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Useless Eaters: Music for Clout 12” (Total Punk Records) I’ve been a Useless Eaters fan since their 2011 LP Daily Commute, which lived in the “recently listened” pile next to my turntable for years before I could bear to file it away. Useless Eaters racked up a hefty, consistently strong discography between 2011 and 2016, going dormant for nearly a decade before returning with a surprise single on the Italian garage-punk institution Goodbye Boozy Records late last year and now this (comeback?) album on American garage-punk institution Total Punk Records. If you’re a fan of any of Useless Eaters’ previous records, you’ll have no trouble warming up to Music for Clout. The revived Useless Eaters still features hooky riffs, buzzing synths, angular rhythms, and Seth Sutton’s trademark disaffected vocals. Yet the sound has evolved, too. For starters, Music for Cloutsounds more layered than the Useless Eaters of old, with criss-crossing rhythms, textures, and melodies constantly vying for your attention. Alongside the density and the fuzz-drenched production, the way these songs venture out on punk’s progressive / experimental limb without losing their hooks reminds me of Swell Maps’ seminal debut A Trip to Marineville. But there’s no mistaking Music for Clout as anything but a product of today, particularly thanks to the album’s numerous samples, which sound like they’re taken from Instagram reels and sound blown out like someone is blasting them through their phone’s speaker a couple seats away from you on public transportation. The album’s lyrical conceit is also worth mentioning: an extended call-out of the fakes and poseurs who see music as the most expedient way to climb the social ladder. If you’re looking for something that balances the hooks with a heaping helping of aural and lyrical bite, this does the trick nicely.