Friday, May 15, 2026

Radio Days - "Flying High"


In a year in music that is looking more and more like one for the ages, the impending arrival of a new Radio Days album is yet another cause for much excitement. We are now five years removed from the last Radio Days long player, so Off The Record (due out in September) is very high on my list of 2026 albums I'm looking forward to. In advance of the album, the band has treated us to a couple teasers. The latest is digital single "Flying High," an upbeat, silky-smooth pop song with a big chorus and lots of amazing lead guitar. This tune finds Radio Days in vintage form, embracing melody on top of melody. Dario's vocals go down easier than lemonade on a hot day in July, and the song could not be any catchier. It's just a joy to hear one of the best bands to ever do this kind of music, uh, do this kind of music! It's always a good sign when you get to the end of the song and think, "That went way too fast!" 

"Flying High" was preceded by the brilliant 7" record "I Won't Give Up." The A-side finds the band living in the skinny tie glory days of power pop with harmonies and handclaps galore. And that chorus hits like a bolt of lightning! On the B-side, "Bang Bang" sounds like if glam rock and power pop made a baby. It's a perfect little slice of bubblegum pop goodness — a surefire radio hit in some alternate timeline where the cool kids still know how to groove. 

New music from Radio Days is good news for those of us who are starting to assemble our summer playlists. And once summer is done, we have a whole album to look forward to! Get your copy of "I Won't Give Up" from Wild Honey Records!

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Automatic Lovers - self titled


When I first heard Automatic Lovers, my instant reaction was, "Hell yeah — we need more bands like this in today's scene!" The Madrid foursome dropped an absolute smasher of a debut single last year — warming my heart with its raw and aggressive vintage 1977 punk rock sound. The band's next challenge was to sustain the same quality and energy over a full album, which is something that's not necessarily easy to do. Sometimes punk rock bands fare better in the short format where they can hit you hard and fast and leave you wanting more. But on their self-titled debut long player (out on Wap Shoo Wap Records and Folc Records), Automatic Lovers prove themselves to be 100% the real deal. 

Over the course of 11 tracks, Automatic Lovers let it rip with force and ferocity — unleashing a heat-seeking missile of a punk rock album. Of course the inspiration for this sound is obvious. The band follows the blueprint of Slaughter and the Dogs, The Vibrators, Eater, The Users, Dead Boys, Menace, Stooges, Pagans, early Damned, etc. with the utmost enthusiasm. But while any band can emulate a style, Automatic Lovers truly have the spirit and power of this classic music coursing through their veins. They tear through these songs with reckless abandon. The drummer sounds like he's trying to pound his kit into submission. The lead guitars rip wildly. The singer spits fire and fury. You might hear a track like "Wasting Time" and surmise that the band can't possibly sustain that level of intensity for a full album. But you'd be wrong! And the tunes (complemented by a couple of ace covers) are legit good. This is a killer punk rock album in any year. You hear a record like this and remember the heart-pounding excitement of hearing punk music for the first time — when suddenly everything else in your record collection seemed super-lame by comparison. What a thrill it is to hear such a young band take up this old school punk rock sound and pull it off this brilliantly. If I had heard a band like this in the later '90s when I was obsessively collecting '70s punk records, I would have flipped my shit! Wap Shoo Wap Records is quickly becoming one of those labels whose releases you never want to miss.

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Saturday, May 09, 2026

The Speedways - "Luna"


It has been over a year since I last had the pleasure of writing about new music from one of my favorite bands, The Speedways. In advance of their forthcoming fourth album, The Magic Comes & The Magic Goes, The Speedways are releasing a pair of digital singles. Up first is "Luna," which will shortly be followed by "I Shouldn't Have Tried To Leave Without You." The two songs will then receive a physical release on 7" vinyl in June. Anyone who has been eagerly waiting for new Speedways tunes will be utterly delighted by "Luna." The song was originally slated to be a B-side due to it being rather short and simple. But sometimes a band gets into rehearsing a song and, you know, the magic comes. The whole band had a sense that the song was something special. With some encouragement and creative input from producer Jez Leather, "Luna" became the lead track for the single. Matt Julian notes that the song tells the story of the day he met his ex-fiancé at Luna Fest in Portugal. Because it was written when they were still together, the vibe is sweet and optimistic. So while the song now feels bittersweet to the band, it remains faithful to its original inspiration (a vibe the music video perfectly captures). I've long believed that writing simple songs is one of the hardest things to do in music. But when a simple song hits the mark, it's a beautiful thing. "Luna" is 117 seconds of pop perfection, and it immediately brings to mind classic Speedways. There aren't a whole lot of "happy" love songs in The Speedways' catalog, so that makes this tune stand out all the more. As a fan, I could not be more pleased. Sometimes short and sweet is exactly what we need in life!

