Collate is a post punk trio from Portland, Oregon, which has been around since 2017 and includes (ex-)members of Mall Caste, Ex-Debs, Conditioner Disco Group, Vog and Dr Identity. To make it short these guys sound a lot like if they were opening for Wire, Gang of Four or The Fall in 1979 or something.
Coming from Portland I of course think of another band which got clear late 70s post punk influences, The Lithics!
Their first release is a 8-track cassette named Material Inspection in late 2017. The influences are clear, the sound is "vintage" (god that word sounds bad but you know what I mean) and the lot is extremely enjoyable.
Yes they clearly bring us back to the late 70s and... why not?
Liminal Concerns is their first vinyl release (as a 12'' self-released mini album) in 2018 with 8 tracks (2 from the first cassette and 6 new ones) which could have totally been released on the same record as the first cassette.
More great 70s post-punk songs with a perfect guitar sound.
February 2019, Collate releases its first EP on Market Square Records.
Once again, no surprises at all, it sounds exactly the same, a bit more of female vocals this time maybe... some great bass lines... Collate manages to make better, catchier but exactly similar songs, and that's all we expect! Super good single!
Big up for Selective Memory which is probably my favourite Collate song!
From what I understood their latest release is a tape only available at their show, it's called Symptomatic and it was probably released at the end of 2019.
7 songs, 2 covers (The Clean and The Fall), a slightly more powerful sound than on their other releases, aren't the songs faster either? a bit more punk right ?
Well what can I say? it's still super good and I hope this last tape is a preview of a future full length!
And for a full vintage experience:
You can listen to Collate and other beautiful songs on Rien à Faire #7.
All Hits is a triofrom Portland, Oregon which has been around
for a couple of years now and play some kind of mostly mid-tempo punk.
Note that at behind the guitar and mic you can find Janie when she
is not behind the drums in another good band from the Portland area:
Collate.
Izzy, at the bass and mic (as well), is also playing in the very
(very) synth punk act
Dress Forms.
Introducingis probably what we can call the band demo. Released as a 4-track
tape at the very end of May 2019, it includes only 2 tracks on their
bandcamp page and that's unfortunately all I had access to.
Rolling mid-tempo percussion, guitar switching between background
melodies and open riffs... the band is swimming on the edge of the
punk pool, close to the indie side, and the great dual vocals singing of
Janie and Izzy is stressing it a lot... and it's
working!
Izzy takes care of the punk side of the chant while
Janie does some proper singing, bringing a softer and more melodic
side to the songs which makes me think of bands like
Child's Pose
or
Catisfaction.
A bit more than a year later the band releases
Men And Their Work,
its first full length, onIron Lung Records(a label which really surprises me these days by the extreme diversity ofits catalogue).
Within 8 songs and a short intro the band delivers what their
demo promised, a great and well mastered album. All Hits keeps the same recipe with an extra pinch of energy (especially
on the hit Blockhead) and punk attitude (Izzy taking the
lead on most of the songs, taking us back to a long tradition of
female-fronted punk bands).
Still mostly mid-tempo, the All Hits' songs do no hesitate to move up a gear when it's needed and as an old punk/hardcore fan I always enjoy a little bit of speed.
I mean the three girls from Portland are writing good songs, keeping the whole lot diverse, energetic and super enjoyable. We are now at the border between old 70s female-fronted punk, the riot grrrl movement (am I hearing some Kathleen Hanna influences in some melodic singing parts?) and more modern all-female bands as quoted above.
There is even something of the Dead Kennedys in the super tensed
verses of Kickback (that surfish guitar and rolling bass lines
man!) and I love it!
In the end I have to admit that I enjoy a lot more the more aggressive singing parts of Izzy than the melodic side of Janie but well that's me.
All that matters is that All Hits IS A GOOD BAND!
(and it's not the below live videos that will make me say something else)
Moth are a young band from Melbourne, Australia, that haven't been around for long, their first release being one year old.
Ok so it all started as the solo project of this guy,
Darcy Berry, who plays drums in
Gonzo
(which last year album is pretty cool by the way) and
U-Bahn
(not my thing).
Darcy also creates a lot of visuals for bands from the
Melbourne/Geelong area under the name
Moth Creative
and writes (wrote ?) a visual art zine called
Conscript.
Ok it's not really true when I wrote that the first release was one
year old, Darcy had published a few years before (2015 ?)
another demo
which does not have much in common with what came next. So I am not
going to spend any time on it.
In 2018 though he released
Initial Object, a 12-track tape out on
Weather Vane Records, which can be considered as the first Moth release.
A drum machine, a synth, some distant vocals with a lot of echo to
give a post-punk vibe... Moth is not hiding its industrial /
post-punk influences, well didn't Darcy define it as
Technological paranoid discordant robot rock after all?
Yes there is some kind of a Z-movie atmosphere in this tape, like the
soundtrack of a kitschier (if that's possible) version of
Forbidden Planet.
Ok ok I am being mean, there is a lot of good in these tracks and
it's interesting to discover where the band comes from.
Released in November 2019, this
5-track demo
is the first "official" release of the band.
I would like to cal it pure high paced mid-tempo modern rock but I know it does not mean anything... anyway it's not really different
from the previous demo but with way better
songs cohesion and improved energy.
It's a demo all right so it does not sound really good and in the end
4 tracks out of 5 (except for Interlude which I find a bit
boring anyway) will be recorded again so I guess that Darcy was
not so happy with the result.
WithMachine Nation,Moth is taking a big big step forward, it's the band first
release on vinyl and it got out on
Marthouse Records
in Australia but also on
Polaks Records
in Europe.
All songs written & performed by Darcy Berry
hum ok Darcy but there is a real band behind you now, some
members of
Kosmetika,Alien Nosejob
and
Body Maintenancehave turned a solo concept into a proper live act right ?
Except for 2021 which was already on the demo (but was re-recorded as
a longer version), this EP deliver 3 new tracks of very good
post-punk.
What strikes me at first and what I really enjoy is that the synth is
getting a lot more discreet! Moth is now a very efficient
post-punk act without all the weird cheap Science fiction sounds. Darcy is still playing with a very British approach of the
vocals (damn it reminds me so much of some not-so-politically-correct
80s British oi! bands, in the vocals only of course!); the sharp
guitar riffs and powerful song construction are now adding real value
to the now "classic" Moth formula.
Of course the synth is still here but it's part of a whole, helping
the songs take some consistency and not taking over the melody as it
happens too much unfortunately.
Veeka Nazarova from Kosmetika delivers great singing in
Russian on Jealousy which adds variety to the record without
completely changing the formula as she manages to keep a similar way
of singing. A very good song.
This EP brings the band in the big league, I would say that they get
closer to the sound of already established bands like
Collate.
Moth's latest release, the self-released
Modern Madness
tape, really fits in the 7" continuity BUT with a step backward. The whole idea is a bit
strange as 3 out of these 4 tracks were already on the demo, so yes
Moth seems to become quite good at making new stuff out of old
recipes.
Of course everything has been re-recorded and shortened a bit, which
is probably why they sound so new. Yes the songs are the same but,
first it sounds a hell lot better (that hi-hat on
Modern Madness!) and second the energy is completely
different which is why this tape is closer to the 7" than to Initial Object.
Unfortunately it's the new song, Work, which fails to convince
me... it sounds like a track from the demo or from
Initial Object... which would actually make sense as the other
tracks are originally from the demo but what I mean is that it
sounds like it was actually on the demo...
Anyway that's the second solid release of the band in a few months
only, well done!
