Backwards Looking Forward - Acid Kicks/Different Skeletons

Another couple releases that should have been at the forefront of your minds before you were lobotomised by Watch The Throne last year...


Acid Kicks are a Philly quartet (three of which play bass, and seeing as I have a distant connection to that instrument I am already enamoured) who put out this EP Life Dreams last year. I have had it floating around for months, and thought that seeing as it plays with me a bit, it should play with you too. It's the typical psych fare that I lap up like alcoholic milkshakes, yet there is a sweaty urgency underneath it all that shakes and rattles the bones. Noisy psych punk with a severe bottom end. Buy the 7" here.


Acid Kicks - Pyramidic Valley


Different Skeletons are a garage rock band from Canada's largest city, Toronto. Their album of last year Secret Jeers was one sloppy, jangly, irreverent jam, Black Lips and the Dirtbombs would be proud.Different Skeletons are delightfully jangled, chanting, and surf-tinged. For all the same reasons I recommended the Bleed Whites I can suggest these guys, especially if you're looking for something quicker and rougher. All and all, a sweet debut album. Plus, it has a great cover (see below) AND is a free download here! Imminently cooler.

Different Skeletons - All Going To Die
Different Skeletons - Samsonite

Backwards Looking Forwards 2011 - Pow Wows, The Spits, Acid Kicks, High Wolf

Here's a few more sweet rekkids from last year that you really should dip into...


Pow Wows is a Toronto band who put out the great Nightmare Soda on Get Hip. The band actually recorded this way back in 2010, but its release some months later has done nothing to dilute its seedy goodness. In fact, I put this alongside Natural Child's 1971 as a companion piece of slacker garage, and as that album was in my best of 2011 list you can bet your bottom dollar Nightmare Soda would have made the cut if discovered earlier. Plus, 'Do The Splash' is my belated fave track of 2011. Not really, but it is a killer track, for drinking booze in the pool in these summer months, which has happened on occasion. Try it - its good for you.

Pow Wows - EIO (During The Flood)
Pow Wows - Do The Splash


I told you about a High Wolf release that Bathetic put out early last year. Well, the demented guru put out a longplayer at the tail end of 2011 called Atlas Nation. It is the typical waterlogged mantra drone fare that High Wolf dishes out, but after getting loose to Pow Wows and doing the splash, it's a great come down. Atlas Nation is available through Holy Mountain.

High Wolf - Raagini


But there is only so much spacing out one can take, and that's where The Spits' V comes in. A harder, vitriolic Ramones, Seattle's fave purveyors of garage gutter punk delivered an album that was straight outta New York circa 1981. It's unashamedly in LOVE with the leather smell of Johnny and his bros - something a few Brisbane bands can definitely sympathise with - and there is certainly nothing wrong with that.

The Spits - All I Want
The Spits - Fed Up