New Junk City - Same Places LP

Night Animal / Secret Pennies / Real Ghost (2018)

New Junk City is a band that keeps randomly popping back into my life when I'm not expecting them.  I had a split 7" of theirs sent to me to review a few years ago, they ended up as one of the bands on an All In Vinyl single series that I subscribed to and now a full length album has shown up at my door. 

Same Places is a full length album's worth of all of the things that have made me like the New Junk City 7"s I've heard over the last several years.  This is a band playing energetic, punked up pop songs.  In reading the bio sheet, the label compares the band to several other bands that I don't think they sound like much.  Looking around the internet at other reviews of this album, it seems like most websites are essentially copying and pasting that bio and trying to pass it off as a review.  That sort of thing annoys me to no end.

What I hear are gruff vocals that remind me a little bit of that guy from Flatliners, but over top of music that's significantly better than anything The Flatliners ever released.  There's a certain amount of late 90s energy, in a Burning Airlines sort of way, but more straightforward and with a heavier emphasis on being catchy.  Or maybe a less polished version of late era Samiam, keeping the hooks in tact, but assembling things a bit rougher around the edges.

However you want to try to describe New Junk City, it boils down to the fact that the record is really good and worth checking out.  I might not being paying as much attention to them as I should, but I'm happy that outside forces keep putting this band back in front of me so I don't miss out on anything.

New Junk City - Same Places:
https://nightanimalrecords.bandcamp.com/album/new-junk-city-same-places-lp

Black Paw - Bait 7"

Night Animal (2018)

I've been missing the band Rumspringer for years.  They were one of my favorite discoveries of the past ten years or so and I still have both of their albums in heavy rotation.  It's so exciting to see Wes from Rumspringer with a new band called Black Paw.  Formed from the ashes of the short lived New Colonies, Black Paw provide four songs of the sort of crunchy, melodic pop punk that I love.

Black Paw is gruff without sacrificing the hooks and they are aggressive without losing sight of the melody.  The four songs on this 7" are every bit as good as anything Rumspringer ever cranked out.  I'm so thrilled it exists and the only issue I have is that there are only four songs.  A fourteen song full length would be much better and would have certainly placed high on my records of the year list if the other theoretical songs were as good as the four on this 7".

 I have nothing further to add.  This is excellent.  Go buy it right now.

Black Paw - Bait 7":
https://nightanimalrecords.bandcamp.com/album/black-paw-ep

New Junk City / Rebot (Re)pair - Split 7"

Night Animal (2016)

One of the interesting things about the recent uptick in records being sent to me to review is that it is exposing me to new bands that aren't on my radar.  Granted, that's not always for the best as there certainly some stinkers that get sent my way.  That being said, the few good ones that manage to sneak through are more than enough reward to sift through sthe sewage.

Case in point is New Junk City from this 7".  I don't really have any idea where these guys came from (OK, their Bandcamp page says they are from Atlanta, but you know what I mean).  I kind of can't fathom that I would have stumbled across this 7" on my own.  Not for any particular reason, I'm just not really sure where it would have popped up for me given my fairly narrow use of the internet.  Anyway, these two New Junk City songs are great.  On "Everything Good," lightly distorted guitar riffs in the verse give way to a chorus that crashes through the song.  The vocals are forceful, but not screamed and most of all it's supremely catchy.  "Wasting" may even be better with its bouncy chord progressions.  It's the best kind of punked up pop, without falling into the trappings of generic pop punk.

Robot (Re)pair doesn't quite hit the same kind of highs that New Junk City hits.  The recording of these three songs is a little flat, which probably doesn't help things.  The first two songs are both about a minute long and they feel like throwaways.  By the third song, "Weird World," they slow things down a bit and take their time.  The results are better and it's a reasonably catchy song, though I liked it more before I read the lyric sheet.  None of the three songs are bad, but they are completely overshadowed by how great these New Junk City songs are.

New Junk City / Rebot (Re)pair - Split 7":

https://nightanimalrecords.bandcamp.com/album/new-junk-city-robot-re-pair-split-7