Category: Rock

TRACK | Frances Chang – flower childs

5/5 golden merles

Frances Chang’s “flower childs” is made up of the stuff of slowcore, psych-singer songwriter, and expertly extracted from the bedroom recordings. It has an arc that rises from the hope found in craft, the most direct determination of destiny, and then, meteorically, quickly, pivots into some dearly dreaded speculation: i’m so happy / i could cry / i’m writing and music sounds good again. It operates with all the damning and deliberate wonder you could hope for.

The melodies are found in their nascent form before repetition hammers them into rote reminders and set queues. The reverb hangs around, an intermittent percussive xylophone accentuates it. In the telling, some halcyon days are recounted which needed to be lost in order to be truly valued, or maybe even realized for their worth.

Forever is found wanting, concepts collide with the earth, invariably misaligned in manifestation. Forgiveness is afforded or withheld, to be redeemed later with interest. what if you don’t forgive me? / or even worse if you do… Is the best way forward a doubling down on delusion or maybe in the end (there is no end) living as comfortably as possible in perpetual doubt.

I wrote recently about Haneke’s Amour, “I guess this is what films would be like if they were made for humans and by humans instead of by corporations and for money,” and this is near enough the musical equivalent; limited in posturing, full of exploration. There are tapes for $10 and FLAC files for $8.

TRACK | Egg Idiot – Barf Life

5/5 golden merles

We may remain in Leipzig for awhile, the scene is flourishing, filled with good and strange things in this baleful era. Egg Idiot is frenzied diy synth and bedroom punk. It may also be the closest thing music has to Ideonella sakaiensis, the bacterium that manages to prosper in the ocean now polluted by plastic; in other words: something seemingly built for, adapting to, and thriving in hell.

The style is rough, rabid/rapid instrumentation, cranked and howling into a vocoder. Many, if not most, submissions I receive contain a distinct lack of muck/bile, but here we have both stylistically and explicitly the proper degree of murky resolve: I’m a bottomless pit / filled with vomit.

It’s a crime not to couple the coverage of “BARF LIFE” without featuring also the video George Bruzzle has concocted to go with his tune. You might have to go back to Chad Vangaalen’s Molten Light vid to find a demon this multifaceted. The cover above is from a super limited run on Berlin’s Henne Records, but it is pay what you will in digi form.

TRACK | Lassie – Temporary Cemetery

5/5 golden merles

Lassie makes infectious Leipzig-based synth punk with all the skill stats buffed and tethered together. Nothing stagnates here or rots in redundancy. In its considered sequences there is utilization of all the accumulate instruments, with key and complimentary fills and every passage reinforced in layered melody. It is fun and morbidly inspired, very well pieced songcraft.

The ensemble of and alternating vocals compliment the energetic roving. On top of that, they’re spewing such fine lines in addition to the virulent chorus, like I don’t wanna choose / Between a job that pays the bills / and a comfort built on kills. And probably in a second language, agreeably putting us grubby John Q. Songwriters to some degree of shame.

I went to link to this very article yesterday and it turns out I hadn’t written on it yet. There are 3 versions that I am aware of (The Turbo Discos single version, the Flennen comp, and the above Phantom Records album version) and they all land depending on how much refinement you prefer. The discography is otherwise relentlessly active, looking at the last several years. I’m excited to see more of the back catalog and what comes next.

TRACK | Onyon – Window Shopper

5/5 golden merles

From the estranged estate of Leipzig, another entry in the perpetual golden era of post-punk in Germany. Our friends Onyon have embedded some driving beats in a cloudless convening of no wave tones, as elaborately as it needs to be under the circumstance, with instrumentation direct and effective, including only the muck immediately necessary to instigate life.

For an emergent phenomenon particularly the tape is notably consistent, arriving frustratingly fully formed. A cohesive and iridescent set of tunes, arising like a great reprieve amidst the hunting and gathering. It is not reaching in its representation of events, the quotidian enshrined in considered tribute, melded to a melody and reified with friends.

As the first tape and abiogenesis, it’s remarkably strong and to be treasured. The work has physical media out on the genuinely/reliably great law offices of U-Bac & Flennen in March of 2022 and now Trouble In Mind (Chicago) for US distribution. Cassettes $12/Digital $10.

TRACK | memory card – hook

5/5 golden merles

Memory card makes lo-fi bedroom rock in Birmingham, AL. This s/t set is full of poise and promise, hollowing out the heart for examples: playing back memories until the tape disintegrates / you don’t get to understand until it’s over with.

In “hook,” after some brief confessions, a quiet crescendo rises before the track decomposes back into the trailing synth that lurks at the root of all things. Friends of Elverum or Windowsill will probably feel in good company throughout the albums turns. There’s much compelling invention in the language, minimalist detailing, and deceptively simple drums with effective interworking.

Other highlights are “red w/ mila moon” and “dead of night,” the genres vacillating faintly in the service of greater effect. It’s a consistently built sequence with plenty of subtly shifting melodies and structures, intricate enough for some salience without any alienation. That all makes for some direct/conversational storytelling, thoughtfully crafted in a very unguarded and approachable document. The price is pay what you will.

TRACK | Class – Steady Hands

5/5 golden merles

Garage rock from Tucson, “Steady Hands” is the best produced grumbling and thrashing you’ll likely hear this fortnight. It’s superbly well conceived and executed, built from a palette of primeval sorts. It is a good example of some nice punk/pop accentuated in scalding oil, fermented in the sun.

