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).