Niek

New EP: Workers Comp || Crazy With Sweat

Look at that! Baltimore’s hard-to-google eccentric Velvetesque protopunks Workers Comp return with a new four-song EP. Last March, I first heard the band, and the new EP Crazy With Sweat further builds my excitement for anything this three-piece (Luke Reddick, Ryan McKeever and Joshua Gillis) puts out. Workers Comp have a way of making their songs sound like loose and spontaneous one-take recordings with zero apprehension about the outcome, fully confident their songs will come out great regardless of the production value – or lack thereof. They are not wrong. And Good Look may be the closest Workers Comp has been yet to writing an underground pop hit.

The Crazy With Sweat EP is out now on a limited run of Tapes at Glad Fact.



Add to wantlist: Bandcamp

New album: Curious Things || Naif

The album art of the new Curious Things LP Naif is not subtle. Curious Things? Naif? Sticking a fork in an electrical outlet! I worried that the art was a tongue-in-cheek metaphor for the quality of the LP, perhaps a case of self-deprecation. Fortunately, Naif doesn’t make want me to electrocute myself neither literally nor figuratively. Rather, I find the record to be electrifying.

Curious Things (Denver) consists of guitar pop/punk veterans Cameron Hawk (The Gamits, Lawsuit Models, The Dead Girls, Bandaid Brigade etc), Forrest Bartosh (The Gamits, Bud Bronson and the Good Timers, Pinhead Circus), and Ryan Heller (Tuff Bluff, Lawsuit Models). The three-piece plays crisp and powerful power pop that has its roots in ’90s pop punk and alt pop rather than in the late ’70s pop punk successors or the ’80s skinny tie movement. It’s an energetic sound that’s super poppy, and transcended by the amazing vocals of Cameron Hawk. Naif has a familiar sound that invites a pleasant sense of nostalgia and escapes the dreaded longing for the glory days. I kinda like that feeling – the new Samiam record evokes a similar response.

Naif is out now on LP that is co-released by Snappy Little Numbers and Dumb Ghost Recording Enterprises.


Add to wantlist: Bandcamp || Discogs

New album: The Growers || The Growers

The Growers is a (mostly) bedroom recording project by Steven Boyle out of Pleasant Hill (California). Five years in the making, Boyle has been slowly writing and reworking the eleven songs that make up his self-titled debut album. “I’ve been releasing a couple songs at a time since 2019, but always had the intention of combining them into a full-length. I think of it like the Megazord from Power Rangers,” Boyle explained to me in an e-mail. Boyle cites personal reasons as the primary driver behind his songwriting, “but if other people like it, that’s cool too!”

I for one think this record deserves an audience. The Growers is a scrappy indie/punk rock record with an emotional edge. Boyle’s voice and sound reminds me somewhat of The Cardinal Sin, a band fronted by Cadillac Blindside drummer Becky Hanten. It’s an honest and unpolished sound I have a soft spot for.




Add to wantlist: Bandcamp

New single: Plastic Act || Plastic Act

Current band or lost ’70s punk single? When the album art and the music evokes that sort of confusion, you know it’s a good one. I’d like to introduce you to Plastic Act, a project started by Private Lives bass player Josh Herlihey after he moved from Vancouver to Montreal. Plastic Act’s debut three-song 7″ single is out now on Brain Gum Records. It’s essential listening, particularly for fans of lo-fi proto punk that is wrapped in duct tape to harness the ramshackle energy and catchy melodies. More of where this came from please! Limited to 100 copies, so act quick if you want one.



Add to wantlist: Bandcamp

New album: Garbayo || La Onda Expansiva

Garbayo is a musical project from Spain by Ignacio Garbayo of Zodiacs fame together with Lander Moya, Pit Flanagan and Javi Estrugo. Their new LP La Onda Expansiva officially dates back to 2022 where it was available on CDr through Oso Polita. Family Spree Recordings is now giving the record the vinyl treatment, and you only need to listen to the first couple of songs to hear why. On these songs, Garbayo play exuberant power pop ‘n’ roll that sounds like The Plimsouls and The Replacements tagging up just to have a good time together. La Onda Expansiva is an old school feel good rock’n’roll record. Play loud for maximum joy.



Add tyo wantlist: Bandcamp

New album: The Ekphrastics || Special Delivery

The Ekphrastics are a new band fronted by Frank Boscoe of The Gazetteers, Vehicle Flips, Wimp Factor 14. Mark Wolfe, Paul Coleman and John Lancia are the other members in the band who last week released their debut album Special Delivery. It’s one of those records that are an instant delight. The Ekphrastics write unassuming timeless indie pop tunes that are scrappy, lo-fi, and above all super catchy. The music will put a smile on the face of fans of underground pop, and the lyrics will further raise the corners of their mouths. “My neighbor works late, late at night // From my window I can see his basement light // His time zone is GMT+9 // That’s where all the best cryptocurrency is mined,” Boscoe sings in Making Fun Of Bitcoin. The song is a perfect combination of schadenfreude and FOMO.

