July, 2026 Show

 Greetings!

 This month's show begins with a tribute to the great Ike Willis, singer and rhythm guitarist for Frank Zappa.  Willis started playing and touring with Zappa around 1978 and played in most if not all of Zappa's touring lineups through the 1988 tour, making him one of the longest lasting of Zappa's hired guns.  Here he is singing lead on a cover of "Purple Haze," which was recorded from a soundcheck during the 1988 tour.  I don't know if it was Ike or Mike Kenneally who did the guitar solo (probably the latter) - the liner notes for the record doesn't say.

Modern Woman- what a band.  I love the vocals- almost Kristin Hersh sounding, and, in fact, this whole song could have been an early Throwing Muses track.

Up next we have an interesting track from the poet Abdul Malik de Coteau from a really neat album of 1970s music from Trinidad.   Trinidad is of course famous for its Calypso, Soca, and steel drum music, but there was and is so much more.  Unfortunately I don't have much to offer by way of Coteau- he's mentioned in a couple of academic articles blocked by paywalls, but otherwise Internet information on him is pretty scarce.  If anyone has some decent info on him, or examples of his poetry, please get in touch with me.

Gichard:  do you think she's sorry?  In all seriousness, this is a great album.

Chinese Junk - great 1977 sounding punk.  The band (from the UK) call themselves "Kings Of Pound Shop Rock" and that seems like a fitting compliment.

Cocanha is an experimental folk duo from the Occitan region of France.  This is absolutely going to be one of my Top 10 albums of the year.  I have a soft spot for traditional music anyway, but when it is goes through a slightly experimental or non-traditional filter I am even more on board.

You can never go wrong with live Ramones.  This is from the box set edition of Road To Ruin, which I think is the last of the box sets (Ramones, Leave Home, Rocket to Russia, and Road To Ruin).  

Les Breastfeeders are a really cool retro garage punk band out of Montreal.  They may not tread a lot of new ground sonically, but what they do they do très bien.

Okay, King Louie might be one of the last of the One Man Band performers.  He sits at a simple drum kit that he plays with his feet, while singing and playing guitar.  In between vocals (which are pretty rapid fire) he'll let loose a quick blast on a harmonica.  Check him out on YouTube if you can.

I would guess that being on Dischord brings extra visibility to anyone who signs to that label, but there are some bands (Lungfish and Soccer Team come to mind) who really ought to be more popular than they are.  I don't mean Turnstile popular, I mean just better known even within the Dischord universe.

The world has two bands named Witch Piss.  What are the odds?  There is a stoner metal band from Belgium called Witch Piss, of whom I know nothing.  The band in this month's show is a punk band out of California.

There are quite a few active bands who I would really like to see live.  Topping the list are Osees, Dame Area, and Party Dozen.  At least they put out a lot of new releases while I impatiently wait to see them someday.

Back in the mid/late 1990s I used to go see a nearby minor league hockey team, the Plymouth Whalers (since moved and renamed) who played in the Ontario Hockey League.  Whoever played the music during game stops liked to play stuff like The Crystal Method, Prodigy, Chemical Brothers, etc.  Is this relevant to anything?  Probably not, but that's what this music makes me think of.

I first heard Veronica Falls on one of those Rough Trade compilation CDs.  I love this song.  It has that neo-retro thing going on like The Raveonettes or something.

The period of 1999-2004 or so is one of my favorite periods of The Fall, and this album is an example of why this period is so strong.  This song, like this album, shows what The Fall does best:  beautiful repetition, simplicity meets complexity, lyrics and MES vocal bits that always command attention, and good studio production.

Plastic Meat's search results on Bandcamp list "Australian Punk" and Spain.  Don't you just love the vague and/or conflicting search terms that pop up so often in Bandcamp?  Well, that's part of the wonderful chaos.  It looks like this is a Spanish band that is playing Australian style punk.  If I have that wrong, feel free to correct me, but in the meantime enjoy the cool music.

Age Of Chance were one of many bands that I latched onto thanks to the famous C86 cassette.  One of my friends had the One Thousand Years Of Trouble LP, which meant that I had most of the songs on a mixed tape.  I don't think I ever heard their Peel sessions tracks before, so I was really happy that the wonderful Precious Recordings put them out on a 12" release this year.  

I love the nervous quality to the voice of this guy singing for Aldi Ost.  The first few seconds of the music has that nervous gloom about it that always reminds me of punk and post-punk from Eastern Europe, though these guys are from Berlin.

Kim Salmon has been a part of so many epic post and post-punk bands and projects.  His solo work, especially on this album My Script is just as amazing.  He is a national treasure.

I love the arrangement on this Dez Dare song.  It has that playful, highly articulate sound that reminds me a little of Blur.

Carambolage has music that sounds like it is from the very late 1970s or early 1980s post-punk scene; even their band photos look like early Bananarama.  I love the vocals throughout.

La Peste, out of Boston, came out right on the thin edge of that time when punk, new wave, and hard driving rock were swirling around in a cauldron that hadn't yet separated into a million subgenres.  Ric Ocasek from The Cars produced this album, which makes sense.  Think of The Cars if they had leaned in a more punk direction versus a new wave direction.

Ha, up next we have two tracks from a punk band from Detroit, H8 Mile.  H8 Mile is a play on the famous road, Eight Mile Road, which separates Detroit from most of its northern suburbs.  As you probably know from the Eminem movie, Eight Mile isn't just a road and a county boundary, for metro Detroiters it has a lot of cultural weight as the divider between the city and the suburbs.  The road itself has a lot of pay by the hour motels, of which the Bali Motel actually exists (actual review of the Bali Motel on Google:  "walked in my room and even the bed bugs was smoking crack").

Up next we have quirky punk as only the Japanese can do, in this case the band Ex-Girl.  I've only recently found out about them, so I can't offer too much by way of detail, other than I really like them.

I love how this song by Pieuvre sounds a lot like early Gang Of Four.  So amazing.

The album covers for Sleepytime Gorilla Museum are really interesting, and so is the music.  I bet there are a lot of stories going on.  This song begins with a part that reminds me a little of Angine De Poitrine, then we have that thunderous next section.  You could spend hours dissecting this song.

Hez is from Panama, and they are really good at this particular strain of hardcore meets D-Beat.

Fugitive Bubble's last two records are on the Sorry State label- a match made in punk heaven.  This band would be great to see on the same bill with Die Spitz.

Los Thuthanaka are two American brothers with Aymara heritage.  The music they make is spellbinding- as if Kikagaku Moyo drifted in a hot air balloon for days and landed in Bolivia.

I first heard Bird And The Bee on an MP3 sampler that came with a Rolling Stone subscription someone gave me for Christmas one year (don't laugh, I didn't ask for it).  The MP3 collection was actually pretty good- I seriously doubt that the brain trust at RStone had anything to do with it.  Someone in their marketing department probably gladly collected any free promotional MP3s sent in by indie labels and put it together as a "free gift."  Anyway, there was a B&TB song on that sampler ("Polite Dance Song" if I recall), and I've been hooked on this duo ever since.  Check out their all-cover album tributes to Van Halen and Hall & Oates.

I found out about Janice Whaley earlier this year when I was looking around for covers of certain Smiths songs.  It turns out that she has covered every single Smiths songs- the instrumentals, the obscure b-sides, and even the Smiths only cover that they ever did.  Ms. Whaley's solo work is also fantastic.  Her acapaella plus one approach is so interesting.

And since I played one of Janice's Smiths cover songs last month, I thought it would be fun to include a Smiths cover by someone else.  For a band as influential as The Smiths, there are (relatively speaking) not an absolute ton of covers out there.  This one by Death Cab For Cutie is really good- a great example of the right band covering the right song.

This track from Rosengarten comes from a great various artists compilation I recently picked up called United States Of Melancholia, Part 1:  Post Punk GDR 1982-1990.  As you would expect of music from the Soviet Bloc in the 1980s, it is suitably spooky and bleak.  I love it.

Moving much further to the east of the former Soviet Bloc, we have a song from a punk band from Armenia, Varakvatz.  I've been fascinated by music from the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe for decades, in part because for a long time it was so difficult to get your hands and ears on anything from that part of the world in good old America.  Things have changed a lot thanks to the Internet, especially those kind people who have posted old punk, rock, jazz, and post punk records on YouTube and individual blogs.  You still have to make an effort to find music from certain countries, including just about all of the former USSR countries such as Armenia.  Every month or so I try to give myself some rabbit hole time to poke around looking for cool music from a particular country or region.  This summer I've focused somewhat on Armenia.  The next two tracks are from Armenia too.  Getting information on the bands from that part of the world is even more difficult than finding the music.

Brick Wall is from San Francisco, and come to think of it, I can definitely picture this track being on one of the Alternative Tentacles comps from the early 1980s (I'm thinking in particular of Not So Quiet On The Western Front).

