Pictures, Movies and Apartments offers the single most exciting opening to any album this year. The Image (Pictures) begins with kick drum, a single-note bassline and squalls of feedback, before going into a monstrously in-the-red five-chord riff, over which Jacobs howls who-knows-what. It’s the very essence of garage punk: something so primal you suspect the Sonics might have rejected it for being a little unsophisticated. Jacobs, from Canada, has – in common with so many modern garage rock artists – a bafflingly lengthy discography, full of the same kind of stuff. He’s not a one-note artist, though: he manages two or three. Born in a Zoo is just as fuzzed-up, but manages a sunshine psychedelia hook; the title track is bouncy lo-fi pop. Throughout, there are hooks and melodies – the album positively drips with them – but it’s combined with a singleminded wildness that’s desperately exciting. Pictures, Movies and Apartments might be the best garage punk record of the year.
