Music: Deluxin' "Smelly Kelly" single

Here you have it: the back-to-blood-basics punk-as-hell Deluxin'. Gone are the arty asides, near-falsetto singing voice and intricate arrangements of "Chocolate Jam", which to be fair, also had its bruisers. This is just fucking bruising along man.

"Smelly Kelly" is the kind of crushing, no-frills punk that's real blatant but not like that stupid fucking plebian-Hans Condor shit. It eviscorates yr shit like a whip. The hook is massive and filled out nicely by the new double-guitar lineup; it's pretty heavy but skips along to Glenn Coburn's swift-handed drumming. Rad break down before the single-note ascending guitar solo thing.

"Sick Lick" on the B-side is another head-wiper, just maybe not as catchy. Still when Nathan's simple high-note guitar lead (really similar to the A side,) kicks in the thrash hits home hard. After a stuttering refrain, the song dumps into a slower tempo grind. It doesn't last long and when the regular Lick returns it's pretty much all over as far as keeping your shit together goes and there"s this other part with a really frantic vocal, and then it does most everything again. This song is pretty long.

Props to Kevin Dietz for the awesome artwork: some kind of Man-Eagle scalping a traveller in the desert(?) on photocopied letter stock, in keeping with the Hag Bloom aesthetic. Pretty sick record all around. Recomended!