Category: post punk

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: SWOLL Shares a Swaggering Homage to DC’s Puff Pieces

Led by Baltimore-based singer/songwriter and musician Matt Dowling, who is best known for his work playing bass in The Effects, Deleted Scenes, and Paperhaus, SWOLL originally formed as a studio collaboration with BLIGHT. Records founder and producer Ben Schurr.

The project’s 2018 self-titled, full-length debut was released to critical praise while establishing a sound anchored around brooding bass lines, minimalist textures and Dowling’s falsetto. Since then SWOLL has evolved into a full-fledged live band, featuring multi-instrumentalist Erik Sleight (drums) and lighting design by Zak Forrest.

Live , the band creates an immersive live performance that combines atmospheric visuals with a thunderous, genre-defying, synth-driven soundscape while exploring vulnerability and the human condition. Adding to a growing profile, the band has shared stages with Gang of Four, Moderat and JOVM mainstays A Place to Bury Strangers.

SWOLL’s third album AVOID ATTACH is slated for a September 26, 2025 release. The album was tacked by Dan Angel and Ben Schurr in Philadelphia, mixed by Alex Tebeleff in Los Angeles and mastered by Sarah Register in Brooklyn. Sonically, AVOID ATTACH reportedly sees the band further cementing a sound that meshes elements of live rock with electronic music and trap beats.

“I wanted to turn the psychological condition of avoidant attachment style into a verb that feels relevant right now,” SWOLL’s Matt Dowling says of AVOID ATTACH‘s thematic concerns. “Avoidant attachment style is perhaps best described by Kevin Barnes’ Of Montreal lyric ‘I need you here, and not here too.’ It’s a particularly modern condition that’s simultaneously psychological and physical. It sort of sounds bad and unhealthy (it is on the clinical edge of a disorder), but things like social media and AI, which are simply wildly popular modern tools, are particularly good places to ‘avoid attach.’ I also think things sort of feel overall bad and unhealthy in the world right now, but that could just be a coincidence, or my own projection.”

AVOID ATTACH‘s lead single “SCAR” features glitchy electronic pulse, skittering boom bap and an angular Gang of Four-like bass line as a dreamy and uneasy bed for Dowling’s punchily urgent delivery. The song manages to be brooding and yet dance floor friendly while anchored around lyrics that offer incisive social critique that eerily captures our weird, deadly, fucked up moment. The song also is a loving homage to the now-defunct Washington, DC-based band Puff Pieces, a descendant project of Antelope, and the social commentary of their 2016 effort, Bland in D.C.

“I directly take lyrics from Puff Pieces in this song,” Dowling says. “The two lyrics, which are also their song titles, are ‘Pointless People’ and ‘Women and Men with Guns.’ I think I went there simply because I felt like I was really echoing Puff Pieces sonically while writing the song. So I figured ‘why not take it all the way and use some Puff Pieces lyrics, provided I can get prior approval?’ (which I did, don’t worry!). I wrote the song probably two years ago, and now that it’s coming out, I’m like ‘whoa, this is timely.’ Puff Pieces were astoundingly accurate at predicting the future while writing songs from 2013-2016. The current time is simply a labored continuation of what they were concerned about while creating those songs. So ‘Scar’ is basically an homage to Puff Pieces’ astute ability to cut right to the center of it all with simple, dancey punk rock music.”

The accompanying video for “Scar” follows the band’s Dowling on a glitchy and fuzzy, analog, security footage-styled late night walk and studio footage — with a world-beating swagger.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: The Wants Shares Brooding and Anthemic “Data Tumor”

Formed back in 2017, New York-based trio The Wants — currently, founding membes Madison Velding-VanDam and Jason Gates along with the band’s newest member NightNight‘s Yasmeen Night — quickly carved out their own niche in experimental music’s outer reaches with their full-length debut, 2020’s Container, which was released to critical applause while quickly establishing a sound that draws from an eclectic array of influences across decades and genres, including Alan Vega, Korn, Hildur Guǒnadóttir, Bauhaus, Throbbing Gristle, and experimentation techno among others.

Container‘s success led to the then-duo’s successful tour of the UK and Europe, which was cut short as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. But after returning back to the States, the band enlisted NightNight’s Yasmeen Night whose deft synth work has helped add an additional electronic sensibility to their post-punk aesthetic.

The trio’s highly-anticipated sophomore album Bastard is slated for a June 13, 2025 release through STTT. The album thematically explore disconnection in an age of endless and unceasing connection, pulsing with the tension between Velding-VanDam’s Midwestern roots and his present in NYC. That duality is manifest through the album’s material — organic instrumentation wrestle with electronic ghosts, while traditional song structures are dismantled and reassembled.

