Pressing Concerns: Norm Archer, The Croaks, Luggage, Blues Lawyer

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You just know that it’s going to be a good week when I’m able to put a Tuesday Pressing Concerns together. Hot on the heels of Monday’s post (which looked at new ones from Soft on Crime, Hello June, Soft Covers, and The Small Intestines), we’re back with a round-up every bit as good, featuring albums from Norm Archer and Luggage and EPs from The Croaks and Blues Lawyer. Without getting too much into it, there are some real short-listers in here.

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Norm Archer – Splitting the Bill

Release date: September 28th
Record label: Panda Koala
Genre: Power pop, 90s indie rock, pop punk, psych pop
Formats: Digital
Pull Track: On the Tyne

Norm Archer is Will Pearce, a Portsmouth-based “home recording enthusiast” who flew onto my radar with his debut album under the name, Flying Cloud Terrace. Though I was completely unfamiliar with Pearce beforehand, I recognized Flying Cloud Terrace as an instant classic in the field of lo-fi guitar pop music, a record that clearly displayed the tricks and hooks it had learned from bands like Guided by Voices, The Cleaners from Venus, and The Bevis Frond while also putting a bit of an underdog pop punk spin on the material. Although it took several years for Flying Cloud Terrace to come together, Pearce needed barely more than one to deliver a follow-up album that is every bit as rewarding as its predecessor. Unlike Flying Cloud Terrace, Splitting the Bill was recorded with all live drums (courtesy of Ben Whyntie, who played on a couple of the previous record’s tracks), allowing the music of Norm Archer to catch up just a little bit to Pearce’s kinetic energy. Splitting the Bill is still a pop record, but the edges of Norm Archer are as sharp as ever–if you enjoyed the way that, say, the most recent Taking Meds album merged power pop with Archers of Loaf-style 90s indie rock, Splitting the Bill is operating in the same area.

I truly cannot emphasize enough how skilled of a pop songwriter Will Pearce is; that much was evident on Flying Cloud Terrace, but every facet of it is on full display on Splitting the Bill. Norm Archer have never sounded more ready or able to deliver Pollard-esque tricky, overstuffed prog-pop anthems, nor have they been more prone to explode into blistering indie rock with a J. Mascis or Nick Saloman level of skill. As grandiose as Pearce makes the fourteen songs of Splitting the Bill sound, at his heart he’s got the spirit of a post-Westerbeg power-pop-punk. It irks me that Norm Archer aren’t big enough (yet) to give opening track “On the Tyne” the stadium-level treatment it deserves on a cross-continent tour, but I bet that Pearce could find a way to whip up a wall of sound to do justice to “Brain Today” in a basement.

“A Taste for Shame” is pitch-perfect jangly college rock–it’s almost shocking how straight Pearce and Whyntie play it, but it’s absolutely what the track calls for. Meanwhile, if Eric Bachmann had been able to write a post-grunge radio hit, it probably would’ve sounded something like the title track (does “it sounds like Fig Dish” mean anything to anyone?). “The Din Drifted In” towards the center of the record is a particularly wild flex, making an aggressive turn towards garage-y noise rock/post-punk and sounding very good at it, too, while the power chord choppiness of “Laramie” is no-funny-business, airtight pop punk. One of the ways Pearce pays tribute to his proggier/psychier sides is by breaking out the acoustic on the starry, spare “Dragging” and the aural daydream of “Saloon Mouse”. These function as quieter wrinkles in a larger tapestry, but because Pearce is the songwriter he is, they’re also no less potent pop songs than the electric cuts. Splitting the Bill is an ornate work, one in which a closer inspection of even its less showy moments reveals exquisite detail. (Bandcamp link)

The Croaks – Croakus Pokus

Release date: July 28th
Record label: Self-released
Genre: Folk rock, progressive folk, baroque folk
Formats: CD, digital
Pull Track: Rainbow Trout

The Croaks are a Boston-based prog-folk-rock band led by the duo of Anna Reidister and Haley Wood, who have been making music together since 2017 (previously in the band Ratslap, as The Croaks since about three years ago). Following the “The Court Jester” single in 2020, Croakus Pokus is the first Croaks record (their Bandcamp calls it an EP; the nine-song, thirty-minute collection feels like an album to me), and it’s one of the more fascinating-sounding releases I’ve heard so far this year. On the one hand, The Croaks are quite serious about incorporating the baroque and medieval into their music (instruments that can be found on Croakus Pokus include dulcimer, harp, flute, and violin), but on the other hand, the band (on this record, Reidister and Wood are joined by bassist Jasper Fleming and drummer Sammy DeSantos) are just as likely to emphasize the rock end of folk rock, with some guitar soloing, feedback, and a sharp rhythm section characterizing more than a bit of this record.

