West America‘s offering is ‘Past is Personal’, a messy garage rock song which lurches from slow to quick to slow again, always feeling on the cusp of something erratic and dangerous. Think the rough noise of Times New Viking meets the peculiar delivery of Krill. The vocals are difficult to discern for the most part (the lyrics read “♩є(･◇･｡)э♩є(･◇･｡)” over and over on Bandcamp), adding to the unsettling feel, as if you are amidst something important but impossible to understand, all meaning and context reduced to sharp energy in the air.

Porridge Radio‘s track ‘Born Confused’ is less ramshackled, an odd and desperate pop song which somehow manages to twin the deadpan drawl of disaffected youth with a fervid, otherworldly catharsis.  To go out on somewhat of a limb, the track sounds like a lo-fi version of a great punk song The National never wrote, offbeat and dreamlike and curiously detached, the attempts to communicate to an unnamed second person through this fog building into frantic, Berninger-esque regurgitations of a simple phrase. What emerges is a track enormously relevant to our generation, the tide of anger and fear and hope breaking through the barriers which normally keep it below the surface (that is, feelings of loneliness, ineptitude, an intense aversion to appearing naive) to make a song uplifting but never glib, and true without ever really understanding why. Thank you for making me happy.

hello dog friendly is out tomorrow (Wed 13th) on Memorials of Distinction. If you are in/near Brighton (UK) then there’s a release show tomorrow evening at Green Door Store (doors at 19:00, 18+), so get along to that, and we’ll try and get a full review of the release written up ASAP.

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