LOOKING BACK AT THE END OF THE WORLD
COMET GAIN – “If Not Tomorrow/I Was More of a
Mess Then”
Perfect
mod punk basement pop dream—for fans of DAN TREACY and Shena MacKay. The B-Side
is my song of th year, Rachel’s snotty yet dreamy deadpan vocals carrying the
world weary nostalgia of our collapsing youth/Too old to die young etc etc
PRIMO! – “Amici!” LP
Album of the year for me! Like SANDRA BELL playing WIRE songs,
in short my dream band, AMICI has the
dream like disquiet of YOUNG MARBLE GIANTS instilled in its essence. My words
are puny and futile, just buy the record punker.
TABLE SUGAR – “Collected Acknowledgements” LP
Seeing
TABLE SUGAR live in 2017 was a career highlight for this brain dead music
consumer. TABLE SUGAR are the coolest, the tapes were like an endless birthday
party to my brains, and to finally have a 12” in my grips feels utopian. The
music is transcendent girl art punk linking up the FOAMS to DRESS UP AS NATIVES
in my mind, but this group is not some referential reenactment troupe, they
make a sound that is theirs and only theirs. It is as adventurous and dreamlike
as the first time you heard the first LILLIPUT LP, in fact my use of the words
transcendent and utopian are not a stretch! This is truly a dream, truly an
adventure! I want to live in the world that this record has made.
CHILD’S POSE – “Feral” EP
Lost my
mind when I first heard this, and instantly ordered the 7” direct from the UK.
A band that makes me think “this is what ELASTICA should have done!” Stripped
down and direct with the coolest vocal style, art punk scritch guitars a SWELL
MAPS-ian rhythm but yeah let’s just go back to those vocals!!! Perfect pop! Perfect punk! This EP is why I am a
punk in 2018.
SCHOOL DAMAGE – “A to X” LP
Their last
LP made my last list and there is nothing different about this year, surrounded
by the same brutal turmoil, same evidence that Australian art punks are forming
some of the coolest concepts in sound… Sounds like some Midwestern art punk
band from 1982 in the best possible manner, can’t decide if I like this one
more than the last one?! Maybe so? What a group! What a sound! Fans of c86,
those Messthetics comps and bands
that formed in the wake of the B52s and DEVO in towns across America circa 1981
should immediately investigate. True Layla-core.
TERRY – “I’m Terry”
I have
been obsessed with all of the TERRY 45s, but a little less so with their LPs
until this one… These songs have an unnerving/unsettling pop feel that makes me
think of Chairs Missing. Really. It
feels throwaway and casual like the best music, but also insidious and well
thought out, earworms with teeth. The lyrics can seem almost like a word game
as well as a secret code message to a radical liberation cell. I can’t stop
listening to this, and I would advise you to do the same thing with your time
and life! Unbelievably good record!
LITHICS – “Mating Surfaces” LP
In which I
quote myself from the press release: “A
stern danceable sound that summons cut up snapshots of Su Tissue and Mark E
Smith, an imagined landscape where Captain Beefheart hits that 99 Records “Too
Many Creeps” beat.”
CONSTANT MONGREL – “Living in
Excellence” LP
Was so excited to listen to this, I think every other record
by this band has made my MRR year end top ten and here we are again…. What a
group! Lyrics tear down the cynical bleat of our current political age of
extreme delirium and hatred while the sound behind somehow reminds me that
swaggering VENOM P STINGER style but maybe also KIRK BRANDON AND THE PACK, just
relentless fucking power! The songs are so catchy and sick, desolate and total.
PATOIS COUNCILLORS – “Proper
Release” LP (ever/never)
Some sort of sick collision between COUNTRY TEASERS and VERTICAL
SLIT. What more could a girl want?
DRINKS – “Hippo Lite” LP
CATE LE
BON and TIM PRESLEY making strange glassy Messthetics
adventure sound. Playful and cool, a strange pleasure.
RECORDS THAT CAME OUT IN DECEMBER OF 2017
THAT EXIST IN THE WEIRD LIMBO BETWEEN YEAR END TOP TENS
BB EYE –
“Headcheese Heartthrob” LP
TOTAL
CONTROL – “Laughing at the System” 12”
ENDLESS CONTENDERS: RAYS LP, LUDELLA BLACK LP, COLD MEAT EP,
TOUGH CUSTOMER EP, SHIFTERS LP, LIME CRUSH LP, LAVENDER HEX LP, BB AND THE
BLIPS LP, LITHICS 45, LAVENDER FLU LP, ALISON STATTON AND SPIKE LP, PHEW/ANA DA
SILVA 2xLP, CREMELLERAS 12”, GIRL RAY 45, STIFF LOVE EP, NANDAS EP
REISSUES
VECTOR
COMMAND – “System 3” LP
HAND GRENADES “Demo
to London” 12” (Last minute entry for reissue of the year!)
JIM SHEPARD – “The Letter Tapes”
INDEX
–Originals Vol 1” LP
FRESH
MAGGOTS – CD
TAPES (tiny list! I guess I mostly bandcamped
demos??)
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