Pressing Concerns: Tigerblind, Marcel Wave, Laybrum, Swan Wash

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The second Pressing Concerns of the week rounds up a few great records from recent weeks for your perusal below: we’ve got new albums from Tigerblind, Marcel Wave, Laybrum, and Swan Wash on deck. If you missed yesterday’s post, featuring Nature’s Neighbor, Hayes Noble, Bug Seance, and Workers Comp, be sure to check that one out, too.

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.

Tigerblind – It’s All Gonna Happen to You

Release date: May 7th
Record label: Self-released
Genre: Lo-fi power pop, lo-fi indie rock
Formats: Digital
Pull Track: Awake and Miserable

What’s that? There’s another musician making lo-fi, home-recorded guitar pop music that I haven’t heard of yet? Well, let’s take a look at who we’ve got now. Cameron McCrary is from Dallas, Texas, and, well, is Tigerblind–since 2020, recordings have intermittently showed up on Bandcamp, typically in the form of singles and EPs, but there are a few collections (2020’s We Love You, Tigerblind, last year’s Self-Inflicted Love Letters) that seem long enough to be considered albums (if that’s even a distinction that matters to McCrary). The most recent Tigerblind release, the ten-song It’s All Gonna Happen to You, is one such collection, self-released and self-recorded like everything else Tigerblind. I was predisposed to like It’s All Gonna Happen to You, sure, but even controlling for that I found myself impressed with McCrary’s songwriting, which is lo-fi pop whimsy delivered in a fluffy and somewhat sensitive package, reminding me of bands like Sparklehorse, early Grandaddy, and The Gerbils (of course, Guided by Voices and Sebadoh are here too). It’s All Gonna Happen to You is a little bit punk, a little bit “confessional”, a little experimental–McCrary is focused on pop above all else, though.

“Crashed Ur Car” opens It’s All Gonna Happen to You with a jolt of muddy lo-fi basement punk, although not so muddy that McCrary isn’t able to practically dance through some excellent vocal hooks. “Take the Money” is a vintage indie rock tune that’s fully teased-out but still low-key sounding, a jaunty greyscale song that’s on the “busier” side of Tigerblind’s spectrum. McCrary is able to get a lot of mileage out of keeping things relatively simple on the record, as the acoustic-based pop songs all breeze by amiably (“Fall for No Reason”, “Every Word Around Me Just Unravels”, “Make It Long”) and the drum-machine jangle pop of “Hold You Tight” is one of the record’s strongest moments, too. The jumbled mess of “Taken Your Good Advice” suggests that McCrary has some stranger instincts, and Tigerblind keep the album interesting by adding a few extra touches to their pop side in late record highlights “You’d Cry” and “Awake and Miserable”. The former has a giant chorus that (both musically and lyrically) borders on melodrama (“I’ll leave unscathed today and whine / It’s really nothing in the end,” is one of several lyrics that makes me wonder if I should be taking McCrary at face value here), and the latter takes an uncertain but firm step forward with a steady bass guitar part and eventually blossoms into a mid-tempo, earnest, sweeping indie pop anthem. Of course, the song’s called “Awake and Miserable”, which is a good summation of Tigerblind’s mental preoccupations throughout the record. Well, you’re already up, might as well throw on It’s All Gonna Happen to You–it can’t make you feel worse. (Bandcamp link)

Marcel Wave – Something Looming

Release date: June 14th
Record label: Feel It/Upset the Rhythm
Genre: Post-punk, indie pop, garage rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Something Looming

Marcel Wave are a quintet from London who have a pretty solid British indie rock pedigree–guitarist Oliver Fisher and drummer Patrick Fisher both previously played in Cold Pumas, bassist Christopher Murphy played in Sauna Youth and Monotony, and keyboardist Lindsay Corstorphine played in all three of those bands (plus Primitive Parts, Violin, The Steal…). Vocalist Maike Hale-Jones doesn’t seem to have been in any other bands–her background is as a writer, specifically as an essayist, screenwriter, and poet. Something Looming, the debut Marcel Wave LP, has presumably been in the works for a while–the group put out a demo EP in 2019–and with it, the band have turned in a confident, polished, and accessible first statement. Something Looming follows in the grand tradition of British “post-punk”/“indie pop” records, art practiced by modern groups like Dancer and Nightshift, among others. Corstorphine’s keyboard adds another dimension to the sound, teasing it out but never crowding it in a way reminiscent of Stereolab (or, to continue referencing newer bands, En Attendant Ana). Hale-Jones, meanwhile, is a classic post-punk frontperson, one with a “non-traditional” musical background whose delivery is of the “speak-singing” variety more often than not. 

Something Looming is a pop album, and while the instrumentals are the primary driver of this side of Marcel Wave, Hale-Jones’ sense of rhythm and force of personality are a great fit for it nonetheless. Something Looming is “catchy” in some form for pretty much its entire length, but sometimes it’s more traditionally so than others–the triumphant indie pop of opening track “Bent Out of Shape” and the garage-pop bounce of the title track both function to hook the listener early on in the runtime. The drama and foreboding undergirding “Barrow Boys” and “Mudlarks” are perhaps more representative of the album as a whole, though, but thankfully, the guitars still arrive in memorable bursts, the keys are early-XTC-buzzy, and Hale-Jones is always on top of things. Her most memorable writing comes in the second half of the album via the vivid reports from “the outskirts of Enfield” in “Discount Centre” and the feverish fast food nightmares of “Great British High St.”–although it’s worth tuning into her lyrics throughout Something Looming, as there’s always something intriguing going on in them. Something Looming keeps rolling into its final stretch with the tightly-arranged diorama guitar pop of “Elsie”, the runaway garage rock of “Idles of March”, and the airy closing track “Linoleum Floor”–Marcel Wave are consistent but hardly content up until the end, cementing Something Looming as one of the top debuts of the year thus far. (Bandcamp link)

