Parquet Courts - 2016 - Human Performance

 

Rough Trade – RTRADCD810  279.06MB FLAC

Propagandhi - 2017 - Victory Lap

 

Epitaph – 87540-2  263.62MB FLAC

Victory Lap, released in 2017, finds Propagandhi sounding less like a band preserving a punk formula and more like a group continuing to sharpen its own language. By this point, the Winnipeg band had long since moved beyond the fast melodic punk associated with its early records. The songs here are denser, heavier and more technically elaborate, pulling in metal, hardcore and progressive structures without losing the urgency that has always defined the band.

The title track opens the album with immediate force. “Victory Lap” is compact, fast and muscular, but the arrangement is full of small rhythmic turns and guitar details that keep it from becoming straightforward. Chris Hannah’s voice remains one of the band’s most recognizable features, clipped and intense, while Sulynn Hago’s guitar adds another layer of sharpness to the record. Her arrival in the lineup gives the album a slightly different attack from earlier Propagandhi records, especially in the interplay between the two guitars.

“Comply/Resist” pushes the album into a more metallic direction, with tight riffing and abrupt changes in pace. “Cop Just Out of Frame” and “When All Your Fears Collide” continue that balance between speed and complexity. Propagandhi have always been unusually willing to make punk songs structurally difficult, and Victory Lap often feels like a record in which the band is enjoying how much information it can fit into a few minutes without losing momentum.

Todd Kowalski’s bass and vocals remain a major counterweight to Hannah. His songs tend to have a different weight and attack, and the vocal contrast helps keep the record from feeling uniform. Jord Samolesky’s drumming is equally important because the songs frequently depend on sudden changes in tempo and emphasis. Even at their most technical, the performances never feel like demonstrations of virtuosity for its own sake. The complexity is there to increase tension.

The album also contains several slower or more expansive passages that break up the constant forward motion. “Failed Imagineer” and “Call Before You Dig” stretch the band’s dynamics, while “Nigredo” and “In Flagrante Delicto” push into darker territory. “Adventures in Zoochosis” closes the album on one of its most reflective notes, showing how far the band’s emotional range had expanded from the blunt speed of its earliest work.

Lyrically, Propagandhi remain politically charged, but Victory Lap rarely feels like a collection of slogans. The writing is more layered, often moving through anger, irony, anxiety and self-questioning within the same song. That complexity matches the music. The band’s politics are present throughout, but the songs work because the arrangements and performances are strong enough to stand independently of any particular message.

The production is dense but controlled. Guitars are thick without turning muddy, the bass remains audible, and the drums retain enough attack to keep the faster sections from collapsing into noise. The record was produced by Propagandhi and John Paul Peters, with additional guitar from former member David Guillas. That continuity helps Victory Lap feel connected to the band’s earlier work while still sounding like a distinct chapter.

The artwork is unusually subdued for such an intense record. The front cover shows a roller coaster standing in the ocean under a gray sky, an image that feels abandoned, unstable and slightly surreal. The same image carries across the disc and interior packaging. The back cover replaces the empty landscape with a band photograph and handwritten track list, creating a sharper contrast between the calm, almost desolate front image and the very human energy of the group itself.

This Oakland Public Library copy carries Main Library stickers, barcode markings and the library hub label directly over the original packaging and disc. The wear and institutional markings make the object look used rather than collectible, but the underlying design remains intact.

Victory Lap is a strong example of what Propagandhi became after decades of refusing to simplify themselves. It is aggressive without being one-dimensional, technically demanding without losing emotion, and politically engaged without relying only on rhetoric. The album sounds like a band still pushing against its own limits rather than simply repeating the things that made it important in the first place.

—ChatGPT

? And The Mysterians - 2005 -The Best Of ? And The Mysterians (Cameo Parkway 1966-1967)

 

ABKCO – 18771-92322  372.31MB FLAC

The Best of ? and the Mysterians: Cameo Parkway 1966–1967 is a 27-track collection built from the band’s original Cameo-Parkway recordings, including material from the 1966 album 96 Tears, the 1967 follow-up Action, later singles, and two previously unreleased versions. Released by ABKCO in 2005, it was significant because the original Cameo-Parkway catalog had been unavailable on legitimate CD for decades. The set finally put the classic recordings into one clean digital collection without sanding away the rough garage quality that made them distinctive.

? and the Mysterians came out of Michigan’s Bay City/Saginaw area and were formed by Mexican-American musicians whose families had roots in migrant farm work. Their sound was built around one of the most recognizable combinations in 1960s garage rock: Question Mark’s sharp, insistent vocal delivery and Frank Rodriguez’s Vox Continental organ. The organ is especially important because it gives the band a sound that is immediately identifiable even when the songs themselves are built from simple blues, R&B and rock-and-roll structures.

“96 Tears” is the obvious landmark. Originally released locally on Pa-Go-Go before being picked up by Cameo-Parkway, the song reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1966. Its organ riff is almost comically simple, but that simplicity is exactly what makes it work. The keyboard repeats like a taunt while Question Mark sings with a cool, slightly sneering confidence. There is no elaborate arrangement, no huge studio production and very little wasted motion. The track sounds like a garage band discovering that three or four perfectly chosen elements can be enough to take over a radio.

The rest of the collection shows that the band was much more than a one-song accident. “I Need Somebody” has the same nervous forward push, while “Stormy Monday” shows their connection to blues and R&B. “You’re Telling Me Lies,” “Ten O’Clock,” “Don’t Tease Me” and “Don’t Break This Heart of Mine” all work inside the compact grammar of mid-60s garage rock: organ, guitar, drums, bass and a vocal that sounds as though it has no interest in being polite.

The second half of the set moves into the Action period, where the band’s sound gets slightly broader without losing its rawness. “Can’t Get Enough of You, Baby” is especially notable because the song later became widely familiar through Smash Mouth, but the Mysterians’ version has a much leaner and stranger quality. “Smokes,” “Got To,” “Do You Feel It” and “Do Something to Me” keep the organ prominent while introducing more soul and pop structure.

Question Mark himself was a major part of the band’s identity. His stage name, sunglasses, dark clothing and deliberately mysterious persona gave the group an almost cartoonish visual presence, but the music underneath it was direct and hard. That combination helped make the band an important bridge between early rock and roll, garage rock and what would later be recognized as punk. The term “punk rock” was even used in print in the early 1970s to describe the Mysterians’ kind of stripped-down, aggressive rock.

The 2005 compilation also makes the band’s recording history easier to hear as a single arc. The first 25 tracks gather the two Cameo-Parkway LPs and related singles, while the final two tracks present previously unreleased versions of “Midnight Hour” and “96 Tears.” Those alternates are useful because they reveal how much the finished recordings depended on feel rather than complexity. Small differences in tempo, vocal attack and organ phrasing can completely change the character of a song this minimal.

The packaging embraces the band’s mid-60s visual identity with orange and brown checkerboard graphics, period photographs and the Cameo Parkway logo. The disc repeats the same color scheme and includes a group image along the bottom edge. This particular copy carries Oakland Public Library markings, including a Temescal branch label on the front, classification sticker, barcode, handwritten disc number and library hub sticker.

What makes ? and the Mysterians endure is not technical complexity. It is compression. The songs reduce rock and roll to a handful of hooks, an organ tone, a rhythm and an attitude, then push those elements until they become unforgettable. “96 Tears” may be the song everyone knows, but this collection shows how much of the band’s personality survived beyond that single hit. They sounded raw, catchy, slightly strange and completely self-contained, which is probably why so much later garage and punk music still feels connected to them.

—ChatGPT