The album is also deeply influenced by personal tragedy: Velding-VanDam began writing the album’s material after learning that his father had died in his Michigan trailer, eight days before he was found. The aftermath of this discovery — hoarded belongings, towers of empty liquor bottles and oxycodone containers, grime-covered childhood photos — became the emotional backdrop for the album’s creation.” Bastard, both as an album and an experience, is an emotional purge—a meditation on isolation and loss,” The Wants’ Velding-VanDam explains. “The story of my father’s life and death loomed large as a backdrop of the writing process. I explored the darkest periods of my life, and the reality that we can all spiral into our own personal voids.”

Bastard‘s second and latest single “Data Tumor” serves as a bridge between their debut and the forthcoming sophomore album. Sonically recalling a synthesis of She Wants Revenge, Interpol and Suicide, “Data Tumor” is a brooding and uneasy song, delivered with a Kasabian-like swaggering bombast while showcasing the band’s unerring knack for arena rock friendly hooks paired with forcefully, propulsive rhythms and Velding-VanDam’s eerie delivery.

“‘Data Tumor’ inhabits the psychological push and pull of trying to assert individuality in a world intent on commodifying and distorting it,” explains Velding-VanDam. “The faceless collective of information and stimuli incentivizes the surrender of personal agency. Choices have to be made or they are made for you.”

“Many songs on Bastard embody a character or voice that is meant to observe and reflect an experience, but not necessarily make a judgement about it,” the band adds. “The resulting tone oscillates between earnest and acerbic, not quite serious but not joking, either.”

The accompanying video, which employs flashing strobe light, touches upon horror movie and true crime themes while turning them on its head. Who is being chased? Who is the victim?

Video by William Ruben Helms

Throwback: Happy 75th Birthday, Mark Mothersbaugh!

JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates DEVO co-founder and frontman Mark Mothersbaugh’s 75th birthday.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Club 8 Shares Breezy and Nostalgia Inducing “Staying Alive”

Last year, Stockholm-based JOVM mainstays Club 8 — Karolina Komstedt (vocals) and electronic music producer, artist and Labrador Records founder and label boss Johan Angergård — released their 11th album, A Year With Club 8, which featured the Joy Division/New Order-meets-The Raveonettes-like “Something’s Wrong With My Head,” a woozily blissful and escapist song that continued a run of material dabbling in 80s New Wave nostalgia. 

The duo have been busy, releasing a single every month throughout the course of this year.

  • The Swedish JOVM mainstays began the year with “ooo,” which continued where A Year With Club 8 left off — breezy and escapist, New Wave-inspired pop featuring shimmering guitars and driving grooves paired with ethereal yet expressive vocals. 

  • February saw the release of “None Of This Will Matter When You’re Dead.” Clocking in at 83 seconds, “None Of This . . .” is a breakneck bit of Smiths-inspired guitar pop, anchored around shimmering guitars, a motorik groove, big catchy hook and choruses paired with Komstedt’s ethereal delivery expressing swooning heartbreak and defiance simultaneously.

The duo’s fifth single of the year, the hooky “Staying Alive” continues a remarkable run of nostalgia inducing, breakneck guitar pop that channels a synthesis of New Order and The Smiths while serving as a lush bed for Komstedt’s ethereal and yearning delivery.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: JOVM Mainstays Activity Shares Hypnotic and Menacing “Scissors”

Acclaimed Brooklyn-based post punk outfit Activity — currently, Grooms‘ Travis Johnson (vocals, guitar), Bri DiGiola (bass), Russian Baths‘ Jess Rees and their newest member The Pains of Being Pure at Heart‘s and Peel Dream Magazine‘s Brian Alvarez — will be releasing their third album, the Jeff Berner-produced A Thousand Years In Another Way on June 6, 2025 through Western Vinyl. 

A friend asked why the album captured the strange, heavy feeling of being alive right now better than anything else. “Evil is very real and having its way, and love is also real and hasn’t lost yet,” Activity’s Travis Johnson told the friend — describing the album’s overall tone. The album doesn’t try to explain the strange time we’re living in; it simply feels like it. it’s a mix of violence, alienation, and tenderness, reflecting the surreal, dreamlike — and often nightmarish– rhythm of our daily lives. 

The ten-song album sees the Brooklyn-based outfit crafting a blend of experimental rock, electronics and found sounds with a sense of paranoia, desperate flickers of hope and a warped reality. Continuing their ongoing collaboration with Berner, the band manipulated sounds and played with room acoustics to create a feeling that’s disorientating and uneasy — like the air is thick and the walls are listening. 

