Pressing Concerns: Molly O’Malley, Frog, Wurld Series, Major Awards

Posted byrosyoverdrivePosted inPressing ConcernsTags:, , , , , , , ,

This Thursday in November, Pressing Concerns rolls on uninhibited, offering up new albums from Frog and Wurld Series, a new EP from Major Awards, and a “mixtape” from none other than Molly O’Malley. Read on!

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.

Molly O’Malley – Noise Beyond the Mantle: A Mixtape

Release date: November 17th
Record label: Mollywhop Record Shop
Genre: Dream pop, power pop, noise pop, synthpop, emo
Formats: Digital
Pull Track: They Don’t Sing All the Time 

Last time we checked in with Louisville-originating, Cleveland-based Molly O’Malley, it was October of 2021 and they’d just put out Goodwill Toy, an ambitious little four-song indie pop EP that snuck onto my best of the year list. O’Malley has kept busy in the interim–the three-song Nobody Parties (Like Molly) EP last year, a few demos on their Bandcamp this April, a song on a Blink-182 covers compilation for Smartpunk–but Noise Beyond the Mantle is their most substantial release yet. The eight-song “mixtape” is the most Molly O’Malley we’ve had in one place thus far, and what we get with it is a blurry but undeniably recognizable snapshot of a talented pop singer-songwriter. The songs here are as catchy as they are messy, given a full dose of controlled chaos in their presentations, and O’Malley’s writing feels sharper and fuller than ever in the midst of it all.

Listening to the opening power pop hooks of “Don’t Say When”, one gets the sense that Molly O’Malley could be a genuine pop hitmaker if they wanted to be, even as the rest of Noise Beyond the Mantle resists being so straightforward, instead letting noise and friendliness alternate for control of the record. “Giddy Up!” chugs along, its dreamy, reverb-y rock slightly obscuring but unable to hide some of the most interesting writing I’ve heard from O’Malley yet (everything in that second verse could be the line that sticks with you on any given day). The biggest vocal hook on the entire record just might be “I just don’t know what I’d say at your funeral / When they ask me to speak,” from “They Don’t Sing All the Time”, and the biggest hook of any kind is probably the blaring, Rentals-y synth that stakes out a position smack dab in the middle of “I’ll Guess I’ll Get Going (If Going Is What I Need to Get)”.

There’s a sort of lightness-darkness balance going on in that latter song, with O’Malley delivering “Either way I’ll be disappointed in you” with all the emotion they’ve got in the chorus. “I’ll Guess I’ll Get Going…” guest vocalist Karah Goldstein of Smol Data is in unfamiliar territory here, eschewing the cartoon-y dramedy vibes of their most recent record for something that’s more “unblinking stare” and less “winking” (Goldstein and O’Malley may have used up all that song’s silliness with its Brak Show-referencing title). When O’Malley sent me this mixtape, they mentioned that they were working on their debut full-length as well, and while I’m certainly interested in hearing what that eventually sounds like, there’s more than enough on Noise Beyond the Mantle to enjoy as more than an appetite-whetter. (Bandcamp link)

Frog – Grog

Release date: November 17th
Record label: Audio Antihero
Genre: Experimental pop, folk rock, psychedelic rock, freak folk, prog-pop
Formats: Digital
Pull Track: Maybelline

Frog are a Queens-based duo of brothers (Danny & Steve Bateman) who have been making music since 2015 to a fair amount of acclaim, even as their fifth album, Grog, is the first I’ve heard from them. I know that the band’s first four albums are beloved by a fair amount of people, and from my limited knowledge, their first new music since 2019’s Count Bateman is something of a departure for them, but from someone bringing no history or baggage to Grog, it sounds like an excellent collection of music from collaborators operating at their peak. It’s a pleasingly divergent record, with nearly every song taking a different tack than the track coming before it, even as the Batemans hold it together with shaky but intact pop hooks and Dan’s timeless-sounding, surprisingly versatile voice. Listening to Grog kind of feels like an alternate-universe oldies station in how it picks and chooses sounds from throughout the past to create a new listening experience. 