Special Delivery is full of wry and sharp observations on every topics like landscape painting, ski accidents, track and field. One of the highlights on the record is a sequence that starts with the title track. In the song, The Ekphrastics write about a delivery man who, to his annoyance, has to make a special delivery to a woman named Becky Jane Joplin each day. “your driveway is long and your driveway is steep.” Then, in the subsequent song The Ballad Of Becky Jane Joplin, The Ekphrastics switch to the perspective of Becky Jane Joplin. We discover that she is actually fed up with her letter sending boyfriend and has fallen hard for her delivery man. The Ekphrastics, they are my kinda band!

Special Delivery is out now on CD at Harriet Records.




Add to wantlist: Bandcamp

New album: Crossed Keys || Believes In You

Crossed Keys (Philadelphia ) is a band of familiar faces in singer Joshua Alvarez (Cinepunx, Halo of Snakes), drummer Dave Wagenschutz (Kid Dynamite, Good Riddance), bassist Andrew Wellbrock (Zolof the Rock & Roll Destroyer), and guitarists Beau Brendley (The Curse, Kill The Man Who Questions) and Dave Adoff (Step Ahead). It’s not like these veterans have anything left to proof to the punk rock community, but they sure are playing like it on their sophomore LP Believes In You. A high level of determination, perspiration and conviction are all accounted for, and the musical skill makes for a tight, well constructed and produced set of songs.

Believes In You is a modern melodic punkrock record of prime quality. It is out now through Dead Satellite Records, Creep Records, and Sell the Heart Records.



Rot troll

Add to wantlist: Bandcamp || Discogs

New album: Classic Traffic || You Want It? We Got It!

New Jersey duo Classic Traffic come crashing out of the gate on their sophomore full length You Want It? We Got It! Opener Morbid Orbit is a jolt of energy in the Bob Mould vein but with sweet almost hushed vocals that are low in the mix. And wait, is that a guitar solo? It’s a killer start to another great effort of a band that is only just getting started.

Other highlights on the album are the short and speedy Out of Me, the alt poppin’ Crash Test Buddy, the indie rockin’ High Wire Guy (“Some blamed the wind // Others say he leapt // We all laughed and bet on his behalf // I knew he wouldn’t make it”) and Lonely Palm Reader.

Classic Traffic sure are an easy band to like on You Want It? We Got It!




Add to wantlist: Bandcamp

New album: Display Homes || What If You’re Right And They’re Wrong​?​

Display Homes play postpunk I could see nonfans of postpunk also fall for. Display Homes’ new LP has the angularity to place them in the postpunk bin, but their edges do not need sharpening. Just take a listen to Nitty Picky, the opening track of What If You’re Right And They’re Wrong​?​ It has a contemporary sound that has the bite and melody of a late ’70s punk song. That’s a recurrent theme on the new LP. Bite and melody. Killer guitar work as well, and driving bass rhythms in synergy with frantic drumming. The threepiece from Sydney play so damn tight and with so much energy, they almost leave you short of breath. Powerful, exciting stuff built on a dark and sad history – the death of their guitar player and best friend Darrell whose amazing guitar playing is all over What If You’re Right And They’re Wrong​?


LP available at Erste Theke Tontraeger.
Add to wantlist: Bandcamp || Discogs

New single: Direct Hit! / Decent Criminal || Split EP

Dirtnap Records + Direct Hit + Decent Criminal + a comic book? That’s about a lock for the wantlist, right?!

Let’s start with the music. Both Direct Hit (Milwaukee, Fat Wreck Chords) and Decent Criminal (Santa Rosa, Diisd/Gunnar Records) contribute unreleased songs / alternate takes of existing songs. Three songs in total, all good, with Time by Decent Criminal the closest to that Dirtnap sound we all love.

Where it really gets interesting is in the comic book department of this release. Direct Hit singer/songwriter Nick Woods began working on a story about the future at some point in the pandemic lockdowns. What started as an impulse or necessity ultimately grew to something more when Woods shared his ideas with his buddies Dylan, Jenny and Direct Hit! collaborator and illustrator Walker Dubois. Together, they “pieced together the first half of BEACON from Woods’s notes, producing a science fiction comic about a person named Doro, and their robot caretaker Partner, as civilization is reborn from apocalypse.”

Sounds cool, looks cool, a lock for the wantlist indeed! Get the 7″single and the first installment of the BEACON comic at Dirtnap Records.



Add to wantlist: Bandcamp || Green Noise Records

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