Pressing Concerns: Diners, Sonic Youth, Leopard Print Taser, Big Bliss

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Welcome to Thursday’s Pressing Concerns! Today, we’ve got four albums that come out tomorrow, August 18th: new full-lengths from Diners, Leopard Print Taser, and Big Bliss, and a live album from Sonic Youth. If you missed Monday’s post, featuring William Matheny, Perfect Angel at Heaven, Jason Allen Millard, and Sundays & Cybele, check that one out too.

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.

Diners – Domino

Release date: August 18th
Record label: Bar None
Genre: Power pop, indie pop
Formats: Vinyl, cassette, digital
Pull Track: Someday I’ll Go Surfing

For over a decade, Diners’ Blue Broderick has been putting out her version of pop music, one that pulled from 60s studio pop rock but in a way that reflected Diners’ lo-fi, casual roots. Domino is the prolific Broderick’s seventh full-length album, and the first since she moved from Phoenix to Los Angeles. The album represents another first for Diners–working closely with producer, multi-instrumentalist, and power pop scholar Mo Troper, Broderick takes a turn for the louder, rockier, and full-band-embracing on her latest record. Although pulling a more pronounced influence from 70s power pop was Troper’s idea (and his forceful drumming certainly aids it as well), Broderick describes Domino as “the rock record that [she] always wanted to make”. Indeed, the Diners of Domino (Broderick, Troper, and guitarist Brenden Ramirez) consistently put together songs that don’t abandon the project’s previous sound so much as punch it up.

Domino opens with a song that displays this clearly in “Working on My Dreams”, a track that sports both a simply yet effective catchy melody from Broderick and a slick rock band backing that excitedly ushers the song forward. Domino might not get mistaken for a punk record, exactly, but it’s certainly in a higher gear–the breezy “Someday I’ll Go Surfing” and the cruising title track are power pop in its purest form, hooky and sturdy, while the Troper-esque “The Power” and the almost-new-wave-y “So What” further expand the scope of Diners. Like a lot of the 60s music that forms the starting point for Broderick’s sound, Domino feels like it has a clearly-defined Side A and Side B. The second half of the record is subtler and quieter–but that doesn’t mean that Broderick isn’t still taking advantage of the full band. The lazy-sounding but deft guitar work on “Painted Pictures” and the meandering tempo of “I Don’t Think About You” are just as invigorated as the louder tracks (and the flip side’s one real rocker, “From My Pillow”, is as strong as anything in the first five). Broderick had apparently considered changing the name of the project from Diners to something else for the album’s release, and while I do think Domino makes sense as a Diners album, it’s exciting that she sees it as the beginning of something new as well. (Bandcamp link)

Sonic Youth – Live in Brooklyn 2011

Release date: August 18th
Record label: Silver Current
Genre: Noise rock, experimental rock
Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital
Pull Track: Death Valley ‘69

One classic enrichment activity for music writers, musicians, and music nerds in general is the endless debate over “the greatest rock band of all-time”, or “the greatest American band of all-time”. It’s not about your “favorite” band, you see–you’re supposed to find the band that most meets some nebulous objective criteria that earns them this prestigious award. Listening to the Sonic Youth of Live in Brooklyn 2011, however, makes these arguments feel like the hollow time-killers that they are. On this recording of the quartet’s last-ever North American show, you get to hear a band ripping through seventeen songs and 90 minutes’ worth of a thirty-year career with a confident energy that, if anything, had gotten stronger with time, and in a way that bridges the gap between the Sonic Youth of 1983 and 2009 seamlessly–what more could you possibly want?

Although Sonic Youth followed through and played five November 2011 festival shows in South America that had been scheduled before Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon’s separation the previous month, the August 12th show at Brooklyn’s Williamsburg Waterfront is sort of viewed by the band as the last “true” Sonic Youth show. The Steve Shelley-developed setlist is a brilliant showcase, beginning with several old Sonic Youth “classics” that sound absolutely vital here (“Brave Men Run (In My Family)” and “Death Valley ‘69” in particular), and the songs from 2009’s The Eternal (“Sacred Trickster”, “Calming the Snake”) get incorporated in a way that makes me realize I’ve never appreciated that record enough. The band pull heavily from their canonical 1980s years here, although the DGC-era cuts (a sprawling, eight-minute “Sugar Kane”, an inspired noisy deep pull in “Starfield Road”, and a sharp version of the title track from Moore’s Psychic Hearts solo album) sound like the band holds just as much fondness for them. There are bursts of noise throughout the recording, but Live in Brooklyn 2011 underscores just how tuned-in they were as a rock and roll band, a force of nature that was almost (but unfortunately, not entirely) unstoppable for their three-decade reign. (Bandcamp link)

