Live Inside by Puppet Wipes

For fans of The Velvet Underground, Big Blood, Mope Grooves, outsider music, and an auditory version of the uncanny valley effect, Live Inside by Puppet Wipes bears all the signifiers of an indie pop record but takes every possible left turn to instead create something endlessly fascinating, deeply disorienting, and instantly original. A twee vocal and production style brings an eerie brightness to this otherwise deeply tense composition, with spidery, angular guitars and bouncy post-punk bass otherwise leading us into a dark yet energetic space. The result creates a zombie-like undead reanimation of 50s and 60s pop rock, in a way beating contemporary punk to the punch by achieving the goals of the earliest punk movements. By reinventing the music of the so-called postwar American golden age with all the post-ironic trappings of the 21st century, Puppet Wipes calls to our attention the darkness which always lingered in those smoky atomic-age studios, reminding us to doubt the heavily monied escapism of pop culture in all its iterations.