Milo's Planes "Aural Palate Cleaning Exercises"

[€5 for CD or Download // https://milosplanes.bandcamp.com/album/aural-palate-cleaning-exercises]

When I first started listening to this- and I mean the very first time, within the first song or two- I could hear some Cheap Trick but that actually ended up changing as the album went on and the more that I listened to it the more I could only hear this as a sort of punk rock n roll or punk n roll even.

Somewhere between Local H by way of their first album and Refused this has a definite quality of loud rock that also reminds me of just the first time that I heard Trail of Dead and that in and of itself should be enough for this to be in your top rotation not just this year but forever.

You know, even if Milo's Planes are my age or around it anyway there is no guarantee that they listened to and are influenced by the same things as me so when I hear what I hear some other people might hear something more recent in a sense.   And that's what you have to love about this heavy, sing it till you lose your voice rock because there is so much of it out there you can pick and choose the good bits of it to create an amazing album such as "Aural Palate Cleansing Exercises".

The Boy I Used to Be "Grip" EP

[£4.99 for Cassette or Download // https://pieandvinylrecords.bandcamp.com/album/grip-ep]

Video for "Try": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XglvILdz6gY&feature=youtu.be

I spent quite a while trying to think of the name of the band that sings "All the little kids with the pumped up kicks" because it's been quite a while since I listened to that band, but luckily for The Boy I Used to Be their name is still fresh in my mind and so they shouldn't suffer a similar fate of being that one hit wonder (Though it could be more a case of them having one EP I review and then they go unnoticed and forgotten after that)

In fact, this EP, "Grip", should solidify them as some sort of great rock band and since they have a habit of selling out of cassettes you're going to want to get your hands on this one early.    It's somewhere between Wheatus and Local H, Soul Coughing and Replacements.    There is a bit more shoegaze on here than I remember previously but then again the song "Rust" also has hints of Marilyn Manson's "Lunchbox" so it kind of balances itself out, no?

With other bands such as Silversun Pickups present the one thing you need to know is that for all of their rock influences none of them are bad and this mix of them makes for a stellar EP at that.   I'm not really laughing at the song title "Pissy Elliott" (probably created before the Super Bowl) but then again they also have "Maucauly Sulkin'" so who cares about song titles anyway, right?