Hank Wood & the Hammerheads - Stay Home LP

"It looked like a city. Ghostly, wavering buildings appeared through a drizzle of midnight rain. Of course, no two minds were alike..." - Terry Pratchett, Thud

Stay Home, Hank Wood and the Hammerheads second album of Mummies-beat New York squalorsquawk, Quintron-by-way-of-Queens, following on from 2012's Go Home, possibly my favourite release from that year. It's more panicky though, Go Home having its fair share of tuff cunt strut in songs like It's Hard On The Street and Don't Walk Away From Me, Stay Home rippling with more uncomfortable grooves, restless itchings, claustrophobic mutterings, skittering percussion like the ricochets of paranoia and angst of the inside of your skull. Go Home had a more conflicted attitude towards its city environs, stumbling between pissed-off rantings and face-up fuck-offs, Stay Home has burnt itself out, wrapped itself too deep in the toxic understandings and fetid cracklings of the city and it wants out.

It's an album living in a maze of traps, internal (Neurosis's agonised "THE DOCTOR SAID TO GO FUCK MYSELF/BUT I'M IN MAD PAIN/I KNOW IT'S ALL IN MY HEAD/BUT I CAN'T CHANGE", The Ghost's frantic "IT'S A PATTERN/IT'S A PATTERN/IT'S A PATTERN/THE MIND/THE MIND IS THE PROBLEM") and external (In Bookings' jailhouse lugging "THROWN INTO A CAGE UNDERGROUND/TRAPPED BEHIND BARS WITH A MILK DRINKING CLOWN/TAKE MY WILL/TAKE MY PRINTS/TAKE MY LACE", Shook & Hungry's propulsive roll of "I'M LIVING IN A DEEP DARK PIT/CONCRETE WALLS TALL AND THICK") and then times where these two merge in a psychogeographic wounding, ripping up city and head, pavement and frontal lobe shocked and splitting simultaneously as on Nervous City's repetitive rankle "BROKEN BRICKS/ANXIOUS CITY", These Chains's blunt instrument jabbing "THESE CHAINS THEY GAVE ME/THESE CHAINS THEY GAVE ME/I CAN'T LIVE ANYMORE IN A CITY THAT DEPRAVES ME/CYCLE CYCLE PRISON CYCLE".


But whenever there are traps and prisons, dreams of escape snarl up, like This World Is Beat and In Space imagine a way out from these insomniac wanderings beset by chaotic urban chatter. Searching for silence and isolation, an escape from this noir of perpetual rain, this pulpy shitsmear of an Ed McBain potboiler, interminable degradation in familiar patterns, they imagine the free-floating void, "DRIFTING OUT INTO NOTHINGNESS/PEACE AND QUIET/WHAT IS THIS" but these remain a fantastical vision, a utopian oblivion tickling inside the dank confines of a old city mentality, built-up tight and built-down deep, cramped, no sprawl.

Rollicking along, Stay Home bounces with gunk and gusto, keys jabbering, guitars gurgling and squeaking like cyclical thought patterns spinning off the axle, infectious skeleton-rattle rhythms like snatches of blackened calypsos, breathy oohs and aahs and huhs like James Brown interjections or stress-induced ticks, like little snorts of pressure released ("THE PRESSURE/THE PRESSURE IS BUILDING/AND I'M SUFFOCATING" on Shook & Hungry). Shaking with a cokesick shiver throughout, ratty gnawings at the worn burlap of your brainfilm, the fraying diaphanous membrane of your psychological wellbeing the relapses of What's So Bad About a Bad Idea, the ugly realisations of I Thought I was a Good Man, tuning into the repetitive rhythms of anxiety and anguish, depressive diggings. A city's bricked-up sickness let loose, the scratching inside the walls amplified and shaken out.

"He turned down a winding lane where pain had peeled from the walls of crumbling houses, where rubbish, dirt, and fruit peelings littered the ground and cats wound between people's feet, slipping into foul-smelling gateways. A light drizzle started again: blank-faced firewalls rose damp and grey into the empty air." - Ferenc Karinthy, Metropole

A Giant Dog - Bone LP

Thick full-throated poppy-punk. Soaring Gateway District kinda vocals over chunky indie-punk riffs, cleaned-up garage tear. Galloping into the album with the drawl of All I Wanted: "All I ever wanted was you anywaaayy", chuntering on in songs like the anguished Cleveland Steven, "WOKE UP IN THE HOSPITAL THE PAIN WAS BLINDING WHITE!" , the shimmy of The Grand with its harmonica snatches, the soar of Another World "Toniiiight... is not your niiight!", the country bummer of Ghostcest that gets into the blues and then dances and shakes out of them, the rock chomp of Teasin' Ass Bitch. The sort of stuff that could get huge, smooth and slick as it is, with so many catchy lines, killer vocals, deadly choruses.