It says here on Bandcamp that this Werewolf Jones album was recorded live- damn, for a punk record that is one hell of a high quality live recording.  I don't see any release since the pandemic, so the news doesn't look good.

This track from Birth(Defects) comes from their Fictional Days album, which has a cover similar to the Sonic Youth A Thousand Days album.  This all makes sense, since Birth(Defects) has a definite Sonic Youth sound to them. 

If you are going to name your band Nazi Tampons, you better bring the goods.  This band from Slovakia does.  Great punk stuff.

I never tire of reggae, ska, and rocksteady from before 1980.  This comes from a great Trojan Records multi CD box set I picked up cheap somewhere not long ago.  I think this track by Derrick Morgan sounds a lot like Desmond Dekker, though Derrick's voice is obviously lower.

I totally love this genre-less track from Sans Merit.  He operates on the Knekelhuis label, which is probably how I found out about him.  This track has a slight early Cure feel to it.

This track from Huxton Creepers comes from a 40 year anniversary reissue of the classic 12 Days To Paris album.  Damn, forty years already?   

I heard about this great rockin' album by The Soulbreaker Company from my friend Daní over at the amazing Catalan record label Discos Macarras.  It's nice to see good old fashioned hard rock making a comeback.

White Reaper are from Louisville, Kentucky.  There is a peculiar paranoid ache to the singer's voice that really captivates me.  He sounds worried and frantic.

Were you expecting such a luxurious voice after that abrasive start to this song by Rat Penat?  I love bands who keep you guessing.

Fun fact:  one of the members of the band A Whole Nother is named Tom Brady.  I'll sit back while you Google your next ten minutes away.

Speaking of Google, if you dig for information on the artist King In Yellow you will find artists from upstate New York, Mexico, and Baltimore.  This is the band from upstate New York (as is the previous band A Whole Nother).

Last but certainly not least this month, I have a great track for you from Société Étrange.  This track reminds me a little of the masterful Montreal album by Autechre, which is one of my all time happy place records.   

 

 

 

 

June, 2026 Show

 Here I am, once again writing this well after the fact, so let me get right into it.

 June 2026 begins with  a great track from Sleigh Bells.  Check out that tremolo in the beginning!  I absolutely love to death the first two Sleigh Bells albums but I haven't been able to like any of their albums since.  I think a lot of it has to do with how the guitar work and song arrangements are on the first two records.  There is this great balance of power, innocence, and un-self consciousness going on.  

Cocanha, who are from southern France, sing in the Occitan language, one of the minority languages in France.  I'm not positive, but I think this is the first record I've bought that had Occitan songs.  I love this record; I'm writing this a few months after the show and I can state that the Cocanha record will most likely be in my top ten for 2026.

I think I learned about Gooch Palms by accident.  I vaguely recall checking the almighty Internet for something and I found a cover the Gooches did of The Ramones (called, I think, Shitty Tribute To The Ramones).  I was hooked.

One thing I've noticed about Japanese punk- the bulk of it goes very fast and very heavy.  Sure, you can find pop-punk and all of the other punk subgenres, but exploring Japanese punk is to get your ears ready.  Just look at Boris and Otoboke Beaver as obvious examples.

This Gut Model song starts with this cool quirky sound a la XTC or Stump before straightening out.. just a little.  Fun stuff.

I first heard Kouskous Heaven from a label sampler, which of course has long been one of my main avenues for learning about new bands, even in this era of streaming and Bandcamp inundation.  How this band from New Jersey wound up on a compilation for a label out of Slovakia is a mystery to me, but I'm sure glad that I found them because their music is terrific.

I've been a fan of A Place To Bury Strangers since I first heard them and all of their material is consistently good.  I say this because if you are new to this band and you are wondering where to dive in, just pick any album and you won't be disappointed.

Gustafi is one of the bands whose records (CDs) I bought before I ever even heard any of their songs.  A few years ago I was on a work trip to Croatia and I found one really good record store.  I went straight to the Croatia section, and the vast majority of the stuff I never heard of.  The CDs of Croatian/local artists were quite affordable, so I filled one of those little plastic shopping baskets with around twenty CDs.  Anything that looked punk, ska, or post-punk went in.  I might have asked the clerk for recommendations, but I don't remember.  Anyway, Gustafi was one of my absolute favorite "hey, let's try it" purchases.  It has a fun mix of newer ska meets Balkan revival that is becoming more common.

On Bandcamp I have some sort of subscription with Fire Talk Records, which means that for a few dollars a month I get all of their digital releases, which includes this new song by the UK band Lots Of Hands.  I love the slightly vertigo rhythms that run through this song.  It reminds me of the edge that Public Image Ltd. had for their first two or three albums, before they totally lost their way.

Then we have this neo-1960s fast little number from a band called Empat Lima.  I think this is the only song I have by them.  I have it on a label compilation called Rice Is Nice Vol. 2 on- wait for it- Rice Is Nice records.

I wasn't sure how long Front Line Assembly has been putting out records, so I just checked:  2001.  They have a lot of great releases.  This one is on Artoffact Records, which is a label with mostly Canadian artists and very reasonable prices on their CDs and vinyl.  A few times a year they also make most of their digital catalog on Bandcamp available for free, so definitely "follow" Artoffact on Bandcamp.

The band Nightwatchers is new to me, but I loved them right away.  Even in this short song they ricochet from Osees style fast noise punk to equally fast poppier punk and more.  Lots to grab onto with their songs.

Next we move into Finnish punk, which by law is always fast and aggressive.  The wonderful Sorry State label (and physical store), out of North Carolina, has some special connections to Finland which is great because it means that in the U.S. we can get some Finnish punk records that would otherwise cost a medium fortune on Bandcamp or Discogs.

This song from the French band Aquaserge (the name is a French play on words for the phrase "what am I good for?") has everything I love:  a general post-punk skeleton adorned with lots of local (in this case the Occitan region of France) clothing.  Without doing anything deliberately, I have picked up a LOT of current (2020-2026) music out of France this year.  Pourquoi pas? 

Then we have another example of this wonderful post-punk meets local color music, this time out of Greece.  I've had some release by Hekátē for a while, but I think it's the first time I've played them on my show.  There is a lot of hard music these days from Greece (metal and aggressive punk) but has more of a coldwave sound.

Of all The Fall records that are part of the Beggars Banquet/ Brix era, I've always found Bend Sinister to stand apart.  There is a dark brooding that permeates the whole record that gives it a different sonic feel, even though the songs are constructed in a similar fashion to those on This Nation's Saving Grace, The Wonderful And Frightening World Of, The Frenz Experiment, and I Am Kurious Oranj.  I love this record, don't get me wrong, but it is unique for that era of The Fall.

Then we move from a frowny Fall song to the perky alt-pop of The Darling Buds.  I first heard the 'Buds when this album came out, thanks to nearby Windsor, Ontario radio station "89X" playing the single "It Makes No Difference."  I think Crawdaddy is their best album, although all of their stuff is pretty good.

There is an excellent record label out of Ukraine called Elek3chestvo ("electricity," I think).  There are lots of great bands who have a lot of (no surprise) meloncholy fueled indie rock and coldwave, like this band Selo Blyznyukiv ("Twins Village," or Село Близнюків in the original Ukrainian).  Do yourself a big treat and check out that label, and do the world a big treat and buy as much Ukrainian music as you can.

I love Bandcamp, I really do, but one of the annoying things about them is there search tool.  As an example, go search for the band Mock Execution (go ahead, I'll wait for you...) and see what you get.  In order to find the album Democracy Shoved Up Your Ass, you have to search by the title of the album or by the name of the record label.  This is more than a time wasting annoyance; somebody new to the band would likely miss out on this great album.  "Why, somebody oughtta..."

Next up is Curve, who I discovered probably around the time that I heard about The Darling Buds.  CDs were still fairly new then (early 1990s) and I remember being in the Dearborn location of a Detroit area record store chain called Repeat The Beat (since closed) when I saw the Doppleganger CD by Curve as I was flipping through the bins.  I had never heard of Curve before, and I couldn't really make out what kind of music it was based on the front and back cover, but something told me to take a chance and I did (the fact that a Doppleganger is a monster in Dungeons & Dragons may have influenced me).  I loved that record (still do) and though I didn't always keep up to date with Curve's discography I'll never tire of that record.  Anyway, this song "Ice That Melts The Tips" is from this record that I am blathering on about.

Glad Sisifus are a band out of Czechia, and according to their little Bandcamp artist blurb their name is based on a quote from Camus (I'm guessing it is from The Myth of Sisyphus, which is kind of cool.  Camus has influenced alternative music more than many other famous authors).  I've only done on special show for Dandelion Radio (on hardcore punk), and I've been meaning to do some special theme shows.  I think a show on songs, albums, and band names inspired by literature would make for a cool theme show.

