by Dan Goldin (@post_trash_)
Innovation shminovation, sometimes we just want to hear music that rips, the sound of crushing distortion and pummeling rhythms that could shaking the foundation of your favorite punk house. Brooklyn’s Bad Cough get it, their music raw and brash, pounding away with a Bleach like dissonance and hooks that rattle under the weight. Good Cough, Bad Cough, the band’s debut EP, resides deep in the red, blaring and immediate, it’s a four song statement of bleeding feedback and primal stampeding beats. Due out on June 22nd via Musical Fanzine Records (Wavers, Hidden Driver, Velvet Dreaming), the band come out swinging, swarming from song to song with an intentional lack of subtlety. They could go anywhere from here, but they’re arrived sludgy and shredding.
Comprised of Maia Mara (Halfsour), Adam Berkowitz (Kal Marks, Mulva, Ex-Breathers), Travis Hagan (Halfsour, Pleaser), and Jenna Lemieux, the band are no strangers to the more nuanced side of indie rock, which makes Bad Cough’s debut all the more delightful. From the peeling introduction of “A Fourth of July” to “Crazier Horse,” the band present an unhinged kind of ramshackle fuzz punk, heavy but undeniably fun. While rooted in grunge, there’s a lot of personality in Mara’s lyrics, her words setting the tone with a well delivered simplicity, sugary but not necessarily sweet. While consistently blaring and punchy, Bad Cough are able to keep a sense of dynamics throughout, rearranging incessant melodies on “Unpaid, Need Cigarettes” while grooving into swaggering punk energy on “Summertime Sickness”. Good Cough, Bad Cough is a great time throughout, twelve and a half minutes of rusted fuzz pop and grungy punk, pretension free.
Bad Cough will celebrate the EP’s release with their first show on June 22nd at Alphaville in Brooklyn.