Pressing Concerns: Annie Hart, Maple Stave, Podcasts, Shredded Sun

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Welcome to Pressing Concerns Monday! Last Friday was such a big release day that even though I’ve already written about five albums that came out last week, today we’ve got four more records from the first week of August to discuss: new albums from Annie Hart, Maple Stave, and Podcasts, and a new EP from Shredded Sun.

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.

Annie Hart – The Weight of a Wave

Release date: August 4th
Record label: Uninhabitable Mansions
Genre: Synthpop, indie pop
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Boy You Got Me Good

New York’s Annie Hart has had a busy and full music career over the past twenty years. From 2005 to 2013, she put out four albums as part of synthpop trio Au Revoir Simone, and she’s also released a solo album every other year since 2017. At the same time, Hart has developed a parallel career scoring films that led to her entering the world of modern music composition, working with the likes of the Atlantic Center for the Arts. With all this going on, Hart’s fourth album, The Weight of a Wave, makes it clear that the singer-songwriter is still in touch with her synthpop roots. These ten indie pop tunes sound sharply-written and -recorded but not overly labored-on or too busy-sounding–Hart cites krautrock as an influence, and the minimal presentation of these pieces of synthesizer-driven songs bear this out.

The Weight of a Wave opens with a golden pop tune in “Boy You Got Me Good”, a beautiful, bass-driven display of 80s new wave/synthpop with a killer but still somewhat understated hook from Hart. The zippy tempo and distorted guitar of “A Crowded Cloud” isn’t exactly “punk rock”, but it adds some extra “oomph” to Hart’s disorienting power pop. The mid-tempo chant of “A Lot of Thought” dives head-first into big old pure synthpop, once again offering up a key melodic hook to push this one over the line. The Weight of a Wave might sneakily have a stronger side two than side one–at least three of Hart’s best pop songs come in the second half. The chiming, wide-open pop of “What Makes Me Me” polishes a lyric that, perhaps intentionally, adds an extra shade of depth to the entirety of the album’s embrace of brightness and catchiness, while the sharp and peppy “Stop Staring at You” is undeniable in its own right and the disembodied, floating, analog synth-led dream pop of “Nothing Makes Me Happy Anymore” makes a strong statement with its bare structure. The similarly simple-but-heavy “While Without” closes the album with a sense of finality and survival, capping what ends up as a full-realized pop record. (Bandcamp link)

Maple Stave – Arguments

Release date: August 1st
Record label: Self-released
Genre: Noise rock, post-hardcore
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
Pull Track: Indian Ocean, Present Day

Vocalist/baritone guitarist Chris Williams, baritone guitarist Andy Hull, and drummer Evan Rowe formed Maple Stave in Durham, North Carolina in 2003. Throughout the 2000s and early 2010s, the trio put out two albums and four EPs of 90s Touch and Go-inspired noise rock, but they’d been quiet since 2016’s V. In the seven years between records, Maple Stave added a new member for the first time–bassist Chris Rasmussen (of Racetrack) joined in 2019, and while the Seattle-based fourth member doesn’t join them for all live shows, his presence is felt on Arguments, the long-awaited third Maple Stave album. Recorded at Electrical Audio, their new album is nine songs and thirty-three minutes of low-end heavy, downtuned, but still limber noise rock/post-hardcore, the darkness of the music countered by Williams’ high, clear, and dramatic vocals.

