Pressing Concerns: Riggings, Max Blansjaar, Eighteen Hundred and Froze to Death, Wild Yaks

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It’s been yet another busy week on the blog–Monday and Tuesday saw the revealing of Rosy Overdrive’s Top 40 Albums of 2024, So Far, and on Wednesday, we looked at records from Goosewind, Eyecandy, Daniel Brouns, and Iffin. Today, we’ve got four albums that are coming out tomorrow, June 21st, to discuss: new LPs from Riggings, Max Blansjaar, Eighteen Hundred and Froze to Death, and Wild Yaks appear below.

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.

Riggings – Egg

Release date: June 21st
Record label: Horse Complex
Genre: Folk rock, experimental rock
Formats: CD, digital
Pull Track: Knife Necklace

Alex Riggs is a folk singer from Durham, North Carolina who’s been at it since the beginning of the 2010s, putting out a ton of records under her old name until coming out as trans around 2022 and switching gears to Riggings. The first proper Riggings album, Egg, has been in development pretty much since then–I suppose that’s only a couple of years, but for someone who’s spent a good deal of her career releasing multiple albums in the same year, the longer incubation time certainly seems remarkable. Not that Riggs stopped being prolific, mind you–you can find Riggings singles and EPs strewn across the Bandcamp page of her label, Horse Complex Records–but it’s clear that Egg was always supposed to be the first full-length Riggings statement. It’s still fair to call Riggs a folk artist on Egg, I think, although that doesn’t exactly capture the blown-open sound that she’s lassoed into place here–she’s been pretty open about Chicago experimental folk (like vintage Drag City artists and Ryley Walker, who’s put out some of her music on his Husky Pants label) being an influence, and I also associate her with fellow Durham act the Mountain Goats, another artist who has grown from fairly simple folk rock to something more laborious and ornate over time.

The record’s first track, “A New Opening”, is exactly that–an instrumental combining orchestral folk and lightly corrupted electronica that soundtracks us as we all file in and settle down to view the Egg show. “The Birds Knew First”, from the traditionalist nature-invocation of its title to the no-nonsense opening couplet to its basically turning the album title into a triple-entendre, is a damn strong scene setter, the sterile, frozen instrumentation eventually opening up into the warm folk rock of “Windshield Spider”. “The Birds Knew First” is as clear as day in how trans it is, as are “The High and Lonesome Racket” and “Old Bones”, albeit in different ways. These two songs are tough as nails because they have to be, written with the lucidity of a transgender woman living in the American South. Riggs will hit you with a blunt lyric from time to time but she’s not really a punk lyricist, as songs like “Knife Necklace”, “Sophie’s Moon”, and “Song for Pregnant Astronaut” are stronger for asking the listener to tease out how everything relates to each other (and I’ll also say that Riggs excels at the occasional John Darnielle-ian high-economical phrase, from “My new body’s a temple / Breaking out of the tomb” in “The Birds Knew First” to the fascinating “Invest in casts, invest in crutches / Learn how to wince good if anyone touches” in “Rhinoceros”). Egg ends with its title track, in which Riggs harangues us over and over to “pay attention” because she’s “got something to say”. Her message is: she’s not done “fucking up”, not done growing, not finished learning. With all due respect, Alex, I could’ve told you that already.  (Bandcamp link)

Max Blansjaar – False Comforts

Release date: June 21st
Record label: Beanie Tapes
Genre: Indie pop, singer-songwriter
Formats: Vinyl, cassette, digital
Pull Track: Saturnia

Although Max Blansjaar still can’t legally buy a drink in the United States, the debut album from the 20-year-old Oxford-based musician has actually been a long time coming. Blansjaar’s first releases, the Spit It Out! and Life’s Too Easy EPs, came out back in 2018 and 2019 respectively on local imprint Beanie Tapes, and he began working on his debut full-length not long afterwards. Blansjaar eventually hooked up with his “dream” producer, Katie von Schleicher, who ended up co-producing False Comforts with frequent collaborator Nate Mendelsohn at her Shitty Hits Recording Co. studio. Blansjaar’s first LP is a successful and personable pop album, a team effort (keyboardist Ben Walker, drummer Sean Mullins, and bassist Brian Betancourt being the other players) that spit-shines and enhances the emerging talent at the center of it all. Blansjaar is a quietly confident vocalist, and as a lyricist his aptitude is apparent from the beginning. His writing is reminiscent of more rambling corners of folk and rock music, but False Comforts turns the free-flowing narratives on their heads by corralling them with tight instrumentals and a stoic delivery from Blansjaar himself.

False Comforts feels classically-sequenced–hits up front, some interesting detours afterward. The record’s first four tracks all could’ve been the “lead single”–the confident, arm-swinging studio pop of “Saturnia” has a few weird touches but is still a wildly engrossing start to the record, the breezy “Burning in Our Name” follows a long, storied tradition of British guitar pop, “Anna Madonna” (which actually was the lead single) is finely honed, economical indie pop, and “Like a Bad Dream” takes the strengths of what came before it and applies them to blissful, slightly fuzzy indie rock. Even as Blansjaar favors a few simple motifs in the construction of these songs, the writing comes off as neither as fluffy as the instrumentals suggest it could be nor as a pure sardonic refutation of them–realistically, it goes wherever Blansjaar sees an opening. The middle of False Comforts tests the deep end with the crunchy distorted pop of “Song Against Love” and the six-minute chill of “Red Tiger”, and those who stick it out to the end of the record are rewarded with a gorgeous pin-drop quiet ballad (“On Beyond Eden”, a risky choice that nonetheless ends up being one of my favorite songs on the album) and the lo-fi folk clanging of closing track “I Will Not Be Forgiven”, an equally bold final statement. From a certain vantage point, Blansjaar singing “I will not go to heaven / It’s clean and pure and lifeless,” over sloppy open guitar chords is almost a refutation of what came before it on the record. Remember, though–you’re listening to a record called False Comforts. (Bandcamp link)

