Did I really get out of bed at 5:00 am just so I could listen to the new Hayley and the Crushers' single and perhaps write a little something about it before heading off to work? That's the level of geekery I have reached! I did not know that "Cringeworthy" was coming out until yesterday afternoon, so I approached this song with zero idea of what to expect beyond knowing it would be super-awesome because, well, it's Hayley and the freaking Crushers! So you're getting my fresh, off-the-cuff take with no time for polishing or overthinking. Bathing and breakfasting await, so I have to hurry.
On that note, I must say "Cringeworthy" is, as I presumed, super-awesome! In fact, it might extra-super-awesome. It's honestly one of my favorite songs this band has ever done, and the vibe reminds me of those great singles the band put out when it first signed to Kitten Robot Records. I love that this song lives in the world of pure pop goodness with punk and new wave influences — always a sweet spot in the Crusherverse. This song is classic Crushers without necessarily trying to be classic Crushers. It's got a serious, somewhat heavy theme, but it's still wonderfully intoxicating in a way all great pop ought to be. The music video is an absolute hoot. Overall, this song and video seem to be going the opposite direction from the popular sentiment that all those millions of people out there doing their thing online are so very cringeworthy. Perhaps, you know, we ought not to be so quick to judge people for what they're putting into the universe — especially if they're doing what they love. How does all that judging and shaming serve us? Perhaps my interpretation is self-serving since what I do is certainly cringeworthy in the eyes of many, but I'm taking something very positive from this song. My first few spins with "Cringeworthy" were more than worth the lost sleep. I can't wait for the album!
Back with his first new solo tracks in a couple years, Gene Champagne hits the mark with a new digital single (arriving in advance of a vinyl release) in his signature punky power pop style. This ace drummer (Brad Marino, Teenage Head, The Killjoys) is also a formidable singer and songwriter, and he's really speaking my language on this crackling summertime two-fer. "Gimme Ammunition" is snappy power pop that will have you tapping your toes and humming along in no time flat. When that hook hits, it hits big! In just a few ticks over two minutes, the song is over and done and leaving you wanting more. That, my friends, is pop songwriting 101. On the virtual flip side, "She's An Atom Bomb" is a little faster and punkier — yet every bit as sunny and catchy. This song is a total earworm, and the lyrics are hilarious! This is a perfect little punk-pop single for warm weather season, and it's sure to go over well with just about anyone who regularly visits this site. You can always count on Canada to come through!
A good, old-fashioned best-of compilation album is something you rarely see in the indie music world. But that's exactly what we have here from Bart and the Brats, France's #1 '77-style garage punk (one-man) band. Out on London's Dirty Water Records, the new LP Pushin' Your Luck features 15 selections from Bart's existing discography (consisting of four-and-a-half albums and six EPs) and one previously unreleased track called "Pissin' in the Wind." Putting out this album was either a terrible idea or a stroke of genius. A good chunk of these songs have never been available on an LP. And if you've been aware of Bart and the Brats but have never pulled the trigger on buying a record, Pushin' Your Luck is a fine sampling of the band's body of work. It includes a whole slew of fan favorites such as "Can't Stand the Beatles," "Masochistic Pigs," "Constant Nonsense," "Good Cop, Bad Cop," and "Sick, Sick, Sick."
Recorded by Lo'Spider at Swampland, Toulouse and remastered for this release, these 16 tracks blast out raw, primitive three-chord punk that thumps you in the head with one hand and gives you the finger with the other. The joke about Bart and the Brats might be something along the lines of "If you've heard one of their records, you've heard them all." But that's a good thing, right? We don't want things like progress, artistic ambition, or proper musicianship ruining this band. Just look at some of the labels that have jumped on the Bart train: No Front Teeth, Sweet Time, Big Neck, Take the City....man, that's the best of the best in the punk rock world! This band embodies just about everything that makes punk music so great. I don't want to tell you to not buy all Bart's stuff. But since we're living in times of economic distress, you might need to be stingy with your cash. On that note, Pushin' Your Luck is a lot of value for the money and an excellent representation of a truly killer band.
