Reviews

Cut Surface

Good Cop World Piss LP

This album is constantly jumping back and forth through different and sometimes contradictory sounds, sometimes in the same song. Throughout the entire experience, though, some naughty drums are getting beaten, and dirty, dirty guitars are getting strangled. This is high-energy, high aggression music with layers on layers on layers of vocals. “Neighbourhood” is an exemplary track that really shows the band’s range, with an indie dance music feel and angelic vocals giving way to muddy guitars and strained-vocal-chords-style shout-singing. It manages to be menacing and inviting at the same time. “Kickflip” is some skate punk that really makes you feel like it’s going to break into ska at any moment without ever actually doing it. The line “I wish you / Would get swine flu” on “Stay at Home” is maybe my favorite “fuck you” I’ve heard in a song in a while. GOOD COP is a very tight trio that really seems to be having fun while engaging in some good-times mockery of the power structures around them. World Piss shows that you can sound pissed-off any way that you damn please.

Neon Lies Loveless Adventures LP

The energy of the minimal beat of a drum machine, the icy kiss of the keyboard, a simple and hermetic melody, the detached but at the same time romantic and confused vocal, the irrepressible desire to dance and forget for a while the misery of modern life, the infinite capacity to create personal hymns, the invitation to inhabit the night and lose yourself in it, with or without love and to join other lonely people in the repetitive movement of your feet, your body and your head. To be outside yourself for a while. That’s Loveless Adventures by NEON LIES, the minimal synth project of Goran Lautar from Zagreb, Croatia. The album is so good that it’s sold out, but I recommend buying it digitally so you can listen non-stop to the four songs that close the album, my favorites: “Loveless,” “Hands,” “Alone,” and “Light.” Brutal.