Pressing Concerns: Tristan Dolce, Lily Seabird, Marking & Plating, Les Ailes

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It’s the second week of January, and it’s time for the second Pressing Concerns of the new year! The first edition that entirely features music from 2024, today we’ve got new albums from Tristan Dolce, Lily Seabird, and Marking & Plating, plus an EP from Les Ailes, to look at. Monday’s blog post was the conclusion of my 1993 deep-dive; if you missed it, why not have some older music to go with today’s new music?

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.

Tristan Dolce – Medium True

Release date: January 12th
Record label: I Love Camping!
Genre: Folk rock, alt-country, indie pop, singer-songwriter
Formats: Cassette, digital
Pull Track: Willow Springs

Tristan Dolce is a Los Angeles-based musician and recording engineer, having amassed technical credits on recent records from Califone, Psychic Temple, and Alex Dupree, among others. Other than a couple of singles in 2020, however, the eight-song Medium True cassette is his first solo release. It’s hardly a one-man effort–Dolce is backed by a full band, guitarist Max Knouse (a good singer-songwriter in his own right), drummer Christian Orozco, and bassist Anthony Beville, as well as nine other guest musicians and vocalists credited (including, presumably, several family members–Trevor Dolce contributes vibraphone, Anthony Dolce contributes guitar, and Megan Dolce vocals). Dolce reveals himself to be an engrossing and striking singer-songwriter on Medium True, using folk and country rock to dress his occasionally long-winded but overtly friendly pop songs. One hardly feels shortchanged by the eight-song-length of the album, and that has just as much to do with how Dolce and his band make every song feel like a self-contained world than the fact that a few songs stretch into the six-minute range.

The first Tristan Dolce song I heard was the album’s lead single, “Willow Springs”, an incredibly catchy piece of Death Cab for Cutie-ish breezy but substantial guitar pop. Dolce’s high, Ben Gibbard/John K. Samson-reminiscent vocals are a feature throughout Medium True, both holding together the record as a whole and allowing for Dolce to keep one foot in the world of pop hooks as the music wanders elsewhere in the record. The vivid storytelling in the lyrics of “Willow Springs” is more than matched by the rest of Medium True–the backing music isn’t as propulsive in opening track “Alaska”, but it makes sense for the uncertain, frozen-in-time energy with which Dolce chooses to begin the album. The variety throughout the record is also key in how memorable it is–Dolce chooses to keep “The Reservoir” and “Ring Ring” spare, almost entirely acoustic guitar-based, while letting his studio pop-side take over in “Digging Too Deep” and “Facts in the Case of M”, and both are effective backdrops for Dolce’s lyric-spinning. The twin six-minute songs that end Medium True mirror each other impressively to push the record a step further–“King of the Arroyo” is a rolling country-rocker that drifts off in its final minutes, while “I Went Up” is vintage big-tent, slow-burn indie rock that builds from its modest beginnings to a giant, horn-laden crescendo. I’d have to credit Dolce’s production work with how inviting Medium True feels on its surface, but the writing beyond that is what makes the record worth returning to. (Bandcamp link)

Lily Seabird – Alas,

Release date: January 12th
Record label: Bud Tapes
Genre: Country rock, folk rock, alt-country
Formats: Cassette, digital
Pull Track: Grace

The latest singer-songwriter to throw their hat in the “folk rock/alt-country-influenced indie rock” ring is Lily Seabird, a Burlington, Vermont-based musician who put out her debut album, Beside Myself, back in 2021 and has returned with a strong follow-up this month with Alas,. Throughout Seabird’s sophomore album, I hear both moments of laid-back folk rock that should appeal to fans of Big Thief and stretches of explosive, wall-of-sound country rock that’ll be up the alley of Wednesday-heads, and while Alas, is out via Bud Tapes (Layperson, Jack Habegger’s Celebrity Telethon, Generifus) instead of 4AD or Dead Oceans, it sounds just as big as those “big ticket” indie rock records. Part of that must be attributed to the all-star cast with which Seabird has surrounded herself on the album, including longtime collaborator Greg Freeman, drummer Zack James (aka Dari Bay), and Noah Schneidman (aka Noah Kesey), as well as Benny Yurco’s production work. But it certainly doesn’t work without Seabird, who co-produced the album and offers up songs and performances that refuse to fade into the background like modern “indie folk” too frequently ends up doing.

