Happy Halloween to all you ghouls, zombies, ghosts and whatnot. I’d say that this is a “spooky” edition of the monthly round-up or something, but really, this is just a normal one. It’s only scary if you’re afraid of good music. Or sentient mouths (we’ll get to that in a minute). Oh, and there is a Teenage Halloween song on here, so that counts for something too, I think.
The World Famous, Norm Archer, and The Bug Club have multiple songs on this playlist (two each).
Here is where you can listen to the playlist on various streaming services: Spotify, Tidal (missing one song), BNDCMPR (also missing one song). Be sure to check out previous playlist posts if you’ve enjoyed this one, or visit the site directory. If you’d like to support Rosy Overdrive, you can share this (or another) post, or donate here.
“Making Noise for the Ones You Love”, Ratboys
From The Window (2023, Topshelf)
Turns out that what I had to do to really get into the new Ratboys album was listen to it while driving. Not that I’d disliked The Window before, but after a spin or two it hadn’t really grabbed me like their last couple of albums–but listening to the opening notes of “Making Noise for the Ones You Love” going down the highway? Hearing the band crank things up gear after gear after gear like they do here? This is classic rock, to me. This should be blanketing the airwaves so we can all get stoned with Julia Steiner on the way home.
“Samuel Was Beautiful Tonight”, The Bug Club
From Rare Birds: Hour of Song (2023, We Are Busy Bodies)
Back in April, I summarized what Welsh trio The Bug Club had done so far and made it clear that I was curious where they’d end up next. Well, I didn’t expect an hour-plus double album to show up mere months later, but that’s what we’ve got with Rare Birds: Hour of Song. The first non-spoken word track on Rare Birds is “Samuel Was Beautiful Tonight”, an absolute monster of a garage-y power pop song that reminds us all instantly of the knack for hooks that Sam Willmett, Tilly Harris, and Dan Matthew possess as a trio. I hear some Jonathan Richman in this one–but mostly I hear just another entry in The Bug Club’s collection of classic songs.
“Rainbow Trout”, The Croaks
From Croakus Pokus (2023)
The Croaks are a Boston-based prog-folk-rock that take their sound into baroque and medieval directions on their debut record–but they aren’t afraid of the “rock” end of folk rock either. Take “Rainbow Trout”, my favorite song on Croakus Pokus–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. Read more about Croakus Pokus here.
“Mouth of the Century”, Fox Japan
From Cannibals (2023)
The 60-second post-punk-pop thrashing of “Mouth of the Century” is Fox Japan’s most recent excursion back to the nervous new wave that characterized their earlier, late-2000s-era work, and it’s certainly a highlight of their five-song Cannibals EP. The lyrics are Charlie Wilmoth at his disturbing and perturbed best, breathlessly describing an actual all-consuming, pretty dickish sentient mouth (“I’ve got the mouth of the century chewing on me / Says I taste like manicotti,” not gonna forget that one). Would also recommend checking out an animated depiction of said mouth in the song’s music video, created by Ryan Hizer of Spirit Night, Librarians, and Good Sport. Read more about Cannibals here.
“Shell”, Medejin
From The Garden (2023, Icy Cold/Den Tapes)
“Shell”, the opening track of Medejin’s The Garden, is one hell of a first impression. Lead singer Jenn Taranto’s vocals are full, right up front, and melodic, and the instrumental feels like it’s serving her singing rather than the other way around. Under the wide umbrella that encompasses modern dream pop, the Seattle band decidedly fall towards the “pop” side of the spectrum–this is about one step removed from a lost Cranberries or Sundays single. The more layered rest of the album shows they don’t have just one mode, but when they do dial this kind of music up, they nail it. Read more about The Garden here.
