Blood//Sugar//Secs//Traffic

It’s all attitude, baby, and on their second album Blood // Sugar // Secs // Traffic, it’s out in spades, for everyone who remembers when rock music rocked, politics and punk could live together without cancelling one another out (or making one more about the other), and bands could dig into a specific influence without being too obvious about it.

Disjointed it may seem, but the pervading sense of chaos and feel good factor tie each track on Blood // Sugar // Secs // Traffic together perfectly, coming to a frothy, tumultuous head on closing cut "Amazing Supermarkets". Arguably the record’s highlight, it’s almost seven minutes of anarchic garage pop, mirroring in miniature the album it concludes effortlessly.

This music is powerfully intelligent without sounding the tiniest bit pretentious, and imaginative without losing a bit of downtown grit. Blood//Sugar//Secs//Traffic is a blazing cool rock & roll assault, and a record that confirms greasy thugs can have a future after all.

This is a solid, fun-loving post-punk record that definitely leans heavy on the punk.

It seems to exist almost in spite of itself, careening energetically down paths it desperately wants to avoid. To that extent, Blood//Sugar// Secs//Traffic is a cacophony of contradiction, but one very much worth investigating.

The Gotobeds execute a formula of beer-drenched reckless abandon, tense odes to the unloved and loveless. The result is a smart, sharp record to soundtrack the end of the world (or maybe even just a hungover Sunday afternoon.)