Nightmare Boyzzz - Bad Patterns

Hookmachine heartachers Nightmare Boyzzz crank out 11 tracks of sweet battered powerpop with bummer vibes, where the jump and yelp and "Whoa-ohs" and constantly seem like they're about to drift off and leave you stranded by the side of the road, ten miles from home with nothing but your thoughts and holey shoes to get you home. Each warm guitar lick feels like a goodbye, drawn in the milieu of bad decisions, empty bottles, hangovers and selfish self-destruction, Guitar Romantic echoes, the warm drunk buzz will leave you just as the songs in the rockin and rollin of You Have No Friends, the mellow wanderings of You're a Star, rapidscuttle garagepop of Baby It's Alright, the whiskey satisfaction fades and discomfort will grow in its place with tickling guitar solos and scratchy riffs,  Say What You Mean might be an up-down dance reminiscent of a punked-up run of Supergrass's Alright but it also lives to cool and burn off the beer in the sobering ennui. This'll help you move your feet so you don't have to think about it though.

True Sons of Thunder - Stop and Smell Your Face

The second album of gritty garage sludge from punk alleystars True Sons of Thunder. Dirty rock excavated from long graves of noise, shaking off the mud and roar, stomping through simple rockers with a babble of disharmony pulled in its wake, Dead Moon by way of Flipper's deep junk racket. There's the hanging punch and tumble of Don't Make It Stop, the twitching horrorpunk of Death Walks Behind You crackling with tension and panic, the belting KBD snot of These Days, a perfect rudimentary desperate punk grunt. There's the slower detours into the noiserock grumble of Glass Foot, marching through battering storms of feedback, dying in the din, the plodding deathblues of Mother May I Now Spell Cup, which comes like the degraded radiosignals of two stations cutting in over one other, melding and splintering.

Friends of Mine starts sung-spoken over simple gutsy riff, blowing into a big openfield 80s rock chorus, "JOSIE KNOWS SHE'S GONNA COME AROUND/ALL THE BOYS ARE GONNA SCREAM AND SHOUT/I KNOW SHE WANTS A PIECE OF ME/I KNOW THAT'S HOW IT'S GONNA BE" before falling back into the shaking repetition of the riff, the fiery clang of the noise. Gettin Kind of Cocky loses it totally in the scream and this odd plinky-plonk solo that clinks over the top of the chaotic squeal and drive.

Each song has its own take on some aspect of the garagepunk artifact mentality, scrabbling around in the twentieth century's dirty cupboards for those little lost bits of bent human swing, trawling through record bins, soulseek files, mp3 blogs, for the obliterated 80s hardcore demos, the privatepress inept blues messes, the 60s beat abominations, all those stabs at musical expression living more with the distortion and degradation and . From the simplistic rock and roll of Get on the Bus, shimmying with blasé fuck-it sneer "GET ON THE BUS AND GO HOME/GET ON THE BUS AND LET'S SPLIT", Beluga's animal inanity amongst the crash and blare "BELUGA! IT'S A WHALE! A WHITE WHALE! DO THE BELUGA!", offering no clues to what this dance entails, but exhorting listeners to get down to it nonetheless, it sounds like a bedraggled forgotten novelty from a dead scene, dancehalls torn down, memories dimmed. Like the Oblivians album from last year it displays familiarity with all sorts of oddball shouts, but it's far nastier, far more crummied-up, it's garagepunk that got lost in the garage, amongst the enginefilth and oily rags and black stains.

On Little Big Chief records.

Räjäyttäjät - Awopbopaloopop Alopbam Räjä LP & Räjäyttäjät LP

Two 2013 LPs of wildman garage plunder from Finnish mentalists, every riff sounding familiar, warm and welcoming snatches of classic rock swagger, bluesy beatback, lowdown boogies, rock and roll rebellion, but then banged full of bursting fizzing nutpunk energy. Half-batty tossed-off impressions of Chuck BerryBeatles, Elvis, all the rock gods since canonised and sterile, thrown into a joyous chaotic blender, reaching back for that 1-2-3-4 stomp and rip, getting into the movement of it, balls of fire that actually burn again. Dancefloor garagepunk built in a din, writhing around amongst clips of conversations where wild whoops abound, waggling tongues, handclaps, a peal of jabbering and gibberish runs in it, each rock and roll move replicated and revivified, reconstituted and rode hard. Through the cultish intonations Räjä 'n' Roll All Night Long, horn runs of Mitä Tapahtuu, freakouts of Veen päällä savuu, caterwauls of Vuosihuoltoon, backmasked noise and snap of Gnol Th'gin Lla Llor'n'äjär, chattering keys of 15 Vuoden Päästä, shake yourself to the real free stuff. Music to make out sloppily on boomer's graves to.

Thee Nodes - All Day Every Day

Cracked up freakpunk fuzzjunk, run out/run in, twerpy feelin-it garage jams about being a real negative vandal prick. 30 second braindamage shatterclashes like Smashin' My Head. Pukepunk pushed fast and simple. Rock and roll bounces about breaking glass, repetitive joy, manic cackling, explosions, rock and roll getdowns and torrents of petty destruction. Loathing and lust in Ugly Bodies, hating on cool kids in Hate the Hip, dickshit insomniac anguish on Filthy Gaze. What makes these live large is the helter-skelter vocals bouncing over each other, the way the rock riffs fray around the edges under the assault of the weird bits, the echoes of darker deeper oddness, the hoots and yapping of minor monsters, a punk built amongst wreckage and ruin, devolving finally into the cold lost call ringing alarm bleeps. The sneering outcast energy a bunch of nogoodnik nerds, busting heads and biting faces off scrawled over shop-shaking party music.

