Cable Ties

Cable Ties

14 12 2022

Cable Ties

(Melbourne, AUS // Poison City, Merge Records)

Led by the abrasive guitars and powerful vocals of Jenny McKenchie, Australian punks Cable Ties blur the lines of punk and rock, with angsty dissonance that has just a hint of AC/DC influence hiding beneath the noise. After forming in 2015, the band played often in Melbourne’s D.I.Y. circles and captured their growling sound on albums like 2020’s Far Enough.

Cable Ties were formed by guitarist/vocalist McKenchie, bassist Nick Brown, and drummer Shauna Boyle. The group played their debut gig at 2015’s annual Wetfest — a non-binary-inclusive music festival in Melbourne celebrating the city’s diverse D.I.Y. scene, curated by McKenchie’s other band, Wet Lips. The trio quickly built up a reputation by playing a huge number of live shows in their first year on the local scene. Their first effort was released in March 2016 — the single « Same for Me » — followed six months later by a split single with Wet Lips. By the end of 2016, Cable Ties had opened the Meredith Music Festival and earned themselves the « Golden Boot » — a tradition that involves the crowd unanimously holding their boots and shoes in the air as a seal of approval; they were the first opening band to receive the accolade.

At the beginning of 2017, McKenchie and Boyle helped curate the first Girls Rock! Melbourne event — an initiative that empowers girls and non-gender youths to get involved in music and music education. The trio then headed out on tour with fellow Aussies Camp Cope and signed a deal with local label Poison City Records; their Paul Maybury-produced eponymous debut album appeared in May. The group again went on tour in support of the release with shows across Australia. In 2019, singles began surfacing in advance of the group’s second album, Far Enough. The record took the band’s raw sound into more complex places, and arrived in March 2020.

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Stiff Richards

Stiff Richards

11 10 2022

Stiff Richards

(Melbourne, AUS // Legless Records)

 Possibly the gnarliest thing to come out of Rye since ergot poisoning: Stiff Richards.

Straight out of the shed into your head, it’s riff-ready, pugilistic punk rock. Scorching licks, no bullshit tricks. Skin-prickling, face-melting, teeth-gritting, savage rock ’n’ roll. Three records deep on Legless, Stiff Richards is a State Of Mind. Five super garage punks, invoking all the slippery pit ghosts that came before them. Blasting the spiders from the rotting rafters, these vibrations will elicit sensations from Australia to Belgium.

Acid Dad

Acid Dad

8 09 2022

Acid Dad

(New York, USA // Greenway Records, The Reverberation Appreciation Society (Levitation))

Acid Dad is an American alternative-rock band composed of singer-guitarists, Vaughn Hunt and Sean Fahey, and drummer, Trevor Mustoe. Vaughn first started recording the band in his Bushwick, NY basement releasing singles “Brain Body” and their first EP “Let’s Plan a Robbery.” Appearing live in the New York City rock scene in 2016, Acid Dad quickly moved to a world stage with their self-titled debut album, released by Greenway Records in 2018.

During 2020, the band spent their time building a new studio space in Queens, NY, while continuing to independently produce all their own music, art and even building their own guitars. With a new space and vision, the band produced their second LP, “Take It From The Dead,” set to be co-released in June 2021 by Brooklyn’s Greenway Records and psych powerhouse LEVITATION’s label, The Reverberation Appreciation Society.

“Take It From The Dead” features an array of different influences ranging from 90’s neo-psych, modern post-punk and 70’s rock-n-roll. Acid Dad has crafted a record that sounds new, yet feels nostalgic. In contrast to their earlier work, they make use of slower tempos and expand their sound to include songs that are both more intricate and more hypnotic. To accompany the new record, the band spent the last year collaborating with video artist Webb Hunt, producing psych and glitch art videos that form a visual counterpart to the dreamy distortions of their sound.

Acid Dad is Vaughn Hunt (guitars and vocals), Sean Fahey (guitars and vocals) and Trevor Mustoe (drums).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzSwzUAqVWw 

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Meatbodies

Meatbodies

10 07 2022

Meatbodies

(Los Angeles, USA // In The Red Records) 

Over the course of the decade, Meatbodies’ Chad Ubovich has been a perennial candidate for MVP of West Coast’s fertile rock scene. The LA native could be seen peeling off guitar solos in Mikal Cronin’s backing band, supplying the Sabbath-sized low end for Ty Segall and Charlie Moothart as the bassist for Fuzz, and, of course, fronting his own Meatbodies. Today the recently dormant experimental noise/freak-rock outfit has announced their return with 333 — A corrosive stew of guitar scuzz, raw acoustic rave-ups, and primitive electronics that charts Ubovich’s journey from drug-induced darkness to clear-eyed sobriety.