Coming out of a period of increased uncertainty, the Brooklyn-based quartet — then Johnson, Rees DiGiola and former drummer Steven Levine — pieced the album together from various fragments, including clipped samples, looping guitar lines and spectral melodies. Johnson, Rees and DiGioia share vocal and writing duties, shaping material that feels both deeply personal and strangely alien. Throughout the album, there’s a sense that things could shift or fall apart at any second — nothing says one thing for long. 

Last month, I wrote about the album’s first single “In Another Way,” a brooding and uneasy track that captures an alienated and painfully lonely narrator’s desperate desire to connect with someone while struggling with the chaos and uncertainty both with

A Thousand Years In Another Way‘s first single, album opening track “In Another Way” is a brooding and uneasy track that captures the captures an alienated and painfully lonely narrator’s desperate desire to connect with someone while struggling with the chaos and uncertainty within and without. According to the band’s Johnson, the album’s first single is “a way of letting off a bunch of aggression, rage and resentment at things not being the way they hold be, both personal and global (wishing things were ‘another way’), and feeling completely important about it, except when playing the song.” 

“Scissors,” the album’s second and latest single is a trance-inducing and decidedly trip-hop inspired song featuring swirling, atmospheric synths, bursts of feedback-driven shoegazer guitars and skittering, reverb-soaked beats serving as a brooding and menacing bed for Jess Rees’ dreamy delivery.

“The song is about being intentionally reckless and breaking things apart, knowing you’re doing it. About not being precious, and digging into that pile of parts inside and finding a better way with what you already have,” the band’s Rees says, while adding, “I was listening to Beak> a lot at the time.”

The accompanying video was directed by Yasmeen Night who says, “Listening to ‘Scissors’ made me feel like I was in a trance, or a dream state. In the video, I wanted to lean on the concept of coming in and out of consciousness. Opening and closing your eyes – forgetting what is real and what isn’t.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

Throwback: Happy 66th Birthday, Ian McCulloch!

JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Echo and The Bunnymen frontman Ian McCulloch’s 66th birthday.

Video by William Ruben Helms

Throwback: Happy 77th Birthday, Kate Pierson!

JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Kate Pierson’s 77th birthday.

Video by William Ruben Helms

Throwback: Happy Belated 65th Birthday, Roger Taylor!

JOVM’s William Ruben Helms belatedly celebrates Duran Duran drummer Roger Taylor’s 65th birthday.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Taxidermy Shares a Bruising and Unsettling Ripper

Copenhagen-based experimental noise/post-punk outfit Taxidermy — Osvald Reinhold (vocals, guitar), Toke Brejning Frederiksen (guitar), Joachim Lorch-Schierning (bass) and Johan Knutz Haavik (drums) — have quickly established a sound that draws from math rock, No Wave, post-hardcore and emo among a list of others. 

Thematically, the Danish quartet’s work sees them exploring the unease and disquiet of contemporary existence through delving into the cryptic and disorientating, the claustrophobic and the surreal. Crafting material anchored around unpredictable arrangements, raw and visceral textures, broad dynamic range and intense emotional delivery, the members of the Copenhagen-based outfit actively challenges the listener to confront the discomfort of the unknown. 

On the heels of last year’s attention grabbing Coin EP, the Danish outfit’s forthcoming follow-up Let Go EP will feature, “Impending,” a single that simultaneously cements their reputation for crafting brooding post-punk while subtly expanding upon their sound with alternating ethereal and atmospheric verses and the scorching, power chord-driven hooks and choruses that would Steve Albini proud. 

Let Go EP‘s latest single, EP title track “Let Go” is a bruising bit of skronky and noisy post-punk/grunge built around a classic grunge song structure with alternating quieter verses with cinematic strings and Reinhold crooning lyrics and explosive choruses and hooks with Reinhold’s urgent shouts. The song captures a heartbroken and desperate narrator, who vacillates between despair, self loathing and hatred — sometimes within the turn of a phrase.

The band’s Reinhold explains that the lyrics capture “a weakened and darkened mind, with a cynical, bleak view of itself and its surroundings.” He goes on to explain that the song was written after the experience of falling out of love. “It’s a deeply personal song for me, as it captures the essence of a weakened and darkened mind, with a cynical, bleak view of itself and its surroundings. It depicts a repeating cycle of actions in an inescapable loop of destructive behavior and presents the troubling notion that we are all self-absorbed individuals who can only briefly be persuaded to believe in unions of any kind, and for a fleeting moment, we may get along. But inevitably, we return to a hostile status quo, distancing ourselves because, ultimately, that’s easier.”