Thee Mighty Fevers - Fuck'In Great R'n'R

It may have come to your attention that Guitar Wolf are the greatest fucking band in the world? It may have also come to your attention that Teengenerate are, similarly, the greatest fucking band in the world. Thee Mighty Fevers are a band that sounds like these bands, and, due to Guitar Wolf and Teengenerate being, respectively, the greatest fucking band in the world and the greatest fucking band in the world, this is fucking great. Blasting rock and roll jacked-up and let out in deadly killingfloor boogies, shakin it way too fast, rolling on that garage punk theeeee, smashing through 13 done-in punk kicks of spit and thunder in 20 minutes of zombies and rockers and punk jackets, fury and riots and renegade brawls. The bass rumbling, the drums crashing and the guitars wheeling about in motorcycle burning, yelps and yaps above the din, 1-2-3-4s and cool oh-oh-ohs, lost in the manic collisions of rock and roll climbings, punknoise descents.

 

Buck Biloxi and the Fucks - Buck Biloxi and the Fucks

I'm pretty sure this features at least one member of the Spits. Not entirely sure as pseudonyms proliferate across the Leave Home-lifting artwork of this record, in different places crediting figures as elusive and sinister sounding as Rick "Def Threatz" Ultrahuman, Snacks "Snooker Snake" Fountain, Giorgio Murderer, Larry Poppins, Orson Scott Tard and of course the titular Buck Biloxi.

True or not, The Spits are a good comparison, as on stuff like Black and Blue or Tomorrow's Children The Spits approach their stripped down garage-punk with the cutting efficiency of rock and roll robots, android punk, drawing on a digitised database of 01110010011000010110110101101111011011100110010101110011 records and feeding out Supersuckers riffs processed and packaged, the machine buzz guitars supporting mechanised voices, dry with automaton distance. Buck Biloxi and the Fucks work over similar territory, but they do it with with the twitchy raw ineptitude and closeness of very human jerk-offs.

Songs built around simple sharp riffs, minimalist lyrics with repetitive choruses that dominate the songs "Shut the fuck up when you see me/shut the fuck up when you see me/shut the fuck up when you see me/shut the fuck up" goes Shut the Fuck Up, "Gonna hit you with a brick/Gonna hit you with a brick/Gonna hit you with a brick" goes Hit You With a Brick, "Night trap/Night trap/Night trap/Night trap/Night trap/Night trap" begins Night Trap/Night Court. Confrontational and rawboned, Buck Biloxi exists in a bad musical neighborhood of chickenwire guitars, rusty bloody, pinched vocals stuck behind them emitting blunt threats and desperate barks, the dangerously flimsy snap and crash of the drums maintaining the song's stubborn rock and roll momentum. Buck Biloxi's world is where I'm a Disaster jolts into I'm a Genius and both seem momentarily true. Bare and exposed, the watery guts open to the elements, a tenuous grasp on its own continuing existence, Buck Biloxi's careless junk-punk stumbles on, scratching ugly lines in the pavement, tossing off battered songs like Rats of Trantor and Who Gives a Fuck? Just another simplicity stomp for the half-cut denizens of this garage-punk dead-end, just another brittle punk sting that hits you with as much subtlety and grace as a half-brick in a sock. Get in, kill, get out. Mean cheap punk for mean cheap lives.

Guitar Wolf - Beast Vibrator

This is a message I received.

I recently received a message from someone who was keen to tell me that while they enjoyed my blog, I would be a better writer if I attempted to write more objectively. I am always open to constructive criticism and I will therefore endeavour to stick to the facts as much as possible in this review. Objectivity is the watchword.

Guitar Wolf are a band. Guitar Wolf are a band from Japan. Guitar Wolf have three members. These three members are named Seiji, U.G. and Toru and are sometimes known as Guitar Wolf, Bass Wolf and Drum Wolf. That is a combination of the word 'wolf' (taken from the name of the band) and the musical instrument that these respective musicians play. Beast Vibrator is the name of Guitar Wolf's new album. This album is their 12th album, following on from Spacebattleship Love, Mars Twist, Dead Rock, Golden Black, Loverock, UFO Romantics, Rock and Roll Etiquette, Jet Generation, Planet of the Wolves, Missile Me! and Run Wolf Run. Guitar Wolf are a band that play very loud. Guitar Wolf are a rock and roll band. Guitar Wolf are a very loud rock and roll band. Their new album, which is entitled Beast Vibrator, contains eleven songs.