I played Conny Frischauf in one of my first shows for Dandelion Radio, and I've been a fan ever since I ran across her music. I bet she would be an interesting person to know.

I bought the "Trash Is Truth" 7" from White Trash way back when, probably around the time it came out in the mid 1980s.  I honestly haven't thought about this great little hardcore record in years then somehow I got news that it is available on Bandcamp, which inspired me to hurry up and get it into my show.

If you've been listening to my show for the past couple of years then you know that I am a fan of the Catalonian label Discos Macarras.  The label covers metal in just about all of its forms:  doom, black, thrash, "classic," etc.  Medussa probably falls into a more classic vein, and their newest material is most excellent.

Noxeema - here we go with the sort of jangly, angular post-punk that puts me in my happy place.

I've never seen Maquina live but I sure would like to.  Imagine this as a dream show:  Maquina, Party Dozen, and Dame Area!  I'd pay big money for that.

Wristwatch is one of those bands whose records kept showing up on the bottom of Bandcamp pages; you know, the "you may also like" section.  Another band that always comes up is Sweeping Promises.  I don't typically pay much mind to "you may also like" suggestions, but eventually I decided to go ahead and check out one of the Wristwatch albums on Bandcamp (I think I started with II and proceeded from there).  I'm glad that I finally paid attention to the suggestion, because I like this band a lot.

From beautiful Latvia, we have a six woman vocal ensemble, Tautumeitas.  I love their voices.

Moving a few thousand miles away, we have a trio of very talented ladies from Colombia, La Perla.  Their percussion heavy music is always a treat.

I've been a huge fan of The Smiths since around the time of Meat Is Murder, but I will say I've never been that big of a fan of the song "How Soon Is Now."  It's a good song, but I think there are so many Smiths songs that are much better, so its popularity annoys me (the same thing applies to "Should I Stay Or Should I Go" for The Clash).  Anyway, I actually like this bouncing semi-mariachi version.  

Then we have the peak of Smiths covers, from the amazing talent that is Janice Whaley.  She has covered every single Smiths track, including some of the more obscure b-sides, as part of her The Smiths Project.  She has released some of these covers as like-for-like albums, and there is also a multi-CD box set that includes the entire catalog.  If you like The Smiths, or cover songs, or both, definitely check out her work.  I believe all of it is on her Bandcamp page.

Anadol (from Germany) and Marie Klock (from France) have collaborated before, and here they are again for a new album.  A love this combination of playfulness and genius musical arranging.  Two more people that would be very fascinating to know in real life.

Spont Ar Stad sing in the Bretagne language, which is so cool.  I would love to get more music done in Bretagne- hit me up if you have any suggestions.  

This track from Mňága A Žďorp is from a CD that I've had for a really long time (the 1990s I think), a various artists compilation called Czeching In.  I remember buying this CD at a time when I was trying to track down CDs from Už Jsme Doma, also from Czechia.  I don't want to sound like an old fart ("back in my day...") but in the mid/late 1990s music on the Internet was just barely getting started, so you really had to work to get obscure releases (imagine walking into an average record store in 1990s Detroit and asking for Czech experimental/psych music).  I would periodically read through Frank Zappa related newsgroups (remember those?  Stuff like alt.music-frank-zappa) and I read several posts about Zappa's big influence on Czech bands like Plastic People Of The Universe and Už Jsme Doma.  I finally tracked down some of these CDs through the Wayside mail order business (which is still around), but fast forward three decades and resources like Discogs, Bandcamp, and YouTube have made the search for uncommon music a whole lot easier.

In between two Czech songs we have this great song by N.E. Veins called "Pinched Nerve."  No wasted moments in this song.

Rust Jam are from Thailand and I cannot remember how in the world I found out about them.  I have a healthy amount of Thai music in my collection but these guys were a recent discovery for me.  Anyway, the song is about eating too much food (you can hear some references to Thai dishes like pad thai in the lyrics).

Draamakuu are one of those bands/artists that you can sense are going to get much bigger in the next year.  Not Taylor Swift big, or even Idles or Die Spitz big, but bigger than they are now.  That would be nice, because more people need to hear this music.

When I head Dani Bander's cover of "How Soon Is Now?" I was so impressed that I checked out some of his other music.  "Malviaje," a mariachi-tinted alt-pop song, is a lot of fun.

For something completely unexpected, how about a Greek Orthodox priest who plays a seven string fretless electric guitar, putting out some truly out of this world drone metal music?  This is the kind of release that cheers me up when I get discouraged by all of the lame copycat music that never stops breeding.

Out of New Zealand, check out this band The Response.  I like this straight ahead, not really any specific genre song.  I just looked at their Bandcamp page, and I see that I am ignorant of most of their back catalog.  I'm on it.

I love this old school garage rock steady song from King Automatic.  This comes from a six song EP of garage and 60s hits.  Good and grimy.

Los Potagers Natures are from the Occitan region of France- I don't know why, but I've been doing some great rabbit hole exploring this summer of music from that area/language.   

Check out that clanging, banging percussion early in the Product KF.  They certainly have that dark, sinister Central/Eastern European vibe.  Post punk at its creepy finest.

I don't know exactly how long Komarov Magnificent Backflip has been together as a band (it looks like they have had releases on Bandcamp for about three years) or what the members did before but they sound really practiced, in a good way.  They are from Italy by the way.

Moving up the continent to Finland, here we have a ripping song from Yleiset Syyt.  The Finns really do fast hardcore exceedingly well.

I'm a fan of the Austrian artist Conny Frischauf, and so I get those email updates via Bandcamp about her, blah blah.  I saw one recently that she had a new song, but it wasn't on her usual label.  Instead, it is on a new German experimental compilation called Experimentelle Welt 1, which is amazing.  As I listened through the compilation, this track caught my ear.  It has that sort of retro feel that would make it a good song for a soundtrack.

Getting back into the fast and furious hardcore, here we have some snarling, fast stuff from Japanese band D.S.B.  An album well worth the price.

To close this month's show, I chose this trip-hop sounding instrumental from the Vancouver duo Noise Unit.  The non-percussion music has that late at night feel, but the uptempo and slightly hard hitting percussion provides a really cool contrast.  

Enjoy the show!

 

 

May, 2026 Show

  Greetings,

 I hope you are doing well wherever you are.  Let's get right to the music for my show for this month...

 

I absolutely love this band Caution out of Alabama (really).  They put me in the mind of PJ Harvey and similar great unfussy guitar driven post-punk.  I can't wait to hear more stuff from them in the future.

This track from La Securité starts off like some kind of long lost Devo track, but once the vocals kick in things get darker and stranger, which is a good thing.  

I love all of the great current music coming out of Turkey- but can we please call it something other than Turkish Psych?  This band here, Ayyuka, reminds me a lot of Khun Narin out of Thailand.

Up next we have a track from Nagrobki, from Poland.  They have a few releases on Bandcamp, digital singles and a few albums and EPs, and they try out a wide variety of music styles.  I really like the semi-ska approach to this song.

I don't know much at all about the band Zipper, from Melbourne, but what I've heard so far I really like.  They are on the Spoilsport label, and I try my best to keep up with anything put out by Spoilsport and Cheersquad, who both feature some great new Australian bands.

I first heard this song by The Shapes on one of those magazine CDs that were really common in the early 2000s- probably it was from CMJ New Music Monthly, which was a great magazine for its short lifespan.  I think I bought the CD via CD Baby, which was a cool avenue for bands to self-release music before Bandcamp came along.

Lambrini Girls, Die Spitz, and a few others are doing a great job keeping the snotty punk genre alive and well.  Cheers!

I bought this CD from Kampec Dolores on one of my last trips to Budpest (back in the mid 2010s; sadly I have not been back to Hungary since 2015).  It looks like there are plenty of good stores there now, but at that time the only good store was Wave Music, which was fantastic.  Sometimes I would just buy just about anything in the "local" bin, even if I hadn't heard it first.

If memory serves somebody from the Pete Power camp emailed me with a copy of this song, which I really like.  It has that early-mid Sub Pop feel to it.

I have all of the original Crass records on vinyl, but I haven't picked up all of the "Crassical Collection" editions, because they have been crazy expensive to get here in 'Merica.  

Captain Beefheart and Frank Zappa were childhood friends but they didn't perform together all that much.  Most of their recorded joint activity took place during this Bongo Fury tour.  The recent anniversary box set edition of Bongo Fury is well worth getting for the additional live material of Frank and the Captain.

I'm a bit surprised that the punk band Rāde hasn't made a bigger splash.  No problem, you know about them, so enjoy them now before they turn into a monster success like Die Spitz (no disrespect to the latter, I love them, but sheesh have they gotten big).

