Radioactivity - Time Won't Bring Me Down LP - Green Vinyl

Dirtnap / Wild Honey (2025)

It's been two years since we had a Radioactivity album from one of my favorite songwriters, Jeff Burke.  I initially discovered Jeff through the second Marked Men album, On The Outside, when the company I worked for sent copies of it out to college radio stations in 2003.  Ever since then I have been continuously wowed by pretty much everything he's been involved in.

Time Won't Bring Me Down is another excellent entry in the Jeff Burke catalog.  It starts out like you'd hope, with fast paced, downstroke heavy, hook-filled, Marked Men-ish rippers.  I've always said that Burke has this insane mastery of having the chord progression go in the least expected direction and that's on full display here, but as usual he keeps the songs on track with vocals that tie everything together perfectly.

Like their last album, there is a an obvious focus on including a good amount of slower song, and in particular the back half of this album has a good amount of them.  While I think I'm always going to prefer the faster one, these showcase the range that Burke has when it comes to crafting impeccable songs that, at least for me, become instantly lodged into my subconscious, destined to play on an internal loop in my brain.  It's so great to have a new Radioactivity record and I plan on spending some serious quality time with it as who knows when we'll get the next one.  Hopefully it won't take ten more years.

Radioactivity - Time Won't Bring Me Down:
https://dirtnaprecords.bandcamp.com/album/radioactivity-time-wont-bring-me-down

Rascalz - Really Livin' LP - Orange Vinyl

Smoke On (2020, Reissue)

Every Wednesday, in honor of Ed Lover Dance Day from Yo! MTV Raps, I take a break from rock and roll to write a little bit about hip hop. In the late 80s and early 90s hip hop ruled my musical life. During this often called 'Golden Era' I discovered so much incredible music. As I am slowly replacing the CDs I've had for thirty plus years with vinyl copies, I'm going to talk about some albums that had a really important impact on me during some very formative years.

Rascalz have an interesting story that I'm going to do my best to piece together as succinctly as I can with the extremely limited information that I can find online.  It all starts off in Canada in 1992 when the group was called Ragga Muffin Rascals.  They released an album called Really Livin' on in independent label.  Said album garnered the interest from Sony and they got signed to rerelease that album.  Feeling that the album was already dated and that their sound had evolved past that, the group opted to redo the album with new songs and redone versions of a few songs from that first album.  The result is pretty much a completely different album released in 1993.  Also called Really Livin', which is the part that I found confusing trying to figure out what was going on.

The 1993 version of Really Livin' is the one that Smoke On Records rereleased in 2020.  It took me a while to find a copy of this for a good price as I had missed the boat on the reissue when it first came out.  This is the first time either version of Really Livin' has been available on vinyl and it's great to have this album that was completely unknown to me when it originally came out.

Perhaps if I had grown up in Canada as opposed to New Jersey I would have been more aware of Rascalz in 1993.  But I never remember seeing them on Yo! MTV Raps or reading about them in The Source.  Much like fellow countryman Maestro Fresh Wes, it would be years and years later that I discovered their record only to be blown away and annoyed that I hadn't been able to listen to it from the jump.

This is a perfectly produced 1993 style record.  Lots of upright bass riffs, giving it that jazzy undertone, while having the loud cracking snare drum bits and hard hitting percussion that keeps things sounding energetic and harder than some of the sleepy production of the later 90s.  Lyrically, they remind me a little bit of the Pharcyde in places, but mostly due to the how the vocals sound and the cadence a bit.  The whole package doesn't really sound anything like The Pharcyde, but the vocals combined with the xcellent production makes this album really stand out.

It really is a great record that I feel is probably lost in time to a lot of people.  I certainly missed the boat on it completely for decades, but I'm glad that it finally hit my radar as it fits in wonderfully with the other 1993 hip hop albums that I love.

Rascalz - Really Livin'
https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_kMslu2PD5ISli5X-irOs4bBSqsoTBvmM8

Model Martel - A Thousand Couple Times LP - Orange Vinyl

Snappy Little Numbers (2025)

An album being on Snappy Little Numbers is usually all that it takes to stir my interest.  It's a label with a remarkable string of quality records that always has way more hits than misses, so I'm going to pay attention as it is.  Throw in a band name that references pro wrestling, and not only am I paying attention, but now I'm setting expectations.  You don't want to waste a good band name on a band that's bunk.

