Seraphina Lotkhamnga on October 23rd, 2014

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Echo Park trio Criminal Hygiene continue to play rowdies on the road, but it doesn’t mean they haven’t had to clean up their act as well as their sound. Compared to the scuzzy “Blak Water” the band released back in 2012, Michael Fiore, Michael Hiller and Sean Erickson are delivering tunes featuring more refined production with each new single. Their latest song “Turpentine” is more along the lines of power-popster Mikal Cronin (and even a little Superchunk) – and their 1970s antecedents – and Criminal Hygiene wears its new clarity well. Not that they’ve left the uninhibited guitar solos, pummeling bass lines and shouted exuberance behind – “Turpentine” is a song with a dual identity, the first half deceivingly calm before, at about the 2-minute mark, everything kicks into high gear. Overall, this new track is a blissful marriage of tight song structure and punk attitude.

||| Download: “Turpentine” (this week only)

||| Live: Criminal Hygiene plays Nov. 12 at the Echo with Twin Peaks, Meatbodies and Modern Vices.

||| Previously: “Sold in the City,” “Raid,” “Withdrawn,” “Blak Water”

Photo by Alice Baxley