Pressing Concerns: Fust, La Sécurité, TH Da Freak, XDS

Welcome to Pressing Concerns! June 16th is a pretty big release week, and we’re getting started a day early; today we’re looking at four albums coming out tomorrow from Fust, La Sécurité, TH Da Freak, and XDS. Rosy Overdrive’s Top 40 Albums of 2023 So Far went up earlier in the week; if you missed that, it’s essential reading.

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.

Fust – Genevieve

Release date: June 16^th
Record label: Dear Life
Genre: Alt-country, folk rock, country rock
Formats: Vinyl, cassette, CD, digital
Pull Track: Trouble

I wrote about Fust’s 2021 album Evil Joy back in the early days of Pressing Concerns, and I still love that record. Bandleader Aaron Dowdy makes music that sounds pulled directly from his home state of North Carolina. Fust distinguish themselves from the more offbeat artists on their label, Dear Life Records, with their devotion to straightforward-sounding folk rock and Americana, and they distinguish themselves from the herd of bands making similarly-branded music with the endless depth that Dowdy writes into his songs. Genevieve follows Evil Joy two years later, and it’s the first Fust record recorded in a proper studio–and featuring notable guests like MJ Lenderman, Indigo De Souza, and Michael Cormier-O’Leary. The differences between Evil Joy and Genevieve are subtle but noticeable–the expanded lineup and sound don’t overwhelm Dowdy’s songwriting, and in fact enhance it–an appropriate addition for a collection of tracks that, even for Fust, feels particularly ruminative.

Fust have always been a measured band, but Genevieve tightens up some of Evil Joy’s looseness and comes across as quite deliberate. It’s still a record in motion, though–the opening title track is a slow burn that opens with the narrator “headed out to California” and away from the addressee of the song. “Violent Jubilee” hews to this feeling even more strongly; the singer has a lot to chew on, but he’s doing so while on the move. “Trouble” is the biggest rocker on the album, and it’s a gigantic-sounding song that’s new territory for Fust in a good way. Contextually, it makes sense–Dowdy, imbued with a confidence he knows is fleeting, proclaims his limits forcefully (“I can’t, I won’t”). Trouble rears its head again in “Rockfort Bay”, a song about thinking and hoping that still ends with Dowdy feeling that he’s “never gonna change” as he heads out of the titular town. 

“Rockfort Bay” isn’t an electric country rocker in the same way that “Trouble” is, although it’s still an upbeat number. “Searchers” pulls the same trick, although to different ends–its rumbling guitars and Dowdy’s lyrics (particularly the final couplet: “It feels good to be part of a greater kind of looking / Gonna be a searcher for the rest of my days”) find a positive way to view and spin the same things Dowdy’s singing about on the entirety of Genevieve. The album ends with “A Clown Like Me”; like “Trouble”, it’s a full realization of the new version of Fust, but in a much different way. A seven-minute studio rock creation, it explores atmospheres and space previously unprobed by the band. There is, if anything, more room for Dowdy’s lyrics in this song. The scene in “A Clown Like Me” is vivid, the missing context only sharpening what Dowdy chooses to share, and it resonates long after the song’s chamber-country instrumental ends. (Bandcamp link)

La Sécurité – Stay Safe!

Release date: June 16^th
Record label: Mothland
Genre: Post-punk, garage punk
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Dis-moi

La Sécurité is a five-piece band from Montreal that formed last year, with the various members having plenty of experience in other groups from the area (Choses Sauvages, Laurence-Anne, Silver Dapple, DATES, Pressure Pin). This experience feels like it was well-used in the construction of their debut album, Stay Safe!. The album’s ten songs are solid pieces of art punk–they’re all quite poppy, but with a garage rock/post-punk edge to them. La Sécurité are a dexterous group, sometimes letting the guitarists (Melissa Di Menna and Laurence Anne Charest-Gagné) whip up a frenzy, sometimes drawing back and letting the rhythm section (bassist Félix Bélisle and drummer Kenneth David Smith) do the work, and Éliane Viens-Synnott’s vocals never waver.