Leopard Print Taser – Existential Bathroom Graffiti

Release date: August 18th
Record label: Knife Hits
Genre: Noise rock, post-punk
Formats: Cassette, digital
Pull Track: Esta Festa Me Molesta

Boston’s Leopard Print Taser have been around since 2017, touring heavily and releasing two EPs, but the Existential Bathroom Graffiti cassette is the quartet’s first-ever full-length album. The record certainly shows a band (made up of Leila Bower, Reid Calkin, Shannon Donahue, and Nicholas Wolf) that’s locked in together over the past half-decade of their existence. The group don’t put too much stock in bells and whistles, preferring to use a two-guitar rock band attack on each song, as they swerve between Sonic Youth-esque noise rock, meaty post-punk, fast-paced garage rock, and even a bit of snotty hardcore influence here and there. The band’s sound is indebted to 90s indie rock in a way that puts them in line with fellow Knife Hits bands like Thousandaire and Rid of Me, though Bower’s vocals certainly help the band stand out among this pack.

Leopard Print Taser hit the ground running with “One Inch Gut Punch”, a pounding indie-noise-rock tune with the band firing on all cylinders. Songs like “Esta Festa Me Molesta” and “Otherside” showcase the band’s poppier side, even though the former’s lyrics are quite blistering and the latter features a nice, deep low-end. On the other end of the spectrum, the band delve into dirty punk rock with the accusatory “Y U Lie” and the lean “Big Shot”. Most of Existential Bathroom Graffiti falls between these two extremes, including highlights like the chugging “India Ink”, which marries a light-sounding vocal with a pulverizing instrumental, the prowling post-punk of “Deep Dive”, and the propulsive garage rock of “Lead the Charge”. The album ends with the blistering “Family LLC”, a song that lambasts the manipulative power of small businesses who claim to treat their employees “like family”, as well as actual family members who use blood relation as a weapon. Rejecting these false structures as a four-piece band that sounds completely in sync with one another is a sharp closing statement. (Bandcamp link)

Big Bliss – Vital Return

Release date: August 18th
Record label: Good Eye
Genre: Post-punk, alt-rock, college rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Tether

Brooklyn group Big Bliss formed in the mid-2010s, and the trio of Cory Race, Tim Race, and Wallace May put out an EP and album on Exit Stencil Recordings in 2016 and 2018, respectively. The five-year gap between their first album and their aptly-titled sophomore record, Vital Return, seems to have been an eventful one for the band. Tim and Cory (who are brothers) dealt with the loss of their father, at least one member of the band began the long road to sobriety, original attempts to record the record were scuttled by the pandemic, and May eventually moved across the country to California, leaving the band (but not before contributing to the recording of Vital Return). The record finally emerges on Good Eye (Personal Space, Scarves, Zoo), and the Races have recruited bassist Rose Blanshei and guitarist Dan Peskin to round out the live band and keep Big Bliss active in their new era.

Vital Return is a post-punk album, although it’s neither of the dance-y Gang of Four variety nor the noisy Fall-esque kind that dominate the modern post-punk landscape. The band is inspired by the slow-moving, anthemic beauty of bands like Echo & the Bunnymen, early U2, and the parts of Joy Division that don’t get ripped off as much to make a sound that pulls from the sweeping, serious end of college rock. “A Seat at the Table” opens the record by building its chanting vocals to an emphatic chorus, while “Sleep Paralysis” mixes darkness and light in a big-picture-thinking way. Tim’s writing matches the grandiosity of the band, particularly in the addiction struggle of “Tether” and in “Sediment”, a song about the Races’ late father’s struggle with PTSD after his time in Vietnam. Vital Return is an album with plenty of ambition, but Tim’s lyrics ensure that these songs connect on a reachable level as well. (Bandcamp link)

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