Top 10 Albums/EP’s That DON’T Suck [JANUARY 2021]

States We’re In – Self Titled
(indie-punk) (emo)
Berlin, Germany 🇩🇪

The Sunks – Wedding Season
(indie-rock) (garage-rock)
Omaha, NE 🇺🇸

Пекинский Велосипед – Разминка
(emo) (indie-punk)
Yekaterinburg, Russia 🇷🇺

Frat Mouse – Plywood
(emo) (indie-rock)
Los Angeles, CA 🇺🇸

Petite League – Joyrider
(indie-rock) (powerpop)
New York City, NY 🇺🇸

Farewell Horizontal – An Argument..
(indie-rock) (lo-fi)
Melbourne, AUS 🇦🇺

Sekunderna – Hjärtat
(pop-punk) (punk rock)
Umeå, Sweden 🇸🇪

Breathe & Repeat – Cuts & Bruises
(post-hardcore) (shoegaze)
Minneapolis, MN 🇺🇸

Sunday Boxing – Hot Box
(punk) (garage-punk)
Charlotte, NC 🇺🇸

Futurat – Incinerat
(punk rock) (fuzz)
St. Petersburg, Russia 🇷🇺

Woof, it smells funny in here!

Hello loyal reader. Funny running into you here. Have you just been hanging around this place waiting for me all month? I’m sorry I took so long. You don’t look too hot. Why don’t you have any shoes on? Hello? Can you talk? What’s that? I don’t understand these gestures you’re making. Are you pretending to peel a banana? I don’t get it. Oh! You’re hungry! I’m sorry, I don’t have any food, but I do have a nice selection of new music for you. No? Why are you shaking your head? Come on! Oh the banana thing again.. I gotta say that’s getting old fast. Why don’t you relax. Hey! I said relax! I swear to god, one more time with this banana thing, I dare you. Yeah go ahead, see what happens.. Hm? Hm!? Yeah that’s what I thought. Okeedokee well I gotta be going. Here’s the music and.. Dude! Let go of my shirt! Damn, you’re weak. Alright well I gotta be outsy. Don’t forget to check the SCRAP HEAP! ttyl bye!

door closes

darkness befalls

chain

padlock

joyful whistling fades into the distance

amazing music begins to play

Doesn’t English (#025) – Please Tokyo Please This is Tokyo & СТОПКРАН

_______________________________________________________________

There are lots of fun things to do in Russia: painting a wall grey for example, or you could paint a fence grey, maybe fuck around and paint a car grey. Also you can go check out some awesome Russian bands like these two poppy wavy indie gazey mofos right here. The first band is called СТОПКРАН and I had a hard time figuring out what that means in English. Google translates it to ‘Stopkran’ and I think ‘Stopkran’ translates to ‘Emergency Brake’ which makes for a pretty cool band name. The other band has an English name and boy is it rad: Please Tokyo Please This is Tokyo. I don’t know what it is about that name, but I love it. I also love all these super chill jams. All jokes aside, I am consistently surprised by how awesome and diverse the music scene in Russia is. Before I started this blog I really did picture Russia as being a vacant place painted grey, but now I know it is not that. Well, it might be that (probably not?), but there are also a lot of dope bands.

Doesn’t English (#016) – побег

_______________________________________________________________

I have no idea what this band is even called. In their bandcamp URL they’re called Pobeg but on the bandcamp page itself they’re called побег. If that doesn’t confuse you enough, the name on the album art appears to be Jiosez. Typical Russian confusion tactics am I right? Pobeg, I think, is the english alphabet spelling of побег, which means “the escape”. Don’t quote me on any of this please. I’m very confused (in general but also about this band). At least there’s no confusion about how freakin’ rad this release is. If I were to transcribe this into colours, the lyrics would be grey or brown and the music itself would be purple with sharp bursts of pink and red. What, you don’t hear colours? I hear the rainbow y’all. This is so good. Track 2, oof! I love it so much.
[Buy it on Amazon!]