Pressing Concerns: Sunshine Convention, Mopar Stars, Hello Whirled, James Sardone

Posted byrosyoverdrivePosted inPressing ConcernsTags:, , , , , , , ,

Good morning! It’s nice to see you! I’ve got two great new albums and two great new EPs to talk about today: long-players from Sunshine Convention and Hello Whirled, and extended plays from Mopar Stars and James Sardone.

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.

Sunshine Convention – The Sunshine Convention

Release date: July 21st
Record label: Cardinal Telephone
Genre: Lo-fi indie rock, power pop, fuzz rock
Formats: CD, digital
Pull Track: Penny Lids

The Sunshine Convention has been gestating for three years or so. The Brooklyn-based band is the project of one Jake Whitener, who’d been working since 2020 on his first record in his bedroom, recording songs via Garageband and Tascam 424, and is now presenting a dozen of them on an excellent debut CD. As Sunshine Convention, Whitener has a sound that will be familiar and pleasing to a lot of regular Rosy Overdrive readers–fuzzy, lo-fi, loud, but above all massively pop-friendly. Nevertheless, The Sunshine Convention doesn’t feel played out at all due to Whitener’s sharp songwriting skills, the album’s excitable energy, and the fact that there’s still plenty of room to explore in the space of these genre labels. The obvious touchstone of Vampire on Titus-era Guided by Voices is here, of course, but so is the high-energy pop of Bob Mould, the fuzzy psychedelic garage rock of early Elephant 6 bands, the charming underdog rock of Sparklehorse, and the more modern experimentation of Mo Troper.

The Sunshine Convention opens with an undeniable noise-pop hit in “Penny Lids”, which wears its Sparklehorse influences quite proudly from the “pennies on his eyelids” title line to the similarities with “Rainmaker”, one of Mark Linkous’ most straightforward fuzz-rock songs. “The Spark” cranks up the amps even more, Whitener’s voice fighting to deliver the melody over the roar, while the humble but loud-sounding power pop of “Dawned on Me” feels particularly Troper-esque.  Whitener recalls some more disparate acts during some of The Sunshine Convention’s less in-your-face songs: “Jars of Stars (The Ballad of Sudden Organ)” pulses and drones in a way that earns the Yo La Tengo nod in its title, and the simple piano ballad of “A Soft Bullet In” reminds me more than anything of Vic Chesnutt. The album doesn’t lose any steam in its second half, with the shoegaze-crawl of “Sister Judy”, the explosive “Fall Away”, and the brief but memorable moments of “101” and “Albatross” all sticking out. There are plenty of bands making this brand of indie rock these days, but few hit the ground running so completely as Whitener has on The Sunshine Convention. (Bandcamp link)

Mopar Stars – Shoot the Moon

Release date: July 19th
Record label: Furo Bungy
Genre: Lo-fi indie rock, power pop, fuzz rock
Formats: Digital
Pull Track: Waiting for the Man

Philadelphia’s Mopar Stars began as the project of Nao Demand, who plays in garage rock/post-punk group Poison Ruïn and metal band Zorn, and now features Bill Magger, Alex Karraba, and Evan Campbell, who have played in bands like Sheer Mag, TVO, and (again) Zorn (all of this information comes from the good music blog Add to Wantlist, who got it by emailing the band directly, as there’s precious little information on them available on the Internet). Mopar Stars is decidedly different than Demand’s heavier fare in that their four-song debut EP is pure, catchy power pop. There are traces of some garage rock, fuzz rock, and alt-rock in Shoot the Moon, to be sure, although these songs sound more similar to The Replacements and The Lemonheads than anything even remotely metal.