The Croaks’ version of “progressive folk” takes shape in the record’s first three songs. “The Court Jester” opens up with a Mekons-y piece of violin-aided folk rock that then zigs into a skipping mid-section and then finally zags into a pounding, dramatic finish. “Cuttyhunk Isle” finds the band creating similar music in a slightly more static mode, but their cover of Comus’ “Diana” gets us right back into the louder folk-rock storm. Once they’ve gotten a sketch of their sound down, however, Croakus Pokus immediately starts playing with it. The fuzzy “Big Bog” (which thematically reminds me of the Mountain Goats’ “Tollund Man”) throws some alt-country into the mix, the heavy “Lochness Lady” is some old-school stoner-prog-wizard shit, and there’s also “Rainbow Trout”, my favorite song on the record. Especially coming after “Diana”, it’s a shocking teleportation back into the (relatively) modern era, an incredibly bright, sweeping piece of indie folk rock with triumphant electric guitars, at least two separate hooks worthy of building a song around on their own, and lyrics that reveal just enough context to land the punch in the chorus most effectively. Croakus Pokus is a deep record in more ways than one–it feels like the work of two talented, in-sync collaborators who bring an adventurous energy to every aspect of their music. (Bandcamp link)

Luggage – Hand Is Bad

Release date: September 29th
Record label: Amish
Genre: Noise rock, experimental rock, post-punk
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Hand Is Bad

Chicago noise rock trio Luggage have been trudging along for the better part of a decade at this point, making a certain unflappable, minimalist style of music that certainly sounds akin to plenty of indie rock that’s come out of the Windy City in the past. Unsurprisingly recorded at Electrical Audio, Hand Is Bad is the fourth Luggage full-length and fifth record (it follows 2021’s substantial Happiness EP). On their latest album, drummer Luca Cimarusti, bassist Michael John Grant, and guitarist/vocalist Michael Vallera sound like they’ve been playing together long enough to stretch out a little bit and push some limits. Hand Is Bad is relatively subtle about it, mind you–unlike, say, the latest from their neighbors in FACS, pretty much all of the album can be adequately described as a “rock record”, but the trio are locking in in a way that’s hypnotic and exploratory in its own right, echoing some of the more meditative post-hardcore albums that came out of the 90s underground.

On the Touch & Go frontperson spectrum, Michael Vallera is a lot closer to Brian McMahan than David Yow on Hand Is Bad. I’d say that Vallera’s stoic talk-singing lets the band do the emotional communication, but whatever message Luggage is trying to send here (beyond “vague unease”) is pretty enigmatic from the instrumentals as well. Hand Is Bad’s songs typically start as stark post-punk instrumentals leaning heavy on the rhythm section– sometimes competing with Vallera’s guitar, other times effectively on their own. Listening to Hand Is Bad’s ten tracks beyond their starts is kind of like playing Russian roulette–they’re equally likely to continue the instrumentals more or less as they started, declining to crack the tension, or to lapse into noisy conclusions led by Vallera’s guitar. “River” floats along and “The Poison” crawls in the record’s second half, while the band’s noisier side gets front page treatment with the opening title track and “Circled”. The weirdest moments on Hand Is Bad come near the end, with “Ends” and (especially) “Deep North” streamlining things down to near-ambient levels. It says something about the record’s cohesion that the band are then able to jump from the latter of those two songs to the full-speed rocking “Nowhere” like it’s nothing. (Bandcamp link)

Blues Lawyer – Sight Gags on the Radio

Release date: September 29th
Record label: Dark Entries
Genre: Noise pop, power pop, indie pop, fuzz pop
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Have Nots

2023 is the year of Blues Lawyer. The Oakland four-piece band released their third album, All in Good Time, back in February, debuting a new, revved-up power pop sound that represented quite the step forward for the band and made it one of my favorite albums of the first half of the year. Co-lead singer/songwriter Rob I. Miller put out an incredible solo album (featuring contributions from Blues Lawyer guitarist Ellen Matthews) in May to keep the momentum going, and last month found Miller and Matthew reuniting with drummer/vocalist Elyse Schrock on the second Blues Lawyer record of 2023, the four-song Sight Gags on the Radio seven-inch EP.  On Sight Gags on the Radio, Blues Lawyer are as catchy as ever, but they’re also louder than ever–the band embrace distortion and fuzz in their pop songs in a way that even the more rock-based All in Good Time hadn’t quite suggested.

Opening track “Have Nots” is nothing less than one of the greatest pop songs I’ve heard in recent memory. Each element–the opening guitars (featuring a shoegaze level of reverb), Miller’s melodic bass, Schrock’s steady drumbeat, Miller’s calm-in-the-center-of-the-storm lead vocals, Schrock’s subtly pleasing backing vocals–introduces itself one by one, taking its place to form a full, complete masterwork. The rest of Sight Gags on the Radio doesn’t drop the ball after such a strong opening–in terms of energy and sheer force, “Our Divide” is right up there with “Have Nots”, and it even introduces some actually quite scorching lead guitar into the fray. “True Love’s Only Name” is the song on the EP that most recalls the band’s jangle pop roots, but it’s also yet another step forward for the band in being a true collaboration between the trio of Miller (who wrote the lyrics), Matthews (who wrote the music), and Shrock (who sings lead vocals on it). “Every Once in a While” closes things out with a song that sounds like a classic piece of twee-ish indie pop run through a healthy level of amplifier fuzz and overlaid with a hard-hitting rhythm section. Assuming Blues Lawyer don’t have anything up their sleeve for the next two months, they’ve closed out their 2023 on just a strong of a note as they began it. (Bandcamp link)

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One thought on “Pressing Concerns: Norm Archer, The Croaks, Luggage, Blues Lawyer”

  1. Anytime I write a record up, I try and at least be a little objective about it. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t. Blues Lawyer makes it reaaaaalllllly hard to do. This EP rips. What a year for these guys!

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