"Ever found yourself staring at the sleeve of a record from before your time, thinking to yourself, ‘I wish I’d been around for these guys…’? Well, wake up and smell the vinyl – the best fucking punk band of your generation has already released two bona fide classics, and here they’re dropping their third.
‘Tube Reducer’ follows 2017’s double whammy of their self-titled debut and its gnarlier-than-thou follow-up ‘Weekend Rocker’ – the latter of which was released on Xmas day, cuz what’s more festive than the gift of ultra-lo-fi punk that sounds like The Undertones playing ‘Smarter Than U’ inside a hairdryer while dragging The Jags by their skinny ties and throwing them in a chemical waste dump?
And guess what? It’s more of the good stuff. In fact it could well be their best record so far. Sonically, you should know what to expect by now – a disregard for fidelity that’d make Guided By Voices knock back another beer or 12 in appreciation; songs that sound way more effortlessly simple than they necessarily are; melodies that’ll burrow their way into your head even as you fight through the fuzz to make out what the hell vocalist Alex Mitchell is actually singing…
‘Stevie Cool’ is the bona fide winner this time – the scuzzed-out powerpop anthem to end all scuzzed-out powerpop anthems – but there’s not a bad cut on offer here. ‘Nothing Good’ blazes by in a fit of nail-biting energy and hooks so razor-sharp you could use ‘em to cut through sheet metal, and if you’ve not donned your pogo-ing shoes to throw yourself between the walls of your house when ‘Life As A Fed’ kicks in… well shit, man, do you even punk rock? By the utterly batshit closer ‘Moto-Hard’ they’ve even thrown a brass section into the mix, skronking away cheerily and deliriously like Flipper’s ‘Sex Bomb’ running the wrong way up an escalator.
Basically, with every passing record, the songs get even more brain-searingly awesome, the vocals get more buried and the air above your head gets punched that bit harder. Booji Boys are on a roll. It’s anybody’s guess as to how long the Halifax-hailing quintet can continue to put out records as heroically thrilling as this, but at least we’ve got ‘em in the here and now. For fuck’s sake, treasure ‘em while you can."
https://drunkensailorrecords.bandcamp.com/album/tube-reducer-lp