La Sécurité open Stay Safe! by snaking through opening track “Le Kick”, a somewhat restrained song that is hypnotically catchy between Viens-Synnott’s sung-spoken vocals, some sharp guitar riffs, and the occasional handclap. “Dis-moi” and “Suspens” are two pieces of zippy, synth-featuring egg punk, and La Sécurité really crank up the amps and get loud on “Anyway” and “Try Again”. The band’s post-punk side particularly shines on the enthralling sketch of “Waiting for Kenny” and on a couple dance-punk tunes that shade Stay Safe!’s second half (the lighter “Serpent” and the heavier “Hot Topic”). Stay Safe! is an engaging record all the way through, and it works as well as it does because it’s stuffed with sounds without sounding too labored over–La Sécurité sound like they’re having fun, and like they know that this kind of music works best when the listener can join in on that feeling as well. (Bandcamp link)

TH Da Freak – Indie Rock (Re-Release)

Release date: June 16^th
Record label: Howlin Banana/Les Disques du Paradis/Flippin’ Freaks
Genre: Lo-fi indie rock, garage rock
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
Pull Track: I Was Around

TH Da Freak is Thoineau Palis, a prolific Bordeaux, France-based indie rock musician who’s amassed a pretty hefty discography since the release of his first album in 2016. Last year, he released Coyote, his “proper” album of 2022–but Palis also released an entirely separate collection of songs on his Bandcamp a few months before Coyote’s release. The aptly-titled Indie Rock was available for only 48 hours and then promptly removed–interest from three French labels (Howlin Banana, Flippin’ Freaks, and the brand-new Les Disques du Paradis) kept Indie Rock from fading into obscurity as TH Da Freak moved on to his next creative endeavor. 

Indie Rock was recorded by TH Da Freak during the sessions for Coyote, but unlike that album, the eleven songs on Indie Rock were recorded entirely by Palis alone. Indie Rock is a tongue-in-cheek title, but god damn if it isn’t also indie rock. Palis has something of a cult following in his home country, and it’s hard not to see why here: although TH Da Freak is rooted in lo-fi, bedroom indie rock, he covers quite a bit of ground within these confines, and does it quite well. Just the first half of Indie Rock includes the beautiful 60s pop ballad “Somewhere”, the messy jangle pop of “I Was Around”, the fuzzy power pop of “Young Bro”, and the garage-y post-punk of “Serie A”. There’s a psychedelic haziness that hovers over songs like “Naked” and opening track “Feel Animal”, and the last two tracks (“Let Me See the Sun” and “A Drummy Alley Straight to Indie Rock Land”) are massive, spirited songs that push against their lo-fi origins. It’s all Indie Rock. (Bandcamp link)

XDS – Bicycle Ripper

Release date: June 16^th
Record label: Mt.St.Mtn.
Genre: Art punk, experimental rock, post-punk
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Oct Cat Rainbow

Experimental Dental School formed in the early 2000s in Chico, California as the duo of Shoko Horikawa and Jesse Hall. Hall and Horikawa (with Ryan Chittick on drums at some point) made experimental, free-sounding noise rock that roughly fit into something of a movement in that decade, but the band seemed to disappear after their last album in 2009. Hall and Horikawa are now back as XDS, and while Bicycle Ripper raises a few questions (Where did they go for the last decade? Why return now? Why the new name?), the best course of action is to enjoy what is a delightful, experimental, but accessible rock record that eagerly throws in bits of dub, psychedelic rock, post-punk, synthpunk and more over its eleven songs.

The songs on Bicycle Ripper can come off as jumbles of synths and rhythm section instruments, but the noise isn’t noisy for the sake of noisiness.  “Oct Cat Rainbow” moves through a couple sections of deconstructed dance-punk and ends with a surprisingly catchy pop rock final minute. “Dune Mellow” skulks around but still boasts a hypnotic refrain. Single “UFO Let Me Go” dips its toe into the kind of West Coast garage-y psychedelic rock that bridged a lot of the gap between Experimental Dental School and XDS, and it’s a natural fit. Songs like the title track and “Hot Panther Cold Moon” are hot pieces of synthpunk, with the vocals riding the tracks’ waves like they’re more typical rock/punk. XDS’ commitment to noise is inarguable, but their ability to sharpen it into something this pleasing on Bicycle Ripper is remarkable. (Bandcamp link)

Also notable:

• Les Lullies – Mauvaise Foi
• The Rallies – It Must Be Love
• Gorgeous – Sapsucker
• Jeff Clarke – Locust
• The Reds, Pinks & Purples – Unloveable Losers EP
• MILLY – The Freed Milly EP
• Curtail – Crimson EP
• Discern – Discern EP
• Blake – Plainsongs
• Fepeste – What You Don’t Know
• McKinley Dixon – Beloved! Paradise! Jazz!?
• Laura Cantrell – Just Like a Rose: The Anniversary Sessions
• Last Quokka – Red Dirt
• Wombo – Slab EP
• The Pigeons – Bird Brain Gang
• Squid – O Monolith
• Sorry Girls – Bravo!
• Spoon – Memory Dust EP
• Juan Wauters – Wandering Rebel
• The Wedding Present – 24 Songs
• Beach Fossils – Bunny
• The Dead Milkmen – Quaker City Quiet Pills
• Joan Jett & the Blackhearts – Mindsets EP
• Ben Folds – What Matters Most
• Cowboys in the Campfire – Wronger