The exhibition of atrocities: weird garage-punk, shitgaze, murky synth-wave sludge and the latest abortions of (no) American rock. A journey through the undergrowth of stars-and-stripes rock in search of yet another mutation, amid lo-fi sounds and pop songs gone bad.

What's been happening in the undergrowth of American rock these last few years? Nothing particularly new — or maybe it is. Meaning what, exactly? Devolution seems to have reached the point of no return. As if the most derelict new outfits of ultra-noise, or the New Weird America scene in general, weren't already enough to blow the last shreds of indie-rock propriety to pieces, there evidently exists some obscure matrix that, especially in certain desolate corners of the country, keeps spawning generations of unhinged musicians. Or perhaps they're simply people with nothing better to do than wallow in post-apocalyptic rubble. It's happened before, and it will happen again. What changes, in this case, is the nature of the bomb itself: no longer to be understood as the hypothetical sword of Damocles of some impending nuclear conflict, but as yet another paradigm shift capable of upending not just the record industry as a whole, but also the most hidden corners of the underground, the ones least susceptible to trends. We're talking about the internet, of course, which, following the rise of home electronics in the early Nineties, has further flattened the production chain, allowing literally anyone to make records. This has been debated for a while now.

So the dominant approach in underground contexts — assuming they can still be called that — is now more than ever a DIY one, pushed to extremes by web culture, self-releases, and, more broadly, by a system in which simply existing is enough to make you somewhat visible. Freed from every production constraint, DIY becomes less a musical philosophy in its own right — as it might have been back in the punk era — and more a necessary and sufficient pass to guarantee visibility. Just record something, no matter how or with what quality, and open up a web page to exist. The devolved sounds of recent years can thus be explained not only by the attitude of each individual “artist,” but also by the possibilities offered by production, information and distribution tools, and by how easy they are to use. Once again, it's the medium rather than the message driving the change. But that's like stating the obvious. As proof, just read what Matt Whitehurst of Psychedelic Horseshit said when an interviewer asked him to explain their live sound: “We have songs but they rarely get played the same way twice. Not because we’re super-awesome and like to improvise but because we really suck and can’t play the same way every time”.

Get the picture of what level we're operating on? And from a strictly “artistic” point of view? The sounds of recent years are the fruit of this paradigm shift, but we've probably reached a transitional phase, not least because the internet revolution hasn't been accompanied by any strong underlying idea. On every level. This is, more than ever, the age of weak thought and relativism (like it or not), and the absence of a “dominant” culture obviously has repercussions on the development of clearly defined artistic visions. Hence this transitional phase which, from a musical standpoint, struggles to bring anything genuinely new (dubstep aside, perhaps) beyond the endless rehashing and reworking of stylistic tropes already put forward in the past. And shitgaze, which we'll get to shortly, is one of the consequences of this state of affairs.

It's become difficult even to find more or less reliable points of reference against which to judge the quality of what's on offer. Every subculture operates within a context that is more relativized than ever, further encouraged by the visibility the medium provides. Each one has every right to claim its own intrinsic worth, simply by virtue of existing and having its own internal coherence, without feeling the slightest need for quality control from some top-down system that might lead from the garage next door all the way to a record released on a major label.

If this was true in the era of punk and the birth of independent labels, it's even truer in this period, in which the internet has served, among other things, to widen the base of the pyramid even further, letting anyone record music and see it published in some form or other. Emblematic in this sense is the phenomenon of net labels. Any quality control, assuming one even exists, comes from within the community itself. In these tiny communities there seems to still be a kind of pre-modern symbolic exchange at work, whereby everything produced is traded with absolute reciprocity, without any productive surplus capable of generating power dynamics or dependency. Hence the whole crop of CD-Rs of recent years, which speak to a desire to simply exist, more than to any chance of making money.

The situations discussed in this article are explicitly the product of a network culture — in the technical sense of the term, meaning a computer network even before a system of relationships — and not the consequence of some overarching collective imagination or a vertical, stratified (counter)cultural idea.

So we're facing a kind of absence: strong ideas are missing at every level, in favor of what Chris Anderson calls "parallel masses" — that is, niches placed side by side "horizontally," with roughly equal visibility and equal ease (or difficulty) of access.

It's hard to grasp what will happen next. Perhaps things will keep going along these lines for a while yet, waiting for some new upheaval to wipe the slate clean.

What does seem clear is that this state of affairs — the easy emergence of niches, the collapse of barriers to entry when it comes to record production, the ease of finding any piece of information whatsoever, etc. — is fueling not only the notorious overproduction but also an extreme hybridization of attitudes, sounds, imaginaries or, if you like, "genres."

