Reappearing at the beginning of 2013 after a brief hiatus, Brooklyn’s End Men made a big statement with their second LP ‘Play With Your Toys’. From that point on, there seemed to be no stopping the blues/garage rock duo, with live shows aplenty following – including a recorded appearance at CXCW – and a quickly released compilation of odds and ends filling the gap until their next studio bookings. Released seemingly weeks after their last recordings, ‘Terms & Conditions’ picks up exactly where you’d expect, with the gravel-voiced Matthew Hendershot weaving tales of woe and drunken forboding while percussionist Livia Ranalli plays by the seat of her pants. With such a quick turnaround of material, are The End Men in danger of burning themselves out? On the basis of their 2015 release, it’s a case of anything but…
Tag Archives: garage rock
SUN VOYAGER – Lazy Daze EP
As the light faded upon the last days of 2014, Brooklyn garage-psych merchants Sun Voyager put their stamp upon the year’s last essential purchase when they dropped a few tracks as part of a split release with label mates The Greasy Hearts. The Hearts’ trashy, Stonesy energy provided the perfect foil for the Voyager’s swirling swamps of sound, and were perhaps more accessible of the two acts, but Sun Voyager’s commitment to deep psyche noise suggested there would be more great music to come from their neighbourhood in the future. ‘Lazy Daze’ (their third EP) presents the band on a bigger scale than ever before, its five numbers bringing fuzzy guitars galore, often coupled with other-worldly vocals that sound as if they’re drifting in from another room.
THE MAD DOCTORS – Snake Oil Superscience
Brooklyn space-psych rockers The Mad Doctors released their EP ‘Fuzz Tonic!’ via Doctor Gone Records in the spring of 2013; its five echo drenched numbers gave an insight into their hybrid sound of garage rock/hard psych and surf music, but its limited recording budget hampered listening enjoyment to a degree. A year on, their first full-length ‘Snake Oil Superscience’ shows a great improvement.
KNUCKLE – This Week’s Been Hell EP
When done right, the two man garage-rock/garage blues set up can be absolutely thrilling. It represents the minimum band configuration to make a noise most effectively. Less distorted than the US’s ¡Vamanos! but more ferocious than the UK’s most excellent Brockley Forest, Huddersfield’s own Knuckle blend garage rock and blues with a touch of stoner groove – as per 2014 breakthrough act Royal Blood, but with an element of DIY sincerity those guys lost by jumping straight in with a major label release. The results on Knuckle’s debut EP, although fairly typical of the genre, are enthralling with a broad range of sounds and styles throughout the six tracks.
GREASY HEARTS/SUN VOYAGER – Grease Voyage (split release)
2014 was a very busy year for Brooklyn-based garage rockers Greasy Hearts. At the start of the year, they turned up at fledgling lo-fi label King Pizza Records with their debut EP already recorded, which the label put out straight away. A few months later, they were back in the studio with the label’s in-house producer Seth Applebaum recording new material – the six resultant songs sharper, the performances capturing more fire than before. Gigs were played…lots of gigs; guitarist Joey Farber also played and recorded with his other band The Jeanies. Somehow, between everything else, the Greasy Hearts still found time to record three more tracks, released here as part of a split release with Sun Voyager for the first time.