Pressing Concerns: Puppy Problems, Neil Jung, Grand Drifter, Surf Harp

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Okay, okay, okay, it’s a Tuesday. I know what you’re thinking–there was just a great Pressing Concerns on Monday, featuring great music from Coventry, The Garment District, Soft Screams, and Guest Directors. But what can I say? There’s just too much music I want to write about to be constrained to two editions this week. So we’re back, right now, at this exact moment, to talk about new albums from Grand Drifter and Surf Harp, and new cassettes from Puppy Problems and Neil Jung.

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.

Puppy Problems – Winter in Fruitland

Release date: September 22nd
Record label: Anything Bagel
Genre: Bedroom pop, indie folk, twee, lo-fi pop
Formats: Cassette, digital
Pull Track: Rainbow Flag

Boston/Providence’s Sami Martasian released their first album as Puppy Problems back in 2018 on Sleeper Records (Ylayali, 2nd Grade, Friendship). Sunday Feeling came out right in the middle of that big wave of tender indie folk that was being practiced by groups like Florist, Gabby’s World, Free Cake for Every Creature, Told Slant…some of those bands got huge, others faded away. Puppy Problems went dormant for a while, although Martasian partnered with Bedbug’s Dylan Citron to make a record as Rose, Water, Fountain in 2021. The second Puppy Problems album arrives on Anything Bagel (Vista House, Bluest, Generifus) a half-decade later–some of these songs have been around for quite a while (there are demos of “Rainbow Flag” and “Big Drink” on their Bandcamp page from 2019), but Winter in Fruitland thankfully doesn’t sound too labored over. Martasian and a small group of collaborators (Citron, multi-instrumentalist Bradford Krieger, and bassist/percussionist Stephen Chevalier) give these track a light feeling, coming off as the warm best-case scenario for this kind of lo-fi music.

At a brisk fifteen minutes, the cassette’s eight songs make their points succinctly, but Martasian still has plenty to say on Winter in Fruitland. Early highlight “Rainbow Flag” features lyrics about the titular object above a record store where “they don’t let us [work] anymore”, listening to Harvard kids get drunk and play “the songs that our friends wrote back in 2016”, a line about circular nostalgia, and ending with “I don’t wanna look back until there is / Nothing left to look forward to,” accompanied by Krieger’s pedal steel–all in under two minutes. “Him or Me” is another song that utilizes simplicity and repetition to great effect (“I need to know if you believe him or me”), and the one song that crosses the three-minute barrier (“Lost Sweater – Disney Wedding”) gets there by letting the long pauses echo the time passing since the events in the song’s title (and the parts that aren’t the pauses indicate that said time has not completely clouded the rear view mirror). “If I don’t say what I’m thinking, then you think I’m not thinking,” Martasian sings in the sub-one-minute opening track–Winter in Fruitland as a whole feels like a statement that, for them, these moments of silence and breaks from the noise contain so much more than the addressee of “Thinking” could understand. (Bandcamp link)

Neil Jung – Infinity Is Whatever

Release date: September 22nd
Record label: Two Worlds
Genre: 90s indie rock, fuzz rock
Formats: Cassette, digital
Pull Track: No Cavities

Sometimes, a group hits just the right amount of band/album name synergy for their music. Here, we have a Brooklyn four-piece group named after a Teenage Fanclub song, with a sound certainly indebted to underground 90s indie rock and power pop, and a debut EP titled Infinity Is Whatever. The newest group from singer/songwriter/guitarist Evan Brock, Neil Jung has been around for at least half a decade, but the pandemic got in the way of their debut record’s release until now. Originally tracked by the quartet (Brock, guitarist Kris Hayes, bassist Jeremiah Furr, and drummer Andrew McDonald) in late 2018 and early 2019, Neil Jung managed six half-finished songs and one live show before COVID ground things to a halt. Earlier this year, the band got TW Walsh (ex-Pedro the Lion) to master these songs, and the Infinity Is Whatever cassette finally saw the light of day earlier this month.

