Almost ten years after their last recorded sign of activity, the 2010s San Francisco garage punk mainstays Useless Eaters are getting the band back together and sound more determined and explosive than ever before, as i was already lucky to witness on occasion of their absolutely unreal and intense Cologne gig earlier this year. Now on their first new recorded artifact - available digitally already with a 7" release expected sometime via Goodbye Boozy - they're killing it once again, in some way continuing the spaced-out, kraut-y and post punk-ish psychedelic leanings of their most recent couple of releases pre-hiatus, propelled forward in an insanely tight, dense and unrelenting performance in which every little detail seems to fall perfectly into place with sleepwalking ease and certitude. Awesome to have them back!
A lovely and fun debut by some Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania group. The instrumental opening tune Liftoff Jam (White Boys in E) swells into a monotonous monster of psychedelic haze that sounds a bit as if MX-80 and Chrome were being fused with early The Men, only for the rest of the EP to settle into a slightly less cumbersome aesthetic of straightforward, somewhat Stooges-esque garage punk that occasionally approaches some hardcore speeds and energy levels and keeps setting itself apart by way of its subtle psychedelic overtones and a constant melodic undercurrent flowing through their catchy, oldschool garage- and proto punk stylings.
Electric Prawns 2 of Moffat Beach, Australia are back with not just one, but two new LPs, in a way highlighting two opposing vibes that have been part of the group's stylistic DNA all along. The very deep red of the Perspex LP's artwork could already be taken as subtle signal to proceed with caution and indeed this one is more of a downer by design, the driving Useless Eaters vibes of the opener Who's Been Laying Eggs Under My Skin? giving way to an increasingly bleak sounding make of psychedelic garage rock that oscillates somewhere inbetween deep sadness and outright bad trip territory, up in space as much as miles underwater and always aware of the fact that both space and the deep ocean are utterly inhospitable places and only a thick steel wall is preventing your body from instantly getting reduced into half a bathtub worth of reddish goo. Feeling awesome about your fragile existence already? Don't worry 'cos i've only told you half the truth so far, with (the so far only imaginary) side B of the record kinda staying in a vintage psychedelia realm but focusing on the much more uplifting parts of that whole affair, so sunny that you're gonna have flowers growing out of your ass in no time. The Heavy Shitters LP then is a lot closer to the friendlier, instantly recognizable vibe that has dominated much of their previous work and just wants to play and fuck around and rock out and crack lots of stupid fart jokes. Many of the record's biggest hits are saved for the second half and especially the marvellous six-song spree going from Sick to Farted In Her Sleep is the kind of thing a lesser group would fucking kill for.
That Evinspragg record has garnered the most publicity of the newest Inscrutable Records batch for several reasons, some of them justifiable, others more annoyingly drama-related. But to be perfectly honest, that one is a bit too ambitious for its own good in my humble opinion and a bit of a mixed bag which starts out incredibly strong, then kinda fizzles out towards the end and i actually feel much more drawn towards the label's other two releases among which is this full-length debut by Johnny Skin. On it, they create a dreamy, melancholy and super-catchy melange blending the yearning vibe of '50s-'60s bubblegum pop ballads with rudimetary, minimalist lo-fi vintage electronic drum beats and synths in a fashion that's gonna draw inevitable comparisons to Suicide and Métal Urbain, interspersed with a bunch of more noisy and dissonant no wave-ish tunes more in the vein of noisy synth punk pioneers á la Primitive Calculators or Nervous Gender and the experimental, psychedelic sounds of Theoretical Girls, Chrome or MX-80.
Their newest EP is hands-down the strongest effort so far of this Indianapolis group, who seemingly have left behind the more straightforward rockin' sounds of previous releases and dialed down the energy level considerably for a comparatively relaxed style of garage rock taking many cues from Paisley Underground-ish jangle pop and british psychedelia. And what can i say, they have carefully crafted the tunes to prove they mean business and aren't fucking around here. It's a consistently classy treat of laid-back psychedelic pop that's catchy as fuck without ever running the risk of becoming too saccharine, a bit like a mixture of, say, Good Flying Birds and White Fence, or maybe also an even calmer version of recent power pop goodness á la Shrapnel and Dumbells.