Speaking of big, Angine De Poitrine sure have tapped into the success vein at the right time.  Like Die Spitz, they deserve it- they are a great band.  Never have I seen anyone master loop pedals like these guys.  That two-necked bass/guitar isn't for showing off- it really gets used to alternate between bass and guitar runs.

I have to thank the fine folks over at Fire Talk Records for the email notifying me about Robber Robber.  I love this song.  It has tentacles in all kinds of directions- driving post-punk, a whiff of trip hop, power pop, etc.  

Speaking of power pop, there is a certain strain of power pop from the past few years that almost exclusively comes from Australia and New Zealand.  I can't really put my finger on it, but this song is a great example.  Maybe a sort of second bloom of the Dunedin sound?

Then we are on to the tortured art of Lucrecia Dalt.  This is definitely the kind of music where you pick up something new each time you listen.

Your Future Our Clutter came out two years after Imperial Wax Solvent, and this for me marks one of those changes in The Fall "eras."   This is probably my favorite of the last five studio albums.

I spent about three weeks in Latvia in 2014, and while there I bought as many Latvian CDs as I could.  This is from one of the many various artists compilations I bought- V/A comps are a great way to try out local music overseas and in many cases they are a better price than regular releases.

More travel memories:  on a trip to Brazil around 2010 I found one record shop within walking distance of my hotel, and as usual I unleashed my credit card and bought as much local/national music as I could.  This was one of my prizes.  It has a very late 1980s L.A. punk feel to it.

Unfortunately there hasn't been anything new from Dermabrasion for over two and a half years.  I hope that changes.  Their material is on the Hand Drawn Dracula label, which puts out nothing but great music.

This Alejas track is from the same cool various artists comp from Latvia that I mentioned above.  There is SO much great music that I can recommend out of the Baltic nations.  

Suitor...  another great band on the amazing Feel It label.  I just looked it up and I don't have a physical copy of it.  Oops.  I'll change that next paycheck.

Then up next we have Spiritual Law with that haunted opening before launching into that kind of punk that marks the transition from hardcore to D-Beat.  Great stuff.

I can't get enough of Indikator B, a great punk band out of Croatia.  There is that dark, gloomy presence that used to cover a lot of Eastern European punk.

Hmm, here we have yet another really cool song from another various artists compilation from Latvia.  Playful and catchy.

Spain is one of the leading exporters of the heavy stuff- all kinds of metal and the heavier side of punk.  If this interests you then check out the Trip To Spain release from Weedian (on Bandcamp) or just about any of the albums on the wonderful Discos Macarras label.

Tiikeri are from Finland and they have a really cool old school 1977-1978 vibe to their music.  Even the opening seconds of this song reminds me of "Angels With Dirty Faces" by Sham 69.

It took three years from the demo release of Pletyka to this current EP.  I hope they can seriously compress their timeline.  The world needs more of this wistful dreampop.

There is an organization called Punk 4 The Homeless that puts out some great various artists compilations for a good cause.  As is the case with other V/A heavy labels/resources like Weedian, I don't know if I will ever get caught up on researching each and every band, but I at least do my best to listen to as much of the music as I can.  

Apartmanlar are from Turkey and though I generally like old and new "Turkish psych" music, it's nice to hear some driving post-punk coming from the streets of Istanbul.

This short new LP from Pura Mania is really good- it might land on my Top 10 for 2026, who knows?

This great high tempo punk song is from Chien Flic, out of France, and their digital releases are Name Your Own Price on Bandcamp, so go!  Go!  Go!

Do you want the bad news or the good news?  The good news is that thisalbum by Voces De Ultratumba is excellent.  The bad news is that it looks like it is the only release so far.

Forty Two, who I think are from North Carolina, have a few releases on the great regional (as in North Carolina and South Carolina) label River Monster.  Their music is super cool and I'll get some more stuff in future shows.

This month's show ends with an electronic instrumental from an artist called Mythologen.  It's from a single on the Hoga Nord label out of Sweden, and I like most of the things that label puts out.  They seem to specialize in a lot of the listening kind of electronica, which I like, as opposed to the club/rave/disco kind of electronica, which isn't my thing.

 

Enjoy the show! 

 

 

April, 2026 Show

 Hello, 

Thank you for reading this, and I hope you have had a chance to listen to my April show.  I know, I know, these show notes are posted a very long time after the show first goes online- I'm trying to get my timing better.  In the meantime, let's discuss some finer points of my April, 2026 show.

 

We start off with a new song from, who else? Osees.  To call this band prolific is not just an understatement, it doesn't describe how they frequently change the sound of their music from album to album.  Honestly, the only other band that has done this combination of high output- frequent yet good musical change would be The Fall.

There are plenty of dub covers out there.  A lot of them, probably more than half, are well meaning but boring and/or amateurish.  This one is not.  The Flying Vipers get all kinds of cool points for taking on the very first hardcore record- the Black Flag "Nervous Breakdown" 7" ep.  They get respect for doing it very well.

With a band name like Red Mass, your first thought is probably some kind of cheezy death metal, right?  Not here!  They are actually a very fuzzy, garage punk kind of thing out of Montreal.  On a few of the songs like this one we get the absolute treat of Hannah Lewis on vocals.

Orange Whip looks like the kind of band who you expect to see roll into a Denny's at 4a.m. on a warm, drizzly night.  In this song there is a line "all he wanted was a Pepsi, and we wouldn't give it to him."  That of course is a reference to the famous song by Suicidal Tendencies, "Institutionalized," with its emotional lyric "all I wanted was a Pepsi, and she wouldn't give it to me."

Lucy Kruger & The Lost Boys, from Berlin, have that really cool sound of haunting female vocals over slower, doomy music.  There are definitely elements of PJ Harvey and Beth Gibbons in the vocals.  I love it.

Stuck, who I believe are from Chicago, really nail that late 1970s-early 1980s vibe of Devo, XTC, Talking Heads, and other early new wave bands.  Quirky and catchy.  Perfect for summer get-togethers in the backyard.

You've probably heard about the aggressive and often violent expulsion of non-legal immigrants in the U.S. (someone should ask the few remaining Native Americans how they feel), often separating families and going after peaceful, otherwise law abiding people.  The evil, lunatic Trump administration claims they are only going after violent criminals, but that is simply not true.  In one case, they went after a peaceful family in southern Texas, including a teenage son who plays trumpet in an award-winning high school Mariachi bands.  You can read about this in the link below.  I also included a link for a video of the high school Mariachi band in action (the teen in question takes the trumpet solo).  In the meantime, here is a classic Mariachi song.  

https://www.texastribune.org/2026/03/09/texas-antonio-gamez-cuellar-monica-de-la-cruz-ice/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQjxfP8apGw

Well, of course Iran is in the news, including Trump's lunatic ranting about how he planned to blow the entire Persian nation and culture back to the Stone Age.  This song from Idlefon doesn't have your expected "Middle East" sound, which is great.  It just shows how wide, deep, and varied Persian culture is.

I was already familiar with a New Zealand band called The Dartz, who are pretty good, and now along comes a band called The Darts (US), so it looks like there are plenty of bands out there called The Darts or some variation thereof.  That begs the question:  why not just pick a unique name?  I don't know, but I do know that I like this US Darts.  They have this kind of spooky retro garage sound that is really easy to put in all kinds of playlists.

Next up we have Caution, out of Birmingham, Alabama.  Great buzzy post-punk with a bit of a late 90's feel.

I've had this CD called Bombay The Hardway:  Guns, Cars, and Sitars for a really long time.  I think I bought this at a Borders ages ago just because I thought the cover looked really cool.  My sixth sense (or Spidey sense) when it comes to unheard records is rarely wrong, and it wasn't wrong this time either:  it's a fun CD.

I don't know much about the band Choncy, but I am very familiar with the Feel It label out of Cincinnati, and for the past few years I've bought just about everything they put out.  Choncy has a lot in common sonically with several Australian bands.

I can't get enough of the haunting vocals of Maria BC.  Her two albums on the Sacred Bones label are mesmerizing.

The Typical Girls compilation series are so amazing- it's a perfect way to discover several bands that you have never heard.  Such is the case with this band Rakta, out of Brazil.  I feel like I should have heard them before, but hey, better late than never.  Parts of this song puts in the mind of "Breathe" by Prodigy.  The songs are nothing alike, but there is just a feel.

There is next to no information about the band Glauque n' Cheap, which is a terrible crime, because I love this song.  It has that playfulness you find in artists like Anadol & Marie Klock.

If my feeble memory serves, I Am Kurious Oranj was the last vinyl album by The Fall I bought back in the original vinyl (i.e. pre-CD) era.  After this album I switched to CDs by The Fall, though I pick up back catalog Fall vinyl here and there, mostly when I happen across them in a physical store.

