Dennis

New single: Lonely Girls || Reflections

Dutch drummer Kees Schaper has been playing as a live/session musician behind artists like Tim Easton, Jett Rebel and Tim Knol for over 15 years, but I mainly know him from garage rock band The Miseries: their self-titled album was number 11 in my year-end list of 2015, and live they were also very entertaining. I still hope that one day this will be continued, but for now Schaper has started a new project under the moniker of Lonely Girls, in which all lessons learned come together. Reflections, the A-side of their first single, is a classic melodic power pop song in which the complete expert bag of tricks is opened to reach perfection in two and a half minutes. The B-side is a nice folky cover of Nick Lowe’s Lately I’ve Let Things Slide, which does the original more than justice. With this, Lonely Girls will quickly find company.

Reflections is out now digitally and on limited 7″ vinyl through I Love My Label / Milkcow Records.

Add to wantlist: Bandcamp

New album: The Reytons || Kids off the Estate

UK indie rock band The Reytons – vocalist Jonny Yerrell (vocals), lead guitarist Joe O’Brien, bassist Lee Holland, and drummer Jamie Simpson – spent five years working towards the release of their debut album Kids Off The Estate. The bumpy journey to this moment can be seen in the documentary Becoming The Reytons on YouTube. Look where they are now – goosebumps all over when you hear a full house roar the lyrics of title track KOTE: “You don’t have to hate // The kids off the estate // Mates after a fate // And they called them Reytons” – an anthem for everyone who knows what it’s like to hang out on the street. The LP has 13 other infectious guitar rockers – we already knew a number of them from their previous EPs – that will do well everywhere (on the car radio, from your speakers at home, in the concert halls, etc.). The sound is reminiscent of hits that you often heard 15 years ago (Arctic Monkeys, Kaiser Chiefs, Courteeners, Dirty Pretty Things, etc.), hits like they are no longer made. The band members will never deny South Yorkshire’s working class, but let’s face it: with such great songs and such a convincing stage presence, they’ll be away from home a lot, to conquer the rest of the world. The Reytons are the ‘right ones’ to get that job done.

Kids off the Estate is out now on CD, cassette and vinyl LP through Scruff Of The Neck.

Add to wantlist: Discogs || The Reytons Shop || Scruff Of The Neck

New album: The Bug Club || Pure Particles

Is there such a thing as a typical addtowantlist.com band? The obvious answer is no, if only because we write about different genres. There are some common characteristics in the music we write about, though: short but powerful guitar songs, not polished, but catchy, full of emotions, authentic and convincing. Anyway, Niek and I regularly say to each other that a certain release really fits well with our blog, that it shouldn’t be missing, A good example of this is South Wales trio The Bug Club. Tilly Harris (bass, vocals), Sam Willmett (guitar/vocals), and Dan Matthew (drums) play riffing garage rock, rattling and naive, energetic and raucous, with humorous lyrics about the most important side issues of the first world’s life. After debut EP Launching Moondream One last spring (4 tracks in 8 minutes), they now have released the mini album Pure Particles (9 tracks in 20 minutes). It has everything we like. However, one small point of criticism: standout track My Baby Loves Rock & Roll Music ends with a fade-out. A typical addtowantlist.com band doesn’t do that. But who cares? 😉

Pure Particles is out now digitally and on 12″ vinyl through Bingo Records. RIYL Holiday Ghosts, The Wave Pictures, Jonathan Richman.

