Operation Bikini Rock

Brooklyn indie rock group Obits has just released Bed & Bugs, their third album since their formation in 2006. A unique and engaging blend of old school rock and roll and new school, snotty garage punk, this record is filled with catchy and fun tracks with some serious attitude slung overtop. Sounding at times like the Black Keys with a healthy heaping of punk, vocals like Kurt Cobain at his most anguished and guitars that sound reminiscent of Dinosaur Jr.-style post punk, but a whole lot more discordant. With a chaotic, strained sound paired with cleaner, more traditional sounds, Bed & Bugs is definitely one of the more innovative and exciting records to come out in alternative rock this year.

Early in the record, with the track “Spun Out,” Obits shows us that they don’t just play straight ahead garage rock with the distinctive twangy sounds of surf rock inspired guitar– a style far too forgotten in modern punk music and almost never combined with other influences in as solid and enjoyable a way as this record has done. Smack in the middle of Bed & Bugs, we are treated to an instrumental track, “Besetchet,” with its catchy, driving example of the guitarist and drummer’s talent aside from the vocals, that ends on such an exciting and unresolved note that the listener can’t help but continue on. What the end of the track doesn’t prepare for, though, is the wailing harmonica that starts of the next, truly rocking track, “Operation Bikini “– a most fitting title for the song.

If you’re a fan of all things indie, rock and roll, or dirty garage-style punk, there’s a song for you on Bed & Bugs. Standing out as one of the more interesting and fun records of 2013, we can only imagine, and hope for, whats to come with this band. If anything they release in the future is as good, or ideally even better, than this record. Obits is sure to stay on the minds, and turntables, of any punk rock fan.