Joey Ramone meets Stiv Bators and Handsome Dick Manitoba

This three-song EP could easily be lumped into the neo-Ramones category, but as Jason Diamond of Impose Magazine suggests, there’s a strong helping of Stiv Bators’ post-Dead Boys pop, and the opening monologue (which tells kids to smoke, drink, fight and eat pizza) rolls in the self-aggrandizing style of the Dictators’ Handsome Dick Manitoba. The closing “Bored Out of My Brains” is among the best Ramones songs never actually written or recorded by the Ramones. [©2011 hyperbolium dot com]

Personal and the Pizzas’ Facebook Page

Welsh power duo cranks up blues-rock riffs

Going the reductionist power trio format one better, this Welsh duo features brothers Aled and Brennig Clifford on guitar/vocals and drums, respectively. With cues from the White Stripes, Black Keys, Two Gallants and others, The Cliffords buzz through heavy blues-rock originals that offer room for Aled to display his guitar playing prowess. Unlike the sonic pounding of labelmates Radio Moscow, Henry’s Funeral Shoe takes a more nuanced, and less psych-influenced, approach to their jamming. Aled’s playing follows more in the vein of British blues-rock giants like Peter Green and Rory Gallagher than metal or prog-rock players, and though he can pierce your eardrums with high, loud notes, he also plays slide and strums an acoustic on “Bottom is Top.” The songs bear the influence of everything from Robert Johnson to The Who, amplified by the volume of metal and the ferocity of punk rock. The hammering power chords of “Dog Scratched Ear” give way to the dobro-styled intro of “Mission & Maintenance,” which ramps itself into a howl stoked by Brennig’s drums and John Edwards’ harmonica. The band neatly ties together acoustic roots, early-60s electrification, late-60s jamming, early-70s excess and the late-70s punk-rock rebuttal; it’s a heavy trip. [©2011 hyperbolium dot com]

MP3 | Dog Scratched Ear
Henry’s Funeral Shoe’s Home Page

Driving Detroit rock spiked with punk and psych

Detroit may have taken a body blow from the recession, but it only seems to have intensified the city’s music. This Motor City quartet has the aggressiveness of a ‘70s punk band weaned on the Stooges, Amboy Dukes and MC5 and the range of a band that’s listened through the transitions from garage to psychedelia and punk to post-punk. Things fall apart, Velvet Underground-style, on “Ideas to Use,” but snap back together for the driving bass-guitar-drums riff of “Safe Effect.” Touches of organ and a low-key lead on “River Perspective” down shift momentarily, as does the experimental “Poems,” but it’s the mid-tempo, hard-strummed numbers that will move you and make you move. [©2011 hyperbolium dot com]

MP3 | Safe Effect
Gardens’ Home Page

Rock ‘n’ roll Halloween!

Just in time for Halloween, Asheville’s Mad Tea Party (not to be confused with some other teabaggers that’ve recently been in the news) unleashes this four-song EP of horror-themed rock ‘n’ roll. The title track sounds as if the Fugs returned from the grave as a punkabilly band that feeds on the flesh of its own critics. “Possessed” digs up the bones of classic ‘60s garage rock, with Ami Worthen singing like Elinor Blake fronting the Pandoras, and producer Greg Cartwright ripping a Pebbles-worthy guitar solo. Forrest J. Ackerman would have appreciated the ukulele-fueled ode to Vincent Price’s “Dr. Phibes,” and the doo-wop party-vibe of “Frankenstein’s Den” sounds like the Coasters meeting up with Bobby Pickett’s Crypt-Kickers over a witch’s cauldron. You can’t play “Monster Mash,” “Great Pumpkin Waltz” and “Thriller” all night long, so add these tracks to your Halloween playlist today! [©2010 hyperbolium dot com]

The Mad Tea Party’s Home Page

Throwback garage rock meets power punk

This Memphis quintet plays amped-up garage-pop that lives somewhere amidst the scratchily anthologized garage-rock singles of AIP’s Pebbles series, the power-punk ethos of the Buzzcocks, the post-punk aggression of The Fall, and a splash of surf-rock in the guitars. The result is more vintage Northwest than Southern. Their latest release is, appropriately enough, a mono 7” available via Goner Records and Bandcamp. Or if you’re stuck in the modern world, you can name your own price for a digital download. [©2010 hyperbolium dot com]

