mrr

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Hey we're back! Here are the latest crop of reviews.

https://www.maximumrocknroll.com/reviews/

We are also looking for new reviewers! Specifically people who like or can at least describe and contextualize POP PUNK OI, SKA, 77/BAR PUNK, POST HARDCORE/EMO, EGG PUNK, 60S STYLE GARAGE, POWER POP and generally things that fall outside of the wheelhouse of hardcore punk. This is a volunteer position, open to people worldwide. E-mail [email protected] for more information. #punk #mrr #reviews

review of Neo Boys self-titled LP by Erika Elizabeth from Maximum Rocknroll #519, August 2026

As far as I’m concerned, NEO BOYS are the single most important band in the history of Portland punk—shirts bearing their name should honestly be just as ubiquitous (if not more so!) as those of the WIPERS or DEAD MOON or POISON IDEA. Until nature has fully healed in that regard, this lovingly remastered collection of the band’s two proper releases (a three-song 1980 EP and 1982’s Crumbling Myths 12”) pays some major respects, complete with a massive, LP-sized booklet that presents an oral history with the band and some incredible reproductions of flyers and photos from the archives. Stated comparisons to the RAINCOATS and KLEENEX aren’t inaccurate, representing just a few of the links in a much longer psychic chain connecting women in disparate corners of the world, many of whom were self-taught and learning as they went along, who carved out similar spaces for themselves in punk (and soon post-punk) in the late ’70s and early ’80s, from SPORTEN ÄR DÖD in Gothenburg to the DISHRAGS in Vancouver, from the NIXE in Utrecht to CHALK CIRCLE in Washington, DC. The tracks from NEO BOYS’ debut EP, released after the band had already been playing together for two years, have the sort of honesty and immediacy that comes from shared intuition and trust, where any technical “limitations” are an asset rather than a hindrance—the fewer walls that are put up, the more freedom there is. Kim Kincaid’s matter-of-fact vocals are the perfect vehicle for lyrics at the intersection of personal, political, and poetic (“Results are clear in front of my feet / I can make a decision / Make a conclusion”), backed by the revved-up jangle of Jennifer LoBianco’s guitar, Pat Baum’s steadily crashing beats, and KT Kincaid’s sneaky, melodic bass lines positioned as the beating heart at the center of it all. By Crumbling Myths, the NEO BOYS sound was more refined and of a piece with femme-centered post-punk of the era while remaining singularly their own, from new guitarist Meg Hentges’s pointillist lines in the haunting, all-timer “Time Keeps Time” to the sparse and contemplative art-punk gallop of “Cheap Labor.” What an unassailable epitaph for a band that started out as teenage amateurs; one can only imagine where things might have led had they continued on into the mid-’80s. Essential history, and a roadmap for future dreamers.

Cover of the NEO BOYS self titled LP. black background with the band name in white script.

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129d

Self-actualize with Maximum Rocknroll radio: https://www.maximumrocknroll.com/radio_show/mrr-radio-1980

Intro
LOOSE FIT – Bittersweet Excess

Dissociate / Anticipate
NUIT MODERNE – Folie Douce
ANIMAL PLANET – Big Red
SUBTONIX – X-Rated
ZIPPER – Hiko

Imitate a Ghost
MONOTON TID – Statisk
FRISCHE FARBE – Frisch Tscha Tscha
THE COMMUNISTS – Camouflage
MANSION – Fleshed Out

A Path That Never Seems to End
EFFIGY – The Wall
HONEYSUCK – Snake Pit
LEGION – Into the Night
THE NORMALS – Suburbanite

Nothing Left to Desire
IRONING MUSIC – Satisfied
FEHLFARBEN – Grauschleier
MAN&ERROR – Paranoia
NINTH COLUMN – Bela’s Box

Outro
RED BUCKETS – Palm Sunday

#Punk #PostPunk #ArtPunk #NoWave #MRR #MaximumRockNRoll

Photo of the band Ironing Music (two women on guitar and drums, two men on bass and synth) playing in a white-walled room with a linoleum tile floor. There's a painted banner hanging on one wall with the band's name hand-drawn in black & red.

Edited 129d ago

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174d

We were so excited about this BIKINI MUTANTS #record that we uh forgot to post any #reviews this week. More reviews for your review here!

https://www.maximumrocknroll.com/reviews/

#mrr #punk #BikiniMutants #SealedRecords

Image of the Bikini mutants "let's mutate" lp. On the right is a black and white photo of the singer of bikini mutants with inset photos of the rest of the band to the left. To the left of that is the band's name oriented vertically to the right in black stencil font on a yellow background.

Review of "let's mutate" by bikini mutants by Erika Elizabeth from maximumrocknroll #514. Text is as follows:

Rescued from the depths early ’80s UK DIY cassette obscurity, Let’s Mutate collects twelve tracks from two demos recorded in 1982 by Yeovil’s short-lived BIKINI MUTANTS, who planted stakes right at the junction of anarcho-punk and indie pop. While their associations with some of the heaviest hitters in both of those worlds might be used as the marketing hook here (they played often with the MOB, and bassist Deb Googe would later join MY BLOODY VALENTINE), it’s almost a disservice to the strength of the songs that they left behind. The stark anarcho influence sticks like wheatpaste to the roiling, tom-heavy beats and endlessly cycling bass line in “Arcadia,” with the splintered guitar and sharp but still slightly shambolic rhythms of “Prey” and “Paper Plane” taking an early MEKONS/EX-like turn, and the dub-singed slowburners “Fool’s Paradise” and “Question” echoing the A-side of that classic FATAL MICROBES single. Criss Cole’s airy, crystalline vocals float through it all, pure sweetness and light but cloaked in shadows—think GIRLS AT OUR BEST! or TWELVE CUBIC FEET, wrapped in a Crass Records foldout. If I believed in heaven, I’d be there right now.

Reviewer Erika Elizabeth
Label Sealed
Issue MRR #514 • March 2026

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