While it’s four years since the Bobby Lees’ excellent Bellevue album was released, they haven’t been stumbling around in the slow lane since then. Having gone on a burnout-enforced hiatus in 2023 with guitarist Nick Casa moving on to pastures new, singer and all-round Renaissance woman Sam Quartin has appeared in a couple of films, while rhythm section, Macky Bowman and Kendall Wind have been seen playing with veteran garage rocker, Jon Spencer of late. So, they’ve certainly been keeping themselves busy.
This busyness may explain the brevity of their new disc, which only clocks in at a little over 20 minutes, but fear not - they’ve lost none of their blistering rage and swaggering bravado in the meantime. This is particularly evident on the banshee’s howl of the fiery “Napoleon” which channels a tempest of not unreasonable disappointment and a demand that the band “stop keep getting fucked” by the music business.
The sonic dogfight of “Give”, intense and mosh pit-friendly, nu-metal vibes of the title track and the blistering, muscular onslaught of “Red Hot” similarly make it crystal clear that there’s plenty of unfinished business for the Bobby Lees to settle yet. Raucous and jagged with plenty of bite, they still produce a noise that feels like being locked in a wind tunnel with a particularly malevolent goblin. However, there’s nothing one-speed about New Self, as the band move down a gear on the raw, drum-free “Got Me Good” and get more than a bit funky on “50 Ft”.
Still, while their new tunes may be looser with a good deal more swing than previously, their grungy, garage punk is still sharp and to-the-point, with hardly any of them clocking in at more than two and a half minutes long. In fact, New Self is a fine and riotous example of how quality punk rock has evolved 50 years since mid-1970s’ Ground Zero.
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