by Dan Goldin (@post_trash_)
Brooklyn's Baglady are like your friendly neighborhood punk band. The type of band you've always imagined are practicing just down the street, and if only you could go in to hear what they were playing as it sounds great blasting through the walls. Luxury Condos, the quartet's debut EP feels like reuniting with an old friend, but it's only the beginning, and Baglady have just introduced themselves. Perhaps it's the band's line-up featuring Max Kagan (guitar/vocals), Kesting Charney (guitar), Pat Ronayne (bass), and Matt Gaffney (drums), a collection of musicians who have played in Heeney, Bethlehem Steel, Dances, Lost Boy ?, Red Dwarf, and countless other bands. Perhaps it's the band's ability to sound like someone flipping the dial between alternative rock and punk radio stations. The EP, which the band will release on Thursday at The Glove in Brooklyn with Big Ups, Stove, and Deli Girls, comes in physical format as a zine the band made together with six different artists from the neighborhood.
Luxury Condos is big, brash, and accessible, a display of punk rock dynamism and dexterity, that charges from groove based rippers to snotty punk twang and back again. It's a got dang rock 'n' roll record, and the band would like you to have some fun listening to it. Easy enough, thanks to songs like the blistering boogie of "#2," the classic rock sprawl of "Seagrams," and the reckless destruction of "Dying Breed". They slay, they swoon, they leave you shouting for more. "#2" is a definitive highlight, a motorik rocking freefall that digs deep into the early QOTSA sound, tearing it's own New York inspired groove into the city's dense streets. Kagan's vocals, both harsh and gentle at any given moment, give the band a sense of character, a thoughtfulness that goes beyond just thrashing pop and well-conceived hooks.
Baglady's Luxury Condos is out now.