Pressing Concerns: The 1981, Cime, House & Hawk, Knife the Symphony

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Happy Monday! In a particularly eclectic edition of Pressing Concerns, today’s post looks at new albums from The 1981, House & Hawk, and Knife the Symphony, and a new EP from Cime. There’s something for everyone here–even you!

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.

The 1981 – Move On

Release date: August 18th
Record label: Dandy Boy
Genre: Jangle pop, indie pop, post-punk, dream pop
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Capture My Condition

The 1981, who are probably the best band going that’s named after a year, are the Oakland-based duo of Adam Widener–who released a solid album earlier this year as Pure Material–and Bobby Martinez–who runs Dandy Boy Records (Weird Numbers, Forest Bees, R.E. Seraphin). The hazy bedroom pop of Pure Material’s Orange Whip Licorice is a good starting point for how Widener’s other project sounds, although The 1981 (who have been slowly trickling out music since 2018, including two COVID-era covers EPs) offers more of a robust, full-band take on this sound. The 1981 sport a distinct sound throughout their debut full-length record, with Widener and Martinez pulling from several areas of alternative music history to make up the instrumentals of Move On–C86 indie pop, Flying Nun lo-fi, dream pop, 80s new wave and post-punk all feel incorporated here.

Move On has been a while in the making. Three songs from the record previously appeared on last year’s Polaroids EP, and the oldest of these, “Easy (It’s Not)”, dates all the way back to 2019 (“Nelson’s Camera” sounds pretty different from its earlier version, although the others are, I believe, the original recordings). Widener’s calm-sounding vocals help Move On feel like it’s on the quieter and more pensive side of guitar pop, although he and Martinez sneakily make a lot of noise on a few of these songs–the opening trio of the stomping “Capture My Condition”, the melodic-guitar-stuffed “Easy (It’s Not)”, and the post-punky “Mona Lisa” sound particularly spirited. The 1981 have effectively deemed Move On a breakup album, and while for the most part the music feels more emphasized than the lyrics, there are moments when the themes become more visible (like the slippery “I Love You”, which follows up its titular line with “…but I kinda hate you, too”). Changes throughout Move On are small, but noticeable–as the record progresses, side two highlights like “Expiration Date”, “Empty Eyes”, and “Moving On” feel a little looser, perhaps mirroring the unraveling at the heart of the album. Either way, The 1981 find a way to present a full picture over the course of Move On. (Bandcamp link)

Cime – Laurels of the End of History

Release date: August 18th
Record label: Syzygy/BSDJ
Genre: Art punk, post-punk, noise rock, experimental rock
Formats: Cassette, digital
Pull Track: The Lost Last Man

One of the most unique-sounding records I’ve heard this year has to be Laurels of the End of History, the latest EP from Cime. Cime is the project of one Monty Cime, a southern California-based Honduran trans woman who released her debut album, The Independence of Central America Remains an Unfinished Experiment, last year. Cime’s one-sentence description of their latest release is “a 20-minute Latin megamix cassette you found unlabelled in a garage sale being performed by a noise rock band”, and while I’m not sure that’s entirely an accurate pitch, it’s also not wrong, and it does get at the fact that the EP sounds like nothing else I’ve heard in recent memory. Laurels of the End of History throws a lot at the listener both thematically and instrumentally–Cime plays no less than seventeen instruments on the EP, and there’s about a dozen guest musicians credited here in addition to her. 

Cime embraces the “mixtape” aspect of the record by rolling together a half-dozen songs that are all pretty different from each other in a way that locks them into one piece. In particular, the way the EP’s middle four songs bleed into each other is satisfying–the bass-driven “La Granadera”, the corrupted-sounding “City on a Hill”, the one-minute gallop of “Yoro”, and the horn-heavy “Spectres of Che” end up sounding like one giant beast of a song. Even as the instrumentals dart from style to style, the tracks are held together by Cime’s folk music-esque lyrics that call for casting off the baggage and exploitation of the past in order to build a better and brighter future. And while the album’s final track certainly continues this thread, the eight-minute “The Lost Last Man” demands to be taken on its own. Cime builds tension and releases it–the first five minutes are noisy, cacophonous free-jazz punk, as Cime paints a dire picture before erupting into a searing cowpunk conclusion: “The cowboys died alone and divided / The natives died alone and divided / Our spirit dies alone when divided”. It’s a warning, but Laurels of the End of History and its array of musical ideas is also a declaration that these aforementioned groups are, in some way, still very much alive and with us. (Bandcamp link)

