Flat Worms

(Los Angeles, USA /// Castle Face, Drag City Records)

Flat Worms is a three piece punk band from Los Angeles with Will Ivy, Tim Hellman (Thee Oh Sees, Sic Alps) and Justin Sullivan (Kevin Morby, The Babies).

They’ve got a pretty good debut EP here, opening with “Petulance”, which speeds along like Sauna Youth, complete with a chorus that recalls an ambulance siren’s rhythm. This is followed by “Sovereignty”, a brief jolt of upscale jumpy punk not unlike The Intelligence. The title track takes hold of the b-side, ready for the overnight drive with a motorik drum-beat and lots of open air for the guitar to play along, beside and against the beat, the vocalist given plenty of time to finish his beer before stepping up to sing the title of the song as though he were a Kraftwerk robot. Good stuff all around, and a nice example of modern-day underground punk in the way that Flat Worms are clearly informed by all cool forms of rock music from the past four decades but borrow sparingly from anything besides Wire’s Pink Flag.

The band has released two new singles « The Guest » and « Circle » in 2021.

 https://flatwormsmusic.bandcamp.com 

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

(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

(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

(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.