Laybrum – Hungry for the Other Thing

Release date: June 20th
Record label: Pleasure Tapes
Genre: Lo-fi indie rock, noise pop
Formats: Cassette, digital
Pull Track: Forward March

Andrew Santora is an engineer, producer, and musician who grew up on the Jersey Shore and is currently based in Philadelphia. Santora makes music under the name Laybrum, which has thus far included an assortment of self-released Bandcamp recordings and some film soundtrack/scoring work. I first learned of Laybrum due to Santora’s association with former Philadelphia resident Noah Roth, and I hear a bit of similarity to Roth’s solo work in the latest Laybrum release, Hungry for the Other Thing. Both Roth and Santora combine lo-fi pop cores with a layered, “studio rat” production style, but Laybrum distinguishes itself by being even more nomadic in its presentations. Roth generally keeps at least one foot in the world of folk rock in their music, but Santora flits between lo-fi indie pop, fluttering synthpop, dreamy psychedelia, and even a bit of murky Spirit of the Beehive-esque experimental pop. Hungry for the Other Thing (self-described by Santora as “maximalist”) layers drum machines over top of live drums, lets synths run wild, and expands itself with string instruments (played by Mike Frazier collaborator Jenn Fantaccione and arranged by Mt. Worry/Hell Trash’s Rowan Roth)–the consistent thread is a commitment to pop music through the noise.

Opening track “Empty-Handed” is a proof of concept of sorts, kicking off Hungry for the Other Thing with some relatively “normal” sounding basement rock at first before slowly but surely adding in Santora’s odder touches in the song’s second half. After sticking the landing in “Empty-Handed”, Laybrum are ready to test the limits a bit further via “Haunt Me How You Will” (a song that marries a swinging drumbeat to explosive, twinkling synths quite memorably) and the soundscape-pop of “Skyspaces” (and its noirish intro track, “Centrifuge”), although the low-key slacker pop of “Handle with Care” in between the two of them keeps the peace. As enjoyable as these more experimental moments are, the album’s biggest successes might come in the second half–Laybrum focuses their maximalism more strategically, creating the breathtaking, marathoning orchestral folk rock of “Rolling Dice” and single “Twirl”, which has a singalong pop rock core that’s impossible to dampen. Hungry for the Other Thing closes with another highlight–“Forward March” stretches to six minutes, but–like its title suggests–it’s rolling full steam ahead for the majority of its length. Santora and crew pound out a massive, fuzzed-out hookfest from the starting gate and largely keep the song’s structure intact as they progress–a swarm of synths eventually surfaces at its big finish, but only after Laybrum have gotten everything they needed out of it. (Bandcamp link)

Swan Wash – Shadow Shadow

Release date: May 24th
Record label: Sister Cylinder
Genre: Post-punk, goth, garage rock
Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital
Pull Track: Almost Gone

Bloomington, Indiana trio Swan Wash supposedly sprouted from a Siouxsie and the Banshees tribute act, and they certainly sound like it. The band (originally vocalist/bassist Scott Ferguson, guitarist Steve Garcia, and drummer Matt Leetz, with the latter two eventually replaced by Jack Andrews and Wyatt Worcel, respectively) debuted with a seven-song self-titled EP in 2019, introducing their version of post-punk–darkwave/goth-indebted, ferocious, but rooted entirely in a stripped down, guitar-forward power trio sound. Some of the songs that make up their debut album, Shadow Shadow, have been kicking around, showing up in live or demo form on various tapes and EPs, but the final record was recorded live in the band’s rehearsal space, with vocals and some overdubs recorded by Jerry Westerkamp (VACATION, Motorbike, Good Looking Son) in Cincinnati. Appropriately, Shadow Shadow sounds like a more streamlined version of the Midwestern basement post-punk practiced by Cincy bands on Feel It/Future Shock records like The Drin, Crime of Passing, and Corker, in addition to more disparate goth-tinged punk acts like Home Front and Schedule 1 and college rock revivalists The Laughing Chimes. Certainly informed by the gothic drama of Siouxsie, The Cure, and even The Teardrop Explodes, Shadow Shadow is too economical and laser-focused to get fully bogged down in Bauhaus-y doom-worship–it’s got too much ground to traverse.

There’s a bit of a tug-of-war to Swan Wash’s sound on Shadow Shadow–the band seem to alternate between foot-on-gas, dark garage rock rippers and mid-tempo, barebones-but-ornate basement goth rock. Opening track “Tunnel” trends toward the latter, with stomping percussion and plodding bass guitar serving up a muck for Ferguson’s vocals to wade into impressively. After that, Swan Wash burn through the fiery riffs and frantic pace of “23 Years”, and “Almost Gone” injects a beefy alt-rock backbone into their sound with minimal shock. The whiplash continues throughout Shadow Shadow (see the fiery “The Upstairs Museum” flowing into the tension and buildup of “Up the Stairs”), but Swan Wash start to fuse their extremes within the same songs by the record’s second half, as evidenced by late-album epics “Tavel’s Gavel” and “Ownership”. The former pulls off seven-minute psychedelic death rock with the same basic ingredients of the rest of the record, while the latter finishes off Shadow Shadow with a classic circling-the-drain post-punk slow-build of an instrumental. “Ownership” never quite lets loose as it crawls to its finish, but it’s too fierce to be mistaken for a retreat, either. (Bandcamp link)

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