Pressing Concerns: Silicone Prairie, Steve Marino, Nate Dionne, Six Flags Guy

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On this Thursday edition of Pressing Concerns, we’ll be looking at two records that’ll be coming out tomorrow, July 28th (new albums from Silicone Prairie and Steve Marino), a new EP from Nate Dionne that came out on Tuesday, and an album from Six Flags Guy that came out a couple weeks ago. Earlier this week, I wrote about records from Sunshine Convention, Mopar Stars, Hello Whirled, and James Sardone, and I also went long on the new Upper Wilds album on Tuesday.

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Silicone Prairie – Vol. II

Release date: July 28th
Record label: Feel It
Genre: Garage rock, post-punk, punk rock, power pop, jangle pop
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Serpent in the Grass

Silicone Prairie is the project of Kansas City’s Ian Teeple, who burst onto the scene in 2021 with My Life on the Silicone Prairie, a weirdo lo-fi punk record that zipped frantically between twisted jangle pop, roaring garage rock, and post-punk. Since then, Teeple has joined rising egg punks Sn​õ​õ​per, but Silicone Prairie is still going strong, as evidenced by the imminent release of their sophomore album, the appropriately-titled My Life on the Silicone Prairie Vol. II (or just Vol. II). Although Vol. II still very much feels like a bedroom rock record, it’s polished in comparison to the first Silicone Prairie album. Some of this new feel can probably be chalked up to differences in recording style, or some choice guest musical contributions, but the success of Vol. II comes first and foremost due to Teeple’s songwriting, which is wide-ranging beyond the vast majority of lo-fi garage rockers.

Underneath the Tascam-recorded sheen is a vintage college rock-inspired record, one that reminds me of a more off-the-cuff version of early Game Theory (this is the same territory in which garage pop iconoclast Daniel DiMaggio has been mining), while the psychedelic and country collide in “Victorian Flame” and “Cows” in a distinctly Meat Puppets fashion. Furthering Vol. II’s offbeat pop charm is flute contributed by Lina Dannov on the warped soft rock of “Mirror on the Wall”, and Leslie Butsch’s saxophone on the downcast but catchy “Neon Moon” and the joyous racket of “Elysian Fields”. Although Vol. II clocks in at slightly under a half hour, that’s more than enough time for Silicone Prairie to make their mark–from the intense art punk of opening track “Serpent in the Grass” to the bizarre synth-led psychedelic pop experimentation of album closer “The Minotaur”, there’s no shortage of fully-developed and executed ideas on the record. (Bandcamp link)

Steve Marino – Too Late to Start Again

Release date: July 28th
Record label: Pop Wig
Genre: Power pop, alt-rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Tune You Out

Steve Marino will be familiar to regular readers of Rosy Overdrive as the lead vocalist and guitarist of Bloomington, Indiana’s Jacky Boy, who released the solid Mush last year, and as the rhythm guitarist for punk-goes-power-poppers Angel Du$t (recently upgraded from touring to full-time member). As of late, Marino (who’s originally from Florida) has relocated from Bloomington to Los Angeles, and now has a full-on solo album to deliver as well. Too Late to Start Again is Marino’s second album under his own name (following 2019’s Fluff), and it continues exploring power pop like Marino’s bands do, albeit from a more wistful and “singer-songwriter”-based perspective. Marino grabs onto the floating sounds of Teenage Fanclub (he even covers “I Don’t Want Control of You” on the album, to say nothing of the record’s title’s evocation of TFC’s “Start Again”) as well as Britpop and 90s adult alternative in order to complete this album’s sonic range.

