Various Artists
Various Artists Hair: Chicago Punk Cuts [4/5] What do you get when you put 14 of Chicago’s best punk bands inside a barber shop-turned-recording studio over 14 days and make ’em each crank out an exclusive recording? If your comprehension skills are a little lax, you get Hair: Chicago Punk Cuts. The sequel to 2003’s...
Whole Wheat Bread
Whole Wheat Bread Punk Life EP [3/5] Whole Wheat Bread’s 2005 debut, Minority Rules, proved that the all-black Jacksonville, Florida-based trio were much more than a cross-cultural novelty-the group could play Green Day-esque white-boy punk as good as any, um, white boy. And there was more: The three hip-hop bonus tracks on Minority hinted at...
Stole Your Woman
Stole Your Woman The Scene [3/5] While Stole Your Woman may not be one of the most prolific monikers for a band, the name of their second full-length release, The Scene, is a grand summation of 12 culminating, meaty, traditional pop-punk tracks without the anarchy and heavy-syllable drawl. However, a riff-heavy, rapid-drum stupor finds SYW...
Scout's Honor
Scout’s Honor I Am The Dust [3/5] Curveball! A label known predominantly for the trademark Gainesville punk sound, No Idea has gone a different direction by signing Illinois duo Scout’s Honor, and the subsequent release of their new record, I Am The Dust. An interesting dichotomy, the band juxtaposes a folk-punk sound with that of...
Hot Snakes
Hot Snakes Thunder Down Under [5/5] Judging by the amount of times Hot Snakes are namedropped in a typical issue of AP, an oral history of the band is (hopefully) inevitable. However, while all three of the sadly defunct band’s proper full-lengths are classics, Hot Snakes really thrived live; which is why Thunder Down Under...
Giddy Motors
Giddy Motors Do Easy [3/5] Giddy Motors have the ’90s post-punk aesthetic down. Think Shellac, the Jesus Lizard and Fugazi, and you’re in the right neighborhood. Still, Giddy Motors find a way to add their own stink to the street-sweeping gurgle-murk bass, high-pitched guitar clang and spastic, accent-heavy drumming style. Unlike the average modern rock...
The Generators
The Generators The Winter Of Discontent [4/5] For fans of the Generators, some material on The Winter Of Discontent will be quite familiar-five songs were featured as bonus tracks on the U.S. version of Excess Betrayal…And Our Dearly Departed. But that repetition can be seen as a good thing, because a few of the repeats,...
Billy Reese Peters
Billy Reese Peters Almost Heaven [4/5] Gainesville, Florida, has given us lots of great bands-Hot Water Music, Less Than Jake and Against Me! to name just a few. But there’s a new contender in town, and their name is Billy Reese Peters. In many ways, Almost Heaven epitomizes the grit and gravel of northern Florida’s...
Amity
Amity Internecine [3/5] If one wanted to dismiss Amity for playing usually middling nü-emo, they’d have to consequently dismiss the band’s knack for driving guitars and subtle hooks, and their choice to forego most of the genre’s tempting clichés. If Circa Survive played about two keys lower, chances are it might sound like Internecine-but maybe...