Weird that this apparently all-year-round halloween-themed group never entered my radar before last year's Chumpire 247 EP, well... better late than never i guess. Their newest one delivers an even stronger set of new tunes that sound like an unlikely crossbreed of classic Spits, Why Bother?, Trauma Harness, Woolen Men in power pop mode and maybe even a slight hint of Hüsker Dü. Crazy deformed little creature that is, but miraculously it doesn't face any problems walking and singing and standing on its own three feet of varying length without falling over even once.
I wasn't entirely sold on the novelty-rocker vibes of the bluesy, hard-/dad-rockin' preview tune Hairy Man, but damn, does this new record not only get better from there on (plus, Hairy Man does work a lot better in the album context too), but there's also easily some of the groups best material to be found on here with the following tracks Beef and Fire having plenty of an oldschool Useless Eaters and Pow! feel to them while Out Of Touch gradually dials up the levels of psychedelic haze that we've known at its most pronounced from their previous Perspex LP, before Hell (or rather, the first part thereof) finally kicks open the floodgates of catchy-as-fuck garage punk/fuzz pop goodness as we all know pretty much any Electric Prawns 2 record eventually does. The second circle of Hell (or maybe they're better understood as two seperate songs, both called Hell?) takes all of the above and imbues it with a slightly campy goth note not unlike more recent Powerplant. Other notable highlights are the burst of ultra-classic aussie rock'n'roll that is Piece of Me and the in equal measure melodic and blues-infused bubblegum vibes of Waste, all of it arguably making for their overall strongest record so far. Who would've thought, making albums of conventional length may not be the worst idea after all!
The second LP of Minnesota's Yuasa-Exide starts off with a thrusting burst of fuzzed-out catchy mid-tempo punk channeling a mix of mid-fi era Guided By Voices, the more power pop-ish ends of the Bevis Frond universe and a slight hint of Eric's Trip or classic-era Dinosaur Jr. to boot in the opening track The Picture You Painted, just to increasingly and deliberately destabilize the sonic landscape on subsequent tracks. Their tunes and arrangements based somewhere inbetween the realms of '80s to '90s indie- and college rock, Flying Nun Records-style psychedelia and busy C86-ish strummery gain a more shambolic, hazy and surreal quality, always in acute danger of falling apart at the seams. Yet, quite wondrously, the looming sword of damocles never seems to strike, the tunes somehow always maintain their fragile equilibrium. The ability to pull that shit off already kinda struck me as their superpower on the previous Hyper At The Gates Of Dawn LP released earlier this year and i think it holds even more true here, a rare quality i previously found in early works by the likes of Rat Columns and The Molds over a decade ago and, maybe, the comparatively straightforward Psych Pop nuggets of Blank Realm's 2014 Grassed In LP which, then again, brings us back full circle on the aforementioned Flying Nun vibes.
Ever since i first stuck my nose in their immense output sometime last year, New Jersey group Monda have proven their worth as not only one of the most productive, but also most consistent purveyors of catchy and fuzzed-out delicacies sitting somewhere inbetween garage punk, oldschool indie rock, noise- and power pop. One other thing you're quickly gonna notice about them is that they really like to rearrange the sonic furniture a bit between releases to keep things fresh and exciting which, among other things, has led to a heavily spaced-out, psychedelic-leaning stretch in their discography most noticeable in and around 2024's Ponderous Leviathan LP. Their newest one now sees them kinda going back to the basics and once again they're getting all of them so fucking right, channelling some pronounced '50s-'60s bubblegum pop vibes just as much as 'eighties Flying Nun and Sarah Records-type art-/indie pop artifacts and various C86-style oddities in a flawless string of strikingly simple but lovingly crafted new tunes that just hit their marks dead-on without exception.
Gripper from Philadelphia have crafted a delightful debut EP here that in a way channels all of the unabashedly hard-rockin' fun and power pop hooks of the early Sheer Mag singles, leaving out most of the southern rock flourishes but getting all the basics right in a flawles set of two incredibly infectious and catchy pop nuggets and two equally rippin' and appropriately sleazed-up garage punk gems.
First-rate new catchy garage punk shit from Sydney that cycles through quite a few different styles in its four songs with POSIWID and the opening tune What A Time To Be Alive coming across a bit like a mix between the fuzzy power pop of Sex Mex and the quirky synth-enhanced egg-ish action of Ghoulies while the synth punk of The Game recalls oldschool Digital Leather material and more recent stuff like Spyroids and O-D-EX. The closing track B-52's Tattoo on the other hand sounds like something right out of the warped mind of Texas garage punk eccentric Trashdog. Oh wait, there's yet another dog band i'm thinking of here... Oh right, that's Melbourne's wonderfully trashy garage-/synth punk explosion Metdog!
New shit from Mark Ryan (of Marked Men, Mind Spiders and Radioactivity fame) and his current electro-/synth punk outfit O-D-EX (or is it just Odex now?). After one short- and one long-playing release from last year - each of 'em sporting more of a minimalist and cold synth wave aesthetic - this new EP sees the duo of Ryan and Micah opening up their tunes towards a comparatively warm, melodic and overall more tangible direction that indeed sounds like a perfect middle ground between the group's aforementioned previous releases and the considerably more garage-leaning Mind Spiders records.
I'm a bit short on time this week so here's just a quick digest of quirky punk releases with varying degrees of egg-ish-ness of which these three particularly stuck out to me. For starters, there are the comparatively rough sounds of Athens, Georgia group Mr. [Redacted] whose tunes rapidly alternate between the parameters of a hard-/art-/weirdcore sound not entirely dissimilar to groups like Judy & The Jerks, Warm Bodies, Sniffany & The Nits, and the more egg-intensive sounds of early Snooper, Print Head, Awful and early Skull Cult. If you're more interested in classic egg punk territory, you may get tons of enjoyment out of the new Tape by Lovebomb from Hildesheim, Germany (man, the krautwürstle are really punching above their weight this week, aren't they?), wo deliver a densly packed bundle of snappy textbook eggpunk goodness most similar to shit á la Prison Affair, Beer, Winky Frown, Molbo and Goblin Daycare. If you prefer it more weird and Lo-Fi, try the new one of Leipzig (again!) group TTTTurbo whose recorded output's overall aesthetic is the sonic equivalent of an n-th generation document that's been xeroxed a couple times too many - beneath a thick layer of burnt monochrome pixels and copy-of-a-copy xerographic grime there's plenty stuff left to the imagination but nonetheless you can't escape the ridiculous appeal of the catchy bubblegum pop nuggets buried in there.
Quirky LoFi-ish toy synth punk goodness from Cleveland, Ohio dude Emmett O'Connor who may already be a familiar figure to some as a member of Archie and the Bunkers and MK Ultras. Now on this solo longplaying effort he's creating a warm, rich and full sound out of minimal means, poured into a number of strikingly simple but infallibly excellent power pop tunes that often have the feel a slightly sedated, toned-down and bedroom-dwelling budget version of Digital Leather's most catchy pop moments.
Man, it must have been ages since we last heard of this Philadelphia group, which for a long time has been one of the probably less then ten bands you could plausibly qualify as "pop punk" that doesn't make me desperately flee the room in a matter of seconds. Dark Thoughts still prove they're capable of pulling off that impossible trick and all it takes them to do so is one of the most beefy yet slick garage punk sounds around, a feisty, determined performance and a perfect hit ratio when it comes to simple, tried-and-tested but always perfectly to-the-point punk songcraft.