Shitgaze, weird-garage or weirdo-punk: these are the labels circulating online and in print to identify a more or less multicolored universe of bands with related sounds and attitudes. Improbable as they are — and rather endearing too — they still convey the gist of what we're about to discuss.

The term shitgaze was coined as a joke by Kevin DeBroux, bassist of Psycheddlic Horseshit, on the band's MySpace page, only to later be picked up and trumpeted far and wide by an NME article. And what would it identify? Well, a kind of genre that, while keeping a fairly solid tie to rock — the hard, pure kind, "the kind played with actual instruments" — marks a further step down the evolutionary ladder. It's a sound born badly and developing worse. Totally lo-fi, corroded and corrosive, but also crooked and stripped of any point of reference. There's some shoegaze in it, which explains part of the name (some of these characters are My Bloody Valentine-dependent), some New Zealand pop à la Clean, Terminals, Chills, Bats, and various noises with a clear garage lineage. What seems less pronounced, on the other hand, is the reference that would appear most obvious at first glance, namely the 80s and 90s indie/lo-fi of bands like Sebadoh, Pavement or Teenage Fanclub. Stronger instead is the link to the pop crudeness of Guided By Voices and to the lopsided jingle jangle of the great Vaselines.

One gets the impression that in the case of shitgaze — also known as shit-pop, shit-fi or no-fi — the sound is structurally dirty from the outset, rather than dirtied on the sly due to poor means of production or a conscious "ideological" choice, as was the case in those other instances. These lunatics sound this way because it's the only way they know how to play. They are punk, in the strict sense of the word, and this is somehow confirmed by the behavior of an increasingly wrecked Kevin DeBroux: Kevin DeBroux, who plays bass in Horseshit and is the only permanent member of Pink Reason, summed it up at Soho Lounge when he asked the crowd to buy his band's records after the show. If they didn't have money, he explained, they could feel free to pay with drugs. "It's like cutting out the middleman," he deadpanned.

It would therefore be wrong to label, as some have done, shitgazers as failed shoegazers, since what actually characterizes the former is precisely this clearly defined punk attitude, both in sound and in behavior. Closer, almost, to Hüsker Dü than to My Bloody Valentine.

And then again, some report a certain contempt among shitgazers for sales figures, as some foreign commentators would seem to confirm too, though I'd tread carefully here, since as usual these strike me as mostly for-show statements — as confirmed by Tom Lax of Siltbreeze, who, when asked about the term shitgaze, replied: "If it sells records, they can call it whatever they want".

Shitgaze is perhaps the most recognizable "genre," in some ways the most clearly bounded and also the most easily digestible, since at the end of the day the bands that fall under it express themselves through a clearly pop syntax. Pop songs, then — maybe not exactly fully formed ones, maybe acid-drenched, distorted, twisted and sparsely arranged, but pop songs all the same.

Then there's the matter of weird-garage, weirdo-punk, or whatever you want to call it, which brings with it a whole series of hybridizations drawing on the most varied and improbable sounds: from classic post-atomic proto-punk to the Pere Ubu-Easter Monkeys-Debris-Chrome-Electric Eels axis, to the more tuneful strain of cold-wave (including the French kind), to the bare-bones electronics of the early gurus of electronic music, passing through San Francisco synth-punk and English industrial music, all the way to the devolved noise of the 90s, à la Men's Recovery Project, and the Mummies-style garage-surf.

What ties shitgaze and weird-garage together is a slacker attitude, alongside a closeness in sounds and stances. In short, while they believe in their own way of approaching music, these guys don't take themselves too seriously, as the Times New Viking make clear enough: "…We take plagiarism serious. We take postmodernism serious, but we don't take ourselves serious. Comments are simply that, not statements".

The reference points are nonetheless numerous and varied, showing just how much the ease of access to information in the internet age has shaped the sound of the bands in question.

Hence the difficulty in precisely pinning down the boundaries of the "genre," whereas in the past niches were born around clearly defined aesthetics and sounds. Just think of 80s and 90s garage or industrial music, to name two examples.

One fixed point is certainly their descent from the aesthetics of devolution, from junk culture, from Neoism and the like. Here too, however, it's worth asking how much of this was consciously absorbed (probably little), and how much instead arrived through viral mechanisms in an osmotic relationship with the web (probably a lot), without any cultural mediation pointing back to ideologically predefined positions.

Supporting this richly varied world of music and scenes is a series of blogs and underground sites, which have the merit of constantly reporting on new releases and bands doing the rounds, and which, detached from any territorial characterization, give the sense of an online community, a social network in the truest sense, more than an actual community in the traditional sense.

