Last week we introduced you to the Girlsville Records‘ Our Voltage punk compilation, due out as a limited edition CD release on March 1st. Proceeds from the album will fund legal aid for anti-racist activists and a new community self-defense gym in Chicago called Haymaker. This week we delve further in to the comp. to premiere the Germ House tracks “7 Into 7” and “Showing Symptoms.”
Germ House is the recording project for multi-instrumentalist/vocalist Justin Hubbard. The musician came up in the scene in the late 90’s playing guitar in the Boston-based punk/rhythm and blues outfit The Kings Of Nuthin’, before forming the bands Turpentine Brothers, and, more recently, Far Corners. Under the Germ House moniker, Hubbard works mostly solo. The project debuted in 2014 with the LP Showing Symptoms, out on the Chicago label Trouble In Mind, and in 2016 Germ House also put out a 3-song Bandcamp release called EP. “Showing Symptoms” is off that effort, and recorded in part by Matt Rendon in Tucson, AZ, as well as by Hubbard himself in Las Cruces, NM, it also finds Tara McManus (Mr. Airplane Man) contributing drums. “7 Into 7,” on the other hand, is a solo effort recorded by the musician in the back of a record store he works at in Warren, RI, and we are told by the label that it is part of a new batch of unreleased Germ House tracks.
Hubbard has a real knack for transmitting the immediacy of his inspiration into songs animated by their spontaneous energy. Both tracks harken back to the DIY aesthetic of 4-track recording with some degree of analog tape grit adding to the character of these cuts. “7 Into 7” has a woozy vibe to it as guitar and toy-sounding keyboard reel with glassy eyes while Hubbard celebrates small defeats and creeping madness with seemingly nonchalant glee. “Showing Symptoms,” meanwhile, finds the musician spreading a more virulent strain of pestilence, but trust us, you won’t mind catching this disease, even when the guitar breaks out in a contagious howl.
