The Lacking Details

If you dig a big fat sawtooth wave riff standing in the front and nearly hitting you in the face with the mic stand, then Brighton's AK/DK has your number. Turn it up and ready yourself to spasm uncontrollably.

Geordie makes good use of a voice that's as smooth as silk and a delivery that promises the utmost reliability, but it's not making a discernible effort to distract from the wonderful glitchiness and complication that hides in the background.

Another band with a well-earned penchant for ALL-CAPS, overbrimming with adolescent incorrigible behavior sung about from the perspective of adults proving it is indeed corrigible. The music is hyper-pop-punk and the irony levels are high.

As the name successfully implies, this outfit is a heady blend of Chicano funk and other sources. Pumping bass lines that could drain the Baltic Sea in minutes and horn stabs that could be entered as evidence in a court of law fill out the package.

The matchup of pub-rock king Nick Lowe and masked instrumental raiders Los Straitjackets might seem like a weird one-off joyride, but Lowe's wise croon has intersected with their sparkling backing many times, and this may be their best effort yet.

These lads supported Mark E. Smith for a while, and that speaks loads about their ability to hit his notoriously high and fickle bar, and (unrelated) their ability to put up with random nonstop antics. Straightahead driving music for eating up miles.

YACHT dropped out of sight right before the whole "yacht rock" revival thing happened, but this release reinforces the band's penchant for commenting on current themes with the musical equivalent of wearing sunglasses inside the nightclub.

What this band brings to the mainly-instrumental surf guitar disco potluck is exactly what you'd expect a band invited to the MISGDP to bring, but let's be honest for a minute: we don't ever want to run out.

Is it the analog synthesizer flourishes, or the gentle delivery with an aggressive intent, or the seamless shuttling between disparate elements that shouldn't work together? The band sounds perfectly familiar, yet completely its own thing.

Get ready for some uncomfortable oversharing, set to the tune of early grunge, with an occasional jazz or doo-wop idiom thrown in… it’s a bit of uneasy listening but it gets its hooks into you.