Fighting with the Undertow #2

A monthly playlist of new punk rock, alt rock and indie music tracks

February’s instalment includes Frank Turner, J Mascis, The Jesus and Mary Chain, Ride, The Smile and more.

Welcome to Fire Red Sky’s latest playlist of the 20 best punk rock, alt rock and indie music tracks to be released in the last month.

Fighting with the Undertow, a line from the same Bob Mould song as ‘Fire Red Sky’, arrives on the first weekend of the month. The playlist aims to help you (and me) cut through all the new music noise and maybe locate our next favourite band.

The first edition of Fighting with the Undertow covered to the rather fallow period from December to very early January. In retrospect, that probably lulled me into a false sense of security about how easy it would be to shortlist just 20 great new punk rock, alt rock and indie music songs from the last month. This time around things get real as bands and performers woke up to the new year, giving me some difficult decisions about which songs to drop from my long list.

I didn’t include ‘No Thank You For the Music’ by Frank Turner last time around, not finding the song all that immediate, but also knowing that my self-imposed (and probably malleable) rule of one song per release for these playlists would be easily filled for him later on. And so it’s proved to be with ‘Do One’, which accompanied the announcement of his forthcoming 10th album and kicks of this instalment of the playlist.

Other bigger names on this month’s collection include The Smile, whose ‘Friend of a Friend’ has reawakened my long-dormant interest in Thom Yorke’s output, while the solo J Mascis track from his fourth solo studio album What Do We Do Now continues my infatuation with his work. Elsewhere, tracks by The Jesus and Mary Chain and Ride are both preceded by songs by some of their modern descendants – King In Yellow and White Orchid.

There’s revved-up punk rock from Manchester’s Bruise Control, with the hardcore-tinged ‘No More, and from Portland’s Mean Jeans on the hyperactive ‘Something’s Going On’. There’s also post-hardcore from Gouge Away on the ripping, hypnotic ‘Stuck in a Dream’ and from Canada’s Jenafur, who shift from Thurston Moore guitar parts to Fucked Up style throat-shredding.

From Cincinnati band Corker there’s a brilliant post-punk earworm with ‘Distant Dawn’ and Dolorifics from Gothenburg do one thing – but they do it very well – on ‘Through Your Eyes’. Those two bands are very much new to me, but one that’ll be new to pretty much everyone is Treibgut. The ‘Deutschpunk-Projekt’ from German actor Nils Svenja Thomas only has one released song to its credit, but the emotionally taut and infectious ‘Licht’ bodes well for their future.

Embedding the Spotify playlist isn’t working for me today, so click on the image above to access the full playlist there, or you’ll find February’s instalment of Fighting with the Undertow here.

Playlist image and main image by Ian Parker on Unsplash