Cel Ray Piss Park EP
These Chicago punks who share a name with a gross New York deli soda have teamed up with French label Six Tonnes De Chair for their second release. CEL RAY is clearly a band who’ve clomped around in the yolk that oozed out of NWI a decade or so back, but they’ve managed not to track too much goo onto the four tracks that make up this EP. By forgoing the brash cartoonishness of a lot of their contemporaries and balancing their DEVO stiffness with some loose, jazzier sounds closer to the MINUTEMEN, they avoid sounding like the straight CONEHEADS-core that is all too ubiquitous these days. It’s upbeat, energetic punk that reminds me bit of what I love about the pre-hardcore punk that came out of Southern California, anchored by a strong vocal performance—Maddie Daviss delivers her lyrics about the mundanities of Midwestern living in a cool, deadpan talk-shout that every so often breaks into a full-throated song—with just the right amount of C.C.T.V.-esque jitteriness to give it more of a contemporary post-punk-y edge. Absolutely worth checking out!