Thread For New Stuff That Sounds Like Herpes

sadly, if you say "pop punk" to someone, they think of, like, some horrible green day band and they should be thinking of Plastic Bertrand or The Buzzcocks. anyway, i dig Herpes. from Berlin. they are peppy and they have an olde-tymey vibe, but they also sound, you know, "now". anyway, youtube vids are cool. anything recent that is poppy/punky/cool with maybe a late-70's/early 80's edge to it. germans are a plus. and synths are always nice. remember when elastica was gonna save the world? there are days when i kinda wish they had.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XG2jAtXdVc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_KLyF1OFZA&feature=related

matt & kim?

are they good?

i love that the herpes album is only 22 minutes long. short sharp and shocked.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vC50v2TB800&NR=1

I like the album (EP, whatever), too, but I'm starting to get the idea I like thd idea of it more than I actually like listening to it. (Same way I am with that Grong Grong album -- sorry, Scott.) Kind of wish their sound had more Trio/Plastic Bertrand/whatever (or even Mekanik Destrutiw Komandoh/Metal Urbain) in it and less digital hardcorish noise in it. I keep trying to convince myself the record is catchier and goofier than it is. But actually, I hope I'm wrong.

Anyway, Scott, did you hear the EP-length Liechtenstein album last year, Survival Strategies In A Modern World? For some reason they occupy a similar space in my head, even if Herpes are noisier. Lichetenstein are Swedes. Maybe more toward Kleenex/Lilliput stuff, though? I dunno. (And the one from a few years ago I liked more than either of these was the EP-length New Bloods album, The Secret Life, on Kill Rock Stars - and they are even Americans, from Portland!)

Liechtenstein's myspace:

http://www.myspace.com/liechtensteinia

New Bloods' myspace:

http://www.myspace.com/thenewbloods

at first i thought this was going to be a "quirky" ILE thread

Me too. The fact that every word is capitalized didn't help.

see, i don't see Herpes as all that noisy at all! maybe i just listen to too much noise noise. i will check those links out, chuck.

There was a mini-heyday for this stuff about six years ago, a lot of it on Dirtnap records

Lost Sounds:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzZ1H5XTuTs&feature=related

Epoxies

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VvenOWt8xE&feature=related

Spits

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x9jbp0_the-spits-dont-shoot_music

The Minds "Plastic Girls" is really good too.

Also, Paroxysm Records, with Capricorns and Hott Beat

http://paroxysmrecords.com/bands/capricorns/

Prima Donnas lead the way in the 90s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dpzb1S_nOvw

that lost sounds song is cool. too long though. i used to get stuff in the mail from dirtnap years ago. i remember that epoxies album. those comps they put out were pretty cool. dirtnap across the northwest. other ones. guess the exploding hearts would have been their biggest band. used to get stuff from gold standard labs too. is that label still around?

pretty sure GSL folded. dirtnap's still going though.

Gold Standard Labs folded a while ago. Did love the Veronica Lipgloss record, which was more in the sleaze/trash/Birthday Party mode. Dirtnap is still around, but the bands tend more towards Dickies and Professionals styled pop punk. The Marked Men's Ghosts from last year is one of my favs of the last decade. Dickies speed with the really creative dynamics of the Wipers.

and it's true about the lost sounds tune being too long. love lost sounds, but man they tended to beat a good idea to death. wonder if that was more alicija than jay, cuz her stuff as black sunday (etc.) tends to do the same, while his solo stuff was much more concise. usually.

herpes kinda remind me of early digital leather - warning live & very rough:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FuViajV8dis

catatonic youth!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNZ9v74vMWU

There's a lot of Stereo Total along these lines ...

(and I feel like Scott might like, say, Paris-Berlin?)

Kind of wish their sound had more Trio/Plastic Bertrand/whatever (or even Mekanik Destrutiw Komandoh/Metal Urbain) in it and less digital hardcorish noise in it.

― xhuxk, Sunday, June 27, 2010 1:11 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark

The Marked Men's Ghosts from last year is one of my favs of the last decade. Dickies speed with the really creative dynamics of the Wipers.

― bendy, Tuesday, June 29, 2010 6:52 AM (30 minutes ago) Bookmark

no, i lie. no idea put out a marked men 7" recently, but dirtnap has the fix my brain reissue. back to yr regularly scheduled.

"Dickies speed with the really creative dynamics of the Wipers."

this is a very enticing description!

yeah, i don't hear the DHR sound at all on the Herpes album. it's all kinda similar to the stuff i posted.

