High Tension Wires- Welcome New Machine LP.  The High Tension Wires are a veritable Texas supergroup including Mike Wiebe (Riverboat Gamblers), Mark Ryan (Marked Men/Mind Spiders), Chris Pulliam (The Reds), plus Daniel Fried and Greg Rutherford (both of Bad Sports). ‘Welcome New Machine’ is a perfect synthesis of the High Tension Wires previous 2 albums. It rocks as hard as ‘Send A Message’ while incorporating the nuances they began developing on ‘Midnight Cashier’. A fair amount of ground is covered here from the Marked Men's trademark choppy, punchy power pop; to mid-tempo punk rock to darker-edged post punk tunes with a new-wavey sheen. It’s all here fired off with Mike Wiebe's seemingly endless front of unusually, interesting lyrics across 12 smolding tracks. And one of the highlights of this album is a stunning Teengenerate-style garage punk ripper sung by the vocally talented Mark Ryan.