The Embarrassment, "(I'm a) Don Juan"

Twitchy call to arms from behind horn rims. Prairie polyrhythms fall in line, clearing room for bleached, offhand yeh-yeh echoes and that restless bass. A plinky digital mix can distract, but the life-affirming video (1981) more than compensates if KBD-and-seek seems a chore. The heart of the matter with Kansas.

"(I'm a) Don Juan"

Devils Hole Gang, "Isn't It"

DIY shrapnel from the Desperate Bicycles milieu. Ferocious in the most oblique way: start–stop hook erosions keep it earthy, but the sentiment is thoroughly modern, a jaundiced electric eye sizing up received pieties of the early Thatcher days. A swift seminar, also, on the title's grammar-defying valences in British dialect — illogic the Homosexuals aired with "It's What's in It, Isn't It?" Timeless crackle pop from a distant island kingdom.

"Isn't It"

The Yolks, "I Do What I Do"

The newest in new from Criminal IQ. Urgency without untidiness, revival without regression, and, incidentally, the perfect melody. Over. Easy.

"I Do What I Do"

BRUNCH: Amy Linton + Stewart Anderson

Popstar dalliance, 1996–1999. Four tracks that sound, respectively, like the Aislers Set, Boyracer, the Aislers Set, and Boyracer. A tremendous primer at any rate, but synthesis this is not, and we're left, swooning, to wonder: What is that middle ground?

"The Lights Are Out"
"Romance, Baby I Don't Care"
"Hipsters, Scenesters, Teenstars and Fakers"
"I Cut My First Tooth on One Just Like You"

The Last, "Looking at You"

Minimally reflective freeway punk. Aside from coffee, fish, and fast food, the Descendents' lone influence — a fact evident on the "Ride the Wild" single but hidden by the time of Fat. Hyperreal harmonies, triplet fills, and beachy bravado. Surf Nazis, basically.

"Looking at You"

Cardiac Arrest, "Old New"

Thug lite from the shores of the Mississippi. Throaty barks, structure, and everything else recall Negative FX, but themes stay closer to the vest — "You used to push me in the halls / Now you push me in the pit" — and betray a boyishness that Brannon could never ratify. Forever 17.

"Old New"

BRUNCH: Sin Orden

Crudos disciples sloganeer, counter-hegemonize. Reductionist migra manifestos still hit hard, biggish breakdowns and an impossibly militaristic snare drum lighting the way. Recent splits and some airspace on the first Histeria also merit attention, but this EP is doctrine.

Intro/"Pesadilla americana"
"Autonomía"
"Nuestra historia"
"Somos la mayoría"
"Cuándo va terminar"
"Puños en el aire"
"Leyes y reglas"
"No a la guerra"
"Imbasión"

The Softies, "Hey Hey Girl"

Central Valley popcest. Rose Melberg and the other one scrub Rocketship clean with nary an organ in sight, tasteful bells doing the evocative with plenty of room to breathe. Eclipses the Talulah Gosh cover on It's Love and, by furlongs, every Softies original. Ambience through absence.

"Hey Hey Girl"

Indigesti, "Nessuna ragione"

Germy thrash, Italia '82. Speedy shock therapy: brat-pack yowls, Piedmont populism, grainy messthetics. Tighter than the Wretched split — and tighter than Wretched — but resolutely anti-technical. Molto espressivo.

"Nessuna ragione"

(lo:muêso), "Rented Mistakes"

Catalan anglers hoard punctuation, dramatic structure. Give it time — specifically, 2:30, at which point the choppy dissonance wanes, funneling into an extended up-the-ladder second act that promises transcendence and almost delivers. Jehu freaks with a touch of the baby's-breath vocals that kept Party of Helicopters in flight — but also some questionable prog tendencies of late. Never forget.

"Rented Mistakes"

BRUNCH: The Dils

Carlsbad class consciousness. Sweetness and light from the upper registers of that left coast. The downbeat stomp of "You're Not Blank" remains the fittest rival, in the last analysis, to "I'm a Bug"'s troglodytic cadence, except the Kinmans pile on harmonies and some unforgettable unison kicks. Praxis makes perfect.

"I Hate the Rich"
"You're Not Blank"

Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti, "Helen"

Washed-out background pop from the hills. Old news by now, but this is what we call a sleeper. Among the less self-referential tracks on House Arrest (cf. "Hardcore Pops Are Fun," built on an identical chorus hook), and a welcome flash of candor from this lilting scion.

