Vintage Crop
Geelong’s favorite sons Vintage Crop have been tearing at the drywall for a few years now, ripping up the boundaries between dirt-dragged punk and a scarred vision of post-punk. Wracked with rhythm, the band knows how to let the bass pulse in the temples and the guitars fall like shredded shale on the speakers. Their past albums have been relentless runs at the listener, chewing on the wires until the bite marks permeate the skull. Kibitzer slides away from the brutal bash of their first two, injecting a bit of pop slide into the mix, but never losing their ability to lacerate when prompted.
“The Duke” brings a shade of synth-punk to the party, adding a touch of tension that rides the edge. The hooks on “Hold The Line” and “Drafted” skew meaty, slapping the listener in the face with a volume-punched pummel. They even slow the tempo on a few occasions as well, sitting back in their singe and letting the pot boil a bit before they hit the heat on the rest of the album. The space and patience fit ‘em well, and this album makes good on a lot of the early promises that Vintage Crop issued in their early works. The band’s been holding down a particularly pungent corner of Aussie Indie over the past few years, and Kibitzer makes an argument that you should be diving into their din.
Support the artist. Buy it HERE (US) or HERE (AUS) or HERE (UK).