Arguments kicks off with “Indian Ocean, Present Day”, a song with an icy, pounding, Swans-esque opening that morphs into a sharp, bass-driven post-punk/alt-rock anthem with a soaring chorus. This dynamic continues in the first half of the record with “The French Song”, another song that balances catchiness, heaviness, and pure drama. Of the album’s three instrumental tracks, two of them are among the first four songs on the record–a bold move, but the tough fuzz of “Good Luck in Green Bay” and the math-y “Downtown Julie Brown” are both quality additions to the record. In the middle of Arguments, the post-hardcore tension of “Cincinnati Hairpiece” is the band’s most Dischord-y moment, while the second half of the album plows on full steam ahead with “Thunderkiss ‘85” and “I’m Not Tied to Pretty”, two of the biggest-sounding songs on the record. Twenty years into their career, Maple Stave are still on the offensive. (Bandcamp link)

Podcasts – Podcasts

Release date: August 4th
Record label: Prefect
Genre: Indie pop, post-punk, jangle pop
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Summerland, 1992

The annoyingly-named Podcasts are an Oslo-originating four-piece band made up of Ellis Jones, Kyle Devine, Tore Størvold and Emil Kraugerud, who all apparently met as co-workers in 2018 (Jones is perhaps most well-known for leading the Bristol band Trust Fund, a group I know a lot of people love but with whom I’m mostly unfamiliar). Work on their self-titled debut album began in late 2019 following the release of their first single–delayed by COVID-19, Podcasts finally arrives this month via Prefect Records (The Telephone Numbers, Ex-Vöid, EggS). Loosely speaking, Podcasts fit well on Prefect’s roster of British (and British-inspired) guitar-based indie pop groups, although there’s a trickiness to their debut album as well, displaying the band’s fondness for unexpected twists and turns in their pop songs.

Although it’s only their first album, Podcasts clearly shows the band has gelled as a four-piece with the way they pull off some of the more complex turns on the record with confidence. Opening track “Stor lordags kveld / No Singing in the Gym” displays this from the get-go, darting from the first to the second half of the title by completely changing up the song. Tracks like “Summerland, 1992” and “Cockatoos” have a bit of jangle pop in them, with the former also exploring the fractured pop world of 90s American indie rock and the latter delivering its guitar melodies as straightforwardly as Podcasts can allow. Podcasts moves forward as the album goes on, with the second half of the album feeling more post-punk-indebted, from the garage-y new wave of “Dragging the Lake” to the repetition of the title track to the fuzzy sing-speaking of “The Unbearable Lightness of Being Drunk”.  One of the more intriguing new(ish) bands I’ve heard lately, I guess what I’m saying is: listen to Podcasts. (Bandcamp link)

Shredded Sun – Translucent Eyes

Release date: August 4th
Record label: Self-released
Genre: Garage rock, psychedelic pop
Formats: Digital
Pull Track: The Dark at the Top of the Stairs

Back in February, Chicago’s Shredded Sun released Each Dot and Each Line, an incredibly enjoyable mix of fuzz rock, garage-punk, psych pop, and power pop that ended up being one of my favorite albums of the year so far. The trio of bassist/vocalist Sarah Ammerman, guitarist/vocalist Nick Ammerman, and drummer Ben Bilow have played together a long time (in Fake Fiction in the 2000s, in this band for the better part of the past decade), a chemistry that’s apparent both on Each Dot and Each Line and its follow-up, the surprise-release four song Translucent Eyes EP. Nick Ammerman has described the record as “one psychedelic summer ballad, three trashy stompers”, and the EP does indeed continue to reflect the dexterity of Shredded Sun in this fashion.

The opening title track is the longest song on the EP by a good measure, stretching nearly to five minutes–I believe this would be Translucent Eyes’ “psychedelic summer ballad”. It’s a gorgeous and restrained song, with Nick’s vocals and the guitar accents giving it something of a “looser Yo La Tengo” feeling. Sarah takes the lead for the EP’s two middle songs, the snotty surf-punk of “Tough Love” and the sneering garage-punk swagger of “Sick Inside”, both of which back up their energy with inspired performances from the band. Shredded Suns save the best pop moment on Translucent Eyes for last with “The Dark at the Top of the Stairs”, with Sarah joining Nick in the chorus to cap an exciting three-minute carousel ride of bashed-out chord progressions, a sing-song melody, and a weirdly captivating keyboard hook. It’s nice to have new music from Shredded Sun again so quickly, especially when Translucent Eyes lives up to the highs of their last release. (Bandcamp link)

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