Compendiums of Clang No. 4
Sorting notes and catching up. So much to listen to, too many distractions to talk about it.
Well, there have been some pretty dang good records released in 2025. I haven’t shared many detailed thoughts on why I like them. One of the reasons was due to a very old laptop I kept lumbering along for years waaay past its expected life. It became a struggle just to get it to wake up and function, let alone get it to go online. Then I would have to hope it wouldn’t freeze for at least half an hour. “Ugh!” I blurt, throwing up my hands and keep myself from winging the thing out a window,
However, I got a new proper machine to write with and took a lot of notes. I’m sifting through them now.
I’ve got some catching up to do. So, just in time for the year to start wrapping up, here are some of those notes expanded. More to come? I hope so.
ENTREZ VOUS Antenna Legs Hear Everything • Entrez Vous’s self-titled 2023 debut was a fun little record of hazy, short bedroom pop ditties. The kind of songs whose lyrics could double as the plotlines from those early-2000s young reader books Gen X parents bought for their kids, hoping to spark a lifelong love of the written word. I can personally vouch for being one of those parents.
All the charm that made their debut such a bashful bop is still here. But this time around, it’s bigger, brighter and brasher.It results in a joyous oddball take on sparkly and trippy tinged beach-time new wave.
That sound shines bright in a Blondie saturated in cosmic twang way on tracks like “Dream City, 1964” and how songs like ”I Had This Vision”, “Back To Carolina” and “Silky” have a misty cool akin to running through the sprinkler on a sweltering, humid summer day. Then there’s “Palm Springs” which is something like hitting the surf where the waves in a motorik flow.
It’s not all sun and sand though as Entrez Vous like it when the moon is out too. “Trap Door” is a like reflective before the dawn woolgathering with Red Bird girls groups in mind, “Tendrils & Vines” shimmies like the best dive bar after midnight and the spooky back alley broken rockabilly beat that gives “Lbs of Roses” confirm all that.
Hear Entrez Vous on Radio Clang
RADIO CLANG No. 10
It’s Labor Day weekend here in the US (and Canada too. I cannot leave out the neighbors across the river of town I grew up in.) A time to honor and recognize the American labor movement and the hard working people. For many, it means a day off, cookouts, beer and etc. For some, it means a day off and prime time to be inconsiderate to people in service i…
Read my take on Florry’s Sounds Like… below.
Looks Like... Florry
Unless this is your first visit here, you probably know my fondness of Florry. A month or so ago, the band announced the follow up to 2023’s The Holey Bible (a top ten album of the year in Clangoring’s rankings) would be coming out in late spring . Titled
Hear Florry on Radio Clang
RADIO CLANG No. 11
Another of those “ it’s common to happen” episodes. One of the ones that end up wandering into the Rust Belt/Corn Belt and then sticking around there for a bit. There’s also story about what punk rock was like when I was young and a theory on a 1970s private press anti-drug message 7inch I recently heard.
The OBLIQUES St. Petersburg• You’ve read me rave about these Durham, NC lads plenty before, so I’ll spare you reiterations. Their debut single out on Hozac Records. Get it!
Hear the Obliques on Radio Clang
RADIO CLANG No. 9
You ever noticed that some hip hop cats will do mic check even though the track has already started? And though they’re at a perfect volume in the mix, sometimes they tell the person in the booth to turn the mic all the way up as loud as it will go. And never once have I ever heard the mic then turned up to some loud, clipping and distorted mess. It sta…
SHARP PINS Radio DDR• I kinda covered my feelings about this album already in a photo story from earlier this year.
Popped!
I can’t say Sharp Pins are exactly bumpin’ out of car radios or blaring from boomboxes in the park. Still, I wouldn’t say WXYC in Chapel Hill wasn’t on a mission to make that happen when their DJs locked onto “Bye Bye Basil” from this Chicago entity’s 2023 debut, Turtle Rock. Precious and shambling, the song’s lo-fi principles and ‘60s Mod/Brit expressi…
I could elaborate more, but instead, how about you give it a listen? I really think it will end up being my album of the year.
TV BUDDHA - 10,000 Buddhas • Based on the band’s name and the song titles, I figured I would be getting into some kind of garage rock meets egg punk. The song titles give me that impression even more. The cover made me think it’s a winkingly French take on that, but I learned egg punk isn’t a thing anymore, and anything I think might be it is now called post-something else. I’ve never been all that up to date on the latest hip micro-hole terms. From my listening experience, this isn’t shooting for any era where such sounds are put on egg-themed shelves.
The shamble and drone across this EP throw Velvets/Faust! shadows occasionally, but the resemblance is slight at most. This is its own (anti) Rock-n-Roll animal. Calming moments are just a respite from the mobs of guitars, which sound like a chorus of belt sanders or rain down like a ton of metallic shards barraging any bystander’s bag of bones.