Reviews

Volar

Beating Beating LP

Punk is an expansive category, but there is also a lot of music that is not punk and this record feels like it falls outside even that blurry boundary. It is artsy, experimental, and a bit psychedelic, with emotive vocals, unorthodox rhythms, open-ended synth solos, and textural sound collages. The track “Slow Burnt” is almost seven minutes of ambient noise, fading into shimmery dreamscape, pop-soul ballad, then shifting back into a proggy, grunge dreamscape (this time with drums). The more cohesive songs do sound kind of like a tripped-out meandering style of post-punk, like the CLASH on quaaludes.

Cat Scan In Nature LP

This LA band has been kicking around for a few years, and this LP apparently hit the streets last September—glad we’re finally getting around to reviewing it! Luckily, it was worth the wait: CAT SCAN delivers the goods. An unrelenting torrent of hyperkinetic, danceable nerd-punk at the sonic intersection of YUMMY FUR, MINUTEMEN, 100 FLOWERS, and DEVO, a Venn diagram sure to provoke uninhibited perspiration: nimble toes and elbows akimbo, pausing only to push eyeglasses back up the nose and sweep the fringe back. Musicianship is not generally something we put too much stock in here at MRR towers, but it would be remiss to not mention how all the members of this group are pulling their weight here: the rhythm section “locks in” (clichés have their roots in truth) to allow the guitars to trill and squall in a jagged ballet of staccato figures.

Keepers Keepers LP

This San Diego trio invite you down into the mire of lurching, sludgy noise punk. The rhythm section keeps things moving along like the drummer on a Viking ship, allowing the guitar to alternate between simplistic fuzzed-out riffs and psychedelic wanderings. The track “Beautiful Things” offers some let-up from the sonic onslaught with an almost post-punk danceability. If you like things heavy, this is worth seeking out.

Keepers I cassette

Hailing from San Diego, KEEPERS bring spooky, carnivalistic, atavistic post-punk gloom to the arena with hazy delivery and morose groove as an intro. Some of this is discordant jangly garage rock, feeling like the FALL and SYNTHETIC ID. Parts are drawn out with cataclysmic psych-rock and lo-fi ’90s indie rock. The EP rounds out with vocal-effected, millennial gaze-y rock that seems both disturbed and carefree. Four tracks of irreverent, playful proto-punk with some twangy edge to it.

The Passengers Under the Cruel Light LP

Debut album by the goth/post-punk band from San Diego, the PASSENGERS. It seems that every month I’m telling you the same thing, but there is something sinister in the water in Southern California, where bands just pop out incredibly formed, with fully crafted statements, personality traits, and a carefully developed sound—case in point, the PASSENGERS. The band has a sense of dynamics within their songs that plays to their advantage, each song has a narrative arc with peaks and valleys, the faster songs are full of vitality while the mid-tempos are oppressive and brutal. The keyboard work generates oppressive or romantic atmospheres depending on what the song requires, the drums are powerful, the bass hypnotic, the guitars melancholic, and the voice tremendous. I want to highlight “The Plague,” “Strange Patterns,” and “Burning Pride,” great anthems that any follower of darker sounds should listen to now.

V/A Presence Not Absence: A Benefit Compilation for Trans BIPOC Housing Assistance cassette

This comp dropped last year, but the purpose is (sadly) more appropriate now than ever. Musically all over the place, much like the communities it is meant to support and lift up; driving electropop (NO NO BABY), ethereal dance (DOVE ARMITAGE), dark conscious hip hop (the UHURUVERSE—whose opening track “Obey” is an absolute stunner), noisy post-punk (VAGUESS), experimental vocals (UNO LADY), and the list goes on. Quality level is extremely high for all genres and musical modalities represented, and proceeds are going to the right place(s).