Pressing Concerns: Maggie Gently, Apples with Moya, Modern Silent Cinema, D. Sablu

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Good morning, folks, and welcome to the first Pressing Concerns of the week! This time around, we’ve got four albums from the past month or so to look at: new LPs from Maggie Gently, Apples with Moya, Modern Silent Cinema, and D. Sablu. Read on!

If you’re looking for more new music, you can visit the site directory to see what else we’ve written about lately. If you’d like to support Rosy Overdrive, you can share this (or another) post, or donate here.

Maggie Gently – Wherever You Want to Go

Release date: June 7th
Record label: Slang Church
Genre: Pop rock, power pop, pop punk, indie pop, alt-country
Formats: CD, cassette, digital
Pull Track: Your Touch

A couple of years ago, I heard a song called “Hold My Hand” by a San Francisco-based librarian known as Maggie Gently. The song’s surprisingly rootsy alt-pop-rock stood out on Peppermint, her debut album, and was probably one of my favorite songs from that year.  “Hold My Hand” captures the feeling of buzzing infatuation in the only way it can make sense–a sugary sweet, two-minute pop song. Maggie Gently’s second album, Wherever You Want to Go, doesn’t attempt to recreate that feeling–rather, it takes the opportunity to stretch out and let Gently unpack more complicated, less euphoric emotions across nine thoughtful indie rock songs. That isn’t to say that Wherever You Want to Go isn’t a pop album–sitting either at the “rock” end of indie pop or the “pop” end of indie rock, Gently cites similar-minded contemporaries like Remember Sports, The Beths, and Rosie Tucker as inspiration, and even enlists frequent Tucker collaborator Wolfy to co-produce the record. Wolfy and Brian Ishiba give Wherever You Want to Go a clear, polished sound, a contrast with Gently’s frequently insular writing at the core of the record that ensures it ends up being a big queer pop album nonetheless.

Thematically and musically, Maggie Gently does offer up a few songs that hover around the same territory as “Hold My Hand” in “Breakthrough” and “Your Touch”, two polished pop rock love songs that brighten the first half of Wherever You Want to Go. However, the songs’ refrains demonstrate how Gently isn’t just stuck on bubblegum, either trying to rationalize a perceived weakness in the former (“Just let me guess, I’m a lot to handle / But I’m worth it for the breakthrough”) or trying to rein in the “getting carried away” impulses in the latter (“When I want something, I want it too much”). These songs are nestled between a few thornier, more tangled tracks in “How This Feels” and “Redecorate”–there’s certainly love and pop in them, too, but also apprehension and messiness, as Gently reaches into the depths and pulls out poetry in the former and a fresh start in the latter. Between the moving-out of “Redecorate” and the seasonal depression of “Sad Songs”, I initially thought that Wherever You Want to Go was a breakup album–it’s not, but at least one song on the album (closing track “Fireworks”) handles an interpersonal separation of some kind deftly. “If I found you one more time, it’d be like fireworks / It’d be dark again before I know it,” Gently sings in the song’s chorus, almost rejecting the lightning-struck emotion of her earlier writing. That’s not what Wherever You Want to Go is entirely about, either, though. I already knew Maggie Gently could write about the moment the sky’s lit up; now she’s captured what comes afterward. (Bandcamp link)

Apples with Moya – A Heave of Lightness on the Ground

Release date: May 17th
Record label: Den Tapes
Genre: 2000s indie rock, indie pop, folk rock
Formats: Cassette, digital
Pull Track: Lift

2019–now that was a great year for Seattle indie rock. That’s the year that cult Seattle “grunge-pop” quintet Great Grandpa released Four of Arrows, their sophomore record and, in a just world, the one that should’ve launched them into the stratosphere. However, that was also the year that Great Grandpa’s sibling band, Apples with Moya, released their debut album, Get Behind the Horses. Lesser known but just as worthwhile, the album was the work of two members of Great Grandpa (vocalist Cam LaFlam, Apples with Moya’s primary songwriter, and guitarist Dylan Hanwright) and a host of other musicians, including some guest vocals from Great Grandpa’s lead vocalist Al Menne. Great Grandpa and Apples with Moya seem to be running on the same schedule–the former appear to be gearing up to release new music, and the latter has nowcreturned with their sophomore album, A Heave of Lightness on the Ground. The band seems to have settled on a core quartet–LaFlam, Hanwright, Special Explosion’s Sebastien Deramat on guitar and bass, and drummer John Laws–although Menne once again sings on the album, along with other guests like Dogbreth’s Malia Seavey and Special Explosion’s Liz Costello.

Although not exactly “easy listening”, Apples with Moya have a more tranquil sound than Great Grandpa on A Heave of Lightness on the Ground, with the songwriting (shared more evenly between LaFlam and the rest of the band this time) lending itself well to polished studio-pop and folk rock. Most of the record’s most accessible moments are credited to the entire band, like the three fully-developed pop rock songs in the album’s first half–the toe-tapping guitar pop of “Lift”, the mid-tempo melodic goldmine of “Contact”, and the flying-down-the-highway power pop of “Quiet Like This”. LaFlam is the sole writer for a lot of A Heave of Lightness on the Ground’s sparser moments, like the low-key opening track “Mercy” and mid-record breather “Force of Love”–not that the lead vocalist doesn’t contribute more outwardly substantial moments as well, with the gorgeous Al Menne-duet “Three in the Fall” and the huge finish of “Another Winter” both making their marks. Interestingly, one of the most memorable songs on the record (the five-minute slacker pop sprawl of “Strange Presence”) is Hanwright’s first writing credit for the band. Get Behind the Horses felt like a good record from the extended universe of a band (Great Grandpa) making a lot of good music; I suspect the two bands will forever be tied together in my mind, but on A Heave of Lightness on the Ground, Apples with Moya look like a band capable of forging their own path. (Bandcamp link)

