���� I probably could have guessed that these guys came from Cleveland, just from listening to the first couple of minutes of damaged punk rock that flopped off the beginning of this record. For whatever reason, the northern Ohio area has been particularly fertile for producing this sort of brain-damaged punk, and this older LP from Clevo mutants Folded Shirt delivers a blast of that upstate weirdness that I've been digging ever since the heyday of the Wheelchair Full Of Old Men label.

���� This self-titled Lp came out on gonzo punk imprint Fashionable Idiots back in 2011, and if you're familiar with the other examples of outsider hardcore and punk weirdness the label has put out, you'll have a general idea of where this is headed. Folded Shirt has a ratty, art-damaged vibe that's gotten their music compared to the likes of early Sonic Youth and Chrome in a few reviews I've read, but the band's rambling, raving noise-addled punk is a bit more aggressive, with an undercurrent of fucked-up hardcore that's no doubt due to the fact that some of these guys have also played in bands like Darvocets and Homostupids. On their one and only full-length, Folded Shirt belt out eleven songs of this plodding, often discordant slop-punk that's loaded with oddball atonal riffs and some rather Greg Ginn-esque "soloing", bizarre xylophone melodies and droning bass guitar and awkward, arrhythmic drumming, and a wonky vocal delivery that piles on the bizarre lyrical visions, the singer descending into random yelps and bouts of borderline glossolalia. This stuff is a blast of Beefheartian mayhem - songs like "Always Born That Way" manage to glom these discordant qualities and maniacal, petulant vocals together in a way that's really catchy, and really reminiscent of fellow Clevo-area weirdos Sloth (at least when that band is playing their brain-damaged version of punk rock) as well as terminal creeps Sockeye. The influence of the latter hovers over this stuff, with songs that delve into the challenges of having a moist brain, the joys of ice machines, bizarre appropriations of Billy Idol lyrics, and something called a "retard hoedown".