Worth mentioning is the now-classic Art For Spastics, run by the legendary DJ Rick, whose "mission" is to provide a broad overview of the DIY world, particularly shitgaze and assorted weirdisms. Constantly updated, it also offers audio files of concerts, podcasts and more. Another essential source of information for fans of this sound is Terminal Boredom, a site/blog dedicated to marginal music in the broadest sense of the term, where shitgaze and its kin find ample room. And then there's the essential Victim Of Time, a 'zine devoted to the underground punk and DIY music world, where you can keep up with records, events and gigs, and which also offers a streaming radio show aimed at "giving voice to the most hidden and underrated bands around the world."

There's also Shit-Fi.com, which covers esoteric DIY, punk and hardcore music, Smashintransistors, focused mainly on 7" releases, and finally (though there would be others still...) the Blank Dogs blog — the mysterious New York band we'll discuss shortly — which, besides offering free downloads of the band's records, provides information on the DIY world past and present.

It should be said, though, that at least the bigger bands have made it onto the pages of major magazines and sites, as shown by the aforementioned NME article and a Pitchfork-style feature centered on Times New Viking, Psychedelic Horseshit, Pink Reason and Sapat. Even if the latter have little to do with this discussion, despite being on Siltbreeze. And it's precisely the label founded by Tom Lax that is the epicenter of the whole affair, and it couldn't be otherwise, since the sounds that shitgazers draw on are part of Siltbreeze's historical legacy — just browse the catalogue, which includes Terminals, Un, The Shadow Ring, Gate, Alastair Galbraith, Harry Pussy, Pin Group, A Handful Of Dust, among others, to get an idea.

Given that the "scene" appears rather varied as well as broad and deep, with no pretense whatsoever of being exhaustive, let's now get acquainted with a few of the bands.

The Midwest's Derelicts

Psychedelic Horseshit (Columbus, Ohio)

How great were Swell Maps? Very, and Psychedelic Horseshit are living proof of it, since their rhythmic stop-and-go and that out-of-focus lo-fi fuzz recall the band of Nikki Sudden and Epic Soundtrack on more than one occasion. And it was precisely on the Columbus band's blog that, more as a joke than anything else, the term shitgaze was coined, sealing their love for My Bloody Valentine. So the Psychedelic Horseshit sound is chaotic and crooked, clearly indebted to shoegaze and certain strands of post-punk, but just as much shaped by the Nuggets-style garage-rock lesson. Chaotic, sure, but their music isn't hard to digest for that reason, since it's precisely the primitivist garage-punk-band approach that gives the mix a visceral immediacy, one that goes beyond the tangled web of sometimes dissonant sounds found especially in the most frenzied passages. The sound of "Magic Flowers Droned" (2007, Siltbreeze) is in fact more complex than it might seem at first, since the numbing lo-fi patina hides many of the sonic references. So it's not unusual to stumble on wild kraut digressions ("Portals") or derailing noise à la Dead C ("Crystals").

If you're looking for a record that best embodies the tenets of shitgaze, that's "Magic Flowers Droned".

Times New Viking (Columbus, Ohio)

That shitgaze is a matter of songs as much as sounds is proven by Times New Viking from Columbus, Psychedelic Horseshit's degenerate twins and among the finest expressions of shitgaze. Across the three albums released so far — the excellent "Dig Yourself" (2005, Siltbreeze), the decent "Present The Paisley Reich" (2007, Siltbreeze) and the less convincing "Rip It Off" (2008, Matador) — Times New Viking have shown a solid gift for songwriting, along with a good knack for playing with distortion and disjointed rhythms. "Dig Yourself", for instance, is a concentrate of songs with a capital S that, were it not for the usual lo-fi murk, could win over even the snobbiest indie-rock fans. They call themselves "romantic nihilists", and the almost emo vocals in certain passages would seem to confirm it, before being drowned in a thicket of numbing feedback.

The melodies are there nonetheless, in a sound that, as with Psychedelic Horseshit, shows an enviable range of sonic reference points. So you'll find (as usual) some shoegazing, Can-like rhythmic obsessiveness, the Fall, Swell Maps, the 13th Floor Elevators and, last but not least, the usual New Zealand lo-fi pop. "Dig Yourself" is a must-have, no question about it.

Grave Blankets (Columbus, Ohio)

A single ("Your Injuried Ways") and a split with Touch-Me-Nots have already allowed Grave Blankets to become the next big thing on the scene. And indeed, their music seems to hint at moving beyond the shitgaze of Psychedelic Horseshit and their ilk. Because the sound is more defined and layered, because the production seems to have gained in brightness without losing its rustic lo-fi charge, and because the three tracks on the single are genuinely remarkable. The reference points are the usual ones, from New Zealand indie-pop, to the post-punk of Swell Maps, to the indie-pop of Yo La Tengo. If I had to bet on a band for the future, I'd bet on them.