“Lipstick Trick”, The World Famous
From Totally Famous (2023, Lauren)
Side two of The World Famous’ Totally Famous might be my single favorite side of a record this year. Definitely hard to choose a favorite one from it, but I’m settling more and more on “Lipstick Trick”, a perfect power pop song. The song’s verses are so catchy that it doesn’t even really compute to me when the chorus comes through and kicks its ass at its own game. Bandleader Will Harris has a delicately melodic voice that I’d put up there Matt Scottoline of Hurry and Peter Gill of 2nd Grade, and the band bring the “power” with an instrumental that’s as bright-sounding as possible. Read more about Totally Famous here.
“On the Tyne”, Norm Archer
From Splitting the Bill (2023, Panda Koala)
Unlike the previous Norm Archer album, 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 bandleader Will Pearce’s kinetic energy. Splitting the Bill is still a pop record, but the edges of Norm Archer are as sharp as ever, merging power pop with Archers of Loaf-style 90s indie rock. Opening track “On the Tyne” is a Robert Pollardesque piece of multi-movement prog-pop that also rocks heavily and would kill in a stadium, I just know it. Read more about Splitting the Bill here.
“Seamless”, Stoner Control
(2023)
Uh oh, Stoner Control discovered alt-country music. Maybe it’s just the Wilco A.M. vibes that I’m getting from the cover art to their latest one-off single, “Seamless”, but the Portland trio add a distinct twanginess to the song’s verses. That being said, they’re still the same power pop/alt rockers who put out stuff like 2021’s Sparkle Endlessly and this year’s Glad You Made It EP, so you can expect them to come at it with plenty of hooks, and the track’s chorus somehow reverts into a Built to Spill-ish indie rock hammering without seeming incongruous with the rest of the song. One might say that the band integrated these new elements into their sound seamlessly!
“Live Laugh Love”, Pacing
From Real poetry is always about plants and birds and trees and the animals and milk and honey breathing in the pink but real life is behind a screen (2023, Totally Real)
“Live Laugh Love” is such a good song. The musical and lyrical adventurousness of Pacing is on full display here, a highlight among Real poetry is always about plants and birds and trees and the animals and milk and honey breathing in the pink but real life is behind a screen’s highlights. Katie McTigue walks the tightrope (or rides the seesaw) between defeatist self-flagellation (“Everything I do is dumb”, “This part of the song is a placeholder / To save myself from saying something stupid”, “This song is dumb”) and defiant defensiveness (“But if you don’t like this song / Why don’t you just rip out my heart?”). These headline-worthy lines are all good and I like them, but the most key one to me (and the one that relates a little more directly to the song’s title, I think) is a more subtle one: “It’s too late to be anything but ordinary”. Read more about Real poetry is always about plants and birds and trees and the animals and milk and honey breathing in the pink but real life is behind a screen here.
“Giant Giant Giant”, ME REX
From Giant Elk (2023, Big Scary Monsters)
I really like ME REX. I never think of them as one of my favorite bands, but just look at where they’ve been lately–2021’s Megabear cracking the top 25 of my favorite albums from that year, last year’s Plesiosaur being my third favorite EP of 2022–maybe I need to start putting them up there. Part of my overlooking them might be that Giant Elk is their first “normal” album–up until now, they’d been all EPs and the 52-song (successful) experiment of Megabear. Myles McCabe, Phoebe Cross, and Rich Mandell, surprising no one, can absolutely hold their own in an eleven-song, 40-minute format, with the band sounding as loud and confident as ever as the poppy alt-rock foundation of “Giant Giant Giant” only serves to accent McCabe’s lyrics further.
“Best Supporting Actress”, Vesuvian
From More Treble (2023)
This song rules so much. I first heard it on the 106-song Bee Side Beats 2: For Gaza compilation (which you should buy, because it’s good and it’s for a very very good cause) and it hit me immediately. Vesuvian (not the Seattle metal band) is Philadelphia’s Joey DeGrado, with help from drummer Will Kennedy and vocalist Tracy Feldman on More Treble, their debut album that came out in April. “Best Supporting Actress” is an excellent piece of alt-country-rock–do you like State Champion? Parister? MJ Lenderman? DeGrado’s operating in the same sphere–that is an inspired tribute to Lee Grant (“Best Supporting Actress ‘75”).
