Pogy & Les Kefars - Dans Ton Retro

The long-play­ing de­but of this group from Mar­seille, France - orig­i­nal­ly self-re­leased in 2021 and re­cent­ly reis­sued by Ly­on la­bel Echo Canyon - is a bot­tom­less well of out­ra­geous­ly catchy pow­er pop gems brought to the next lev­el by rock-sol­id song­writ­ing chops. I'm re­mind­ed of a full wealth of con­tem­po­rary house­hold names like Tom­my and the Com­mies, Warm So­da, Ra­dioac­tiv­i­ty, Mr. Teenage, Cor­ner Boys, Bad Sports or Patsy's Rats.

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Metal Guru - Metal Guru

Their re­cent split tape with Dadgad was plen­ty of fun al­ready and their newest EP, mark­ing the Ro­man group's (for­mer­ly known as the garage one-man-band Mus­tard) de­but as a full band line­up, di­als up the good­ness to ridicu­lous lev­els with an over­all vibe that you might com­pare to the best mo­ments of fair­ly melod­ic garage punk acts á la Liq­uids, Boo­ji Boys or Erik Ner­vous, with some added psychedelic/​british in­va­sion Vibe akin to, say, the Res­onars in the clos­ing track Samu­rai.

Motorbike - Motorbike

On this record, every new song kin­da re­minds me of a dif­fer­ent bunch of groups which is great re­al­ly, many of those be­ing aus­tralian which is al­so rarely a bad sign! The open­ing track, for ex­am­ple con­tains echoes of The Es­tranged, Red Dons, Xe­tas, Civic, a touch of Saints and Bird­man. True Method has the sleazy rockin' qual­i­ties of Gold­en Pel­i­cans and some­thing else i can't re­al­ly put my fin­ger on right now. Throt­tle has some dumb straight-ahead Feed­time en­er­gy to it and the sub­se­quent stretch of songs then has straight­for­ward garage punk á la Ex-Cult, Sauna Youth blend­ing in­to more melod­ic garage and pow­er pop shit á la Ra­dioac­tic­i­ty, Bad Sports, Mind Spi­ders, Bed Wet­tin' Bad Boys. Po­ten­tial to Ride shares a sim­i­lar vibe with psy­che­del­i­cal­ly in­clined post punk acts á la Pub­lic Eye, Waste Man or Mar­bled Eye. Fi­nal­ly, the two clos­ing tracks re­mind me of the sim­ple, undi­lut­ed im­pact of aus­tralian pow­er­hous­es Split Sys­tem, Po­lute, Jack­son Reid Brig­gs and the Heaters. All of this is ground­ed in un­fail­ing, con­fi­dent songcraft and com­pact­ed in­to an in­cred­i­bly tight, cer­ti­fied all-killer LP.

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Smirk - Smirk

Fol­low­ing their most am­bi­tious record so far in last year's Ma­te­r­i­al LP, which ex­pand­ed the son­ic pal­lette out in­to the weird­er fringes of some­what Des­per­ate Bi­cy­cles-lean­ing art punk and al­so fea­tured some of the most in­fec­tious pow­er pop song­writ­ing of that year, the newest 7" by Nick Vic­ario aka Smirk, who's al­so known as a mem­ber of Pub­lic Eye, Cri­sis Man und Ce­men­to among oth­ers, keeps things com­par­a­tive­ly sim­ple and straight­for­ward this time while his heav­i­ly sam­ple-backed songs and arrange­ments still un­err­ing­ly hit their mark every sin­gle time.

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Shop Talk - The Offering

I think this is the same band i've been yap­ping about many moons ago.. Their 2016 EP ap­pears to have been com­plete­ly wiped from the face of the earth and the web though, which is a fuck­ing shame re­al­ly 'cos this was good stuff al­ready. But ad­mit­ted­ly, this shit is so much bet­ter… Melod­ic punk and garage vibes rule supreme here with more than a lit­tle hint of Dick­ies and some dis­tinct '77 and pow­er pop fla­vors that would al­ready make for a per­fect­ly sol­id EP. What pro­pells this one from good to plain out-of-the-ball­park spec­tac­u­lar though are the ad­vanced song­writ­ing chops on dis­play here, run­ning cir­cles around 99% of all oth­er cur­rent punk groups play­ing sim­ple, straight­for­ward pop tunes. This is tru­ly tran­scen­dent, next-lev­el shit, i mean it!

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Faulty Cognitions - Demo

This San An­to­nio, Texas group de­lights with a throw­back to the most melod­ic parts of eight­ies punk, in­die- and col­lege rock, clear­ly in­formed by the likes of Hüsker Dü, Re­place­ments, Mov­ing Tar­gets, Guid­ed By Voic­es and Di­nosaur Jr. in the more jan­g­ly melod­ic mo­ments, as well as some ear­ly Naked Ray­gun in the straight-ahead rockin' tunes, all of it held to­geth­er by fric­tion­less song­writ­ing that wouldn't feel too out of place with more re­cent bands á la Boo­ji Boys, Bad Sports, TV Crime or Bed Wet­tin' Bad Boys ei­ther.

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Sex Mex - We're A Happy Family

Over the course of the past year or two, San An­to­nio, Texas group Sex Mex have proven to be a re­li­able bet with their knack for catchy garage-/synth punk and fuzz pop tunes. Their newest batch doesn't dis­ap­point ei­ther, de­liv­er­ing a pop good­ness high­ly in­debt­ed, among oth­er things, to the more melod­ic end of the Reatard-re­lat­ed uni­verse, Lost Sounds be­ing the most ob­vi­ous com­par­i­son here but al­so new­er shit á la The Gobs, Witch Piss or Ghoulies wouldn't be too far off.

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Gee Tee - Goodnight Neanderthal

New stuff from Gee Tee or Vee or what­ev­er, this dude's shit is all good! On this LP, he's hold­ing a nice bal­ance be­tween the pow­er pop ten­den­cies of his re­cent Tee Vee Re­pair­man records and the some­what more garage-lean­ing projects of his á la Sa­tan­ic To­gas, Re­search Re­ac­tor Corp. and Set-Top Box, mak­ing for an­oth­er fine batch of fuzzed-out garage pop tunes, among them some of his most in­fec­tious ones so far, that's for sure.

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Scam Likely - Scam Likely

A duo made up of Ki­mi Recor and Vin­ny "Vaguess" Ear­ley, you can't re­al­ly over­look the sim­i­lar­i­ties to the lat­ter dude's record­ed out­put but there's al­so more go­ing on here. Start­ing off from a fa­mil­iar mix of garage- and post punk there's some clear Lithics kind of en­er­gy in some places or Welt Star, an­oth­er Ear­ley-re­lat­ed project comes to mind while songs like Star­ing at the Sun and Please 3 sound like for­got­ten Woolen Men tunes that fell through the cracks some­where and Chameleon has the vibe of a Dig­i­tal Leather deep cut from an al­ter­nate cold-wave re­al­i­ty.

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Tee Vee Repairman - What's On TV

Not long af­ter the re­cent 7" on Good­bye Boozy Records we get the first LP of Sydney's Tee Vee Re­pair­man on that oth­er garage punk pow­er­house la­bel To­tal Punk. As you might've guessed this is an­oth­er juicy treat of sim­ple and stu­pid melod­ic garage punk and pow­er pop de­light well suit­ed for fans of shit like Bad Sports, Tom­my and the Com­mies and Bed Wet­tin' Bad Boys while of the dude's own oth­er projects, you might be most re­mind­ed of a sug­ar-coat­ed ver­sion of Sa­tan­ic To­gas or re­cent R.M.F.C..

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