Two years on from their ‘No More Than Three Chords‘ album, Italian punks Latte+ returned with ‘Stitches’, an album that captured the band’s supercharged Ramonescore sound in a slightly more polished way. Despite a better final mix, the band’s sense of speed and guts still dominated and in songs like ‘Everyone Listens To The Ramones Even My Mom’, the Screeching Weasel-tastic ‘Darkness Inside Your Heart’ and the melodic punk punch of ‘Another Sleepless Night’, they managed to show off the complete range of their always improving sound. It seemed like an album that would break them outside of their home country, but despite such a strong effort, Latte+ (always pronounced “LattePiu”) still seemed destined to be found lurking somewhere within the ranks of dozens of other Europunks and not mentioned in the same breath as Screeching Weasel, Dan Vapid and Teen Idols.
Tag Archives: pop punk
LOCAL DRAGS – Shit’s Lookin’ Up
Local Drags have been called “The best power pop band from Springfield, Illinois”. Regardless of how much competition the band may or may not be up against, if your idea of power pop is still rooted in the 70s with Raspberries and Badfinger albums, with Cheap Trick’s ‘In Color’ and the early works of Nick Lowe, it might be time to move along…this album won’t necessarily fill your ears with the musical hit you crave. If, on the other hand, you enjoy basic power pop aesthetics mixed with an insanely huge dose of good old pop-punk, then ‘Shit’s Lookin’ Up’, will indeed, catch you off guard and deliver a dozen tunes that’ll perk up your day…and fairly quickly too.
Bringing together the talents of Lanny Durbin (sometime of Starter Jackets) and Matt Sailor (Mayor Sheriff) and produced by The Copyrights’ ‘Luke McNeill, it’s an album with a great pop-punk pedigree and, in the main, the kind of record that fans of The Copyrights, The Apers and Parasites will certainly take to their collective hearts.
THE RADIO BUZZKILLS – Get Lost!
At the beginning of 2018, St. Louis punkers released ‘Get Fired!’, a fully formed pop-punk masterpiece that applied the band’s usual spiky style to some great choruses. The disc was so popular, the first pressing sold out in quick time and a repress was also quickly snapped up. It even managed to get the expanded deluxe treatment; the addition of various period rarities to an already great disc made the reissue a must-have for any self-respecting punk fan. Given that ‘Get Fired!’ was so well received, The Buzzkills could’ve followed it with more of the same, but instead – perhaps wisely – realised that anything too similar would run the risk of coming up short, so instead, they chose to take a musical side-step…
THE YOUNG ROCHELLES / THE NERDY JUGHEADS – Split EP
At the end of 2014, Tokyo punks The Nerdy Jugheads released their first recordings on an intense EP that took the core sounds of Screeching Weasel and transplanted them via Japan, creating music that blended fine Ramonescore with the nerdy oriental quirks of Hi-Standard. The result was an all-thrashing, all-bouncing five tracker that no pop punk fan should be without. The band returned in the summer of 2016 with three new tracks, issued as one half of a great split release with New Yorkers The Young Rochelles. It’s East meets West in this spit EP face off…who will win this global punk battle of the bands?!
The Radio Buzzkills invite you to ‘Get Lost’…
The last few years have been very much a case of “onward and upward” for The Radio Buzzkills. The St. Louis pop-punkers released their EP ‘The Quick & The Cheap’ in April 2016 and just five months later plans were afoot for the band to share a stage with their hero and Screeching Weasel co-founder, John Jughead.
Their tenacious and never-say-die attitude led to the Buzzkills working with another of their heroes, Dave Parasite, on the first full length album the following year. Released early 2018, ‘Get Fired!’ was a masterpiece of pop punk. With a couple of Parasite co-writes and an amazing production job, The Buzzkills had made a classic record, their very own equivalent of Screeching Weasel’s ‘Anthem For A New Tomorrow’.