"Helen"

Descendents, "Like the Way I Know"

Lost-and-found angstage from the greatest. Cut with SPOT for MGTC but unmixed until 1998, this one trickled from The Last to the Descendents before escaping non-posthumous release. Chainsaw pop at its purest, the thick Navetta tones both prickly and warm, Milo's wounded cords spitting little dissertations on the outcast's episteme. In every sense, a national treasure.

"Like the Way I Know"

BRUNCH: Tiala

Combustible time-sig terrorism. Complex but never hyper-intellectual, grafting tightly wound thrash segments onto the bipolar conservation-of-energy rubric that bubbles under so many records birthed in the wake of emo. Dig the Shaft-hat intro, the walking bass, and finally the screams as the boys lay waste to facile notions of climax and denouement. Tiala pals around with the Malay crew — Fujicolor, Orbit Cinta Benjamin, Kias Fansuri — but is Japanese, and their side so dwarfs splitmates and alleged scene doyens Utarid as to compel some serious soul-searching around Kuala Lumpur.

"Futekisetsu Gendou"
"Public Enemy"
"Tuu Tuu"

Algernon Cadwallader, "Serial Killer Status"

Puberty comes to the Keystone State. The realest Cap'n Jazz clones modern science ever cooked up. The jilted aphorisms live on — "You can't just get off the bus now / So cut off your feet and like it because stubs are better feet" — but wordplay, when it indeed crops up, feels just perfunctory: another track, we regret to inform, on the Some Kind of Cadwallader LP is called "Yo Soy Milk." Boisterous, anyhow, and atavistic in the best way. ¡Qué suerte!

"Serial Killer Status"

Books Lie, "Letter to My Psychiatrist"

Possessed hardcore from pre-onslaught Williamsburg. Vocals by way of End of the Century Party, which spells spite and frustration, but a clear eschewal of the spastic tactics that defined that band, Palatka, or other Floridian comrades. Total refusal, lyrically, underwritten by a furious battery harvesting the fruits of the '90s and spoiling them anew.

"Letter to My Psychiatrist"

BRUNCH: plouf!

Imagist primitives go pop. Toy-chest marauders clock in and dwindle before any heavy lifting — chorus or bridge, say — even seems advisable. No shambles, either — just radical abbreviation. Fleeting larks from the nursery.

"Dirty Plate"
"Lunar Holiday"
"Peko"

The Beets, "My Bones, My Flesh, and Me"

Underage echo-chamber pop from Jackson Heights' own. Pulsating reverb takes hold, etched only by a chorus of exuberant aharmonic yips. Lyrics bespeaking bulimia, or merely self-abnegation, are beyond their years: "But then I will eat again / And I feel like one of them / So I will have to let it out." Watch this space.

"My Bones, My Flesh, and Me"

Surf Nazis Must Die, "I'm Not Anti-Girls, Girls Are Anti-Me"

Berliner raw dogs traffic in renunciation, victimization. The Anti-Everything EP, a Youth Attack joint born of Das Oath's Dutch presence, is littered with chunky, cheeky, grating jams. This comma-splice conniption is the most gratifying of the lot, the coda a permanent breakdown. Sarcastithrash for the EU era.

"I'm Not Anti-Girls, Girls Are Anti-Me"

BRUNCH: Void

Rough, rough cuts from the undisputed kings. Little bouts of rage, tempered by a thick coat of static. Themes persist: "Draft Me Please" supplements the old conscripts "War Hero" and "Time to Die," the latter noticeably (p)rearranged here, hewed by arrhythmic stops. John Weiffenbach's code-red squeals never sounded better, even if his tactics self-contradict: "We're not asking you / We're telling you" segues into "Please give us a chance." His Rules.

Hit and Run

Charles Bronson, "What's Wrong With Me?"

Avowed Voidheads flip the split, cover Faith. Ratcheting up the relatively sedate track — next to Void, anything is — Bronson races for the finish line, radiating an oblique sense of musicianship, or at least coordination, that their patron saints solidly refused to develop. Until V-Day '08, the meanest thing out of DeKalb, Illinois.

"What's Wrong With Me?"

Apathetic Ronald McDonald, "Fuck That, Gimme Wafflez"

Imperial brunch violence from Fontana, CA. Roving power chords, lisped vocals, and an insatiable appetite for that Belgian batter keep AxRxMx (they insist) in their place. Play fast, eat fresh.

"Fuck That, Gimme Wafflez"

BRUNCH: Duke Nukem Forever

Sledgehammer LAPV makes of variety a virtue. Admixing Bronson-caliber samples, the grindstone diligence of a Tragedy, and even the errant Cookie Monster growl, these beginners bode well. Stick to your guns.

