Gino & the Goons and Chinese Junk “Talk Trash With…” 2025. Big Neck Records, red & white marbled vinyl. Split EP of upbeat, snotty garage/punk. Gino & the Goons are from South Carolina and it looks like they’ve been around and releasing albums and singles since 2013. Their side of the split (the Goon Side) is sloppy lo-fi perfection with my top picks the ass-shaking “Nothing At All” and the psychobilly tinged breakneck “Mess You Up.” Chinese Junk is a three-piece from the UK and a bit newer (though definitely not younger: both vocalist/bassist Ben Nuthink and guitarist/vocalist Steve Legend were formerly in Griswalds from the 90’s) with single releases starting in 2020 and one full-length LP in 2023. Tighter and more 70’s/80’s punk than garage slop, their side (the Junk Side) has hard-driving, chugga chugga guitar riffs, frenetic drums with a lot of fun subversiveness and snot: “Shut Up About the USA,” “Crimewave” and the sassy, rat-a-tat-tatty “Your Family Are Robots” (“your family are robots, your family is square, your family ain’t real”).

Ida “I Know About You” 1996/2026 30th anniversary edition (lent to me by my pal BJ). We had the extreme pleasure of seeing indie-folks Ida perform at one of our yoga studio locations last week as part of their I Know About You anniversary tour, one of small (micro) non-traditional venues (facilitated by Undertow and another local pal, Jon Duris). Duo (and married couple) Daniel Littleton and Elizabeth Mitchell played a lightly amp’d acoustic set of many IKAY tracks plus a few other Ida songs and one from Elizabeth’s 2006 children’s record You Are My Little Bird. In between songs they had light banter (he is the rambling storyteller, she the long-suffering partner who gently grasps his forearm and says “you can stop talking now”), reminiscences of performing in Milwaukee years ago and other delightful moments.  I Know About You is the band’s second album and considered a true gem of the indie folk rock genre. Their voices weave beautifully together both in person last week and on the record: crystal clear and unaffected, just totally honest without being raw or forced. While much more mellow than the majority of the music I listen to, the record has such a sweet melancholy to it and absolutely feels like the mid-90’s (they are just a couple years older than me so I feel/remember those mid-to-late 20-something emotional vibes hard). My top pick is the hardest edged song, the almost-grunge ballad “Requator” but I absolutely appreciate the softer edges too. Sides A-C are the original recording of I Know About You, and Side D is a collection of singles (1995’s “It’s Not Alright” – a jangled indie rocker – and 1997’s “Truxtun Park“) and previously unreleased tracks recorded in ’95 and ’96.

Because they had a local professional recording the show at the yoga studio, I don’t think anyone in the audience was recording video on their phones (I certainly wasn’t as I was sitting on a bolster like 5 feet from Elizabeth’s feet) but here’s a video of them performing a house show last month, the track “August Again” from I Know About You.

Cairo Jag “Digital Manipulation” 2026. Romanus Records, limited edition Nebula variant. Heavy psych from Indianapolis. Wow, this album is killer! I was unfamiliar with Cairo Jag but because one of my life’s goals is to have a copy of every Romanus release, I obviously nabbed this one when it was came out last month. Hard rocking, super-grooving, hypnotically head-banging sludgy good stuff. They’re a great match for the Romanus brand, reminiscent of Milwaukee’s own heavy psychers Astral Hand (formerly Calliope) who also have releases on the label. Cairo Jag formed in 2017 and features Curt Turner on vocals and guitar, Nolan Schockman on drums and Joe Wise on bass. Digital Manipulation looks to be their first “official” album release, with two other EP + live cassettes that came out in 2019, 2022 and 2023 and a digital-only EP back in 2018. Digital Manipulation includes some tracks from those previous releases. My top tracks are “Rotten Throne,” the ass-shaking “N.R.G.” and the garage rocker “Queen.” “Terminal Existence” is pretty excellent, too, with a space nerd, Devo-esque vibe but filtered through some seriously heavy rock.