Pink Reason (Green Bay, Wisconsin)

The post-punk desolation of Joy Division and Bauhaus runs through the ultra-depressed ballads of Pink Reason, the solo project of Kevin DeBroux of Psychedelic Horseshit, and the true deus ex machina of this community of musicians. The Pink Reason sound is about as decadent and self-referential as anything you'll hear among the bands mentioned here. At times it sounds like a lo-fi version of The Cure, because these self-flagellating hymns sway like branches in the wind, folding endlessly back on themselves, built from a handful of acoustic-guitar chords, barely audible electric feedback in the background, DeBroux's hyper-depressed voice, and little else.

“Cleaning The Mirror” (2007, Siltbreeze) is DeBroux's public diary, laying out his obsessions and his troubles. It's the document of a period in his life when, strung out and homeless, he wandered with no fixed destination. The album boasts at least three masterpieces: the psychedelic “Goodbye”, the imploded psalm of “Storming Heaven”, and the slightly more optimistic, mid-paced “Up The Sleeve”, which conjures up rural imagery.

In “Cleaning The Mirror”, then, there's a desolation made even more real by the sheer scarcity of the production means available to DeBroux. It's a bit like hearing a depressed singer-songwriter from behind a closed door, picking up on the despair more than the actual sound. It's like listening to Jandek after he's decided to try his hand at melody. Or, if you're looking for a soundtrack to accompany a reading of Cormac McCarthy's “The Road”, then “Cleaning The Mirror” is just what you need.

Tv Ghost (Lafayette, Indiana)

Obsessive, dirty, crooked, and thoroughly punk: that's Tv Ghost. Drawing on no wave echoes, Electric Eels-style spasms, and Cramps-esque rock'n'roll, these outcasts from Lafayette would sound like an all-round garage band – the usual two or three chords stirred every which way – were it not that they're skilled at varying the script with heavy doses of James Chance-style white funk. In short, had they come out a few years earlier with a better production, they'd have been swept up into the punk-funk revival bandwagon alongside Black Eyes, Go Go Go Airheart and the rest of that crowd. The almost obsessive repetition of rhythmic patterns and the dryness of the sound testify to the huge influence of the Fall and Swell Maps on this generation of musicians too, while the presence of (fourth-hand) synth flourishes makes the mixture subtly psychedelic.

They have two releases to their name, the 7" “Aìomic Rain” and the self-titled album, both out on Die Stasi Records.

A band worth keeping an eye on.

Tyvek (Detroit, Michigan)

Tyvek aren't all that different from Tv Ghost. Here too the funk component is quite pronounced, though set against a fundamentally garage backdrop. People online have called them a cross between the sound of the motor city, (again) the Electric Eels, and Half Japanese, and honestly the description fits rather well. But Tyvek are better suited to the label weirdo-garage or weirdo-punk, since they play things loose, goofy, and not remotely ferocious, despite what the shape of their sound might suggest. “Fast Metabolism” (2007, What's Your Rapture?) – which collects tracks already found on the “Summer Burns” EP along with others scattered here and there – is a concentrated dose of spastic garage-rock songs. And confirming that they're among the most devolved bands around are the lyrics themselves: absurd, provocative, raising pseudo-existential questions like “Can you drive a Honda like I can drive a Honda?” In short, Tyvek are genuinely out of their minds.

Hue Blanc's Joyless Ones (Algoma, Wisconsin)

Algoma is a small town in Wisconsin on the shore of Lake Michigan, where, according to some, there's nothing better to do than shut yourself in a garage and play at absurd volumes. And that's exactly what Hue Blanc's Joyless Ones do, standing as the ultimate musical expression of that reality right now.

And what do they play? Garage-punk to the nth degree, mindful of the lessons in radioactive rock'n'roll taught by the likes of Mirrors, Easter Monkeys, Scientists, Gibson Bros., but also Mummies and Teengenerate. The Hue Blanc's Joyless Ones sound is both ramshackle and couldn't-care-less, with a decidedly rural streak running through it – as if John Mellencamp played garage-punk. Two guitars, two drum kits and a raw, flayed voice turn this Wisconsin combo's songs into small classics of drunken weird-garage. Because beyond being gripping and intense, Hue Blanc's Joyless Ones songs also have real melodic appeal. Don't miss “Arriere Garde” – released last year on ss Records – especially if you like Black Lips but feel they've since sold out. If nothing else, not everyone is capable of pulling off a song like “The Ballad Of Soloth Sar”. Great stuff.

Homostupids (Cleveland, Ohio)

A name that's a guarantee in itself, and a hometown, Cleveland, that's more than just a trademark: in short, Homostupids are exactly as you'd imagine them – crude, devolved and thoroughly lo-fi, a sound born purely out of technical ineptitude.

