Wobbly Lamps EP reviewed by Shindig! magazine's hip little sister Happening

The only two music magazines I make sure I never miss an issue of are Bananas (from Brooklyn) and Shindig! So it was a real treat today to find that Shindig!'s hip little sister magazine Happening had reviewed the Wobbly Lamps EP.

WOBBLY LAMPS - Neon Teepee EP - Polyvinyl Craftsmen 7”


The first release from this DIY label is from Southend garage punks Wobbly Lamps. The twenty-and-thirty-something fivesome are at the more deranged end of that particular world - think Lux Interior vocals, Thee Oh Sees style guitar mangling, and judging by their Youtube clips a healthy disdain for the audience. The Fall are hard to ignore in their DNA, as the title track of this EP ably demonstrates. Billy Childish may have trademarked that muddy lo-fi garage sound, but they are no mere imitators here. The riffs and drumming are hard not to instantly love on all the songs. 


‘SWMD’ though is more of a sludgy, incomprehensible rant - and I’m getting pretty sick of bands purposely making their vocals unintelligible as an aesthetic. You may as well be an instrumental act if you have nothing to say, surely? The third and final blast here, ‘Alice The Goon’, is a murky, hypnotic repetitive beat from the depths, and is twisted enough to let it’s dark heart show. The tremelo guitar that rattles along is a beautiful sound to hear against its satanic surroundings. It must be pretty brutal when played live!


If you like your minimalist, outsider distortion rock then you need to get this seven. The single is limited to 250 copies, with each record hand-stamped and wrapped in a sleeve designed by Wobbly Lamps member Paul Lagden.


The spirit of ‘66 meets ‘77 lives on here. Amen.


Phil Istine

Wobbly Lamps review at Mer Musique blog

the end of the sea.

Wobbly Lamps - Alice The Goon 
Wobbly Lamps - She Wants Me Dead 


paul from Polyvinyl Craftsmen (which is a killer blog by the way & currently has me addicted to their mixes) was nice enough to send me some sounds from uprising uk band Wobbly Lamps.


the following tracks are from their debut ep, Neon Tee Pee, which is concoction of upbeat rock tinged with a bit of loud garage. upon listening, this heavily channeled the cramps ala bad music for bad people & if you know that album then you'll probably get a feeling this ep is gonna be a good one. and get it while it's hot - currently this is limited to not so many releases!

Wobbly Lamps review at Styrofoam Drone

Thanks to one of my favourite music blogs Styrofoam Drone for a brillopads review of the Wobbly Lamps 7".



Wobbly Lamps – Neon Tee Pee 7″ EP


WOBBLY LAMPS are a new band from Sarfend in the UK and Neon Tee Pee is their debut release. The 7″ EP comes from the Polyvinyl Craftsmen label and is also the debut release for the label itself.


With that being said, this here is truly a single of firsts. The Wobbly Lamps bring us three songs of their medium paced, crunchy style of garage rock, plagued with plenty of shredded guitar grit and blown-out, muffled vocals. These guys bring in plenty of poppy hooks to keep things catchy, as evidenced by an eerie track like “She Wants Me Dead” with its bouncy guitars. Opener “Neon Tee Pee” features more frantic hooks with its caffeinated guitar spikes as the whole track is slowly swallowed whole by a cringing metallic texture. Later on, “Alice the Goon” comes into play with suddenly darker tendencies (almost with a pulsing post-punk vibe), boasting crackling guitars that have a destructive strobe light texture that seem to swallow everything whole as it melts the song down. The song quivers with this weird and nasty edge until the very end, hereby leaving us with an unexpectedly promising debut.


Now is probably a good idea to go and grab the debut 7″ directly from the Polyvinyl Craftsmen – there’s only 250 to go around!

Polyvinyl Craftsmen Transmission 57

This week's show features a selection of records that have come through the letterbox this week, been rescued from the local dump or have been selected from our collective record boxes to share with you all. Hope you enjoy 'em.


If you're not subscribing on iTunes you can download this week's show here.

