garage – Page 15 – Plainly & Painfully

TRACK | OK Cool – Self-Sow

Chicago’s OK Cool are making ruminative and well crafted hooks, angular and blazing within a shoegaze/bubblegrunge genus.

While lyrically pensive and introspective material, the instrumentation is sheer revelry and admirably honed to a point of exacting precision. There is great density within its melodic ornamentation, and seemingly always another generous layer or accent driving the tracks metering forward.

Sonically rich, there is considerable attention put into the pacing of all the accompanying forms. The vocal effects are an early ghostly clarion, but equally laudable are the vaporous, sophisticated guitar tones phasing in and out of the mix. It is a joyous thing to behold in the headphones.

TRACK | Thee Marvin Gays – Iron Maiden

Sounding suspiciously like your neighborhood middle-american egg punk, Tournai’s (Belgium) Thee Marvin Gays own and operate guitars.

The tones are framed in a glaze of static residue, gently smudged, and securely off kilter enough to be believed: some of that magic which has not yet departed the world.

A friendly slap in the face. Sounds a bit like P&P favorites Together Pangea and Dead Ghosts. By some means the 2014 release Sleepless Nights has escaped my gaze to this point and I am looking forward to pouring over it’s excesses.

TRACK | The Mokkers – Peace of Mind

One excellent album from 2016 that even James Acaster himself overlooked, The Mokkers’ In a Daze is tremendous, tremulous Berlin-based surf/garage rock.

I really need a change /
I need it like the plants need water when there’s no rain

Well-versed and wholehearted, “Peace of Mind” is a searing and self-assured cut. More or less timeless, it dissects a few essential organs steeped in history that are worth preserving and successfully transplants them.

Smoldering vocals, speaking in and with instrumental accompanying tones of the past, beseeching, to reconfigure the present on better terms. In league with others who do this properly, like our dear parasocial friends Shannon and the Clams and Sheer Mag.

TRACK | Daughter Bat and the Lip Stings – chrissy dins

More Love Songs was released on New Years Eve, maybe to spite the compulsive year-end-listers, maybe not. I think it’ll still make its way onto my 2022 set because it is deserving of praise. And, though it may try, the Gregorian calendar alone doesn’t dictate when or what we listen to.

Lots of formidable flux here, and it’s a little unnerving in it’s unfaltering shimmer.

Melody and tone are of paramount importance. But also up there in import is the character of the tones themselves, vocally and the instrumental accompaniment, which envelop a delirious kind of defiance, defiant but grotesque.

You can have it both ways, transformative between each line, the grave seriousness and the severed irreverence. It’s more fun that way, in fact, and richer. There’s a lot of value in taking either of these divergent impulses and honing them into a few heightened hooks which share a purpose. In that stylistic choice is a brighter/weirder future that maintains its sense of humor throughout the collapse.

TRACK | Cupid and the Stupids – Burn the Mattress

Having featured these gentle giants on a previous mix and once earlier on this eternal tomb, I was excited to see the new album, 99 ways to fix a broken heart, appear in the Tremendo Garaje feed.

It’s a joyous and raucous set, tactile in that lo-fi measure that puts you in the room. 99 ways is 36 minutes of the fervent and the gushing. Recorded over three days, it really feels like it, or maybe even more like one afternoon of unsupervised pyrotechnics.

Mostly incandescent, its poignant haranguing is a lot of fun. Antithetical to most music that is built to bracket advertisements, it is built with a different purpose. And this almost seems like a mistake or misdirection within the current structures that determine what has value and why.

But, knowing the dominant alternative, it is a great relief to have access to this sentiment and viscera… particularly on this day of all days. I am of course referring to the fact that it is exactly 74 days until Arbor Day. Good luck out there, my friends.

TRACK | LAFFF BOX – We Hear You Talking

Equal parts ripping and roaring, there’s not one Florida ounce in this track that isn’t a good time. Both terrorizing and playful, sort of reminiscent of the common era. Crooked and delightful.

There is a fine patchwork of influences that I have been culturally conditioned to respond positively to.