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Drakulas - Midnight City


On their extraordinary third LP, Austin, Texas–based Drakulas take the concept they've been honing for years to new heights. Out on Wild Honey Records in Europe and Dirtnap Records in North America, Midnight City is not only the best Drakulas album to date but also the best new wave record I've heard in a couple years. From start to finish, it's all hits and no shit. 

Savage Lord Mic, Sam Francisco, and Pink Rick continue to build this wonderfully immersive world of an eternal turn-of-the '80s late night excursion into the dangerous and dimly neon-lit corners of some seedy metropolis. While not quite a rock opera, Midnight City is an album with a novel or film's ambition — it songs full of unsettling tales and colorful characters. Yet the concept never reeks of pretension or bogs down the record. If you weren't paying super-close attention, you might not even notice the connections between the songs. While the atmosphere is striking, the quality of the tunes is never an afterthought. As I listen to this record, I don't hear a band in 2026 trying to sound like a band in 1980. I hear a band that sounds like it teleported here from 1980. 

The style remains a perfect blend of the punk and new wave sounds that were both changing the game in the late '70s and early '80s — but this time, the hooks are bigger, sharper, and positively addictive. I love the way this album bobs and weaves between danceable post-punk ("Singin' with My Tongue Cut Out," "Sex," "Head in the Clods"), punky new wave ("F.A.F.O."), new wavey punk ("Is It Enough," "Garbage Strike"), haunting synth-pop ("Wheelhouse"), and punky power pop ("White Off Your Nose," "Guys Like Me, Girls Like You"). On this record, Drakulas come off a little like Autogramm's evil twins, and that's a vibe I can dig all day long. Their use of synthesizers is masterful and very old school  — as if they live in a universe where modern synth-punk hasn't been invented yet. In my old age, I've become far less enthralled with darker post-punk, but this album is dark in a way that is captivating, a little sexy, and oddly intoxicating. 

While early '80s retro-futurism often comes off kitschy, Midnight City feels less like goofy nostalgia and more like a vivid dream about a time and place you can never go back to but can never forget about, either. It creates an analog world I want to live in or at least visit often. None of these songs would have sounded out of place emanating from the speakers of a delinquent hangout arcade as you dominated on Galaxian back in the day. Although I can hear the influence of so many cornerstones of my record collection, I by no means find these songs lacking in creativity or originality. And as tunesmiths, these guys take a back seat to no one. As good as Drakulas' previous releases were, this one is at another level. Whether you approach it as a piece of art or just a killer slab of punk/new wave, this is a brilliant album in any year.

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Sunday, May 03, 2026

Rob Moss and Skin-Tight Skin and 7 Door Sedan - Split single


This is my sixth time writing about Rob Moss and Skin-Tight Skin's split single series. This series is one of the most interesting and enjoyable musical endeavors I've had the pleasure of following in recent years. Out today is the latest installment, which finds Moss collaborating with 7 Door Sedan, the Silver Spring, Maryland–based trio featuring singer/guitarist Glenn Kowalski from legendary D.C. punk band White Boy. 

As always, the format is that the two bands cover each other. I think what I like most about this series is that nobody ever settles for a straight "faithful" cover. In his vision for what these splits ought to be, Moss really seems to encourage creative interpretations of the selected songs. And we need more of that in today's music, when cover songs are too often dismissed as filler. There's real artistic value in taking someone else's song and making it your own. 

On this release, Moss, joined by Tom McNally and Steve Naff, adds a new wrinkle to that concept. He covers not one but two songs by 7 Door Sedan: the opening and closing numbers off the band's 2008 LP Killer Good. Remarkably, Moss and Skin-Tight Skin combine "Everything in The World" and "Cement Man" so seamlessly that you might not even realize these were two separate songs. As a single track, "Everything in The World/Cement Man" is not just a creative reworking of the original songs. It's also a little bit of a different sound for Moss: less sneering '70s punk and glam and more of a moody post-punk slow burn. Moss really shows his talents as a pure singer here, and I love his rather eerie guitar work. 

On its side of the digital wax, 7 Door Sedan goes big and takes on one of Moss's signature songs: "I'm On a Rocket Ship (Heading My Way Back Home)" from the album Now With More Rockets. As you would expect from 7 Door Sedan, the T. Rex vibes loom large. Kowalski played lead guitar on the original version, so he came to this song with a unique perspective. But he and his bandmates Josh Singer and Norman van der Sluys definitely transform the song here, trading the intergalactic anthemic feel of the original for a grittier, slightly Stones-ish approach. And I'm left feeling the way I don't feel enough when I hear covers: more appreciative of the original than ever but also blown away by the new rendition. 