The first song on the Guitar Wolf album Beast Vibrator is Beast Vibrator. The second song on the Guitar Wolf album Beast Vibrator is Mesopotamian Lonely. The third song on the Guitar Wolf album Beast Vibrator is Gasoline Lullaby. The fourth song on the Guitar Wolf album Beast Vibrator is Ghostly You. The fifth song on the Guitar Wolf album Beast Vibrator is Robot Maria. The sixth song on the Guitar Wolf album Beast Vibrator is Batting Center. The seventh song on the Guitar Wolf album Beast Vibrator is Saphire CITY. The eighth song on the Guitar Wolf album Beast Vibrator is Magma Nobunaga. The nine song on the Guitar Wolf album Beast Vibrator is Barf Night. The tenth song on the Guitar Wolf album Beast Vibrator is EARTH vs. ALIEN. The eleventh song on the Guitar Wolf album Beast Vibrator is Female Machine Gun.

The first song on the Guitar Wolf album Beast Vibrator, Beast Vibrator, is a rock and roll song. It is loud. Beasts is a word used to describe undomesticated animals. Vibrator is an instrument used to provide sexual pleasure. This song is a wild animal that provides sexual stimulation and release.

The second song on the Guitar Wolf album Beast Vibrator, Mesopotamian Lonely, is a rock and roll song. It is loud. Mesopotamian is an adjective pertaining to the inhabitants and culture of the area now known as Iraq. Lonely is the sensation when you are isolated from other people and have negative feelings due to this isolation. This song is painful desert solitude.

The third song on the Guitar Wolf album Beast Vibrator, Gasoline Lullaby, is a rock and roll song. It is loud. Gasoline is the substance that is used to power many machines, including cars, motorcycles and chainsaws. Lullaby is a song that is sung to children to help them go to sleep. This song is powerful song that will ignite to make children sleep.

The fourth song on the Guitar Wolf album Beast Vibrator, Ghostly You, is a rock and roll song. It is loud. Ghostly is a word that descibes things which resemble the spirits of dead people. You are a bastard. This song is a haunting bastard.

The fifth song on the Guitar Wolf album Beast Vibrator, Robot Maria, is a rock and roll song. It is loud. Robot is a word, originating from the Czech playwright Karel Capek's book War With the Newts, that is used to describe an automaton capable of performing tasks. Maria is a popular name. It is often associated with Catholicism, or the van which takes prisoners to jail, which is known as a Black Maria. This song is machine built from wire and steel that will take your ass to jail.

The sixth song on the Guitar Wolf album Beast Vibrator, Batting Center, is a rock and roll song. It is loud. Batting is the action of striking a ball with a bat. Center is a word for the middle of things. This song strikes at the core.

The seventh song on the Guitar Wolf album Beast Vibrator, Saphire CITY, is a rock and roll song. It is loud. Saphire is a precious blue stone. CITY is a large built-up area in which many people live and work. This song is the blues in lives and works.

The eighth song on the Guitar Wolf album Beast Vibrator, Magma Nobunaga, is a rock and roll song. It is loud. is the substance that consists of molten rock underneath the world. Nobunaga is the name of a man who unified Japan. This song is unifying burn. Out of context, the word Nobunaga may appear to some English readers to be a nonsense word such as flubtredderling, weeewoopapapapabipdaaaaaaarswuix, or gluttle. This song is hot squabaloo.

This is the album cover of the Guitar Wolf album Beast
Vibrator. This album cover depicts the members
of Guitar Wolf imprisoned and looking super cool.

The ninth song on the Guitar Wolf album Beast Vibrator, Barf Night, is a rock and roll song. It is loud. Barf is a word for when you expell food and fluids from your mouth through a series of convulsions. Night is the period when the Earth is turned away from the sun. This song is a convulsion that will turn the world dark.

The tenth song on the Guitar Wolf album Beast Vibrator, EARTH vs. ALIEN, is a rock and roll song. It is loud. EARTH is the planet on which humanity originates, vs. is a term used to denote a fight or contest, ALIEN is a word for sentient beings not originating on planet Earth, also used to describe anything which comes from outside our realms of experience. This song is a fight between all that we know and all that we do not know.

The eleventh song on the Guitar Wolf album Beast Vibrator, Female Machine Gun, is a rock and roll song. It is loud. Female is a word used to describe women. Examples of women include Alice Bag, Tabitha Tate, Khutulun, Laura Jane Grace, Kathy Acker, Trina, Pauline Kael, and, in fiction, Storm from the X-Men. Machine Gun is a type of weapon that fires a great many bullets in rapid succession and is designed to maim and kill. This song is a storm of grace designed to main and kill.

This is a Guitar Wolf album. This Guitar Wolf album is named Beast Vibrator. Guitar Wolf are the best band in the world. Guitar Wolf are literally the best band to ever exist. Guitar Wolf are the sun rising and the night falling. Guitar Wolf saved my soul.

