Beyond Veronica, “Hard Times for Dreamers” (Fetish Pop, 2012)Pretty good garage-rock (not really “punk”). The sound is too clean and there’s not enough edge to the performances, except the spirited female singer, but they’ve got a nice pop sense, and it all has a charming, small-town feel.Try 2, 107/26/12
Bhang Revival, “Never Look Back” (Snake Eye, 1989)Great lost all-female Chicago garage-punk act, fast, hard and melodic but also with a heavy/psych aspect. This captures a blinking-in-the-grey-dawn, lost-girls-in-the-city take on late-‘80s Chicago in all its adventure and mystery.Try A/1, A/2, B/11/23/14
Big Brother and The Holding Company, “Cheap Thrills” (Columbia, 1967)Janis Joplin’s first band would have been remembered as a great chaotic, exploratory, hard-rocking San Francisco acid rock band even without her. With Joplin’s unstable vocal pyrotechnics, their twisted cavern of sound was downright explosive.Try 1/ 1, 2/ 47/29/13
Bikini Kill, “The Singles” (Kill Rock Stars, 1998; original recording 1993-5)We’ve already got some of this, but not the Joan Jett-produced first three tracks, in strictly music terms the apex of their work — punk rock with teeth-rattling beats, and massive jagged guitars grinding like tectonic plates.1, 2, 3, all great. Of the later stuff, […]
Buck Biloxi and the Fucks, “Buck Biloxi and the Fucks” (Red Lounge, 201?)Current garage-punkers fill out their trebly sound with obnoxious humor and personality plus good old gratuitous aggression.Try
Bis, “The New Transistor Heroes” (Grand Royal/Capitol, 1997)Teeming, fun-crazed post-punk/pop/everything explosion, with a rapid-fire channel-switching ethos reminiscent of the Boredoms, but different source material – the twee-pop of their native Scotland, riot grrrl, ska, electro-pop, etc. – all spun into the blender and blasted out in a Ritalin-defying fleet-footed squeal of snot-nosed glee that threatens […]
Black Bananas, “Rad Times Xpress IV” (Drag City, 2012)Jennifer Herrema has been making cool, fun underground rock for nearly a quarter-century, and this is one of her wackiest, most exhilarating releases yet, returning some of the deconstruct-on-impact space-electronica of her work with Royal Trux to the one-woman arena-metal revival she’s been conducting for the last […]
Black Grape, “It’s Great When You’re Straight . . . Yeah” (Radioactive, 1995)After the Happy Mondays went up in (crack) smoke, Shaun Ryder defied near-universal assumptions of his artistic demise and returned with this booming, oozing compendium of bigfoot hip-hop beats, thick funk tracks and brilliantly preposterous brain-fried banter.Try 2, 4, 66/9/11
Black Sabbath, “Black Sabbath” (Warner Bros., 1970)Debut slab from these Midlands industrial-wasteland lugs, and of course the mothership of all subsequent Doom. Even so, there’s something unique about the swirling psych residue that colors their shadowy blues-trudge-sludge here.Try 1/ 1, 2/ 17/11/16
Blasted Canyons, “Second Place” (Castle Face, 2012)This label can do no wrong in my book, and this just might be its best release yet. Blasted Canyons hit the sweet spot right where trippy garage-punk evolved into no-holds-barred freakout psychedelia, and filled it with pop melody, sound-spasms, and everything but the kitchen sink, while always staying […]