Eighteen Hundred and Froze to Death – Thirds

Release date: June 21st
Record label: Resident Recordings
Genre: Noise rock, post-punk, punk
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
Pull Track: Signal Burns

Ithaca’s Eighteen Hundred and Froze to Death are something of an upstate New York supergroup in reverse. The quartet of David Nutt (guitar/vocals), Joe Kepic (guitar), Brendan Kuntz (drums), and Tom Yagielski (bass) put out an album and EP in the early 2000s before going their separate ways and pursuing various projects–all of them but Nutt made a record together as The 1,000-Year Plan, Nutt started a solo project called why+the+wires, Kepic played in noise rock group Chimes of Bayonets, and Kuntz put out a bunch of great fuzz-country records as Grass Jaw. Always influenced by tough, post-punky 90s Dischord records, it made a lot of sense that, when Eighteen Hundred and Froze to Death reunited in the mid-2010s, they tapped J. Robbins to produce their second album, 2019’s appropriately-titled Some Years. Eighteen Hundred and Froze to Death fans only had to wait five years for a follow-up this time, with Thirds (yet again, an appropriate name) coming out this month (produced by Christopher Ploss this time, but Robbins returns to mix the record and sing backing vocals on “Minutewomen”).

There’s a lot of underground rock history contained in Thirds, but to be a bit reductive, it’s effectively the clean, workmanlike precision of Electrical Audio-recorded Chicago noise rock crossed with a palpable sense of Washington, D.C. punk rock agitation. If you liked the most recent Chimes of Bayonets album, it’s in the same universe, but that record’s blunt instrumentation is replaced by a more sharply-honed weapon on these nine songs. As is proper, Eighteen Hundred and Froze to Death’s rhythm section is incredibly key to their sound–Yagielski’s high-flying bass is the heartbeat of the record, and Kuntz’s powerhouse drumming the bolded exclamation mark. I have no idea how the band decided to sequence this album, as there are so many songs on here that feel either like an assault of an opening statement or a barnburning closing track (the record’s first four songs in particular are like one punch in the face after another, with the post-punk snaking of “Wreck the Decks” the first thing that even hints at subtlety). I suppose “Minutewomen” gets the nod as the album closer by virtue of it being the longest song on the album, a six-minute Touch & Go-type tune that spends half its length ramping up to an explosive, almost classic rock finale. Eventually, Eighteen Hundred and Froze to Death remember that they’re just a bunch of guys in a medium-sized college town and bring “Minutewomen” in for a conclusion that kind of tapers off. Still, I wouldn’t want to have to follow that one–but Eighteen Hundred and Froze to Death probably could’ve picked off where they left off if they wanted to. (Bandcamp link)

Wild Yaks – Monumental Deeds

Release date: June 21st
Record label: Ernest Jenning Record Co.
Genre: Garage rock, psych rock, art punk
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: See the Light

Wild Yaks are a Rockaway, Queens-based band who debuted back in 2009 with an album called 10 Ships (Don’t Die Yet); depending on whether or not you count 2021’s Live at Rippers, they’re now on either their fifth or sixth full-length. The lineup’s shifted a bit over the years–vocalist/guitarist Robert Bryn and drummer Martin Cartegena have been there since the beginning, bassist Jose Aybar showed up a couple years later, and they added keyboardist Giovanni Kincaide sometime in the late 2010s. Their latest album, Monumental Deeds, introduces Jairo Barsallo Rubio on lead guitar, and this quintet (plus saxophone contributions from frequent collaborator Jeff Tobias) comprise the Wild Yaks this time around. Out via their longtime home of Ernest Jenning Record Co. (which seems to be the premier destination for long-running, unclassifiable rock bands in the greater New York area), Monumental Deeds is a loose but sharp collection of deeply felt rock and roll. It’s “garage rock” in a big-tent sense of the term–I hear a bit of the freaky, psych-tinged explosiveness of labelmate King Khan in it, particularly in the retro sound brought by the keys and the prominent rhythm section, but Wild Yaks are a group that primarily just sound like themselves at this point. 

Something of an accidental record, Monumental Deeds began as “a 7” or an EP”, but Wild Yaks just kept rolling until they had a full album. There’s an off-the-cuff charm to the album that shows up from the get-go, with the opening garage-pop rager of “Crazy People” and the euphoric “See the Light” both sounding incredibly fun. Wild Yaks take that attitude with them through detours into bass-led, saxophone-shaded dance-punk (“Lover/Liar”) and tipsy country western singalongs (“Desperado”), and the rambling spoken word soliloquy of “Jose’s Struggle” is even more gripping with the smooth playing of the band around its orator. The raging bull energy of the Yaks spills into the back half of Monumental Deeds, even as “See That Girl” (a two-point-five minute shapeshifting garage rocker) and “MOMD” (a five-minute post-psychedelic journey of a track) are genuinely weird songs. Just as impressively, Wild Yaks save what’s straight-up one of the best and most fully-realized moments on the album for last, with “Take the Bell” finding the band honing in on the kind of retro, 60s-touched rock music that they’d been dancing around up until that point and playing it straight. In a way, the rest of Monumental Deeds could be Wild Yaks working their way up to this final exclamation mark–but, thankfully, they’re a band that’s equally compelling in “hammering things out” mode. (Bandcamp link)

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