"Demo 2007"

All Girl Summer Fun Band, "New in Town"

Impressionistic lovers' rock to take the edge off. With the first chills of fall — and a new, surely inferior album — why not? "New in Town" comes from the 2001 debut, a cuddly conga line of pop whimsy that points to all points Northwest. They're based in Portland, but they get around: "Canadian Boyfriend" said as much; see also "Down South, 10 Hours, I-5." This one tracks a peripatetic crush from the grocery store to the punk-rock show, all anxious and obsessed. But the third verse speaks truth to puppy love: appearances can be deceiving.

"New in Town"

Baskervilles, "Caught in a Crosswalk"

Note-perfect orchestral popcorn. NYC vets pump trumpet and keys into this vaguely Britannic crisper, recalling Brilliant Corners without all the mope. "Caught in a Crosswalk" completed Twilight, a free singles series, fourteen deep, now collected on CD for eager purchase. This is the brightest of the bunch, a studio wonder whose creeping veneer doesn't eviscerate the twee appeal. And maybe they play out once in a while — but get your priorities straight.

"Caught in a Crosswalk"

BRUNCH: Apeshit

Best-in-class Gravity atavism. Brief, quasi-technical spasms strip away the algebraic conceits of an Ampere but lose almost none of the bite. The last five entries on this demo appear, cleaned up, on a split 12" with Tigershark; here, the rhythms blur somewhat, but the blunt vocal mix adds sass. "Scabs & Scars" is probably the best distillation of Apeshit's project, the breather section reduced to seconds and mangled into strange shapes. Serious sounds — almost enough to vitiate the fool exclamation marks that bookend the band's name on official documents.

"Demo 2"

Gorilla Angreb, "Bedre Tider"

Springy Danish punks recall better times. The "punchy" production here sanitizes inchoate rockabilly leanings, and the clarion chorus, which each glorious time still feels clipped, rings true, unmuddied. Bizarre harmonic schemes shroud the thing in a slasher-film aesthetic, but these accoutrements can't allay the X worship that lies at the core. They're desperate: get used to it.

"Bedre Tider"

William Martyr 17, "Blame It Red"

Razorbacks wrench hearts, calculating catharsis with more than boys' poise. Wrecking-ball first-chair bass, alluring unison figures, and that voice all make this slow-churner strangely immediate. Unlike many contemporaries, WM17 songs reach no obvious stopping point: the steady cadence of glides and yowls could extend into the night, unfazed. When four minutes feels stingy, something's right.

"Blame It Red"

BRUNCH: The Bananas

Left-field "Peel Sessions" from Sacramento's finest. All-heart Frogger vocals, sizzling six-stringzz, and some of the best melodies this side of 1959 allow conventional building blocks to recombine into some really unforgettable punk rock. "I Gotta Be Me" most acutely channels the sock hop, but the one-size-fits-all spite propelling the ensuing trio shan't be counted out: "Big Blue Marble" charges that much harder. All this and more on the essential First 10 Years collection — for low, low Plan-It-X prices, to boot. And yes, it's a pun.

"I Gotta Be Me"
"Amy's Birthday"
"My Charmed Life"
"Big Blue Marble"

Assfactor 4, "Attempted Control"

Miscellaneous sedition from Palmetto pranksters. Making the northwest passage to '82 San Francisco, the unclassifiables dig up a Code of Honor tune, ignore the code itself, and carve some flabby seconds off the whole beast. Aerodynamic if nothing else, and better than the thick-headed original. On my honor.

"Attempted Control"

Jerome's Dream, "My Most Recent Left–Right Brain Argument"

Turn-o'-the-century heroes introspect, burn bright, pass out. Making blast beats a threat again, JD's violent polyrhythms evoke titular schizophrenia better than the wailed lyrics, and in the space of forty seconds sufficient ground has been bulldozed for the life-affirming coda to blossom. Splitmates Orchid cower in awe, bested. Maybe Spirit of Versailles, debatably Trillion Barnacle Lapse approached this piercing vocal stratosphere, but they cheated — which is to say, they sang into microphones. File under "unplugged."

