Naomi Punk – “Television Man”

Naomi Punk make angular and exhausting music that emphasizes spartan, assaultive drumming, mysterious chords, and half-buried, yowling/crooning vocals. Their music is unsexy. It does not swing.

It’s also completely compelling.

Naomi Punk’s songs feel like fever dreams from the mind of an autistic schizophrenic (please note: I am NOT a mental health professional!) trying to make sense of a confusing and overwhelming world by pounding out one concussive, metronomic anthem after another. It’s the sort of music that might have been the score of Stranger Than Paradise if that film had been directed last year by David Lynch on an airplane-glue bender.

The band’s official site is, of course, amusingly and defiantly uninformative.

This Olympia trio starts a North American tour this Sunday. Go forth and be punished by them!

Give a listen to “Television Man”, the title track from their upcoming album.

As a bonus (and because it does a fine job of capturing the band’s damaged sensibility in visuals), here’s the video for “Voodoo Trust” from their previous album The Feeling.