Tracklisting

Let the Money Roll Right In – Mudhoney

Puppeting – Michael Yonkers

Barmy – The Fall

Doing Anything I Say – Dan Sartain

Isolation – Heavy Trash

Frontwards – Pavement

Miracles – Jackson Sisters

It’s Love Baby (24 Hours a Day) – Jackie De Shannon

Waste A Lot of Things – Jaill

Ugly Women – King Khan & his Lonely Guitar

Nevertheless – Brain Jonestown Massacre

Down in the Bottom – Howlin’ Wolf

She’s Alright – Muddy Waters

Call Me Animal – MC5

Upside Down – The Tropics of Cancer

It’s Only a Phonograph Record – Charlie Monroe

Phantom Pain – The Whispering Pines

Pretend You Love Me – Sonny and the Sunsets

Life is a Rehearsal – Country Teasers

Black Heart – Keith Hudson

The Universe – The Intelligence

Push th’ Little Daisies – Ween

Punk’s Pajamas – Strange Boys

Always Forever – Hunx

Come On! / Go Right Ahead – The Hives

Rock & Roll Machine – Atomic Suplex

What You Gonna Do – Manfred Mann

Church of Thee PVC Episode 10

Praise be sinners, Church of Thee PVC hits double figures this episode with songs going right back to Leadbelly and then coming bang up to date with new releases from  Ty Segall Band, The Intelligence and Cheap Time.

Download your hymn book here.





Songs of Praise


One Girl Man – The Lost Agency


I Cried – The Chains


Death of a Romantic – The Smugglers


Pop Song – Mikal Cronin & Ty Segall


Dokks – The Hussy


A Simple Mistake – Indian Wars


My Soap Won’t Float – The Regiment


Haunted House – Dead Ghosts


Get Along – Mikal Cronin


I Bought My Eyes – Ty Segall Band


City Hall – Graham Coxon


My Momma Said – Epsilons


More Cigarettes – Cheap Time


96 Larmes – Jack of Heart


Bottle Up and Go – Leadbelly


You Know I Got to Do It – Leadbelly


Test Drive – The Mummies


Swami – William Penn Fyve


Alice the Goon – Wobbly Lamps

More Wobbly Lamps reviews

We've had a couple more great reviews for the Wobbly Lamps EP this week, thanks to the blogs for their generous words.


There are now only 100 left of the limited run of 250, they are selling quickly so if you want to get your hands on a copy be quick.


Mad Mackerel - Introducing… Wobbly Lamps


The debut record by Southend’s Wobbly Lamps is the first release on Polyvinyl Craftsmen Records (an independent DIY label set up by the team behind the Polyvinyl Craftsmen podcasts).


It contains three tracks of strutting garage rock that evokes the best of The Trashmen through to the surging sonics of the Stooges and the voodoo swagger of the Cramps. This is no pastiche though, these boys have enough going on of their own making to create an original blend of lo-fi rumble that is as trippy as it is threatening.


Try the pulsating sonics of Alice the Goon, it takes an intro that sounds like it has been dragged kicking and screaming from a sweaty Detroit basement club in the 60s, attaches it to a thrumming, hypnotic riff, and then slams a sleazy proto-punk chorus over the top for good measure. Absolutely marvellous.


Limited to just 250 copies of 7″ vinyl you can snap one up from Polyvinyl directly, Norman Records or Rough Trade. Be quick!




Listen With Monger - Wobbly Lamps Single Review


Wobbly Lamps – Neon Tee Pee/She Wants Me Dead (Polyvinyl Craftsmen Records)


It’s amazing what a trip to the kitchen can do for a record isn’t it. The first time I listened to this debut offering from Southend-on-Sea’s Wobbly Lamps I was indifferent so I went to pour myself a whisky and settled back in to my listening chair. After a couple of sips I pressed play again and suddenly the lo-fi, swampy, bluesy, garagey blusterings made much more sense. This is the music I grew up on but I’d forgotten all about. This is small town angst played out by men with bigger music collections than bank balances and more passion than ability. Now don’t get me wrong, these songs are well crafted and fall in to that ilk that houses the likes of the Jam, Doves and early Kaiser Chiefs. But there is something else here that makes it all the more appealing and that is a tendency to flirt with American blues rock which leaves you reaching for your Black Keys or White Stripes collections.