This has been an entirely objective review of the new Guitar Wolf album named Beast Vibrator. I would like to extend my thanks to my original correspondent for suggesting this new writing style predicated on balanced factual information. My first draft for this review contained sections such as this: "Mashing together words with a sort of bloodied and beaten glinting glee, Beast Vibrator, Gasoline Lullaby, Barf Night, Female Machine Gun. The trainwreck joy of Beast Vibrator, "V-V-V-V-Vii-iibrator!", trashrock noise, flailin out, the flushing wildness of Robot Maria, the whispering fuzz and dancing guitar spikes on Barf Night, the insane thrashblues of Mesopotamian Lonely, rubbing along with those huge sweeping guitar strokes over the bassruns, the shiver and crash of Female Machine Gun." which I now see were gauche and overtly subjective. Guitar Wolf need no such musings. Guitar Wolf are Guitar Wolf. Guitar Wolf are a rock and roll band. This is a Guitar Wolf album. It is loud.

The Love Triangle - Clever Clever

Rumbling propulsive 77 punk punch. There are bits of power-pop smoothness, bits of garage-punk snot, closest in make-up maybe to straight-up punk bands like The Pigs or The Radiators, all those little first wave hangers on cranking out jumpy punk runarounds, or KBD soulpunk flashes like The Law's Hole in my Heart, in terms of more modern bands, it recalls stuff like the Exploding Hearts and their throwback rock and roll edge, but while bands like that are built more around the jab and itch of the guitar, Clever Clever for the most part tumbles along in the wake of the throb of the bass, scampering this way and that, hitched to the low-end. Yeah there are aggressively infectious guitar lines like on the vituperous Just You Wait  ("Just you wait til I get cancer!"), or the suave spikepop of The Wait, the grubby needling of Swift Exit, but really this album feels meaty and blocky in its construction, feels deep and gutsy and bolted confidently to its own engine.


The Wait, Just You Wait, the chug and pump of I'm Still Waiting for the Buzz, tension infects this album, the songs woundtight and cramped, pushed together and ready to snap, ready to spool out with snaking chaos, degrade and roll over the hill sad and old, like the promises of Just You Wait and Be Old Soon, it's an album aware of what lays ahead, so it crackles and dances with what life it has now.


It still slows down now and then, I'm Still Waiting for the Buzz, the dragged out cynicism of Hollywood Sleaze, the chilledout fuck it of The Situation is Excellent  ("Are we living in the end times?/Have a drink and take a rest") and those are nice change-ups, but when this album really hits its full pace, on Tangle or Future Tense or others, there's nothing like it.

Dancepunk does not mean what it could mean, it means all new-wavey stuff, cleaned-up funk-punk, echoes of Gang  of Four and what not, art and keyboards and disco shine, which can be cool, can be a good time, but then it leaves me struggling to put words to the physical sensation of Clever Clever. But maybe that's a good thing, shutting off one linguistic alley makes you scramble and search for a new one, a more refined descriptor to pin into the music. Dancepunk, what it could mean are these sort of wriggly Lurkers-lumped punk rock numbers, that shuffle and step quickly and purposefully, that move like you want to move, that pull you out of yourself with every tossed-off riff or bass turn or drum shiver, punk for dancers. Move yourself to this beat, pop like a broken bass-string, find yourself, draw yourself, make yourself, punk melodic and guitar frantic.

On Static Shock records.

Oblivians - Desperation

One of the absolute best bands of the mid-90s garage punk scene, Oblivians have here, on In The Red Records, their first album in 15 years, and they still got that stomp, still got that dirt, but they are a little more restrained, a little smoother, they haven't got that wild holler of Cannonball and they're half a rockin world away from the colossally rumdrunk blastblues of AAAA Thee New Memphis Legs, but they can still write a way sweet rock and roll song. Punx reunion material can end up being good (American Steel's Destroy Their Future), the bad (post-Danzig Misfts) and the so horrible and aesthetically, philosophically and morally unacceptable that everyone involved should've died fucking young to spare us all (Dead Kennedys reworking MTV Get Off the Air as MP3 Get Off the Web). It can deal with stuff in a few ways too, it can pretend that not a single day has passed, and that can go well, but often it goes fairly badly, the ridiculousness of a band all the more apparent when 40 year olds not twentysomethings do it, it can moan about like a tedious old man, angry now at exactly the thing it was in the first place when it was angry at the thing it is now (the attitude exemplified by most interviewees in every single punk doc interviewing old punx), or it can retain the struggle that defined the band at first, but approach it from a slightly different angle, without devaluing their original stuff, and also without retreading it too much. Which is what Oblivians manage to do here, everything's in place but there's nothing as unhinged or perfectly broken as Bad Man, but then they're also thankfully old enough to know that using the n-word in a song title is just the dumbest dumbest shit ever.

The very first song acknowledges their ageing, I'll Be Gone "Let's rock & roll as we get old/We will before too long.", the fuzz feels warm, not abrasive, enveloping everything but not kicking it to pieces, the song frayed around the edges. "I won't have to watch/Cos baby I'll be gone."