Blasted at paroxysmal volumes, “The Intern” (2007, Parts Unknown Records) lasts a mere 17 minutes – two more than the Circle Jerks classic “Group Sex” – across 15 explosive tracks. And indeed the album flaunts a ferocity and playing speed of clear hardcore lineage, backed up by the anthemic cut of the songs. Except the tracks all sound the same, and there's not a hint of an actual anthem in sight. In short, zero imagination. Likeable, but nothing more.

Black Orphan (Michigan)

Another promising act is Black Orphan, a mysterious combo hailing (probably) from some remote corner of Michigan, purveyors of a dark and fairly aggressive synth-punk. It's almost as if the sound of Blank Dogs (whom we'll get to shortly) is starting to win converts. Two releases so far from these scruffy characters: “Circuits” (2008, Hozac Records) – containing the truly remarkable “XX Spectrum” and “Ondine”, which bring to mind Units and Screamers – and “Video Kids” (2008, Hozac Records). If first impressions are anything to go by, Black Orphan should be good fun.

Mac Blackout (Chicago, Illinois)

Mac Blackout is something of a small cult figure in the American underground. He's been writing music since '97, back when he apparently attended Herron School in Indianapolis. He later moved to Chicago in '99, where he met Chris Fist and Brian Costello, with whom he formed Functional Blackouts, and later Daily Void. The peculiarity of Mac Blackout's solo work lies in how he manages to make cohesive layers built from wildly heterogeneous sounds – whether homemade clarinets, synths, electrified violins or electronic drums. Mac Blackout's brand of synth-punk is truly distinctive, where Ballardian visions of technocratic apocalypse (in the vein of Chrome/Suicide/Joy Division) coexist with an underlying attitude that's clearly mocking and irreverent. The contrast is made even more evident by the genuine DIY (non-)production, which, revealing one aspect or another at any given moment, manages to disorient the listener. Around the corner might lurk a track worthy of Gary Numan or Devo, or something that manages to blend both attitudes at once. Two records – both very good – have reached my ears: “Mac Blackout” (2008, Dead Beat Records) and “The Rabid Babies” (2008, Dead Beat Records)

Functional Blackouts (Chicago, Illinois)

Functional Blackouts was Mac Blackout's first band, chronologically speaking, after his move from Indianapolis to Chicago. Though it seems they've already split up. Here, this post-modern madman drops the Dadaist attitude of his solo records in favor of a more direct approach, expressed through a schizoid, destabilizing art-punk. The first album, released on the Chicago cult label Criminal IQ, earned the praise of an enthusiastic John Peel, who seemed to recognize in it the spirit and genuineness of '77 punk, while “The Severed Tongue Speaks For Everyone” (2006, Dead Beat Records) is another collection of epileptic punk shards, still torn between irony and nihilism.

Daily Void (Chicago, Illinois)

Synth-wave with the solo records, '77 punk with Functional Blackouts – what's missing? A bit of genuine garage-punk, and that's exactly what Daily Void, Mac Blackout's latest incarnation, delivers. “Identification Code: 5271-4984953784-06564” (2007, Dead Beat Records) is a concentrate of flayed garage songs fired straight in the face with no respect for anyone. Mac Blackout knows how to write songs, no doubt about it, and that's what makes the difference.

For fans of Black Lips and Hue Blanc's Joyless Ones.

Dirty South

Electric Bunnies (Miami, Florida)

Not much is known about Electric Bunnies except that they come from Florida and have three EP releases to their name, two of which came out on Floridas Dying Records, a label specializing in garage and related sounds, whose roster boasts, among others, the excellent Nothing People.

“Fantastic Metal Eye” (2008, Self Released) contains four fairly different tracks, so you can have fun with the bubblegum garage-pop of “Chewing Gum”, the breakneck rhythms of the scratchy “Love Radiation”, or the basement psychedelia of “The Stranger”, which recalls the more brooding side of Black Lips. Not bad, but we'll wait to see how they hold up over the long haul.

Jacuzzi Boys (Miami, Florida)

It really is a case of 'dirty south', because Jacuzzi Boys, like Electric Bunnies, also work within a garage-punk vocabulary that's decidedly crooked and derailed. Here too there are only singles to their name, three to be precise, including the notable "Ghost Ghost" (2007, Self Released), which boasts at least one small masterpiece in the beautiful title track, dragging itself out for two and a half minutes between morphine-drenched atmospheres and relentless rhythmic stop-and-go moves.