There isn’t a dud on Shoot the Moon, although opening track “Waiting for the Man” is hard to beat. Demand’s humble vocals, a healthy amount of distortion, and the band’s workmanlike power chords land the song somewhere between vintage 70s power pop and the friendlier side of Pavement-esque 90s indie rock. There’s a guitar solo here that should be “showy”, but it sounds a lot more modest in Mopar Stars’ hands. “Five Grand” has a little bit of tension, feeling like it builds up to the release of the “Why is it sometimes like that?” refrain, while the jagged edges of “Straight Piped Dodge” don’t dampen its catchiness. “Cold and Loud” rides some more power chords into a slick garage-power-pop anthem–or at least, as “slick” as this casually-presented EP can possibly sound. Hopefully Shoot the Moon augurs more for Mopar Stars than just a one-off side project, as there’s clearly something potent here. (Bandcamp link)

Hello Whirled – Questions for Concerned Citizens

Release date: July 7th
Record label: Sherilyn Fender
Genre: Lo-fi indie rock, fuzz rock
Formats: Cassette, digital
Pull Track: Winner

We last visited the world of Ben Spizuco at the beginning of 2023, when Pressing Concerns discussed the prolific lo-fi indie rocker’s trio of records that spanned a three-month period from November to January. As readers of the blog have surely come to expect, Spizuco has hardly been idle in the intervening months, putting out (among other things) the “label pitch EP” of live recordings Where Were You When We Made It Big?, the album Fuck Your Process Throw Your Life At Wall (made on unfamiliar equipment with nothing written in advance), and Undreamed Limbs, the debut from Embalming Druid (an intriguing collaboration between Spizuco, Joe Physarum, and Rectangle Creep’s Dan Jircitano). This brings us to Questions for Concerned Citizens, the first Hello Whirled album to be recorded by a full band playing non-remotely, and I believe the second Hello Whirled album (after last year’s Hoping For A Little More…Pizzazz) to be released on cassette.

Spizuco has gotten fairly good at imitating a full band on his recordings in terms of sheer might, but the sense of propulsion that guitarist Danny Loos, bassist Evan White, and drummer Nick Bsales lend Questions for Concerned Citizens is palpable. Hello Whirled is still very much a stage for Spizuco to wring out the tools of 90s indie rock for all they’re worth, but now he’s got a gang of hoodlums to help him pulverize this corpse. “Must We Take Advantage?” is actually led by an electrifying guitar riff as much as Spizuco’s vocals, while “Wood Anniversary” shows the band can present a typical Spizuco lyric in a way that lets it shine when it should. Songs like the stop-start “An Old Darkness” and the loopy “Recoveries” sound like the band feeling their way to potential new avenues for Hello Whirled to explore (and one of these avenues, per “Winner”, is a brand of jangly power pop that Spizuco has frequently circled around but rarely given into completely). I suspect that Ben Spizuco will continue to release music at a clip that will eventually turn Questions for Concerned Citizens into just one chapter of several to follow, but that certainly doesn’t mean it isn’t an exciting one. (Bandcamp link)

James Sardone – Colors

Release date: July 21st
Record label: Fort Lowell
Genre: Synthpop, new wave, indie pop, post-punk
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Colors of Your Brain

Fans of a certain strain of underground indie rock music will recognize North Carolina’s James Sardone as the guitarist of Brickbat, the Wilmington-originating noise rock band that released three records in the 1990s and toured with the likes of Jawbox and The Jesus Lizard. Sardone’s music has certainly evolved since those days, as evidenced by the latest release under his own name, Colors. The five-song EP runs over half an hour in length, although half of that is devoted to a dancefloor-friendly remix of opening track “Colors of Your Brain” and its truncated “radio edit”, meaning that there’s about fifteen minutes and three songs of “new” music, one of which is a cover song. That said, Sardone offers up plenty to enjoy in these three tracks.

Opening track “Colors of Your Brain” is vintage new wave/college rock at its best, with Sardone’s clear vocals leading an instrumental brimming with New Order-esque bass melodies and swooning synths. It’s a sharp pop song that is too strongly-written to fall victim to any sort of mindless retro fetishism, and while follow-up track “Life of Love” isn’t as immediate, it’s arguably even more sonically interesting. Its post-punk influences lurk a bit more under the surface as it adopts a tougher alt-rock posture (even as its lyrics are aggressively optimistic) and even throws in a surprisingly heavy guitar solo. Sardone then pulls into the EP’s centerpiece–a six-and-a-half minute version of Blondie’s “Dreaming”, slowing down the original’s giddy new wave into a slow, deliberate but still starry-eyed synthpop ballad. Sardone incorporates it into Colors’ light-seeming but deep sound effortlessly. (Bandcamp link)

Also notable:

Leave a comment