Category Archives: Album & EP Reviews

A BUNCH OF JERKS – The Dead EP

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If you’re the kind of person who always expects musical perfection, Boston garage rockers A Bunch of Jerks just won’t be for you. Since their inception, the band have always championed a ragged style: their sound is often driven by an overly loud drum kit; there are never any attempts made to fix any wobbly vocal moments and, generally, you get the feeling the band put the same level of care into their recordings as they put into their frankly terrible choice of band name. Regardless of their trashy aesthetic, they’ve plugged on and won fans and supporters – not least of all from the bands within the Rum Bar family – and by 2020, they seemed to have a fairly solid online presence.

Their ‘White Girl Wasted’ digital EP – released in March ’20 – provided a reasonable snapshot of their no-frills style, presenting front-woman Stabby’s vocals high in the mix on a couple of raw, self-penned tunes. The free download also gave a welcome look into their broad world of influences via a spirited (but somewhat unfussy) cover of The Rezillos’ ‘Flying Saucer Attack’ which showed bassist Bat to be a pleasingly muscular player.

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PORTABLE RADIO – Portable Radio

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One of the best things to happen during the early 10’s was the resurgence of AM radio styled pop music. For decades, bands like Electric Light Orchestra and Supertramp were considered hideously unfashionable, but in the ultimate example of “what comes around goes around” or perhaps “everything old is new again”, ELO somehow – and against the odds – became everyone’s favourite band. Pinpointing the instigator for this resurgeance in popularity for 70s pop is difficult, but it’s fair to say the very retro soundtrack for Guardians of The Galaxy may have been largely responsible. By 2019, the 70s pop wagon was rolling at full speed once more. No longer were The Feeling and a couple of bands on the Lojinx record label swimming against the tide.

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GOODBYE BLUE MONDAY – Self-Indulgent One-Take Woefuls EP

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Goodbye Blue Monday’s third release, the ‘Misery Punk Ruined My Life’ EP, was one of 2018’s strongest DIY punk releases. Between a barrage of massive riffs and some thoughtful lyrics dealing with mental health issues, the Glaswegian band marked themselves out as one of the UK scene’s most intelligent acts.

Despite sterling support from Make That A Take Records and some very positive online press, things seemed to go quiet in the GBM camp a short time after. It wasn’t until 2020 any new material materialised, but a pair of digital singles (‘Love In The Time of Corona’ and ‘Exile’) made good on the promise of earlier recordings by way of musical crunch and more social commentary. A world grinding to a halt and a lack of social interaction enforced by a global pandemic also meant that fans would have to wait even longer for a brand new EP or album, but the band closed the first half of 2020 with a surprise acoustic EP to tide everyone over.

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FENCES – Wide Eyed Elk Ensemble EP

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Back in 2015, Fences made music that sat very comfortably within the indie-rock spectrum. The sound on that year’s ‘Lesser Oceans’ tapped into a sound that often sounded like a more synth based Mercury Rev crossed with the quieter and poppier moments from The New Pornographers. By the time 2019’s acclaimed ‘Failure Sculptures’ rolled around, band leader and frontman Christopher Mansfield seemed to be besotted by various elements of Americana. In adding extra folk and Americana derived elements to the already strong alt-pop sound, Fences created something rather special and a strange bubble where Fleet Foxes and Beck seemed to co-exist helped to create the band’s defining work.

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VARIOUS ARTISTS – Kitchener-Waterloo Metal Cover Collection

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Featuring six bands and a selection of retro metal covers, this compilation is an interesting prospect. None of the featured acts will mean very much to most people living outside Canada – or even anyone living too far outside of Ontario – but in a couple of instances, the bands’ choice of material involves songs that will have spent decades gracing millions of stereos since the 1980s. By choosing a couple of very familiar 80s classics, Invicta and Cathartic Demise both stand a fair chance of picking up a new fan or two via this release – and at the end of the day, that’s what every hard working band wants…and needs. By recycling early nineties death metal, both Aepoch and Raider can seem more marginal, but their featured performances capture some more than reasonable extreme metal chops.

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