MUSIC REVIEW: THE CROTCHES – FUCK THE CROTCHES

MUSIC REVIEW: THE CROTCHES – FUCK THE CROTCHES
July 2026
Love Now!
Reviewed by Shane Pinnegar
86%

At its best punk rock challenges the status quo, forges new directions and foments social – even political – change. That’s the beating heart in The Crotches’ chest, a group of agitrockers from The Levant whose anti-Zionist stance led them to relocate into the belly of a very different beast: Las Vegas.

Through ten raucous tracks we find these four walking attitudes – Alonzo, Amitkes, Nimshi and Gadi – aren’t just regurgitating old Pistols and Oi! tropes, they’ve got their own influences at play and have something to say.

Throughout the album there’s a psychedelic thread soaking through the band like an Owsley acid sheet – guitars swirl and whirl, Stooges-like garage piano hammers away, all expanding an early punk simplicity into something more, something wild, something trippy A.F.

Procrastination was apparently recorded “spontaneously” with Red Axes, and it bristles with rage and fun in equal measure. The liner notes tell us Moto Bicicleta was co-written with Iara Cruz Wahrmann “when she was 4 years old,” and it’s a surf punk ripper that would go off live like Fishbone before they learnt to play properly.

Kitbag Question is punk by way of the Summer Of Love, a groovy, loved-up, hippy rocker – “flower punk,” as noted by Nathan Whittle on John Robb’s Louder Than War – and See You Soon Sin City is a Swinging Sixties pop love letter to their newly adopted hometown.

Flip the record and Strange For A Change revels in the band’s uniqueness; O Brother is anarchopoetry like Jim Morrison’s grandkids on peyote; Sea Of Love + Tears is another trip back to the 60’s, bringing to mind the shock and awe of very early Alice Cooper Band whilst singing a proper love song – “cause I love you so, and I see your love, so please follow me, into the sea of love, love and tears.”

Even stranger is So Many Humans. This could have been a full force rocker dripping in vitriol and raging about over-population… but instead The Crotches have again gone as left of centre as they could have and deliver this like The Mamas & The Papas meets early Spinal Tap, the complete lack of obvious irony or sarcasm making the track even more ironic and sarcastic and ramming the point home even harder.

Closing the album is No Respect, bringing us right back into aggressive punk mode, a turbo charged growl of a song railing, “you got no respect for what’s mine! You got no respect for his shit!” This will go off live like a frog in a sock, the mosh pit working itself into a sweat-soaked frenzy as the band do a breakdown in the middle which is part Zorba The Greek, part Anti-Nowhere League.

From its Disney-baiting cover to its psych garage anarchopunk heart, Fuck The Crotches is an eclectic and enthralling blast from the underbelly of our fucked up world gone to hell, informed by the wars tearing their homeland and their adopted home apart. It’s a strange time to be alive, and this is a strange record – strange and strangely great in its embrace of the weird, wonderful and wilfully non-conformist. Just like the best punk should be.

 

Category: CD Reviews