Pressing Concerns: Seablite, Means and Ways, Sandy Pylos, No Drama

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Welcome to the working week (I’ve probably used that one before, but I’ve done so many of these at this point, I think I’m allowed to)! Anyway, this is a good and varied edition of Pressing Concerns, featuring new albums from Means and Ways and Sandy Pylos, a new EP from No Drama, and a remastered reissue of Seablite‘s debut album. Which one’s your favorite? No wrong answers here.

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.

Seablite – Grass Stains and Novocaine (Reissue)

Release date: November 3rd
Record label: Dandy Boy
Genre: Shoegaze, jangle pop, indie pop, dream pop
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Pillbox

It’s a great year to be Seablite. The San Francisco noise pop quartet released their second album and Mt.St.Mtn. debut Lemon Lights back in September (according to Rosy Overdrive and many others: it’s a hit), and barely over a month later, their 2019 debut album Grass Stains and Novocaine, originally released through Emotional Response, has seen a remastered vinyl reissue through Dandy Boy Records. If you liked the follow-up record, you’ll find plenty to enjoy on their first full-length, even as the band (guitarist/vocalist Lauren Matsui, bassist/vocalist Galine Tumasyan, guitarist Jen Mundy, and drummer Andy Pastalaniec aka Chime School) definitely have developed their sound in the four years that passed between the two. On Lemon Lights, Seablite emphasized the louder end of their shoegaze-indebted sound and even explored some of the psychedelia that colored a lot of the band’s early 90s touchstone/reference-point records–and even though Grass Stains and Novocaine is plenty fuzzy in parts, its more straightforward indie pop/power pop sound recalls the subtler moments on that record, like “Monochrome Rainbow”, “Smudge Was a Fly”, and “Faded”.

Of course, there’s still plenty of shoegaze textures throughout Grass Stains and Novocaine–for one, “Won’t You” comes right out of the gate with an exciting and blistering wall of sound, and the vocals are plenty “ethereal” here. It’s far from the only such moment on the album, but Seablite also establish early on that they weren’t just that, with songs like “Pillbox” and “Time Is Weird” coming off more than anything else as louder versions of vintage indie pop in the vein of K, Slumberland, and Sarah Records. The slow-moving, atmospheric album centerpiece “(He’s a) Vacuum Chamber” uses some fuzz and reverb to make an intriguing piece of art rock that is nonetheless quite catchy, while the second half of the record reveals that Seablite can still rock out with almost no distortion in their sound with the surprisingly clean-sounding indie pop of  “House of Papercuts”. Of course, some of the best moments on Grass Stains and Novocaine also come on the noisiest tracks–“Haggard” is classic retro pop run through a woodchipper, and the chilly “Polygraph” (“I’m starting over, because of you” is a pretty powerful, simple refrain line) also buries an excellent hook in fuzz. With Lemon Lights indicating that Seablite has no intention of attempting to recreate their debut faithfully over and over again, it’s worth appreciating Grass Stains and Novocaine as a singular entry into what one hopes will grow to be a large discography. (Bandcamp link)

Means and Ways – Fear Filter

Release date: November 3rd
Record label: Self-released
Genre: Alt-country, singer-songwriter, folk rock, soft rock
Formats: Digital
Pull Track: September Sun

New York-based singer-songwriter Quinn Mongeon makes music as Means and Ways, which is, per their Bandcamp page, “sometimes a band, sometimes one man”. Previous Means and Ways singles have featured a full band (Mongeon on guitar and vocals, plus pianist/organist Peter DeBartolo, bassist Brendan Finn, and Victor Lum); on the other end of the spectrum would be the two-hour Locked Down in New York, an album comprised of demos that Mongeon recorded alone during the pandemic (and subsequently decided to let them stay frozen in that time period). Fear Filter, which seems to be the first proper Means and Ways album, is somewhere in between–it does feature some contributions from his collaborators, but was “largely written, performed, and produced” by Mongeon himself. Some solitude is perhaps apt for an album fairly personal in nature, but it’s not overly lo-fi–either alone or with others, the Means and Ways of Fear Filter are practitioners of lush folk rock and guitar pop.

Fear Filter isn’t afraid to be subtle–opening track “New Voice in a Room” does feature some striking lead guitar work, but it’s far from “showy”, and this only sets the stage for what Mongeon delivers throughout the record. A good portion of the album–the somewhat dark but still fairly “pop” acoustic folk of “World Remains the Same”, mid-record ballad “Stardust”, the five-minute soft-country shuffle of “Time to Go”–are songs that’d drive a person to shush anyone who’d dare to try to talk over them when they’re being played at a show. There are more upbeat moments (“Another Year”, “Hollow”, “A Lot Like That”), but they’re not exactly hard-charging rockers–nor should they be, really. The lyrics of Fear Filter are drawn from Mongeon’s experience living with a debilitating panic attack disorder for several years; while he doesn’t say so directly in the album, most of its narratives–a combination of aurally-pacing inner monologues and brief, blurry glimpses into the outside world–make quite a bit of sense in this context. Closing track “September Sun” makes sense as a final statement with this in mind, as well–the city-life observations are vivid and complete in a way they hadn’t previously been, and the chorus (“Oh now that day is done / When I was alone, I was alone”) announces the beginning of a new chapter with clarity. (Bandcamp link)

