McBain-s/t EP (2014)

McBain's debut EP is as sweet as the candy that rotted out your teeth (like the tooth on the cover). Just when you think the band is going to descend into the standard hardcore speedslop, they jerk to a stop. Full stop. This is the sorta music best experienced in someone's crowded, filthy garage or basement on a hot summer night, half-delirious from heat exhaustion yet still guzzling Labatt's or some other Canadian pissbrew.

"I'm Exhaustion," opening with growled vocals worthy of the dood from Scratch Acid, exemplifies the McBain sound: as the guitar meanders through a postpunk number, the drums counterpoint the singer. Of course you can't understand anything he's singing about, but "whiskey" does get repeated a lot. One can imagine the song was written after drinking a lot of it, but the boys kept it together to throw in coherent choruses. Just when you think it's over, minor notes lurch into more frenetic, seething tension.

The drums win the fight on "Cooking with Feelings"; I haven't heard punk drumming this good since the days of Giant Haystacks. My guess is that "I Survived the Moe Earthquake" is a reference to a Simpsons episode I never saw, and Moe might indeed throw this one on to drive Barney Gumble outta the bar at 3 AM. It's that good!

At the end of the day, Mcbain is a punk band that's a little too clever to play retreaded retard rock with a mohawk cresting over the din. These Aussies is so nice, you can download the EP for free, here!

Idle Minds-Teenage Suicide CS (2013)

Maybe it's the winter blues, maybe it's the terminal lack of leisure options if you're dead broke, but I've been listening to more hardcore lately. As much as I'd like to think I'm somehow too old for it or that I've learned enough to not need obnoxious noise in my life, hardcore is like alcohol. You think you can live without it when things are going great, but those periods are fundamentally transitory and it's always waiting for you, patiently, when you bottom out and your friends leave you in the cold grey dawn.

Melbourne's Idle Minds are ready for you, the next time your life hits the skids, and you'll be met with sweet sonic oblivion. It takes a lot of wasted years to be able to distinguish between different strands of hardcore, but I wasted said years happily and eagerly. So it sounds like Idle Minds is torn between the possibilities of manic fastcore (Dropdead, et. al.) and "emotional," grown-up hardcore like American Nightmare.* I'd like 'em either way, but that's a backhanded compliment: hardcore is either abject teenage oblivion or it's self-conscious, which is to say, it negates its own reason for being.

This tape is as frenetic as a 15 year-old hardcore kid who just gobbled up a month's worth of Adderal, and as crude as the cover art. The songs tear by in a whirlwind of juvenile anger, pulsing rage, and sheer annoyance with whatever's happening when you play this tape. Idle Minds is as bratty as you are in your worse moments, and it's better to embrace them rather than reject them as somehow below you.

Check out Idle Minds here!

*It's only a matter of time before this stuff is popular among yuppies and "cool" parents. Buy your copy of the last AN LP now and start dubbing copies for your grandkids.

Thee Hugs-Drug Use & Alcohol Abuse LP (2013)

Drums rarely set the tone for a band, at least in rock. Brisbane's Thee Hugs is an exception to that rule: this band's rhythm section careens, thunders, and clunks through this LP like a truck driver on crank. These ten songs manage to walk a thin line between Dick Dale surfrockisms and the more musically-adept end of  first-wave L.A. punk (like dis crew).

The debut single, "She's My Girl," spurts jangled surf guitar before the drums set the pace: this is rave-up garage played right, by guys who prolly were at home playing along to Sham the Sham records while the rest of us were...at home, smoking weed. Again, though, the drums set the tone: mid-way through, they jerk the song to a halt and it closes on a crooning note. Helps that the singer ain't half-bad at sounding like a more frenetic, less controlled Jeffrey Lee. The guitar edges out the competition on "Sarsaparilla Shoes," putting in a memorable performance. My faverave track here though might be "Nazi Shooter," which is so charmingly juvenile in its faux-swagger that Legs McNeil himself couldn't'a done a better job. Holler-shouted vocals, needle-thin guitar notes, and rumble-in-the-jungle bangclang, although the rock-out-with-yr-cock-out bassline of "How Good Looking" is in a league of its own. Live it up.

In short, Thee Hugs are trafficking in an extremely formulaic and formalized genre, and manage to make it their own. That's no mean feat, given that most of the musicians and bands they reference here are at least thirty years old, if not going on fifty.

Get into it, and then buy the LP, HERE!