Hailing from the Western Mass town of Holyoke, this solid debut album has the mid-tempo gut-punch of the STOOGES and DEAD BOYS—the kind of punk that doesn’t need to speed through the songs or pull some Epi-Fat double bass drum fills and is comfortable pulling back and letting the songwriting and a little attitude bring the message. There’s also a tinge of post-punk here à la WIPERS or HURRY UP.
Parisian label SDZ teams up with the fledgling Brooklyn label Dot Dash Sounds to bring us the second full-length from this five-piece out of Phoenix that shares at least a couple of members with the prolific noise rock outfit SOFT SHOULDER. The LP is composed of eleven two-ish-minute vignettes that can roughly be categorized as DIY post-punk or jangly lo-fi indie rock. You get stuff that sounds like early FALL playing the VELVET UNDERGROUND’s “The Gift,” SWELL MAPS locking into the loosest krautrock groove, some indistinct blend of GBV/BUILT TO SPILL/SEBADOH, or—as with my favorite track on the record (and one of my favorite tracks of the year), “In Center (X-Static)”—a shit-hot mix of, like, CRIME’s “Terminal Boredom” and the extraterrestrial buzz punk of CHROME’s “TV as Eyes.” But the whole record has this sun-bleached and sandblasted quality, like it was recorded after the band was forced to wander the Sonoran Desert for a week. The vocals, which often sound like someone doing a stuffy-nosed Mark E. Smith impression, are so odd and loosely multi-tracked at times that it makes you feel a little delirious. Real strange, but also real great!
A brand new label’s debut release, and an all-around cool idea. A compiled mixtape of bands on the label’s radar, all doing unreleased/live/cover songs. Super fun. I always love when labels do things like this, because it is a beautiful way to expose people to a ton of new bands. Featuring tracks by the already-known and beloved RETAIL SIMPS, GG KING, and IBEX CLONE, as well as fifteen others to open your eyes to. Love it. Will certainly be keeping an eye out for what Dot Dash ends up releasing next.
A follow-up to last year’s sampling of this NYC niche label. If I were told these tracks came off a ’70s French coldwave comp, I wouldn’t bat an eyelash. But for something so specific, there’s still considerable breadth here. The TRENDEES and C.A.D. AND THE PEACETIME CONSUMERS offer some fun garage-esque bops. NAPE NECK’s atonal funk is a hoot, reminiscent of DELTA 5. There are also some left turns like WEEGEE’s gothy waltz. The whole collection is a nice mix of the fast, the fun, and the froide.