"Sun Is Shining" is one of my favorite Bob Marley songs, and just listen to this cover by a collection of heavy hitters:  Prince Fatty, Bunny Lee, The Aggrovators, and Ronnie Davis.   

How can you not like a record called "Wank Generation?"  I'm surprised it took this long for someone to grab that title.  Everything about this song is great, including the main riff that borrows quite a bit from Black Flag's "Nervous Breakdown."

TV Freaks-  I think I heard them on a radio station in Ottawa.  Very solid, unfussy pop-punk.

What do you think about this song from otay:onii?  Lots of interesting percussive elements.  

This Tony Tuff song is a lot of fun.  It came out in 1984, which makes sense.  It has that UB40, Eddy Grant vibe to it.  I confess that I don't know a whole lot about Mr. Tuff's catalog- I'm interested if that 80s sound is noticeable throughout his entire collection.

Another great song from Upchuck.  I hope to catch them live soon. 

Chicaloyoh is one of many bands that I discovered through a former French label called Et Mon Cul, C'est Du Tofu?  This label put out a really wide variety of music- punk, post-punk, etc.  I bought as much as I could on physical media, and for a while all of the digital releases were available for free download on the Et Mon Cul website.  That might still be the case.  If not, they should be around for a low price on Bandcamp.

Colombia has so much great new music- so many of the bands do an incredible job of mixing older styles like Cumbia with really modern twists.  Here is a great example on this song by Conjunto Media Luna.

Up next we have a wild one from Super Panela.  The "fuego" part sounds like an older song I think by the same name-  I don't know if it's a reference, a sample, or a coincidence.  No matter, this song is super cool.

If you haven't figured out by now, I'm a big fan of Discos Macarras Records in Barcelona.  It's no exaggeration to say that I look forward to each new release.  Most of the catalog is metal of some sort, though a lot of their recent releases are more like good old fashioned super hard rock.  I am a sucker for flanger and phaser sounds, and this song by The Bateleurs has a nice one to kick things off before the song goes into ZZ Top meets Black Flag mode.

Anadol (from Germany) and Marie Klock (from France) have a new album out, their second, and this one might be even more playful than the first.  It's kind of like French Cold Wave music run through an early Devo filter.

Morwan is from Kiev, and I sincerely hope that war ends very soon.  Fuck Putin and his evil friends and henchmen.

Grecco Romank is probably one of the more "out there" bands I've heard recently from New Zealand.  I played their song "Worm Regenerate" on my first Dandelion show, and I am happy to revisit their intriguing stuff.

Then we move to an absolute punk classic from Sham 69.  I know Ian Mackeye and Henry Rollins were big Sham 69 fans when they were teenagers.  My introduction to them was a lot slower- as I recall I only had a couple of compilation tracks at my listening disposal until later in life.

Next up we have a really good pub rock/pub punk track from Australia, courtesy of The Prize.

At first this track from Sudan sounds like it's from South East Asia- I have a lot of Thai and Cambodian retrospective comps of local rock music from the 1960s and early 1970s, but this is from Sudan believe it or not.

Speaking of South East Asia, this next song is from Indonesian band Sukatani.  I'm having trouble finding a lot of good new punk or post-punk from Thailand-Laos-Cambodia, but there is a LOT of great punk and post-punk going on in Indonesia and Malaysia.  This is new, by the way.

Fugazi just released a digital version of the Steve Albini sessions of their classic album In On The Kill Taker.  There are a million write-ups about how and why the Albini sessions were shelved in favor of all-new recordings, so I won't take up your time rehashing that information.  It is interesting to play the two versions of the album side by side.  It is so interesting to learn about how different artists work through the creative process.

I absolutely love this song by JeGong.  It is like a spooky throwback to the heyday of trip hop.

If you are interested in some really great current punk and post-punk out of Poland, spend some time on the Bandcamp site for Syf Records, a label out of Poland.  Great stuff.

The Skunks are out of Adelaide, Australia.  I spent a few days in Adelaide in late 2017, but unfortunately I didn't know about this band at that time (I did pick up some cool stuff from Mark of Cain, though).  This is a cover of a Chron Gen song, in case I forgot to mention it during the show.

Xray Xeroxx are a really fun band.  The song title, "1.21 Jiggawatts," of course is a reference to the amount of power the Delorean needed in the Back To The Future movie (scientifically, it is actually gigawatts, but you go tell that to Doc Brown).

Son Rompe Pera has done a few sessions for KEXP, but unfortunately only one of them is available to buy on their Bandcamp site (hopefully that will change soon).  

On the deluxe expanded edition of the classic Stiff Little Fingers album Inflammable Material, we have this great lesser-known song, "You Can't Say Crap On The Radio."  Check out the little nod to The Clash's "Capital Radio One" at the end.

With a band name like Slow Crush, what kind of music do you think you are going to get?  You got it.  I won't use the dreaded "S" word here, don't worry.

You guessed it, that one of a kind voice is none other than Kim Salmon, who has given us so much great music with The Scientists and many other projects.  I just learned that the drummer on this project, Leanne Cowie, died not too long ago.  Rest in peace.

Another song with a vague "Nervous Breakdown" opening riff.  This is a new record out of France, well worth tracking down.

I have most of the albums from Rollins Band, maybe all of them (I haven't compared my collection with Discogs) but I can tell you that I listen to their album Weight less often than I listen to End Of Silence or Come In And Burn.  That should change, because this is really a great album.  

Tanya Tagaq is from the Nunavut region of northern Canada, and she is fairly well known for her vocal gymnastics, including some jaw dropping throat singing on some of her songs.

Colleen puts out some really cool "sit still and listen" electronic music.  I watched a concert of hers on YouTube that was fantastic.  She avoids all of the "look at me, I'm really a performer" theatrics of so many electronic artists and yet is entrancing to watch.  

And finally, we have a song by Giraffes?  Giraffes! from Massachusetts.  At least on this album, the play a really cool blend of prog, cinematic post-rock, and post-punk.  (Okay, that is enough hyphens.  See, this is why some people hate putting genre labels on music).  

 

 

 

 

March, 2026 Show

 Hello there, I am more home bound than usual for the next few weeks, so hopefully I can use that opportunity to stay more current with these posts.  Meanwhile, let's plunge into my show for March.

 

The show begins with two really good cover songs.   The first is by one of the few current artists who can do everything and do it well, Ty Segall.  What a talent.  Here he does a wild take on the old Doors classic.  Then we have Dwarves, who I don't honestly follow very closely, putting forth an amazing cover of AC/DC's "Big Balls."  I love it when an artist really reimagines a cover song into something really new, and Dwarves definitely do that here.

 Varna GL is a singer from Greenland, and I really enjoy her music.  Over the past year or so I've slowly gotten into some indigenous music from Northern Canada (Nunavut and northern Quebec mostly), and this rabbit hole of Greenlandic and Canadian music has been a lot of fun.  

 I've had this CD from Iceland's Utopia for quite a while- I picked it up in Reykjavik during one of my visits in the early 2000s.  The vocals and music really put me in the mind of early Radiohead B-sides.  

 Continuing a wave of several Icelandic bands is the group Þausk, who I just recently discovered.  There is definitely a 90's sort of classic grunge sound and vibe to this song, but I really like it.

Next up is Fufanu, who I've known about for a few years.  They have a modern post-punk sound that is fun.

#4 in my run of Iceland songs is one from Haugar, another band that I only recently discovered (though I don't recall how).  Their new album is really good and I hope it catches on.

 I should take a moment and thank my friend Dru for bringing me back a bag full (12 or so) of CDs from Luky Record Store in Reykjavik a few weeks ago.  I haven't been to Iceland since the end of 2016/first of 2017 so it was nice to get my hands on some physical media from Iceland.

 Fen Fen, from my hometown of Detroit!  Apparently they are named after a weight loss drug that came and went in the 1990s.  

I first heard Novalima at a Spanish tapas restaurant in Washington, DC in 2013, not long after I returned from a work trip to Peru where I bought a large stack of CDs.  Luckily Novalima CDs were pretty easy to get in the U.S. at the time, though I confess I haven't kept up with this artist since then (makes note to go back and catch up on any post-2013 releases).

Dezerter has always been one of my favorite groups and their first LP, Underground Out Of Poland, is probably my favorite album of all time.

Next up is my favorite song by Deerhoof.  I think I have all of their records, though I can't say I have totally verified that (they do have a long discography with a lot of label switches).  This was the first Deerhoof song I ever heard, on some long gone music podcast.  The opening riff reminds me a bit of "All Right Now" by Free, which doesn't mean a whole lot, but I enjoy making musical connections any chance I get.

I love this record from Kilynn Lunsford.  Great post-punk music, cool vocals, and just enough weirdness to give it a unique vibe.  Really good stuff.