Modern Silent Cinema – The Cabinet of Modern Silent Cinema

Release date: May 3rd
Record label: Bad Channels
Genre: Experimental rock, experimental folk, post-rock, lo-fi
Formats: CD, digital
Pull Track: Forest Warrior

Cullen Gallagher is a Brooklyn-based musician who’s been part of several bands (Hard Job, Demoted, Steve Carface) over the years, but his longest running endeavor seems to be his solo project, Modern Silent Cinema. Although the first few albums from the prolific “lo-fi experimental electro-acoustic instrumental” act came out in 2007, Gallagher actually began it in 2004–and he’s announced that he’s planning to put out six different Modern Silent Cinema albums in celebration of its 20th anniversary (three new, three archival). The first one that caught my attention is one of the archival ones–the appropriately-titled The Cabinet of Modern Silent Cinema, the twenty-seventh album from the project overall and third of 2024. These thirteen instrumental tracks are over a decade old–the first ten were recorded by Gallagher alone in 2009, and the final three with his brother Boru in 2010. These are primarily guitar-centric recordings, although Gallagher finds a lot of ground to cover here–some of these are loud, electric skeletons of rock songs, others are quieter (even treading into ambient territory), and folk and blues music shade his guitar playing  throughout the record.

Although it’s not exactly a “hit”, there’s something about opening track “Assless Chaps Do Harm” that kept drawing me to The Cabinet of Modern Silent Cinema, with its weird and fascinating combination of dub sensibilities, whispering folky guitar, and ambient background noise. The blown out acoustic guitar of “Forest Warrior” is a different type of creature, but it’s similarly rewarding in a skewed way–and then “Blues for a Broken Blue Ceramic Mug” comes stumbling into frame with its upbeat, jaunty strumming of a classic blues progression. “Sitting on a Bus, Thinking About a Burrito Blues” revisits this side of Modern Silent Cinema–together, they’re a nice pair of spirited diversions from some of the headier material on The Cabinet of Modern Silent Cinema, such as the chugging instrumental rock of “Death Whistles the Clues” and the messy, fuzzed out funk of “Rotorelief”. The three songs with Boru are all guitar duets, and when the snaking, shaking electric power of “Dislocations” begins to take shape, it appears that we’re in for the loudest stretch on the record–but Gallagher and Boru dial it back on the meandering, contemplative “Blues for Colonel Brewster” , while “Siodmak” makes the brothers’ twelve-string conversation sound like it’s happening a couple of rooms away. While I may not have the context that someone who’s been following Cullen Gallagher’s music for a long time might have, I nevertheless enjoyed perusing The Cabinet of Modern Silent Cinema. (Bandcamp link)

D. Sablu – No True Silence

Release date: May 17th
Record label: Yes We Cannibal
Genre: Garage punk, punk rock, hardcore punk, noise rock, post-hardcore
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: 69 Forever

D. Sablu is a punk rock band from New Orleans, originally started by vocalist and namesake David Sabludowsky when his previous band, Casual Burn, became a casualty of the pandemic. Eventually, D. Sablu became a full-on quartet featuring several longtime New Orleans DIY/underground veterans–bassist Shana Applewhite (of Keen Dreams, whose Eric Martinez also contributed to an early version of the band), guitarist Cole Jones (Coal, Fault), and drummer Evan Cvitanovic (Glish, Sexy Dex and the Fresh). Following the self-recorded Taken By Static in 2020 and a couple of tour/demo cassette tapes, the band considers No True Silence to be their first “proper” album, and as a first statement, it’s an undeniably potent one. Across eleven songs and twenty-nine minutes, the band whips up a pummeling frenzy of noisy, explosive, hardcore-tinged punk rock with hardly a moment of respite. Sabludowsky (who also plays guitar in Sick Thoughts) is a classic punk vocalist, able to dial up “sneering 70s belter” and “possessed, losing-his-mind hardcore frontperson” with equal ease. No True Silence is unhinged, nothing-to-lose garage-punk, a more southern version of what The Stools concocted in Detroit last year.

You can’t say that No True Silence doesn’t warn you what you’re in for from the very first track–“Bomber Stop” is a nasty opener, a white-hot piece of post-hardcore/noise rock that only burns up quicker as the song picks up steam. “Hypocrites in Cyberspace” shows off D. Sablu’s ability to lean into classic punk rock, as they ride an avalanche of angry guitars for nearly four minutes with ease. “Stuck in a Rut” and “Spiral Out” keep No True Silence’s ratio of straight-up ferocious garage punk numbers nice and tidy, but it’s the pounding rock and roll endurance test of “Smut Date” that really kicks things up a notch in the record’s second half. The B-side of No True Silence is impeccable, offering up the pent-up fury of “So Sorry” (capturing the spirit of early, still-congealing hardcore punk better than most traditionalists are able to do), the high-flying, club-swinging workout “Try Harder”, and the climax of the album, “69 Forever” (a shockingly spirited-sounding piece of punk rock and roll that somehow keeps finding another higher gear and really needs to be heard to be believed). It nicks some tricks from punk rock ground zero and still sounds untamed–short of actual, physical violence, I’m not sure what else you could want from No True Silence. (Bandcamp link)

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