Suggested Friends: Turtle Taxi (2019)

Every year, I take great pride in burning myself a year-end double-CD mix of that year's best music. And nothing pisses me off more than belatedly discovering something I missed that seems so essential I need to go back and re-burn the mix.

So screw you, Suggested Friends!

But here we are. Stumbled across this not long ago, and it's terrific. Dunno a lot about them -- apparently from London, queer punks, second album. But damn it's infectious. Reminds me a lot of Waxahatchee (prior to this year's Americana turn) and the early, rawer Tegan & Sara, a punchy revamp of 90s alt.rock, polished but not slick. The hooks are massive, but they eschew pure pop for a more intriguing, dynamically skewed sound that kinda keeps you guessing.

Do I love this? Yeah, I really love this. I went back and checked out their 2017 self-titled debut over on Bandcamp; that one's a lot rougher, still really cool but much more punk-infused. Here they sand off some of those edges, but tracks like opener "Imminent" retain every bit of the exuberance, while others--i.e. "Cygnets" and "At Ease," peppered through with attention-grabbing lyrics--are more mid-tempo indie pop, inherently catchy yet fresh-sounding. Relatively restrained tracks like "Pretty Soon Your Grave Will Be A Landfill" and "Magnolia" sound like the current crop of women singer-songwriters (i.e. the whole Anna Burch/Lucy Dacus/Phoebe Bridgers scene) as filtered through a Riot Grrrl-heavy record collection.

Go buy Turtle Taxi on Bandcamp.

Here's the video for "Cygnets":

...and a video for the title track:

...and a video for "For Jokes" (ok, it's a cat video, and I'm a sucker for cat videos, so not really playing fair):