I don't know much about Welt Star yet (sorry, I'll work on that) but I love the late 1980s-early 1990s indie rock sort of approach.  

The Frenz Experiment is one of my two or three favorite albums by The Fall.  Every song is a winner.  It seems so tight, so well crafted, yet playful.  Unfortunately the expanded edition did not have a whole lot of bonus material, though these Janice Long sessions are great to have.

Maddie Ashman is in the same awesome category as Kilynn Lunsford above.  Fantastic songwriting, vocals, and music.  

The General Speech label is putting out all kinds of great punk and hardcore, including domestic releases of otherwise expensive foreign records (I also have to give a shout out to Sorry State, Total Punk, Iron Lung, Slovenly, Feel It, and Beach Impediment for doing the same).  There is so much great punk coming out of the Spanish speaking world right now (including from the USA, but don't tell ICE) that I can barely keep up.  This great song by Disket has a cool 1977-1978 vibe.

Up next I have three songs in honor of great musicians who died earlier this year:  Billy "Bass" Nelson from Funkadelic, reggae great Sly Dunbar, and Ghana Highlife star Ebo Taylor.  All three were stellar musicians with an amazing legacy.

This Histamine track almost sounds like Osees when they go all-out punk.  So, if you like the harder, faster moments of Osees, definitely check out this stuff from Histamine.  They are from Sydney, Australia.

Up next we have a cover of a Les Thugs song.  La Phaze brings a bit of Prodigy or Crystal Method to this version, which makes for a cool cover.

I've really been enjoying Gaudi's various projects over the past couple of years, though this record goes back to 2007.  Here Gaudi gives the dub/remix treatment to the master of Qawwali music, sort of like when Bill Laswell did his famous remix/dub album of Bob Marley music back in the 1990s.  I actually think this album works better than Mr. Laswell's (though I do own that one and I do like it).

There are a large number of great bands and musicians in and around Washington, DC that seem to fly under the radar, which is too bad.  I love Ekko Astral, and hopefully I can catch them live soon.

I've been fascinated with Polish punk, post-punk and just about everything else ever since I bought my first Dezerter record back in the 1980s.  Seks W Czasach Wojny doesn't have a huge catalog yet (just eleven songs on Bandcamp) but I'm hopeful they will have some more material soon.  Go buy some of their music to encourage them.

RF7 has a unique old school sound that bridges punk and late 1970s/early 1980s hardcore.  I would most compare this with the first album by Toxic Reasons.  

Oh, how do I love Yellow Fang.  They have one full album and a handful of individual songs, and each one is just great.  There is also a very good YouTube video of them in concert in their native Thailand.  I would love this band no matter where they come from, but they stand out even more because modern Thai pop music is overrun with sappy ballads.

If you like the kind of angry at the world music by the likes of Shame or Idles then you should definitely check out Mini Skirt.

Years ago I spent a week or so in Zagreb for work, and luckily I found an excellent record shop.  I loaded up on Croatian and older Yugoslav music, including this really cool compilation of older Yugoslav electronic music.  I don't know anything about the artist, but I love that sinister melody that snakes its way behind the more generic Euro funk beat.  The drums that come in around the 2:00 mark are cool too.

Discos Macarras!  What a label, run by the wonderful Dani in Catalonia.  Their catalog spans a wide range of metal styles, including this Motorhead approach.  More!  More!  More!

Remind me never to get on the bad side of the singer of Cold Meat.  

Yasmine Hamdan does such a beautiful job of blending traditional vocals with a unique blend of Mid East and western music.  Her album Ya Nass is a stunner.

I learned about Foodman from an episode of BBC's "Late Junction" back in 2021.  He's a very interesting artist.  On a side note, BBC won't allow US listeners to hear some of its shows, including "Late Junction", which is really stupid.  

I don't remember how I came across Tanukichan but I love that combination of fuzzy guitars and washed out vocals.  The cover of the album really matches the music too- that sort of daydreaming moment that we all need more of.

There are so many cool punk/hardcore indie labels putting out tons of great records:  La Vida Es Un, Goodbye Boozy, Sorry State, and of course Drunken Sailor.  I subscribe to all of these labels' mailing lists or Bandcamp notices, and I generally just buy anything new that comes out, even if I don't hear it first.

Adios Cometa- really cool 2000s sounding indie pop from Costa Rica!  I visited Costa Rica about twenty years ago, but it was a nature retreat kind of a trip so sadly I did not see any record shops.  

Each time I visited Sydney I always spent a good amount of time and money at Red Eye Records downtown.  One of the things I remember is how good and how affordable their selection of music related books was.  One of the many books I bought was a book about alternative music from western Australia from the 1970s and 1980s.  The book had a CD in a little envelope glued to the back of the back, and that is where this "Virus X" song comes from.  Anytime you can get your hands on Australian punk or indie compilations, definitely pick it up.  There is so much great music from our Australian friends that never made it to the U.S. or probably Europe either.

Cruelster are from Cleveland.  You'd be angry too if you lived there.

Vikowski- a band with a name that sounds like they are from Eastern Europe, but they are actually from Italy.  Anyone who likes Interpol should be big fans of Vikowski.

It's really difficult to get any information about bands from the Republic of Georgia.  It's not even that easy to get alternative music from Georgia, but I try to find what I can.  While I do not know anything about this band (Gerchi) I definitely love the music.

This Blouse album- which came out in 2011- is amazing.  It has that gentle indie pop sound that puts me in the mind of the bands Kindest Lines and Totally Mild.  Just really cool music that isn't in a hurry to go anywhere and be part of any particular sub-genre.  Nice.

Black Bomber:  because sometimes you really need some great hard charging Motorhead style metal.  Never stop, guys!

I only learned about The Plague very recently, though they were active in the early 1980s around Athens, Georgia.  The Chunklet Industries label recently offered a "box set" of four CD-Rs for a super cheap price, and of course I jumped.  On this song, "Crab Water," they show an Australian post-punk sound in the ballpark of The Bad Seeds or The Cruel Sea. 

Well, since we were just talking about Australia, how about 1-800 Mikey?  Distorted, fuzzy, lo-fi goodness.

Hot Face seemed to come out of nowhere, and now vinyl copies of their fairly new album are going for extortionate prices online.  A big Fuck You to the record flippers out there.

On the other hand, this album by Taker, which has a bit of a Ramones feel, is available for much more reasonable prices, so I recommend you go for it.

The opening of this song by Benzyna really brought me back to the opening of the song "Ants Invasion" by Adam & The Ants, even though the songs are nothing alike.  Something about that squealy opening guitar lead, though.

This cool song by 86 It, "Hairy Toothpick," get my vote for song title of the month.  Ottawa gets my vote for punk city of the month.  

Then we have Ty, from my hometown of Detroit, a city which never stops gargling great garage, punk, and good ol' hard rock n' roll.

From Latvia, we have Karšti Klijai, who have a really good post-punk sound going for them.  There is so much great punk, post-punk, alternative, and other good stuff coming from Latvia- I am doing my best to keep up.  Fortunately, unlike Spain and Italy, shipping costs from Latvia to the U.S. aren't totally unreasonable, so I scoop up as many CDs and occasional vinyl that I can.

Wow, that was a lot of songs this month!  Bringing up the end is a nice reflective song by Hanry, from France.  

 

See you next month!

 

 

 

 

 

February, 2026 Show

    

Well, well, well.  Here we go with the February show.

We start off with Scientist, an absolute genius (genius, I say!) of dub.  Just listen to how clear each instrument is in the mix.  I especially love the sound of the percussion in this track.

 

Cult Objects are new to me, but I am sold.  I bet you thought the intro drums was “Janie Jones,” didn’t you?  Come on, be honest.

 

Sick Thoughts really nails that trashy overlap between meat and potatoes classic rock and punk.  It’s actually a sound that very few bands pull off.  I bet this is killer live.

 

Full Flower Moon Band out of Australia have done a good job of changing up their approach with each release.  This whole album is excellent.

 

Phelimuncasi & Metal Preyers- I have no idea what they are singing about, but the vocals are really striking.  So much, in fact, that you need to go back and listen to this song carefully to hear all of the musical ideas going on.  Those church bells?  Amazing.

 

I know this is a radio show, but what in the actual hell is going on in the video for “Tamoo Trance?”  I think the budget for the video was $350 and a jar of THC gummies.  Great song, excellent album, music video weird as shit.

 

This new Xiu Xiu album of all covers is simply amazing.  For this month I was really close to playing “Hamburger Lady” but in the end I could not stay away from this haunting version of “In Dreams.”  Check out that vocal ache at the 2:45 mark; how stunning is that?  The only good way to cover Roy Orbison is not to sound like him, but to demonstrate his influence on you.  The album is amazing not only for how great the covers are, but also for the fascinating choice of songs.

