Reviews

Dot Dash Sounds

Leopardo Side A / Side B LP

This album starts off with a beautiful, bizarro warble of a song that could have been a lost track from SWELL MAPS’ 1979 opus A Trip to Marineville. The album takes off from there with experimental looping tape sounds, off-kilter timing, mesmerizing Dean Wareham-esque vocals, and plinky melodies reminiscent of the VASELINES. Hints of TELEVISION PERSONALITIES and PERE UBU pop in and out. I’m sure the band could and probably has drawn VELVET UNDERGROUND comparisons, but in a more focused sense, it’s the vision and spirit of JOHN CALE that shines out from this unique body of work.

Nape Neck Nape Neck LP

You can skip reading this review and just buy the record. NAPE NECK is the realest shit, and I have already bookmarked this for end-of-year top ten season. Outstanding collection of post-punk meets no wave squall that sounds like a GANG OF FOUR, TEENAGE JESUS AND THE JERKS, and ERASE ERRATA tag team against your brain. There is a forward propulsion to these tracks that is effortlessly compelling and enormously fresh. Syncopated drums lock in with heavy bass grooves, while guitar lines tangle in and out and transform into a percussive element of rhythmic palm muted strumming. All three members sing, usually at the same time, their voices weaving an urgent tapestry of sound that comes together in ecstatic, unified chants on tracks like “Demonstrations” and “A Worm.” This LP compiles two previously released cassettes, and is bewildering in how fully formed the band emerged from the beginning. Essential urgent punk for right now.

Red Herrings Zax Armoire LP

Hailing from the Western Mass town of Holyoke, this solid debut album has the mid-tempo gut-punch of the STOOGES and DEAD BOYS—the kind of punk that doesn’t need to speed through the songs or pull some Epi-Fat double bass drum fills and is comfortable pulling back and letting the songwriting and a little attitude bring the message. There’s also a tinge of post-punk here à la WIPERS or HURRY UP.

The Sheaves A Salve for Institution LP

Parisian label SDZ teams up with the fledgling Brooklyn label Dot Dash Sounds to bring us the second full-length from this five-piece out of Phoenix that shares at least a couple of members with the prolific noise rock outfit SOFT SHOULDER. The LP is composed of eleven two-ish-minute vignettes that can roughly be categorized as DIY post-punk or jangly lo-fi indie rock. You get stuff that sounds like early FALL playing the VELVET UNDERGROUND’s “The Gift,” SWELL MAPS locking into the loosest krautrock groove, some indistinct blend of GBV/BUILT TO SPILL/SEBADOH, or—as with my favorite track on the record (and one of my favorite tracks of the year), “In Center (X-Static)”—a shit-hot mix of, like, CRIME’s “Terminal Boredom” and the extraterrestrial buzz punk of CHROME’s “TV as Eyes.” But the whole record has this sun-bleached and sandblasted quality, like it was recorded after the band was forced to wander the Sonoran Desert for a week. The vocals, which often sound like someone doing a stuffy-nosed Mark E. Smith impression, are so odd and loosely multi-tracked at times that it makes you feel a little delirious. Real strange, but also real great!

V/A Dot Dash Mixtape, Volume One cassette

A brand new label’s debut release, and an all-around cool idea. A compiled mixtape of bands on the label’s radar, all doing unreleased/live/cover songs. Super fun. I always love when labels do things like this, because it is a beautiful way to expose people to a ton of new bands. Featuring tracks by the already-known and beloved RETAIL SIMPS, GG KING, and IBEX CLONE, as well as fifteen others to open your eyes to. Love it. Will certainly be keeping an eye out for what Dot Dash ends up releasing next.

V/A Dot Dash Mixtape, Volume Two cassette

A follow-up to last year’s sampling of this NYC niche label. If I were told these tracks came off a ’70s French coldwave comp, I wouldn’t bat an eyelash. But for something so specific, there’s still considerable breadth here. The TRENDEES and C.A.D. AND THE PEACETIME CONSUMERS offer some fun garage-esque bops. NAPE NECK’s atonal funk is a hoot, reminiscent of DELTA 5. There are also some left turns like WEEGEE’s gothy waltz. The whole collection is a nice mix of the fast, the fun, and the froide.

Weegee Primitive Thrill LP

Dirty, sludgy, sexy—Brooklyn/Queens-based WEEGEE plays vampire rock that’ll have you sharpening your incisors. Sink your teeth into this debut LP made up of six longer-format songs, leaving plenty of room for dirgeful rhythms, squawking saxophone solos, muddy pummeling, and breathy snarls. Julie Congo plays guitar and contributes most of the vocals, saving room for drummer Michael Rekevics and guitarist/synth Adam Kastin to add some low-end verses before giving way to John Rekevics’s saxophone and clarinet madness. I hear deathrock inspired by the CRAMPS and SONIC YOUTH mixed together to form something that is as ghoulish and cunning as it is heavy and driving. Each song is tragic, hungry, and compelling, to put it plainly. No skip tracks here. I find great catharsis in this Primitive Thrill.