The two sides of a crazy night out in two songs early in the album. The dry shimmy of Woke Up in a Police Car, "Woke up in a police car wuuuh-oh/Handcuffs cut into my arms wuuh-oh." The wuuh-oh a deadpan kicker on each line, not wailing or soaring, just sitting there like punctuation, head in your hands as we hear the clang of jail doors. But then just when you think that it's clambered up in Murtaughian resignation, too old for this shit. Straight after it, like an elliptical narrative, the dirty rock and roll shake of Call the Police, all swagger and relentless organ riffs (provided by Mr Quintron) "You better call your wife/Call your bossman/We ain't never going home/Call the po-lice, call the po-lice/We gonna get our drinks on". Stuck after Woke Up in Police Car rather than before it lifts you up from the drunk tank blues and throws you back out on the wild streets in a dirty rock and roll shake, slathered in engine grime.

Despite being a mostly inactive band for over a decade, the members of the Oblivians have not been idle, they've been involved in The Reigning Sound, True Sons of Thunder, The Legs, Bad Times, South Filthy, The Compulsive Gamblers, Knaughty Knights, the Tennessee Tearjerks and more. Moving onwards to the next project without hesitation, like the prolific filmmaking of Johnnie To, Rainer Werner Fassbinder or Takashi Miike. New work is the best work. Get something out then get something else out. Do not wallow. There's been constant work, an ongoing exploration of rock and roll's dirty corners with a work ethic that would put anyone not named Billy Childish to shame and that all comes together here.

So each song has its own slightly different feel, drawing from a different little bit of the punk/rock/blues spectrum, there's Pinball King's schoolyard chant, a defiant teenage dream that charms in its obvious failure bent. The skifflish kick of Loving Cup. Run For Cover's rolling train feel, an onwards thrust like a lo-fi sloppy take on Overkill or Kriegshog's Burn. Fire Detector got a 77 punk feel, the inane metaphors the Damned's Love Song ("SHE MISTOOK ME FOR A FIRE DETECTOR!") sleazed up. The wail of Oblivion (OBLIVION! THEY CAN'T GO ON PRETENDING LIKE THEY DON'T KNOW HOW TO SPELL IT ANYMORE!). The relentless prod of Come A Little Closer, another dancefloor story. The bedraggled blues of Back Street Hangouts. The handclaps and bounce of Desperation. "She leaves me... IN DESPERATION!"

Mama Guitar is maybe as close in feel to their oldest stuff as is this gets, the guitar-scrape dragged under by the throbbing bass. The time where the slop and fuzz seems less warm, more oppressively inept, as the flat drums pound on and the guitar solo dances about in the underbelly of the song. It's where the album really goes from warmth to nastiness, right at the end, finally abandoning to snap back once more into that backyard rock and roller fighting pose, a cover of an old rock and roll song destroyed as it's paid tribute to.

This is an album of love and loss, fire and ashes, parties and hangover. It's an album of consequences. Dancing approximations, purposeful waggle and puling shuffle sliding into each other. A drunken party dancefloor finishes and becomes a damaged morning-after slide but you can't really draw the line between them that clearly, the hands in hands and bodies pressed together as the band played another killer has got the sorrowful knowledge of tomorrow's aches in the kisses and steps, the wounded stumbling of the next day has got the smile and joy of last night's last dance present in its parts. The poetics and mechanics of each movement blurrin into one another, footprints cut across one another, hurt in the freedom of dance and healing joy.

Like on Em, a love song that seems more about knowledge and acceptance than a rush of feeling. It's about lives intersecting, but not colliding and exploding, just shaping each other slightly and moving on. There's pain but there are also friends. There is anguish but we're not alone. There is an end but it is not the end. "Life can be so underhanded/Sometimes I can hardly stand it/The day is dark but the sun's gonna shine again/When I think about you, Em!"

Four Livids singles.

It's been 20 years since the New Bomb Turks dropped !!Destroy-Oh-Boy!!, exploding with needle-sharp wit and furious buzzpunk blap into the early 90s punk scene and Eric Davidson is still fucking killing it. That's the long game, people. Livids has Davidson joined by a bunch of people from other punk bands, the only one of which I know is the guitarist from The Zodiac Killers, and Livids continue to churn out the kind of scuzzfuzz rock-and-roll that bore the New Bomb Turks to high enough heights to be act as shorthand for "Famous enough to be a band you've heard of, small enough for the idea of them being famous to be funny." in the classic Onion article 90s Punk Decries Punks of Today  They've recorded enough stuff for a full-length, but in true J Church fashion, have put it out as four separate singles on four different labels. Your House or the Courthouse on Slovenly, She Likes Zits on Twistworthy, (Some Of Us Have) Adrenalized Hearts on Oops Baby and Midnight Stains on Goodbye Boozy.

On (Some of Us Have) Adrenalized Hearts, Eric Davidson clucks out a defiant answer for anyone wondering how people can still twist and thrash this way after two decades of punk nonsense, squealing "I got a way, I got a sway/I got a feeling I ain’t goin’ away" in a moment of terse self-knowledge, once this sound gets stuck in you, you're stuck in that mud, flapping about noisily in a cloudy mix of driving outside passion and shitflinging ape compulsion. "I gotta slay/I gotta wail/I don’t know what else to do." it continues, a rock and roll song that revels in the idea perhaps best expressed by the Alan Moore line in Another Suburban Romance: "Once you step outside, you're outside for the rest of your life"

Theme from Livids on the same single gives more of this idiot trash power. A sixty second propellerpunk howler that bounces between obnoxiousness "You being happy makes us sad!" and self-deprecating goofpunk grin "Our moms think we’re fuckin cool."