MP3 | (Don’t) Throw My Love Away
The Bulletproof Vests’ MySpace Page

The Young Fresh Fellows stock up on irreverence

Seattle’s Young Fresh Fellows return with their first album since 2001’s Because We Hate You. With band leader Scott McCaughey having joined REM as an auxiliary member and turning out albums with the loose-knit Minus 5, the Fellows have become something of a side project. Add to that the late-80s departure of co-founder Chuck Carroll, and the band’s irreverent ethos is more of a thread than whole cloth, stitching things together rather than organically binding twenty-somethings who live and play with one another on a daily basis. The new songs, two by guitarist Kurt Bloch, two by drummer Tad Hutchison and the rest by McCaughey, capture the band’s loony humor if not its early fraternal bonds. There are a few newly minted Fellows classics here: “Go Blue Angels Go” is the theme song for a yet-to-be-created hydro-plane themed limited animation TV show. “Let the Good Times Crawl” is a convincing Sunset Strip garage rocker sent back from 1965, and “Lamp Industries and “Suck Machine Crater,” whatever their inside jokes are about, are bouncy pleasures. The foursome still delivers wacky songs stretched across a deep love of pop, punk and rock sounds with simple punch and energy. [©2009 hyperbolium dot com]

MP3 | New Day I Hate
Young Fresh Fellows’ MySpace Page

Cowpunk revival: punk rock meets country waltz

This San Francisco trio travels the same circles as lo-fi minimalists Two Gallants, but the Riders country leanings take them closer to 1980s bands like Blood on the Saddle, Rank and File, the Meat Puppets, and Replacements. The album opens with thrashing rhythm guitar and drums, but by track two the throbbing bass is accompanied by melodically picked hooks. By track three the vocals take on a country twang, and on track four there’s lap steel. The band-written songs are filled with heartbreaks that won’t let go, frustrated misunderstandings, and late-night drunks, and the music is rendered as strung-out ballads, cowpunk waltzes and amped-up two-steps. Most of the songs stare into unfading memories of past emotional train wrecks, and even when there’s an inkling of change, such as the wished-for dissolution of “Livin’ Daylight,” it’s viewed with trepidation. The band retains their guitar, bass and drums punk-rock urgency even as guests add dobro, fiddle and accordion, and the high edginess of Pete Frauenfelder’s vocals makes the lamentation all the more powerful. [©2009 hyperbolium dot com]

MP3 | Safety of a Back
Trainwreck Riders’ MySpace Page

Treasure trove of mid-60s Sacramento garage sides

This two-CD set catalogs 58 obscure garage-rock sides waxed at Sacramento’s Ikon Studio in the mid ’60s. Ikon was one of Sacramento’s top professional recording studios, and in addition to commercial work, they operated the custom Ikon label. Local groups, including many Battle-of-the-Band winners visited Ikon to imortalize themselves on a hundred copies of a 7″ single. The low production runs kept Ikon a secret from even many ardent garage rock collectors, and poorly mastered third-party vinyl (by Modern in Los Angeles) often failed to convey the high quality of the original recordings.

Compilation co-producer Alec Palao dug up a reel of original masters, and as the project rolled along, additional masters were recovered. The resulting snapshot of mid-60s young Sacramento is rendered in sound quality often better than the original singles. As a studio-for-hire, Ikon recorded all kinds of music, but Palao and co-producer Joey D keep a bead on garage rock (including snotty punk, folk rock, surf, frat stompers and organ rave-ups), some quite polished and some lovingly inept. This set is a gem, offering top-notch sound quality, good tunes, and plenty of spirited performances. Palao’s extensive band notes fill out a booklet thick with photos and reproductions of period ephemera. [©2009 hyperbolium dot com]

Gravel voiced punk meets Americana

If cowpunk had steeped somewhere less urbane than Los Angeles, and if its progenitors had brought along the raw amperage of their punk backgrounds, it might have sounded more like this Columbus, Ohio band. Vocalist/songwriter Micah Schnabel sings in a hoarse gargle that’s several steps past “raspy” or “roughhewn,” and his self-reflective lyrics are backed alternately by hard-charging electric rock and acoustic country-folk. He’s a cynical sort, mocking his powers as a musician with the opener’s lyric, “So if it lights you up, and if it turns you on / I will sing to you all your favorite songs.” An ambivalence surfaces in the relationship of “Skinny Legged Girl,” with a love letter in one hand, a poison pen in the other, and his ambivalence extends to music itself, compelled to keep writing, but feeling “it was arrogant to think from the start, you were the only backyard Dylan with a folksinger’s heart.” Schnabel’s gravelly delivery is more Tom Waits than Bob Dylan, and a few of the songs, such as “Glass City,” offer the rising tide of an E Street Band epic. The band’s Americana influences are heard in the jangly rocker “Wooden Teeth,” the emotional ballad “Not Your Friends,” the twangy “Swallowed by the Sea” (with bassist Shane Sweeney providing the low lead vocal), and the exceptional acoustic autobiography “Swingset Assassin.” In addition to Waits and Springsteen, the Replacements and Uncle Tupelo provide obvious antecedents; less obvious are Big Star, the Goo Goo Dolls and even Bryan Adams, and contemporaries like Drag the River and the Drive By Truckers. In the end, Schnabel’s voice is too unique for such simple comparisons, his lyrics too intimately autobiographical, and the band’s combination of fiery punk rock and earthy Americana quite unlike any one of their forerunners. [©2008 hyperbolium dot com]

MP3 | Brass Ring
Two Cow Garage’s MySpace Page