What really hits me about all these Rob Moss and Skin-Tight Skin splits is that the two bands involved are never merely just friends — they're also huge fans of each other's music. You can sense the love for the source material and admire the effort made to do something genuinely transformative as a tribute. This latest installment involves two immensely significant figures in the history of D.C. punk rock. And the point is that neither is resting on any laurels. Moss and Kowalski are out there making vital and exciting music, and it ought to be heard.

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The Chelsea Curve - The Rideout


Can we rightfully call an album that comes out on May 1st a "summer" release? Can we even call it an album if it only has seven songs? I suppose those questions are up for debate. But since I find such debates largely obnoxious, I'm going to say "yes" and "yes" in the case of The Chelsea Curve's The Rideout, out now on Rum Bar Records. On its second album, the Boston-based trio is giving feelgood vibes all day long. Some recent years were trying for The Chelsea Curve, but the band has endured it all and now finds itself inspired and excited about what's ahead. 

The theme of The Rideout comes through loudly and clearly: life is short, so live it up! "This record is about living for the moment, being with your people, and just enjoying life," says bassist/vocalist Linda Pardee. That spirit comes through not just in the lyrics but also in the music. If anything, coming back from all that adversity has energized the trio's sound. While the Chelsea Curve still lives in that mod/punk/pop lane, this album in particular puts the "power" in power pop. Pardee, guitarist Tim Gillis, and dynamo drummer Bruce Caporal tear into these tunes with force and vigor, and what results is 20 minutes of infectious and incredibly exciting music. If I might be so bold as to call this the first summer record of 2026, then the timing of its release was certainly no coincidence. This is your soundtrack to the good times that lie in front and ahead of you — some of which will certainly involve you at the wheel of some sort of motor vehicle with the sun shining and the wind at your back, en route to days and nights of adventure, romance, fun, and friendship. 

The leanness of The Rideout is almost certainly by design. Every song clocks in somewhere in the neighborhood to two-to-three minutes and embodies perfect pop with a whole lot of snap and crackle. Three of these songs were released as digital singles last year, yet it feels like these seven tracks were meant to be heard together and in this precise order. "Ride" is the tone-setter —  a song that literally invites the listener to join along in living for the moment. Last year's summer hit "Kindawanna" is the perfect follow-up —  an ode to all those things you can't wait to do with that present or future special someone in your life. After another vintage Chelsea Curve mod-pop bopper in "Outta My Head," there are some cool surprises. "Never Come Down," another song about seizing a magical moment, features Gillis on lead vocals and channels Oasis by way The Who in its psychedelic era. "I Can't Help It" is an homage to Letters To Cleo and the heyday of Boston indie power pop. The band goes full-on "freedom rock" on closing track "Rally 'Round," and any skepticism I may have originally had about this song was wiped away as soon as I heard how it and "Ride" bookend the album with affirmations of community and hope. 

Arriving four years after its predecessor All the Things, The Rideout captures a considerably evolved and revitalized Chelsea Curve. The sound is bigger and more layered, and the vibe is so joyful and optimistic that some might take it as corny. But as Pardee says, "Life's way too short to be precious." Rebounding from dark times and riding the spark that a drummer like Caporal can bring to a band, The Chelsea Curve is in the mood for (as a wise man once put it) rocking out and having fun. So yeah, this is not just a summer album. It's THE summer album. Push play and raise a glass to life!

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Muck and the Mires - Ghost of Roky Erickson


That ever-dependable institution of Boston garage rock is back with another slab of toe-tapping, hip-shaking goodness! I speak, of course, of Muck and the Mires, a foursome as consistent and notorious as death and taxes combined. Out on Madrid's stellar Ghost Highway Recordings, the new EP Ghost of Roky Erickson follows the typical Muck recipe. You get two wild, garage-rocking smashers and two power pop gems that sound like they could have been plucked straight from the British Invasion (one of them actually was!). The ripping title track is one of the rockers. The song title is no red herring. The song really does describe an encounter with the ghost of Roky Erickson (on the 13th floor of an elevator, of course!). If you're going to come face-to-face with a ghost, wouldn't this be the one you'd want to meet? I always love a tune that tells a story! This song proves to be as inspired as its subject matter — just the latest in a long line of bangers from the Muck hit factory. "Hey Sunshine" is firmly in 1963 Beatles territory, and "It's Gonna Be Alright" is a killer cover of the Gerry & The Pacemakers classic. Bringing it on home is "Dead To Me," a stomping kiss-off that combines some good, old-fashioned spurned lover bitterness with deliciously dark humor. And that's that: four tunes in a little over nine minutes, and it's all perfect rock 'n' roll just as the music gods intended. You always know what you're getting from Muck and the Mires, and it never stops being thrilling. My friends here in the states can pick this one up from the Rum Bar Records Bandcamp page!

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