>>Nostalgia For Infinity

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The excellently-named Stegosaur hail from San Antonio, Texas, and play tremulous indie power-pop with delicate sensitivity and walloping distorted choruses. The Adventure 7″ boasts three such tracks.

Opener ‘A Headache’ opens with simple palm-mutes and a tamborine underpinning the lines ”Strike a balance between mean and pop sensibility hoping the tracks that we chose keep the interest of record executives pleading in rhyme not to be ignored.” It’s tongue in cheek, of course, later adding “so the equity used buys a van and some clothes.” (I actually can’t make out the lyrics between that bit, which is kinda annoying.) After that things kick off a bit with clean, powerful singing and loud power chords… plus glockenspiel, you know, because that’s how they roll.

I’ve seen Stegosaur compared to Cursive but I’m more reminded of Desaperacidos, the one-album Bright Eyes side-project, as Stegosaur’s singer has more than a hint of Conor Oberst about his delivery. The simple music, quiet/loud dynamics and fragilility of the song also remind me a little of Canada’s Now, Now Every Children.

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Hailing from Exeter, Bull See Red are a personable and energetic punk band who’ve apparently only been together for about a year and a half. ‘A Girl Called Murder’ is their debut mini album; it was originally released late last year on Lockjaw Records and it’s 8 tracks are an impressive collection of tunes.

Musically they’ve a fondness for anthemic choruses and simple but addictive hooks, with occasional shifts into crashing, meaty alt-rock riffs and softer ballad-like parts. A few obvious comparisons spring to mind; vocally I’m reminded of Ontario’s Billy Talent if singer Ben Kowalewicz were a bit more cheeky and self-deprecating. You know… if he were British. Apocalypse Hoboken also spring to mind; the snotty Chicago punks had a pugnacious but emotive attitude that also emerges in ‘A Girl Called Murder’. In some of the more low-key parts I’m reminded of Surrey’s defunct alt-rock three piece Reuben.

Enough of the comparisons, on to the songs. The eponymous track boasts a pacey and catchy chorus riff with some nicely contrasting minor key verses and harmonics; lyrically, though, it name-checks the band as well as the album which is a bit cringe-worthy, you know? Good tune, though, and all is forgiven with ‘Multi-Storey Massacre’, which has a ludicrously simple but brilliant verse riff. There’s only a couple of notes in it but it works well.

As the album goes on it becomes apparent that the songs are of a formula, with quiet/loud dynamics being a common technique, but this is no bad thing when they’re this solid. There’s a lot to like; for example, gang vocals are used to good affect in ‘Roll Royale’, and I can really see that being a lot of fune live. Every so often the frontman busts out a line that demonstrates he has more range than he tends to use (he’d probably hate to hear the comparison but his breathy style reminds me of Matt Bellamy’s performance in early Muse; for the record, I was a fan back in the day). The lyrics are very directly addressed and ambiguous but with the addressee never specified they remain open to personal interpretation.

Brilliantly, the album wraps up with ‘Pig Head’, an anti-Nazi ballad which if I’m hearing the lyrics correctly invites Combat-18 members (a group of far-right Nazi thugs) to kiss the singer: fucking genius.

By the looks of it the band have never played Brighton (although they did once play Hove, actually), which is a shame… hopefully they’ll pay a visit soon. They also have a couple of new EPs out which I’ll see about reviewing on here in the future.

Official site | MySpace | Lockjaw Records

Holy folkpunk, Batman! US DIY punk label Plan-It-X Records is closing up shop. Apparently Chris Johnston “doesn’t want to be a dinosaur” running a label based on selling cheap CDs in an age when “CD sales are dropping like crazy”. Read the full story over at PunkNews, or wherever they picked it up from.

The decision makes sense, but I’m still a bit sad… I don’t have a huge number of Plan-It-X releases as the budget aspect of what they do kind of vanishes after you ship it from the US to the UK, but I respect their DIY ethics and they’ve put out some great bands. I think my first encounters with the label were Against Me!’s Crime As Forgiven By CDEP (two of my favourite records ever) and a This Bike Is A Pipe Bomb album I downloaded using AudioGalaxy (remember that?).

Fond farewells to all involved with the label and good luck with all future projects.

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Brighton’s Offcuts (disclaimer: my friends and some of my housemates) have finally released the video for their single ‘Flesh’ (warning: contains some graphic scenes of violence, gore and burgers):

I say single, but it’s not been released as one. Maybe one day! Still, the video’s goddamn slick, huh?