The band also generally stays away from some of the more Rolling Stones influence of New Bomb Turks stuff, sticking straight with that garage-punk speed slip, from the grossout geek love on She Likes Zits to the Ramones roller of Spoof Attack, to the bass runs and guitar squeaks of Stop Bleeding, Livids are cracking out furious catchy stuff, a perfect plague-carrier for Davidson's classic yelp, which is supplemented and cross-cut by the backing vocals from the rest of the band, which punch out the middle on stuff like the half-minute Koro kick of Zich on Your House or the Courthouse. Maybe there's nothing here quite as sharp as NBT lines that I've scrawled onto my jacket but this is terrific searing punk rock.

Low Culture - Screens

Screens is pop-punk that shrugs off the taint of cleanliness that infects some of that genre, ex-Marked Men/Shang-A-Lang Dirtnap goodness, songs that snap into each other so quickly and sharply that sometimes you think it's just a rhythm shift in one song. Clackety power-pop that often seems to turn on that modern life alienation axis, all medication ("But I can't seem to replace the space that was left behind" on Pills) and distance, the thrum of technology and the croon of separation, like Royal Headache by way of Subhumans songs, or Lost in the Supermarket torn through by the Carbonas.

"I can't keep these demons from crawling in" shouts Nightmare in a full punk tumble, "You say you wanna take me out well take me out" drawls Waste the Day Away. But this focus on emptiness, so perfectly captured in the little trills that burst out of the garage-punk shiver, finding respite on the mellower California with bubbling sunny pop melodies and refrain of "But tonight I'm getting fucked up in California/Drinking whiskey on the beach/And all those kids who were better than me/Well they're probably sitting home watching their TV" This always feels to me like a small album, it's not some all encompassing statement, it's not a blast of noise to rearrange and reconfigure, it's a tight punk picture of some bad stuff and some good stuff, wrapped up in sweet vocal lines and hooky doxologies to our troubles and tenseness and what breaks through.

Solid Attitude - BB Gun Picnic

Solid Attitude have got a rock and roll punch, a thumping Sonics base for slippery Doc Corbin Dart vocals strained to the point of slathering spangled discomfort to yelp over and lacerate sneeringly. Garage rumble to shake the dust from the ceiling, the cobwebs from your leather jacket, strip the paint from the walls with the 27 second combusting thrash on Punk Beer, the post-punk quiver on Smoking Sheets, the anxious snap and scream of Can't Chill Out, the Stones-y drone on Black Pocket climbing into a torrent of fumepunk strut and roll.

Post Teens - The Heat

This band is made up of members of sludge-poppers Torche, shoegazers Averkiou and PV thrashers Assholeparade, all coming together to make a release that sounds nothing like any of that, instead its six sixty second songs of poppy garage-punk, combining the relentless rip of a Marked Men laceration with the scuzzy noise of the likes of CPC Gangbangs, bringing to mind at times the straighter Fleshies moments, laid through with little irresistible flourishes like the burst of Bad Brain cadence that opens Turn Down the Teen Rebellion, or the miniature freakout that closes Polyamory.

Puffy Areolas - 1982: Dishonourable Discharge

Despite the presence of both the words '1982' and 'discharge', this is not another album of straight UK82 worship, instead its a meatier, more unsettling piece of work. It starts with 1982, a straight hardcore-punk number, that lasts about a minute forty that barely holds itself together for that brief length under the attack of a psychey freakout that threatens to suck the song into its swirling vortex throughout. The song succumbs to that weird noise and it's that struggle which defines the album, the repetitive rock rumble of Not Tonight that just wants to boogie down with some simple rock numbers but keep having to fight with this ugly void of noise and psych-oddness that wants to consume the straight-up straight-down Stooges-rock in the drowning pull of its manic squawk and wonder. Weirdpunk garage freakouts, protopunk succumbing to the hateblasted deathscream of chomping jazznoise, staggering in its ungodly threat and magnitude. Rudimentary Peni sings MC5, psychotically dismember the jams. It's an album for shakin' your stuff and then crying in the corner as the trip kicks in and faces around you start to melt and wail with the warm red devil-eye flutter of the unfamiliar clublights.

Wild Billy Childish & the Spartan Dreggs - Coastal Command/Dreggradation/Tablets of Linear B

Like Michael Moorcock's bibliography or the vaulting scope of human experience itself, Billy Childish's musical output is unknowably vast and impossibly labyrinthine every time digging deeper into that dirt-simple rock and roll. This year his latest project, The Spartan Dreggs, put out three fucking full-length LPs, THREE! This is pretty much business as usual for Childish, basic but literate punk stomps, though its got a slightly more spindly sound to it in the vocals from Neil Palmer, drawing to mind a more vulnerable air than the sneer of a lot of Childish's oeuvre  the Spartan Dreggs' highlights include running an AE Housman poem through that spare garage-spark on A Shropshire Lad, penning sad songs about modernist Swiss writer Robert Walser on The Ballad of Robert Walser, wailing plaintively on Grimpen Mire, a five-minute rumbling indie-punk takeback of the word 'epic' on the Homeric Headlong Fly the Achaeans.

