Dogstrum? Dog? Strum? It’s true – all the great band names are spoken for. You’d have to wonder how many other supposedly worse names this Seattle band discounted before deciding that Dogstrum would be their best. Luckily, though, for this particular power trio, their music shows more than a glimmer of greatness. Labelled ‘grump-punk’ (whatever that might mean) by a local paper, their sound is hard and dirty, energetic and sometimes raw in spirit, though fidelity-wise, these six tracks are well recorded with plenty of punch in all the right places.
Tag Archives: garage
COACH N COMMANDO – FBP!K!K!
Coach N Commando are a two-piece act that are almost the dictionary definition of the word niche. These self-styled country punks create a raw sound that sounds like the deformed mutation of Lux Interior, Reverend Horton Heat and a toothless bluegrass hobo. Their 2016 release – their first for Brooklyn’s King Pizza label – is both intricate and ferocious; ugly and smart. Long standing fans will recognise a few tracks reworked from previous records, but rest assured that the re-recordings are an improvement at every turn. The eight songs that make up ‘FBP!K!K!’ play like disastrous musical travelogues retold via a telegram from a previous generation. With bad motels, dirt roads and broken relationships at the core, it’s like everything and nothing you’d expect from such an unholy alliance of sounds.
NIGHTMEN – Fifteen Minutes Of Pain
If you imagine the sounds of proto-punk from 1975 transferred via Sweden, you’ll know almost instinctively how this release from Nightmen sounds. This Scandinavian quartet dish up some really honest and authentic music on this audio love letter to the days of New York Dolls and the Ramones’ debut; the twelve tracks crammed into under half an hour showcases the sounds of leather and sweat, with a little camp trash thrown in for good measure. In short, ‘Fifteen Minutes of Pain’ might be heavy on the recycling, but the energy combined with a knack for hooks and riffs makes it an essential listen.
MAMMOTH SPIRIT – Mammoth Spirit EP
Throughout 2014, Brooklyn based garage rockers Greasy Hearts were phenomenally busy. Between May and December that year, they issued three cassettes and played a number of live shows. There was talk of another release in 2015, but nothing materialised and then at the very end of the year, three Greasy Hearts members resurfaced as part of Mammoth Spirit, a more complex band trading in the much of their straight up garage stance for an unpolished hybrid of blues, funk and retro psych sounds with an old soul.
READYMADE BREAKUP – Live With It EP
Readymade Breakup’s third album – their self-titled release from 2011 – was, at the time of release, their best to date. It was still a little hit and miss but the good material far outweighed the bad, while the band’s newly found tougher sound was clearly a step in the right direction. Time passed. A follow up never came and the band seemed to lose the momentum built up by the release. Their drummer moved away; their bassist, Mr. Gay Elvis, put out his own EP in 2014 and with an ever expanding gap between the present and their last release, by the end of 2015, it seemed Readymade Breakup were done.