Shit Eagle (Orlando, Florida)

Shit Eagle only have one single to their name – "Girl In School" – but here too we're dealing with an uncompromising sound. More flat-out, radioactive garage-punk, three explosive tracks that aren't averse to veering into the most delirious psychedelia. And once again it's Floridas Dying Records serving as the reference point in these parts.

Abrasive California

The Lamps (Los Angeles, California)

They've earned a decent slice of notoriety, if only for the fact that they record for In The Red.

Lamps are a Los Angeles outfit with two albums and a live record to their name. Here we're in the territory of spastic, delirious punk-noise, as if Cromagnon had been born by mistake in the post-punk era… and had called themselves Flipper… On the In The Red website their music is described as "mongoloid frenzy music", underlining its expressive urgency but also a not-so-subtle negative charge, redolent of paranoia and frustration. Two albums of new material, as we said. The first – "St" (2005, In The Red) – is a sonic assault with a knife between its teeth, while the second – "St" (2005, In The Red) – takes a more varied and adventurous compositional approach, without sacrificing the harshness of the sound. Picture them as a less noise-drenched Cloackcleaner, but with an extra dash of self-irony.

The Hospitals (San Francisco, California – Portland, Oregon)

Adam Stonehouse is the man. The one who, together with John Dwyer, ferried punk through the 2000s. If it still makes sense today (and I doubt it does) to talk about punk, it's largely thanks to Hospitals and Coachwhips. But what can be said about Hospitals? Well, first of all, let's say they've been included in this article because many of the bands mentioned here owe them something, at least in terms of attitude, if not sound. It's probably from Hospitals – formed in Portland and now based in San Francisco – that shitgaze, weird-garage, and that utterly cocky, irreverent ultra-punk attitude (more than nihilistic) that characterizes the mood of these small underground communities was born. Try watching a few videos around the web, and you'll understand what I mean.

Three albums released so far. Adam Stonehouse's band started out as an ultra-noisy garage combo with a lo-fi bent, and in that guise they delivered an explosive debut, well matched by the follow-up "I've Visited The Island Of Jocks and Jazz" – where signs of change were already visible – and by the EP "Rich People". On those records, Hospitals made immediacy, or rather non-mediation, their reason for being. Simple, straightforward songs, then, however acidic and dissonant.

"Hairdryer Peace" – self-released just this year – is instead a spineless record, without head or tail, as they used to say. Twisted and shredded as badly as could be; the songs (if you can call them that) lurch forward in fits and starts, forcing the listener's brain into continuous stop-and-go, while the sounds, blurred and confused, derail non-stop in search of some possible melodic foothold (which almost never arrives…).

The record's strength lies precisely in the overall picture it (fails to) create. To put it plainly, "Hairdryer Peace" is a monstrous moloch of sonic non-sense, of maimed sounds, of broken-down materials fished out of some junkyard, of signs that (precisely) mean something in meaning nothing beyond themselves. A record made purely of signifiers uselessly busying themselves to justify their own existence. From Stonehouse's ragged bark, which tries in vain to rise above the wall of degraded feedback, to the rhythms, straining for a continuity that is instead almost always denied them.

A truly great band, and essential to understanding "the evolution of the music of devolution" in these troubled 2000s.

Sic Alps (San Francisco, California)

Sic Alps are excellent too, a band born out of a rib of Hospitals, given that the line-up of the first album included, among others, Adam Stonehouse himself (later replaced by Matt Hartman), as well as Bianca Sparta of Erase Errata. We could describe them as a heavy-garage-psych band, almost like an even more derelict, lo-fi Plastic Crimewave Sound, or a Royal Trux trapped in a morphine-soaked, Barrett-esque indolence.

And it's precisely "Pleasures And Treasures", released in 2005 on Animal Disguise, that stands as the expressive peak of Sic Alps, even though what came after doesn't sound bad at all — quite the opposite. But it's here that the band's capacity for sonic wreckage comes through best, along with an ultra-derelict streak that outflanks any '77-style punk nihilism on the left. These guys really play as if on a dare.

The nice thing is that, stripped of the feedback, Sic Alps' songs could pass for ordinary folk-rock ballads, maybe a bit acidic, but still possessed of a certain melodic charm.

Nothing People (Orland, California)

Another great band from that fount of mental illness and crooked music that is, and always has been, California. Nothing People are among the best groups of whatever-you-want-to-call-it in the new generation. One of the best bands, period, despite having just one album to their name. If we had to pin down their character, we'd say Nothing People are among those acts able to reinterpret early-80s dark post-punk - bands like Circle X or Bpeople - through a garage lens. But always in a battered, ramshackle key, with none of the self-satisfaction found in so much of the new wave revivalism of recent years. "Anonymous", released on the ever-present SS Records, is one of the most interesting records of 2008 for the way it cuts across its reference genres. So "State Of Mine" carries all the viciousness of Swans and Ritual Tension, while "Boccioni's Mothers" and "Suspicious" sound like the Fall jamming with Nervous Gender. But there's fun to be had with the melodies too, on tracks like "Corner's For" and "Omega Man".

