A Hozac Triptych Of Seven Inches

I’m kinda getting 7” (and revisionist garage rock) happy this week, and here are three more, all from the Hozac world, that have been taking turns at spiriting me away from the real world, into one filled with attitude, mayhem and hedonistic fun.

Winter Bear is the new venture from ex-Cave Weddings songstress Erin Dorbin, and the two tracks here are imbued with enough summertime revelry and devil-may-care energy to fuel many a beachside moon party. ‘Jump In The Fire’ has the requisite punchy vocals and doo-wop backing vocals, but it’s Dorbin’s steely guitar riffs that infuse this with enough growl and bluster to supersede the cutesy exterior and be a true acolyte of 50s leather rock n roll. ‘Should I Leave’ flows on, more of the same, and it spins around and around, a youthful elixir that pushes aside the clouds and back the clock. Vintage pop tunes, shrink-wrapped and left in an attic, left until now, a true relic of then and now, if slightly warped from the sun and Dorbin’s overflowing charms.

But you can only by walking on sunshine for a certain amount of time before getting burnt and hurtling back to earth, and Cop City/Chill Pillars’ Gift Shop/Brand New Neighbor Blues has the requisite cement in the scorched punk rhythms to make that trip all the quicker. There is a primitive baseness to these two tracks (and indeed on the band’s debut eponymous LP) that disarms. The DEVO card is whipped out regularly when these guys find their feet, and it’s pretty warranted – the spaced out, deliciously warped compositions shouldn’t make sense – at all – yet inexorably draw you in. Before long you are splattered on terra firma, every bone, muscle and organ turned to jelly, yet you continue to hum these tunes through cracked teeth as you breathe your last.

  

Finally we are slammed with some squalling psych detritus from Chicago’s Verma. I know Hozac isn’t just a dirty, scuzzy garage den – they harbour the likes of The Band In Heaven and Human Eye in their midst - but it always blindsides me when something outside the mold crawls out of the darkness and into your ear. The assault is duly justified though – the uneasy motorik energy informing the swirling ‘Ragnaraak’ evokes the most ethereal yet dark machinations of the likeminded Cave, blistering the walls and scorching the floors with their fiery outro; whilst ‘Chrome’ ploughs through serrated tempests of noise to settle into a insidious groove that is pregnant with ill-tempered intent. The kaleidoscopic undulations are insistent, incessant, invasive and invigorating – you won’t be yourself when the needle stops, nor will you want to be.

 

You can pick all this slices of heaven up here.