Lead track ‘Neon Tee Pee’ swaggers and staggers like a man that’s been up for three days on the mother of all benders but still knows which way ‘cool’ is even if he doesn’t know where home is. It’s a desperate, itchy, claustrophobic song that almost begs for mercy by the time it stumbles to a close but the circular riff will stay in your head long in to the night. Oddly, second track ‘She Wants Me Dead’ has a more Mancunian attitude to it with its swirling organs and distorted vocals but that’s no bad thing. There’s a defiant stomp to Wobbly Lamps that is hard to resist once it gets under your skin. Final track (and the lone B-side) ‘Alice The Goon 2’ is great for two reasons; 1) It is pure Mark E Smith and 2) It is named after one of my favourite cartoon characters, the indescribably ugly yet universally adored member of Popeye’s entourage that seemed to exist purely to make Olive Oil seem in some way attractive.


Like I said, its strange how a trip to the kitchen can change your mind about a band. To further the experiment, I tried going to the toilet after listening to Olly Murs but when I came back he was still shit. Go figure.


The single is limited to 250 7” pressings but is available at Rough Trade, Norman Records and by mail order from: http://polyvinylcraftsmen.blogspot.co.uk/


And maybe our favourite so far from the Czech Republic! Google translate's inadequacies only improve the review!


МЮZИKK - Wobbly Lamps EP (Polyvinyl Craftsmen Records)


Like Bodie, Doyle and Cowley, and Woobly Lamps give the British remember the seventies. However, while the boys got me out of CI5 through grainy black and white income and the Austrian television debut single Woobly Lamps pedaling as Bodie třílitr Ford Capri. Garážmistrem this from Southend-on-Sea arriving crew (Ricky Wicked, Paul Lagden, Lee Hall, Ashley Lyons, Del's Bells) is a podcast representative Polyvinyl Craftsmen ( Transmission 56 ) Paul Cooper, who premiered his own PVC brand devoted just a colleague Lagdenovi and post Wobbly-punk party LAMS. Do not hesitate. Record from Seamus Wong studio is based only on the 250 sedmipalcích!    

Polyvinyl Craftsmen Transmission 56

Back to regular programming this week, hope you enjoyed the last couple of live broadcasts from Village Green. Transmission 56 features plenty of new releases including new songs from Ty Segall Band, The Fresh and Onlys, The Intelligence, The Hussy and Cheap Time. Mix that up with oldies from Alexis Korner, Umar Bin Hassan, The Mummies, Captain Beefheart and more and you've got another 90 minutes of musical magnificence to make the weekend sweeter.

Download the whole thing here.

Tracklisting

Undefined – The Hussy

Hippy Provider – The Intelligence

Shake the Shackles – Crystal Stilts

I Want Your Love – Dead Ghosts

Tilt-a-Whirl – Leo & the Prophets

Die – The Mummies

Heaven’s Journey – Wild Billy Childish & the Chatham Singers

Diddy Wah Diddy – Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band

I’m Tore Town – Alexis Korner

Burro – Beck

The Bird That You Can’t See – The Apples in Stereo

Homo – The UV Race

DedND – Gonja Sufi

40 Deuce Street – Umar Bin Hassan

Matchmaker – Joan Proctor

Summer’s Gone – The Cynics

Growing Faith – White Fence

But You’re Gone – The Brood

Yes or No – The Fresh and Onlys

Another Time – Cheap Time

See Him Go – People’s Temple

Bimbo’s Theme – The King Khan & BBQ Show

Ain’t Dumbo – Night Beats

Bells (w/ tremolo and distortion) – Sic Alps

Do You Remember Being a Roller – Hunx

Always Make Your Bed – Nodzzz

Oh Mary – Ty Segall Band