Coming across like a more serious & less ethnically diverse Hard-Ons, Dealer deliver up an in-your-face ten tracks of hybrid metal/punk/grunge on debut album Billionaire Boys Club. There’s a distinctly old-school feel to the way they do things whilst simultaneously pushing the crossover boundaries of the various genres they readily embrace.

The Oakland trio (formed less than a year ago out of the ashes of Sexless) bring a hefty amount of weight to the table on the likes of ‘Odious Charm’ whilst covering the speed angle on ‘Total Horse’ and 'Cake Walk', amongst others. Both moshers & skankers have plenty here to make good use of when in space to cut loose.

There are riffs galore in their “Mudhoney-meets-Megadeth-via-Black Flag glory” with Darien McKinney’s kit-pounding anchoring everything the band does to a solid, propulsive force. Vocally they follow the line of being understandable for around 50 percent of the time but that’s hardly a drawback.

Unafraid to draw things out the band even get (almost) Eastern & mystical on ‘She’s As Beautiful As A Foot’ at the halfway point of Billionaire Boys Club, although it doesn’t quite pan out that way by the song’s strangulated close.

Vocalist Kevin Klausen has been actively pursuing rock ‘n’ roll glory for a number of years now and his guitar work clearly displays the notches earned over that time spent slogging it out both as a performer & as the tour manager for other acts at home and abroad. This is a guy who’s had his faith in music almost quashed only to once more get the buzz and come back with arguably a career-best piece of work and the band to make it work in the long-term.

Dealer are in your neighbourhood and on your street corner – you need to get ahold of the goods they're peddling.  

Billionaire Boys Club is available from amazon.

With Mac Demarco seemingly well on his way in an unassuming bid for world domination, it would come as a surprise that one of his closest affiliates opted to step out of the slacker demi god’s shadow, leave the crazed hordes of fans behind and go it alone. Even with the unfathomable price some would pay to regularly be in the presence of Demarco’s charisma, upon listening to his records, it’s quite easy to grasp why Peter Sagar aka Homeshake made the risqué decision to quit the Demarco dynasty nearly four years ago. Not only an escape from a heavy touring schedule, Homeshake offered Sagar a chance to wriggle free from the maturity that was seeping its way into Mac Demarco’s music, and well and truly indulge in the quirkiness that provided Rock and Roll Nightclub with its inimitable atmosphere.

As a base for his new project, the melting pot for hazy, lo-fi indie that was Montreal circa 2013 opened its arms to the delectable guitar twang and idiosyncratic lyrics of Homeshake, labeling it as one of the emergent scene’s prize exports alongside that of Alex Calder and his former band leader. Since the moniker first surfaced, Montreal has breathed life into four Homeshake records, with the most recent coming in the form of Fresh Air; Sagar’s best attempt to date at making a serious record whilst trying at all costs to not be serious at all.

Moving away from the cartoon samples and charming guitar licks generously topped with reverb, the self-confessed RnB lover has conveyed his musical passion on more recent records, offering up a rather bizarre blend of indie darling meets MTV Base in the process (‘Give It To Me’ from previous LP Midnight Snack marking the evolution with grandeur).

On Fresh Air, Homeshake is once again at his combustible best, effortlessly achieving an equilibrium between slacker and heartfelt crooner when dabbling in abstract slow jams. When the record burns, it burns bright; it’s what happens in between the magnesium like bursts of energy that leave the album wanting in terms of structural foundation and direction. But in turn, that may just be the signature of Sagar’s work; never rooted into one spot and the free to explore the imaginary realms his music has created, and since immersed itself in.

Album opener, the aptly titled ‘Hello Welcome’ initiates the record in a familiar fashion, igniting a sense of hope for fans longing to hear Sagar call upon the sounds that littered his first EP Homeshake Tape. Its creamy guitar lick sizzles and upon contact with the heavily produced bass line beneath, however, the sense of intriguing ambiguity soon vacates with the arrival of ‘Call Me Up’ and ‘Not U’ shortly after. The odd ball tracks border on parody rather than genuine attempts to recreate the urgency and unadulterated suggestibility associated with Homeshake’s music.

Cue ‘Every Single Thing’, arriving in the nick of time to restore a sense of consciousness: “are you even paying attention to me right now” sounding out as the track begins. Opening with shimmering UFO sounds akin to a low-budget sci-fi film, the track catapults into the cosmos aboard a squelching beat before bringing home an infectious groove that disperses over the rest of the album. The standout moments of Fresh Air that follow come in the form of ‘Getting Down Pt II’, ‘TV Volume’ and ‘Khmlwugh’ – albeit the latter continuing a minute longer than necessary. All three tracks tilt a tried and tested RnB format slightly off kilter to fabulous effect, turning the absurd into quite frankly arousing.

