Pressing Concerns: Teenage Tom Petties, The Smashing Times, TIFFY, Citric Dummies

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It’s been a whirlwind week yet again here at Rosy Overdrive. Today’s post caps off the week by looking at four albums that are coming out tomorrow: new ones from Teenage Tom Petties, The Smashing Times, TIFFY, and Citric Dummies. The October 2023 playlist/round-up went up on Tuesday, and we looked at albums from Aux Caroling, Bungler, The Wind-Ups, and Miracle Sweepstakes on Monday; check those posts out, too.

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.

Teenage Tom Petties – Hotbox Daydreams

Release date: November 3rd
Record label: Repeating Cloud/Safe Suburban Home
Genre: Lo-fi power pop
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Dipshit

I first became aware of Wiltshire, England’s Tom Brown as one half of the lo-fi power pop duo Rural France, but Brown’s Teenage Tom Petties project (named after a song from the most recent Rural France album) has taken center stage as of late. The self-titled debut Teenage Tom Petties album came out last year, and it was a jolting 14-minute, 9-song proof of concept that was recorded entirely by Brown himself at home. I’m not the kind of person that listens to lo-fi, clanging, tuneful pop rock and thinks “I just wish this was recorded in a studio with a full band”, but playing these songs live necessitated the development of one, and, wouldn’t you know it, the Teenage Tom Petties are now a five-piece, three-guitar group that spans both Old and New England. In what I think is a first for Pressing Concerns, the Teenage Tom Petties Quintet features two different label heads–Galen Richmond of Portland, Maine’s Repeating Cloud (and the band Lemon Pitch) on guitar, and Jim Quinn of York’s Safe Suburban Home on bass, in addition to lead guitarist James Brown and drummer Jeff Hamm. 

The group decamped to Providence, Rhode Island’s Big Nice Studio to record Hotbox Daydreams, the sophomore Teenage Tom Petties record, with Bradford Krieger of Courtney and Brad, and they ended up with an album that doubles the length of the debut (28 minutes) despite only having one more song. And in terms of fidelity, it’s obviously an exponential leap forward (regular readers of the blog are aware that Krieger knows what he’s doing). Great pop songwriters shine through the most rudimentary of recording setups, yes, but they also don’t need to lean heavily on amp distortion and off-the-cuff energy to make something worthwhile–with that in mind, I’m pleased to say that not only does Hotbox Daydreams retain the spark of Teenage Tom Petties, it’s a leap forward for Brown and his collaborators in every way. It’s deeper, more energetic, more consistent, and it sounds better (and mind you, I liked that debut quite a bit).

Every song on Hotbox Daydreams could’ve been a single. I can’t really argue with the two choices–particularly “Stoner”, a high-octane piece of loud melancholy that solidifies the album’s excellence in the track two slot–but what about the excellent, sprinting, scene-setting opening track “Trigger’s Broom”? Or the crunchy power chords, giant chorus, and “slacker rock anthem” vibes of “This One’s on You”? What about the instantly memorable lo-fi showtune “Dipshit” (well, unless they were going all out for radioplay, in which case that one answers itself)? Brown’s choruses feel more developed, maybe more “mature”–not in the sense that they’re any less immediate, but songs like “I Got It from Here” and “Find Me” feel precarious in how they shoot for the pop-song moon while balancing some more complex emotions. It’s rare that I think “ah, I wish I had a lyric sheet for this slacker rock album,” but Brown’s writing, which already had a bit more going on under the surface than normal on the last album, feels like it’s moving even further to the front of the pack here,  both on the quieter moments–closing track “Death Trap” and…well, basically just that one–and in the crevices of the rockers. Welcome to the next generation of Teenage Tom Petties, bigger and better than ever. (Bandcamp link)

The Smashing Times – This Sporting Life

Release date: November 3rd
Record label: K/Perennial
Genre: Jangle pop, psychedelic pop
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Dandy

The Smashing Times are effectively the platonic ideal of a certain version of guitar pop. The Baltimore five-piece are lead by the duo of vocalists Thee Jasmine Monk (also on guitar) and Zelda-Anais (also on drums) and are rounded out by bassist Britta Leijonflycht (also of Galore, Rays, and Almond Joy), drummer Paul Krolian (also of Expert Alterations), and guitarist Blake Douglas (also of Gloop). This Sporting Life is the band’s fourth album since 2019–the first one I heard was last year’s Meritorio-released Bloom, which was presented as a “psychedelic twee freakbeat” album and lived up to that description, a warped wonderland where vintage jangle pop and folk rock take strange and unknowable twists and turns all over. Merely a year later they’ve jumped to K and Perennial (Daisies, Ribbon Stage, Milk Music) for This Sporting Life, which might be the most fully-realized The Smashing Times have sounded yet–it’s the most pop-forward they’ve sounded, even as they haven’t abandoned the exploratory streak that made them stick out in the first place.

