The successor to the Astoria, Oregon group’s incredible 2024 Gay Bordom LP doesn’t quite reach the same level of originality and playful creativity, playing it a bit safer and at times veering a bit too close to pop punk territory for my taste, but for what it is, this is actually a pretty neat record in its own right still, the songs ranging between servicable and pretty freakin’ good and still spanning a good deal of sonic variety so yeah… this is a strong enough follow-up to a larger-than-life record that would’ve been kind of a tough act to follow for pretty much anyone and it almost feels a bit unfair to not judge this new one on its own merits. It is what it is and that’s still pretty fucking good, even if we know this group can do much better.
The third EP of this Montreal group is yet another irresistible candy seemingly inspired by the more melodic strains of eighties punk somewhere inbetween, say, Fastbacks, late-era Naked Raygun and Hüsker Dü, but also previous-decade revivalist indie punk rockers like Milk Music, California X, Milked and Kicking Spit ain’t too far off either. This time they keep us waiting a bit – until the very last track to be precise – before they fully lean into their trademark heavy metal shredding which has also been the secret ingredient of their brilliant previous EP, but that shall in no way distract from the bucketloads of catchy joy we had along the way leading up to that point too!
There’s a strikingly economic, down-to-earth quality to this Portland-based group’s debut EP, on which they serve up six highly flammable concoctions of eighties-style punk and hardcore with only the slightest hint of a present-day garage punk extension, all of which these dudes pull of with sleepwalking ease and class by way of a neverending string of simple and catchy hooks.
Damn, it’s been almost eight years now since we’ve last heard of Youth Avoiders on occasion of their 2018 Relentless LP, which i remember having had some lukewarm feelings about, but that’s probably less a reflection of that record’s qualities and more of the not all too sunny place my life has been at in 2018. Anyway, here’s a new Youth Avoiders LP at long last and guess what, it’s every bit as good as anything the Paris group has done so far, excelling in a sound inbetween melodic punk and postcore that’s become kind of a blueprint for countless of predominantly french groups following in their footsteps like Telecult, Nightwatchers, Stalled Minds, Litovsk, Bleakness, Laxisme or Bronco Libre, who in turn have developed it over the years to include varying amounts of post- and garage punk and, even more recently, Oi! elements. Because of that, their music may nowadays be described as pleasantly oldschool and possibly won’t sound quite as unique today as it did back in the early 2010s, but that’s just underscoring the massive influence these folks have had on parts of the scene with a sound that’s actually very much their own.
Now that’s an impressively confident second EP by this Philadelphia group, newly (re-)issued on a neat pink cassette now by pop-ish punk specialist label Dead Broke Rekerds, presenting a dense package of high calorie catchy earworms that combine a slight hint of early ’90s indie rockers á la Superchunk, Sebadoh, Seam and Superdrag with an even stronger dose of present-day power pop sensations like Teenage Tom Petties, Bad Sports, Teen Line, Night Court, Tommy And The Commies, Ex-Gold and Mr. Teenage and it’s their infallible songwriting capability that really elevates these tunes.
The past couple weeks had quite an abundance of incredible short-form 2-track releases and i’m even shorter on time than i anticipated as, on top of my infamously unreliable brain chemistry, this week also came up with a family emergency for me to help mitigate, so i’m gonna take the liberty of just dumping the four strongest of the batch in a single post.
The most surprising of thiose was certainly the debut (?) single of Atlanta, Georgia group Assembly, covering a pretty wide and eclectic stylistic spectrum in the postcore, noise- and math rock field ranging from classic ’90s and early ’00s Dischord-flavored sounds of the Faraquet, Bluetip and Q And Not U variety over other ’90s phenomena like Polvo, Braniac and Chavez to more recent noise rock and art punk acts like Wax Chattels, Solderer, Body House, Haunted Horses and, most of all, Spray Paint and assiciated later acts Rider/Horse and During.
Australia’s Tee Vee Repairman – yeah, of course it’s another group of Gee Tee’s Ishka Edmeades – follows up a bunch of previous EPs and a brilliant LP with a new 7″ whose two songs can easily be counted as among the finest in a discography that’s never been lacking in infectious power pop melodies to begin with.
In a similar vein, there’s a new Smirk (aka Nick Vicario, also of Public Eye, Crisis Man und Cemento) 7″ that also sees the dude considerably upping his songwriting game, going places we haven’t seen of him before with Domestic Dog kinda fusing oldschool anarcho and post punk flourishes with a pronounced 77-ish melodicity and an almost Television-like spaciousness that also permeates the other tune Manhunt in Paradise, the whole of which sounds a bit like the most recent Institute LP being taken a step further in its art punk elegance.
And finally, in contrast to the previous bands, we have an example of a group plainly serving up more of the same and what a brilliant kind of “same” that is, the new 7″ of Brooklyn power pop group Shop Talk who’ve so far always blown me away with every new release and the new one can do no wrong either, with Museum Of Sex being another flawless instance of catchy and straightforward ’77-ish punk with that distinct Dickies flavor while the more intricately constructed Gaslight slows things down a bit, adds a more melancholy vibe and equal parts of a Buzzcocks- and Replacements quality to the mix. A knockout tune to say the least.
Awesome new shit from Basque Country-based label Mendeku Diskak. First off there’s a new EP of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania group Iron Breed on which they serve four delicious treats of catchy garage-flavored Oi! shit with an oldschool strummy power pop-ish quality to boot. The debut EP of Gare Du Nord, a group of somewhat nebulous international origin then feels a bit like the more rough and old-fashioned flipside to that same thing as they churn out no-frills catchy tunes with both a distinct ’77 and eighties europunk flavor, kinda as if the current breed of french and belgian garage/oi!/post punk groups went all-in on their original inspiration.
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.
This group from Santa Cruz, California delivers six neat little calorie bombs made of oldschool Power Pop excellence, flawlessly executing a simple old formula that could actually have occured at any time in the past five decades and wouldn’t feel out of place in any of these multiple eras, while their way-above-average songwriting powers never falter even for a second. Even if at times i can’t help but feel like i’ve heard these songs many times before, this is one of those instances where i’m perfectly content with coming off as a kinda basic bitch as far as quality rock’n’roll is concerned.
This Montreal group’s spectacular debut EP pulls off a pretty neat trick and does so flawlessly and at exactly the right time in our collective cultural consciousness. Ultra-catchy punk rock kinda bridging the gap between classic eighties acts like mid-career Hüsker Dü, Dinosaur Jr., Dag Nasty, Embrace or the later works of Naked Raygun and Government Issue on one hand; previous-decade noisy punk and indie rock groups á la earky Milk Music, Kicking Spit, California X, Milked and Happy Diving on the other, gets blended here with flourishes of decidedly ’80s-sounding heavy metal shredding and solo-ing which, in tandem with the heavily dungeon-themed artwork, is sure gonna strike a chord with friends of Steröid or Poison Ruïn, with this shit at times coming across a bit like a catchier, immediably approachable spin on the latter group’s work so far.
