Ditches - Lights Out

  As promised yesterday, here's another winner from Drunken Sailor Records...

 Ditches are a fast, gritty and melodic garage punk band from Stockholm who are "coming straight out of the gutter and speeding into the part of your brain where all the catchiest melodies lurk for the rest of time." They formed in 2016 with a yearning to fill what they felt was a gap in the European garage punk scene and their influences include South Central US garage punk, power pop and 60's surf rock. By South Central US garage punk I'm assuming they mean the Dirtnap Records catalogue! They've a debut S/T album on the way (vinyl 20th March, 1st 100 copies on blue) and that Dirtnap signature sound is all over it, you can't help but listen to the album without thinking of The Marked Men & Radioactivity. They've even got Jeff Burke on production duties (and he adds backing vocals to a couple of tracks). Don't mistake it for a pointless exercise in fan worshipping though, Ditches have taken their love of that style and produced something equally as good as anything released by their heroes. No mean feat. You can check listen now as it's already streaming :   https://drunkensailorrecords.bandcamp.com/album/st-lp-10

  To help promote the album, the band will soon be touring around Europe and you can check out dates here : https://www.facebook.com/ditchesband/

  The first single from the album is Don't Care, a pacy 2 minute track about unanswered questions but to be honest pretty much any of the 11 songs could have taken pride of place as a single, they're all very good. My early highlight is this uptempo rocker, it's called Lights Out...