Pressing Concerns: Dazy, CLASS, Typical Girls, Fluung

It’s the Thursday edition of Pressing Concerns! Today we look at three albums coming out tomorrow (Dazy, CLASS, and Emotional Response’s latest Typical Girls compilation), plus the Fluung record from two weeks ago. If you missed Tuesday’s Pressing Concerns, featuring Dear Nora, Mt. Oriander, Puppy Angst, and Austin Leonard Jones, you can catch up here.

If you’re looking for more new music, you can browse previous editions of Pressing Concerns or visit the site directory. If you’d like to support Rosy Overdrive, you can share this (or another) post, or donate here.

Dazy – OUTOFBODY

Release date: October 28^th
Record label: Lame-O/Convulse
Genre: Power pop, fuzz rock
Formats: Vinyl, cassette, digital
Pull track: Asking Price

2021 was truly the year of Dazy. Although James Goodson began the project the year before, last year was the one where it truly came to a head, resulting in a couple of substantial EPs and culminating in MAXIMUMBLASTSUPERLOUD, which compiled Goodson’s first 24 songs as Dazy. MAXIMUMBLASTSUPERLOUD served, among other things, as proof of the potency in the familiar yet singular sound Goodson developed as Dazy—an enthusiastic and (yes) loud form of power pop that’s equally driven by pop punk, Madchester, Britpop, and fuzzy noise pop. That compilation is better than many bands’ debut records, but it isn’t one—that would be this year’s OUTOFBODY, Goodson’s first attempt to present Dazy in a dozen-track, one-statement format.

It doesn’t take long for OUTOFBODY to establish that Dazy is still at the top of their game. The first three songs on the record all offer up big, hooky fuzz rock, even as they sound fairly distinct from one another—the opening title track holds back enough to feel like a dramatic, even cinematic starting point, the driving “Split” has a breezy jangle pop core underneath the distortion, and the effortless cool of “On My Way” is a bit of every part of Dazy’s influences. The rest of OUTOFBODY keeps the hooks coming, but seems more interested in spreading out over the course of an LP and less concerned with delivering a pure sugar rush (although if you want that, “Choose Yr Ramone” and “AWTCMM?” are there as well).

Goodson’s sound is unique enough that an entire record embracing it wholeheartedly would feel far from stale, and while OUTOFBODY doesn’t deviate from it wildly, it also finds different corners of it to lean into, like the melancholy of mid-record highlight “Motionless Parade” or the extra Madchester touches in “Ladder”. The biggest departure is the acoustic-and-synths pin-drop sound of the delicate “Inside Voice”—if Goodson wanted to make more songs of that nature, it’d be fine by me; as it would be if he went the other direction, as he does in closing track “Gone”. The latter is particularly multi-layered, but Goodson’s voice and the jaunty core of the song aren’t lost in the noise that is still somehow only being made by one person. It’s all still exciting. (Bandcamp link)

CLASS – Epoca de Los Vaqueros

Release date: October 28^th
Record label: Feel It
Genre: Garage rock, power pop, punk rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull track: Left in the Sink

Epoca de Los Vaqueros is the debut full-length record from Tucson’s CLASS, following a cassette EP that came out in June, and it’s eight tracks and twenty minutes’ worth of exhilarating garage-y punk rock that show off the full range of the band (guitarist-vocalists Andy and Rick, bassist-vocalist Jim, and drummer Ryan). Are CLASS a nervy, Devo-core egg punk group? Are they a rough-and-tumble, glam-inspired power pop group? Are they sneering, dangerously-loitering 70s punk devotees? Epoca de Los Vaqueros has a little bit of all of it.

Album opener “The Way It Goes” in particular rides pent-up rage in its verses up to a robotic, Q: Are We Not Men?-worthy chorus, and the dark “Incomplete Extraction” matches it for post-punk atmospherics. Elsewhere, CLASS offer up high-octane, barreling-forward power pop with “Box My Own Shadow” and “Left in the Sink”, and the mid-tempo “Light Switch Tripper” takes their pop skills even further, sounding like Flying Nun Kiwi pop filtered through the most accessible moments of 90s indie rock bands like Pavement and Guided by Voices.

The punk rock of Epoca de Los Vaqueros is probably best exemplified in “Cockney Rebel”, a seething put-down of a number, but also in true original punk fashion, CLASS end the record on a note of despair and nihilism. “Unlocking Heaven’s Gate” is their “Final Solution”, an alarm-sounding empty tune describing a deadly, destructive virus (well, I guess that’s a reasonable substitute for 70s punk’s Cold War-era nuclear dread). What more could you want? (Bandcamp link)

Various – Typical Girls Volume 6

Release date: October 28^th
Record label: Emotional Response
Genre: Indie pop, post-punk, hardcore punk, synthpop
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull track: Thin As Flags

Arizona’s Emotional Response Records initiated their Typical Girls series in 2016 with the simple yet welcome goal of highlighting vital and perhaps under-appreciated women and female-fronted bands in the punk, post-punk, and indie pop landscapes. The sixth volume of Typical Girls features sixteen bands from seven different countries, and it’s geographical diversity is matched by that of genre as well. On the heavier end of the spectrum, we have the garage rock/classic punk bands that are perhaps closest in spirit to the Slits song for which the series is named (Fake Fruit, Sweeping Promises, Luu Kurkkuun, Squid Ink), not to mention the couple of hardcore songs that appear on the compilation as well.

The other, softer extreme of Typical Girls Volume 6 is its indie pop side—Cindy’s sleepy-sounding “Thin As Flags” is another gem from the Karina Gill (Flowertown) project, Lande Hekt’s “Lola” is a slice of emo-tinged indie rock from the British songwriter, “Abraxas” by New Zealand’s Wet Specimen is a thorny but accessible piece of 90s-inspired indie rock, and Ukraine’s Glass Beads offer up the goth-adjacent dark pop of “Music Box”. It’s a fairly packed compilation—some of the less flashy contributions (specifically a couple of skewed indie rock tunes from Persona and Body Double and a minimalist synthpop track from Naked Roommate) didn’t grab me at first but stuck out on multiple listens. Effectively, if you like the kind of music Rosy Overdrive covers, you will find a new band to like here, and most likely multiple ones. (Bandcamp link)

Fluung – The Vine

Release date: October 14^th
Record label: Setterwind/Den Tapes
Genre: 90s indie rock, fuzz rock
Formats: Vinyl, cassette, digital
Pull track: Decades

Seattle three-piece band Fluung are an electric-sounding group whose recently released second record, The Vine, features eight tracks displaying the best-case scenario for a band making 90s alt/indie-rock-inspired music today. Effectively trading in loud pop songs, Fluung offer up fuzz and hooks in equal measure, and it’s a toss-up whether guitarist Donald Wymer’s clear, melodic vocals or blistering solos are the attention-grabbers at any given point in The Vine.

The Vine fails to let up or take a breather throughout its first half—it stomps through crunchy opening track “Hold On”, it slides into the sun-drenched “Run with You”, and then unleashes the choppy, power chord-driven “Truck Song”. “Decades” is in some ways the perfect Fluung song, in that it maxes out both the loudness and catchiness for a completely unforgettable mid-record song. The second half of The Vine is, perhaps, slightly less immediate and more moody, but songs like the title track and “Sunburnt” rival the record’s poppiest moments in the midst of their maelstroms. And Fluung offer up a genuine mountain-scaler of a closing track in the weary but determined “Crooked Road”, making the whole thing seem bigger than it relatively modest sub-30-minute runtime. (Bandcamp link)

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