It has theatrical and melodic elements of Rocky Horror and belligerent/lacerating subsections of Kel Mason’s superb GEE TEE and DRAGGS. And, of course, all the fine roots of whatever compost fed those grubs to their formidable and resolute selves.

Never mind the origins of these things: Australia, US, UK, Germany, whatever; we all live together now more than ever in one another’s minds. And it’s crowded. And this is the result of that digital brain swelling, a fine and upstanding cesspool of innovation.

TRACK | Bad Deals – Paint

Recalling the careening melodies and cutting guitar riffs of Women at their best, “Paint” is a stunning track from Boston’s Bad Deals.

The vocal layers agreeably proffer through and alongside the rampant lead guitar, hectic and harboring great detail. In the unfolding events it is clear that there was great care put into the balance of the soundscape.

That I am the incalculable dullard writing about this good work, presently more fixated on personal creation than curation, seems undeniably cruel.

“Paint” is one of those bandcamp gems that is another in the series of deeply concerning by it’s so-far limited fanfare. That something this well realized and refined lacks an audience is very frightening. It seems a logical step from greatly loved traditions. The algorithm at play hasn’t figured out yet how to read these things properly and deliver them to those who would immediately appreciate them.

TRACK | Jeanines – Where We Go

Jeanines’ 2019 self-titled album is full of killer hooks and excellent melodic structuring. A couple months prior to the pandemic I was fortunate enough to see them rip through a set at one of Brooklyn’s premier indie venues, Wonderville.

Golden, bright and jangly guitar tones consistently drift over some highly refined ruminations. The well crafted bass and drums are immensely complimentary, enrich the melodies and keep everything moving at pace. The songs are in fact refined to the point that no track on the record stretches beyond the 2:34 mark.

It is the output of aficionados, the zealots, the genre purists, and it is I think even more than most records meant to be consumed as part of the whole set or album foremost.

With the deceptive brevity, one track, any really, acts as an entry point that demands the others be likewise appreciated. There isn’t a weak point in the chain.

In its episodic and relative conciseness there is a mechanic here that plays with perception through a more manageable and enforced segmentation (Like happily binging a 12 hour limited series and it appearing less daunting than a single 4 hour film). These are 16 excellent tracks in just over 25 minutes and well worth a visit.

TRACK | Protomartyr – How He Lived After He Died

With “How He Lived After He Died” we have another finely tuned and balanced appreciation for content and form. Protomartyr have done it enough that at this point it does not appear to be a mistake. There’s clearly premeditation.

The ironically named All passion no technique is yet another (and the original) entry in which Protomartyr manages to properly render human expression in a compelling and expert manner.

“How He Lived After He Died” is another rendition that does justice to their own source material, a debt that always seems to perpetually reemerge with each rendering.

Apparently 21 songs were recorded in four hours and this was one of them. A fact that is at least as frustrating as it is impressive.

Being the 10th track of 17 feels buried, but in a good way. That is a confident placement for something this great.

TRACK | Lomma – T. Hanks

Tube amp and tremolo powered revenge anthem that it is, “T. Hanks” is a lot of fun. If you’d like some reference points that are fundamentally inaccurate but broadly reasonable in comparison, there is a bit of Ty Segall, The Fresh and Onlys, and Kasabian in there. It is driving, garage-y surf-pop.

It’s a good track for when everything is falling apart and forfeit and no effort adds up. It is a bit of commiseration in a miserable era. And in its buoyant forms and affable uttering, does a good job of making this all seem more or less fine while proclaiming the opposite.

And while we know from… life that the squeaky wheel more likely gets executed at dawn, locked in an Ecuadorian embassy, or exiled to Russia, there remains inherent value in the logging of the complaint.

So what if the world is an unforgiving and hellish place and that every ounce of good is drained out in a vice, cut with chemicals, and then sold back to you at 10x the cost? We can still refine our critiques to be appealing and catchy. There’s some good resilience here in this track and in the lessons it provides.

[Something I didn’t notice until after selecting the track but may have been subconsciously seen: our projects were featured on bandcamp daily on the same entry a week back. That doesn’t need to be disclosed I just wanted to brag a little and am glad to be associated further in this linkage.]