Add to wantlist: Bandcamp

New album: Guerrilla Monzón || PCH

Buckle up for our latest discovery: Guerrilla Monzón is an enthusiastic three-piece from Brooklyn, New York, who passionately play primitive garage rock with attractive power pop tricks. Jason Sanchez (guitars, vocals), Eric Gordon (bass, vocals), and Reymon Sinsay (drums) gained experience in past rock bands 56k and Oh No & The Tiger Pit, and under the moniker of Guerrilla Monzón they’ve developed a sound that’s a little less lo-fi and punk. The trio now have their debut album PCH released, which was well produced by Brett Parnell. Maybe we should call it a mini-album – after about 19 minutes you’ll have to click on repeat (you’ll want to click on repeat!) – but more importantly: these are 7 catchy songs, with great hooks, and vocals that wouldn’t look out of place at the better metal bands, songs that will get you enthusiastic yourself too. In addition to the 4 fine original tracks, they not only cover Elvis Costello’s This Year’s Girl in an excellent way, but they also recorded new versions of their own work: Pronto by Oh No & the Tiger Pit, and Rey by 56k (it may be clear that this one is about the drummer of the band, but all songs are about real people on some level). Our latest discovery is a great one, isn’t it?

PCH is out now digitally. Add to wantlist: Bandcamp

David Menke & Lionel Limiñana || The Devil Inside Me

Movies are often a nice way to get in touch with other music, but in this case it was the other way around: as a longtime fan of The Limiñanas I found a new project by the male half of the garage rock duo in Spotify’s Release Radar. French composer / multi-instrumentalist / singer Lionel Limiñana, together with German composer / producer / multi-instrumentalist / sound engineer David Menke, recorded The Devil Inside Me, which turns out to be the soundtrack of the Netflix series Monsters inside – The 24 Faces of Billy Milligan. In between blogging I just started watching the documentary: the true crime story is intriguing, the images and design are cool and hypnotic. The 16 songs – partly instrumental – on this fascinating soundtrack have the same effect, thanks to their driving rhythms that get stuck in the back of your mind. Moody melodies, dark grooves, fuzzy guitars, and fitting vocals pick up where the soundscapes from the series left off. Theme song Them, which opens the (digital) album, is the standout track (another hit to be mentioned is Illusion Song), but the rest is more than good enough to deserve a vinyl release. For garage psych fans, this could be the soundtrack of the year.

The Devil Inside Me (OST) is published via Because Music, and can be heard on all streaming services.

UPDATE: On June 3, 2022, Because Music will release a vinyl 2LP, containing not only The Devil Inside Me OST, but also the music that The Liminanas and David Menke wrote for the Arte documentary The Ballad Of Linda L about the life of Linda Lovelace.

New single: Radio Days || Psychotic Radio

Last month, Italian power pop heroes Radio Days released their 7″ single Walk Alone, with a track taken from their 2021 album Rave On! on side A, and the new song Stuck Inside My Mind (Lose Control) and a cover of David Bowie’s Suffragette City on side B. Only a few weeks later here’s Psychotic Radio, with a sympathetic power pop cover of their friends of Psychotic Youth’s Mercy on the A side, and on the B side 1998, a perfect classic pop song with a summery feel, about lasting memories. Now the radio stations have to discover it too…

Psychotic Radio is out now digitally through Ammonia Records, and releases November 26 on 7″ vinyl through Snap!! Records Spain.

Add to wantlist: Bandcamp

PS To round out the story: Psychotic Youth released a single with the same title on the same day, covering Radio Days’ Tomorrow and also performing a new original song.

New album: The Grease Traps || Solid Ground

Fans of James Brown, Curtis Mayfield, Durand Jones & The Indications and Blaxploitation soundtracks can get their dancing shoes on again, and hip-hop producers searching for fresh samples should open their ears. US eight-piece The Grease Traps have released their debut LP Solid Ground, featuring eleven slices of great hard-driving funk and lowdown soul, both originals and (rare) covers. Raw and energetic on the one hand, perfect and honest on the other. The band spent six years working on the album’s recording and mixing; as fans of the old school analog sound, the album was recorded straight to 8-track tape on a Tascam 388, which also graces the cover art. Kevin O’Dea (guitar, triangle), Aaron Julin (keys, tambourine, trombone), Goopy Rossi (bass), Dave Brick (drums), The Gata (lead vocals), Chris Brown (trumpet), Dave Salvatore (tenor sax ), and Mike Maricle (baritone sax) master their instruments like The JB’s did in the past, and their sound is as clear and big as can be. A solid debut that blows the roof off.

