WHIPPER Shit Love 7inch EP

     Like with what it seems with many Australian bands nowadays, Whipper are made up from some dudes from other bands (this time it's Cuntz, Bits of Shit and a couple others) forming yet another bad ass unit.
     Motor City via Melbourne street sleaze strut and Telecaster splattering garage rock/proto-punk riffin' get things off on the right foot and straight into in a dangerous place to be on "Shit Love." Oozing the Aussie swagger of Hoss and Powder Monkeys but sounding like their own thing, the swamp thick bass driven "White Glove" is a bloody lunged raver of a tractor trailer careening recklessly through mountain roads proportions. By the time the pummeling "Chase The Rainbow" declares "Drop Out Of High School" it's like being surrounded by an crowd of angle dusted bikers leaving you no other choice than to do exactly that.
aarghtrecords.bigcartel.com

Smashin'Transistors Fave Albums of 2013

I know there wasn't a whole lot of WRITING about records in this place again this year. I can put the blame on distractions, a major change on the domestic front and life in general getting in the way. I did LISTEN to bunches of music both new and old this past year though. After mulling over the tunes that passed through my ears in 2013 here's a list of the most enjoyed and often played albums at home, in my car and on my radio show for the year (in alphabetical order.)

-Dale

BAD NOIDS "Everything From Soup To Dessert" (Katorga Works) Ragin' and retardo, ugly and nasty. Old school sick kid hardcore. There's some toxic things still along the Lake Erie coastline!
Bad Noids on Facebook

BARDO POND "Peace On Venus" (Fire) Guitars that sound like electrical storms cutting through a dense damp fog while voices teeter between the ethereal bliss & indecorous pain. Flutes get pushed through whirling effects while the rhythm section thumps some swing into a sludge beat.
Bardo Pond on the web

BLIND SHAKE "Key to a False Door" (Castle Face) A musical head space where weirdly tuned silt punk goes out on dates with surf music to watch people go-go dance into a chasm of barbed wire and broken glass.
Blind Shake's website

CATHOLIC SPRAY "Earth Slime" (Born Bad) Freaky frogs doing  LSD fried and cheap beer sauteed post-whatever VU boot lickin' garage punk. Wig out while stomping daisies in a black light room.
Catholic Spray on Bandcamp

COUNTER INTUITS s/t aka "Sheets Of Hits" (Pyramid Scheme) A king of atonal rock woe, Ron House sets up camp around a tape machine with a prince of tin sheeting put to a belt grinder pop, Jared Phillips of Times New Viking. The results are like fetching a Swell Maps record out of a running garbage disposal with your bare hand. 
An interview with the Counter Intuits

MIKAL CRONIN "MCII" (Merge) Introspective singer-songwriter coyness, brash guitar fuzz freak outs and things like strings and woodwinds making appearances are all parts of the recipe here. The result is some of the most glimmering pop songs to sugarcoat ears this year.
Mikal Cronin on Bandcamp

The FEELING OF LOVE "Reward Your Grace" (Born Bad) Shoegazing gets tribal. Psychedelia gets stripped bare then chrome plated. Monochromatic drones intertwine themselves with technicolor swirls. Taste the strychnine rainbow.
Feeling of Love on Facebook

The GO "Fiesta" (Burger) If late 60's era Beach Boys moved to Michigan, spent all summer in a resort town riding bicycles, hanging out at the arcade, trying to find someone to buy them beer (or sell them doobies) and striking out when talking to chicks. Then spent cooped up in a Michigan winter to write songs about it
The Go on Bandcamp

The GOSPEL TRUTH "A Lonely Man Does Foolish Things" (12XU) In some universe a swamp country soul band detours into Birthday Party territory and play at the most surly pig roasts for miles around every weekend. If that universe doesn't exist yet-the Gospel Truth are at working on it.
The Gospel Truth on 12XU

The HUSSY "Pagan Hiss" (Southpaw) Heather singing like a girl group gone bad and bashing the drums like a ton of bricks. Bobby making tantrums of psych-punk noise on guitar and blurting things in a nasal tone. Their best record yet.
The Hussy on Bandcamp

HUMAN EYE "4: Into Unknown" (Goner) Laser guns get put into some mischievous hands after a space punk UFO crash lands into ruins and rustbelt rock-n-roll. Feel the ultraviolet slime ooze out of the speakers. 
Goner Records

MORDECAI "College Rock" (Richie) Mangled and out of sync trash rock/art punk that somehow locks into a groove of cohesive chaos. The most glorious and loudest wreck to come of out Butte, Montana since a six hour loop of Evel Knievel greatest wipe outs.
Mordecai on Tumblr

OBNOX "Corrupt Free Enterprise"(12XU) Read Smashin' Transistors review here.