All the dreams you held so near / have gone to shit / falling from the lowest point / you’ll soon find out / is high enough to be destroyed

If this is something you find unrelatable: congrats, I guess. But for those of us that don’t live in a cotton candy house, that’s some proper commiseration. With a bit of field to fortify, there is much to admire, the melody and hook done justice by key performances and attentive detailing. It’s a carefully built hex for which you don’t have to wait long for the curse to kick in.

Name your price on the bandcamp, or an $8 buck cassette can be acquired from Feel It Records, fine folk affiliated with The Cowboys, Sweeping Promises and Alien Nosejob.

TRACK | THE CLUE – Starting

5/5 golden merles

More lo-fi punk marinated in the Deluxe Bias morgue, a very fine and irrevocable 21st amendment to their rising catalog. It does not overstay its welcome with 5 tracks running to a little over 7 minutes in length, hitting the ideal demo structure, and ending with a nice homage to Tiny Tim to wrap things up.

Frantic and favoring the form, it hurtles about in the orbit of the egg punk. Never reaching, it’s all fully realized in tone, consistent in its clamor throughout. A goodly sort, well beyond the proof of concept.

Head to TegosluchamPL for the track list divided, otherwise you’re in for the long haul, which is to say 5 short hauls combining for a medium haul. The tapes have sold out, promptly & irrevocably, unless later reprinted. Otherwise you can have it for naming any number smaller than the one in your bank account.

TRACK | Guitar – Double Down

5/5 golden merles

“Double Down” is freshly forged Portland-based lo-fi garage and post-punk. A slightly disoriented rendition of what you’ve come to expect: the atoms scrambled up, the collider coughing up something new. The work is recoiling from structure and form a bit and thereby moving closer toward tone and feeling. It feels singular despite the common pallet. It unravels for a couple minutes before snapping back into a likeness for what you might favor.

The album didn’t immediately burrow into my skull on the first pass when I saw it come up at the esteemed and endlessly reliable tegosluchamPL. But a second pass as the closing track on onetwoxu.de‘s recent Verspannungskassette #40 finally got it through the thickness and had me excitedly searching “guitar” in google like a jackass for a bit.

What should rock music sound like in a geriatric oligarchy? It’s a tool, as always, but one of escape or commiseration? In Guitar’s self-titled you can have a bit of both. From where I sit —fleeing one price gouging to another, within a gauntlet of diseases, no prospects or future— it feels like a good approximation: the sound of disillusionment compounding. There are plenty of bits where the melody and traditional structure is subverted, detuned and driven off the cliff or into a pit. And ringing truer because of it. And with plenty of cohabitant reference points for footing. And the work is overall stronger for it, ending with this, the most approachable track, “double down.” In a class of them it would be voted most likely to succeed, but, in god’s name, at what? It is the most at ease with expectations and a great tune, bigger within the context of a really good set.

The cassette is out on Spared Flesh Records.

TRACK | EXXXON – CHEVRRON

5/5 golden merles

EXXXON’s DIESEL TAPE DB#22 is hardcore punk rock from Wyoming with titles that recontextualize the wrath. A culture becoming more accustomed to the naming of names is hopeful, and seemingly more willing to address systemic fault, to the extent that remains a possibility. And the rage is refreshing. And the reframing is welcome. Maybe we are entering a new era of mutually assured destruction and there should be an appropriate soundtrack for it.

The levels are blown up, charred and lacking in pretense. The production is expertly rendered within this context, keeping all the components uniquely salient despite their unity of purpose. There is always a great sense of motion and dread.

Most hardcore bands I was exposed to the inadequate sample-size of my youth were, when comprehensible, preoccupied with naval gazing. And while that has its place (the bit beneath the sternum), it is a relief to see something worth shouting about more explicitly incorporated. Something like, for instance, the world’s foremost profiteers in the decline of a habitable planet and their knowing immiseration of the species. The EP is attempting to rise to address the enormity of the problem. It is working within the available genre pallets and emotional gradients of conveying discontent. And seems to be approaching through that symbolism an almost appropriate level of panic and rage.

The early tapes are sold off, nestled all snug in their deck-beds. But the digital representation of the audible range remains available for you to Name Your Price.

TRACK | BRIAN DISEASE – no regret

5/5 golden merles

UK lo-fi punk that “hate(s) music… and will make you also hate music.” The work is offering similar sentiments to Csehak singing, “I don’t want to kill The Killers anymore / … now I know that music itself is wrong.” BRIAN DISEASE are found here raiding a zeitgeist which frankly deserves whatever pillaging and plundering comes its way.

If somewhere in the region of 99% of a medium seems to offer no value to you, to be wallowing in tradition, without invention, built of tropes and cloyingly posturing, what else would the proper response be? “The good” is well within the margin of error, the exception to the rule.

Still, on BRIAN DISEASE, there is provided an example that there remains a bridge out of the thing, the structure is largely intact, approachable and traversable. Here we’re shown that there’s much to be salvaged from the culture, even in profound disillusionment.

In the coursing and the clatter, there’s a resplendent, breathtaking bile here and proof of what can still be extracted from the old genres. There are nourishing guts in it but loose in a slurry, the kind of stuff you reluctantly feed your cat, for now. It can be reconfigured compellingly together and we can subsist upon it. Casettes out on Just Step Sideways Records.