Pressing Concerns: Friends of Cesar Romero, Lee Baggett, Haint, Lose a Leg

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In what I believe will be the penultimate Pressing Concerns of 2023, we look at two albums that are out this week from Lee Baggett and Haint, as well as two recent LPs from Friends of Cesar Romero and Lose a Leg. We’ll be back with the results of the reader’s poll, Favorite Reissues of 2023, and one more Pressing Concerns after Christmas!

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. And last but not least: don’t forget to vote in the 2023 Rosy Overdrive Reader’s Poll by Christmas!

Friends of Cesar Romero – Queen of All the Parliaments

Release date: December 13th
Record label: Doomed Babe Series
Genre: Power pop, pop punk, garage rock
Formats: Digital
Pull Track: Blackfeet Death Eyes

Our latest entry in Pressing Concerns’ quest to cover every prolific power pop artist out there takes us to Rapid City, South Dakota. That’s the city where J. Waylon Porcupine moved after leaving the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation in the mid-1990s, and where he co-founded garage rock group The Reddmen with Miyo One Arrow shortly thereafter. The Reddmen have been mostly inactive since the early 2010s, but Porcupine has since begun to occupy himself with his Friends of Cesar Romero project–on its Bandcamp page, one can find forty-something different records that have come out between 2011 and now, a pace that’s only increased in recent years. Porcupine has been favoring brief two-to-three-song EPs and singles as of late (see Temporary Anne, Gameboy America, and Spiral Eye Roll, among others, from this year alone), but Friends of Cesar Romero have decided to cap off their 2023 with their most substantial of the year. Queen of All the Parliaments bashes through fifteen four-track-recorded pieces of garage-y, punk-y power pop in about twenty minutes. Several of these songs don’t even last for sixty seconds, but that’s more than enough time for each of them to get their kicks and hooks in–there’s hardly a wasted moment here.

I’d recommend taking a deep breath before putting on Queen of All the Parliaments, as the opening one-two punch of “Blackfeet Death Eyes” and “A Better Who” doesn’t really offer any opportunities to catch a break. The Ramones-y first-wave pop punk of the former song and the snotty, messy vintage power pop of the latter are both nonstop hook fests, and the garage rock stomp of “Kicking the Eternal Flame” is only “tame” in comparison to what it immediately follows. There is a bit of variety on Queen of All the Parliaments after the initial barrage–“Psych Trials” indeed throws a bit of psychedelic noisiness into its garage rock, the mid-tempo “Bleach Tears” is some excellent Guided by Voices-core lo-fi pop rock, and “Tomorrow’s Weather Girl” is a forceful Friends of Cesar Romero take on Strum & Thrum jangle pop (of course, these are all interspersed with minute-long pop ragers like “Pantheon Restroom Riots” and “Jennifer Echoes”). If the hooks weren’t enough to remember him by, Porcupine delivers plenty of lyrics that’ll stick with me throughout the album, either by subverting traditional power pop fare (“Doomsday Hotties”, which is positively Cramps-ian in its prose) or ignoring it entirely (“Atheist Mantis”, which is a Robert Pollard title if I’ve ever heard one). Queen of All the Parliaments likely won’t be the last chance to hop aboard the Friends of Cesar Romero train, but it’s hard to imagine a more inviting one. (Bandcamp link)

Lee Baggett – Echo Me On

Release date: December 21st
Record label: Perpetual Doom/Curly Cassettes
Genre: Folk rock, alt-country, singer-songwriter
Formats: Vinyl, cassette, digital
Pull Track: All Star Day

Although Echo Me On is only the third proper Lee Baggett solo album, the Philippines-born, West Coast-based singer-songwriter has been hovering around the Cosmic Americana/psychedelic folk/alt-country/whatever you like to call it world for two decades now. Perhaps you’ve heard his Lee Gull solo project, or his guitar work in long-running folk rock group Little Wings, or seen him be championed by musicians like Phil Elverum. Last year, Baggett put out Anyway, a sublime collection of relaxed, vintage, wisened folk music that I unfortunately didn’t have time to get to on this blog, but Baggett is back a year and three months later with Echo Me On, which matches his previous work in charm, in personality, and in unhurried, rambling songwriting. There’s no question that Baggett’s voice is the star of Echo Me On, but he’s got a wide cast of musicians and vocalists behind him throughout the record–the keyboards provided by Zeb Zaitz and Nick Aives, Amanda Lawrence’s violin, Emma Wood’s cello, and Cory Gray’s various arrangements are all key pieces of this record as well.