“Pest Control”, Big Cry Country
From Living Conditions (2023)
“I’ve seen the afterlife, and you are wearing my old sweater,” now there’s a hell of a chorus hook. Big Cry Country are a Washington D.C.-originating power-pop-indie-punk quartet who’ve just put out their debut EP, Living Conditions. The whole thing is a solid, polished but not-overthought collection of spirited indie rock, but the opening track, “Pest Control”, is the one that I keep coming back to. Lead vocalist Roxanne Bublitz certainly can deliver a melody and convey a lot with just that aforementioned line, and the rest of the band (Jill Miller, JP Salussolia, and Jarrod Brennet) are certainly no slouches when it comes to fleshing out the music as much as possible.
“Vice Grip”, Noah Roth
From Florida (2023, Rocket to Heaven)
Noah Roth recorded Florida–their third solo album in about a year–almost entirely alone with just an acoustic guitar in its titular state. Although their past releases were nowhere near this stark, Roth’s songwriting translates well to the world of early Mountain Goats-esque spartan structures. My favorite track on Florida, “Vice Grip”, particularly strains against its “folk rock” foundation in the perfect Darnielleian way, the simple but huge chords trying to launch themselves into space. “I thank my lucky stars that I’m alive today / Though I’m still not sure it’s better off this way,” goes the chorus of this one. As for that… Read more about Florida here.
“Guard Stick”, Golden Apples
From Bananasugarfire (2023, Lame-O)
Bananasugarfire is the most ambitious Golden Apples have sounded yet–the third record from Russell Edling and his band in as many years gobbles up shoegaze, psychedelia, and power pop heedlessly to kickstart what feels like a new era for the newly-solidified quartet. Early on in the record, “Guard Stick” feels like Golden Apples developing the sound of Bananasugarfire in real time, it that takes a vintage Golden Apples-ish slacker-indie-rock chord progression and adorns it with more bells and whistles than, say, “Let Me Do My Thing” or “Slime” from their last album, but without losing any of the catchy core of those tracks. Read more about Bananasugarfire here.
“Caroline”, Strawberry Story
From Clamming for It (1993, Vinyl Japan)
I’ll have more to say about Clamming for It when I do the next edition of my 1993 listening log, but I’ll leave you with “Caroline” for now. It’s a song from Strawberry Story, a British indie pop band who released a lot of singles–Clamming for It is actually a compilation–including this perfect one. Sometimes I need a jolt to remind myself how much I love music, and, well, this song absolutely shook me out of a stupor on a certain shitty morning. “Finally I’ve got a weakness that doesn’t take a toll on my smile,” what a beautiful chorus. What a wonderful sentiment. Music is magic!
“Doctor”, Teenage Halloween
From Till You Return (2023, Don Giovanni)
It took Teenage Halloween three years to follow up their excellent self-titled debut album (one of my favorites from 2020), but I’m happy to report that Till You Return is every bit that album’s equal in terms of massive power pop hooks and electric punk rock energy. I could’ve put just about any song off of this damn album on the playlist and it would be one of the catchiest things here, but for now I’ve been particularly enjoying “Doctor”, which strains hard in its chorus to help it stand out in a murderer’s row of Teenage Halloween anthems.
“My Heart Is Breaking Over You”, Sick Thoughts
From Born to Blitzkrieg (2023, Rokk)
jesus fucking christ
“Only One Way”, the Mountain Goats
From Jenny from Thebes (2023, Merge)
I’m always having opinions on the new Mountain Goats album. Bleed Out won me back after a few years in the wilderness, and while Jenny from Thebes is probably not going to top that one for me, it does feel like John Darnielle and the rest of the band are back to making music I’m predisposed to like again. Of course, keeping the length down to a single LP’s length helps a lot–this is the first Mountain Goats studio album under 45 minutes since Transcendental Youth, which is probably not coincidentally the last one I really loved. Still, they’re pretty far away even from that album–the power chords, keyboard chimes, horn section, and handclaps of “Only One Way” lead up to a “I’m not sure if the Mountain Goats have ever sounded exactly like this” moment for me. If Darnielle is on, though, it doesn’t much matter what’s backing him.