Spying an opportunity to solidify his music in its own light, the move to focus on more RnB influences presents itself as a tempting path; one where the balance between creativity and claptrap is all that more delicate. Luckily Homeshake toes the line on Fresh Air, pulling out the stops when they’re most needed, just as the album starts to drift off without any real cause to follow.

At risk of feeling constrained by the loveable guitar licks birthed during his time with Mac Demarco, Peter Sagar’s desire to progress forward into the world of RnB with no pretext or focus is what grants his music with its honest texture. Instead of placing Fresh Air under the microscope, the album leaves its hazy aesthetic open to interpretation, and with that calls for being looked upon through a similarly out of focus lens.

Fresh Air is available via Amazon and iTunes.

What’s in a name these days? Not much but then is naming yourself after a country any more or less lazy than doing so after your favourite TV show or a book about the expansion of human consciousness? Once you get past that it’s the music that has to stand up and be counted.

Dublin’s Switzerland’s four members certainly have a lengthy musical apprenticeship between them, having variously been in at least five bands before this one, which affords the songs of Long Gone a satisfying level of professionalism. They’ve an Eighties element running through their work along the lines of Orange Juice and Lloyd Cole, which is periodically shot through with the sunshiny sounds of The Thrills.

The near two year gestation period for the songs that comprise Long Gone has also of course contributed to the overall lack of flab on their bones. Nothing on these tracks “about people (real and imaginary) who have made a change in their lives and faced the consequences” feels surplus to requirements.

Whether they’ll all have people jumping about the place, as singer Brian Walsh has indicated he’d like, is debateable – ‘Lay Me Down’, for example, is one to shuffle your feet to at best. Then again in a live setting they may all be as charged up as ‘Papaya’ or the almost-epic ‘Coming Back Strong’. Opener ‘Starting Out’ and closing track ‘You Know Me Better’ ably bracket an assured collection of songs that the quartet and label Popical Island can be rightly proud of.   

Long Gone is a fine debut album from a band that come across through their works as a good bunch of lads, enjoying what they’re doing and with the considerable ability to continue to do it well. Fans of well-considered, played & produced jangly indie-pop should look towards Switzerland when contemplating their first purchase of 2017 in that vein.

The album release show takes place at Whelan’s in Dublin on January 27.

Long Gone is available via bandcamp. 

Working hard at it for over 24 months Edinburgh’s No-Things have fast established themselves as one of the city’s garage punk regulars. Gigging plentifully at both at home and abroad (the Paris suburbs were taken by storm at the end of 2016) they’ve built up a solid live act over the course of two consecutive Franklin Fest performances along with numerous shows either as headliners or in a supporting role to bigger or visiting acts.

Musos’ Guide has been on hand to catch the quartet live on a number of occasions, stretching back to their inception, so regular readers will be well aware of the regard in which we hold their on-stage antics (making us possibly a bit biased in our coverage …) but such an infectious group needs rightly praised for their total commitment in the live sphere.

Counting amongst their number an ex-Thane and a current BOF! Their pedigree is undeniable, leading to Germany’s mighty Soundflat Records offering them a deal last year. Here Come The No-Things!! is the resultant musical total of their time in the studio.  

Comprising 14 tracks Here Come The No-Things!! naturally contains the band’s current live set at this time, including the continual crowd pleaser ‘Who Did You Rob Bob?’ and 'Why Do You Love Me?' Garage songs are rarely known for their lyrical or musical complexity and the contents of 'Don't Get On My Tits' ably live up to that revered tradition.

The No-Things are by no means the first such band of their ilk to fall foul of not having their live sound replicated when in the studio but, when performance is so much a part of your whole schtik and on-stage wildness (often becoming off-stage wildness) you really need a sympathetic producer at the controls to compensate for the lack of visual distractions as well as to reproduce the raw musical edge such a propulsive band possesses when out in the open. Unfortunately, this time around, The No-Things have ended up with a work which is too cleanly produced to do their efforts ample justice. The general idea is there but overall it’s the band in embryo.

You can though appreciate the band in all their live glory at the album launch in Edinburgh on January 21 (full details here).

Here Come The No-Things!! is available from amazon & iTunes.