Egzoz Smoking Jacket LP
Simple and effective guitar/drums garage rock band featuring members from the US and Turkey. Stripped-down, flanged-out guitar lines and catchy vocals make this an enjoyable, conceptual romp through Beyoğlu, Turkey. The track “SlightlyDelic” stands out from the rather primitive garage stompers on the record with a fast and funky post-punk approach, complemented by commanding spoken word vocals. Several songs center on themes of late nights in the city’s streets and include sound clips and Turkish lyrics mixed with English that give the record a cool, culture-straddling flair. One of the band’s vocalists, Chris Sollars, recently released a solo project called $OLLAR$, which I mention because this release contains three of those songs in more polished, upbeat versions.