Luckily for all involved, Model Martel lives up to their name and their label.  This quartet has put together an album of punk-adjacent songs that are heavy on melody, choruses and hooks that get lodged in your head pretty easily.  I say punk-adjacent because the ethos is surely there.  There's that energy and scrappiness that are the hallmarks of of any good punk rock record, but this is a band that's not yelling or hollering or playing a million miles an hour for the sake of it.  They're crafting songs that draw equally from the 90s alternative rock cannon (the good stuff, not like Stone Temple Pilots) as they are from their Lookout records catalog.

Also, I feel the need to call out how much I like the vocals.  So often these days there's a band that's playing something I like musically, but as soon as the singer steps up to the microphone, I'm out.  There's this thing that seems to be going around that requires bands making melodic punk records to scream over the top of them as opposed to sing.  Not the case here.  There's a roughness to the vocals that keep them authentic, but not in a way where the inherent melody is being sacrificed.  It's good stuff and I wish more bands could pull it off.

Just as I was lamenting the lack of good new records by new bands, here comes Model Martel to make a liar out of me.  It's probably the best debut album I've heard this year by a long shot and easily among the overall ten best albums of 2025.  Definitely worth checking out.

Model Martel -  A Thousand Couple Times:
https://snappylittlenumbers.bandcamp.com/album/a-thousand-couple-times

Lutheran Heat - Hi Again LP

Pinata (2025)

Maybe you remember 2016?  Much of it is a blur to me in that way that it seems like it was yesterday and there isn't much of consequence to remember.  While at the same time it was nine years ago and well enough in the past to legitimately forget a lot of what happened because you're old now.  Once of the things I didn't forget about was the band Lutheran Heat.  Their album from that year, Louder From The Other Side, was one of my favorites.  And then they just kind of vanished.  Maybe not to the folks lucky enough to have them playing shows locally, but as far as a record releasing entity, that was the last I heard of them.

And here we are, nine years later.  Lutheran Heat is back with their new album, Hi Again.  Despite the length of time between records, this one picks up right where the other one left off.  Jangly guitar that drives the sounds forward in a way that's bouncy, catchy and the exact sort of thing that's helpful to listen to when you might need your spirits raised up a bit.  Whenever I listen to them, the band that comes to mind most often for me is Title Tracks.  Even though Lutheran Heat doesn't have a sound that's quite as frantic and the recording fidelity is significantly cleaner, there's still something about the two bands that strike me the same way and it's an energy that I wish more bands had.

Lutheran Heat is tight as all get out and the alternating female/male vocals create dynamic songs.  When those vocals combine into any of the album's memorable harmonies there's something textural that happens to the music that I'm having a difficult time describing (likely because I don't write particularly well).  But needless to say, these songs soar and I'm just loving every second of this record.

That brings me to my only complaint.  The seconds on this record.  There aren't nearly enough of them with only eight songs on the album.  Having 12 songs like their debut would have only made me love it more, but I'll take eight over none any day of the week.  

Lutheran Heat - Hi Again:
https://lutheranheat.bandcamp.com/album/hi-again

Mad Skillz - From Where??? 2xLp + 7" (/750)

90s Tapes (2023, Reissue)

Every Wednesday, in honor of Ed Lover Dance Day from Yo! MTV Raps, I take a break from rock and roll to write a little bit about hip hop. In the late 80s and early 90s hip hop ruled my musical life. During this often called 'Golden Era' I discovered so much incredible music. As I am slowly replacing the CDs I've had for thirty plus years with vinyl copies, I'm going to talk about some albums that had a really important impact on me during some very formative years.

This is another one of those albums that's been in my backlog to write about for ages.  90s Tapes rereleased this back in 2023.  Even though that doesn't necessarily make this the most timely time to write about From Where???, it has given me a good amount of time to sit with a record I had never heard before picking up.

The story goes is that Mad Skillz debut album, packed with top tier producers and guest appearances, was dropped in 1996 the same day as a 2 Pac record and The Fugees.  This led to it being drastically overshadowed and resulted in Mad Skillz being dropped.  Which led to him changing his name to just Skillz and taking another swing at things in the early 2000s.  By 1996, I wasn't paying attention to hip hop at all really, so I wasn't aware of this album.  I'm not sure how I would have felt about it if I had heard it at the time.  I think that if From Where??? had dropped in 1993, I would have been into it.

We've got a rogues gallery of producers on here including Large Professor, The Beatnuts, Buckwild and J Dilla.  They've put together an album that's full of cool and interesting beats that are way better than the bulk of production that was happening in 1996.  That said, it does still suffer from slow-tempo-itis for the bulk of the album.  Don't get me wrong, it's good.  It's very good, in fact, if you think about the year it came out.  But I'm always going to be more interested in an album that has some higher bpm numbers.

