Culture Abuse

Culture Abuse dare you to try categorizing them. On their debut full length, "Peach," the San Francisco Bay Area band drop hints with every song — power pop melodies collide with punk grit, garage rock swagger meets hardcore aggression, and there's even an upstroke or two — but never give the listener enough to definitively put them in a box. And that’s just the way they like it.

Recorded with Scott Goodrich at Nu-Tone Studios, "Peach" is an eclectic album that represents a band finding their sound, and that sound is anything they want it to be. The album sees the band lean full tilt into the Nuggets-inspired garage punk only hinted at on their more hostile early work, throwing keyboards and even the occasional string arrangement on top of their distorted attack. The result creates a barrage of outsider earworms that might be hard to label, but aren’t hard to sing along to instantly. This refreshingly try-anything approach to songwriting makes for an unpredictable listen that is somehow simultaneously cohesive, a testament to Culture Abuse’s ability to wrestle disparate styles into something all their own.

Culture Abuse don’t care what kind of band you think they are, and after listening to "Peach," you’ll be too busy singing along to care either.