“As If It’d Even the Score”, CLASS
From If You’ve Got Nothing (2023, Feel It)
On If You’ve Got Nothing, Tucson quartet CLASS zeroes in on their glam-influenced power pop side, bashing out a dozen such tunes in half an hour. There’s plenty of hits on If You’ve Got Nothing, but my favorite song from their second full-length in as many years just might be penultimate track “As If It’d Even the Score”. It’s a glam rock/AOR-flavored strut that is as catchy as anything else on the record (it’s even got a bit of a jangle to it, which is a nice touch for CLASS). It’s also just a little bit off in an interesting way–the verses are probably catchier than the refrain here. Read more about If You’ve Got Nothing Here.
“Water Tower”, Combat Naps
From Tap In (2023, ABC Postman)
The latest release from Madison’s Combat Naps, the 25-minute “mini album” Tap In, is a dozen tracks of brief, friendly dispatches of lo-fi guitar pop that pulls together early Tony Molina and early of Montreal eagerly. The record opens with a certified hit in the perfect bouncy power pop of “Water Tower”, a piece of post-LVL UP weird shininess–it’s as catchy as it is just about as stuffed with as many ideas as bandleader Neal Jochmann could possibly fit into two minutes. Read more about Tap In here.
“Time”, Aux Caroling
From Hydrogen Bonds (2023, Half a Person)
Hydrogen Bonds, the debut album from North Carolina’s Aux Caroling, contains a preoccupation with the passing of time and what that means for its narrators that slowly but surely reveals itself. Singer-songwriter Scott Deaver and multi-instrumentalist Mike Albanese give album highlight “Time” a dressing that pushes against the subtlety of Deaver’s writing, however–it’s got a very pleasing piano-pop-rock feel, accentuating lines like “It’d be nice to get the answer before the ice caps melt / Or at least shortly after that”. Read more about Hydrogen Bonds here.
“Dusk”, Dusk
From Glass Pastures (2023, Don Giovanni)
You’ve got to love when a band records a song with their name as the title. Of course, considering that Appleton, Wisconsin’s Dusk is a very good country rock band, it was only a matter of time before they wrote a song about that particular time of day. Glass Pastures is the first proper Dusk album in a half-decade, although they were R Boyd’s backing band for his 2020 album High Country Skyway and Amos Pitch and Julia Blair both put out solo albums in the interstitial time. Blair sings lead on “Dusk” and she absolutely kills it, confidently piloting a timeless-sounding pop song to its country classic-worthy refrain–“It’s not that I got nobody / Just that I got nobody right now”.
“Delete Me Everywhere”, Dear Vandal
From You Were There (2023, Reginald Hill)
Earlier this year I wrote about Melancolony’s Qualia Problems, an overstuffed collection of pop music that borrowed a lot from vintage college rock and post-punk. Dear Vandal’s You Were There gives me the same feeling–over 46 minutes and 13 tracks, Geoff Turner goes digging through indie and early “alternative” rock’s past to dredge up lost-sounding pop music. That being said, my favorite track, opening number “Delete Me Everywhere”, obviously contains a couple of references that’d preclude it from being mistaken from a forgotten 1987 classic. That jaunty drumbeat and dusted-up but still “in it” chorus–those are timeless, though.