The Atomic Tanlines - demo / Nü-klē-ər Blast Suntan - The Wheel of Fate is Turning 7" EP

These two bands don't really sound anything like each other, but I just thought I'd review them together because of the coincidence of their name. Both are great names juxtaposing, the healthy glow of the summer outdoors, with the irradiated buzz of Discharge's favourite topic, 50s paranoia and 50s beach-movies all in one. NBST tart it up with an entirely over-the-top use of umlauts and schwas, which is awesome, because it looks fucking cool and pronunciation guides are always handy, this one apparently aimed at that GWB 'nucular' mangling. The Atomic Tanlines add another level of uncouthness beyond the radiation poisoning, I mean, it's all well and good catching some rays from the dying-star we call a sun in the harsh post-apocalyptic contaminated nothingscape, but keep an even tan, people! Don't be so fucking gauche about it! The Atomic Tanlines play a style of unencumbered queercore punk rock where they're equally at happy with an abrasive brief frustration blast screaming FUCK MY REPRODUCTIVE DUTY!!! or the stop-start fury of Skank Around which cuts between power-violence speed thrash and ominous stalk of something like the opening of JFA's Beach Blanket Bongout, along with a couple of anger-tight danceable late-FYP punk rockers like Comatose, which clips along with handclaps and fucking everything! They also have a contender for song title of the year in BDSM vs. Tupac, which drives along with rock-and-roll swagger like a mid-period New Bomb Turks song, anchored to the vocals which have that Alice Bag ability where a smoothly-sung line threatens at any time to explode into a scream, and a line can twist between sarcastic and dismissive and celebratory call-to-arms in the space of a second.


Nü-klē-ər Blast Suntan are way heavier, atmospheric crustpunk, which distuingishes itself with the squealing needle of the guitar which bursts out of the Nausea Punk Terrorist attack, and almost rips the song to shreds in the middle of White Wolf, before the thundering riffs return again, improbably faster and crazier than before in order to burn out the song. Searing chaotic crust noise that only ever slows down just to show you how it's gonna fucking hit you before it punches you in the eye with its clattering hardcore onslaught. There are two songs on side-B of this thing but you have to be really paying attention to know where the switch is as this is the sort of tearing intensity that brooks no fucking niceties like song gaps.

Mean Bikini - demo

Meeean Bikini do loppy, occasionally new-wavey riot grrl garage-punk. Simple lively pop songs leant menace and posture by the clang and and clatter of the guitar, the thick burbly bass and vocals that yelp and drawl with grinning attitude. The Pleasure Seekers' What a Way to Die run through the sweet crash-pop of FIDLAR or the gonzo-synthpunk of Jay Reatard's Lost Sounds. Bed Bugs itches with surf energy, Sick of Love is all angry disdain and a simple insistent guitar line, and the final song, Johnny Bananas, begins with a Barbed Wire Love-style ragtag take on Chordette-ian girl group vocals that sticks slurringly with that Poni-Tails shiver just long enough to trick you that they're going to leave you on a chillout number before a 1-2-3-4 yelp that throws the song into a  jumping into punk that speeds up and builds into the craziest most chaotic song they've got, snarling itself apart from within and even getting furious enough  that while writing this review I let the demo play out on my computer and it jumped into Dishammer without seeming like a million-mile leap. I first listened to them after seeing them support Theee Bat, and any band that can stick in the mind when they're supporting those biker-punk nutcases is impressive, and my favourite song they played live, Can't Play Guitar, isn't even on this, so I'm excited for whatever comes next.

Terry Malts - Killing Time

This is an odd one. The music is scuzzy garage-punk, but as opposed to something like AAAA The New Memphis Legs, where the blockbuster noise swallows everything, here the vocals are put way up front to dominate and it just so happens that the vocalist here is a goddamn goldenthroat crooner, which means even though the music is a delicious babble of fuzz, the whole album feels way poppier and smoother than that. In places it reminds me of the Onion Flavored Rings, though it's simultaneous less spiky-scratchy and more noisy. The vocals roll everything into this sweet warm hum of earworm powerpop where even a humanist anthem like Not a Christian with its bitten crustcore-classic refrain of “NO GODS! NO MASTERS!” and its opening 10 seconds of deformed feedback seems like the happy buzz of a fourth pint, summerday smiles at being alone in the universe. Tumble Down sneaks the opening of Rocks in My Head by the Vindictives and bathes in clackety drums and ba-ba-bas. Nauseous rips into gear quickly and doesn't let up, contains a plethora of cutting guitar wheedles and snips, and even features a snotty spiteball of a chorus in "Your love makes nauseous!" but the ooh-ooh-ghosts and the general air instilled by those affable lounge pipes ameliorate any real menace leave the song and yeah this whole album with a feelgood melodious shiver.