Neo Boys Neo Boys LP
As far as I’m concerned, NEO BOYS are the single most important band in the history of Portland punk—shirts bearing their name should honestly be just as ubiquitous (if not more so!) as those of the WIPERS or DEAD MOON or POISON IDEA. Until nature has fully healed in that regard, this lovingly remastered collection of the band’s two proper releases (a three-song 1980 EP and 1982’s Crumbling Myths 12”) pays some major respects, complete with a massive, LP-sized booklet that presents an oral history with the band and some incredible reproductions of flyers and photos from the archives. Stated comparisons to the RAINCOATS and KLEENEX aren’t inaccurate, representing just a few of the links in a much longer psychic chain connecting women in disparate corners of the world, many of whom were self-taught and learning as they went along, who carved out similar spaces for themselves in punk (and soon post-punk) in the late ’70s and early ’80s, from SPORTEN ÄR DÖD in Gothenburg to the DISHRAGS in Vancouver, from the NIXE in Utrecht to CHALK CIRCLE in Washington, DC. The tracks from NEO BOYS’ debut EP, released after the band had already been playing together for two years, have the sort of honesty and immediacy that comes from shared intuition and trust, where any technical “limitations” are an asset rather than a hindrance—the fewer walls that are put up, the more freedom there is. Kim Kincaid’s matter-of-fact vocals are the perfect vehicle for lyrics at the intersection of personal, political, and poetic (“Results are clear in front of my feet / I can make a decision / Make a conclusion”), backed by the revved-up jangle of Jennifer LoBianco’s guitar, Pat Baum’s steadily crashing beats, and KT Kincaid’s sneaky, melodic bass lines positioned as the beating heart at the center of it all. By Crumbling Myths, the NEO BOYS sound was more refined and of a piece with femme-centered post-punk of the era while remaining singularly their own, from new guitarist Meg Hentges’s pointillist lines in the haunting, all-timer “Time Keeps Time” to the sparse and contemplative art-punk gallop of “Cheap Labor.” What an unassailable epitaph for a band that started out as teenage amateurs; one can only imagine where things might have led had they continued on into the mid-’80s. Essential history, and a roadmap for future dreamers.