Being in an independent punk rock band can be fun, but it can also be hard work without a guaranteed reward, and The Bobby Lees got to know that better than they hoped while on the road in support of 2022’s Bellevue. Long stretches of low-budget touring and recording albums without recouping their expenses put enormous stress on the group, and founder and leader Sam Quartin was beginning to buckle mentally and physically under the strain; the Bobby Lees went on hiatus in 2023. Fortunately, they had a fan who was willing to help and also happened to be rich and famous — actor Jason Momoa, who featured the band on his HBO series On the Roam, and offered to finance their next album. 2026’s New Self reflects the pain and frustration in the years leading up…
Category: garage
The four words no one thought they would ever see appeared last year. They were “GRAMMY nominee Jon Spencer.”
But that’s what happened when Samantha Fish and Jesse Dayton’s 2023 album Death Wish Blues was up for one of those iconic awards. And by extension, so was producer Jon Spencer.
It’s worth noting that his career spans over four decades crafting some of the edgiest, most frictional and at times discordant roots music ever appearing on major or indie labels. A variety of sonically boundary-pushing outfits such as Pussy Galore, Boss Hog, Heavy Trash, Jon Spencer & the HIT Makers and, probably the most popular one, The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion were all helmed by Spencer.
Off Course, the new Osees record, is only five tracks, but some of them are long, and Dwyer is calling it an album. It certainly takes you on a journey the way good albums do. The songs are playful, funky, and hallucinatory in a way that reminds me how much King Gizzard owes to this crew.
Dwyer says it emerged from endless jam sessions, a method the Osees hadn’t employed for a while: We went back to an older method of writing for this one. We jammed and jammed and jammed. I took the tapes home and ironed out some mutant tunes. We went back into the studio and burned them to tape live and then I took it home to Stu-Stu-Studio and did the vocals and brought in Tom Dolas & Brigid Dawson to put the finish on…
…Based in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, IRKED’s debut, The Grievance, blazes with their own particular (fire)brand of bruising garage punk with vocals howled by a twirling dervish of pure fury.
Whether it’s in the short, sharp jolt of sub-one-minute rager ‘Running’, or ‘Who Asked’s grim cycle of working and drinking, underlined by the chorus “Why does everybody want to fuck with me?”, the band are never far from spitting out a mouth full of bile.
At times it’s delivered in the form of snark, like in the cutting refrain on ‘Death Cult’ around personal responsibility towards global issues: “Keep up, you’re not doing enough.” Or, similarly, in the lines “Keep off the grass, stay out the sea, don’t piss in the pool, keep ‘em on a lead”…
There are debut albums that arrive with intent, and there are debut albums that arrive like a pneumatic drill through drywall. GNAT, the first full-length from Manchester’s drummer-fronted psych-punk quartet Wax Head – recorded with long-term collaborator Borja Regueira at Manchester’s GLUE Studio and mastered by Melbourne’s Joe Carra – is emphatically the latter: sub-thirty minutes and zero patience for anything resembling restraint.
The title track opens as both decree and detonation: a blitzing, subterranean riff-storm whose fretboard acrobatics would make Dillinger Escape Plan’s Ben Weinman raise an eyebrow. At 90 seconds, it doesn’t so much announce the album as ambush it. ‘Bug Doctor’ follows with equal ferocity, the rhythmic convulsions and…
Jim Jones is, of course, the scraggly British rock’n’roll Jesus who out-Stooged Iggy in the 80s with delirium rockers Thee Hypnotics, and has chased that fuzzy psych-punk high ever since under various names, line-ups and conjurations.
Black Crowe Chris Robinson produced this album, and also provided some vocals, as did ‘Mrs’ Marc Bolan Gloria Jones. Green On Red mainman Chuck Prophet also wanders in for some guitar musings. Does this qualify the ‘All Stars’ nomenclature? Yes. Who were you expecting? Slash? C’mon, man, everybody cool is dead these days.
Much like fellow junk-punk-funker Jon Spencer, JJ’s sound these days is stripped-down and laid bare, free of the youthful 17-minutes-long-with-four-guitar-solos excesses his previous…
In 1974, Merle Haggard released Merle Haggard Presents His 30th Album. Having released thirty albums is in itself a remarkable accomplishment, but it was all the more impressive that Haggard cut those LPs in just nine years. It’s a shame Haggard never talked to Billy Childish about productivity; In 1991, Childish brought out a compilation, I Am the Billy Childish, that included one track each from the fifty long-players he’d put out between 1977 and 1991. Of course, Hag had the resources of Capitol Records behind him as he cranked out his recordings, while Childish cut his music for tiny indie labels, mostly on his own dime, and was also making lots of non-LP singles, publishing poetry, and creating various sorts of visual art at the same time.
