Driving The Telstar On An Endless Drugged Straight

Another day, another Calgary band influenced by Women. Telstar Drugs brought out their Endless Straight EP and Weather Underground cassette on the Perdu label (run by equally excellent band WTCHS), and these are six songs of intricacy, spider-thin guitar, languid-to-urgent atmosphere and tension. A subtle, subliminal draw-and-quartering.

Side note: My first car was a Ford Telstar. There were a lot of drugs smoked in that car. So the name holds a lot of nostalgia for me. Heady, heavy times. Get Endless Straight here.

An Excellent WTCHS' Curse

Canadian hexed howlers WTCHS brought out a new EP on Out Of Sound Records. It's Not A Cross, It's A Curse is five songs of feverish, haunting brooders, lurking in the shadows in their own filth. Five lullabies for the insane. Five nightmares of sewer dwelling triumph. Remember Kong? Miss them, right? Here is the legitimate successor. I want to wax lyrical about the maniacal catharsis this brings, but these words will do. Get it NOW - this is one of the best releases of the year, hands down.

Brendan Masala's Top 7s/10s/EPs of 2013

I'm racing for a train that is taking me into Shropshire for the New Year - village eating, drinking and debauchery awaits. So here is a list of the short form releases that floated my boat this year...

7"s

Bad Vision - 112/Favours



Harmony - Do Me A Favour



Occults - Occults



Ex Con - Ex Con



White Reaper - Conspirator/The Cut




Ttotals - Spectrums Of Light




Neon Windbreaker - New Sky

THIS CANNOT BE PLAYED AT THIS TIME.

Pale Earth - Prelude To Debut



Big Richard Insect - Big Richard Insect



Charles Buddy Daaboul - Three Colours Green



EPs

Multiple Man - Multiple Man
(one of my favourite releases, regardless of format)



Andrew Tuttle - 4064



Death Cassettes - Ghost Party



Young Adults - Born in '91 EP



WTCHS - Wet Weapons



Parquet Courts - Tally All The Things You Broke



Deep Heat - New Design


A Savage God - A Savage God


Barbiturates - Shades


Angry Seas - Angry Seas


What do you think?

Burning The WTCHS

Losing vowels has been in for a while now. Hamilton, Ontario's WTCHS ensure that you lose your bowels too, scraping metal on metal to create an atonal morass of base emotions and desires that still maintain they are catchy and carefree - the perfect crime. Wet Weapons is a four track EP that thrashes violently in the near darkness, a dark, meticulous dirge that caresses your damaged soul. Merely an acid taster though (Wet Weapons came out in October), as this recent split with fellow Hamilton band Thoughts On Air attests. 'Mr Hands' cuts off your digits, sprinkles PCP in the wounds before cauterising them with a blazing iron, leaving your writhing in pain and harbouring dour, dire demons, both real and imagined. Excellent stuff. Grab the split here.

 WTCHS - Mr Hands