Disco Doom - Mt. Surreal (2022)

Disco Doom is a Zurich-based band who have been active since 2002 when they released their first EP on their own record label, Defer Records. 20 years later, the band released Mt. Surreal - their 5th full length album - also released through their own Swiss record label but released in the US through Exploding In Sound Records out of Jersey City. 

I found out about this band as I've been recently obsessed the band Helvetia. Upon purchasing a Helvetia record on bandcamp, I see Disco Doom being personally recommended by Jason Albertini from Helvetia - who I would learn also played drums on Disco Doom's third full length, Trux Reverb, which was released in the US through The Static Cult Label, a label co-started by Duster's Clay Parton Albertini also played in Duster). 

So I give this album a listen and it's fucking great, as are the other releases by Disco Doom, who seem to only have gotten better with time. Weirdly enough, people don't really talk about this band. I can't find their album stocked in, supposedly wonderful, NJ record stores either despite being peddled by a local label. 

 

The band has an experimental indie rock vibe that's simultaneously minimal and psychedelic. They have moments where they are Built to Spill-esque if all the lushness was stripped away in favor of sparsity. They have toured with Built to Spill so this comparison might be too easy... I'm actually having a hard time finding a comparison. The music's very approachable but also slightly off-kilter and tense. Like Helvetia, they have a solid and steady rhythm section providing the canvas, but everything else ... the guitars, vocals and sonic ornamentation... is dripped and splattered across like paint from a saturated brush. It's not as chaotic as a Jackson Pollock, Disco Doom is more Pat Steir or Cy Twombly. 

Criminally underrated. 

8 songs.

Disco Doom - Mt. Surreal

Twisted Teens - Twisted Teens (2024)

I think the greatest thing an artist can do is embrace whatever has come before while pushing the dialogue forward. By adding an experimental element - an unconventional medium, technique, perspective, or tool - one can create something that stands out... something special.

Here we have something special. Within the first minute of the first track, you will understand why. Twisted Teens offer something immediately familiar, a kind of lo-fi, late-70s punk not entirely dissimilar to what you'll hear coming out of Australia these days. First, you'll note the vocalist, credited as Cas P. ian, sings with an appealing tuneful grit: a campfire ballad with a leather throat.... like Tom Waits meets David Bazan. But you'll also notice that the musty basement crunch of the opening track is balanced by something luminous - the glassy sheen of the pedal steel guitar provided by RJ Santos. And so, it is only fitting that it is Cas P. ian and RJ Santos on the cover of this, the band's first release. 

These 11 tracks are more than the sum of their parts, however. This is more than just "punk rock with a pedal steel" gimmick. There is clear history behind this songwriting and delivery, one that hints heavily at years of experience. Since 2004, singer Cas P. ian fronted Blackbird Raum, a well-known anarcho-folk punk band from California. The drummer from that group, Magnus Nymo, is also credited on the Twisted Teens record. Originally from Norway, Magnus also played in drums in a Norwegian black metal band called Forcefed Horsehead. RJ Santos, who is clearly an adept pedal steel player, has more of an online presence devoted to being a talented painter.

While the music on Twisted Teens varies from punk to country to classic rock, folk, and 90s indie rock, I don't pick up on that anarcho-folk punk element here (and certainly no black metal). In that way, Twisted Teens isn’t a reinvention of any genre... but it’s a reminder that familiar ingredients can still taste surprising in the right hands.

Twisted Teens - Twisted Teens

The Gobs - Eight Things at Once (2023)

 

Olympia’s The Gobs makes music like a raccoon trapped in a vending machine—frantic, confused, and somehow kind of inspiring. Their 2023 album, Eight Things at Once, is 24 tracks of synth-stabbed, tape-scorched punk that sounds like it was recorded in a porta-potty during an exorcism. Every song is under two minutes because any longer would be medically unsafe. “Adderall or Nothing” is what happens when your frontal lobe dissolves in a gas station bathroom, while “Get a Dog (That Can Kill Me If It Wants To)” is a love song, probably. “I Wanna Fuck the Moon” is either a metaphor or a cry for help—either way, it slaps. The keyboards aren’t playing along so much as heckling the guitar, like a drunk uncle at a little league game.

Listening to this album feels like licking a car battery during a lightning storm and glimpsing something vast and unspeakably cool. When you snap out of it, you’re barefoot in a Denny’s parking lot, your pockets are full of teeth (not yours), and you know, with a deep certainty, that something incredible just happened—something wild, beautiful, and slightly cursed, now pulsing just out of reach in the back of your brain.

The Gobs - Eight Things at Once

Cody Blanchard - HALLOWEEN EP VOL 1 (2020)

Here is an ode to Halloween from Shannon and The Clams guitarist/vocalist Cody Blanchard. It's a lean 2 songs, both covers, done with acoustic guitar and vocals. 

