Fake Last Name It’ll Happen Again cassette
Shape-shifting post-punk from a new Baton Rouge, Louisiana solo endeavor dubbed FAKE LAST NAME, with scribble-scratch guitar, limber bass lines, skittish beats, and perfectly affectless vocals all assembled in a series of quick, economical audio bricolages that are decidedly offbeat, but not at the expense of an accessible and sneaky playfulness. There’s the sparse, concise ROSA YEMEN-style No Wave exercises “FFSN” and “Demeanor,” backmasked loops circling behind abstracted spoken vignettes and a singular fuzzed-out bass note repeated into oblivion on “Persona,” cowbell-accented deconstructed dance rhythms pushing “Window” forward, and the anxious, agitated twitch in “Service!” (and its dryly acidic “thank you, thank you for your service!” refrain) that hits a similar nerve center as MARAUDEUR’s modern redux of DIY Euro-wave, just with a touch more of a late ’70s US art-punk preoccupation. The real freak sound of now!