If Alive Naturalsound putting out a live album of their current roster sounds indulgent, then so be it. LA-based French expat Patrick Boissel's label has built a stunning back catalogue that presaged and launched today's back-to-basics garage blues-soul scene, harking backwards but always looking forwards.

RENT PARTY - The Waldos (Jungle Records)

I ain't owned that beautiful Nina Antonia book about Johnny Thunders for years-poor people can't have nice things - ya always have to sell it all to eat and smoke. "Everything is in the pawnshop", you dig? But all those swanky Heartbreakers photographs are etched forever in my mind.

This is bass-heavy punk rock from Sydney with an initial "we're-drinking-cans-at-the-football-on-the-hill-so-sing-along-with-us" flavour. This is five, short and sharp songs with names like "No Logo Is A Joke" and "You Want It" so you might suspect that it's all politically incorrect. Of course, first impressions are often wrong. It's punk rock with a left-of-centre social bent.

Super Best Friends (wasn't that a South Park episoide?) have already had the Triple Jay thumbs-up - but don't hold that against them. They knock around with Children Collide and Violent Soho so it's going to work as punk rock for the generation that can't remember last Friday night, let alone the Sex Pistols.

Guitarist Johnny Barrington sings in a broader-than-Sydney-Heads accent without sounding like he's bunging it on( like those worse than awful Australian hip hop acts.) Matt Roberts' bass sound hand playing s more pliable than the GDP of a small West African country and Adam Bridges' fluid drumming kicks things along nicely.

There's a lot of crunch in the guitars and a whole bunch of shouting. Blips of sythn run through "Karma Karma" so it's not just rote punk. The songs are catchy with choruses and drop-outs. All in all, perfect festival fodder. I can hear the kids at the next Splendour In The Grass singing away to "You Want It" or the scathingly anti-xenophobic "The Bleachers."

Fast, furious and fun - and a step above most of the latest wave of what passes for punk rock, Super Best Friends might lyrically fly over the heads of some the people who pick up on them but that's not going to stop anyone having a good time. - The Barman

1/2

Here's French garage rock from five guys who have soaked up a fair bit of the output of The Lyres, at a guess. I caught them in the flesh a couple of years ago, supporting a reformed Screaming Tribesmen in France's best rock and roll tavern, Mondo Bizzaro in Rennes, and this four-track 10-inch EP sounds like they do live.

The New Christs
The On and Ons
Marrickville Bowling Club, NSW
Friday, 6 June 2025

It’s fitting, in many ways, that the New Christs assaulted the beaches of Marrickville in Sydney’s Inner-Western Delta tonight on the 81^st anniversary of D-Day. Your correspondent on the frontline can report that no ammunition was spared in a fiery, two-set bracket show that was their second-last before an August tour of the UK and Europe.

The New Christs pulled a full-house on a cold Sydney Friday night and put on an intense performance that peeled the Copperart panels from the beloved Bowlo’s ceiling.

The Johnnys
"Live in Lyon CD Launch"
Penny Ikinger’s Marbles
The Vibrajets
The Tote, Collingwood, VIC
Saturday, 31 May 2025

Hello I-94 Barflies! Well, I dragged my skinny white arse from The Farmhouse down to Melbourne on the bloody bus (500 kilometres) last Saturday morning for The Johnnys’ release of their CD. “Live In Lyon 1990”,  at their gig at the Tote Hotel.

And let me tell you that it was worth every fucking painful kilometre.