Coachwhips

Reviews

Coachwhips Devil Uptown cassette

Girlsville really digging deep with the COACHWHIPS nuggets over the last few years, and I thank them for it. Four cuts here—a synth-drenched swamp dirge outtake from 2002’s Hands on the Controls and three rough and tumble demo tracks (“Get Yer Body Next Ta Mine” and two others). Fidelity out the window, these early COACHWHIPS excursions are confident and raunchy garage punk protein; vocals demented beyond words and music stripped down to the roots all bluesy and full of not a care in the world. And loud—it needs to be loud.

Coachwhips Night Train LP

This is a reissue of the first COACHWHIPS tape with a bunch of demos and out-of-print extras from their entire history of a band—an odds ’n’ ends greatest collapses or something. COACHWHIPS were one of the bands that everyone was talking about when I moved to SF in the early ’00s. I’d seen John Dwyer’s earlier, more experimental group PINK AND BROWN and was obviously intrigued by witnessing that destruction force in the context of garage music. Obviously Dwyer repaved SF music in a significant way with THEE OHSEES before moving to LA when tech attacked, but for me at least COACHWHIPS is just more what I want out of this sound and scene. Uncontained destruction force sound where rock is a myth that must be destroyed! This is a cool overview of a specific era, investigate?