California X California X

Received a 7.8 rating from Pitchfork. In less than a year, Amherst trio CALIFORNIA X have emerged from basements and punk practice spaces of Massachusetts as one of the tightest new garage punk bands in the Northeast, teetering between various pockets of the punk spectrum-drawing influence from the worlds of noisy '80s Western Mass rock, fuzzy '90s garage pop, and classic post-hardcore SST sounds. Fronted by main songwriter LEMMY GURTOWSKY, their debut LP for Don Giovanni follows one prior release, a double A-side single "Sucker" b/w "Mummy" out via the UK's Sound of Sweet Nothing label. From start to finish, the record's eight hook-heavy tracks of melodic guitar punk could all be singles: the noisy vox and huge grungy riffs on "Curse of the Nightmare"; the slower-burning head-banging pulse of "Pond Rot"; the shoegaze-inflicted fleshed-out melodies of "Lemmy's World." Songs like "Hot Hed" feels so essential you'll wonder how they're not actually from some long-lost punk tapes of the 1980s Western Mass. Appropriately, the band recorded the album in MA with JUSTIN PIZZOFERRATO, previously a collaborator with Sonic Youth and Dinosaur Jr.-and though California X sound like they could have been contemporaries with those bands, they're also carving out their own space in a lineage of their hometown's punk history.