The Smashing Times roll through fourteen songs (sixteen if you count bonus 7” single “Monday in a Small Town” and its B-side) in forty minutes here–if you want to get lost in This Sporting Life, it’s encouraged, but there are also several memorable signposts in the form of sneakily brilliant pop singles here. The roaring “Saturday Night and Sunday Morning” is the obvious single from the A-side–the band sound like a slightly more scatterbrained version of The Jam on that one–but the jangle pop overload of “Let’s Be Nice with Johnny” and the 60s folk rock sweetness of opening track “Glorious Tales of Wes” are both just as catchy without being quite as dramatic about the whole thing. Two of the best pop moments on the album come towards the end–the forty-second instrumental ball of melody that is “Petey” and the sparkling “Dandy”–even as the album ends by stretching their sound in classic Smashing Time fashion. “Where Is Rowan Morrison” is some vintage psych-folk-pop-rock, and the nearly eight-minute “Peppermint Girl” (which closes the album proper) just keeps going, declining to run out of ideas and territories in which to steer the song. “Peppermint Girl” could’ve gone on even longer as far as I’m concerned–but when it’s finished, I can just start This Sporting Life over again. (Bandcamp link)

TIFFY – So Serious

Release date: November 3rd
Record label: Totally Real/Dollhouse Lightning
Genre: Dream pop, indie punk, 90s indie rock, power pop
Formats: Cassette, digital
Pull Track: In Jest

So Serious is the debut album from TIFFY (aka Tiffany Sammy), but the Boston-based singer-songwriter has been around for a bit. I first heard her self-titled EP back in 2021, which was her second, following her 2019 debut Fire Sale. So Serious is being put out through the team of Dollhouse Lightning (with whom she’s been since her 2020 “Double Feature” cassette single) and Totally Real Records (Onesie, Pacing, Snake Lips), who’ve been on a real tear lately. Sammy describes her sound as “soft punk”, and the TIFFY EP reflected this by mixing quiet, dreamy indie pop with some louder fuzz-pop moments (the “pop” being the main throughline here). So Serious feels like the culmination of Sammy’s last few years of output–some of these songs have existed as demos or alternate recordings for a while now, but everything on the record locks into place and fits together as an inspired marriage of jagged alt-rock and more polished pop.

“I’m Not Equipped for This”, which kicks off So Serious, originally appeared on the TIFFY EP–this re-recorded version feels more dynamic, the Weezer-y wall-of-sound guitar flareups sounding more towering compared to the restraint shown in the verses. Sammy’s commitment to rock music is as strong as ever here–just on the first half, the blistering “In Jest”, the melodic lead guitar workout of “Don’t Take It Personally”, and the slow-but-steadily-building “Vying” all feature enjoyable guitar-forward music. Although the dance-pop groove of “Lost in the Shuffle” is an early outlier, you might have to stick around a bit to hear the “soft” side of TIFFY become the dominant strain–even the dreamy “Can’t Stand It (Don’t Wanna Talk)” develops into a full-blown rocker by its end. The muddled synthpop of “Ingest (With a G)” closes the album on a curious note, with Sammy, whose vocals had largely been front and center, fading into the background and wondering “what did I take all these years?” It’s a true breather in a record that doesn’t feature too many of them–but with one full-length finally under her built, TIFFY’s earned that much. (Bandcamp link)

Citric Dummies – Zen and the Arcade of Beating Your Ass

Release date: November 3rd
Record label: Feel It
Genre: Garage punk, hardcore punk, fuzz punk
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: I Don’t Wanna Be with No One But Myself (Tonight)

I shoulda never smoked that shit, now I’m getting my ass beaten on the Zen Arcade cover. That album artwork and title is certainly the first thing I noticed about the fourth album from the Minneapolis trio Citric Dummies, who have apparently been skulking around releasing music on punk labels like Erste Theke Tonträger (Public Interest, Supercrush, Needles//Pins) since 2016. Yes, they’re probably just goofing around about an album they’re supposed to treat as a holy grail as a Minnesotan garage punk band, but at the same time, early-to-middle Hüsker Dü is not at all a bad starting point for Citric Dummies’ breakneck, land-speed-record hardcore-ish punk rock. While vocalist/bassist Drew Ailes (“Egg Norton”), vocalist/guitarist Patrick Dillon (“Blob Mould”), and Travis Minnick (“Brandt Shardt”) are not exactly trying to create punk rock opera, the twenty-three minute Zen and the Arcade of Beating Your Ass similarly takes its pop and pulverization in equal measure.

Maybe this is what happens when you take an early Dü ethic and devotion and combine it with a Replacements goofiness–you get songs like “I’m Gonna Punch Larry Bird” and “Doing Dope at Chucky Cheese” that are as serious about laying you out as their titles are absurd. Citric Dummies do have a hardcore speed to them, but the majority of Zen and the Arcade of Beating Your Ass is pop music delivered with plenty of fuzz and punk yelps. Sims Hardin of Mesh compares them to the Ramones on the album’s Bandcamp page, and while I’m not going to sit here and claim that these are just 60s girl-group pop songs sped up like Johnny, Joey, Dee Dee, and Tommy made, it’s not just pure aggression that makes “I’m Gonna Kill Myself (At the Co-op)” and “I Don’t Wanna Be with No One But Myself (Tonight)” into pretty timeless-sounding punk anthems. Really, the best thing I can say about this album is that it lives up to what you’d hope something called “Zen and the Arcade of Beating Your Ass” would sound like. It’s not Zen Arcade, but it stands on its own. (Bandcamp link)

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