#2799 Pity Party (Girls Club) - Girls Club

Rock's gone back underground, little threads of resistance keeping the cause alive. Surf rock's a beating artery, lo-fi too. This complicatedly-named gang of youth keeps it alive on both veins, bashing out another wave of noisy, hooksome wasting away, all reverb and small sentiment and rumbling threats of life. Keep beating kids, don't let it all die with us 4/5

#2798 Winston Surfshirt - Sponge Cake

Perfectly smooth white-guy soul//R&B//hiphop, sounding readymade for festival groovalongs. It's not bad to listen to, but a profoundly uncool record in a space that demands coolness, from the obvious beats, to the weird fried vocals. The fact that every song sounds exactly the same by the halfway mark's just the mayo on the wonder 2.5/5

#2797 Nadine - oh my

Plain lyrics with hidden edges. Simple electronic buzzes with hidden heart.

A quiet little record. Even when it goes big, there's space in the notes, a laserframe with no protection from the wind.

Worth sinking into, worth letting sink in 4/5

#2796 Dommengang - Love Jail

Supersolid fuzz, busy drums, fast-slow pacing that flows, lyrics that stay the fuck out the way - that is the map to my heart. I'm a simple man. I just want a texture that sinks into my mind folds and fills in all those fuzzy gaps, that keeps my boredom and anxiety at bay, that gestures at some atomic wave of sound. The Men are gods in this space, Boris circa Pink, all the way back to Sabbath, put these guys in the pantheon. Effortlessly heavy, occasionally pretty, take me away 4.5/5

#2795 The Garden - haha

Absurd lyrics over big fat riffs and outdated electronic flourishes make for a delightfully dumb piece of indie-punk nonsense. None of it's especially memorable, but these dudes sound like they're having a blast in the moment, entertaining in the short term, never telegraphing what's next, everything blunt and bouncing, shades of Single Frame, Vundabar, Enon, early Liars 3.5/5

#2794 Goons of Doom - Free Your Skeletons

Aggressively amateur Australian punks with enough natural hooksense and charisma to make this 24-pack of throwaway songs a scruffy good time. It's Guided By Voices readymade lo-fi goodness, with a Stooges-via-Frogs trolly deadpan - indie pop at its finest, all community and good-enough ramshackle joy, the kind of album you feel like you could make, so why don't you? You won't. But that spark of feeling like you might could, that's exciting right? 4/5

#2793 Sacha Robotti - Believe in Me

The title track's perfectly good big bwowmy slowrolling house, with enough glitches and bigass buzzes to keep you interested. But it's only barely good enough to justify the release, especially with such a no-nowhere B-side 3/5