It's been a whopping five years since this Paris group's debut EP but the wait has paid off handsomely on their first full length release, delivering an endless stream of high-octane melodic (garage-)punk smashers in the vein of groups like Cheap Whine, Short Days, Red Dons and Telecult… you might also sense a hint of Marked Men, Royal Headache or The Thermals. In a few instances, the songwriting doesn't quite cut it and that's when they veer dagerously close to shallow pop punk territory. However, when they hit, they hit hard and even manage to evoke a subtle retro 60s power pop vibe along the way.
Guadalajara, Mexico group Mess recently put out yet another EP whose totally unashamed oi!-ness is, to be perfectly honest, a bit too much for me to bear. This more post punk-leaning two-track digital single they released just a week earlier is pure gold though.
A kinda unexpected and excellent music submission came in here by a group from Zagreb, Croatia playing a variety of dark oldschool post punk with a very slight goth edge, reminding my at different points of contemporary groups like Daylight Robbery, The Estranged, Primitive Teeth, Anxious Living, Criminal Code or Xetas while of the old guard, there's certainly some Wipers-esque guitar work in there and maybe some mid-80s Naked Raygun? In the second half of the album, things get increasingly more melodic, gaining some kind of melancholic Leatherface-, HDQ- or mid-to-late 80s Government Issue vibe.
No wonder this shit feels familiar. The Wind-Ups is a new solo project of none other than Jake Sprecher of Terry Malts and Smokescreens fame. Much rawer and louder than any of his other groups have dared to sound recently (albeit not quite reaching early Terry Malts levels of speed and fuzzyness), this at times sounds like a fusion of Terry Malts' melodicity with slightly post punk-leaning garage groups like Tyvek or Parquet Courts, while in other moments you can sense a breeze of The Spits, Ricky Hell or anything Reatard(s)-related. Yet when he goes all-in on power pop, there are some undeniable british invasion vibes emanating from his arrangements and compositions.
As a counterbalance to my last post, here's kind of a musical shitpost created by some seattle dude who also happened to play in one or the other local legend you might have heard of. A fourteen-act rock opera of 7"-sized proportions that kinda plays out like an odd fusion of 80's Nomeansno, early Minutemen and Saccharine Trust… chances are i'm already overthinking this though.
Not a whole lot ever changes in the music of Vancouver's Needles//Pins and in crap times like the past year-and-a-half, this familiarity is rather comforting. They still play that certain kind of punk rock… you know the one. The wholly unsubtle und unapologetically earnest, melodic, emotional and euphoric, the folk- and americana-infused kind. The kind that inevitably leads to embarrassing singalongs and awkward displays of emotion from concert audiences. Disgusting, man. I miss it so much…
Let me be blunt here: You guys wanna convince me to pay the equivalent of ~4,60€ for a digital download of only two songs, those two songs better be fucking brilliant. Luckily, fucking brilliant is exactly what these these two tracks by some Tokyo group are. Ka-ching!
This Sydney/London based duo hits every nail on the head straightaway on their first EP with an honest urgency to their straightforward lyrics and a sound not entirely dissimilar to recent british DIY phenomena like Silicone Values or Suburban Homes, although Nasty Party supplement their obvious Television Personalities vibes with quite a bit of Buzzcocks drive. I'm also vaguely reminded of Proto Idiot and Freak Genes.
Another way-too-short cassette bearing the gift of quality dumb oldschool punk crankiness of the heavily KBD-leaning kind, made by two members of L.A. weirdos Launcher. What's not to like?
Now that thing's a treat! Some group from Ciudad López Mateos, Mexico delivers a truckload of pure joy on this tape, condensed into three straightforward-as-fuck bangers made out of fuzzed-out garage- and bubblegum punk with some synth-sweetness on top, transmitting an undiluted sugar rush straight into your bloodstream.