Back with its first full-length album since 2020, long-running Minneapolis alt-rock outfit High On Stress delivers an absolute winner on the 12-song Still Here. This is the band's first album on Rum Bar Records, and it slots perfectly between Tom Baker and Mono In Stereo on the label's roster. What we've got here is good, solid Midwestern heart-on-sleeve rock 'n roll branching from the Replacements/Bash & Pop family tree. The album successfully combines a singer/songwriter's soul with the no-nonsense punch of a heartland bar band. Nick Leet knows how to craft a song with a killer hook that will also move you on a deeper level. I hear these songs and imagine myself sitting in some dimly-lit dive while I drink a pint of cheap beer and ponder my personal wins and losses and the general sadness of the human condition.
I always have a soft spot for this sort of rootsy, power pop–tinged honest everyman rock, and High On Stress pulls it off as well as any band on the scene these days. The songwriting, musicianship, and production all hit the mark. The fantastic single "Over/Thru" (which Leet co-wrote with Kevin Salem) reappears here, but it's certainly not the only standout. Opening cut "House of Cards" is a knockout mid-tempo rocker that brings to mind the heyday of American alternative rock. "Plans Have Plans" is such a relatable gem of a song that it sounds instantly familiar, as if you've known it all your life. The title track is nothing short of an anthem — a proper album closer if I ever heard one. For a band to be sounding this good after more than two decades in the game is a pretty remarkable thing. It's not every day that you come across music with this much soul. Pop open a cold one and get High on Stress.
Alright! Here we go! When it comes to straight-up killer punk rock that rips hard and fast, MK Ultras are one of the best new bands representing for the old school. Goodbye Boozy Records has just unleashed the Cleveland-based foursome's third release, a 4-song 7" that will smash anything that dares to get in its way. This, my friends, is quintessential Rust Belt punk rock. It's not quite '77 punk and not quite hardcore punk but rather something perfectly in between. These are tough, hard hitting tunes that kick you straight in the ass yet will still get your toes tapping. The Clevo-punk in this band's musical DNA is undeniable, but they aren't ripping anyone off. They're doing their own thing, and it's real deal punk rock like you rarely hear these days. Great freaking stuff from dead end America!
I always love a good sequel. My friend Jay Castro and I tandem-posted a while back on the ten punk bands from the 1990s that are most essential to us. So we decided the obvious next step was to write up similar lists for the 2000s. If we were trying to explain to an extraterrestrial or someone who wasn't yet born in the 2000s why we love the punk music of that decade so much, which bands would we mention?
This was an interesting project for me to work on. For me, the '90s were my "heyday" for punk rock. That was when I discovered punk music, started doing zines, and was going to shows all the time. I have a certain romantic attachment to the punk music of the '90s that I don't quite have with later time periods. That said, I was still writing about punk music with great enthusiasm for most of the 2000s. I think what defined 2000s punk for me were the changes in the way I followed it. In the '90s, it was all about Maximumrocknroll and other print publications, record stores, mail order catalogs, tape trading with pen pals, and seeing bands at live shows. In the 2000s, the internet took over. Webzines and message boards were all the rage, and it became quicker and easier to interact with more people who liked the same stuff as me. By the end of the decade, YouTube, social media, and downloading & streaming were coming on strong. I had become more reclusive in my personal life but was more connected than ever to a worldwide community of punk rock fandom.
I shock myself sometimes when I do the math and realize that the music of the 2000s is now anywhere from 17 to 26 years old. That was how old '60s music (which seemed ancient) was when I was first getting into punk! So as I look back on the punk music of the 2000s, I can't assume that all of you remember this stuff or are even aware of it. But I imagine a lot you will be very familiar with all these bands.
I reiterate: this is not my list of the "greatest" or "top" punk bands of the 2000s. It's just the ten bands that are most essential to me on a personal level — the ones I keep going back to, year after year, decade after decade. This was a difficult list to limit to ten bands. I left off plenty of bands that I acknowledge were massively influential (Marked Men, The Briefs, Jay Reatard, The Spits, just to name a few). I decided not to recycle any bands from my '90s list, so that excluded the likes of the Dimestore Haloes and The Prostitutes. I left off a few really great one-album-and-done bands like The Busy Signals, The Lids, and The Minds. So this easily could have been a top 25. I wanted to select a list that would reflect all the different kinds of punk music I was listening to in the 2000s, and that's exactly what I ended up doing.