“Friends of Joey”, Joey Nebulous
From Joey Spumoni Creamy Dreamy Party All the Time (2023, Dear Life)
Joey Spumoni Creamy Dreamy Party All the Time is a whirlwind queer pop record–Joey Nebulous bandleader Joey Farago’s falsetto is just one of the many striking features of the album’s eighteen songs. Farago and friends end the album on perhaps its highest note with “Friends of Joey”, a polished send-off in which Farago declares “I’m always there for you when you want it” and sounding exactly like he means it (and when his bandmates join in, it feels especially infectious). Read more about Joey Spumoni Creamy Dreamy Party All the Time here.
“I Might Try”, Half Stack
From Sitting Pretty (2023, Forged Artifacts/Royal Oakie)
I feel like there are several bands in this edition of the playlist who finally released new albums after being away for several years. You can add Oakland’s Half Stack to that list–they’d been quiet since 2020’s Wings of Love (one of my favorite albums from that year), but Sitting Pretty continues their winning streak of solid desert-touched fuzzy, psych-y alt-country rock. Opening track “I Might Try” is a steady, low-key introduction– I believe that’s Marley Lix Jones, who has a larger presence on the new album than the last one, on vocals here, and the interplay between the lead guitar and the singing in the chorus is a really exciting moment on a record with no shortage of them.
“Shaken”, Upchuck
From Bite the Hand That Feeds (2023, Famous Class)
Another band that’s returned with another full length in a year’s time is Atlanta quintet Upchuck, whose first album, Sense Yourself, was one of my favorite albums of 2022. That album balanced the extremes of garage punk, combining a hardcore punk ferocity with plenty of undeniably “pop” moments. The Ty Segall-produced Bite the Hand That Feeds finds the band honing their skills and songs down to short but sweet daggers, of which “Shaken” is maybe my favorite. This one gets it done in 90 seconds, with lead singer KT’s vocals grabbing one’s attention from the beginning, offering plenty of hook-y moments but declining to sugarcoat things.
“A Taste for Shame”, Norm Archer
From Splitting the Bill (2023, Panda Koala)
Splitting the Bill is such an adventurous, unpredictable indie “power pop” rock album that “A Taste for Shame” is something of a black sheep just by playing things mostly straight. The track is pitch-perfect jangly college rock–it’s almost shocking how doggedly Will Pearce and Ben Whyntie stick to the slickly-unfurling pop rock that kicks off the song, but it’s absolutely what the track calls for. Like the rest of Splitting the Bill, Pearce’s songwriting acumen and the shot-in-the-arm Whyntie’s drumming gives it are more than enough for “A Taste for Shame” to succeed. Read more about Splitting the Bill here.
“Horse Riding”, The Small Intestines
From Hide in Time (2023, Meritorio/Lost and Lonesome)
Melbourne’s The Small Intestines make distant-outpost rock music on Hide in Time. It feels like a thirty-minute excerpt from an infinitely-rolling tape, like these guys (Matt Liveriadis, Rob Remedios, and Tristan Peachare) are making low-key, timeless-sounding indie rock on a constant basis regardless of whether we’re listening. Remedios’ bass work is really sharp throughout Hide in Time–you can hear it prominently on opening track “Horse Riding”, a pastoral scene-setter that is subtle but brilliant on a focused listen. Read more about Hide in Time here.
“Can Ya Change a Thing Like This?”, The Bug Club
From Rare Birds: Hour of Song (2023, We Are Busy Bodies)
There’s a lot to choose from on Rare Birds: Hour of Song (I mean, did you hear them? It’s an hour of song), but I knew pretty much instantly that “Can Ya Change a Thing Like This?” was going to end up on here. It’s another high-flying piece of high-energy, high-octane power pop, just like most of Rare Birds… What makes this one stand out among these standouts? Well, the vocal tradeoffs between Sam Willmett and Tilly Harris are absolutely ace, there’s some nice liberal f-bombs thrown around gleefully, and there’s a couple noisy rave-up moments here, in the biggest pop moment on the biggest pop album of the year.