"My Most Recent Left–Right Brain Argument"

BRUNCH: All Scars

D.C. dream team genre-hops, reinflecting the local canon in stages and tactically letting it decompose. This "Early Set," from Early/Ambient, catches the shape-shifters at their least loose, scrapes and chunks aplenty. Bettis delivers his Meta-matic twitcheroo over a damaged battery that pushes the '90s-Dischord playbook a few yards outside its comfort zone. Occasionally the band of brothers — here a Canty, there a Canty — congeals for a righteous Fugazian holler-chorus, but then they back off and start bending strings again. They need their space.

Early Set

Gauze, "大きなサツマイモ"

Veteran Easterners emerge from their growlery 26 years later, mean and gutteral and bloody as ever. A cornucopia of harsh tones, well fermented and then unleashed at light speed with only an intuitive nod to the strictures of time. Vicious and nearly unsuitable for headphone listening: the threatening snare stings like a drill bit to the left temple. Day jobs and midlife crises mean we might not see another LP until about 2016, but keep hope alive.

"大きなサツマイモ"

Eat Skull, "Punk Trips"

Gristly PDX treble hounds milk it and don't look back. Sick to Death is every bit as compelling as they say, but it's a grab bag, a maxed-out postmillennial potpourri. "Punk Trips" is the most immediately anthemic. Drowned beneath waves of organ and those insistent bullhorn vocals, the existence of a rhythm section is merely implied. Somehow, though, the track charges like none other, interpellating and then firmly berating all comers: "This is what matters. This is relevant."

"Punk Trips"

BRUNCH: I Like Japanese Hardcore

Confessional Clinton-era cuddle pop straight from Neverland, i.e. Bloomington. Cloying and citational to no end: note the multiple, discrete references to mutton chops, sweaters, Calvin Johnson, and surely other creddish period tics. Everything's out front — every barre chord, every furry, gaping long vowel — for coarse-toothed inspection. No secrets — we're here to listen.

Live on WFHB

June Paik, "Echoes"

Ominous extremo pads Deutschland's fertile scene, channels Quebec's. Never terribly terse, the band plumbs convention to build, section by epic section, an insistent parade of doom. But the real prize with this LP is sort of the lyric sheet, which, especially in translation, showcases one band member's sideways stabs at an English literary voice. For "The Inquest," read, "Reality dastardly takes advantage of conscious moments / Run the gauntlet in slo-mo / Interrupted only by profane stagnation." The penultimate track, "Coarse Sphere," unfolds, "Peakedly threatening monoliths / Point at small amounts of lunacy turned to gas / Like at the surrounded enemy / Loamy soil washed by the rain / Shines resplendent like glass beneath my feet." Saetia got your tongue?

"Echoes"

Sam and Joe, "Save the Children"

Cautionary post-Soviet manifesto for clean living. Sam McPheeters steps out from Born Against but doesn't pause for breath on the definitive cut from Vermiform's 1993 Fear of Smell compilation. The rage slowly builds as he and the interlocutor outdo one another; note, by way of correlation, the gradually more intense Gotham accent. Diets, dollars, doublespeak: it's all in there as this yarn of permanent revolution spins out of control. Quiz to follow.

"Save the Children"

Crom-Tech, "Wemcraftor:Limsniffer [• 12 a wixot as Q off the Rolltarp •]"

Two-man stylings from a parallel universe. Mick Barr, in advance of his current "avant-metal" conceits, churns finely wrought post–post-hardcore, pushing every limit. The words mean nothing, but there's more frenzy and just pure release than anywhere in the Orthrelm–Octis–Ocrilim family, which can give off a Guitar Center veneer of noodleage. Almost a song, but not.

"Wemcraftor:Limsniffer"

BRUNCH: Dow Jones and the Industrials

Provincial unrest atop the crest of the new wave. "Can't Stand the Midwest" drives, a — perhaps the — paradigmatic KBD fight song. It drew a response from Indiana's Gizmos ("The Midwest Can Be Alright"), which culminated before long in an amicably split single. Less conspicuous in the longue durée are its bookends, dehumanizing synthers underwritten by prickly picking and a hollowed-out voice. "Let's Go Steady" oscillates between that paranoia and a legitimately stomping chorus. But the low high tech returns to swallow the coda, promising better things. 1980: Morning in America.

"Let's Go Steady"
"Can't Stand the Midwest"
"Indeterminism"

Lucky Dragons, "Ivy Girl"

Divinely inspired, massively illegal jungle grunge. Luke Fischbeck loops that song from that album by that band, making it whir and purr and bounce — which is to say, unrecognizable until you think about it. The sound of a cardigan unraveling.

"Ivy Girl"

Cobra Kai, "Fragile"

No-mercy karatecore. Cincinnati screamers strike first, strike hard, flailing and at times tempering their craft with keyboard. Out of commission after a short run — surprise — but not entirely out of date. What is the problem, Mr. Lawrence?

