December 2023, huh? Guess that means this fuckin’ year is almost over with. Good riddance to that, buuutttttttt I guess we still gotta do one more of these recommendation article things because the music isn’t going to recommend itself. Wish it would, but it doesn’t.
If I’m going to be honest, I spent most of my month listening to the back catalogs of French post-punk labels. I listened to plenty of new stuff, too, but I’m going to say fuck the honorable mention section for one month only and populate it with some stuff from this year and last I missed. Mostly French stuff. Okay, let’s start.
This is Cool Stuff For Cool Lifeforms December 2023!
This French punk band’s debut EP is short, fun, and gives off the air of danger. I mean, shit, the third song, “Aucune Excuse”, has guitars that sound like air raid sirens in the best possible way. I have no fucking idea what any of these songs are about, but the attitude seeps through all the same. It translates so well that I have, thus far, been uninterested in translating the lyrics in a literal sense. I just want to experience how it feels as they alternate between seething and blaring alienation.
DWYNE – S/T
DWYNE is really a band that hits the “genres” are bullshit vibe. It also might just be one person. The information on this band is nonexistent. I mean, I suppose I could email the Reverse Tapes label that put out this album, but that would ruin my own vibe of simply wanting to recommend great music and not wanting to do any work above and beyond that. Anyway, genres are bullshit. That’s especially true here where this band goes from soul to noise-punk to drone to industrial to psych rock in what seems like a breath. Sometimes all at once. My only issue here is four songs. Only four tracks? Come on, now.
Okay, this came out in early October, which is riiighhtt on the edge of being too old for me to share as new music in this column by the new standards and regulations I have recently imposed on myself, but it’s so good. It’s literally just Emily Robb shredding on her guitar. But it’s really weird stuff and really awesome. And you kind of forget it’s just one guitar and that’s it. It’s wild. It doesn’t need to be more than that.
All Get Out – S/T
Sometimes you just need an album full of perfectly crafted pop-rock songs that are also heartbreaking, every single fucking one of them. Songs that you feel like they get you on a bummer day because they’re sad but you can sing along to them. And songs that you can put on when you’re in a good mood to bring you down just a little. (If you’re weird like me and drawn to that sort of thing.) These are songs made for belting out in the car or at an All Get Out show, probably to the partial annoyance of the band. They’re songs for college kids and sad adults alike. There’s a song called Windows 98.
Even by egg punk standards, this is perfect for anyone with ADHD. The longest song is under two minutes. Each song has the attention span of me, which is to say no attention span at all. And it’s only 9 songs. You’re in and out with a thousand billion ideas having run through your mind in the span of like 10 minutes. If you hurry now, you can also buy the last remaining cassette copy. There’s literally only one left at the time I’m writing this, so get on it. This joint combines MIDGEE’s first two EPs into one place, and I think that’s the perfect way to experience them.
So, this is my pick for Coolest Album of the Month. They absolutely rip through these six songs (and, like, really there are only four songs here — you’ll see) like a weird hybrid of black MIDI and Nirvana. This EP is awesome, but with a band this young and this new, I can’t help but wonder what they’ll sound like as they grow more into who they are with future releases.
Stylistically, they’re nothing alike, but there’s almost a Guided by Voices aspect to David Nance. He’s willing to change styles and genres and even way of singing from track to track with a flow that has almost a stream of conscious logic to it. And what keeps it all together is Nance himself and his home recording charm (although, he knows what he’s doing — and these all sound as they should) and a certain, vague aura of the album, the very things Robert Pollard would use to keep his early albums together even as the songs seemed to branch in every random direction.
Seb Radix – 1977
Gotta tell you, I want to hate this album on title alone. There are already too many albums and/or bands with that title, and I don’t really get what the obsession with the year 1977 is. But this album rules, so fuck it, I have to recommend it. It’s my duty to humankind, and I take that duty seriously. This is weird post-punk that steals plenty of catchy moments between angular guitars and strange experiments.
Before I go, girl, two things:
1. If you are a band or label with a newer, lesser-known band with music similar to the kind of music I typically highlight in this column, shoot me a line at pizzafriendsrc at gmail.com and I’ll check out your tunes. Will it make this article? Probably not, but I’ll check it out.
2. Here’s some stuff from before December 2023 and last that I missed until this last month, but I’m sharing it now:
If you enjoyed Cool Stuff For Cool Lifeforms of December 2023, please check out previous installments here
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