Trouble Seekers - S/T – New LP

with some connection to the pasts of these punks, previous projects and involvement including The Prostitutes and Hey! It's The Pandoras, but dipping back and departing forward, weaving it all together with soldered circuits, electric cords, guitar strings, and chicken wire, coming out of that garage punk-rock tradition that grabbed the synthesizers with both hands without relying on the robot sounds to dominant the songs, and in regards to that, this perhaps has a bigger connection to various and varied sounds of the late 1970s and early 1980s (perhaps made more obvious by the two covers, Cheap Trick 1977 and Madonna 1984), exploring territories in no-man's land between no wave and new wave while also clearly ripping itself loose from all those pasts to offer something clearly going down right now.  check it out!   -- winch

The Trouble Seekers:
Kevin McGovern (The Prostitutes) and Hillary Burton (honeychain, The Pandoras)
all songs written by the Trouble Seekers
except: "he’s a whore" (Cheap Trick 1977) and "borderline" (Madonna 1984)

This duo made up of Kevin McGovern (The Prostitutes) and Hillary Burton (honeychain, The Pandoras) continues to prove there's plenty of room for originality and innovation in punk rock. Seriously: there's nothing out there in the world of music that sounds quite like this band's blend of synth-punk, dark new wave, dystopian soundtrack, and post-modern rock and roll.  Shockingly, this is the first 12" vinyl that McGovern has released since The Prostitutes' Can't Teach Kids Responsibility came out 25 years ago. He shared with me that The Trouble Seekers, in some warped way, feels like the proper follow-up to Can't Teach Kids Responsibility. Way back in 1998, he was envisioning a new direction for The Prostitutes that would have involved the addition of synthesizer, female vocals, and moody tempos. Lacking the right collaborators to make this happen, he put this vision on hold and never really got it back until last year when he and his friend Burton decided to make music together. And once these two got together, everything clicked.  The Trouble Seekers' 15-track debut album retains the snarl, sharp edge, and pure intensity of The Prostitutes' recordings. But it moves that energy in new and exciting directions. The Trouble Seekers are moodier, stranger, and far more experimental than even the later Prostitutes were. These are your most troubling nightmares set to music you can dance to on the apocalyptic ruins.  Sometimes leaning more punk rock ("Beautiful Doom," "Falling in a Dream," "Cruel Summer"), other times leaning more new wave ("Out of Order," "Endless City"), and other times adhering to no conventions whatsoever, this album manages to be informed by new wave era reference points even as it drags them kicking and screaming into the 21st Century. A case in point are the album's two cover songs: hyper-imaginative re-workings of Cheap Trick's "He's a Whore" and Madonna's "Borderline" that will just about blow your mind. Face-melting debut from The Trouble Seekers."