 

I received an email message from somewhere, maybe the label Bass Agenda, about the Carebot$ various artists compilation.  141 songs!  Given the amount of music that hits my attention each day, I´m not sure how long it will take before I can give all 141 songs a decent audition, but I did try a few and this track from g13ck did get my attention. 

 

Syf Recordings out of Poland has been one of my go to labels for the past year or so.  They have a really good stable of artists and the prices for the releases are quite reasonable, so expect me to stay on top of Syf Records releases for the indefinite future.

 

Rehash Neu Klang is new to me, and I love that late punk/early post-punk sound.  I hear bits of Wire, Magazine, and definitely Gang of Four.  Close your eyes and you might hear “Damaged Goods” in parallel to this song, but in a good way, not a cheap copycat way.

 

This Cochon Double track is so damn cool.  I love songs where each instrument or sound is interesting on its own, but then when assembled together it gives your ears something to chew on over many repeated listens.

 

Club Coco, which is basically Coco Maria, is a focal point for cool, funky, late night chill Latin music.  Imagine if St. Germain underwent a two-year intensive study of Latin music. 

 

Room To Live was one of the last albums in The Fall’s catalog that I got on CD.  I don’t think that fact is relevant to anything.  I do have all of their studio albums on CD, many of them “deluxe” reissues, in case you are worried. 

 

I remember in high school someone had this Kraut record.  I hadn’t thought about in a really long time and something recently made me think of it.  NYC didn’t have the strongest hardcore scene in the late 1970s/early 1980s, but Kraut was definitely one of the great bands from that city.

 

It's not very often that I am on social media, and it is even less often that I discover something new and interesting on those platforms, but I have to think Instagram for learning about John Q Irritated.  Someone posted a picture of this album with a short but interesting description, and my Spidey sense told me to investigate.  I hear bits of Gomez and Drums & Tuba in the songs, which is both interesting and a lot of fun.

 

Disoriented Ghost I read about somewhere on Bandcamp, and there is a really fascinating mix of hard rock arrangements, mid-Eastern tones, and pseudo Tuvan throat singing going on here.  Those elements could be a recipe for a train wreck, but it really works on this record.

 

Can you believe there is no Wikipedia page for Günter Schickert?  It’s not like the bar is very high regarding fame or talent to have a Wikipedia page.  Someone should do something about that.  Maybe that someone should be me.

 

I am fascinated by the blend of sounds in this song by The Deep Freeze Mice.  The vocals sound like something out of the early 1980s Australian post-punk scene, but there is the almost Spanish sounding acoustic guitar.  Interesting.

 

Itchy & The Nits reminds me of one of the original instructions for punk rock:  here is how you play three chords.  That’s all you need to construct a song.  Go have fun.

 

Both Morwan and A Place To Bury Strangers have put out some really cool dramatic post-punk meets cinematic post-rock lately, and when you put the two together you just get some stunning music.

 

I heard this song by Hammell On Trial on a music podcast in the 2000s (I can’t remember the name of the podcast but it was in that time when music podcasts would spring up continually then suddenly disappear after a dozen or two episodes).  It’s chilling how relevant the lyrics from this 2007 song are here in a so-far evil and bleak 2026.

 

New Earth Tongue!  I love this band.  Even though the price of records from the In The Red label are not cheap, I am still very happy that In The Red released this new album because the cost to get records from New Zealand shipped to my house is prohibitive.

 

I don’t know much about these next two bands, Plastique Pigs (Raleigh, North Carolina) and Hiraki (Denmark) other than the songs are new and I really like them (the songs and the bands).

 

1980s New York City was not a real hotbed of hardcore punk, but it was indeed a non-stop volcano of art punk and post-punk.  Phantom Toolbooth is just one of many great examples of this.

 

I remember hearing this Silver Apples song on the radio, if you can believe that.  It was late 1990s Detroit and I was driving somewhere, and I was listening to a very small community college station (Henry Ford Community College; the call letters might have been WHFC or WHFU).  It was the first time I ever ran across a radio station that had very specific genre shows, such as death metal, rockabilly, etc.  Anyway, I heard this song and was intrigued by the insane drumming with the various melodies layered on top.

 

What Glitterbeat, Awesome Tapes From Africa, Africassette, and other labels have done to rescue obscure African music the Vampisoul, Munster, and other labels are doing for lesser known Latin music, especially 1960s and 1970s music from Colombia, Venezuela, and Peru.  Muchas gracias, Vampisoul.

 

I just love this Digital Leather track.  The vocals- arrangement and performance- are real standouts for me. 

 

The amazing Catalan label Dicos Macarras released some amazing records in the last couple of years, including Beyond The Void by The Sky Creepers.  The Sky Creepers prove that heavy music doesn’t necessarily need drop-D tuning and Cookie Monster vocals.

 

I don’t know anything about this Polish artist Brenda I Funky.  I do like the start of the song- it starts out with a bass line that sounds like classic rock, then picks up a kind of Suicide feel which stays with the rest of the song. 

 

Kid Congo has one of the most interesting and impressive resumes in all of alternative music, and that continues with his recent collaborations.  Here is with Draculina serving up a great Cramps-esque tune.

 

After you enjoy listening to this track by La Luz (it’s a great song no matter how you dissect it) a few times, go back and listen and concentrate on the drums.  You will thank me.

 

I never thought about Réunion island much (except that I am a stamp collector and I have a few from there) until 2019, when I spent a whole day record shopping in Paris.  Like London, Paris is great in that there are fantastic all-around stores, but also quite a few specialist record shops.  I found one that was really focused on music from Tahiti, New Caledonia, and the south Pacific in general, and another shop that had an amazing collection of records from Réunion and Mayotte.  So, I have tried to keep somewhat up to date with music from those French colonies, which brings me to Jako Maron, a Réunion artist who just happens to be on one of my favorite labels, Nyege Nyege Tapes. 

 

Gróa is a really cool band from Iceland, and it is merely a coincidence that the singer sounds a lot like early Sugarcubes-era Björk?

 

This track from Дом Прекрасных Аустов (“The House of Beautiful Austs”) perfectly encapsulates all of the dark, wistful tendencies of Russian music, no matter the genre.

 

Institute, from Austin, is new to me but this new self-titled album by them is really good.  I’m looking forward to what comes next.

 

The Höga Nord label out of Sweden has a lot of electronic music that I like (which is saying something, because I am very picky about electronic music that I like vs. do not).  The beginning of this song reminds me so much of the theme song from The Sopranos.

 

I just received my new copy of the Maria BC album Marathon in the mail yesterday, and I am super excited.  I had a difficult time deciding which song to play this month so guess what?  I chose one, and I’ll play more songs in the months to come.

 

If you have any interest at all in forward-looking German alternative music, definitely keep up to date with the labels Bureau B and Pingipung.  I missed this album by Das Kinn when it first came out in May of 2025 but I recently acquired it and you should too.

 

I first heard Machinations on a CD compilation called Notes From The Australian Underground, which by the way is well worth tracking down. 

Here we have Mujeres Podridas, out of Austin, playing perfect blend of hardcore and fast punk.  Drop your needle anywhere (or hit the ol’ random play button) and enjoy the ride.

 

I’ve only been to Lithuania once (sadly), and that was a long time ago (2001?  2002?).  I did buy as many local CDs as I could, but I was there for a business trip and I did not have much time to shop for records or ask about the local scenes (jazz, punk, post-punk, etc.).  I would love to go back with time and some money to take in all of the interesting things going on in Vilnius.  As with the neighbors in Latvia, there is a lot of really cool post-punk going on in that country.  Luckily for me, shipping from Latvia and Lithuania is on the cheaper end of the European spectrum (not cheap, mind you, but definitely cheaper than Spain and Italy, which has crazy shipping rates to the U.S., even for a single CD).

 

The new album from Robber Robber comes out in a few weeks, and I am looking forward to hearing all of it.  As of now there are four out of eleven songs available on their Bandcamp page.  There are elements of Die Spitz, Mandy Indiana, and other really cool bands in their sound.  I’m confident that this band will show up in Dandelion Radio’s Festive Fifty.

 

Okay, this next item is really interesting.  I’ve been interested in the Situationists and the Paris May 1968 student uprising since my college days.  I know the Situationists had varying degrees of influence on Malcom McLaren, The Feederz, and others, but I didn’t know much about their more time and place influence on French music until I recently picked up a book titled Synths, Sax, & Situationist.  That led me to get off my butt and look more into Situationist inspired music, especially from France.  That led me to this 2022 album by V. Vale & La Mère, titled Situationist Music.  This album is terrific, and it will not surprise you that this album (and much of the Situationist inspired music that I’ve had a chance to hear so far) would not be shunned by those music fans who have their Nurse With Wound list memorized.  This could make for a good one or two hour special show sometime- stay tuned.