“Basement Spaceman”, Mike Adams at His Honest Weight
From Guess for Thrills (2023, Joyful Noise)
Releasing albums in back-to-back years is bold, yes, but even bolder is–as Mike Adams at His Honest Weight have done–designating one of them as the immediate, pop-friendly one. Like, what does that make the other one? The “pop” one, 2022’s Graphic Blandishment, was one of my favorites from last year, but now we have Guess for Thrills, built from “synthesizer experimentations” and “mellow singer-songwriter tunes” that’s Mike Adams at his most nebulous but still stubbornly hook-filled. I almost went with one of those synthesizer experimentations (the bizarre, fascinating “Golden Rule Breakdown”) but in the end “Basement Spaceman” is one of the best “singer-songwriter mode” Adams moments I’ve heard yet. Adams takes his time getting to the chorus, but he makes it more than worth your wait.
“Cordon Bleu”, Dancer
From As Well (2023, GoldMold)
As Well is Dancer’s version of a “difficult second record”; they’re a bit moodier, noisier, and post-punk-ier. That being said, the Glasgow quartet still open the EP with “Cordon Bleu”, a jangly guitar pop number that falls somewhere in the Motorists realm of marrying pop with post-punk touches. It’s got a bit of that lean, economical guitar pop charm that marked their self-titled debut EP, even as the rhythm section of bassist Andrew Doig and drummer Gavin Murdoch hit just a bit harder here. Read more about As Well here.
“Losing Your Touch”, Alejandro Escovedo
From Thirteen Years (1993, Watermelon/New West)
I don’t love Thirteen Years as much as the previous year’s Gravity–one of the great underheralded alt-country/singer-songwriter/roots rock whatever albums of the 90s–but upon relistening I rediscovered “Losing Your Touch”, which definitely stands as one of Alejandro Escovedo’s finest moments as a solo artist. It’s a swaggering piece of country rock–Escovedo can really probe with his ballads, yes, but my favorite songs of his are generally the ones that can light a fire under you–and “Losing Your Touch” is quite hot to the touch.
“Game Over”, Al Murb
From BRD SHT (2023, Small Shot)
Pocatello, Idaho’s Al Murb is definitely making music for the true lo-fi indie rock scum amongst us on his latest record, BRD SHT. Pulling from the low-key adventurousness of The Jicks, the sloppiness of early Pavement, and some of the Silver Jews’ twang, Murb takes BRD SHT on some pretty weird detours, but decides to throw the pop heads a bone in album highlight “Game Over”. It’s a laid back and hypnotically catchy guitar pop tune in which Murb puts on his best J. Mascis/Kurt Vile face to pull it off. Read more about BRD SHT here.
“Bailed Out”, The Auteurs
From New Wave (1993, Hut)
I really liked this Auteurs album. Again, more on it when I publish the next 1993 listening log, but “Bailed Out” made the cut pretty easily. There’s a lot of excessive British music from around this time period–New Wave, and “Bailed Out” especially, feels like a breath of fresh air in its (relative) minimalism. Its slightly eerie, ornate presentation is really unique and transfixing, and the understated chorus has really stuck with me.
“Oh I Know”, The Wind-Ups
From Happy Like This (2023, Mt.St.Mtn.)
The latest album from California lo-fi-garage-power-poppers The Wind-Ups (aka Smokescreens’ Jake Sprecher) is weirdly backloaded. The flipside of Happy Like This isn’t any less in-the-red sonically than what precedes it, but the majority of the biggest “hits” on the album can be found here. “Oh I Know” is The Wind-Ups at their Ramones-iest, and it also finds them peeking into the world of Upper Wilds-y massive fuzz-power-pop sounds. Oh, and they bash the entire thing out in seventy-seven seconds, as well. Read more about Happy Like This here.
