Featured Releases


Vanity: Yer Fucking Boring 7"

Limited two-song single from this NYC skinhead/oi! band. It's way limited and already sold out from the label, so if you think you might want this I would encourage you to go ahead and pull the trigger now. In case you didn't pick up Vanity's debut LP (which also sold out in a flash), they sound a LOT like Skrewdriver... they build their songs around the same kinds of hyper-speed Chuck Berry riffs, and the singer has a similar melodic growl to Ian Stuart. I know I've said it many times before in these descriptions, but I've always been a big fan of the bands that lie on the more melodic end [...]

Vexx: Give and Take 7"

After a much talked-about debut 12" on M'Lady's, here's the follow-up EP from Olympia's Vexx. In general Vexx have kind of a classic, guitar-heavy punk sound; the label's description mentions Legal Weapon and the Avengers, and they could have dropped an X comparison just as easily. That goes a long way toward describing at least three of the four songs on this EP, but my favorite by far is the first song, which has a slightly different feel than the other three songs. Something about it sounds very British to me... it doesn't sound like any particular band [...]
 

The Fall: This Nation's Saving Grace 12"

One of my favorite LPs from the mighty Fall finally gets reissued! Whenever someone expresses curiosity about the Fall, This Nation's Saving Grace is always the LP that I point them toward. As the best and most consistent LP of the Fall's most accessible period, TNSG is the Fall at their most proto-indie, which is still very much the Fall and hence weird by most anyone's standard. Songs like "Spoilt Victorian Child," "L.A.," and "Gut of the Quantifier" seem to me like the main place where bands like Pavement and the Pixies copped [...]

Anasazi / Survival: Communion 12"

LP version of what was originally a split cassette between these two dark NYC punk bands. You might recognize a couple of the Anasazi songs from their recent LP, Nasty Witch Rock, but these versions are a lot rawer and more direct. It's funny, one of my few gripes with that Anasazi LP was that the production was a bit muddier than I would have hoped, but I think this even rawer sound actually suits the band even better. These tracks have an explosive energy that Nasty Witch Rock didn't capture as well, particularly on the electronic-based final track, "I Was a Teenage Criminal," which is [...]