Blanchard's approach is perfect: taking upbeat, punk rock classics and conjuring each into a dark, cold folk song lead by his ghostly but beautiful falsetto. These covers are so good they might just become staples to your Halloween playlists for years and years to come. 

Released 3 years ago in the thick of the pandemic. Hopefully we will be getting a volume 2 sometime soon.

Featuring "I Don't Wanna Go Down To The Basement" by the Ramones and "Halloween" by The Misfits.

Cody Blanchard - HALLOWEEN EP VOL 1

Crimes - Good Hope (2011)

Late May is the time where I start to think about summer. Technically still spring, there are a few summer-esque things that occur in the next few weeks before the solstice. Honeysuckle will explode in the next two weeks, and with it the dizzyingly sweet fragrance. At the end of the first week of June, lightning bugs (or fireflies) will fill the evening trees with miniature constellations. 

This is also the time I inevitably start looking for my summer music. I don't know why summertime is associated with music... maybe almost probably (definitely) it has something to do with capitalism. But, like a parasite, capitalism lives in me and it feels natural to seek the summer record.

Good Hope is a good contender. Crimes from Minnesota, a 4 piece sharing the same lead singer of the phenomenal Loud Sun, recorded their debut LP Good Hope in 2011. It is reverb-laden, shimmering psych pop with a melodic and stoned vocal delivery that just makes me relaxed. These songs, much like those of Loud Sun, are like the "couch-lock" of music. Put it on and forget it's there, you'll realize 30 minutes later that you just came up for air and that you have been swimming, drowning in thought. 

You'll wonder where the time went. Their second release was written up by our old friend Elvis Dracula in his EP Grab Bag Vol. 32. Also an excellent release. 

If you live in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area, Crimes are playing a reunion show on June 3rd at Palmer's Bar.

Crimes - Good Hope

 

Past Lives - Tapestry of Webs (2010)

 

Growing up in a small city with limited resources for bands, one that was never included on anyone's tour schedule, was frustrating for a young me. Situated firmly between NYC and Philadelphia, you'd think that teenage me would have many options. 

Life wasn't like that, however.

Fast forward to my first experience living in a bigger city. My desire for live music was so pent up that every year I would bankrupt myself seeing live music. It was like a drug. I would get yearly bonuses that would all be dwindled 4 months, where I'd inevitably pull money from my retirement fund to cover rent. 

One of the bands I saw in this time was Past Lives. I was working with the bassist from The Thermals, who were opening, so I had the rare opportunity to see a show for free, and I loved The Thermals so win win. Then Past Lives takes the stage and within minutes my little mind was splattered all over the walls of the venue. 

Past Lives featured Jordan Blilie on vocals... a very recognizable voice in the music scene of the Pacific Northwest. I'd loved his earlier band The Blood Brothers, but didn't really follow Blilie's career or even know what he looked like. So immediately when he started singing I knew he was standing right in front of me. 

Tapestry of Webs is post-hardcore pushed up toward colorful melodicism and away from the dismal, grey vibes more indicative of the genre. The music is energetic and thrashing at times but also swings towards balladry. There's singing AND screaming. Guitars AND saxophone and... is that a clarinet or a bassoon in there? A wild, beautiful, inspired record that 13 years later is still giving newness to my ears. 

Past Lives - Tapestry of Webs

ISS - (Endless Pussyfooting) (2017)

 

Innovation in music isn't something ubiquitous. Meaning, not everyone truly succeeds at innovation with their art. Creation in and of itself is not ground breaking. Rather, one must be cognizant of what has come before to recognize the manicured, well-trodden path that lies before them. 

Then, one must avoid the low hanging fruit and go their own way. 

This is what ISS does with their take on punk. It's clearly coming from punk roots but when adding drum machines, samples, and minimal instrumentation, it veers towards late 70's/early80's post-punk but with the tempo and tenacity of hardcore. 

The lyrics also tend to be quite hilarious. ISS aren't a joke band, they're not out for a laugh. But the lyrics for example in the song "I Hate People My Age" are crass and antisocial but in a way that I at least find amusing and relatable... decrying the idiocy of of "$15 dollar donuts" and how their generation has "thoughts on modern topics that are all garbage" ... not to leave out the refrain, "I hate people my age, my heart is pumping rage, and my stomach's turned to bile... I pray my peers all catch West Nile"

A little harsh maybe but keep in mind this is punk rock from North Carolina... a state that has no shortage of enraged punk (see this past post about one of the greatest hardcore bands who also happen to be from NC). 

