By: Chip McCabeGarage rock was born in the slums of the rock world, the dirty cousin to the polished, mainstream, radio-friendly monsters that roamed the Earth. It’s bastard offspring was punk, an unwashed, feral animal of the gritty streets of inner cities across the globe. New London, Connecticut’s Straight To VHS fall somewhere in between. They’re like the milk that punk has suckled off the teats of garage rock, nurturing one genre while simultaneously being generated from the other.

Straight To VHS is about to release a brand new full-length album, Weekend Weekend Weekend. It’s a wild ride of a record that pulls from over forty years of the most unyielding and tenacious influences to ever take a stage, yet successfully remains easily accessible to anyone who doesn’t use safety pins as an every day wardrobe accessory. It’s also easily the band’s most focused and well-written set of songs. From the surf-punk styling of album opener, “Bitch, You Ain’t No Ninja” to the downright folksy “Mountain Song”, Straight To VHS has made an album full of tunes that are so catchy and likeable you would be hard pressed not to be humming something off this album for days after, once it’s all said and done. Yet there’s enough dour moments on this album to appease the circle pits as well. Tracks like “Punk Rock Black Chicks” and “Yeah, Yeah, Yeah” are throwbacks to cheap beer and cheaper shows held in some squat on the decrepit side of town. Your parents didn’t want you in those neighborhoods and there was an excitement in the supposed danger of it all. Straight To VHS channel that energy with aplomb.

An argument could be made that Straight To VHS are born too late. They are a garage-fueled, power trio riding through the grimy streets of the mundane, kicking up dust and garbage to cover their tracks as they tear off to the next town. They are modern day musical outlaws who’ve stolen the secrets of what lies between the 60’s forefathers of the punk genre and the 70’s innovators. Fans of everything from MC5 and The Stooges to The Buzzcocks, The Damned, UK Subs, Avail, and even The Pixies will find something to dig on this album for sure.

You can experience a pair of songs over at the Straight To VHS Bandcamp page.