Pressing Concerns: Lorelle Meets the Obsolete, Silver Car Crash, Stoner Control, Mythical Motors

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Welcome to Pressing Concerns! Today, we’re looking at brand new albums from Lorelle Meets the Obsolete, Silver Car Crash, and Mythical Motors, and a new EP from Stoner Control.

I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that today’s blog post happens to fall on Juneteenth, the day on which Bandcamp donates 100% of its shares from music sales to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. Today would be a great day to pick up one of these following records (or any other, really) on Bandcamp.

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.

Lorelle Meets the Obsolete – Datura

Release date: June 16th
Record label: Sonic Cathedral
Genre: Post-punk, psychedelic rock
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
Pull Track: Dos Noches

Baja California, Mexico’s Lorelle Meets the Obsolete have been around for over a decade at this point–Datura is their sixth album since 2011. I’d heard some of their previous music before (including their previous album, 2019’s De Facto), and I viewed the band (the duo of Lorena Quintanilla and Alberto González) as practitioners of experimental, spaced-out psychedelic rock that could be soft and drippy or heavy and impenetrable. With their newest album, however, Quintanilla and González have made something that feels a ways off from where Lorelle Meets the Obsolete had previously been. Gone are any wild song lengths (Datura is eight songs in 34 minutes, with only one of them crossing five minutes), and the rhythm section (handled by drummer Andrea Davì and bassist Fernando Nuti) grounds almost the whole album. What results is a fascinating record of post-punk that still has plenty of busy tricks up its sleeve, but delivers all of them while steadily marching forward.

The opening title track floats forward in a way that’s fairly recognizable for Lorelle Meets the Obsolete, although in this case Quintanilla’s vocals and the band’s synth stabs are ushered forward by a firm, insistent drumbeat. The chilly “Invisible” feels like a direct descendant of early 1980s Manchester, while the fuzzy “Dínamo” marries stomping psych-rock to a propulsive rhythm section. Most of the tracks follow the first couple of songs’ examples, putting together muscular, guitar-forward post-punk, although Lorelle Meets the Obsolete’s one real foray into true synthpunk, “Golpe Blanco”, sits well with the rest of the seven songs. Tracks like “Arco” and “Ave En Reversa” have moments of noise hidden in their patient, mid-tempo rocker foundations. Lorelle Meets the Obsolete keep exploring; closing track “Dos Noches” rolls along in a droning way that’s reminiscent of Stereolab or krautrock, with buzzsaw synths soundtracking the whole journey. (Bandcamp link)

Silver Car Crash – Shattered Shine

Release date: June 15th
Record label: Crafted Sounds/Michi Tapes
Genre: Noise rock, fuzz rock
Formats: Vinyl, cassette, digital
Pull Track: Pleasure Zone

Silver Car Crash are a Pittsburgh-based four-piece band who released their first album, Resource Body, back in 2018. The band took a half-decade to follow it up, but Shattered Shine feels like it’s arriving at the right time, when fellow fuzzy rock Pittsburgh groups like Feeble Little Horse, Gaadge, and Barlow are having something of a moment (much of which has been chronicled by Silver Car Crash’s label, Crafted Sounds). Compared to some of the more ephemeral-sounding bands in their home city, Silver Car Crash has a blunter, punker edge, feeling in debt to 90s noisy indie rock and more in line with modern bands like Pardoner, Gnawing, and Kal Marks. This isn’t to say that Shattered Shine is impenetrable, as the band offer up their share of loud pop songs as well.