ISS are beginning to catch on, with this record being the one that grabbed my attention first. Maybe you will enjoy them as much as I do. All their records are worth listening to and purchasing. 

ISS - (Endless Pussyfooting)

Music for 4/20

420 is a dumb tradition in the United States that has to do with smoking marijuana. Every April 20th hundreds of thousands of college kids are making both dumb jokes and excuses to get blasted today. 

I used to be one of them, so I use the word "dumb" lovingly. 

Weed is a lot more accepted in the US today than it ever has been with stores selling it legally in several states. They are strange places, almost more like banks than, say, liquor stores. One does not browse at a weed store. The transaction is very business-like... almost cold. You wait in a line (or in some instances a waiting room) until it is your turn to order. You speak to a stoner (sometimes called a "budtender") who helps you find what you are looking for (weed, you are looking for weed). You get your wares and you GTFO. 

Anyway. Those days are behind me but no judgement if you took the day off to smoke a ton of weed and do whatever. May these records guide be your soundtrack.

Holy - All These Worlds Are Yours

Holy is from Stockholm, Sweden and they remind me of Tame Impala's Innerspeaker and Lonerism days. Swirling phased out drum fills and Beatles-esque vocals make this well-produced record one that I've returned to several times over the past several years.

Holy is solid, psychedelic indie rock. Also - a limited amount of vinyl remaining on this one.

2019 release on Punk Slime.

Dead Finks - The Death and Resurrection of Johnathan Cowboy 

Sometimes I gather so much music that I forget to listen to it. Popped this one on the jukebox the other night and boy howdy, a gripping rock record from a Berlin duo. Just straightforward punk that's more slightly more rock than punk to my ears but your experience may differ.

The chord changes are just slightly askew and I like how they double (triple? quadruple?) the vocal tracks. Will probably get this on vinyl.

For stoners who like IPAs with their bong hits.

Kadhja Bonet - Childqueen

Here's some gorgeous soul/jazz/r'n'b out of Los Angeles. I think it was during the initial phase of the pandemic that I went on a bit of a music buying spree and Kadhja Bonet was one that I bought several things from.

Chill music in case your mellow gets harshed. Track 4, Delphine, is at least worth 6 minutes of your day. Here's a great live performance of a song on a different release. 

Jogging House - Face

Another contribution from Germany. Here we have Jogging House from Frankfurt, which is the ambient project of one Boris Potschubay. Since getting into ambient music 3 years ago I've consistently enjoyed the music of Mr. Potschubay. The tones are warm and nostalgia inducing with touches of 8-bit grit. 

This is his most recent release under the Jogging House name. Good for zoning the eff out while doodling or whatever stoners do these days. I listen to it while doing chores on rainy Sunday mornings because like I've said before... I'm old now.

The Molds - Saltine (2018)

One of the most interesting things about Bandcamp is that it's truly a website for everyone: big names but there music on there of course, but so does the everyday person who records music but holds a completely different day job.

The Molds is the monicker that a guy named Matt Ojala uses to write and record rock music somewhere between Seattle and NYC (and maybe Charleston, SC) when he's not working in project development. 

The tracks are pretty lo-fi but punchy and loud. It's kinda punk and it's kinda throttling indie rock. The rhythms are strange... not in a time signature kind of way but in a "why is he hitting the snare drum there" kind of way. Try bobbing your head along to the rhythm. It's like being on an old wooden roller coaster ...it all works but in a jerky sort of way. 

Impressively good music from an obvious talent who ALSO just so happens to also develop affordable housing communities. Makes me wonder what the hell I'm doing with my life.

The Molds - Saltine

 

Mid-Air Thief - Crumbling (2018)

 

Here's a record that was, from what I understand, fairly huge in South Korea but is much less ubiquitous in the US. 

This is an electronic pop album, or folktronica as their Wiki page states but that's a word that makes me want to barf. Showing my age, I guess. If the blending of acoustic instruments with electronic instruments makes something folktronica, the description is apt, however reductive. 

The gorgeous melodies of this album, in the exchange between girl/boy vocals, and the playfulness of the dynamics.. the parts of the album that whisper and then swell into a prism of sound.. these are the things that earned this record Best Dance and Electronic Album of the Year at the 2019 Korean Music Awards (there's really no element of dance here, however). 

The acoustic bits, and the rhythms in part, are actually quite Brazilian. I'm not well versed in the genres of Brazil but I think I'm correct in saying this album is part electronica and part bossa nova. Maybe not throughout the entirety of Crumbling but it's definitely there. 

I stumbled on this album exactly one year ago and over the year, it's been my happy place. It got me through a bout with Covid, through hot summer road trips, and eased my anxious mind to a restful place. 

11/10.

Mid-Air Thief - Crumbling