Scottish indie/pop-punk band PAWS have released their new video, ‘No Grace’, off the upcoming album with the same title. It’s out June 17 and available to pre-order now. Mark Hoppus has produced their new album. Check out the video and tour dates below:

TOUR DATES

APRIL
22 ROTTERDAM NL V11 w/ Dead Coast
23 GRONINGEN NL (Venue TBA)
24 HAMBURG DE Hafenklang
26 AARHUS DK TAPE
28 STAVANGER NO Folken
29 BERGEN NO Kvarteret
30 OSLO NO John Dee

MAY
02 ESKILSTUNA SE Mint Editions
04 STOCKHOLM SE Landet
05 GOTHENBURG SE Skujl 46
06 COPENHAGEN DK Stengade
07 MALMO SE Grand
08 BERLIN DE Urban Spree
09 PRAGUE CZ (Venue TBA)
10 VIENNA AU Fluc w/ Pop1280
11 LUZERN CH Schuur w/ TacoCat
12 ZURICH CH Gonzo Club
13 SCHORNDORF DE Manufaktur w/ TacoCat
14 TILBURG NL Extase w/ TacoCat
15 AMSTERDAM NL (Venue TBA)
16 BRUSSELS BE Magazin4 w/ The Coathangers
17 PARIS FR Mechanique Ondulatoire w/ SWMRS
20 BOLOGNA IT Covo Club
22 PESARO IT (Venue TBA)
26 OVIEDO ES La Salvaje 27 Madrid ES GetMAD Festival
28 BARCELONA ES La 2 Apollo

JUNE
24 EDINBURGH UK Summerhall
25 GLASGOW UK Stereo

facebook.com/wehavepaws

So your upcoming EP is out February 26^th? What’s the background behind that?

When we recorded the ‘True Brew’ LP, there were two other songs that we chose not to put on the album as there were too many on the album. We also decided to re-record ‘True Brew’ – the song – in Swedish, so it actually feels like a new release rather than a digital B-Side. It’s also being released on vinyl.

Do you think we need political punk bands now that Europe is leaning more and more to the right-wing?

Europe has become a bit more racist and right-wing and we do have a bunch of anti-racist songs on the new album. There’s a load of stuff on social media and you get so much manipulated news off Facebook that idiots get too much airtime. Before, when it was more controlled, journalism would be a profession and it’d be your duty to check your sources and look for truths. Now, it’s like you can post misinformation which becomes truth for millions of followers on social media.

You’re doing three shows in the UK – do you love it here or what?

Well we’ve been here loads of times but before we did Slam Dunk Festival last year we didn’t ever do club tours or indoor shows. This time around it’ll be the first time we play club shows since about 7 years ago.

Does the reception here ever surprise you?

We had such a long career and I’m surprised that people remember us anywhere. The popularity of punk rock goes up and down but whenever we tour in the Western world, people seem to still come out for us. The new album was really well received so we are super stoked that we still have a big following. We’ve never been to China or India or Russia – we’ve had offers – but sometimes it doesn’t work out. We got an offer to play right on the Ukraine border and that was just when that plane got hit which was unfortunate. We have a lot of areas to cover yet but we’re going to Australia and the USA after Europe.

Do you ever get tired of travelling then, or is this still fun after all these years?

I hate travelling. I hate airports and everything but I love the venues and playing shows. It makes up for everything. From a tourists’ perspective, we’ve seen all that stuff years ago, but going to gigs and just hanging out is good enough.

So has touring become a bit more comfortable over the last couple of decades?

I’m super happy that I’m able to live off the band, selling records and touring for twenty years. It was right around 2000 that we realised that we could have a good tour bus and not a small van. We’re a big band but we’re not huge. We still have to set a budget – some bands, by the end of the tour, have lost money. I know one Swedish band which hired a bus and some stage props. When they started the tour, the manager told them straight up, “you won’t make any money from this tour at all”. Paying to get on tour won’t work in the long run.

Why is it so hard to make money selling records? Is it the market or the label?

We’re really lucky to be on a label, and what most people don’t get is that the label works for you most of the time rather than steals your money. They want to sell records too and we’re grateful just to be on a label. We’ve got a good contract which is completely fair, and it’s kinda sad that there are less big labels these days. When people started to download music around the early 2000s, it made it harder – I’m happy that our label has managed to withstand that.

