Onlooker – Cleveland

This is Onlooker‘s second album, the first being ‘Total Rest’ back in 2022, and if you’re unlucky enough to have not listened to this band, then now is a good time to put this to rights. Being a band that have always been true to their punk roots, a band that live are always that band you know you’ll always want to go back and back to experience, then does this recording do them justice? Well let’s take a listen and see if we can give you some kind of a heads up on that score. I’m pretty sure the album name was chosen as a way of showing off the place they come from, when living in the shadow of the Cleveland hills, and how the melting pot that is Teesside has so much to do with how you see the world and how you react to what’s going on outside of that too.

One of the biggest changes that this album had to undergo before it saw the light of day, was the addition of a dedicated singer, previously it was bassist Kevin Ridden hat covered this job, so heading into the studio and re-recording everything must have been both interesting and challenging at the same time. Having seen the band only a few times, the first being when supporting Benefits at Middlesbrough Town Hall a while back, buying the first album on the back of that performance, I hit play a little nervously because you kinda want this to be just as good, yet moved on. Guess what? its both, the first track ‘Formula Tofu’ is a song that’s wonderfully garage, yet almost Hives in feel, it has that choppy nervous energy to it.

What you have also to remember when listening to this album, is this is a pure a garage album as you’ll get these days, this was solely recorded and arranged by the band in studios, lock ups, and houses before finally being mastered at SoundsChitty. So what you get and fully appreciate when listening is that authentic DIY sound, like in the snappy edgy ‘Cuppa Tea’ which weirdly takes a simple concept and runs with it in a Stooges kinda way, like any great band would.  It’s so easy to find yourself trying your hardest to pigeon hole bands like this, and failing miserably, yes you have to stick to the roots of it in Punk, but this album now elevates them far beyond the confines of that box. You just have to listen to the ridiculously off kilter ‘Carpool’ and it’s use of what I like to call chinky riffs, then there is the anti melodic, yet so damn catchy ‘Better Get Better’. 

What has to be said more than anything about this album is, don’t just stick it on in the car, or whilst doing something else, this isn’t one of those background or half listening albums, this is a full on slap your headphones on and turn it up loud kinda things, without this you’ll never get the reality of ‘Hook-A-Duck’ or the psychedelia of ‘Suburban Dreams’. So Yeah, that works for me ‘if you know what I mean’. For fans of everything great about DIY Garage Punk go buy and fucking enjoy……

You can go and buy Cleveland via Serial Bowl Records and you can find Onlooker on Bandcamp and Facebook