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.

TRACK | Cobra Man – Living in Hell

5/5 golden merles

“Living in Hell” is synth pop / electro-punk with a great sense of fantastical demiurge. It’s anthemic and apocalyptical, with a chorus that must redeem any perceived trespasses or misgivings punk purists might have about the synthesis of style. They’re expertly balancing a heightened humor and horror around two premier vocal performances, joyfully heralding our ongoing collapse.

In the dark times will there also be power disco? Can directly 80’s influenced music become self-aware and not have this result in the destruction of the world? Who cares. It’s a lot of fun. There’s a good mix of disco feinting at egg punk/devocore and all as a means to an end, all in the service of melody and evocation. Initially I was a bit put-off by the grandiosity and refinement. But it’s just too damn good. It rises to include those heightened elements while maintaining a palpable sense of impending dread that best embodies the cultural moment.

Spiritually a bit akin to recent p&p favorites LAFFF BOX, Cupid And The Stupids, –or any of the yolkier punks. The new 2022 Demos III from July are real exciting as well.

TRACK | Mižerija – Izolacija

5/5 golden merles

Mižerija’s “Izolacija” is solid Croatian post-punk that responds with a sort of melodic revelry to the grand terror and trepidation of existence. Particularly, it is concerned with isolation, the literal/physical and myriad metaphorical forms. And the track acts as its own antidote, a celebration around form and a type of commiseration that brings the outsiders together.

The swords, ploughshares, and spears have all been hammered into hooks here. Another strong counter melody even reinforces perpetually from underneath amongst a great peripheral detailing of yelps and backing screams. This is filed under the Tom Waits quote about liking “beautiful melodies telling me terrible things.”

Speaking only from the rough google translated lyric and the perceived style and emotion, it reminds me of an excellent line from the newly elected vice president of Colombia, Francia Márquez, “We are going to move forward from resistance to power until dignity becomes something our country is accustomed to.”

The cost is arbitrary, pay what you want, as determined by your gut biome and an abiding sense of shame. Or, immortalized in wax physical form, there’s black and blue vinyl out on Doomtown Records.

TRACK | Mo Troper – I Fall Into Her Arms

5/5 golden merles

Mo Troper is returned with another fully fledged set of lo-fi power pop aches. The warp is strong and the warble can be counted on with lead single “I Fall Into Her Arms.” It plumbs the murky depths of the duality of love, wherein the dichotomy of finding true acceptance is considered: now i’m not afraid to die / now i wanna stay alive.

Flame and fuzz provide the context. Timelessly, the plasticine vocal core glides above the static and soft room ambiance, imparting to me, subjectively, as a different human, a feeling of ambivalence despite the explicit text affixed above. The track delivers on capturing that particular sort of hopefulness and queasiness, the kind that comes from ever really considering anything at length, weighing the opportunity costs of the leap, and committing to the bit of existence. But also ultimately coming down on the side of the earnest and heartfelt as the only proper guide amidst the chaos and malaise.

The full document drops into our laps on the 2nd day of September and Violet/Violet swirl versions of the vinyl exist with some fun perks on the Lame-O Records storefront.

TRACK | Useless Eaters – Dungeon

5/5 golden merles

Regularly featuring on many The Net In The Sea mixes over the last decade, Useless Eaters are punk-noise rock royalty… that is if royalty status was established through a grinding and perpetual merit and not merely hereditary nonsense. They rip through the verses like a hungover langolier might, mighty and amorphous, eagerly resolved to annihilate.

The track is spatially aware of the soundscape in a manner that is rarely realized in the genre, a volley of cannon instead of one. In the thrashing it saliently utilizing the stereo mix amidst the core cacophony of other center-lane and assertive lo-fi attributes. It feels dynamic and so it is.

Kindly reminding me of this excellent track was onetwoxu.de featuring BLNDI with their also superb cover off a recent couple of demos. It recoups well the spirit and introduces its own invention amidst the translation. The original digital is €9.99 or the vinyl is listed for a few dollars more.

TRACK | fizzface – blinking shivering

5/5 golden merles

Intricate Licorice is eminent experimental noise and folk rock from New Zealand. It is also a guide on how to properly synthesize influence through the prism of a personal vision that can still be accessed and appreciated by outside observers. Maybe that’s just a definition of art. But look: some finely wrought phrases planted in murk-laden hooks, and the ambiance and field to capture the greater multidimensional representation of the arbitrarily defined moment.

That amounts to some superb storytelling. There is invention and quality when the artifice of noise cuts prior to the lyric and the line completes in its isolation: my breath is frail / my hands are shaking / a response to what the wind has taken.

Most of magic is misdirection, how to position the observer and pacing. There is great value in knowing what to cut and leaving the next track to begin with a sigh at the outset of the take. Good work and unique voices are exciting and allow for reassessing the fundamentals which are regularly lost sight of for one reason or another. If you are estranged by the strangeness, it’s all there, the heart and pathos, half a meter underneath and more. 5 golden merles in praise of burnt potions, their efficacy, and addendums applied to horizons.