After 33 years, Guitar Wolf returns to Goner Records, where they started! Way back in 1993, Wolf Rock was released by Goner and immediately, around the world, people enthralled with raw rock n roll and pure Japanese enthusiasm for over-the-top noise realized they had a new band to watch out for.
Many tours, many records, and many eardrums later, Guitar Wolf has returned for the latest, and greatest Guitar Wolf record yet – More Jet. More raw, crunching guitar noise, frantic rhythms, and unpredictable screaming! More head-scratchingly-great song topics! The perfect blend of Link Wray / Ramones / Joan Jett / Cramps sound and attitude mixed with industrial-strength noise.
Led by singer and guitarist Seiji the group’s…
The Masonics are the Kings Of Medway Beat, known for being ‘the best Rhythm and Beat combo since The Milkshakes’, and there’s a very good reason for that…
With Mickey Hampshire (The Milkshakes, Mickey And The Salty Seadogs, Mickey And Ludella, Mick Hampshire), Bruce Brand (The Pop Rivets, The Milkshakes, Auntie Vegetable, Thee Headcoats, The Kravin’ “A”s, The Clique, Dutronc, The Voo-Dooms and more) and John Gibbs (The Wildebeests, The Kaisers), this Medway-based trio fire rhythm ’n’ beat and rock ’n’ roll!
Since 1991, The Masonics have been raising roofs all across the land, and disturbing audio grooves on at least ten studio albums and more than ten singles. There’s no stopping them!
The Guy Hamper Trio was formed by Billy Childish, after a chat with his friend James Taylor (Hammond organ).
Billy and James had played respectively in The Milkshakes and The Prisoners, often sharing the same bill in the early 80’s, leading to Billy’s blues ensemble The Natural Born Lovers being the support act for the early shows of The James Taylor Quartet.
The Guy Hamper Trio is: Billy Childish on guitar, his wife Julie on bass and Wolf on drums – who as it happens was the drummer in the original incarnation of JTQ – and of course features James Taylor on Hammond organ.
The Guy Hamper Trio provide a bottom end, Blues-influenced instrumental mayhem for those…
Getting so obsessed with a band that you book a local show just to see them play — we need more freaks like that in the world, and that’s what Merge Records’ Mike Krol did this spring when he put together a bill featuring himself, Shannon Shaw’s new group Voilà!, and this not-so-known New Orleans duo Twisted Teens, Krol’s recent fixation, here in Los Angeles. “I blasted it in the car at night with the windows down, tracked down records, mailordered merch like I was 16, and all of a sudden I felt excited about THE CREATION OF MUSIC again,” he wrote on Instagram. “I couldn’t believe a band I didn’t even know existed at the beginning of this year made — quite possibly — my favorite record of the past 2 decades.” Amen, Mike. This shit tears.
Though little-known in America prior to 2000, Thee Michelle Gun Elephant formed in Japan back in 1991 and began playing raucous garage rock & roll inspired by the Stooges, Thee Headcoats, the Who, and MC5. Futoshi Abe’s thrashy guitar riffs propel the fast-paced, hard-hitting tunes over the driving rhythms of Kouji Ueno’s thick bass grooves and Kazuyuki Kuhara’s heavy backbeat. Yusuke Chiba’s mod, raspy vocals, alternately sung and screamed out mostly in Japanese, hold the whole thing together with a rough-as-rock-gets swagger.
Initially, Thee Michelle Gun Elephant’s sound was derived from British punk and blues. The band recorded their first EP, Wonder Style, in 1995. They soon followed up with their debut album, Cult Grass Stars, recorded in London with…
Ty Segall’s 2016 Emotional Mugger Tour was a blistering assault of psychedelic surrealism. The power derived from the multiple-guitar, six person set-up of Mikal Cronin, King Tuff (Kyle Thomas), Emmett Kelly, and Wand’s Cory Hanson and Evan Burrows. The surrealism came in when Segall donned a baby’s mask, filtering his rock star persona through a shroud of carnivalesque disguise. When the band turned up at Mark Riley’s BBC recording studio, they had already logged 50 shows. It was mayhem — how could it not be? — but finely tuned.
