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.

 

 

December, 2025 Show

 

For this month’s show, these bands are totally new to me:  BB Bomb (though generally anything on the Damnably label is totally worth checking out), Wiccans, Liam Vincent & The Odd Foxes (they remind me of someone…. Wolfstone?  It’ll come to me eventually), Haram (if you are interested in seriously angry smart punk, and not Hot Topic/Warped Tour stuff, then you must check this Haram record in its entirety), The Big Idea, Morwan, Sunflowers, Piso Franco, Sword II, and Flux (the “flux your heard” I’m sure is a direct reference to the classic hardcore Dischord various artists compilation Flex Your Head, which includes Minor Threat’s cover of “12XU” with Ian screaming at the end “flex your HEAD!!”), and Medussa.  I apologize for not having any exciting back info on the artists or my discovery of them; I think these were all the result of my many Bandcamp rabbit hole excursions.   

 

This latest album from Citric Dummies kicks total ass.  The songs on this album I think are a bit longer and more sophisticated than their earlier hardcore bursts, but make no mistake, this album has speed and power galore.

 

I was back home in Detroit this past autumn and I was very happy to find a copy of the Kit Sebastian album in Dearborn Music for a very fair price (if you find yourself in Detroit I recommend trying Dearborn Music before anything else).  Kit Sebastian is an example of the talented and fun bands coming out of the modern Turkish music scene.

 

In the past couple of years there seems to be a welcome renaissance of reissues covering late 1970s – early 1980s American hardcore.  This is welcome for all kinds of reasons; mostly, because the originals can be very hard to find and expensive; the reissues often include material never before available; and the sound quality is sometimes much improved.  I was overjoyed to get the reissues of the two SS Decontrol 12”s a couple of years ago from the Trust label, we just got a reissue of one of the last NoMeansNo records, and now we have archival releases from Midwest bands Mecht Mensch and Zero Boys.  Now if we could just get Necros….

 

This new song from Mandy Indiana (from their new album due out in February, 2026) shows off everything I love about this band:  in your face percussion, frequent changes in tempo and instrumentation, and vocals that hit me a different way each time I listen. 

 

I discovered Waltz For Debbie via a rather large various artists label sampler box set I picked up from the Labrador label.  I don’t remember exactly how I stumbled my way into the Labrador camp- most likely it was the group The Radio Dept., though how I found them is anyone’s guess.  I’ve periodically thought about keeping a journal describing each time I hear a band for the first time- that might be a fun future project.  Anyway, this Waltz For Debbie song is a perfectly executed piece of indie pop.

 

Oruã has a great hard indie-psych sound on all of their records (I recommend their entire catalog) but what I find really interesting is the vocals.  The singer has a voice that is really unique- I’m not good at describing vocal stylings, but this guy has that sound that you can recognize immediately as him.

 

Optic Sink- cold wave from Memphis!  Why not?  I love how this band’s sound has evolved from the earliest records to now.

 

The Danzig-era Misfits often recorded several versions of their songs, and in a few other cases (like here) we get treated to a remixed version (not remix in the dance sense, mind you).  If you are a real Misfits fanatic, you can sit back and enjoy listening to multiple versions back to back and comparing and contrasting.  For “Who Killed Marilyn?” I have five different versions in my collection, including this new remixed version by Glen Danzig.  I think l like this one the best- the vocals are easier to hear and the instruments are better balanced compared to other versions.

 

Listen to this great song from Chini.png-  isn’t this a masterwork of pacing and soft/loud dynamics?  All of their music is this good.

 

I have to thank my fellow Dandelion Radio DJ Sean for introducing me to Neon Kittens.  I love their overall sound- it sounds like a mix of second/third album PIL if Adrian Belew and Robert Fripp joined in on guitar.

 

This Algebra Suicide sounds like another great example of neo-Cold Wave.  The talk-sing matches well with the nervous, furtive music.  I like to keep listening to this song and picking out the layers. 

