Tiger! Shit! Tiger! Tiger! - Bloom

My pet­ty at­tempts at writ­ing about mu­sic might've been even worse 10+ years ago than they still are in the present but at least there's lit­tle need for me be­ing too em­bar­rassed about most of the mu­sic i've picked back then. Case in point, the new LP of ital­ian group Tiger! Shit! Tiger! Tiger!, the first new mu­sic af­ter six to sev­en years of si­lence by the group that had the ques­tion­able hon­or of be­ing the sub­ject of the very first 12XU blog post ever (the ger­man lan­guage sec­tion that is, which goes back to the year 2013 rather than the eng­lish sec­tion which is less than half as old). De­spite their slow pace of out­put you can't ac­cuse them of lack­ing stay­ing pow­er, that's for sure! Their sound's pro­gres­sion over the years makes per­fect sense to me as well, their ex­cel­lent 2013 For­ev­er Young LP kin­da chan­nel­ing the by­gone late 2000s /​ ear­ly 2010s era of noise pop and fuzz punk groups á la No Age, Wavves and Male Bond­ing, which then mor­phed in­to a more re­laxed, in­die rock-lean­ing vibe with on their 2017 al­bum Cor­ners. With this new one, they fi­nal­ly set­tle in­to some ul­tra-clas­sic shoegaze ter­ri­to­ry with just a hint of post grunge added to the mix, Bail­ter­space and Swervedriv­er be­ing the the best com­par­i­son i can come up with. Here they slow things down even fur­ther with­out ever com­ing across as sleepy or bor­ing - it takes a rare amount of elab­o­rate con­struc­tion work and song-craft­ing prowess to pull this shit off suc­cess­ful­ly and these ital­ians de­liv­er on it in droves, more than any oth­er group has done in re­cent years as it's been a rather sad decade for the genre so far if you ask me, in which most of these groups cer­tain­ly have all their ef­fect ped­als in place while lack­ing the songs, en­er­gy and vi­sion to do any­thing for me oth­er than gen­tly lulling me to sleep. This one, it sounds kin­da old­school while ab­solute­ly not Slow­dive-ish and that's like a breath of fresh air to me in these days.

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Beta Máximo - Creo que E​.​T. es Melvin

Span­ish noise pop over­lords Be­ta Max­i­mo re­turn with a strong new batch of tunes. Hard to be­lieve their pro­lif­ic out­put be­gan just some­time last sum­mer… Start­ing out with what i'd con­sid­er more of an egg­punk-aes­thet­ic, they've con­stant­ly kept chang­ing things up, grad­u­al­ly evolv­ing in­to a some­what slow­er, dreamy and slight­ly shoegaze-y di­rec­tion and these new songs strike me as the most re­al­ized and well-round­ed stuff we've heard from them re­cent­ly.

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Wetnap - Gnarled

The full-length de­but of this Tokyo group kin­da plays out like a round-trip through some of the most jan­g­ly and melod­ic sec­tions of late eight­ies to nineties in­die rock, noise pop, post- and emo­core, con­jur­ing up the spir­it of groups like Pol­vo, Su­per­chunk, Un­wound, Bitch Mag­net, Lync, Di­nosaur Jr. and many more, with the oc­ca­sion­al flash of Slint thrown in for good mea­sure and some shoegaze flour­ish­es par­tic­u­lar­ly of the Swervedriv­er va­ri­ety - all of that bot­tled up us­ing fit­ting­ly rough lo-fi pro­duc­tion val­ues. An al­to­geth­er rare and re­fresh­ing thing these days, at least in its raw and undi­lut­ed form as on dis­play here.

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Healees - Healees

I rarely get too ex­it­ed about the cur­rent gen­er­a­tion of shoegaze-re­lat­ed groups, who for the most part seem per­fect­ly con­tent with just cre­at­ing a pleas­ant sound­scape to fall asleep to and soon for­get about. This Paris group, how­ev­er, does not on­ly have the son­ics, but al­so the dri­ve and the hooks to make it stick, find­ing kind of a work­able mid­dle ground be­tween the ob­vi­ous gold­en-era Shoegaze acts (es­pe­cial­ly a strong Bail­ter Space vibe go­ing on here), some ear­ly Sarah Records pop and more re­cent noise pop ex­am­ples of the Gold Bears, Seablite or Fly­y­ing Colours va­ri­ety.

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Permanent Collection - Nothing Good Is Normal

Didn't ex­pect this to hap­pen… A whop­ping sev­en years af­ter his last EP, Oakland's Ja­son Hen­dardy aka Per­ma­nent Col­lec­tion is re­ac­ti­vat­ing his old mu­si­cal en­deav­or and de­liv­ers a bril­liant new al­bum which - in spite of its rather fa­tal­is­tic sound­ing ti­tle - di­als back the son­ic doom and gloom of his pre­vi­ous ef­forts, the dark post punk tone tak­ing the back seat while the melod­ic noise pop & shoegaze as­pects take cen­ter stage - a con­sis­tant­ly fun high en­er­gy ride from start to fin­ish. If you ever wished acts like A Place To Bury Strangers or Cer­e­mo­ny (VA) woud spend less time less time spac­ing out and cut straight to the chase in­stead, this record ist for you.

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The Deadbeat Club - Vital Earnings

An­oth­er love­ly treat from Austin la­bel Dig­i­tal Hot­dogs. The rather quirky kind, rough around the edges and full of sweet­ness in­side, strange and fa­mil­iar at the same time. Just like you've prob­a­bly come to ex­pect of any­thing re­leased by this out­let. There's bare­ly any in­fo on the ac­tu­al band in ques­tion. I found two bands of this name list­ed on band­camp, but i don't think we're deal­ing with ei­ther of those here. What we get in­stead is a sheer wealth of catchy as fuck tunes wrapped in­to dreamy, yet pow­er­ful sound­scapes some­where in the realm of post punk, noise pop, shoegaze and 90s In­die Rock, some­what rem­i­nis­cent of the ear­ly Lo-Fi ad­ven­tures by Eric's Trip, Guid­ed By Voic­es, Fly­ing Saucer At­tack, maybe even a bit of Se­badoh. Or you may choose to draw com­par­isons to more con­tem­po­rary acts in the vein of The Molds, Tree­house, Par­don­er, Rat Columns or Teardrop Fac­to­ry. What­ev­er your view­point on this, you've got im­pec­ca­ble taste, sir. You are made for this record.

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Big Bite - Trinity

Last year's long play­ing de­but by Seat­tle group Big Bite al­ready struck me as an anom­aly of the most wel­come kind. Now their sopho­more ef­fort comes across as no less bril­liant - once again breath­ing new life in­to a par­tic­u­lar 90s niche, os­cil­lat­ing some­where be­tween straight­for­ward, no-fuss but high-thrust in­die- and al­ter­na­tive rock plus a bit of shoegaze. Think Sug­ar, Pol­vo or Swervedriv­er when it comes to bands of the afore­men­tioned era, or of more re­cent acts like ear­ly Ovlov, Par­don­er, Milked or Dead Soft. Psy­che­del­ic mo­ments are giv­en a bit more em­pha­sis here than on their first, while in the album's fi­nal stretch you can sense a sub­tle post punk vibe of the Teenanger or Con­stant Mon­grel va­ri­ety.

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