Sleaze

***"If you’ve been at this record collecting thing for any time now you’ve probably figured out that in this day and age there are two kinds of punk rock. The first type is to vintage late ‘70s and early ‘80s punk what Sha Na Na was to Eddie Cochran—y’know, studied nostalgia for a bygone age that’s never coming back. Then there’s the other kind of punk; the music made by those marked from birth as lifelong mutants and complete fuck ups. Call it TOTAL PUNK if you will. These punks aren’t looking to the past so much as spontaneously acting upon the same maladaptive urges that gave rise to bands like the Electric Eels and the Gizmos. These are exactly the kind of punks we’re talking about when we talk about the SLEAZE. Guaranteed not one Sleaze has ever heard of the initials KBD. As far they’re concerned Bloodstains are just what you get on your clothes after a 3 AM drunken wrestling match. And yet through some miracle of surreptitious retardation these four goofballs managed to blindly stumble upon the primordial essence of punk captured so often on those aforementioned comps. You notice at first in CONOR’s quintessentially snotty voice and MARK’s staccato guitar riffs, but it’s there lurking under the surface in JOE’s repetitive basslines and WILL’s savant-like drumming as well. All eight songs on this 12” twitch and throb with a deviant vitality that will remind you why you got into this punk garbage in the first place without bringing to mind a single band you could cite as an influence. There's always been something off about the Sleaze—what other band besides these guys would think it was a good idea to give some of their best songs impossibly dumb titles like ‘Conor Start’ and ‘Big Azz Butts?’—but the more you listen to this record the more you will realize how their complete disregard of history and accepted ‘good form’ is what makes them so right on. The Sleaze truly don’t give a fuck about anyone or anything other than themselves. Everywhere they go they leave behind a trail of bad decisions, broken promises, unhonored debts, damaged property, innumerable cans of Mountain Crest with shotgun holes punched in the bottom, and—redeeming it all—a bunch of timeless songs that will be cranked out of broken speakers for as long as there are still dirtbags out there making a mess of their lives through punk rock. Tektonik Girls is the Sleaze in all of their damaged glory. Buy this record and it will shatter your soul."—Steve Borchardt