“Nature’s Vagabond” begins Echo Me On with some horns and piano, and also features some excellent upright bass from Anthony Zaitz–appropriate for the endlessness and transience evoked by the title, it feels like we’re dropping into the middle of something already in progress (but a program that is nevertheless welcoming to those of us streaming into the building late). Single “All Star Day” is throwback 60s folk rock at its best, albeit a version of it that’s been slowed down, stopping to view the scenery instead of racing to its conclusion. In “Zipper Ride”, the electric guitar becomes just another instrument in coloring Baggett’s molasses carnival rides, while “Simmer Down” and “Hideaway with Me” both build their timeless pop songwriting around jaunty piano playing. By the time we get to the keyboard-heavy southern rock grooves of penultimate track “Little Soggy”, Echo Me On feels like it could go on forever, but “Weeds & Flowers” is a “wrap-up song” if I’ve ever heard one. Baggett’s singing is even more deliberate here than elsewhere, the backup singers (both Zaitzes, Aives, Judy Butterfield & Anya Rome) helping to emphasize his lyrics. In the midst of chronicling various life cycles, Baggett offers up some advice: “Give off a good vibration / On this trail you’re traveling on”. This line resonates precisely because he’s spent an entire album practicing what he’s preaching. (Bandcamp link)

Haint – RZRGRL

Release date: December 21st
Record label: Self-released
Genre: Industrial pop, dance-pop, post-punk, synthpop, darkwave, experimental pop
Formats: Digital
Pull Track: Higher Than Love

Stone Irvin, aka Haint, is an Atlanta-based musician who’s been at it since at least 2016–a self-titled Haint record showed up back in 2017, the Drain EP followed in 2019, and now RZRGRL, her second full-length, slides in under the wire in late December of 2023. Judging by RZRGRL, Haint is an adventurous project, in more ways than one. Instrumentally, I’d describe it loosely as “industrial pop”–it sounds streamlined but unpredictable, relatively guitar-forward but still falling under the larger “dance music” umbrella, and containing more than its fair share of catchy riffs and refrains. Conceptually, RZRGRL continues Irvin’s interest in high-concept, heady, even dystopian territory–the “garx” in “All the Garx” being short for “oligarx”, fascism hovering over the album when it isn’t being displayed in the open, and the “razor” of the title being invoked both for its ability to cut and the thin margin it represents (and although the tool’s hair-shearing purposes are never explicitly referenced, one could see its relevance in the idea of “New Flesh” around which the album circles).

RZRGRL begins in full force between its opening title track and “Been Dead”, two immediately-attention-grabbing songs. “RZRGRL” is an incredibly sharp structure of drum machines, synths, and big, bold guitars that’s just about as catchy as this kind of music gets, while “Been Dead” shoots for something eerier and darker despite using the same ingredients, and its warning-tone chorus might actually trump the previous song’s hooks. Irvin backs off the guitars a bit in the record’s midsection, although they’re seething under the surface of shrieking highlight “Laydown”, and “Balance Beam” needs its kitchen-sink electronic makeup to really convey its high-stakes uncertainty. Just when things start to think about spinning completely out of control, “New Flesh” throws some lost but fiery guitarplay into the mix, and then the sweet “Higher Than Love”, out of nowhere, gives RZRGRL a perfect pop song in the penultimate track slot. Instead of ending the record there, though, Haint closes things out with “All the Garx”, a jaunty piece of deconstructed industrial rock that crashes us back down to a harsher reality. Stone Irvin hardly sounds frightened about it at this point, though. (Bandcamp link)

Lose a Leg – Lose a Leg

Release date: November 24th
Record label: Self-released
Genre: Post-rock, 90s indie rock
Formats: Digital
Pull Track: The Tunnel

David Roy is a Glasgow-based multi-instrumentalist who’s been making music since at least the beginning of the 21st century–he’s played in plenty of bands over the years, including Sputniks Down, Multiplies, Dananananaykroyd, Text Adventure, and Alarm Bells, and since 2020, he’s been putting out instrumental rock records as Lose a Leg. Roy considers Lose a Leg to be the project’s fourth album (he’s not counting a “rarities” compilation and five different “drone or noise or weird” records released under the name Balaclavichord during the same time period) in as many years, and it represents something of a “back to basics” moment for the musician. Although it’s remained guitar-based, Lose a Leg has explored orchestral post-rock over its first three records, peppering Roy’s compositions with strings and horns–with Lose a Leg, the project downsizes a bit. Inspired by revisiting and subsequently disposing of the tapes he made as a teenager, Roy decided to make an album using only electric guitar, bass, and drums, inspired by the 90s indie rock bands of his youth. 

Lose a Leg, while certainly invoking some of the more exploratory rock music of the 1990s, doesn’t slot neatly into any particular subgenre–it’s too pretty to be Touch & Go-related, not ornate enough to hang with Mogwai or the other British practitioners, too guitar-based to be compared to either the Tortoise or Godspeed! You Black Emperor strains, and not consistently subdued enough to be fully “slowcore”. What it is is a very capable collection of guitar music–often tranquil but not “chill”, frequently finding melody but never vainly attempting to do so in the same way bands with vocalists do, flowing together effortlessly but also being just about as “song-based” as something like this can be. Just in the first half, the welcoming, shimmering “The Tunnel”, the lurching, rhythmic “Put Josh On”, and the expansive “The Irish Sea” all distinguish themselves from each other. Lose a Leg takes its time but remains strong up to the end with the bright but hefty “Crabtree” and plodding, downcast closing track “ttaped Over”–all told, the album is a fruitful visit to the beginning of David Roy’s musical journey. (Bandcamp link)

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