Lyrically, Mad Skillz can really hold it down.  He reminds me a lot of Maestro Fresh Wes in his voice, cadence and subject matter.  He spends a lot of time talking about how good he is in relation to his geography.  Just as Maestro Fresh Wes liked to spit about how good he was despite being from Canada, Mad Skillz treads similar territory, but swapping Canada for Virginia.  This isn't a dig.  I love Maestro Fresh Wes, so if you have something in common with him, I'm going to be OK with that.  Guest verses by the aforementioned Large Pro and Q-Tip don't hurt either.

This is a fun record.  I wish it was a little faster and had it come out a few years earlier it probably would have been.  Considering the desert that 1996 hip hop was, Mad Skillz and From Where??? stand out as being among the top tier of that year.

Mad Skillz - From Where???:

https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_n5AE8o7T2ysIpYQmlSf5PRrVRRVORV35M

Fig Dish – That’s What Love Songs Often Do 2xLp - Blue Vinyl (/500)

Forge Again (2025, Reissue)

This is one of those records that I was worried would never come out on vinyl.  Despite how much I love Fig Dish, along with a cadre of friends whose taste in music I trust very much, I was worried they were being forgotten.  Then came last year's release of the 'lost' fourth Fig Dish album, Feels Like The Very First Two Times.  That got my hopes up that we might actually see the release of the band's two major label albums from the 90s.  And Forge Again followed through with the first of those two, That's What Love Songs Often Do.

Originally released in 1995 on Atlas/Polygram, this was Fig Dish's first foray into the major league feeding frenzy on 1990s rock and roll.  I can't say that I have a lot of perspective on how it was received upon release.  I was 18 at the time, and I don't think I actually stumbled across them until sometime in 1996.  And that stumbling occurred in the used/cut out bin of my favorite record store.  Though Fig Dish's appearance in that sort of bin was not limited to that one store, as I did see them there kind of frequently.  

Assured that the record was more than worth the dollar or two price tag on the CD, I picked it up and for the next 30 years never understood why they weren't more lauded and appreciated.  I love this record and always have.  It's got that perfect, huge 90s guitar sound that cranks through song after song of earworm-ridden hooks.  This is a band that really got how to put a song together for maximum catchiness, while keeping the tempo of the album varied and interesting.

This has been one of my most wanted albums on vinyl for ages.  The fact that I'm finally holding it, along with some pretty heavy hints that we're also going to get their subsequent album, When Shove Goes Back To Push, is cause for immediate celebration.  Thank you to Forge Again for releasing this classic and to Fig Dish for creating it.

Fig Dish – That’s What Love Songs Often Do:
https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_kdHZsWRzBRvu89c0Zdn8CXu8hJCmf1NO0

Superchunk – Songs In The Key Of Yikes - Orange & Black Swirl Vinyl

 

Merge (2025)

I will readily admit that I was very disappointed in Superchunk's last album, Wild Loneliness.  It was slow and kind of boring, in my opinion.  I've always preferred the faster, punkier Superchunk songs and that album didn't click with me.  Luckily, there's no shortage of Superchunk albums out there that will give me that fix, but I can't say I was particularly excited or expecting a whole lot when they announced this year's new record, Songs in the Key of Yikes.

As long as they keep making Superchunk records, I'll keep buying them.  So, as usual I preordered the new one without listening to anything.  Once I put it on, I was pleasantly surprised.  It's much better than Wild Loneliness.  While I can't fathom they'll ever hit the highs they hit in the 90s for me (seeing them close their set opening for Rocket From The Crypt with "Slack Motherfucker," "Precision Auto" and "Hyper Enough" pretty much confirmed my opinion of that), this is a solid record, with upbeat and catchy songs.  The mope is on the back burner and the hooks are at the forefront.

Thirteen albums (and forty-five 7" singles) into their career, I don't know exactly what I could possibly say about Superchunk that wouldn't be a rehash of anything else I've ever said.  If you are reading anything that I write, the odds of you not having your own opinion of Superchunk already seems absurd.  You know what they sound like.  You know they're great most of the time.  All I can really tell you is that this is one of their their records with upbeat songs than slower ones.  It's on the more subdued side of their upbeat catalog, but it's a good record.  I dig it and unlike a couple of their other albums, I will definitely listen to this one from time to time.