Even the new Stereo Total album this year wasn't bad (a marginal keeper, guess I'd call it). I reviewed it for Rhapsody:

http://www.rhapsody.com/stereo-total/baby-ouh#albumreview

Had sort of been under the impression, though, that they ran their schtick into the ground years ago, and keep making the same album over and over, but maybe not. (Lost track a while before that new one.) Favorite is still the first I heard, the self-titled one on Bobsled from I guess 1995, which some people apparently call Oh Ah!.

Liked plenty of the stuff in the early '00s on GSL, and some on Dirtnap (the Briefs' Hit After Hit for instance.) Not sure how much most of that sounds like Herpes, though. (Maybe I'm listening to Herpes wrong? I haven't heard them as a pop-punk band, even in the Buzzcocks/ Elastica sense; surprised others see them that way.) Anyway, a couple of other bands along those lines that you might want to check out, Scott, would be the Hatepinks, Clorox Girls, and Final Solutions. Maybe the Clone Defects, too, if you don't know their stuff (though I guess they'd be getting more toward angry light-socket avant-garage.)

good call on the briefs - that stuff seemed to go hand-in-hand w the twitchy synth punk a few years back. at some point it all just tips over into socal pop-punk, tho. see former & latter:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWHqgyWoeSk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbmG3zPqmEc

hozac recs was a good source for keyboard abuse, before mike sniper ruined it for everybody:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbmG3zPqmEc

hey, that 2nd one was supposed to be the stitches here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PD2Ld_Tvjcc

I was going to mention the Clorox Girls - also maybe Busy Signals (who I think were also on Dirtnap)

Oh Ah! is not the same album as Stereo Total self-titled, although there are a lot of the same songs on it. I'm not sure why the self-titled exists. It looks like it might be some US comp of the 1st 2 albums or something.

I love Liechtenstein, but I don't think they belong on this thread at all. They're more like C86 twee pop with a tiny bit of DIY post-punk chucked in. I love them, but they don't sound much like these bands.

Actually I saw somebody describe Liechtenstein like that on ILM a few months ago, and that really surprised me, too -- I'd been hearing them as a sort of Rough Trade girl post-punk throwback, not especially twee at all. (Though, OK, maybe still a ways from what Herpes do.) Again, not claiming I'm fully right; maybe the truth is somewhere in between. (Or maybe I just tend to play to these records in the background, while exercising or whatever, and I haven't been listening close enough!)

And I guess you're right about the s/t Stereo Total, which is the one I have. Confusion comes from that one and Oh Ah! -- which I've never actually seen -- having the same cover, and lots of song overlap. But yeah, I guess it's like what bands like Grupo Sportivo and the Fabulous Poodles used to do back in new wave days, where they debuted in the U.S. with a comp culled from their first couple overseas albums.

I've not listened to the latest Liechtenstein 10" yet (I've got it, but it's still in my listening pile) but their 1st couple of singles are pretty damn twee pop. I've seen them live a couple of times and they do have some more post-punkish songs (and they didn't play Stalking Skills, their 1st single) so maybe the newer stuff is more in that vein?

All I've heard by them is Survival Strategies In A Modern World, from last year. (Is that the 10-inch? If so, that might explain it. I only have it on CD. 10-inch would be infinitely preferable, obviously.)

Yep, that's it.

Bare Wires might be a good choice, though not as frantic as Buzzcocks etc. The Rezillos were fantastic, IMHO. Nice Face has done some interesting things that might be up this alley. There's also several bands on the Captured Tracks & Florida's Dying labels that would be worth looking into.

Relistening to Herpes, I was indeed way off with that Digital Hardcore claim. (Hadn't played it in a couple months -- Still don't get why that's abbreviated DHR instead of DHC, though.) Guess I just meant that the album's blurry lack of production makes it way less tuneful than I wish (and hence lacking in hooks worthy of Trio or Plastic Bertrand, or Buzzcocks/999/Adverts/Rezillos/FM Knives etc. too), which might be okay if Herpes music had the angry rock bite and pull of Metal Urbain, MDK, whoever, but it doesn't. So ultimately it comes out sounding pretty thin, and the songs just don't stick with me. Sounds okay in the background. Just wish it was a lot better than it is, and not feeling like it was recorded inside a garbage can down the hall, through a wall, might help. Curious what other people's favorite songs on it are. Like I said, I want to like it more. They seem like fun Germans.

since improvspirit mentioned nice face, here's a single from their sacred bones LP, not dissimilar to the wizzard sleeve track i posted a while back. harder than herpes, and twice as catchy (sorry):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ed11mNu35uk

liechtenstein always reminded me a lot more of look blue go purple than anything especially punky

DHR = Digital Hardcore Recordings