Inhumanistic

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After several years sounding like the arachnid cousins of early Australian garage punks The Lime Spiders, Mark Ryan and crew take a surprising detour into new wave synths and drum machines on <i>Inhumanistic</i>. On songs like “Suicide” and “Electric Things,” the Texas band seems to have hit a shiny new button in the wayback machine control room, with late-‘70s power pop melodies and glassy keyboards elbowing their way into the band’s fuzzed-out guitars and rambunctious ‘60s rave-ups. “City Stuff” is a slithering, hissing electro-pastiche that sounds like a mash of Suicide and Wall of Voodoo, while “I Want You” flashes with neon laser-beam synths even as it belies a T. Rex–style charm. The Spiders still maintain their devotion to their <i>Nuggets</i>-era roots, and tracks like “They Lie” and “The Steady” are all muscle and brawn and garage fumes. Bringing the genres together appears to be a stroke of brilliance by the time “Pictures” pounds its way through the speakers: energetic, high-voltage psych-punk inflected with occasional oscillating keyboards that might seem out of place in lesser hands.

via Apple Music

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