While their debut LP from 2023 had the character of a colorful grab bag of different styles and flavors, the sophomore album of this Cincinnati, Ohio group featuring members of, among others, The Drin, The Serfs, Vacation and Crime Of Passing, comes across as a good bit more homogenous with the common thread here being a comparatively sleazy, hard-rockin' garage punk sound occasionally bordering on dungeon- and motörpunk territory with strong similarities to the likes of Cement Shoes, Golden Pelicans, Cheap Heat, Pïss Bäth as well as AUS/NZ groups like Hög, Polute, Split System or maybe Alien Nosejob's sleaze rock record Stained Glass a while back, yet there is still plenty of nuance and variety crammed into in these tunes regardless. Currency has a strong feel of classic Saints, Radio Birdman and Scientists while Afraid of Guns melds propulsive power pop harmonies with psychedelic undercurrents and textures. Speaking of which, the band members' connections to The Drin and The Serfs become quite obvious for a change in the spaced-out, kraut-ish Gears Never Dry. Quite Nice and to a lesser extent, What Have I Done radiate a hazy, cowpunk-ish heartland rock vibe, Nie Wrócimy has a bit of an MX-80-esque proto-/art punk bent to itself and i totally shouldn't fail to point out the four bonus tracks of the digital edition, among which the record's most catchy, power pop-ish tunes Error, Flowers and the Wire-esque Ffion deserve special mention.
Silicon Heartbeat have been a constant presence at the periphery of the 12XU-relevant sonic spectrum for years now, yet it appears i've never given them a blog post so far for some inexplicable reason (though you've surely stumbled upon them on a couple of my mixtapes). This has to be rectified immediately i'll say and their newest EP is the perfect occasion for that, not only featuring some of their strongest tunes so far but also being further elevated by the production work of garage punk royalty Erik Nervous, whose magic touch adds plenty of oomph and contour to their somewhat Spits-indebted, catchy and psychedelic synth- and garage punk sound. I sure hope that, in spite of its title, this ain't actually the last we're gonna hear of them..
This Sydney group has an embarrassment of riches in store for us that's being poured into a sonic guise of timeless elegance here - heavy duty power pop songwriting chops take on the shapes of Byrds-inspired, relaxed garage rock, british invasion- and first wave british psychedelia-fueled jangle pop anthems which often come across like a less sarcastic variant of The Soft Boys, a more retro-minded Guided By Voices or the more powerpop-ish corners of the Bevis Frond galaxy, though you may just as well compare them to more recent, mostly US-based groups like The Resonars, White Fence, Honey Radar, Good Flying Birds, Chronophage, Violent Change, Scupper, Germ House or Mo Troper, while in more indie rock-leaning tunes like Winston you can sense just a little hint of fellow australians Treehouse.
Here's a sensational debut EP by some band or project based in Lethbridge, Alberta containing six perfect blows of post punk whose ear-piercing walls of noise and pulsing electric beats at times sound a bit as if an eggpunk Big Black collided with the somewhat psychedelic qualities of garage greats like late Useless Eaters, Pow! and Mononegatives - or maybe the murky old experimental punk classics of Métal Urbain / Dr. Mix and the Remix - in a breathless succession of certified bangers. I also have a hunch that fans of spaced-out noisemakers á la Corpus Earthling or french magician Pablo X are gonna lap this shit up.
What this dude from Chico, California pulls off on his debut EP i can best describe as a pleasantly antiquated sounding burst of late aughts / early 2010s fuzz punk and noise pop with plenty of a Wavves, Male Bonding and early Terry Malts kind of energy, but equally imbued with some of that certain surf-infused psychedelia of the same era á la Crystal Stilts and Fresh & Onlys.