Here we go, then: in no particular order, the ten 2000s punk bands that are the most essential to me!
The Ergs!
If you've been following me for the past 25 years, you are probably tired of me talking about The Ergs! But that's one hill I'm willing to die on. In the 2000s, The Ergs! were more than just a great pop-punk band. Their genius was being the embodiment of music geekdom and geekdom in general. If Egghead. were their big brothers and Boris the Sprinkler their uncles, The Ergs! took that whole dork punk thing and ran with it. They never got proper credit for the variety and depth of their influences. You could write a 600-page book just on the cultural references in their lyrics. dorkrockcorkrod was a genre-defining album of its time, and it has only gotten better with age. And why does nobody ever talk about Upstairs Downstairs? Somehow this band amassed enough non-album tracks to fill not one but two odds and sods compilations! The Ergs! were the kind of band that would do fantastically ridiculous things like back their song "Blue" with a cover of Nirvana's "Blew" and turn a Pennsylvania geography joke into a love song. How could I not love a band like that?
The Exploding Hearts
The presence of The Exploding Hearts on this list will surprise no one. This is the first band that a lot of people would think of when the topic of 2000s punk came up. The mere fact that we now talk of "punk powerpop" or "powerpop punk" as a genre onto itself tells you what a game changer this band was. Guitar Romantic arrived with considerable buzz behind it and lived up to all of it — it was an instant classic on arrival, and it still shapes the musical universe that you and I now inhabit. It's record I'll never tire of. And The "(Making) Teenage Faces" 7" was a classic in its own right. RIP Adam, Matt, Jeremy, and Louie.
The Bobbyteens
I've been waiting a long time for someone to bring The Bobbyteens' catalog into the digital realm. This is a band that needs to be heard. The best we can do now are a few tracks on YouTube. The Bobbyteens came out of the Bay Area garage punk/budget trash scene in the later '90s but added their own secret sauce: a little power pop, a dash of '70s punk, a splash of early rock 'n' roll, and a big heap of '60s girl group energy. Tina Lucchesi owned the 2000s. Tina and the Total Babes, Deadly Weapons, and Top Ten were all absolutely awesome. But The Bobbyteens will always have a special place in my heart. Not So Sweet from 2000 is well worth tracking down if you can find it. The world barely seems to remember 2004's Cruisin' For A Bruisin', and that's a crying shame. Somebody please reissue this stuff!
Tranzmitors
In the 2000s, I was thrilled to see many bands blur the lines between power pop and punk rock. Few did that better than Vancouver's Tranzmitors, whose run of greatness throughout the latter years of the 2000s is still not talked about nearly enough. Their self-titled album was the best 1979 punk-pop album to come out in the 2000s. If I can convince Jay that a sequel to this sequel is in order, Jeffrey McCloy will get his flowers a second time!
The Dents
I am still baffled as to why The Dents weren't more acclaimed and recognized outside of their native Boston. Co-fronted by Michelle Paulhus and Jen D'Angora, The Dents were pretty much the quintessential Boston punk rock band. They had it all: hooky tunes, killer harmonies, amazing lyrics, and boundless rock 'n' roll energy. 2005's Time for Biting is an album I'd put up against almost any 2000s punk rock album. Fun fact: The Dents were on Abbey Lounge Records, a label co-run by the man himself, Malibu Lou Mansdorf!
The Kidnappers
Formed from the ashes of the Highschool Rockers, Germany's The Kidnappers were one of the bands leading a youthful new wave of garage punk in the early 2000s. Ransom Notes & Telephone Calls infused a '70s punk influence into the band's lo-fi rock 'n' roll approach, and it was one of the albums that put Alien Snatch Records on the map. And by the time 2006's Neon Signs came out, the twins Chris and Philipp had seamlessly integrated a '70s power pop influence into their sound. "Spanish Girls" was one of the best singles released by anyone in the 2000s. Another change in style led to another new band name, so now these guys are going strong as the punk rock band Küken.