333 simultaneously reflects on how the world he re-entered was still pretty messed up—if not more so. “These lyrics are dark, but I think these are things that a lot of people are feeling and going through” he says. “Here in America, we’re watching the fall of U.S. capitalism, and 333 is a cartoonish representation of that decline.” 

That psychic tug-of-war plays out on opening track and lead single, “Reach for the Sunn” which is available today along with an accompanying video directed by Josh Erkman. On “Reach For The Sunn” Ubovich realizes that he’s not so much singing about his own path, but something much greater than himself as its distorted slow-motion creep leads to a chorus both celebratory and dispiriting: “Reach for the stars/reach for the sun/reach for the trigger/reach for the gun.”

Because the downside to maintaining such a prolific work rate is that the threat of burnout becomes a looming occupational hazard, and after touring behind Meatbodies’ second album, 2017’s Alice, Ubovich finally hit his breaking point.

“I’d been touring for eight years straight with all these bands, and just couldn’t do it anymore,” he says. “There was also a feeling in the air that everything was changing, politically. Things just didn’t feel right, and I went down a dark path.”

Fortunately, Ubovich was able to pull himself back from the brink and, upon getting sober, began writing and recording at a furious pace. By mid to late 2019, Meatbodies—Ubovich and drummer Dylan Fujioka—had a new album in the can, ready to be mixed. But when COVID hit, the band, like so many other artists, put their release on hold as they rode out the pandemic’s first wave. During that idle time, Ubovich discovered a cache of demos that he and Fujioka had recorded in a bedroom back in the summer of 2018, and he really liked what he heard. In contrast to Meatbodies’ typical full-band attack, it was deliriously disordered. “It sounded gross, like a scary ‘Magical Mystery Tour’,” he recalls proudly. After subjecting them to some mixing-board freakery, Ubovich fast-tracked the songs into becoming Meatbodies’ third release, 333.

As much as 333 speaks to the disillusionment of a lost generation, it also abounds with the innovation that limited resources can inspire. To set the Zeppelin III-styled pagan-campfire jam “Let Go (333)” in motion, Ubovich tapped out the beat with drumsticks on his pillow, while “Night Time Hidden Faces” melds two completely different demos together, steering its Stereolab synth drones into a mind-bending boogie worthy of Royal Trux. The instrumental “Eye Eraser” might be 333’s greatest example of hermetic ingenuity—what may have turned into a shoegaze rager is instead rendered as a blissful union of brain-fogging fuzz and minimalist electro beats. And yet for all its free-ranging experimentation, 333 arrives at a tidy, full-circle conclusion with the sundazed serenade, “The Hero.” 333 proves Meatbodies have greatly expanded their palette, opening new portals to explore. And for an album that wasn’t supposed to exist, 333 is the ultimate testament to Meatbodies’ renewed vitality.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqN_7wJDst8&t=5s

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On in the red

 

LUMER

LUMER

8 07 2022

LUMER

(Yorkshire, UK // Beast Records)

Upon the potholed streets, amongst the increasingly gentrified train stations and the suffering of the voiceless that surround them – purposefully and abhorrently disregarded by the ignorant – stand LUMER, surveying the stark reality of it all. 

LUMER have this uncanny ability to evoke the gritty trauma of modern day society and channel such hurt and agony into wondrously affecting notions. Brimming with undeviating venom, their music veers from frothing with condemnation and dwelling in such stark clarity to personifying the increasingly traumatic state of the world with a certain poetical romance. It’s intensely isolated, brooding with a curious assuredness yet indelibly scorched by the very reality we are utterly consumed by. 

LUMER are startling in their anger and vulnerability. Their music battles with its own indignation, surging with unkempt fury before collapsing in fragile exhaustion from carrying the unheard, and crushing under its weight, utterly confounded by the normalcy in silence. It’s gut-wrenching, yet entirely vital – a pertinent voice that possesses more subtle gravitas and intelligence than many of their contemporaries. The very heart of LUMER is here on display. 

Written by Ross Jones (So Young)

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