This five song EP revisits the glorious abandon of that mid-teens iteration of Segall’s art. It delivers four songs from Emotional Mugger, plus a rabid but abbreviated run-through of…
Rock ‘n’ roll needs two things to be successful: a biting riff, and a playful groove. It’s what distinguishes The Rolling Stones from The Animals, The Jam from AC/DC and The Stone Roses from Oasis. The responsibility is shared between the lead guitarist and those following in the rhythm section. It’s not enough to rock, you also have to roll. Luckily, Hot Face have got the mixture right on their biting debut Automated Response: a bracing, unabashed thrill ride with as much emphasis on the bass grooves as the power-charged electric guitars. Combine the giddy impishness of Ash’s 1977 and the savage, carnal energy from The Who’s A Quick One, While He’s Away, and this is probably the album you’ll get.
Emotionally coiled guitars cement “Liar”, aided…
If you had an uneasy feeling that 2025 would somehow be the year of Thee Headcoatees, then give yourself a hearty handshake – for surprisingly, ’tis true!
We can indirectly blame the passing of our dear departed Great Ribbon, Mr Don Craine, for instigating a regurgitation of Thee Headcoats back in 2022. Ostensibly booked to record a tribute EP as Thee Headcoats Sect – featuring Don’s fellow Downliner-in-Chief Keith Grant Evans – the chaps found they had a few extra hours to fill in the studio, so they figured they may as well record a new Headcoats album, too. And why not? This materialised, with minimum fuss, as Irregularis (The Great Hiatus) on Damaged Goods in 2023.
Come late 2024 and before you could…
London’s groundbreaking psychedelic pioneers, still led by founder Paul Rudolph along with former Hawkwind bassist and Lemmy protegé Alan Davey, return for a brand new album Covered In Pink cover songs. The Fairies tear into some of the classic rock’s biggest monuments from “American Woman” to “Mississippi Queen” to “Baby’s On Fire” and “Communication Breakdown” PLUS a brand new version of their proto-punk hit “Do It” and original tune. Includes special guest appearances by Nik Turner (Hawkwind co-founder), Michael Moorcock (Hawkwind) and Danny Faulkner (Pre-Med).
The excessive, drug-fueled Pink Fairies grew out of the Deviants, a loose-knit band formed in 1967 by members of the West London hippie commune Ladbroke Grove.
Osees have released their new live album, Live at the Broad Museum via Deathgod Records. Album captures a dynamic live performance at The Broad museum in Los Angeles. The record features extended tracks that highlight the band’s improvisational energy, including a standout 22-minute jam, “I Got a Lot.” Unlike their tightly structured studio recordings, this album explores krautrock-inspired grooves, hypnotic rhythms, and experimental soundscapes, showcasing the band’s versatility and adventurous live presence.
The album is mixed by frontman John Dwyer and mastered by JJ Golden, emphasizing the raw, immersive quality of the performance. Critics praise it as a document of Osees’ live power, capturing moments of spontaneous creativity…
Although they emerged from Melbourne bayside outer suburbs onto the local live scene with their fresh and spirited indie-rock update of the garage-beat sounds of The Easybeats, Kinks and early Beatles only a year or so ago, Gnome actually started out as a bedroom solo project for teenaged singer/songwriter/ guitarist Jay Millar a few years back. Jay, playing everything himself, started recording and releasing a steady succession of material – quite a few albums’ worth – on his own Goblin Records label via Bandcamp. Realizing he needed a band to start playing out, Jay approached some like minded players from Frankston’s rehearsal hub Singing Bird, and with Jay on lead vocals and lead guitar, Ned Capp on guitar, Olly Katsianis on bass, and Ethan Robins…
Fuzz, the California based trio of Ty Segall (vocals, drums), Charles Moothart (vocals, guitar), and Chad Ubovich (vocals, bass), present their latest release Fuzz’s Fourth Dream on In the Red Records. This is the band’s first release in four years and is a collection of singles, unreleased demos, and rarities.
“I lived in a four-bedroom house in San Francisco that housed anywhere from six to ten people at a time,” Moothart explains. “Friends were always crashing when they were between spots, on tour, or just couldn’t make it home. It was a chaotic space, but a space that was cherished by many. Chad frequently crashed on our couch when on tour—surrounded by ashtrays full of cigarettes and joint roaches; beer cans and spray paint cans.
Damaged Goods is proud to present re-issues of one of thee great collaborations of our times…
Thee Headcoats Sect is the inevitable intersection of two generations of mad-hatted Punk R & B misfits with musical and philosophical lineage that can be traced back over more than 30 years. The Downliners Sect were among the country’s foremost rhythm and blues groups, their most prolific period being the years from 1964 to 1966. As is often the case, they were denied the sort of success they deserved – they were outcasts, too young, too uncouth, and just a tad too eccentric to be accepted by their peers. As the Melody Maker said of their debut album in 1964: ‘forget this one if you want a Happy Christmas, and don’t want to drive all the guests away from your party’.