Another Bandcamp Friday where all of your money goes directly to the artists -- and I use it as a push to get me to write some stuff about new releases. This is by no means every release or even every good release, but they're the ones that stood out to me. Some oddballs in this group! Let's dig in

Another Bandcamp Friday where 100% of your purchase benefits the band. Admittedly this one snuck up on me, so forgive me if the reviews are a little hasty, but there's a good chunk of them! Here's some releases that I think warrant your attention. In no particular order.

Summer Begins is a tight package of 9 lighthearted trad surf originals with a sunny beach attitude. From as best I can tell this is his first surf record, but that's not evident from a listen as he switches deftly from guitar tone change to the next, always sounding good. All of these are fun and center around strong, memorable riffs.

While beach party stompers like "Summer Begins" and "Nonstop" are the meat of the album, there's a great venturing into exotica on "Bewitched", and it wraps up with a nice Sleepwalkin' closer, plainly named "Surf Ballad".

Though they've been dropping a few nice singles here and there, it's been 15 years since we've had an LP from the Space Agency, and they remain as special as ever. Somewhere underneath layers of fuzz and pedals is a pretty trad surf group with great dead-simple melodies that honestly could sound more 1962 than many groups if they felt like it. Give a listen to the least dressed song on this record "Alpaca Boogie" to catch a glimpse.

In a genre where originality is admittedly optional, The Surfin' Surfers almost embrace that low bar with their name, 3-color artwork, and the lack of original songs. However, I still quite enjoyed their debut "Surfers' Surf' and even bought the 7".

The title "Poolside with" may seem somewhat generic, but it's actually a bit of a clue. The Bluebottles aren't out to capture the adrenaline rush of a monster wave, it's a lighthearted album full of party music. Even though opening track, though lively, features an acoustic guitar lead, aiming to greet with an active dance floor rather than an overwhelming salvo.

Genki Genki Panic stands at an unlikely intersection between Mike Patton, Cave In, John Carpenter, Danny Elfman, surf music, and nerddom. Their own description of this album is that it was supposed to be an epic noise/surf concept album, and it seems it languished and they were like "eh, it's the apocalpyse right now, let's just push it out." Oddly enough, I think it settles into something that feels just about right for this band.

The fourth LP from Coffin Daggers is perhaps a bigger turn than having a google-eyed bongo-playing demon on the cover: it's a cover record! Of eleki tunes! For those unacquainted, Eleki is a Japanese instrumental rock & roll music, highly Ventures influenced, typically with very sharp, staccato guitar tones. Admittedly, Eleki is a bit of a weak point in my instro knowledge -- I always kind of hoped I'd go to Japan and blindly buy anything that vaguely fit the bill and learn from there -- but generally good starting points are Takeshi Terauchi and Yuzo Kayama.

You know what they say about the eventual fate of good things, and in this case it's cool skulls on The Apaches album covers. It does not appear that this was their secret ingredient, however as this is my favorite record yet from them.