At the risk of stating the obvious, Wednesday and Big Thief didn’t invent this strain of rootsy indie rock. It’s something that’s been in the air for a while–Lily Seabird is their peer, as are less-massive alt-country rockers whose music I also hear in Alas, like GracieHorse and Florry. Alas, is something of a gauntlet-throwing record in the genre, all things considered, a bold statement by someone making a case to be thought of as one of the most exciting and intriguing voices currently doing it. Alas, has one of the strongest opening duos of the year thus far–“Take It” is balance-beam country rock that is sold heavily by Seabird’s distressed but oddly in-control-sounding voice, while “Grace” is a Cheshire Cat grin of a country song that roars into its fuzz rock chorus in a way that ought to make you throw your fist up. The agreeably chiming electric folk rock of “Twenty” follows gamely, and the stunning acoustic-based “Angel” also shows up in Alas,’s first half–with such a strong first side, the record flirts with being too frontloaded, but the less-immediate B-side of Alas, starts to come into focus as a vintage “grower” back half over time (not that “Cavity” isn’t imminently pretty folk rock, but Seabird and her band also take the opportunity to really explore on the six-minute “Waste”). Thus ends Alas, and the bar for good indie-country-rock has been raised yet again. (Bandcamp link)

Marking & Plating – Zéro Vague

Release date: January 9th
Record label: Strange Mono
Genre: No wave, experimental rock, lo-fi indie rock, noise rock, post-punk
Formats: Cassette, digital
Pull Track: Space X Blow Up

A new band featuring a familiar face to Rosy Overdrive readers, Marking & Plating are a “Lo-Fi French No Wave” duo formed in Austin, Texas by Harold Whit Williams (longtime guitarist for Cotton Mather, and as of late a prolific lo-fi power pop artist in his own right as Daily Worker) and poet/translator Michael Perret. They became acquainted as library co-workers, discussions eventually leading to the creation of Zéro Vague, a bizarre and unique debut album recorded in Williams’ home studio and available on cassette via Philadelphia’s Strange Mono. On Zéro Vague, Marking & Plating take both rock and electronic music and shove them together to the point where it’s hard to tell the difference–guitars, drum machines, and synths are all funneled into a four-track and distorted to an eardrum-damaging level, and the songs’ droll, spoken-word French vocals do their best to make themselves heard over the cacophony. I hardly speak a word of French, but the song titles (here are three of them: “Space X Blow Up”, “Joe Rogan”, and “False Flag, TX”) give plenty of hints as to where Marking & Plating’s ammunition is aimed.

The rumbling “Space X Blow Up” opens up Zéro Vague with some ear-splitting, pressurized rock and roll, sounding like something akin to fractured surf-punk with some surprising lead guitar work making itself known in the second half of the song. The minimal synth-bounce of “Joe Rogan” is pretty far from rock music but still pretty damn catchy, although by “South of Hugo”, Williams and Perret have mostly dispensed with hooks in favor of noise. The post-punk crawl of “Drag Queen, TX” is some vintage Lone Star experimental rock that’s the only other song on Zéro Vague with prominent guitar–the rest of the record cycles between whirlwind drum-machine forward pop assaults (“Loner Star”, “Castroville”) and industrial noise collages that are only sort of grounded by the vocals (“Chez Joe Rogan”, “Spanish Dog”). The one song that doesn’t feel like an outright attack is the eerie closing track “Starbucks Gun”–all we get in this sub-two-minute outro is some words in French about Starbucks and creepy synths that roll in and out as the vocals become increasingly manipulated and edited. It’s maybe more disorienting than the in-the-red no wave drum machines. (Bandcamp link)

Les Ailes – How to Greet a Praying Mantis

Release date: January 12th
Record label: Self-released
Genre: Indie folk, singer-songwriter
Formats: Digital
Pull Track: Comedown

Les Ailes is Rylie DeGarmo, a Seattle-originating, Portland-based singer-songwriter who’s been recording music since at least 2015 (first as The Rue with her father Chris, a metal/alt-rock lifer who’s played with Jerry Cantrell and Queensrÿche among others), and has been putting out a steady stream of singles, EPs, and even one full-length (2021’s Tennessee) for the entirety of this decade. As Les Ailes, DeGarmo has synthesized her jazz background with hushed but full-sounding indie folk, a combination that’s on full display on How to Greet a Praying Mantis, her latest EP. DeGarmo went overseas to record the EP, making it at Analogue Catalogue Recording Studios in Northern Ireland with musicians Declan Legge and Brian McClintic and producer Julie McLarnon–together, the group put together an EP of five songs that don’t go out of their way to be particularly showy but are more than strong enough to shine in How to Greet a Praying Mantis’s bare presentation.

How to Greet a Praying Mantis is a slow-moving EP–there is minimal to no percussion on these tracks, and DeGarmo never sounds hurried as a frontperson. “I Am Bad” is not the most attention-grabbing song on the record, but as an opener it’s a strong tone-setter–it sounds like whoever’s playing the electric guitar is trying to make as little noise as possible while still playing full chords, and DeGarmo’s voice, jumping from transportive high notes to nearly spoken-word simplicity, is just about the only other noticeable aspect of the song. “Comedown” and “In Stride” are a bit more built-out, and these are the songs where Les Ailes’ vocal jazz-pop influences make themselves the clearest; the former is a timeless-sounding, emotional ballad, while the latter is a bit more probing but still engrossing. Not wanting to get too busy, How to Greet a Praying Mantis ends with its sparsest moment in “San Francisco”, with nothing but a simple percussive beat (which could be little more than somebody lightly banging on an acoustic guitar) and what sounds like DeGarmo harmonizing with herself closing the record. It’s all Les Ailes need to make something worthwhile. (Bandcamp link)

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