Pressing Concerns: Star 99, Onesie, Pretty in Pink, Telemarket

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Ah, the rare Tuesday Pressing Concerns! I hope you had a nice Labor Day weekend; here’s some good music to take with you back into the working week. New albums from Star 99, Onesie, Pretty in Pink, and Telemarket are featured here today, and I must say, this is a really strong one. If you don’t know these albums yet, get ready. You’re gonna enjoy them!

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.

Star 99 – Bitch Unlimited

Release date: August 4th
Record label: Lauren
Genre: Power pop, pop punk, twee
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Vegas

I don’t know too much about Star 99, although I can recognize a winner when I hear one. I do know that they’re a San Jose-based quartet made up of vocalist/guitarist Saoirse Alesandro, vocalist/guitarist Thomas Romero, bassist Chris Gough, and drummer Jeremy Romero (thanks, BrooklynVegan). I also know that Bitch Unlimited is their debut album (following EPs in 2021 and 2022), but that the members have played in Bay Area bands for a while, which makes sense, given how the album sounds. I’m not the first person to point this out, but Bitch Unlimited has that unmistakable sound of early 2010s indie-pop-punk, the stuff that was spreading organically across the United States via bands like Cayetana, Lemuria, P.S. Eliot, Chumped, and countless others (such as fellow Bay Area group Joyride!) that will probably never get enough recognition for how they shaped the state of indie rock today.

Bitch Unlimited is ten songs and 26 minutes long, and just about every second of it is crammed with hooks. Star 99’s philosophy seems to be that there’s nothing that can’t be made into excellent, catchy, fizzy, and quite memorable power pop. Of course, this is certainly aided by the band being well-stocked in the “compelling frontperson” department–Alesandro is the more expressive of the two, and seems to deliver the greater share of the most quotable lines (“To the human condition, I stand in regular determined opposition” in “Cosmic Glue”, and “Poured a glass of water out, it was calcium and lead / An opportunity to recognize that my brain’s a harbinger of death” in “Vegas”, there’s a couple), but Romero’s four songs are made of the same catchy DNA and contain no dips in quality. No matter who’s at the helm, Bitch Unlimited rolls through moments of indie pop rock bliss without fail–the guitar solo reflecting Alesandro’s frustration in “Cosmic Glue”, the dual vocals and keyboard hook in “Jackie”, the way that Alesandro pauses in the middle of singing “small town aristocracy” in “Girl”. All of these wrinkles give Bitch Unlimited an outsized personality, landing punch after punch the whole way through. (Bandcamp link)

Onesie – Liminal Hiss

Release date: August 18th
Record label: Totally Real/Pillow Sail/Kool Kat Musik
Genre: Jangle pop, power pop, psych pop
Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital
Pull Track: Anemone in Lemonade

Brooklyn quartet Onesie has been at it since 2017; last month’s Liminal Hiss is their third full-length album, but the first one I’d heard from them. Based on their latest record, however, this is a group that’s incredibly up my alley–bandleader Ben Haberland immediately establishes himself as an ace pop songwriter, and the band (also featuring guitarist Lori Bingel, drummer Will Whatley, and bassist Chris Bordeaux) deftly steer his songs through dazzling arrangements of jangle pop, power pop, and psychedelic pop. Onesie have a rock edge to them, although they deploy it strategically–sometimes the ornate touches let the band’s love of 60s/70s studio-based pop rock come through, while some of the looser moments on Liminal Hiss imagine The Chills as a more freewheeling, 90s indie rock-inspired group (like if the Flying Nun bands had taken influence from Pavement and Guided by Voices, instead of the other way around).

The first half of Liminal Hiss is a barrage of warped pop hooks that nevertheless comes through loud and clear. “Permaspring” contains both lethal doses of jangling guitars and stomping power pop, and the swerving chord changes after the chorus reflect the oddball side of Onesie as well as anything. “Cash for Trash” and “Rat Island” also effortlessly stitch together a few different exciting ideas to make multifaceted, captivating pop songs, while “What You Kill” holds back just enough to let its post-chorus guitar stabs hit even harder. The guitar heroics of “Anemone in Lemonade” remind me a bit of the math rock-adjacent latest album from Curling, another band great at finding pop music in unexpected places. Liminal Hiss’ B-side is only “calmer” in comparison to Side A–all these songs still have strong melodies, with “Another Day in the Experiment” and “Let Me Guess” in particular acquitting themselves as top-tier jangle pop, and the whole thing ends with “Live Yuppie Scum”, a piece of prog-pop where Onesie really test the limits of their sound, with fascinating results. Of course, there’s still plenty of hooks in “Live Yuppie Scum”; Onesie never stop delivering those. (Bandcamp link)