Superchunk – Songs In The Key Of Yikes:
https://superchunk.bandcamp.com/album/songs-in-the-key-of-yikes

Casual - Meanwhile... 2xLP (/200)

Trumindz (2025, Reissue)

Every Wednesday, in honor of Ed Lover Dance Day from Yo! MTV Raps, I take a break from rock and roll to write a little bit about hip hop. In the late 80s and early 90s hip hop ruled my musical life. During this often called 'Golden Era' I discovered so much incredible music. As I am slowly replacing the CDs I've had for thirty plus years with vinyl copies, I'm going to talk about some albums that had a really important impact on me during some very formative years.

Casual's debut, Fear Itself, is one of my favorite records in the history of hip hop.  Easy top five, probably top three.  Jive dropped him before he had a chance to release a follow up and it wasn't until 1997 that Casual released Meanwhile.  It was independantly released via Hieroglyphics own label, Hiero Imperium, and only came out on cassette.  I picked that up off the Hiero website in 97 while I was in college.  I liked it well enough, but I remember being a little disappointed with it considering how much I loved his first album.

Truth be told, I wasn't really in a space to appreciate a good hip hop album in 1997.  I wouldn't go so far to say I was against hip hop or anything like that, but I was really sour about how much the sound had changed and the type of music that I had identified with in formative high school years had kind of left me behind to seek fame and riches.  When Dope Folks released a barebones vinyl version of Meanwhile a few years ago, I reevaluated it and found that it had aged so much better than I had remembered it.  Are the beats on par with Fear Itself? Not exactly, but they're still really good.  Especially in comparison to what was being shoveled out by most rappers in 1997.

Up to that point we had a self released tape and a single LP with a generic sleeve for Meanwhile's official releases.  But finally, nearly 30 years later, Trumindz stepped up to the plate of put out a double LP version with full artwork, remastered and with a bonus track.  This is absolutely the definitive version of this album.  It looks great and sounds great, finally elevating this release to something that can stand shoulder to shoulder with the other incredible Hieroglyphics releases of this era.  

I'm so thrilled we finally have this version and can only hope that Trumindz decides to give the same sort of love and attention to The Shamen record that got a barebones CD release on Hiero Imperium in the early 2000s.  To me, that's the last crown jewel of the Hiero catalog that needs the deluxe reissue (though I certainly wouldn't turn down more Hiero Oldies and Hiero B Sides reissues).

Casual - Meanwhile...

https://casual1.bandcamp.com/album/meanwhile

Diaz Brothers - The World Is Yours LP - White Vinyl

Dead Broke / Serial Bowl / Waterslide / Break The Silence (2025)

I have a very hard time coming to grips with the fact that the first Diaz Broithers record came out five years ago already.  I also acknowledge that the old man time-goes-by-so-fast-now trope is also a bit tiring and overused.  But I'm one for a good trope and I feel like it's an easy way to explain that the first album still sounds so fresh, exciting and vibrant I haven't really filed it into 'old friend' status yet.  It's a record I'll put on when I want to hear something new instead of an old standard.  But again, I've been doing that for five years now and that doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

What will definitely move the Diaz Brothers' debut to that 'old friend' status is their new album The World Is Yours.  The fact that anyone is making music like this in 2025 is miraculous and anyone longing for those sounds of the mid 90s melodic punk scene in the UK, your ship has come in.  Sharing members with HDQ and The Jones, you're going to find that electric guitar work that fits so elegantly in the Hammond/Stubbs school of riffage and that's something I find to be in tragically short supply these days.

What sets Diaz Brothers apart from the few bands that do dip their toe into this sort of sound is how the vocals are just head and shoulders above what you tend to hear.  Rather than someone shouting like a malfunctioning Decepticon, Dave "Golly" Golledge has complete control of his vocal apparatus, weaving together melody with a passionate, intense delivery that so excellently complements the guitar maelstrom being thrown around by Mike Jones and Neal Cox.  It all comes together so perfectly and would fit right in with your favorite record of the 90s, while still having the sort of electricity that makes it feel like a new record that's currently relevant, not some nostalgic throwback.

I couldn't possibly say enough good things about The World Is Yours.  It's giving me exactly what I want to listen to when it comes to melodic punk rock.  I only wish there were more bands that could capture this sort of lightning in a bottle in 2025.  It would sure make putting together a top records of the year list a lot easier as Diaz Brothers will certainly be in the upper echelon of this year's list.

Diaz Brothers - The World Is Yours:
https://deadbrokerekerds.bandcamp.com/album/the-world-is-yours