Photo by Brenden Beecy
Most bands are terrible, and of the bands that aren’t terrible, most are mediocre. The subsections keep getting smaller and smaller until you’re pretty much left with the very top tier of music, music that God and Jesus are down with. For the sake of argument, let’s say the upper echelon is pretty much Ella Fitzgerald and The Spits, and in this hierarchy of quality, bands do not often move up. Bands get worse all the time, but a band going from “pretty good for a Saturday night ” to “I will listen to this in the privacy of my own home and bop around in my boxer-briefs to it” is as precious and rare as a perfect simile.
Nuclear Santa Claust, formerly of Cleveland, eternally of New York/New Jersey, have always been pretty good. Good songs, terrible production, heavy drinkers, and very many laughs; they’re a good solid local punk band for bad punk times. Frankly, for their future, expectations were reasonable. That’s why their new album, Je Ne Sais Claust (out 2/2 on Don Giovanni Records), is such a revelation. While Queens’ pinhead bop-pop remains the basic template, the Spits worship has been infused with Blitz aggression and mid-80s SST ambition. Thanks to a wise decision to defy some of the rules of contemporary basement punk and not record the album inside a literal butt with tubes attached, you can actually hear what the drums and bass are doing while the guitars drone and swerve like a desert psyche band. Nuclear Santa Claust, while maybe not quite at Ella Fitzgerald level yet, have become a great punk band. They were also nice enough to let Noisey premiere their new banger, “Sayonara Baby.” It’s nice as hell. Bless you, Nuclear Santa Claust.
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Pre-order Je Ne Sais Claust here.
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