Pressing Concerns: Feefawfum, Phosphene, Lost Film, American Cream Band

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On this beautiful fall Monday, Pressing Concerns has arrived with the morning dew to present you with four new albums that we’re confident you will enjoy. Do you like post-punk? Math rock? Dream pop? Psych-jazz-funk-kraut? Well, all of that and more awaits you as we discuss new ones from Feefawfum, Phosphene, Lost Film, and American Cream Band.

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.

Feefawfum – 100

Release date: September 8th
Record label: Self-released
Genre: Math rock, art punk, post-punk, noise rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: DKA

Over the past month or so, I’ve written about records from Curling–who branched off from their math rock roots to make an exploratory, progressive pop album–and Perennial–who are in the business of reviving early-2000s post-hardcore/dance-punk through sheer force of will. Somewhere in the middle of the two lies Feefawfum, a Montreal-originating, Oakland-based band led by drummer/vocalist Farley Miller. On their second full-length album, 100, Farley (who recorded the record largely on his own) reaches back into the world of early 2000’s jerky, frantic-sounding math rock/post-punk to color his songwriting (they cite Deerhoof as an influence, although that doesn’t quite capture their sound on its own…they’re too poppy to be compared to Melt-Banana, not exactly “sasscore” either…does anyone remember Ex-Models?).  Feefawfum whips up a frenzy in nine songs and 30 minutes, sounding noisy and paranoid but at the same time remaining surprisingly pop-fluent.

Another record I could compare 100 to is Everything Is Broken, Maybe That’s O.K. by Alex Orange Drink, an album that discusses singer Alex Zarou Levine’s experiences living with homocystinuria, a serious, life-threatening, long-term metabolic genetic disorder. Although it’s easy to miss it in the instrumental barrage, 100 is a also concept album–about Miller’s everyday life as an adult diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. The clues are there once one knows to look for it–in the Brainiac-y freak punk of opening track “DKA”, Miller sings about needing to be able to afford insulin in order to live (“I hope I live to see a raise / So I can change my blood’s pH” goes the chorus, aided by backing vocals from Mellotron player Emma Greenbaum and bassist Kevin Sullivan). 

“DKA” is short for diabetic ketoacidosis, and even the record’s title refers to the optimal blood sugar level for the human body (100 mg/dL). The rest of the album connects to this in some way–“Evergreen” and “Miles Away” take a dark big-picture view (“The protocols and flow charts / Know what’s the best for you” Miller sarcastically sings in the former, a Wolf Parade-y art punk tune about the completely legal ways pharmaceutical companies kill poor people), while “Should Have Known” supplements this with a straightforward account of a hypoglycemic episode and the uncaring world around him in the moment. 100 plows ahead musically regardless of where Miller is at in his lyrics–one doesn’t need to know the entire backstory to enjoy the taunting egg punk of “Brown”, or the punchy noise rock of “Pickled Ginger”. Truthfully, I didn’t really know much of this until I sat down to write about 100, but by that point it had already offered me more than enough to win me over. (Bandcamp link)

Phosphene – Transmute

Release date: September 15th
Record label: Self-released
Genre: Dream pop, post-punk, synthpop, shoegaze
Formats: Digital
Pull Track: Umbra

Phosphene are the Portland, Oregon-based duo of vocalist/guitarist Rachel Frankel and drummer Matt Hemmerich, who have been making music together for around a decade. Their third album, Transmute, is the work of two musicians inspired by the dream pop and post-punk of the 1980s, both directly and filtered through bands drawing from the same well (Frankel mentions Japanese Breakfast and Alvvays as touchpoints for their sound). Transmute is surprisingly muscular-sounding for a dream pop record–these eight songs are, more often than not, anchored by prominent, sharp guitar lines, propulsive drumming from Hemmerich, and Frankel’s front-and-center vocals. Phosphene recorded Transmute during the pandemic–as a result of the extra gestation time, they expanded their sonic palette to incorporate more synths and even digital strings. What Phosphene have ended up with is a record that shows how to allow these new touches in a way that adds to the music without overwhelming their core sound.