Shattered Shine opens with the noise punk of “Interference” and the jerky “Nature” follows not long after, but “Lessons” in between the two sounds like a 90s indie rock anthem. “Crime” and “Pleasure Zone” come after the opening trio, and they’re even more of a surprise by offering up Guided by Voices-esque jangly, melodic guitars before launching into a more accessible but still recognizable version of Silver Car Crash. The band kick off side two of the album with the pleasing, roaring garage-punk of “Sacred Repetition”, and then work out with the dark, seething “Tee Vee”. Silver Car Crash never turn the amps down no matter where they’re at on Shattered Shine–whether it’s songs like “Minor Celebrity” that stomp all the way through or tracks like the multi-part closing track “Ways to Exist”–and this energy keeps the album engaging all the way through. (Bandcamp link)

Stoner Control – Glad You Made It

Release date: June 2nd
Record label: Sound Judgement
Genre: Power pop
Formats: Digital
Pull Track: The Candlemaker

In 2021, Stoner Control released Sparkle Endlessly, an incredibly hooky collection of power pop tunes that ended up being one of my favorite albums of that year. Glad You Made It is the Portland band’s first new original material since Sparkle Endlessly (they released a brief covers EP last year), and the five-song EP finds the trio putting together songs that hold up against their previous best work, even as it has its own personality separate from Sparkle Endlessly. Stoner Control sound a bit looser and less polished on Glad You Made It, with producer Matt Thomson letting the band’s slacker, 90s alt-rock side shine through a bit more than the (ahem) sparklier Sparkle Endlessly (particularly on Charley Williams’ songs), but they’re no less catchy here.

The most “rocking” songs on Glad You Made It are the first and the last one– “Glad You Made It” is a lost 90s rock radio anthem that the band sells completely, while “Too Bad” ends the EP on a loud and decidedly upset-sounding note (still fun to listen to, though). The three tracks in between them aren’t quite as mussed up–Sam Greenspan offers up the smart jangly pop of “Wearit Laze”, which wields its guitar line, slick verses, and bursting chorus to maximum effect, and “The Candlemaker”, a song that takes a few left turns but still feels like it hits every right note. Williams’ ballad “Show You Around” is the centerpiece of the EP, and it’s pulled off with as much aplomb as anything else on the record. Williams and Stoner Control keep it simple, letting the song earn its big instrumental finish. (Bandcamp link)

Mythical Motors – Join Her Circus

Release date: June 16nd
Record label: Lo-Fi City
Genre: Lo-fi power pop
Formats: Cassette, digital
Pull Track: The Howling Red

Chattanooga, Tennessee’s Matt Addison keeps plugging away at his lo-fi, bite-sized guitar pop without losing any of the sharpness in his songwriting. 2021 saw the release of his project Mythical Motors’ A Rare Look Ahead, which ended up being one of my favorites of that year, and while 2022 “only” saw a split release with Athens, Georgia’s Antlered Auntlord, Mythical Motors continue their streak into 2023 with Join Her Circus. If you’ve enjoyed previous Mythical Motors releases, Addison offers up a lot of his signature touchstones–big, hooky, Guided by Voices-influenced power pop with melodies sold by his high, excited voice. Mythical Motors has always been a lo-fi endeavor, but Join Her Circus feels a bit more fuzzy and louder than the last couple, which had a larger share of melancholic moments. 

After the introduction of “Emerge from the Catacombs”, Mythical Motors begin to push things into the red with the punk-tinged “Tiger on the Balance Beam” and “In a Sanctuary”, which is a vintage, loud Mythical Motors anthem. Join Her Circus continues the spirited-sounding music by offering up garage-y takes on their sound (“Cut the Crimson Wire”, “Static Bird”, and “The Howling Red”), and a couple of really full, loud tracks that push Mythical Motors’ sound a lot closer to shoegaze than I would’ve expected (“The Thoughts Impossible” and “The Apparition”). Addison still sneaks in a couple of acoustic-and-strings  songs as breathers (“Siren Parade” in the first half, “Father Hypnotist” and “Over the Fog” in the second), but they feel more like breathers on Join Her Circus than they would’ve on past records. Whether Mythical Motors are in their quieter, orchestral mode or cranking out fuzz rock, Join Her Circus delivers Addison’s pop songwriting in consistently sturdy vessels. (Bandcamp link)

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