 

 

I first ran across the Tzadik label way back in the late 1990s, if I recall correctly.  This was the height of the CD era and I was in my Marc Ribot rabbit hole, trying to get my hands on any of his material.  He did some work on the label, including a Marc Bolan tribute compilation.  Fast forward ten years or so and I was reading a newsletter from Wayside Music, a mail order company where I buy music from now and then.  They had a short description of this Afrirampo CD that grabbed my interest, so into my shopping cart it went.  I haven’t done much research on this artist but from what I recall it is two ladies who mix visual and performance art with the music.

 

Dame Area is one of the most fascinating artists around.  They share a general approach to another of my favorite bands, Party Dozen.  Can you imagine a show with the two of them on the bill?

 

The Dirtbombs put out a fantastic all covers album in 2011 called Party Store.  They covered all techno songs in their inimitable Detroit garage rock style.  All of the covers came off well, but I think their version of “Cosmic Cars” (originally by Cybotron) is the best of a very good lot.  The album refers to a Detroit area staple:  the party store.  In Detroit and its suburbs, a party store is basically a cross between a liquor store and a 7-11 or bodega.  But unlike today’s chain store everything, party stores were all independent.  No two looked the same even though the concept was similar.  Most of them were a big part of the neighborhood, especially before the rise of Walmart, Target, and Costco.  They were (and still are for those that still operate) a neighborhood place that held a lot of local meaning.  Party Stores are a part of Detroit’s fabric, and so the title of this album by a great Detroit band has special meaning.

 

Most songs tell a story, but this song by Karen Y Los Remedios feels more like a novella.  The pacing, arrangement, and vocals make this song sound like you are being treated to one-act play, tightened into a mere three and a half minutes.

 

Superior Viaduct has done a great job of selecting and reissuing out of print records and artist anthologies that are criminally long out of print, including this new archival release by Paris 1942 out of Phoenix.  Arizona has always had a very eclectic (sorry, but this time the word truly fits) punk/hardcore/post-punk scene:  groups like Feederz, J.F.A., and Meat Puppets, to name a few.  I wasn’t aware of Paris 1942 but I love this sort of mid-80s New York City angular post-punk sound.

 

While I wasn’t aware of Paris 1942, I do remember the Amuck compilation coming out of Phoenix in 1982.  It contains a wealth of great bands but unfortunately has not been reissued, as various artist compilations rarely are.

 

Isn’t it really cool when just the right artist takes on a dinosaur of an old song and breathes new life into it?  Anika, who has one of the most compelling voices on the planet, can make magic out of anything she covers but her singing “Spooky” is just astonishing.

 

The fine folks at Kool Tone Records (thank you guys) sent me a cassette of the new Sunset Images album Live at Glastonbury and it is fantastic.  The band is out of Mexico and reminds me of Lorelle Meets The Obsolete, so if you like the latter be sure to check out the former.

 

Intel have accomplished the near-impossible; they sound very much like Osees without coming across as a lame copycat band.  Keep it up!

 

Babe Haven recently did a few shows opening for Die Spitz, and wow, what a one-two punch of a lineup that was.  Babe Haven are out of North Carolina and if you are looking for something beyond Lambrini Girls or Wet Leg then point your little ears toward these ladies. 

 

I don’t spend very much time on Spotify, but a couple of years ago I came across a couple of good playlists featuring independent music from Armenia and Georgia.  This caught my attention because it’s not always easy finding alternative music from those countries (I spent eleven days in Tbilisi several years ago and I could only find choral church and the usual garbage club music) so I did what I could looking into the featured bands.  For some reason very few alternative/indie bands from Armenia and Georgia are on Bandcamp, but many of them do sell songs on iTunes, so I spent time listening to stuff on Spotify then buying the things I liked on iTunes.  Not ideal, but better than nothing at all.  This artist, սխալduke has this melancholy, almost spooky quality that I find interesting.