Reviews

Low Ambition

Billiam The Letter W & the Numeral B EP

Melbourne’s BILLIAM is back with another EP, his fourth release this year. There’s nothing new here, and any of the four tracks could have appeared on any of the project’s previous efforts. If you’ve enjoyed any of his other records, you’ll dig this. “New Wave” and “Houston We Have Rock” are full of fuzzy three-chord punk, battered with synthesizers and left scrambling to catch up to the lo-fi hi-hats working overtime in the background. The vocals sound like they were recorded through a cell phone inside of a cave, which kind of ruins it for me, although repeating the phrase “Houston, we have rock” 16 times in 54 seconds brought a smile to my face. The B-side is more mid-tempo and features the highlight of the EP for me, the closing “Essential Feedstock Oils,” where they repeat the word “record” 27 times in 90 seconds. Heavy SPARKS vibes with a bedroom charm. It ain’t for me, but fans of 1-800-MIKEY and GEE TEE will eat it up.

Fen Fen In Yer Sights 12″

Pumping stripped-down and rugged rock into the Motor City, FEN FEN unleashes a tough rip of tunes on their debut 12″. Loaded with foreboding riffs and catchy lyrics, the songs are propelled by a triumphant power, at times coming across like a warped version of the HIVES. Snappy and snotty, its clean aggression makes for pure punk catharsis.

Morgana Contemporaneità 12″

From Florence, Italy, MORGANA releases some re-recorded demos, a couple singles, and a new song to form Contemporaneità. These seven songs are an icy post-punk that reminds me of the Copenhagen group KOLD FRONT that I reviewed a while back. Mid-tempo, reverb-heavy, with high-octave, melody-driven guitar riffs. While this may not break any molds, this is certainly my cup of tea, and I would recommend a listen.

Xray Xeroxx Art Rock! cassette

XRAY XEROXX brings medium-fi garage punk that is stylistically all over the place. The first two tracks revel in thick, fuzzy chord progressions with catchy, gruff vocals, resulting in grunge-meets-garage Warped Tour fodder—essentially NOFX with a Big Muff pedal, which is probably a cup of tea quite a few people enjoy. The second half sucks in a different way. Not to weaponize the band name, but “Art Rock!” and “1.21 Jiggawatts” sound like cheap, bad copies of quirky egg-punk bands without the nervous weirdo energy and rawness that make the microgenre tolerable. The tracks feel calculated and inauthentic, and while snappy with their squiggly synths and jerky vocals, smack of forgettable genre tourism. Lyrics to “Art Rock!” say, “Is this new wave or no wave? / Who’s to say? / Is this grunge, is it shoegaze? / Is it cliche? / Is this new wave or no wave? / Who’s to say either way? / But would I listen to it? / No way!” Yeah, same.