Pressing Concerns: Petit Bureau, PACKS, Heat Wrays, Swimming Bell

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Welcome to Pressing Concerns, this fine Thursday in January. Today we’ve got four great albums hitting the shelves (physical, digital, or both) this week: new ones from Petit Bureau, PACKS, Heat Wrays, and Swimming Bell. If you missed Tuesday’s post, featuring Fust, Arcwelder, Knowso, and Still Ruins, check that one out 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.

Petit Bureau – Bear’s Brain

Release date: January 19th
Record label: Hidden Bay/Les Disques Roblo/Dushtu Records/Epicericords/No Way Asso/Table basse Records/Skank Bloc Records/Le Celtic Pub
Genre: Post-punk, experimental rock, art punk
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Matthew White

Toulouse duo Petit Bureau appeared on my radar because Hidden Bay–an imprint that appears in Pressing Concerns with regularity–is putting out their sophomore album, but as it turns out, they’re sharing the honor of releasing Bear’s Brain with seven other record labels. What’s caused the French underground to so thoroughly hitch their wagon to Petit Bureau? Well, Bear’s Brain is certainly a great example of the best of French indie rock–bassist/synth player/vocalist Stéphanie Marchesi and drummer/vocalist Laetitia Dutech apparently don’t even need guitars to make their brand of skewed but not-impenetrable post-punk. Bear’s Brain was mixed by Greg Saunier of Deerhoof (with whom the band had previously collaborated on 2021’s “The Tiny Desk Is Weak” single), and there’s more than a bit of the experimental “art punk” that’s long characterized Saunier’s band here–perhaps unsurprisingly due to the instrumental makeup of the band, they do a great job of getting the rhythmic side of Deerhoof-ish indie rock down pat.

Bear’s Brain starts off with Dutech’s drums right in the front of the mix on “Automaton”, hammering out a deliberate beat for about a dozen seconds before Marchesi’s bass slinks into the picture. Eventually, Marchesi starts flinging bass notes at the listener and Dutech  bashes along to match–the song, coiled in its first half, strikes confidently after it’s satisfied with where it’s ended up. The first half of Bear’s Brain gets plenty of mileage out of the bass and drums setup, from the smoking, almost psychedelic rock and roll of “The Red Spot Cave” to the more traditionally post-punk “The Ninkasi Road”, but it also knows when to add another shade–the synth playing in the new wave-y “Matthew White” and in the eerie, minimalist “Who Has Seen the Wind” is a welcome addition. Bear’s Brain only gets sharper as the record goes on–the lean, dueling-vocal post-punk that marks the second half of the album in “The Swallow”, “Roasted Freak”, and the title track is the sound of Petit Bureau locking in and rolling out song after song of what they do best. The oddest turn on Bear’s Brain’s B-side is “Peurs”, a piece of atmospheric noise-art rock that somehow feels like it can’t be doing all that with just percussion and bass. It’s just Petit Bureau continuing to excel at their format of choice, however. (Bandcamp link)

PACKS – Melt the Honey

Release date: January 19th
Record label: Fire Talk
Genre: Lo-fi indie rock, garage rock, fuzz rock, folk rock
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
Pull Track: HFCS

PACKS is the project of Toronto’s Madeline Link, who has been steadily releasing music on Fire Talk Records for as long as Rosy Overdrive’s been around–2021’s Take the Cake, 2022’s WOAH EP, and last year’s Crispy Crunch Nothing. I hadn’t been able to get around to any of those albums on the blog even though I’d enjoyed them (particularly Take the Cake), but PACKS have started off 2024 by giving me another chance to talk about their music in the form of Melt the Honey, a brand-new full-length. On its surface, the record has the look of a vintage basement/“lo-fi” rock record–downbeat but fuzzed-out guitars, casual sung-spoken vocals, short song lengths (and short as a whole; the album comes in at under a half-hour). However, the sonic and structural choices of the record aren’t by happenstance or accident–Link has been working with the same backing band (guitarist Dexter Nash, bassist Noah O’Neil, and drummer Shane Hooper) for a while now, and they actually all traveled to Mexico City to record what would become Melt the Honey’s eleven songs.

