It’s surprising that Sonic Youth, gone now for more than a decade, have yet to go the deluxe/unreleased route. Their Bandcamp page is replete with live sets and rarities, but In/Out/In (out March 18 on vinyl, CD, cassette and download from Three Lobed Recordings) may mark a change in that missing tide. The album collects five tracks recorded between 2000 and 2008, mostly instrumental and varyingly experimental. After the meandering, 10-minute opener “Basement Contender” (which sounds like a lackluster latter day Velvet Underground outtake) there’s the first of a pair of harder edged jams “In _ Out” and “Out _ In,” recorded a decade apart, the first with singer/bassist Kim Gordon at her subdued “Bull in the Heather” best. The driving instrumental “Machine” is, at under four minutes, by far the shortest, and maybe the strongest, track included but the most fascinating is the abstract noise of “Social Static,” showing how well the band worked outside of song format. A lot of it seems a bit subdued, at least by their standard, but it works well as a set, and a fine one at that.
If that’s a bit too trance in your thrash, though, and what you need is something more like someone who just cleanly ripped their lips off, you could do worse than looking to the new album from Nagoya’s Nicfit. The band has been around since 2009 but Fuse is their first full length, out in January on vinyl and download from Upset the Rhythm. They claim postpunk roots (Essential Logic, Magazine, Wire), but reminds me more of the 1990s glory days of The Cooler in Manhattan’s Meat Packing District, when you could walk through the smell of fetid animal flesh and past aspiring fashion models and trans sex workers to catch the next in what seemed an endless parade of Japanese punk oddballs. It’s a clean, polished and vicious disc, streaming in full on their Bandcamp page (at least until Bandcamp falls to the profit hunger of its new corporate lord and master).
Montreal’s NOBRO also claim punk cred, but they remind me more of early ’70s hard rock pop. The Runaways are an obvious parallel for the gender demographic, but I hear traces of Alice Cooper’s straight-ahead rockers. I had already started writing a review of the 7-track, 23-minute Live Your Truth Shred Some Gnar before I listened, ready based on the advance tracks to say that if they were just working their way to a great greatest hits album somewhere down the line (if anyone even still does those), that’d be good enough. The lead-off “Better Each Day” is as gloriously passionate/apathetic as “Don’t Die” from their short debut Stay Sick, but really the whole potty-mouthed record rips. It’s available digitally and streaming in full, and Dine Alone Records has also paired it with the previous EP for a 12” release, giving them a proper first album.
Despite what their name might suggest, Los Bitchos would probably fare better than NOBRO in polite company. Their music would, in any event. The London instrumental combo’s music is absolutely infectious: surf-guitar exotca drawing from their city’s (and their own) cultural diversity. There’s hints of Argentine cumbia, Peruvian chicha and Turkish psych in their beguiling upbeat tunes, simple melodies bouncing atop sophisticated arrangements. Let the Festivities Begin (vinyl, CD and download out last month from City Slang) is their first full length and getting enough of it isn’t easily done.
Good times and righteous indignation aside, there’s some powerful resonance to post-winter misery. The ice has melted but the world’s still cold. TS Eliot saw it, declaring April as the cruelest month, and Fran Landesman knew it well when she wrote what became a jazz standard: spring can really hang you up the most. The underground power trio from Down Under Springtime isn’t trying to do anything to lighten that desolate mood. Their three track Night Raver EP (a March 2 digital release from Joyful Noise Recordings) has them stretching out more than on their 2021 debut, which suits their scuzzy reveries well. The trio is comprised of keyboardist Chris Abrahams (The Necks) and drummer Jim White (Dirty Three)—both bands known for stretching themes into dreams—and guitarist Gareth Liddiard (Tropical Fuck Storm), who brings the ugly. They reprise Liddiard’s “The Radicalisation of D” (from his album Strange Tourist), a wretched tale in Leonard Cohen cadence, and include the previously released “Punumbra.” The high point, though, is “The Names of the Plague” with Dan Luscombe (the Drones) on baritone guitar. “You are living in a nightmare you can’t bribe your way out of” repeats the haunting refrain, supplied by Liddiard’s uncle, the Irish poet Ian Duhig. At a ferocious quarter of an hour, it’s set to become a raging anthem for the next variant resurgence.
A deeper descent into springtime seasonal affective disorder can be indulged with the debut album from Spain’s Ab’bhau. The stated intent of the band of musicians from the Spanish noise underground (connections to Black Earth, Suspiral, Inhumankind, Phicus, Triple Zero, Gárgara and Sudaria) is “void invocation, void materialization” and “Black Metal Destruktion.” Out last month on vinyl, CD and download from Cyclic Law, Devastaciones Bajo El Fulgor Del Vacío is a fantastic slow grind, lots of atmosphere, lots of depth, with flurries of activity on the surface like insects above dark, still waters. There’s occasional riffs and rarely regular rhythms; when there are regular beats, it usually seems only the drummer in the ensemble of unnamed members is paying heed. The void they conjure is pretty nightmarish. You can stream it for free but you can’t bribe your way out of it.