What are your plans for the future – when do you decide is a good time to stop?

We’re booking shows for the fall right now and we’ll probably go on touring for this album until early 2017. Then we’ll have to focus on new material, I guess. I can’t do artwork on tour or work on a new album so we definitely need a break sometime to do that.

Millencolin are on the road, kicking off their EU tour at London’s Electric Ballroom on the 12th February 2016, before heading to Australia in April. The band will release their ‘True Brew’ EP on the 26th February.

FEBRUARY
12 LONDON Electric Ballroom
13 MANCHESTER O2 Ritz
14 BRISTOL Bierkeller
16 PARIS, FRANCE Le Divan Du Monde
17 BIARRITZ, FRANCE L’ATABAL
18 VITORIA GASTEIZ, SPAIN Sala Jimmy Jazz
19 MADRID, SPAIN Sala Penelope
20 BARCELONA, SPAIN Sala Apolo
21 MARSEILLES, FRANCE Le Moulin
22 TREZZO SULL’ADDA, ITALY Live Club
23 SALZBURG, AUSTRIA Rockhouse
24 WURZBURG, GERMANY Posthalle
27 GOTEBORG, SWEDEN West Coast Riot

Canada’s Weekend Dads have posted a new track from their upcoming album, September Downs, available digitally on February 2nd. Stream it below and check out our feature on them which was posted way back in 2014!

facebook.com/weekenddads

Frivolous merch has previously been the subject of criticism on Punktastic, but that was mostly a bunch of metalcore bands who have fortunately been left behind in 2013. Now, Christmas merch is seeping into every other genre associated with punk, and it’s time to take a stand, or, just to sit down and read my article and not buy the most ridiculous, cynical attempt at selling merch since well, the whole career of the Descendents.

Let’s start with The Menzingers, which is really difficult, as criticising your favourite bands often proves to be. They ‘teamed up‘ with one of those breweries that puts edgy fonts and words all over their bottles of IPA in November to create ‘Menzinger’. That’s novel, except, we already have The Menzingers, and overpriced IPA. This is a form of merch which is as far removed from music as it could possibly be. Why stop here? We’re really lucky that craft cigarettes don’t exist – tempting fate, I know.

It’s not just The Menzingers who have made a ridiculous attempt to put their mark on beer. Enter Shikari, Frank Turner, Mastodon, The Clash and Bad Brains all have their logos on bottles of beer. The flat-footed and bumbling marketing team at Brewdog have also tried to throw their bottles of hop-flavoured water at the punk scene, as have Atticus Clothing, formally owned by pop-punk industrialists Tom DeLonge and Mark Hoppus.

You can’t represent your favourite band with beer, unless somebody took out your liver and examined it for traces of ‘Menzinger’. Gildan – who probably make a couple of your T-shirts and sweaters – are described by the Worker Rights Consortium damningly: “They are being cheated out of an average of seven weeks’ pay per year…ill-fed, indebted and without access to medical care”, said the 2013 report about their workers in Haiti. T-Shirts can instill a sense of pride for the punk who likes to represent because – get this – you can wear them on your body, but the sourcing is a major issue and must be tackled.

If there’s a trope that’s as tired as beer marketed to punks, it’s probably ‘Ugly Christmas Sweaters’. Itchy, unattractive and ironic in an irritating self-important way – guys who constantly go on about their beards love ugly Christmas sweaters as much as they love themselves. It’s predictable to see a bunch of pixelated reindeer and some clip art snowflakes accentuating a band logo now, which isn’t clever or funny, but lazy design. Everybody is doing it, from 2Chainz to Five Finger Death Punch. Yes, even punk bands are doing it, and the aforementioned Menzingers are guilty once again.

The issue is that merch is taking the foreground while the music itself is losing relevance in comparison. There’s no particular data available for merch sales for only punk and pop-punk bands, but this research from ‘Future Of Music’ indicates that merch sales account for a proportion of band revenue that averages way higher for ‘rock’ than other music genres. It’s not a huge amount at 5.2%, but compare that to the 1.2% of revenue derived from merch within other genres, and it starts to paint a picture. That survey has a small sample size but 80% of the answers are from musicians who are part-time, which fits the small punk, pop punk and metal bands that Punktastic covers.