One such choice that PACKS make is to open the record with “89 Days”, a song that’s a lot more restrained and deliberately-paced than most of the band’s other material. Link’s voice throughout the record can go from flat and emotionless to packed with feeling in a way that reminds me of Rachel Brown from Thanks from Coming/Water from Your Eyes, and it’s just as effective whether she’s wading through the observations of “89s Days” or twisting and turning a bit more to fit the active, nervously-pacing “Honey”. “HFCS” (standing for “high-fructose corn syrup”) is a clear side one standout, a messy but catchy fuzz rocker with a belting chorus, and if “AmyW” follows it up with a psychedelic-flavored instrumental, it’s one that nevertheless keeps the Melt the Honey’s energy up. Even though it doesn’t feel like a fast-paced album, Melt the Honey is over before you know it–you might have to give it a couple listens before fully appreciating what’s going on in the back half of the album, like the lilting guitar pop of “Paige Machine”, the brisk “Missy”, and the psych-folk exploration of “Trippin”. It’s pleasingly off-the-cuff-sounding, but Melt the Honey is the work of a committed and driven group of musicians. (Bandcamp link)

Heat Wrays – Drip Down

Release date: January 17th
Record label: Self-released
Genre: Garage rock, post-punk, garage punk, fuzz rock
Formats: Cassette, digital
Pull Track: On Notice

Heat Wrays are a quartet that hail from Leeds–they put out a three-song demo EP back in 2022, but they’re starting off this year by taking a huge leap forward in the form of an eleven-song, 45-minute debut album. On Drip Down, Heat Wrays are a bit hard to categorize–they’re one part fuzzed-out garage rock, another part blunt post-punk, and another part of them just wants to make loud, distorted pop music. One thing that strikes me upon listening to Drip Down is just how fully-developed these songs are–one of the reasons that it’s difficult to label Heat Wrays a pure “garage punk” act is their aversion to brevity and complete confidence in letting their songs stretch out to four and even (gasp) five minutes. The album was recorded at Stationhouse Studio, and part of why it works as well as it does is it sounds great–the bass is more than substantial, sounding like a post-punk/noise rock low-end, while neither the guitarwork–frequently thorny, reminiscent of 90s indie rock–nor the post-punk, sung-spoken vocals get shortchanged.

“Heat Ring” kicks Drip Down off with a runaway electric guitar riff before launching into some spirited garage-post-punk that just…never runs out of steam. “Professional Conduct” one track later similarly rolls forward for five minutes, but isn’t above adding in a few tricks–some vocals that sound about as animated as this kind of music gets, plus some melodic guitar leads that get a little buried but not enough to be obscured amidst the torrent of distortion. The hidden, bouncy riffs are the secret weapon of Drip Down, punching up workouts like “Atomic Football” and “Clairvoyant” (and singing right along with everything else in the seemingly-out-of-nowhere glam-power-punk anthem “On Notice”). Another thing I’ll say about Drip Down is that it does not let off the gas–just when you think you might need a breather, the guitars come crashing in on “Weaver St” and “Grapevine Cross”, or the drumbeat sprints out in “Buffet Memorial”, and we’re off to the races yet again. Drip Down is an ambitious debut, and it’s got more than enough energy to see it to its conclusion. (Bandcamp link)

Swimming Bell – Charlie

Release date: January 19th
Record label: Adventure Club/Permanent
Genre: Folk rock, country rock, singer-songwriter
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
Pull Track: I Believe in Us

Charlie is the sophomore album from Swimming Bell, the project of Los Angeles-based Katie Schottland, and it becomes apparent from the opening notes of “I Believe in Us” that Schottland and her collaborators (including producer/multi-instrumentalist Oli Deakin, horn player Kyle Resnik, pedal steel guitarist Tim Kelly, and drummer Morgan Karabel) have put together a collection of songs inspired by the Laurel Canyon sound that originated in their city of residence decades ago. However, the journey to Charlie is a bit more winding than “southern Californian folk artist makes southern Californian folk music”–it began five years ago when Schottland was still living in Brooklyn, and a look through her history reveals a singer-songwriter just as versed in indie rock as in classic folk (she’s covered Love as Laughter and Wand, and contributed to music from Savak). While Charlie certainly isn’t a post-punk or heavy psychedelic rock album, I do appreciate that Schottland lets these songs have a wide-open, full-band sound that’s within the Laurel Canyon guidelines but not sounding hamstrung by them.

Charlie’s opening shot, the immaculately-designed “I Believe in Us”, is as well-executed as its core is simple–Schottland’s endless chorus melody and simple pop song chord structure get slowly draped in Resnik’s horns, Allison Robinson’s harmonies, and extra guitar lines to immediately hook the listener. The rest of Charlie isn’t quite as immediately attention-grabbing, but it’s still got a palpable energy–check album midpoint “Ash in the Jar”, a winding, generous country rocker that has no shortage of impressive moments sewn into it, and even the quieter songs like “Company” and “Take It Easy” are fleshed-out in a way that other folk records might balk at. Schottland pulls out a curiosity in Charlie’s second half in her cover of 70s psych-folk-rock duo Curtiss Maldoon’s “Fly Like an Eagle”, finding a maximalist smoothness in it that turns the track decidedly into her own. Album closer “Just Begun” is perhaps the only moment where Swimming Bell really relents and lets Schottland carry a song with (mostly) just an acoustic guitar; after building something impressive, Charlie is content to end by finally trailing off into silence. (Bandcamp link)

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