The Pop Corporation

Sometimes, you need someone to arrive right on time, feeling like they’re saving something. Twisted Teens have a new album out called ‘Florida Water Blues’, and it feels like someone saved Garage Punk.

See, Garage Punk never went away for the salivating few, but The Hives are a good time rock ‘n’ roll band who know their place, Jack Black is too pale to be a proper Garage Punker, so you need someone who looks like they might get kicked out of a bar for making too much noise in the corner and playing the kind of rock ‘n’ roll that makes your hair stand on end.

Since 2024, these fuckers have managed to put three albums out, and they’re all breakneck, noisy affairs and the latest might just be their best, with twangy guitars making their way to molten lava bangers that concern themselves far more with swagger and energy than they do any kind of fidelity – which is of course, how it should be.

At times, so dense is the sound that it feels like all the air leaves your lungs like when you’re stood too close to a huge bonfire – all hooks and racket, but with a Southern States sensibility that bleeds through the walloping music, to give it a neat edge from those who are content with their attempts to just rewrite stuff from the Nuggets boxset.

Their Southerness is best served hungover it seems, as away from the caterwauling of the uptempo numbers, there’s an air of songs that are battered and bruised, like you hear on ace Outsider ballads and Loner Country music 45s.

This regionality in the music is what’s really refreshing with this album, so the record doesn’t suffer from trying to level you with a suite of similar stompers back-to-back – there’s a lot of light and shade in this album, even if the moments you might immediately take away are the ones that make you feel like you’re being jumped in a phonebox!

This is a band that veer between weary mystical stuff and boneheaded bangers – we prefer the latter, such as “girl, clean your fucking room!” and whoever they aimed “little fucker with a big attitude” at.

There’s loners, outcasts, cigarettes, prostitutes, hard luck stories, and an absolute zinger about where they’re from: “I live in a crazy swamp just about in the crotch of America – smells like ket and two-piece chicken and the air’s all made of bacteria” – how can you stop yourself from getting on board with that?!

It’s moodier in places, but still has all the fury and velocity that you want from a group like this. Ultimately, this is a very entertaining affair and if you’re in the market for some of that good time rock ‘n’ roll, you’d do a lot worse than inhabiting whatever sweaty armpit these guys have found themselves in at any given juncture.