"Fragile"

BRUNCH: O Level

Reflexive schoolboy punk straight outta the sixth form. On their first seven-inch (not pictured), pre-TVP Ed Ball and friends (not Treacy) sing what they know: standardized tests, West London, and the little hypocrisies already fraying the edges of the U.K. scene. "Pseudo[-]Punk" more than slightly resonates with "Part[-]Time Punks": O Level, name-dropped in that standard, watches one rebel surrender his "leather bomber jacket" for a "three-piece suit." Because he sort of means it, Ball rolls his R's like Johnny Rotten. Backing vocals ensue.

"Pseudo Punk"
"O Levels"
"East Sheen"

The Penetrators, "Drive Me Crazy"

Warped, frustrated strut from Syracuse proto-punks. Self-appointed "kings of basement rock" find their queen: Christian D'Orbit, the here-today guest fronting this squad of toughs, keeps it saucy, each line encased in prickly spite. Instructive musings on the life of a mannequin occasion the boiling point; primitive dueling guitars keep us guessing. Manlier cuts can be found on the almost-recent Swami anthology, from which the adjoining artwork is lifted.

"Drive Me Crazy"

A Fine Boat, That Coffin! "Ey, haste ne Bombe geköpft oder was?"

Mangled jazz ground into post-emotive oblivion. German technicians approach the asymptote of prog but back off, splicing influences, before the beast can swallow them alive. Peerless — totally unpredictable and occasionally, like the plague of your choice, a little catchy.

"Ey, haste ne Bombe geköpft oder was?"

BRUNCH: Manrae

All-business patiencecore jets the Ebullition groove trans-Atlantic. Leicester boys spin yarns of injury, regret, and the inadequacy of language. By 1995, nothing new, but Manrae's steady builds and articulate mouthpiece — or is it just the accent? — present a new vision of emo composure, measured and contemplative without the "violent" histrionics. This time, chaos ain't me.

"Mr. Leuchter"
"Pacata Hibernia"
"Sleight of Hand"

L'Amico di Martucci, "Invierno y verano"

Thrash italiano. La Piovra justifiably swelled up during their short life, but first there was L'Amico di Martucci, Venetian pugilists with the errant D.R.I. cover and some songs in Spanish. This is one of them, but the high-octane screams aren't the main event — those in tune with American "razacore" and, say, Piovra realize that HC conventions level what phonetic differences do persist between the two tongues. Think of the rhythm section here as a kind of exploratory committee, or a team of chefs: thrash three ways. Again genre conventions take hold: each "verse" shuffles the canonically admissible beats in and out, from a downbeat stomp to double time, back again, and on to blast beats for good measure. Martucci seem playfully in control of the blinders limning their craft, but the little slice-and-dice doesn't distract from the basic songsmithery — never consumes the project but informs it.

"Invierno y verano"

Crystal Stilts, "Converging in the Quiet"

Subdued jangle reapplies Mark E. Smith's three R's in a new idiom. For this quintet in Brooklyn that claims a Vivian Girl on drums and Calvin Johnson's conscience holding the mic, repetition rules the day — no deviation at all from the near-motorik chord structure, and no discernable emotion. Maybe "Crippled Croon" has the superior melody — the whole EP is strong, so don't not look elsewhere — but this one exploits the stubborn circularity to its very fullest potential. Cold-weather pop, Kiwi flavor aside.

"Converging in the Quiet"

BRUNCH: Talulah Gosh

Tinny test runs of four faves, recorded before "Beatnik Boy" made it official. The mix sort of crashes together; only the supple bass asserts itself, bubbling under all the static and pots and pans. "Just a Dream" lags, but "I Told You So" here eclipses the eventual flexi edition, thriving on the ramshackle production, seething, scheming. The earliest yelps from the greatest pop band, template for a legion of unequals. See: '86.

"Steaming Train"
"I Told You So"
"Just a Dream"
"Sunny Inside"

Pants Yell!, "Two French Sisters"

Cambridge pop dons administer one of the most wrenching album-closers in recent memory. Sparse nice-boy plucking washes over the plaintive narrative that, from other lips, might seem bitter and solipsistic. Effortlessly cites the Smiths, but this twee-archivist trio — the record is titled Alison Statton — feels radically unchained to specific forebears. Epic, immediate, definitive — and the spoken interlude is reason enough to leave that office and never come back.

"Two French Sisters"