A couple of weeks back, I composed one of my somewhat annual “favorite music of the year” posts, prefacing it with a long, laborious preamble about how my personal tastes, listening habits and preferred means of “consuming” music have (d)evolved in manners pointedly at odds with the times. Put simply, not only do I sneer at the majority of contemporary popular music, but I also refuse to dutifully suck at the slimy teats of Spotify to satiate my listening needs. This doesn’t mean I don’t check music out on platforms like YouTube or on the excellent Bandcamp, but whenever possible, when I’m so motivated, I prefer to obtain the compact disc. Obviously, pursuing this particular option has become incrementally more difficult with each passing year, and let’s not even delve into my dogged insistence on still using iPod Classics. I tread a hard, stubborn road, in this capacity.
In any case, as detailed in that previous post, much as with years prior, I did indeed discover a clutch of brand new songs, albums and artists that I latched right onto. The list of my 2021 favorites, however, was fairly brief, give that, as I also pointed out, a lot of the music I’d warmed to this year was technically released before 2021. Of the bona fide “new releases” that I got excited about, however, my top three were Crawler, the fourth album by IDLES, Dark Matters, the 19th (and possibly final?) album by British Punk stalwarts, The Stranglers and, finally, Live - Friday March 15, 2020 by the Art Gray Noizz Quintet, the new-ish noise-rock “supergroup” helmed by former Lubricated Goat frontman, Art “Stu Spasm” Gray.
Indeed, all three of those releases are fucking excellent, and you should all go snap them up at once. I feel remiss in not also citing Virtual Control, the debut long-player by erstwhile Killing Joke drummer Big Paul Ferguson, which I wrote about more extensively here. I practically lived inside that record during most of the late spring and early summer, but those seasons already seem like a century ago here in the gloomy throes of 2021’s death rattle.
But just when I'd figured it was high time to blithely toss a funeral wreath on the concept of new music of 2021, I heard something new that just about blew me off the porch, so to speak.
Randomly discovered by the timelessly excellent This Isn’t Happiness, The Wind-Ups are a lo-fi blitzkrieg of old skool, stripped-down punk rock with a COVID-conscious mentality for our troubled new age. As I rapturously evangelized them on Facebook, they sound like Joey Ramone playing Modern Lovers covers backed by the Jesus & Mary Chain. They are fucking perfect.
Here’s a quick taste…
Fuckin’, RIGHT?
Anyway, as it turns out, The Wind-Ups are not so much a “they” as a “he.” The cooped-up, pandemic project of restless rocker Jake Sprecher, otherwise known in indie circles for his membership in outfits like The Shankers, 24 Satellites and several other names I’d never heard of. Sprecher also plays in Jonathan Richman’s band, so my Modern Lovers call was spot-on. The Wind-Ups, meanwhile, were birthed after Sprecher was gifted an 8 track mixer/recorder right as COVID was coming down. Shut inside indefinitely, Sprecher channeled his boredom and restlessness into Try Not To Think, a full (albeit breathlessly stealthy) album of non-stop guitar trauma that is equal parts exorcism, catharsis, primal scream and barbaric yawp. While indeed flecked with cheeky references to the pandemic (“Lockdown,” “Drinking Bleach”), the album’s eleven tracks buzz by in a manner that is shamelessly retro-leaning, but somehow not in a nostalgic dad-rock sorta way. I mean, while songs like “Much to Do” could easily be mistaken for outtakes from Rocket to Russia, there’s still a bracing, contemporary quality about them.
Anyway, if you’re curious, you can read a great interview with Jake Sprecher here, download the album from Bandcamp here and/or order it on vinyl here.
IT ROCKS! GO GET IT!
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