Pretty in Pink – Pillows

Release date: September 1st
Record label: Hidden Bay/Subjangle/Little Lunch
Genre: Indie pop, lo-fi pop
Formats: CD, cassette, digital
Pull Track: Pressure Socks

Pillows is the sophomore album from Pretty in Pink, a Hobart-originating, Melbourne-based Aussie trio who make charming, minimal edge-of-the-world guitar pop. Guitarist/vocalist Claire McCarthy, guitarist Lauren Mason, and bassist/drummer Elliot Taylor unite various strains of indie pop from multiple continents with their deceptively humble but deep sound—there’s a melancholy streak to them that reminds me of their Melbourne forebearers in The Cat’s Miaow, their lo-fi attitude reflects both U.S. Pacific Northwest twee and New Zealand’s Flying Nun, and their spare arrangements make it unsurprising that Cardiff’s Young Marble Giants are a frequent point of comparison. Nevertheless, Pillows isn’t weighed down by indie pop history, cultivating a distinct sound led by McCarthy’s aching, bare lyrics and vocals left hanging out in the ether by sparse instrumentals.

“Pressure Socks”, the song that opens up Pillows, is something of a red herring in its particularly Colossal Youth-esque exercise in timing and sharply-deployed, minimal but quite catchy guitar leads–the rest of the record comes off much more loose. The album follows that up with “Pale Blue”, a truly despairing piece of music, and the creeping “No One Else” also marks a highlight of the record’s first side. The second half of Pillows moves forward uneasily, while containing some surprises as well, like the way McCarthy’s vocals take an unexpected turn in the chorus of “Radishes”. The album sneakily has one of the better B-sides that I’ve heard this year–the incredibly sparse “Turtles” is the most haunting song on the album, while “Butterflies” arranges Pretty in Pink’s base elements into a perfect indie pop song that most bands only dream of writing. “Star” ends the record with just a bit of fuzzy guitar over top of a typical Pretty in Pink instrumental–like the rest of Pillows, it remains eye contact until the very end. (Bandcamp link)

Telemarket – Ad Nauseam

Release date: August 25th
Record label: Cloud Recordings/Science Project
Genre: 90s indie rock, noise pop
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Who Was in My Room Last Night?

Telemarket is an indie rock quintet led by singer-songwriter-guitarist Adam Wayton, and rounded out by several members of the Athens, Georgia music scene in guitarist/vocalist Will Wise, bassist Hunter Pinkston, drummer Jack Colclough, and vocalist/keyboardist Josie Callahan. The band’s been kicking around for a while (their first EP came out in 2018) but Ad Nauseam is their proper full-length debut, and it’s an intriguing record of warped 90s-inspired indie rock (their Bandcamp description: “phone scam slacker rock”). Although I hear more of The Grifters, Sebadoh, and even Swirlies than their hometown scene of Elephant 6, the weirder moments from that collective certainly bubble up on a few of Ad Nauseam’s thirteen songs (to the point where its release on Elephant 6 veteran John Kiran Fernandes’ Cloud Recordings makes perfect sense).

As soon as the bizarre snippet of the opening title track gives way to the record’s dozen “proper” songs, Telemarket make it clear that we’re in for some fuzzy, distorted pop music. “Who Was in My Room Last Night?” is a weird but welcoming piece of warped, layered lo-fi psychedelia reminiscent of early Olivia Tremor Control, making it one of the most overtly Elephant 6 tracks on Ad Nauseum. The revved-up tones of “How’s About Now” flirt with shoegaze, while “In the Morning” is weirdo-noise-cow-punk at its finest. Ad Nauseum keeps the offbeat energy up throughout the album, whether it’s the heavy textures of “Under the Sun”, the Ramones-in-a-basement thrashing of “Through My Head”, or the multilayered psychedelia of “Big Bend”. Wayton and the band do offer up a few breaks in the noise, like the acoustic pop of “Lies We Tell Ourselves”, the ambient folk of “The Way That Things Are”, and the solo, Mangum-esque strumming of “Hanged Man”. Still, for the most part Ad Nauseum dresses up its songs in ample distortion, trusting the listener to meet them through the noise. (Bandcamp link)

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