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Low Culture

Nothing beats an old comfortable chair. You can sit in other chairs and they’ll treat you right, but you always go back to the comfortable one. I have a chair like this in my house. It’s way old, a bit tattered, and you can feel a couple of the springs when you sit in it, but man, when you need to relax it always does the trick. Punk rock is like the old comfortable chair. I can go far away from it, listening to music on the opposite end of the spectrum, but when I hear a good punk rock song, it’s like being back in the comfortable chair. When I heard Low Culture for the first time today, I was back in the comfortable chair. Low Culture just released their debut LP (vinyl only for now) Screens on Dirtnap. The band is made up of members of The Marked Men and Shang-A-Lang. The title track below is a great punk rock song. It’s quick, it’s tight, it’s kind of grimey–not over-produced. Hear for yourself, then hurry over to Dirtnap’s store and get you a copy of the LP, they only pressed a few hundred, or you can wait until the digital version is released on January 9th. Enjoy.

Low Culture – Screens from Screens (2012/2013)

Dirtnap Records

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King Loses Crown

Darker than Devo, faster than Depeche Mode, denser than Killing Joke, but sharing the apocalyptic atmosphere of those artists, San Francisco trio King Loses Crown releases their new single today, “My Revenge.” We reviewed an earlier demo version of this song a few years back, but the band has since added a member, beefed up production and further honed their sound. And as luck would have it, their sonic assault met its visual match in visual effects director Jim Mitchell (Harry Potter, Sleepy Hollow, and Jurassic Park III). Mitchell directed the video, also released today, a documentary style, sci-fi look into the future where our technology catches up with us and our darkest impulses.

It’s not everyday that a full-fledged Hollywood filmmaker produces the video for an emerging band, so I checked in with Mitchell to see why he decided to get involved with King Loses Crown. He told me that a friend invited him to see the band at the Elbo Room and he was “blown away by the intensity and energy of their songs.” Mitchell had been developing a robot character and when he heard “My Revenge” he realized the song’s theme was “similar to what [he] was imagining for the world of the character.” He edited a few of his robot animations to the song and “couldn’t believe how it just seemed to naturally sync up like they were meant to be together.” The band agreed. So do I. You probably will too.

My Revenge from You Can’t Escape EP, February 2013

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The Super Vacations

My introduction to the Super Vacations came by way of a 7″ split that I received in the mail. I hadn’t heard of either band on the split, and had no idea what to expect when I put the needle down. The driving rhythms and psych-tinged guitar instantly grabbed my attention. I was pleasantly surprised, and blown away by The Super Vacations. They released their 3rd full length album, Heater Pt. II, with Funny / Not Funny Records back in September. Check out the two songs below from this release, “Controller”, and “El Ray”, then hurry over to F/NF‘s site and get you a copy before they are all gone.

The Super Vacations – Controller from Heater Pt. II (2012)

The Super Vacations – El Ray from Heater Pt. II (2012)

The Super Vacations

Funny / Not Funny

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Holograms

Swedish punk rock…kind of hard to imagine from a country whose top exports have been outfitting the world’s middle class for decades and whose social system is famously egalitarian. But Sweden has its share of factories and, no matter how good your health benefits are, working in a factory sucks. That’s how the Holograms met: going out for drinks after their factory shift. Their brand of working class punk is accented by gravelly basslines and frayed synths (they are Swedish after all). The self-titled debut is packed with chilly, desperate war cries like “ABC City”. If you dig, get your hands on the entire album — it’s one of my top five of 2012 so far.

ABC City from Holograms (2012)

http://capturedtracks.com/

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Mean Jeans

Mean Jeans are a pop-punk band out of Portland Oregon. They released their second album, On Mars, back in April on Dirtnap, it is catchy as hell! Full of rad hooks and goofy lyrics, On Mars blows through 36 minutes without really taking any time to breathe. The track below, “Anybody Out There”, they pull out all the stops with xylophone (i’m guessing) at the beginning and “oh-oh-oh’s” throughout. It’s a great punk rock track, and would fit nicely into any summertime playlist. Enjoy.

Mean Jeans – Anybody Out There? from On Mars (2012)

Mean Jeans

Dirtnap

Green Noise

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Estrogen Highs

I’m short. I’ve been short all of my life, so I’m pretty used to it. But, I would be lying if I said I’ve never dreamt of being taller. I’m not asking for anything extreme like 7 foot, just average, 6 foot would be perfectly acceptable. When I heard Estrogen Highs’ new single “I Wanna Be Tall”, the chorus really hit home with me. It simply states, “I wanna be tall like you”. It’s a great punk rock song that starts out slow with a warm glow of feedback and lonely guitar before it kicks into full assault of fuzzy guitar and pounding drums. Check it out below along with another track from their new album, Irrelevant Future, out now on Trouble In Mind.

Estrogen Highs – I Wanna Be Tall from Irrelevant Future (2012)

Estrogen Highs – Grass of Leaves from Irrelevant Future (2012)

Trouble In Mind

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Sonic Avenues

Sonic Avenues, a punk band out of Montreal, Quebec. Their second album, Television Youth, came out in January on Dirtnap Records. The title track, included below is a great example of their dirty, loud, lo-fi punk rock sound.

Sonic Avenues – Television Youth

Dirtnap

Sonic Avenues

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Bad Sports

I love punk rock. I love everything about it. I enjoy it in almost all of it’s forms. No matter how broad my musical tastes have become with old age, when I hear good punk rock I get really excited. Bad Sports is good punk rock. Hailing from Denton, Texas, they do everything good punk bands do, including tight guitars, snotty vocals, and songs about girls. Bad Sports play with serious energy, their songs are very catchy and have an old school vibe to them, drawing comparisons to bands such as the Buzzcocks. “Can’t Just Be Friends”, the track below, reminds me a lot of the Ramones with a little Hard-Ons mixed in. Yes, I just wrote that. Their 2nd LP Kings of The Weekend just came out and it’s really good, you should go buy it.

Bad Sports – Cant Just Be Friends from Kings of The Weekend (2011)

www.dirtnaprecs.com

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Capsule

Capsule is a three-piece, post hardcore, punk rock band that I stumbled across the other night while searching for music. They play hard and fast, almost as if each member is trying to out do the other. “Neuralize So Numb”, the opening track, clocks in at a blazing 1:05. The song is angry, aggressive, and very catchy. It ends almost as quickly as it starts, and it will punch you in the face, so you have to pay attention. I really like this song, and I hope you enjoy it too.

Capsule – Neuralize So Numb

http://www.myspace.com/capsulefl

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Mind Spiders

Mind Spiders is the new project of Marked Men singer Mark Ryan. Their debut self-titled album is definitely not a Marked Men redo. The punk rock is still there, just now it’s full of reverb and distortion, like mold has grown on it. Along with the fuzz is the sci-fi noises that make the album sound at times like it was intended for a B-movie soundtrack. The song “No Romance” is one of the more punk rock songs on the album. It’s quick song, just under two minutes, but it gives you a small taste of the lo-fi goodness that this album consists of. Thirteen songs in total, including a spaced out version of Little Richard’s “Slippin’ and Slidin”, the album takes a little over 30 minutes to listen to before you start it over again, because it’s so good, you’ll have to play it again.

– By Todd S

No Romance

Mind Spiders Site
Dirtnap Records