OBLIVIANS "Desperation" (In The Red) Reunion albums by legendary bands are normally a big letdown. With tunes that go well at a backyard BBQ/Dance Party or cruising the streets looking for trouble and possibly a knife fight though Desperation isn't! Older, wiser but still packing plenty rock-n-roll firecrackers.
The Oblivians Facebook page.

OOGA BOOGAS s/t (Aarght!) This is like one of those "everything but the kitchen sink (for the lack of a better coin) "New Wave" fun party records of the mid 80's. Downstroked & elastic guitar rock-n-roll chuggers peppered with horn sections. Pub rock slathered in cheezy synths. Sing-a-long anthems with all of the above.
Ooga Boogas Bandcamp page 

PAMPERS s/t (In The Red) Blues punk (or at least a Scientists/Cramps/"Dial M" era Pussy Galore) gets spun like a top before being severely beaten by deviant art misanthropes swinging red hot tire irons. It's then set on fire and placed by some gas station pumps. The explosions are deafening.
Pampers page on Bandcamp

PSYCHIC ILLS "One Track Mind" (Sacred Bones) Chill out boogie for bikers? Spacemen 3 cruising in a brand new Cadillac through the a wildflower filled countryside? Music to burn a j while sitting under under a big shade tree at the beach? Yep, Something like that.
Psychic Ills place on the web

PURLING HISS "Water On Mars" (Drag City) Read Smashin' Transistors review here.

SATANIC ROCKERS "Fu Kung" (Alberts Basement) Read Smashin' Transistors review here.

WHITE FENCE "Cyclops Reap" (Castle Face) Syd-esque crumbling apart folkie rock gets a bunch of glitter dust tossed at it. Be the songs sound like acid country rock, glam pop played on household items or a heavily medicated Creation playing Byrds songs (or vise-verse) wiggly acoustic strums and big fuzz wails get their equal amounts of attention.
White Fence on Facebook

And with that-let's kick 2013 to the curb. On to 2014!

JAMES ARTHUR'S MANHUNT s/t LP

You can call James Arthur lots of things: Triumph motorcycle aficionado, D'Lana's old man, A Texan who can drink some large amount of bourbon etc. One thing a person would never expect to call the one time member of the Fireworks/Necessary Evils/A Feast Of Snakes/Golden Boys though is "Space Rock Music Maker".
Recorded in "shacks in Texas" over 2009 with James playing almost every instrument on it (he credited with bass, guit, drums, organs, bongos) with a few guests like Golden Boys Nathan providing organ on a couple songs, Bruce Saltmarsh of '68 Comeback fame supplying some drum bits and Bantam Rooster's Tom Potter doing a guitar bit, you could pin this as something like a Hillbilly Hawkwind or Krautrock wearing some mud caked bluejeans.
With that all said don't be expecting this record to set you off floating aimlessly into a warm and squishy galaxy at an instant. To leave the planet is always a loud, dirty and lots of fire and fuel vapor situation such as the Mr. Potter on the burns from bacon grease splattered lead guitar trash blues stomp opener, "The Cougar", the JAMC marinated in hot pepper jelly then raked over the coals of "Black Cop" and the walking blues surfer sound excursion that blows into tiny sharp shards of "Strong Back" prove.
When the music does elevate itself past towards outerspace it isn't a floating above the clouds soundtrack by Tangerine Dream type of snooze either. It's a fight against static storms that set the mechanical parts all awry such as the distortion, unearthy pitch shifting & delay noises and space rocks hurled against the side of the rocketship sounds that "The Gurgler" and "My God #4" and 1970's era Cabaret Voltaire robots wired wrong clanging of "Black Angus" are riddled with. On the other hand though tracks like "Crows" WOULD border on the line of ethereal if there wasn't an obvious menacing under current to them.
http://www.myspace.com/jarthurjarthur