House & Hawk – 4

Release date: July 13th
Record label: Heavy River
Genre: Synthpop, sophisti-pop, new wave, indie pop
Formats: CD, digital
Pull Track: I Need a Friend

I hadn’t heard of them before now, but the Pittsburgh duo of Alexander Strung and Steve Ninehouser have been making music together as House & Hawk for a decade. House & Hawk has been putting out a steady drip of singles and records since 2013; the aptly-titled 4 is their fourth full-length album, which makes sense, because I doubt many bands start out sounding like the band do here. 4 is a fascinating pop album–everything from 80s sophisti-pop, turn-of-the-century indie rock, synthpop, psychedelia, and prog color these eleven songs. Ninehouser cites Pinback, New Order, and Steely Dan (among others) as points of reference, a grouping that kind of feels like a “random influence generator”, and yet the album does sound like all of these in various parts. I’d throw in Peter Gabriel (and Genesis in general) in there as well–in no small part due to Strung’s voice, but also in House & Hawk’s ability to hit the pop bullseye in the midst of the grandiose.

The steady drumbeat of “Awestruck” gives way to a kaleidoscopic environment of synths with plenty of melodies contained therein–although none are as captivating as the one delivered by Strung’s voice. This sets the stage for much of 4–musically ambitious, but with Strung’s vocals always leading the way from the center. The brisk percussion and circular keyboards that compose “Resistance (Tribute)” continue the record in the same vein, but then “I Need a Friend” sends the band surprisingly into chugging mid-tempo indie rock territory (without sounding out of place). The golden chorus of “Forever Hot” rises up from the minimalist electronica of its verses, while the slow-moving “Private Elevator” shows off some of the band’s “studio pop” influences. The one song that really leans into the loose, fuzzy guitar-rock of House & Hawk’s past comes on the record’s second side–“That’s Rich” nevertheless has a darker undercurrent that lets it fit in with the rest of 4. Still, the record ends with the duo of “Let’s Make a Movie” and “Just a Million Miles”, two songs that reflect what House & Hawk do best on 4: combining expressive vocals and the sound of machines to make something emotionally resonant and real-sounding. (Bandcamp link)

Knife the Symphony – All the Wrong Turns Taken to Get Here

Release date: June 30th
Record label: Phratry
Genre: Noise rock, post-hardcore
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
Pull Track: Wildling I / Islands

There’s some very good rock music coming out of Cincinnati these days, and it’s time to add noise rock trio Knife the Symphony to the list. Not that they’re a new band–their first album came out all the way back in 2008, and although they put out a handful of split releases in the 2010s, All the Wrong Turns Taken to Get Here actually appears to be the first new music from the group in six years. Still, their new album has the energy and fire of a young and hungry group–one that’s still invigorated by 80s underground rock and punk (if you like all things Touch & Go, Amphetamine Reptile, and Dischord–well, Knife the Symphony do, too). It’s risky business comparing an album to Yank Crime, but between the shredded-but-focused vocals and the propulsive power-trio format that guitarist Jeff Albers, bassist Seth Longland, and drummer Jerry Dirr frequently assume throughout All the Wrong Turns Taken to Get Here, I’m going to go ahead and say I’m allowed to do it here.

All the Wrong Turns Taken to Get Here opens with Knife the Symphony in full “pummel” mode with “Wildling I / Islands”, an excellent little piece of some Unwound-esque circling the drain. The band then step on the gas with the garage-punk/post-hardcore showdown of “Boulevard Inn”, a mode that they lock into several more times on All the Wrong Turns Taken to Get Here to great effect (particularly in “Gouge” and “Causation”). Don’t get too comfortable with Knife the Symphony’s tinnitus-baiting main gear, however; the first sonic surprise is the winding, nearly-two minute post-rock intro to “Sequestered”, and then “Mile Marker” does it one better by being an entirely acoustic-based song. This range shades the rest of the album–the six-minute “A Light Withheld / Thermo-Man” similarly wanders the depths before exploding into a fiery noise rock conclusion, and the album ends with “Wildling II”, a banjo-led instrumental that veers even further into folky ambience–an unorthodox conclusion for this kind of album, but perfectly in line with Knife the Symphony. (Bandcamp link)

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