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FEELIT 137LP
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"My mates went on holiday to the Isles for this one. Galactic romantic entropy three sheets to the Wind. Saxy glimmers, broken sunbeams, oil dancing in a puddle of water in a parking lot somewhere in St. Louis or Birmingham. And just as first-wave yankee punk was decidedly solipsistic, the Poms folded in a more civic bent to explain the zeitgeist of generational disaffection. Is 'Scared To Care' about spikey punks whose apartments are littered with Amazon boxes? Is 'Biggest Sale of The Year' an indictment of late-stage capitalism? Is 'The Milkman' an effective populist who wants you to sink so that he can swim? Is this record more political than those dystopian hardcore records you sold when a nice girl opened your eyes once? Merely conjecture. It's an album dripping with clandestine musical intelligence, artisanal song-writing, great voices. The illegitimate son of Dinosaurs' bassist isn't in the mix this time, but I can assure you his spirit is there -- I can almost hear the glass of side mirrors cascading to Richmond Ave on a drunken bike ride 15 years before Josh Allen and Conway The Machine made The City That Always Sleeps cool! What is soul? Soul is finding your own catalytic converter at the thrift store. Soul is trying out for the Harlem Globetrotters on your 37th birthday and it not going so well. Soul is wearing those attractive bygone eras on your sleeve without hesitation or embarrassment. Pentatonic rock didn't exactly bubble from a serious bog, and when adults who partake become artistically conservative, grow egos in a Petri dish somewhere in the well-adjusted hyper-capitalist cityslicker life they've created because they can seemingly play Vibrators riffs better than the actual kids, everything is lost! Class know this, resisting that spiritual deficit of our collective moment with the voice of honest men trying to have fun in this fuckin' wacky world, unafraid to rhyme words like 'narcissist' and 'anarchist.' I mean, how many songs wouldn't have a pinky toe to pirouette on if 'school' and 'fool' didn't rhyme?! Now get your ass to Class." --Brandon Gaffney
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FEELIT 104LP
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"The artist works in a museum and that museum is rock and roll. In a world of meme punk rockabilly grandads, it's the classicists that really have something to say. Straight lines, hooks, and a clear path to your heart. They might not be dbeat heart throbs, but no one else can give you that feeling that you can hold on to a moment like you are driving too fast down Route 60 and it's never going to end. In 20 years when you skulk the dark alleyways of wherever punk's red fern grows, they won't be talking about Dwight Twilley, the Looks, or the Nerves, they will be looking for a little CLASS." --Tobi Vail and Hayes Waring
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DRUNKEN 164LP
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"If you've ever spent any time in the darkest recesses of the internet, you'll know that 'powerpop' is an emotive term. For every pockmarked tenderfoot flying the flag for some fuzzed-out alterna-rocker's harmony-drenched new single, there's a grizzled veteran insisting that there's not enough jangle, not enough hook, not enough oomph on display... This is where Class come in. Class are a four-piece from Tucson, AZ, who are most assuredly all the power, all the pop, all the time. They've served time in a bunch of bands you already know and love -- most notably everyone's favorite 'delinquent slobs' Rik And The Pigs -- and Matt Rendon of their citymates The Resonars is the guy behind the mixing desk, so you know whatever comes out is gonna be good. 2-4-1 compiles the two cassettes they've released on Cincinnati's Feel It Records (which also released their debut LP proper, Epoca De Las Vaqueros) and it's absolutely rammed with new pop classics. 'Steady Hands', 'Wrong Side Of Town', 'Inspect The Receipt', 'Left In The Sink'... get learning these titles now, 'cause you're gonna get very well acquainted when you spin 'em until your needle's worn down to a flattened-out nub. Sound-wise, it's pop music as envisioned by the punks -- straight to the point, no fucking about. Some of these songs feel like Alex Chilton playing 'September Gurls' on a curious cocktail of cheap speed and wayyy too much sugar; others are kinda like the aforementioned Resonars if they ditched their British Invasion records and got obsessed with a heady mixture of The #1s and Richard Lloyd's Alchemy. Sometimes it just sounds like a forgotten late '70s punk classic, so I think we're all in the right place here. It's scuzzy and scuffed up in all the right places, with blazing guitar solos and crashing drum fills designed to get you where you need to go, with a minimum of fuss. 'Class' is an apt name. As you'd expect from a band with three vocalists, there's more than one style at play here, meaning this record pulls from enough varying strands to keep things interesting without sounding unfocused. There's no time to get bored, unlike when reading my drivel. What the fuck are you waiting for? This is power pop at its best, punk at its funnest, a whale of a time in less than 30 minutes. Let the nerds wage war on each other -- clearly, I'll be reading it -- and claim your own victory by playing this one to death. This band are in a class of their own, and if I've not laid it out explicitly enough, you need to start listening. Now." --Will Fitzpatrick
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