This feeling is more pronounced than ever in Grog’s opening stretch, where the opening snippet track gives way to the space-y psych pop ballad “Goes w/o Saying”, a fascinating song whose falsetto vocals evoke a highly specific time period where bands like Mercury Rev, The Flaming Lips, and Grandaddy were incorporating the piano-pop-songwriting side of Neil Young into their indie rock. They follow that one up, of course, with the freak folk of “420!!”, a track that reminds me of the same feeling I get listening to Bruiser and Bicycle’s Woods Come Find Me, an indescribable campfire experience–and then after that comes the cascading, vintage power pop rock of “U Shuld Go 2 Me”. More twists keep coming, like the Grifters-y guitar möbius strip that is “Doom Song”, but by the second half of the record, something of a distinct “Grog style” starts to emerge in the form of folk-y, poppy journeys like “New Ro” and “Gone Back to Stanford”, one that can be slowed down (“So Twisted Fate”) or sped up (“Maybelline”) to best fit the song. As a document of a band developing a particular sound in real-time, it’s both successful and highly enjoyable to hear. (Bandcamp link)

Wurld Series – The Giant’s Lawn

Release date: November 17th
Record label: Meritorio/Melted Ice Cream
Genre: Lo-fi indie rock, jangle pop, 90s indie rock, psychedelic pop
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: World of Perverts

Christchurch’s Wurld Series seem like a band made in a lab to appeal to me–a New Zealand guitar pop group that is inspired both directly by the classic Flying Nun bands that put their country on the indie rock map and indirectly via the American 90s indie rock groups that made the Dunedin Sound into something heavier and thornier. That being said, although I liked their 2021 breakthrough record What’s Growing, it didn’t end up fully “sticking” with me–but their follow-up and third full-length, The Giant’s Lawn, caught my attention just about immediately and has only rewarded this sleeve-tug since. Luke Towart, Brian Feary, Ben Woods, and Ben Dodd meander through an impressive patchwork sound throughout the album’s seventeen songs, displaying themselves as masters of both delicate pop music, indie guitar jams, and spacey acoustic psych-folk detours. 

If thinking about The Giant’s Lawn as an Alien Lanes-ish mix of hits and strange interludes helps you understand it, Wurld Series certainly invites you to do so, especially early on, when the quartet offer up more than a few perfect guitar pop songs (the alt-rock chug of “Friend to Man and Traffic”, the especially Guided by Voices-y shit-kicking melancholy of “Lord of Shelves”, the deceptively affecting mid-tempo sparkle of “World of Perverts”) interspersed between the instrumental “The Giant’s Lawn Part I” and the warped piano snippet of Britishness that is “The Pugilist”. Particularly in the record’s second half, however, The Giant’s Lawn starts to melt in the sun, and the oddball and pop sides feel more likely to be directly intertwined. Not that, say, “Resplendent Fortress” isn’t as poppy as anything on the record’s A-side, but stuff like “Alive with Flies” and “Illustrious Plates” can’t be dismissed as interstitial even as they decline to be “normal” indie rock tunes. The last two songs of The Giant’s Lawn feel to me like divergent endpoints–on the one hand, there’s the multi-part prog-alt-rock-folk-swill of “Soft Ranks” and on the other one, the starkly beautiful acoustic/strings Pollardesque ballad “The Cloven Stone”. Both are highlights, and both represent The Giant’s Lawn well. (Bandcamp link)

Major Awards – It’s a Good Night to Have a Bad Time

Release date: November 17th
Record label: Self-released
Genre: Power pop, alt-rock, college rock
Formats: Digital
Pull Track: Dial Direct

Los Angeles’ Major Awards are a “sunshine punk” group made up of the core trio of Dylan Hensley (guitar/vocals), Mario Carreno (drums), and Josh Abarca (baritone guitar/trumpet), and joined on their debut EP by bassist James Bullock and pianist Tony Ramirez. It’s a Good Night to Have a Bad Time, which follows their debut single, September’s “Luxurious Sarcophagus”, is a four-song slow-burn of an EP with a familiar-seeming but nonetheless intriguing sound. Abarca’s prominent trumpet reminds me a bit of Fixtures’ most recent album in how just a single instrument is able to elevate a traditional “rock band” foundation beyond its starting point, and there’s a bit of Menzingers-y weary heartland punk (sapped of “attitude” to the point where only trace elements of “punk rock” can be ascertained) mixed in as well.

I’m not sure It’s a Good Night to Have a Bad Time could’ve started any more laid-back than with “Psalm 151”, whose mid-tempo power chords and Fender Rhodes accents give way to a lazily floating chorus (“Carry my thoughts and prayers to Heaven / On a plume of cigarette smoke,” Hensley sings alongside Abarca’s trumpet). Major Awards muster up just a bit of pep for “Let’s Be Resentful Again (Like We Were Last Year)”, although the cyclical, simmering emotions featured in the song keep the track from pushing the heat past “medium low”. Major Awards’ sound is just right to pull off “Red Eyes on the Red Line”, whose chorus feels like it’s frozen in time. It’s a Good Night to Have a Bad Time closes with “Dial Direct”, the EP’s busiest moment, and the one that feels like it most takes advantage of the newly-minted quintet lineup. Pretty much every instrument gets a moment in the spotlight throughout that track’s four-minute roots rock finale–a punctuation mark that only bodes well for Major Awards going forward. (Bandcamp link) 

Also notable:

Leave a comment