Sandy Pylos – Notas de Voz

Release date: November 3rd
Record label: Self-released
Genre: Indie pop, synthpop, experimental pop
Formats: Cassette, digital
Pull Track: La Modelo de Mis Fantasias

Ana Diaz is a musician from Asunción, Paraguay, where they co-founded the psychedelic power pop band EEEKS in 2012. EEEKS put out a couple of albums in the late 2010s, but since Diaz moved to Portland, Oregon in 2018, they have started a new project, Sandy Pylos. Diaz has released singles as Sandy Pylos as early as 2020, but Notas de Voz is their debut album under the name, and it finds Diaz separating themselves from their work with EEEKS by embracing an atmospheric synthpop sound. Although they no longer live in Paraguay, Diaz’s place of origin is clearly still on their mind–these ten tracks are full of field recordings that Diaz makes every time they revisit their home country as a way of remembering it, and the subjects of the songs (which are bilingual, in both English and Spanish) deal with the idea of home, thoughts of family, and the intersection between the two of them.

New horizons aside, the first minute of Notas de Voz does sound pretty similar to an EEEKS song– “La Modelo de Mis Fantasias” gets off to a sprinting start with its bouncy power pop. However, almost as if to assert that this is Sandy Pylos, the song then deconstructs itself, shifting into a more low-key but still catchy pop rock tune in its midsection, and ending with a sound collage of hushed music from the song, bird sounds, and ambient noises. “Cerca Mio” and “Bellas Chollas” are the other “pop” songs found towards the front of the record, although they’re fairly distinct from one another–the former opts for guitar-driven, laid-back but still quite full-sounding bedroom-psych-pop, and the latter goes for prim, strutting synthpop. Diaz cautiously leads the album into a controlled unraveling with the entirely field-recording-based “1437” and the experimental pop of “Like a House” before ending Notas de Voz with a trio of heartfelt pop ballads. All of them feature synths in the foreground–“A Weekend” in particular would be hard to imagine without those soaring tones–although “synthpop” doesn’t quite get at where Diaz is coming from here. The pop music of Sandy Pylos pulls from several different corners, but Notas de Voz is built from a solid, sturdy, coherent structure. (Bandcamp link)

No Drama – No Drama

Release date: November 3rd
Record label: Hidden Bay/Seitan’s Hell Bike Punks
Genre: Lo-fi indie rock, fuzz rock, slowcore, shoegaze
Formats: Cassette, digital
Pull Track: Born to Clap

No Drama are a new Toulouse, France-based indie rock band made up of Hidden Bay labelhead Manon Raupp on guitar and vocals, as well as bassist Amandine Rué, guitarist/vocalist Daniel Selig, and drummer Iso Couderd. Raupp’s label is co-releasing their debut EP with Seitan’s Hell Bike Punks, and the members have played in various other Hidden Bay bands (Radical Kitten, Docks, Walk Home Drunk, Comité, balnéaire, and Chien pourri), although No Drama presents a group already developing a distinct sound. The five-track cassette EP is a dour-sounding piece of 90s-inspired indie rock, with No Drama pulling in a bit of slowcore, shoegaze, and emo into their downcast but quite striking music. For a debut record, No Drama is fairly fleshed-out–the quartet present both concise, chilly bummer pop and sprawling, four-to-five minute guitar-exploration-heavy rock songs in a sub-twenty minute package.

Opening track “Better Off” strikes an opening balance between the melodic, almost triumphant-sounding indie rock instrumental and the emotional, somewhat pained-feeling lead vocals, declining to settle into either “slacker rock” or “chill dream pop” easy listening modes. Although “Better Off” is a short tune, it primes the listener for the back-to-back punches of “Happy Dog” (which stretches to nearly six minutes) and the stop-start cavernous indie rock epic of “Exit”, both of which present grand-scale visions from the still-young-yet band. Those who make it through the EP’s rather harrowing midsection get rewarded with “MFNM” (that stands for “making friends, not money”), which steadily paces its way to a big, electric finish, and closing track “Born to Clap”, a bright, vocal-trade-off-heavy piece of fuzz pop that’s easily the most accessible track on the record. The song promises handclaps, and it delivers–with about three seconds left on the EP. If that seems a bit backwards to you–well, to me it seems like No Drama know exactly what they’re doing. (Bandcamp link)

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One thought on “Pressing Concerns: Seablite, Means and Ways, Sandy Pylos, No Drama”

  1. Seablite has been a revelation for me this year, with Lemon Lights being an AOTY candidate. Looking forward to checking this remastered version of Gras Stains and Novocaine.

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