Recommended, no argument allowed.

Oregon's misfits

Meth Teeth (Portland, Oregon)

Meth Teeth are a full-fledged folk-garage band, if such a thing can exist. The closest reference point is Sic Alps, though this Portland crew push even harder on melody and derelict jingle-jangle rather than on lo-fi garage impact, even though they have that in their DNA too.

Meth Teeth's songs are crooked from the outset, and played even more haphazardly still. Mattey Hunter's nasal vocals wallow in the most shameless amateurism, like some irritated Jonathan Richman who's just had his lollipop stolen. They have just one record to their name, "Untitled", released this year on Sweet Rot Records.

Eat Skull (Portland, Oregon)

Eat Skull are another bunch of lunatics. They seem unable to find anything better to do than douse the three or four chords they can, by pure accident, actually play, in sulfuric acid.

Another group born out of a splinter of Hospitals, specifically thanks to Rob Enbom and Rod Meyer, Eat Skull have one album and a couple of cassette singles to their name.

"Sick To Death" (2008, Siltbreeze) contains 14 anthemic-leaning tracks that, while dressing themselves each time in different shades, keep a unified underlying approach, drawing mainly on the sound of Times New Viking. Shitgaze, then, but with decided garagey swerves, and with a keen focus on pop and pleasing, at times downright sugary, melodies ("Survivable Spaces", "I Licked The Spider", "Shredders Of Fry", "Cartoon Beginning"). More appealing, though, are the punk-oriented ravers like "Beach Brains", "Dog Eeligion" and "Puker Corpse", which bear the clear imprint of the mother band.

A special mention for "Alarms", where Eat Skull managed to mix the Beach Boys with dried-up shit. Which is no small feat.

Leper Print (Portland, Oregon)

That Hospitals have spawned a whole scene around Portland (and beyond) is proven by Leper Print, another band of unknowns wrestling with a kind of obsessive, blunt-force garage-punk. "Coma" (2008, Die Stasi Records) contains three fast, draining tracks in which the sound lacks any resonance, as if it were being suffocated inside a copper can.

Little Claw (Portland, Oregon)

So, to all the indie-girls left orphaned by Sleater Kinney who might want to get their designer outfits (complete with hateful bone-rimmed glasses) a little dirty, I'd recommend checking out Little Claw, a sort of botched cross between the Slits and the Stooges. Both of them drowned in an open sewer, obviously. Little Claw are the best thing female-fronted rock has offered in the last couple of years, no offense to the utterly fake Erase Errata. With Little Claw you really do get filthy, because they play the filthiest, most hypnotic negative rock, full of garage spasms — a world away from the Saturday-night no wave of the indie-alternative club scene. They have two albums to their name. Their self-produced self-titled record, out in 2005, is packed with jagged, driving tracks worthy of the Slits' best moments, while "Spit And Squalor Swallow The Snow" (2007, Ecstatic Peace) shows a more layered sound. Worth flagging here is the gorgeous "Polar Bear", an acid-soaked wave dirge in the vein of Lydia Lunch (with a touch more femininity thrown in).

In short, as pleasant as a kick in the balls from a steel-toed boot. Which makes them great.

Stray dogs roaming across the States

Blank Dogs (Brooklyn, New York)

Blank Dogs are among the most mysterious bands of the bunch, and among the best. I won't hide the fact that "On Two Sides" is one of my fetish albums among those reviewed here, and in case you haven't already gathered as much, I'd urge you not to miss it for anything in the world. So, let's start by saying that Blank Dogs run a blog where you can freely download all the records released so far, perhaps in exchange for a small donation. The blog also occasionally offers reviews of records and compilations from the past. So what do Blank Dogs actually sound like? Well, their music is among the most elusive of the lot. Sure, at the end of the day it's synth-wave/cold-wave, but there are plenty of reference points in play. From San Francisco synth-punk, to French cold-wave (at times it's like hearing a poppier Clair Obscur), to English post-punk of the Cabaret Voltaire variety, not to mention the Residents-like image the band cultivates, helped by the fact that the members' identities remain unknown. And it's precisely this pronounced multiplicity of references that often makes their music hard to decode, its mood balanced on a very thin line between the apocalyptic and the mocking. What's certain is that what sets them apart from the rest of the pack is a songwriting ability clearly above average. Blank Dogs write great songs that, with better production (and a singer who actually sings properly), would top the indie-rock charts the world over. But I get the feeling they couldn't care less.

