There are those kinds of bands lacking a rigid quality control and those that don't, wisely leaving the lesser takes on the cutting room floor. And then there's that rare third kind that's seemingly not in need of any amount of quality control 'cos pretty much anything they create seems to turn into instant gold. This new collection of unreleased shit that accumulated in the trash bin of formerly Orlando-, now apparently Portland-based garage-/synth-/eggpunk institution Cherry Cheeks makes a thorougly convincing case for them belonging into that latter category as even the scraps, odds and ends they came up with so far are the kind of material other groups should be jealous for really, making for an admittedly weirder, more cluttered and fragmented but by no means less thrilling and energizing listening experience!
This group from Newcastle, Australia delivers five first-rate new blows of electrically driven, vaguely egg-ish and noisy high-energy garage punk shit on their first EP, sure to evoke a nervous twitch or two in those already familiar with such phenomena like S.B.F., Kerozine, Factory City Children, Witch Piss, Cthtr, Feeding Tube, The Gobs or Liquid Face... 'cos this shit is every bit as good.
Two young dutch garage punk upstarts who've already proven their potency over the past year-and-change join forces on this neat little split EP. Haarlem troublemakers Achterlicht give us two more of their rather quirky egg-ish synth punk goodness only for Utrecht's No Brains to easily one-up them in terms of energy, exchanging some of the previous LP's eighties Naked Raygun-style riffing for a more abrasive garage punk vibe which i think suits them perfectly here.
This is some top-notch, stimulating new shit on the full-length debut of this Raleigh, North Carolina group, hovering somewhere around the rough coordinates of noise-infused post-, garage- and synth Punk. Grim and furious throughout but nonetheless filled to the brim with catchy hooks, this stuff positively reminds me of such respectable forces as Freak Genes, Isotope Soap, Broken Prayer, Powerplant, Kerozine, Cthtr, Beef and S.B.F..
Yup, it's yet another Gobs EP doing exactly what a Gobs EP is supposed to do. Quirky garage-, fuzz- and synth punk bliss obscured by a thick veil of buzz, noise and perfect Lo-Fi production values, never lacking in terms of catchy hooks and melodies. As i said, it's the fucking Gobs alright.
I gotta say it's been an exceptionally fun and joyful ride so far tracking Billiam's progress gradually morphing from a scrappy-yet-charming eggpunk also-ran into the mighty garage-/synth punk force we know him as today, as he's only been growing and evolving his sound with every new release, a trend that continues with his newest LP. Not only is this arguably the most densely packed with catchy hooks of all his releases so far, but also the tightest he's ever sounded with his tunes and arrangements having reached a whole new level of sophistication, elegance and stylistic variety in a relentless nonstop onslaught of viciously contagious earworms.
The two preceding digital Singles TV DVD and Frontier Days sure did a great job at making me eager to finally hear the debut EP by this group from... somewhere and it turns out these tracks aren't even the strongest this record has to offer! Granted, the egg-ish post punk of the former and the psychedelic garage stylings of the latter still very much hold their own but are certainly just a slight notch below the fluffy power-/fuzz pop of Time To Spare, the catchy garage punk propulsion of Funny Feeling and the sparkling, melancholy Lost Sounds-isms of the closing tune Suggestions. Yup, every song on this is a fucking hit.
The follow-up LP to the unwieldy two hours, 69 tracks long 2023 opus Prawn Static For Porn Addicts by Moffat Beach, Australia group Electric Prawns 2 is yet again a quite generous affair in the context of the current garage-/eggpunk-adjacent wave, spanning 15 kinda eclectic, genre-hopping tunes that once again prove the impossible-to-contain, wildly creative drive of this group. The opening track Reaction sparkles with that vaguely familiar vibe of neon-glow psychedelia you might expect of a Mononegatives or Pow! record, plus a hint of Isotope Soap, maybe? What follows then is a nonstop fireworks of all-killer-no-filler tunes showcasing a great stylistic variety and, at one point or another, reminding me of a bunch of like-minded groups á la Ghoulies, Billiam, Nick Normal, Alien Nosejob, Erik Nervous or Busted Head Racket, to name just a few. The most incredible thing about this record comes right at the end though, in the form of the closing track Who I Am in which a sense of widescreen drama akin to The Wipers' Youth Of America or God's garage one hit wonderMy Pal gets condensed into an ultra-compact hook-fest á la Split System. Holy fuck, what just happened there?!
Following a couple of releases which largely dabbled in mellower sounds, Spain's prime eggpunk-/noise pop act Beta Máximo at long last is cranking up the speeds again while applying and consolidating all the lessons they've learned at previous excursions for the benefit of their newest EP, which easily marks their strongest release so far made up of nothing but hits and gelled into place by plenty of simple but rock-solid, top-notch songcraft at its core.
Melbourne's Kitchen People as a band are about as old at this blog and although it took them a couple years to turn into the highly combustible garage punk force we know them as today, their 2020 EP Planet Earth sure saw the group in creative overdrive and their newest six-track cassette once again is nothing short of brilliant! No wonder, since these folks are partly responsible for other top-rated groups such as Ghoulies, Pleasants, Aborted Tortoise and Dr. Sure's Unusual Practice, all of whom are perfectly suitable references for describing these quirky and slightly egg-ish garage-, post- and synth punk tunes, in addition to such household names as Ausmuteants, Checkpoint and Research Reactor Corp..