The debut Neil Jung release is a laid-back but airtight collection of fuzzy guitar pop songs; while the influence of their namesake band is certainly there, more than anything it feels like a flag-waving for All-American indie rock groups like Dinosaur Jr., Pavement, and maybe even a little bit of emo in there for good measure. Opening track “No Cavities” is a bullseye in this particular field, imagining J. Mascis attempting to write a jangly pop song, while the power chords and plodding bass of “Washing Machine” find the band in power-pop-punk mode while still retaining a “slacker” veneer. The sub-two minute “Waster” has a bit of post-Westerberg college rock in it even as it has just enough punk-y energy to its instrumental, and on the other end of the spectrum is the five-minute “Algae”, a slow-burning indie-progger that goes from understated pop rock to a Sonic Youth-y torrent of noise as it draws to a close. It’s a surprising ending, but after spending the bulk of Infinity Is Whatever coming off as immediately likable pop tunesmiths, Neil Jung can pull off just a little bit of an indulgence. (Bandcamp link)

Grand Drifter – Paradise Window

Release date: September 8th
Record label: Subjangle
Genre: Indie pop, jangle pop, folk pop, baroque pop
Formats: CD, digital
Pull Track: Unrecorded Feelings

Grand Drifter’s Andrea Calvo hails from a country that I’ve never covered on Pressing Concerns before (Italy), but the singer-songwriter makes a brand of guitar pop that is familiar to both me and, in all likelihood, anyone who is a regular reader of the blog. Calvo falls on the lush and ornate end of the indie pop spectrum–even as he plays nearly everything on his latest album, Paradise Window, himself, he still takes care to dress these seven songs in intricate and varied instrumentation over top of their simple acoustic foundations. Belle & Sebastian is the most obvious sonic comparison for the third Grand Drifter album, although any indie pop band that has incorporated a bit of sophisti-pop refinement into their sound–from The Cat’s Miaow to Trembling Blue Stars–will get you into the general vicinity of Paradise Window.

A short album at around 22 minutes, Paradise Window wastes no time in offering up smart guitar pop music. “Drawing Happiness” gets a ton of mileage out of little more than acoustic guitar and piano flourishes, while the next track, “Beautiful Praise”, expands the sound of Grand Drifter with a wider range of instrumentation while feeling like a smooth extension of the song before it. “Unrecorded Feelings” is a little more uptempo than its surrounding songs, although Calvo’s casual-sounding vocals keep it in line with the rest of Paradise Window. While sophisti-pop touches mark the entire record, the jazzy chords of “Peaceful Season” and the string-heavy title track in the record’s second half feel like Paradise Window’s clearest forays into this side of Grand Drifter’s sound. Calvo does his best to play and present the tracks of Paradise Window in delicate fashion, although at their cores, they are quite sturdy pop songs. (Bandcamp link)

Surf Harp – Language Is Lost

Release date: August 25th
Record label: Shiny Boy Press
Genre: Art pop, synthpop, prog-pop, sophist-pop
Formats: Vinyl, cassette, digital
Pull Track: Willowing

There’s something about Baltimore that seems to trigger the spawning of pop weirdos of every stripe, from Tomato Flower to Gloop to Smoke Bellow. The latest such group to grace the pages of Pressing Concerns is Surf Harp, a wide-ranging five-piece band with members in both Baltimore and Osaka. Language Is Lost is the third album from the quintet (Philip Bolton, Jeffrey Koplovitz, Aaron Perseghin, Christopher Sweeney, and Ryan Zadera), and the first in half a decade following 2018’s Mr. Big Picture. It sounds like Surf Harp has used the interstitial five-year period well–with Language Is Lost, the band have put together a forty-five minute, fully-realized art pop album with more than its fair share of ideas. Although a lot of the points of comparison for the record’s sound come from roughly the 1980s (new wave, synthpop, New Romantic, sophisti-pop), Language Is Lost is hardly captured by those genre tags, and feels entirely forward-looking.

Language Is Lost is a consistent listen despite (or maybe because of) how much it incorporates–while the soaring, wide-eyed synthpop of “Factory”, the chugging “Permissions from Hoari”, and the post-punk groove of “Planet Parent” all start in different places, Surf Harp bring a similar briefcase-of-tricks pop professionalism to all three of them, and they all shine equally brightly. The band references XTC in their notes, and I found myself, like one can do with that band, listening to Language Is Lost’s twisted pop songs and wondering which one could clean up nicely for consumption outside of this little world–the busy prog-pop of “Willowing” was the one that got a “radio edit” (and it has a nice “drop” moment at nearly two minutes in–DJs take note), while the slow-building “Messages from Horai” is Surf Harp at their most conventional-sounding (we’re still grading things on a curve, mind you). It’s a fun exercise, although Language Is Lost is best enjoyed by entering into this world wholeheartedly and just enjoying Surf Harp’s scenic route. (Bandcamp link)

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