Two years on from dropping a record that deserved a place at the annual international post punk conference (if that doesn’t already exist consider this a trademark application, cc: IPO), Australian post-punkers Clamm have been tightening up and doubling down.
Let’s get one thing straight – no matter how many times you’ve gone back through your 15-year-old copy of Panic Prevention this year, you’re not about to get a second helping here. And if you think about it do you really want 36-year-old Jamie T, born Jamie Treays, to try and copy what he did in 2007?
The pumped up, tightly wound first single from Automatic’s new album Excess boldly proclaims a ‘New Beginning’ and while tightening things up from the LA trio’s 2019 debut Signal it’s not necessarily a huge leap forward. It is, however, a surge of energy that handclaps manically in front of your face and demands your attention. This surge is almost exactly reprised towards the end of the record on the hectic synth-punk of ‘NRG’, just in case your eyes were starting to droop, although they really shouldn’t be.
“I am safe here” sneers Charlie Drinkwater four songs into Priest’s much-anticipated My Other People, and you can bet your life he’s not the only one. Fans of a certain genre, faced with the London four-piece’s second album, will also be feeling distinctly secure, greeted with a reassuring but well-executed take on the post punk du jour. With vocals along the lines of Yard Act’s spoken/sung delivery and jagged toilet-circuit-sink-shaking riffs, My Other People achieves the confounding quality of sounding instantly familiar on first listen.
Now summer has (kinda) arrived, what better way to soundtrack those sun-drenched barbecues than with some brand new highly-polished urbane soul?
Manchester-based singer-songwriter Mica Millar has been bubbling under for a while now, firstly fronting cult local quartet Red Sky Noise, before embarking on a solo career, earning her chops with an extended stint on the road with her expertly drilled ten-piece band.
Weird nightmares, we’ve all had them. Rabid uzi-wielding Teletubbies hunting you down through the jelly swamps of Atlantis on your wedding day while both moons flash like strobes and Enya drums in a Slayer tribute band… or something. Right?
Never let it be said that Crows do things by halves – where debut album Silver Tongues was recorded in near-totaldarkness, the sessions for their brilliant follow-up Beware Believers were marked with games of hide and seek where the seeker carried knives.
Unlike many contemporaries, the supremely influential Killing Joke can still boast their original line-up as a draw to paying punters. With these guys we’re not talking one or two founder members fleshed out with a bunch of Kens.
Released on Merge records with none other than the members of Hot Chip manning the studio controls, Ibibio Sound Machine’s fourth album ‘Electricity’ is yet another recording heavily influenced by the recent global malaise.
The brainchild of Leeds musicians Jed Skinner (keys) and Matt Woodward (drums), Galaxians infectious funk instrumentals could make a cadaver’s rotting arse wiggle.
Are You Haunted? is the fourth album from Australian alt-poppers Methyl Ethel, the beguiling musical brainchild of Jake Webb. He already knows the answer to that question – "we all have these ghosts that linger in our present predicaments" – and just as the speout of the corner of our eyes, the record has no fixed form, shimmering just out of reach of our common understanding.