Spazzys
When it comes to truly perfect pop-punk albums, Aloha! Go BananasbyMelbourne's Spazzys is in that category. Of course everyone knows the greatest Ramones knock-off ever recorded, "Paco Doesn't Love Me." But how about "The Sunshine Drive"? "Action City"? "Hey Hey Baby"? "Steal a Kiss"? I could go on and on! It was remarkable for a band this young to arrive so fully formed with a bag of influences that included not just the Ramones but also '60s pop and girl groups, power pop, and '90s pop-punk. This is probably an all-time top 20 favorite album for me. Their later releases (some stretching into the 2010s) were awesome as well.
The Unlovables
When I first heard The Unlovables' demo (on a comp tape Lew Houston made for me), I was so floored that I almost drove my car off the road. It was an instant "Where has this band been all my life?" moment, and I was excited when The Punk Rock Club EP was released shortly thereafter. By the time Crush*Boyfriend*Heartbreak came out in 2005, Hallie Bulleit and company had refined their craft to the point where they were able to deliver one of the greatest pop-punk albums ever made. 2007's Heartsickle was pretty great in its own right. If the secret recipe for pop-punk is to be ability to write fun, upbeat-sounding songs about devastating emotional experiences, no band embodied that more than The Unlovables.
Zodiac Killers
Sometimes the Zodiac Killers get overlooked when people talk about Greg Lowery's musical legacy. Everyone brings up Supercharger, The Rip Offs, and The Infections. The Control Freaks get plenty of love. But the Zodiac Killers rivaled all those bands — especially on their 2000s LPs. When it comes to (as Lowery calls it) "fast, catchy, stupid punk rock," albums like Society's Offenders and Radiation Beach are as good as it gets. Those final years of Rip Off Records are very underrated.
Smogtown
Having first emerged in the late '90s with some face-melting singles on Hostage Records, Orange County's Smogtown really hit its stride in the 2000s with the dark vision and blistering melodic beach punk sound of albums like Führers Of The New Wave and Domesticviolenceland. When you talk about definitive, legendary Southern California punk bands, Smogtown takes a back seat to no one.
And that's that! 10 punk bands from the 2000s barely scratch the surface of what was going on in those days, so I encourage you to drop your own lists in the comments. Be sure to check out Jay's list over at Shock Treatment!
Given the world domination recently achieved by The Peppermint Kicks, I got distracted from the fact that Sal Baglio hadn't released any new songs from The Amplifier Heads since Rectifier came out at the end of 2022. Well, that situation has been, uh, rectified! "A Song Called Sha La La" is the brand-new single from The Amplifier Heads, and it's a red-hot, super-duper, intergalactic smash! Writing a great rock 'n' roll song about the dearth of great rock 'n' roll songs now being written is just about the most meta thing ever. But if you're going to do a song like this, this is how you do it! "A Song Called Sha La La" might be the best Amplifier Heads song ever, so you know that Sal is bringing it with all he's got. The whole spirit of the song is nicely summed up by lyrics like these:
Somebody write a song that we can sing Get up and shout and not worry ‘bout who’s listening Somebody write a few bars That we can turn up loud in our cars Somebody write a song that goes
Sha La La
Amen! With this song, The Amplifier Heads are fully in 1960s classic radio hit form. Just press play, and you've got pure pop majesty for three-and-a-half glorious minutes. For sure, this is a song you can sing, and it will quickly have you up and shouting. And of course you will want to turn it up loud in your car as you rock out with full vigor and care not what a fool you look like to all those smug observers who live sad lives devoid of the joy that rock 'n' roll brings. Also on board are rhythm players Kevin "King" Rapillo and Brad Hallen along with some special guest stars: Jeff "G-Man" Giacomelli on tenor sax and Carlos Menenzes Jr, Matthew Naeger, and Henley Douglas Jr from the mighty Jambalaya Horns!
What do you do when you long for someone to write a song called "Sha La La"? You write a song called "A Song Called Sha La La," and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy! Glenn Robinson's cover art is so on-point that I briefly thought it was a photo of an actual 45 record! And that gives you the vibe this song is going for. If you grew up plugging coins into jukeboxes and amassing stacks of vinyl singles in your bedroom, this will be your jam. Look for Super 8, the new Amplifier Heads album, on Rum Bar Records this summer!
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