punk this week: useless eaters, lava, yuasa-exide, boo/hiss + 7 more

Hey, hi, it’s the Fourth of July and it’s Punk This Week. This column rounds up the best new punk and rock'n'roll records each Friday. This one marks new releases from Useless Eaters (they’re back!), the Detroit queercore duo LAVA, and a split between Midwest bedroom scuzz pop greats Yuasa-Exide and Boo/Hiss. There’s more stuff, too.

I’m posting on a national holiday. Most people take off work, but I didn’t because I don’t feel even tangentially patriotic right now. This year, punk music has offered me a pretty crucial counterbalance to this country’s sprint toward mass suffering under fascism. Today’s a good day to listen to loud, angry, bizarre music from this week or any other.

You get a lot of free stuff if you’re a free subscriber. I charge $4/month for this full column every week, plus bonus podcasts and the radio archive. There’s a two-week free trial if you wanna check these out. Subscribe free or paid to my independent, billionaire-free, reader-supported punk publication. Please take care of your people, go eat some junk, drop your feet into a baby pool.

Useless Eaters: EGO SHELL / RUB [Goodbye Boozy]

Seth Sutton has brought back Useless Eaters, and thank Christ for that. It’s a recorded return after a few years away; apparently he was living in Berlin for a while and is back in the Bay Area. Both songs pack a post-punk attack that’s simultaneously woozy and jagged. The lyrics are abstracted, but there are flashes that seem to reveal songs about someone’s superficial online lifestyle presentation and subculture cosplay. In two songs, Useless Eaters accomplishes a level of depth that most bands can’t find across an entire album. It’s incredible, watching a punk grow up from the earliest stripped back records and start creating records that are effortlessly multidimensional.