Solid Ground is out now digitally, on CD and vinyl LP through Record Kicks. This will be a new classic in the genre, you’re just in time to get your hands on the first pressing.

Add to wantlist: Bandcamp || Discogs

New album: Parker Longbough || Off Front Street

Parker Longbough, the recording name of Anchorage, Alaska native Matthew Witthoeft, collected all the anxieties, fears, and worries of the year 2020 on Crackle/Hiss, his fifth full-length album, which was released in January this year. But apparently he hadn’t said everything that needed to be said yet, because here’s Off Front Street, album number six. It’s lo-fi, guitar driven indie pop / rock with occasional electronic sounds seeping through. Although the eight songs are mighty fine musically, the lyrics steal the show – not exactly cheerful stuff, but they give a fascinating glimpse into the psyche of the singer-songwriter.

Off Front Street is out now digitally. Add to wantlist: Bandcamp 

New album: The Lethargics || Rough South Short Stories

February 10, 2021: The Lethargics released their debut album Maladies & Melodies, which features 13 pretty good songs. March 20, 2021: The Lethargics released their sophomore album Hue & Cry, which features 12 pretty good songs. September 15, 2021: The Lethargics released their third album Rough South Short Stories, which features 13 pretty good songs. (Between March and September there were some non-album singles, also pretty good.) How do they do that? I asked the band’s songwriter Darrel Mendenhall: “We feel like we’ve got a story to tell. We try to shine light on tales and characters that haven’t been pushed to the margins so much as they have been shoved right off the page. We are Hillbillies, and we have all the rage and shame that comes with that. Our message is that we may be Waste People – but we are still people!”

It’s obvious: The Lethargics are not just any American rock band. They hail from the hard beauty of the hills and hollers of the Appalachian Mountains, near Knoxville, Tennessee, steeped in the histories and mysteries of rock, blues, punk, country, folk, and Americana. You can tell by their sparkling guitar-driven music, which is authentic, unflinching, passionate and brooding, with brutally honest songwriting. They call Rough South Short Stories – a telling title – the record they were born to make. It’s folky blues (or bluesy folk), with intensely sung lyrics about real life, love and loss, emotional lyrics that evoke rich images. In my opinion, it’s a record that is meant to be heard in the rest of the world.

Before you know it, there will be new work after the aforementioned trilogy, which I’ve been enjoying a lot lately: “Three albums in a year – I guess that’s mostly a product of not knowing how to do anything else and not having anywhere else to go. Heck, we may get another one out before the end of the year!”

Rough South Short Stories is out now digitally. Add to wantlist: Bandcamp

New album: Jackson+Sellers || Breaking Point

Nashville singer-songwriters Aubrie Sellers and Jade Jackson were both artists in their own right, but social media contact during the pandemic led to a 1+1=3 collaboration. Their debut album Breaking Point, out now on ANTI- Records, contains ten folky rock songs, both dreamy Americana ballads and twangy riff driven tunes to dance to. Jackson (acoustic guitar) and Sellers (mellotron, bebot) share sultry vocal duties – their voices match very well – and their alliance sounds and looks like they’ve been friends for a lifetime, even though they’ve only known each other for a year. Both musicians contributed songs they had previously written, and there is one song they wrote together: Wound Up. In addition, there are two awesome covers that they completely have made their own: a flaming version of Julie Miller’s The Devil Is An Angel and an exciting reinterpretation of Suzi Quatro’s The Wild One. Jackson+Sellers, as their joint project is called, are reinforced by Ethan Ballinger (guitars, synth, keys), Matty Alger (drums, percussion, synth, bells), and Rich Brinsfield (bass). Watch and wonder: “You look at me so tender // But I wonder if there lies // Something dark and sinister behind those innocent eyes.”

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Add to wantlist: ANTI- || Bandcamp

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