Nielsen – the giant company which makes around $6 billion a year doing market research – found that music streaming in 2015 was 92% higher than in 2014, while total album sales decreased 4% . That’s damning, but at least music sales from independent outlets went up by 0.8% and non-traditional retail outlets sold 8% more albums than in 2014 in the US, which shows that within smaller music scenes, people are still purchasing LPs and EPs.

Nielsen also show that while people aged 24 and under are most receptive to buying merch in the T Shirts, Posters, and Hats categories, the ‘Other’ category of merch is nearly equally marketable to all age groups. 25-34 year olds are slightly more likely to buy unconventional merch than teens.

“Fans want more,” said Barara Zack, Chief Analytics Officer at Nielsen Entertainment Measurement to Billboard in 2013. “There is an unmet need there. There is a desire to engage at a different level than what they have.”, he continued. That goes some way to explain why we’re drawn towards limited edition or seasonal merch.

Selling merch is also an effective way to sidestep the issue of piracy and streaming music. The gaming industry concurs, as the makers of the heavily pirated Football Manager series prove here. It seems to be a problem that we, the consumer, have created. We choose not to value art, and so bands are forced to start selling coasters and belt buckles to make one or two ends meet. That’s understandable, but it’s being taken to new levels. The Wonder Years have flip flops and beach balls and the Descendents have single-handedly accounted for hundreds of my groans and sighs at excessive merchandising, but the lessons we should learn from them are that merch is saturating the punk scene with useless and unrelated crap.

Unfortunately, with every example of contrived knitwear, hotpants, shoelace, and Descendents tribute shirt, it seems that the band members are more obsessed with their own logos than their music. With the new, inevitable flood of Christmas merch this year, it’s sadly undeniable that artists and labels are losing the plot and there is indeed an ugly side to their intentions.

It’s becoming clear that musicians are exploiting our desire to engage with them on a deeper level, and surely the jaded feeling isn’t mine alone. We have a part to play, as music sales threaten to decline, but there’s an easy remedy to that: stop buying clothes and start buying more music. Then, when you’ve bought their music, go to their gigs. Then when you’ve gone to their gigs, go and buy the limited edition represses of their music on clear vinyl, and then buy the repress on green vinyl, then on that vinyl colour that’s split between two colours and then go buy their new album. Now if you’ll excuse me, it’s eggnog time.

The four-track EP begins with ‘Chaser’. It introduces us with a melody that fades in, using a muffled and reverberating effect which belongs in only the most forgettable of mid-2000 rock songs. That leads into the line: “Could you hold on / for one more song”, which is so bland an opening, literally any line could follow and it wouldn’t matter. Oh, and speaking of effects which are overused and outdated, the choir effect from a Casio keyboard is in the background the whole time. I start to wonder if I can actually hold on for one more song.

With three more tracks on this EP there isn’t much hope for redemption, and The Red Owls don’t show much evidence that they haven’t become trapped in a mould once filled by bands like Feeder, Simple Plan and the aforementioned Koopa. The much needed injection of pace is evident on tracks like ‘Bad Advice’ and ‘Party Lines’, though there is another muffled introductory guitar riff in ‘Bad Advice’ and forgettable lyricism strewn all over the place.

While the drumming is solid and satisfying throughout, the production on ‘Do You Feel Any Better’ is riddled with gimmicks: flat-sounding vocals, predictable melodies and unnecessary effects everywhere. It’s a painful throwback to the most dull rock bands ever to have existed, who would throw together some cliched songwriting onto a heavily recycled chord progression with some chorus and modulation effects and call it a single. ‘Do You Feel Any Better?’ is unfortunately a derivative and impact-less effort.

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lmrecs.bandcamp.com/album/2015-2016-sampler
 

TOUR DATES
NOVEMBER
10 BRISTOL O2 Academy
11 MANCHESTER Ritz
12 GLASGOW Garage
14 LONDON The Forum
15 BIRMINGHAM The Institute
17 BERLIN Posbahnhof
19 PARIS Le Trianon Hall
21 KORTRIJK De Kreun
22 BRUSSELS AB Club
23 UTRECHT TivoliVredenburg: Pandora Hall

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