Raleigh post-punk outfit RIBS has announced their second album, COLD RIBS, arriving this summer on Three Lobed Recordings, the venerable North Carolina indie label. The band shared lead single "Not A Boogie" today, a track that epitomizes their approach: harder and meaner than The Hold Steady, with spacier arrangements that fold classic rock riffs into Mike Wallace's distinctive spoken and shouted delivery.
RIBS built a considerable reputation as a live act before releasing their debut, Junk Dynasty Leaderboard, last year. That record established their aesthetic fully formed. Wallace's narrative voice cuts through dense guitar work with the urgency of a man with something urgent to say, anchoring songs that could easily dissolve into pure noise but instead maintain structural coherence beneath the chaos.
Three Lobed Recordings has become an essential outlet for experimental and post-punk work in the Southeast, and the label's founder Cory Rayborn clearly relishes RIBS' approach. His description to Bandcamp followers captured the band's deliberately abrasive character, the way they weaponize classic rock grammar against modern sensibilities.
COLD RIBS arrives at a moment when post-punk revivalism has calcified into predictability. Most contemporary bands in the genre traffic in precise throwback aesthetics. RIBS reject that cleanliness. Their music sounds lived in, worn down by actual performance, shaped by a regional rock tradition that never quite disappeared. Wallace's delivery especially distinguishes them from peers who favor detached vocal posturing. He sounds like someone who means what he's saying, which lends weight to the controlled noise surrounding him.
The single hints at an album willing to expand on their debut's foundation while maintaining the core tension that makes them compelling. COLD RIBS drops summer 2024.