Maness Brothers “Hill House Sessions” 2026. Romanus Records, limited edition tricolor “Nebula” variant. Love love love these trad/garage blues rockers from Missouri. Maness Brothers are, indeed, brothers with David on guitar and vocals and Jake on drums and vocals. We first caught the duo back in 2017 when they opened for Brother O’Brother (along with SERVICE featuring former Jon Spencer Blues Explosion’s Russell Simins on drums — see here for that post and a great story David Maness told us about discovering JSBX when he was 11 years old) for BoB’s Neon Native album release show in Indianapolis. We caught them again in Indy in 2019 at Romanus Fest. Hill House Sessions is their first full length in over 5 years and it’s a scorcher (the liner notes state the album was recorded over the course of eight months back in 2021).  A mix of traditional Southern blues, grungy growls, electric guitar shreds and a family orientated DIY punk attitude. the opener “The Way That It Is,” “Tammy Jean” and “Let It Roll” are all rollicking blues ass-shakers with gravel country roads vocals; “Life” is a blues-country bender with an ear-worm infinity hook that excellently devolves into controlled garage chaos (one of my top picks for sure). “Workin’ Man” blends grunge and metal with bendy blues for a sound so big it rivals the 80s hair bands (but wins for better music). “Sometimes” too leans heavy and raucous while the album closer “Luna’s Lullaby” opens has an adorable spoken word from, I’m guessing, one of the bro’s young daughter and moves into a lovely, sparkling, dreamy instrumental that is, as advertised, a (blues) lullaby. It’s been several year since we’ve seen Maness Brothers perform and I’m hoping they will tour the upper Midwest soon.

Brandy Zdan “Secretear” 2018. Tallest Man Records, translucent pink vinyl variant. Zdan was one of our favorite new-to-us acts at this year’s Mile of Music festival in Appleton a couple of weeks ago. We often base our picks on the MoM app’s filters (rock!) and then the artist description, followed by a preview of a few tracks available via streaming. Zdan’s was “brandy ZDAN (zuh-dan) is a Canadian artist & Record producer based in Nashville TN. After two JUNO nominations (Canada’s Grammy) and years on the road as a session guitarist, ZDAN carves out a rock n roll/post punk sound reminiscent of the Runaways, Bikini Kill, with some 80’s Bryan Adams thrown in the mix. She is also quickly making her name as a sought out record producer with her dark and raw sensibility, approach of serving the song, and creating a sonic palette unique to the artists she works with.” Check, check and check. We caught her set at The Bar on Friday afternoon and it was excellent! She’s an engaging performer, lots of smiles + attitude; and we’re fairly certain her touring bassist (no clue if she’s in the band full-time) performed with Gloom Girl at Mile last year. Secretear is Zdan’s first label release; she has a couple of records from 2015 that appear to be self-released and she has another LP, Falcon, from 2021. Since I haven’t heard those other releases I don’t know what her sound trajectory has been or became, but Secretear is definitely more country/Americana inspired than her performance, which was for sure more straight up guitar-forward rock. She also has an amazing voice. My top picks from the record are the rocking opener “Get To You,” the dream-pop, girl-group inspired “Run Away,” the banger “Wild Fire” and  “Night Rider” – an 80’s inspired slow-burner upon which her voice is simply angelic, bringing to mind the great Pat Benatar.

Circle Jerks “When the Shit Hits the Fan” limited edition red vinyl, Repo Man version 2025. Trust Records. Last night we saw Circle Jerks perform a full set at the Oriental Theatre in Milwaukee, followed by a Q&A with Keith Morris, Repo Man writer and directer Alex Cox, and Circle Jerks’ bassist (though not when the movie and song was originally released) + Repo Man actor Zander Schloss (he played Kevin, the nerdy, acne + curly mohawk’d friend to Emilio Estevez’s Otto); this all before a screening of the full 1984 film. What an experience!!! The evening started with Alex Cox taking vocals on the song “Repo Man” (by Iggy Pop) – in the Q&A we learned that Keith refused to sing it because he thought the lyrics were stupid…and Alex knew all the words. The Keith came out and the band ripped through a full set of, like, everything like “Coup D’Etat,” “Wild in the Streets” and “When the Shit Hits the Fan.” The Q&A was hilarious – Keith let us know he hated the lounge version of “When the Shit Hits the Fan” — which appears on the b-side of this single and we got to hear all about the filming for that scene in Repo Man (it was the hottest day of the year and they spent something like 18 hours in their custom tuxes waiting for that scene to be shot), how Zander got the role (Chris Penn was the original Kevin) and got hooked up with Circle Jerks, and a bit about Alex Cox’s other past, present and future projects. The absolute highlight of pretty much the whole night was when a little boy who couldn’t have been over 8 years old and under 4 feet tall took the mic to ask, sweetly, “How did you come up with the name of the band” to Keith. The entire sold-out theatre erupted into hysterical laughing and it only got more raucous as Keith proceeded to answer the question in great detail, yet he somehow managed to keep his answer (mostly) PG. We then screened Repo Man, a movie I first saw back in ’86 on VHS (or maybe Beta), its soundtrack one of the punk staples in the 80’s. We purchased a bunch of merch, too, including the show poster (this tour is extremely limited to I think five or six dates around the Midwest), this single plus a Circle Jerks/Descendents split, a t-shirt and one of my favorite show souvenirs ever, a generic Repo Man x Circle Jerks beer coozie.