Marino eases Too Late to Start Again in with the low-key jangle of “Satisfy You”, a song that builds slowly and patiently to its ace chorus. The record then offers up a couple of smooth pieces of alt-rock in “Comedown” (which wields its late-90s drumbeat and three-chord hook expertly) and “Got You (In My World Now)” (a downbeat number with just a hint of Britpop contained therein). The peppy “Tune You Out” kicks off side two of Too Late to Start Again with the album’s biggest power pop moment, sounding like a lost Gin Blossoms or Lemonheads single, although the more subtle charms of the fuzzy “Blue” and the acoustic-rocking “Love You More Than Before” stick out towards the end of the album as well. Marino’s sparse “I Don’t Want Control of You” cover ends the record even more humbly than it begins, its eternal melody sitting along with the rest of Too Late to Start Again as if it’d always been there. (Bandcamp link)

Nate Dionne – Fantasy

Release date: July 25th
Record label: Gentle Reminder/Home Late
Genre: Lo-fi indie rock, garage rock, fuzz rock
Formats: Cassette, digital
Pull Track: In Blood

Although I hadn’t heard of Nate Dionne by name before now, the Philadelphia-based musician has been in a ton of noteworthy bands over the past decade and a half: Snowing, Glocca Morra, Dogs on Acid, Yankee Bluff. Dionne’s debut under his own name came with 2020’s Love Is Always Worth It, and he’s followed it up three years later with a new five-song EP, Fantasy. Although Dionne’s past credits hew towards the emo side of the spectrum, this doesn’t really describe Fantasy, which instead dives headfirst into fuzzy, lo-fi, noisy 90s-inspired indie rock. There’s nary a trace of twinkly math rock on this EP, which ranges from anarchic garage punk at its loudest to sleepy bedroom pop at its quietest. Perhaps the clearest connection to Dionne’s past work here is that, despite it being abrasive on the surface, there’s plenty to like going on underneath.

Fantasy kicks off on a relatively friendly note despite the fuzz with opening track “Delta”, a five-minute, multi-part indie rock statement of a beginning, and continues to welcome with the lo-fi pop of “In Blood”, an in-the-red hook-y tune that gets it done and two and a half minutes. Don’t get too comfortable with this side of Nate Dionne, however; the assaulting noise punk of “SWP” then comes swooping in to shake any of that complacency out of you. The rest of Fantasy brings back the pop, albeit in different ways–the ramshackle fuzz-rock of “Drawn On” is one last successful attempt at recreating the opening two songs, while the closing title track surprisingly veers into synth-drone bedroom pop that’s reminiscent of Ylayali, or what his former Snowing bandmate John Galm is doing in Bad Heaven Ltd. “Fantasy” hangs around for a couple minutes after the synths end, knowing full well that it’s already given more than enough for a five-song lo-fi indie rock EP. (Bandcamp link)

Six Flags Guy – And Nothing Did So What

Release date: July 14th
Record label: 329
Genre: Post-rock, noise rock, 90s indie rock, post-hardcore, slowcore
Formats: Digital
Pull Track: Work Song

Six Flags Guy are an Ohio band–I believe they’re based in Columbus, although they have some connection to Athens as well. The three full members seem to be Jonah Krueger, RJ Martin, and Collin Kelley, although a few other people contribute to the recordings you hear on And Nothing Did So What, the band’s first album. The band refers to themselves as a post-rock group, and their debut record bears this out–specifically of the Slint/Unwound/Touch & Go/Quarterstick version of this genre of music, the kind that grew out of post-hardcore and American indie rock in the nineties. The album’s eight songs wander through smoky, dingy soundscapes unmoored from recognizable structure, with subtle vocals and guitar work both ready to launch into a frenzy of noise at any given moment.

Every song on And Nothing Did So What feels like a journey, even the ones that clock in at “only” four minutes or so. Opening track “John Wayne” and its muffled but aggrieved spoken-word vocals are hardly the most welcome opening to the world of Six Flags Guy, but the song certainly works as a tone-setter, and perhaps prepares you for the way “Hunger Art” coils and strikes and coils up again. “Albert Sleeps in the Drivers Seat” features an instrumental that stays “pretty” throughout, although the second side of And Nothing Did So What is perhaps the more accessible one. Helena Karlstrom’s vocals on “Yeah Right Okay” helps deliver an eerily beautiful post-punk-tinged tune, while both “XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX (Credit Card Guy)” and “Work Song” are massive, multi-movement songs that stand as guitar-based post-rock achievements–particularly the latter’s matter-of-fact post-hardcore finale. And Nothing Did So What strongly evokes a specific era of indie rock, although it does so with a host of new ideas and well-built songs. (Bandcamp link)

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