CD REVIEWS
By: Chad C
The Darts - Halloween Love Songs
After a decade of tearing up stages across Europe, the UK, and the U.S., Seattle’s The Darts return with their most ambitious record yet: Halloween Love Songs, out March 3 on Adrenalin Fix Music. Produced by Grammy-winning Mark Rains at Station House Studio in Los Angeles, the album captures a band operating at full voltage, a tight, road-seasoned unit that has distilled years of touring, lineup evolution, and late-night writing sessions into a sharp, cinematic garage-punk statement. The Darts are no strangers to global attention. They have spent years selling out concerts across Europe, the UK, and North America, moving vinyl faster than labels could repress it and landing sought-after KEXP live sessions. They hit major festivals like Punk Rock Bowling, Binic Folk and Blues, SJOCK Festival, and Bear Stone Festival, earning fans ranging from Dave Vanian to Stephen King to Jello Biafra. Known for genuine, close-to-the-crowd performances and Nicole Laurenne’s honest connection with the room, the band brings people into the show and plays from real joy rather than polish. What Halloween Love Songs shows is a band not riding momentum but steering it.
The spark for the record came during a 2024 Rock n Folk interview in Paris. Singer and keyboard player Nicole Laurenne joked that Halloween deserved more than one novelty hit. By the time she got home, the joke had grown teeth. “I didn’t want an album that was just monster costumes on the playground,” she says. “Side A is full of colorful, early-evening energy, the kind of songs you could blast while the neighborhood lights are flicking on. But Side B is the soundtrack for after dark, when the bonfire is raging. It’s for sweaty middle-of-the-night dancing, making out on a bed of empty candy wrappers, and spinning through an all-nighter apocalypse.” It is a concept album, but not a themed gimmick. More like a two-sided mood built from years of shows where danger, joy, humor, sweat, and catharsis all live in the same hour.
Side A kicks off with the slinky strut of “Midnight Creep,” a live favorite built around a custom dance that has been breaking crowds from Switzerland to Cincinnati. Tracks like “Zombies on the Metro” and “Every Night Is Halloween” expand the early-evening palette, driven by Nicole’s Farfisa grit, Rebecca Davidson’s guitar snarl, Lindsay Scarey’s low-end punch, and the heavy snap of returning original drummer Rikki Styxx. Side B is where the night deepens. “Apocalypse,” inspired by the medieval Apocalypse Tapestry in Angers, France, hits with a caveman stomp, Mudhoney-thick fuzz, and the now-iconic “No Kings” refrain, a line Nicole wrote about shedding oppression that later surfaced as a protest chant across the U.S. long before the band had released a note. Cuts like “The Devil Made Me Do It” and “Darkness” push the band into heavier territory: chant-driven, hypnotic, and built for sweaty clubs at one in the morning. It is garage rock with a pulse and a shadow, still wired to The Cramps, The Trashwomen, The Seeds, and Death Valley Girls, but sharpened with modern muscle.
What separates Halloween Love Songs from past Darts records is the sense of intent. It is bigger, more focused, and feels like a culmination of years spent on trains, in vans, on festival stages, in basements, through lineup changes, and inside the tight-knit world of international garage-punk. This is a band that learned to command their lane, then built a record bold enough to expand it. True to form, The Darts will follow the release with another year of heavy touring across the U.S., Europe, the UK, and Japan in 2026, including early-year Hawaii shows that set the tone for the run ahead. They are not slowing down. They never have.
Fake Friends - Let's not overthink This
Montreal’s The Fake Friends hit their stride on Let’s Not Overthink This, a full-length that folds post punk rhythm, new wave cool, and melodic bite into one long, late-night pulse. Out February 13, 2026 on Stomp Records, the record sits in a sharp, stylish lane somewhere between Pylon and Wire, Parquet Courts and Cloud Nothings, with the danceable precision of Franz Ferdinand cutting through. It is a sound wired to the city they came up in, all neon reflections, cold sidewalks, and the kind of after-hours clarity that only shows up when the metro’s running every half hour. The band has lived a few lives already. What started in 2020 as a reason to hang out turned into a scene fixture that never quite fits into any one pocket. Frontman Matthew Savage and guitarist Luca Santilli built the bones, pulling in longtime collaborators Felix Crawford-Legault, Michael Kamps, Bradley Cooper-Graham, and Michael Tomizzi until the lineup locked into place.
The mantra “all eyes on me” loops until it stops sounding like confidence and starts sounding like pressure. It is the clearest statement of what the record does best, turning everyday absurdity into something cathartic, catchy, and just a little unhinged. As the album unfolds, the emotional temperature rises and falls in waves. “Control” slows the pace, letting keys drift over a beat that feels like walking home too fast in the cold. “Living The Dream” twists a familiar phrase into something queasier, all shakes and repetition, half in the moment and half out of it. “Backstreet’s Back pt. II” leans into darker swagger, a song that feels haunted without ever naming the ghost. Further down, “Dance On My Grave” becomes a strange celebration, a grin in the mirror after the worst night of your life, and “Good Friends” closes the record by stripping everything back to piano, voices, and one last bitter truth: “you fuckin’ hate this town.”
SLIP~ons
What do you get when you combine two Canadian music lifers into one guitar-heavy power-pop unit that still believes in volume, melody, and sweat? You get SLIP~ons. Fronted by Brock Pytel of Montreal pop-punk staples Doughboys and anchored by Brian Minato, longtime bassist for Sarah McLachlan, the Vancouver four-piece makes rock music the honest way. Plug in. Turn it up. Let it rip. Their sophomore EP Overtime arrives February 20, 2026, via Scamindy. SLIP~ons aim straight for the sweet spot where 90s alternative heft meets power-pop immediacy. Think Sugar-era Bob Mould muscle, Hüsker Dü urgency, and the loose confidence of The Replacements, with flashes of Ash and Dinosaur Jr. in the guitar tones. Rounded out by Rob “Shockk” Matharu of The Spitfires on guitar and Shane Wilson on drums, the band plays with instinct and economy. Nothing is overthought. Everything hits when it’s supposed to.
Overtime takes its title from the sudden-death hockey period, used here as an extended metaphor for pressure, consequence, and the moment when everything sharpens. The EP leans heavier and more focused than the band’s debut, pairing Pytel’s gravel-edged vocals with punchy, direct arrangements that waste zero time. The lyrics widen their scope too. Politics surface naturally, filtered through experience rather than slogans. As Pytel puts it, “I made it all the way through side A without a single song about a breakup.” The shift is subtle but intentional, and it gives the record real weight.
John Raham recorded the EP at Afterlife, formerly Mushroom Studios, a room steeped in Canadian music history. Raham’s resume includes work with Frazey Ford, Dan Mangan, Tanya Tagaq, Destroyer, and Pharis, and his approach here keeps the performances immediate while giving the songs room to move. Mixing duties were handled by Dave Ogilvie of Skinny Puppy, whose touch adds grit and tension without sanding off the edges. Overtime was mastered by Ronan Chris Murphy, whose work spans artists such as King Crimson, Ulver, and Gwar, bringing clarity and punch while preserving the EP’s raw, guitar-forward bite