 

Ipek Gorgun’s late 2025 album Earthbound is tagged in Bandcamp as “electronic” and “experimental” and both terms do apply correctly.  This is electronic music for people who like to listen rather than dance.

 

The show finishes with Terveet Kädet, the hardcore legends from Finland.  I remember about the time (1983 or so) when American hardcore bands had just about hit their limits of speed and short songs, along came a small wave of Swedish and Finnish hardcore bands that kept the blistering speed and short song durations going.  Terveet Kädet may have been the most notorious at the time, but there were other bands that I recall like Rattus, Headcleaners, and more.

 

 

January, 2026 Show

  

You could write a list of 900 bands, past and present, and not a single one would be a better choice to cover “Ghost Rider” than Party Dozen.  The perfect band to cover an amazing song. 

 

As I write this the new Ty Segall & The Muggers live album is not out yet, but I’m certain it will be great.  While you are waiting, if you haven’t heard his Live In San Francisco record do yourself a huge favor and go listen.  I don’t know why Ty decided to put ironic quotation marks around each word in the album’s title (“Live” “At” “The” “BBC”).  It is probably some inside joke but who cares as long is Ty Segall is involved.

 

If you only know Booker T. & The MGs for “Green Onions,” you really should jump into at least part of their high quality catalog.  The only competition to Stax Records was Motown Records (and vice versa) and while both labels brought the groove in massive doses, Motown had a bit more swing while Stax had a bit more funk, especially in the early years. 

 

I read somewhere that Nadine Shah had formal jazz vocal training, which makes sense when you listen to her strong and expressive vocals.  On this album (Live In London) quite a few of the songs have more energy and urgency than their studio counterparts. 

 

I love how this O’o song starts.  You have no idea what genre it belongs to nor where the song will go.  Great unpredictability from start to finish.

 

You might recognize this song from La Sonora Dinamita if you are a fan of Breaking Bad/Better Call Saul.  In one of the Better Call Saul episodes, Mike is setting up an ambush of a cartel delivery truck by stringing what likes like a strand of barbed wire across the road.  As the truck proceeds along its way, heading to Mike Ermantrout sabotage, the driver sings along to “Mi Cucu.” 

 

Check out how angry Twenty One Children (spelled without the hyphen) sound.  This is a punk band out of Soweto, and I’m sure I’d be angry too if I lived in Soweto.

 

I don’t know if there is much I can say about “My New House” by the mighty The Fall that hasn’t already been said.  You may notice that it does have a fade out at the end, which thankfully doesn’t happen too much in The Fall’s catalog.

 

Wain Pain & The Shit Stains…. As if their growly hardcore wasn’t great enough, they come up with one of the best EP titles ever. 

 

A few years ago I was in Adelaide, Australia and we had a day long winery tour driver all to ourselves.  We talked about local music at some point, and I mentioned that I really like The Mark Of Cain.  Our driver had some kind of close connection (best friends with one of the members or something) so we had a nice talk and later he dropped off a pair of MOC drumsticks at my hotel for me. 

 

The Xiu Xiu all covers album came out a few days ago, and it is fantastic.  All-cover albums typically take one of three forms:  a multi artist tribute to a single group; a soundtrack or occasional compilation (often dedicated to a decade or genre) that features multiple artists doing covers of multiple targets; and a group that puts out an all-covers record, usually of songs that inspired them.  This new Xiu Xiu album is in the latter category.  The mix of song covered is quite interesting (Runaways…  Roy Orbison…  Throbbing Gristle….) but it makes total sense when we note that this is Xiu Xiu we are talking about.  This isn’t some major label band pretending to have “indie” roots.  Xiu Xiu doesn’t need to pretend about anything.

 

Then we move into another astonishing cover by a truly exceptional (in the true outlier sense of the word) artist called The Space Lady.  Apparently she was a street busker with a “you gotta hear this!” reputation and was eventually brought into a proper studio.  Can you imagine emerging from a subway station in New York or London or Washington only to behold this lady in a tin foil hat singing away in her one of a kind voice (with lots of speaker echo) with a simple keyboard?  I never have had that kind of luck.  In Washington, DC I only get local kids banging away on upside down plastic tubs or some hippie looking acoustic dude trudging his way through “Margaritaville” or “Brown Eyed Girl.” 

 

Discos Macarras is a fantastic small label out of Barcelona that specializes in all formats of metal and hard rock.  I especially like their recent releases in the Black Sabbath/Motorhead vein.  This Black Bomber album is new and it is worth your attention.

I’m a fan of the Hungarian language even though I only know a few words and phrases.  It always sounds like it comes from another planet.  I love to hear how languages other than English pair with the given music of a song, and the Hungarian language always seems to match well with art-infused post-punk and dread filled punk or hardcore.  Listen to this song by Kibaszott Emberek and just soak up the vocals as a non-speaker.

 

“Johnny Rotten Is A Fascist Pig.”  John Lydon sure turned into a major dickhead.  Lydon and Morrissey are both major disappointments that bring up the classic question:  can you (and should you) separate the art from the artist? 

 

Wire is one of those few post-punk bands like Gang Of Four, Joy Division, Killing Joke, and P.I.L. that have a sound so unique that you can recognize it quickly, even in a song you may not know very well.  Wire’s first three albums are pure perfection and post-punk classics.  The rest of their catalog is awesome too, but those first three records….

 

If you like the dreamy, jangly or effects-heavy music of the late 1980s and early 1990s (I hesitate to use the term shoegaze because it is probably the most misused and most misunderstood term in all of music), especially groups like The Darling Buds and Lush, then you need to check out the current indie scene throughout Latin America.  Chile, Argentina, and Mexico seem to lead the pack, but there are great you-know-what type bands active in Ecuador, Costa Rica, Honduras, and elsewhere.  Muy bien.

 

Places Like This is easily my favorite album by Architecture In Helsinki.  They have the distinction of being the first musical artist I ever heard on a podcast.  I got my first iPod in 2007, and at that time there were not a whole lot of music related podcasts, but KCRW in Los Angeles had a podcast led by the then-host of Morning Becomes Eclectic.  The podcast I first heard started with AIH live in the studio and I was hooked (on Architecture In Helsinki, not Morning Becomes Eclectic).

 

Speaking of my first iPod and early podcasts, CBC radio out of Canada used to have a really good podcast that was called the indie countdown or something like that.  If I recall it was a weekly podcast that had a top-something (20?) countdown of current Canadian indie bands, and they would play a handful of songs from that week’s countdown.  I picked up on all kinds of cool bands from that podcast including Menomena, The Weakerthans, etc.

 

I only heard about JJulius a few months ago, but I am definitely interested.  There is that oddly assembled song structure common in Krautrock but the moods are more complex, something more like Radiohead. 

 

Man I wish records from the Elefant label out of Spain were cheaper to ship to the U.S.  The prices of the records themselves are reasonable, but the cost to ship records and CDs from Spain to the USA is insane.  I would love to have a physical copy of this album by Linda Guilala.

 

X… Not the Los Angeles X but the Australian one.  The singer sounds like Iggy Pop crossed with Dez from Black Flag.  That is a recipe for one of the best rock and roll vocals ever.  The fact that it just so happens to go with a great band and great songs makes this so damn cool.

 

How in the world did a band like Debris’ come out of Oklahoma?   Don’t get me wrong, I am glad that they did, but still, how?

 

Lucid Express, especially with this song, reminds me of the Thai shoegaze band Yellow Fang.  And since I am in a very long despair that Yellow Fang probably won’t put out any more new music, this band from Hong Kong is helping me considerably.

 

The Traditional Fools are one of the many hard and fuzzy projects featuring the wonderful Ty Segall.  Their sound is mostly like this song, fast, reverb prominent punk songs that make their point quickly then stop.

 

If you like bands such as Tuatara or Action Figure Party then definitely check out this supremely talented Hungarian band Másfél.  Lots of unique song arrangements and tempos.

 

I’ve been fairly well educated about Zamrock for a while, but I am definitely new to non-traditional music coming out of Zimbabwe.  This recent archival release, Roots Rocking Zimbabwe, is terrific.  I am looking forward to opening new musical rabbit holes (as if I need more on my plate) by diving into the artists represented on this solid album.

 

Unwound were contemporaries of the so-called grunge scene of nearby Seattle, and they were/are on an officially approved indie label (Kill Rock Stars) yet Unwound largely avoided the hype monster that took over so many bands from that time and place.  That is a good thing, because what we have is a band playing something like a cross between The Screaming Trees and Detroit garage punk, untainted by major labels demanding videos and radio friendly junk songs.

 

Finally, we have this cool little song by Intergalactic Mechanic.  My favorite genre within electronic music is this type of Detroit techno that has the robotic, break-dancing beat.  It provides a great canvas for whatever music and vocals join the song.  Way cool.