“Tinker’s Darn”, Upper Narrows
From While We’re Warm (2023, Repeating Cloud)
Tyler Jackson is new to me, but he’s been kicking around for a while, playing in Portland, Maine bands like Foam Castles and Golden Rules the Thumb since the late 2000s. Upper Narrows is Jackson’s latest project–its debut record, While We’re Warm, is indeed a warm-sounding record of sleepily beautiful synthpop and dream pop. Opening track “Tinker’s Darn” is my favorite–Jackson’s earnest vocals float alongside a brightly-strummed acoustic guitar and slow, steady synth washes as plenty of memorable melodies rise to the surface.
“Candy Clouds”, The World Famous
From Totally Famous (2023, Lauren)
I compared The World Famous frontman Will Harris to a couple of different vocalists when I wrote about “Lipstick Trick” earlier; “Candy Clouds” is the song where he really adds Grandaddy’s Jason Lytle to the list. Harris especially sounds Lytle-ish in the verses, which are chugging but delicate Grandaddy-like indie rock–and it’s worth noting that these verses are catchy enough to be chorus hooks on their own. Instead, they’re one of three such “hook-worthy” sections on “Candy Clouds”, along with the “When I look into your weary eyes…” pre-chorus and the actual chorus. Read more about Totally Famous here.
“Ask New York”, JOBS
From Soft Sounds (2023, Ramp Local)
New York’s JOBS are an experimental/art rock four-piece made up of Max Jaffe, Ro(b) Lundberg, Jessica Pavone, and Dave Scanlon. Scanlon’s solo work has made appearances on the blog before (he released a really good album earlier this year), and JOBS’ latest album, Soft Sounds, feels like a grander-scale version of Scanlon’s relatively intimate but still “experimental” folk music. Scanlon sings lead on “Ask New York”, a suspended-in-amber piece of minimalist synthpop that I find quite hypnotic.
“Cool Fool”, Look at the Bones
From Home Sweet Home (2023)
I feel like I’ve been slacking in the emo department lately. I’m a little pickier when it comes to this kind of music, so I really need to dig to find the stuff that really resonates with me. “Cool Fool” found me, however. I’ll tell you exactly what got to me–when Look at the Bones shift into “popping bass guitar and crackly vocals” about forty seconds into this song. These kinds of bands never have bass that sounds like this in their music, but this group make it sound natural. It’s a highlight from the Seattle trio’s first release, the five-song Home Sweet Home EP, and they seem like a new group worth keeping an eye on.
“Forced Perspective”, Dazy
(2023, Lame-O)
New Dazy? Don’t mind if I….doozy. This is the first new music from the James Goodson-led power pop fuzz rock project since the Otherbody EP back in March, itself comprised of songs that didn’t make the cut from last year’s OUTOFBODY. Apparently there were a lot of outtakes from those sessions, but I have reason to believe that “Forced Perspective” is newer–for one, its late 90s alt-pop leanings are decidedly more teased-out here than in Goodson’s preview output. Tina Lou Vines from Negative Glow said the song has “Sugar Ray energy” and I can’t unhear that. If it’s all gonna be as good as “Forced Perspective”, though, I say: bring that revival on.
“Kentucky Kingdom”, Mister Goblin
(2023, Exploding in Sound)
An alarming number of Mister Goblin’s best songs are about theme parks. “Six Flags America” from Four People in an Elevator and One of Them Is the Devil, “Holiday World” from Bunny…highlights of their respective records, both. Although the Indiana/Florida-based Sam Goblin has spent some time in the Bluegrass State as part of Louisville’s Deady, he admits he’s never been to the titular amusement park. No matter–this song is still Mister Goblin at their best. It’s just about the polar opposite of the last one-off Goblin single (the fiery post-hardcore of “Left Before Your Set”), showing off Sam Goblin’s indie folk singer-songwriter side. He’s really good at writing these…blurry, unfocused pain-based lyrics; “Kentucky Kingdom” reminds me of a more insular version of the personal micro-dramas that Fox Japan’s Charlie Wilmoth writes. “We’ll be standing in the line for the Lightning Run when Kentucky Kingdom comes / And collapses all at once,” indeed.
Rosy Overdrive 