If I had to name the one act that best embodies the devolved rock of recent times, I'd certainly go with Blank Dogs (and Factums). Ad malora.

Factums (Seattle, Washington)

Here they are, the Factums, without a doubt the devolved band par excellence of recent years.

Born out of a splinter of the excellent Intelligence, whose ranks include drummer Matthew Ford, and out of Fruit Bats, in which guitarist Dan Strack once served, Factums project an image of themselves that is a short-circuit between stone-age visions and premonitions of a future ruled by machines. Almost a paleolithic cyber-punk. And the music fully reflects the imaginative coordinates the band has set for itself, managing to fuse the primitivist freak-outs of bands like Smegma and Cromagnon with post-industrial music and modern noise, amid synths that recall kraut-rock, spastic electronics, and post-industrial edits worthy of Monte Cazazza. Names like Residents, Chrome, Cabaret Voltaire, and Grotus naturally come to mind, for a sound that, thanks to this peculiar blend of expressive forms, manages to feel timeless, and therefore hard to pin down to any specific historical period. Factums could be a garage band from the early Seventies, a post-industrial combo from the late Eighties, or perhaps an art-rock creature from the Nineties, something halfway between Ubzub and Men's Recovery Project.

In fact, judging by their latest album to date, the excellent "A Primitive Future Soundtrack" (2008, Assophon), one is reminded of the pioneering music of some obscure electronic experimenter, an early guru of electronic music. Because it's here above all that the post-structuralist scope of Factums' music comes through; a sort of open-air workshop in which composition and performance appear to be utterly inseparable moments, where the sound seems to be the product of a spontaneous stream of consciousness, captured in one take.

This is music for the deranged, made by characters whose brains must have short-circuited from ingesting psychotropic substances. "Alien Native" (2007, Siltbreeze), for instance, is a drugged, rotten, thoroughly derelict record, even though here the band tries to express itself in more intelligible terms, that is, through fully formed songs. Because the sense of transience and claustrophobia conjured up by tracks like "The Disguise" or "Take Drugs" leads straight to the analyst's couch, while in the more garage-leaning moments ("Bomber", "Angel Twitch", "Drip"), you'll want to put on Pere Ubu just to get back to normal...

The following "Spells And Charms" and "The Sistrum" mark a transition between the garage immediacy of "Alien Native" and the experimental approach of "A Primitive Future Soundtrack". Although less striking than the aforementioned records, they still manage to display a gallery of sonic atrocities that's a real pleasure to hear.

Factums are among the greatest bands of the past 4-5 years. Truth be told, this article was written largely as an excuse to talk about them.

Home Blitz (Princeton, New Jersey)

Along the same lines as Black Lips and Hue Blanc's Joyless Ones are Home Blitz, an entertaining garage combo from Princeton. "Home Blitz" (2007, Gulcher Records) is a collection of the band's early releases and contains 12 tracks in the style of Jonathan Richman, which is essentially what Weezer should have been doing, had they been a "serious" band. An EP of theirs titled "Weird Wings" is reportedly due out on Parts Unknown.

A look outside the States

Pink Noise (Toronto, Canada)

Another rather promising band is Pink Noise from Toronto, whose "Dream Code" is among the best things to come out on ss Records this year. Stop and go in the Fall vein, disjointed noise residue à la Swell Maps, and an aggressive synth that brings to mind the Suicide of the first album. Naturally, it's all drowned in the usual lo-fi murk that makes the sound pretty gloomy. Another band worth keeping an eye on.

Diet Cola (Ontario, Canada)

Just one EP to their name so far, Diet Cola deal in aggressive, stripped-down synth-garage à la Primitive Calculators, driven by the sacred rock'n'roll spirit of the Cramps. Their self-titled EP delivers four full-throttle tracks that bode well for a first full length.

Los Llamarada (Monterrey, Mexico)

ss Records takes center stage again with the release of the first official Los Llamarada record, said by many to be the best Mexican garage band around right now (…). And indeed "Exploding Now" is a solid psychedelic garage album that also brings the Black Lips to mind. Actually, we'd call it art-garage, since Los Llamarada aren't shy about dropping noisy shards into their tracks, giving the sound an extra layer.

Cheveu (Paris, France)

Most people file Cheveu under weirdo-garage, and we'll do the same here. The French band, though, operate on another level entirely - the one occupied by Volt, for instance - because theirs is a fairly well-produced synth-punk that has little to do with devolution. These guys write real songs, and they know how to write them. Their debut album, released this year on ss Records, is a little gem of aggressive, minimal synth-punk stuffed with guitar skronk that veers to the edge of noise, though it has to be said the closest reference point is really their fellow countrymen Volt.

Ride the wave of great music

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