Phosphene hit the ground running on Transmute with the six-minute “Umbra”, a focused, advancing song that balances its no-nonsense rhythm section with synths and some decorative and even dance-friendly guitarplay from Frankel. “Black Sheep” and “Levitation” continue to fill Transmute’s first side with full-sounding post-punk exercises, before they offer up their first ballad in “Jigsaw”,  a go-for-broke piece of wide-eyed dreamy synthpop. Transmute is a consistently solid listen, as Phosphene continue to balance their post-punk foundation with dreamy touches across its second half. “Wisp” builds confidently but never eases its grip on the jangly guitar line that’s shading it, the brisk “Everyone Is Gone” lets the synths deliver some of the most memorable melodies, and “Wandering” closes things out by taking a Sundays-esque, earnest piece of guitar-driven dream pop and adding a few more layers to it. It’s one last pleasing but hefty moment. (Bandcamp link)

Lost Film – Keep It Together

Release date: September 15th
Record label: Relief Map
Genre: Dream pop, post-punk, jangle pop, slowcore, bedroom pop
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Big Talk

Easthampton, Massachusetts’ Jim Hewitt has been making music for about a decade as Lost Film–for the past couple of years, he’s been doing it while also running the record label he founded, Relief Map (Old Moon, Kitner, Convinced Friend). The past few Lost Film records had been recorded by Hewitt alone at home, but for Keep It Together, his fourth album under the name, he had other plans–he recorded it (along with drummer Ben Husk and engineer Matt Freake) in a cabin in rural New Hampshire “in the midst of a blizzard”.  The trio of longtime indie rockers approached Keep It Together with the intention of making a polished guitar-pop album, and what they’ve produced is their version of it–one indebted to both 1980s post-punk/indie pop and 2010s greyscale bedroom pop, but always hovering towards the “pop” side of these genres.

Hewitt is a subtle vocalist–he falls on the Alex G/Hovvdy spectrum of “getting out of the song’s way”, although he delivers his melodies in a warm and pleasing manner nonetheless. His singing contrasts nicely with the music of Keep It Together, which pushes against its limits for 25 minutes and nine songs. The wide-eyed indie rock of opening track “Little Things Forever” sounds both humble and sweeping, and then Lost Film outdo themselves on the next track, the shining “Big Talk”. The midsection of Keep It Together is more insular–”Exist” and “Stay” turn polished jangly rock inward, and while letting borderline-garish synths lead the mid-tempo, cavernous “Searching” is a particularly “DIY bedroom rock” move, it’s one that the band pull off. Second half highlights “Notion” and “Re:places” keep spirits high towards the end of the album–the latter ends with the swirling post-punk instrumental giving way to an excitable lead guitar part. It’s one big pop moment–after all, why wouldn’t some indie rockers in a cabin in New Hampshire reach the pinnacle of pop music? (Bandcamp link)

American Cream Band – Presents

Release date: September 15th
Record label: Quindi
Genre: Krautrock, post-punk, psychedelic rock, no wave, jazz-rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Taste What We Taste

American Cream Band is led by Nathan Nelson and a “rolling cast of collaborators”, emerging out of the Twin Cities about a decade ago and putting together several records of improvisational-originating, krautrock and psychedelic-inspired rock music. The bulk of their latest album, Presents, was recorded by Nelson and ten other musicians in December of 2021, and it’s an exciting and friendly big-band album that functions as a proof of concept that making and listening to “record collector rock” can be, in fact, extremely fun. Presents is led by Nelson’s ringleader bark, and it throws everything from punchy horns, a scorching rhythm section, and gripping, chanting backing vocals at the listener in under a half-hour.

Presents opens with “Sirens”, a synth-led, ambient-psych-ish soundscape–it’s something of a throat clearing before American Cream Band get down to business. “Dr. Doctor”, the first rock song on the album, is led by a brisk bassline and drumbeat, over top of which the band layers additional productions, synth and horn accents, and a call-and-response of the title from Nelson and his bandmates. The repetition of the title in “Banana” (or “Banana-nana”) certainly feels like it’s on the improvisational side of things, although the groove on this one is no less potent. The horn-funk of “Royal Tears” punctuates a sharp side A, while the flipside contains a couple more space-jazz explorations in “Birds Don’t Try” and closing track “Words Would Handcuff Us” (while nevertheless offering up the blaring funk rock of “Taste What We Taste” as well). Presents feels longer than its relatively brief runtime–not in a “it’s not over yet?” way, mind you, in a “I can’t believe we just went through all that in 28 minutes” kind of way. (Bandcamp link)

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