Hello, and welcome to the first 2024-based edition of Rosy Overdrive’s monthly playlist and round-up! The December/January ones are always fun because they’re the most random of these: you’ve got stuff from January releases, singles from records coming out later in the year, a bunch of songs from 2023 that I found through other people’s year end lists, and a few old songs from my 1993 project. It rules. If you missed yesterday’s Pressing Concerns, featuring new records from Cheekface, Girls Know, and Fantastic Purple Spots plus the most recent Heavenly reissue, you oughta check that one out, too.
Fust and Now have two songs on the playlist this time.
Here is where you can listen to the playlist on various streaming services: Spotify, Tidal (missing two songs), BNDCMPR (also missing two songs). Be sure to check out previous playlist posts if you’ve enjoyed this one, or visit the site directory. If you’d like to support Rosy Overdrive, you can share this (or another) post, or donate here.
“Maybe”, Rotundos
From Fragments (2024)
“Shoulda never said ‘I love you’ if I didn’t mean it,” and then the guitars kick in–now that’s how you start a pop punk song. Chicago’s Rotundos are decidedly more than just that–their latest EP, Fragments, is only four tracks but it covers art punk, garage rock, post-punk, and maybe even a bit of mathy post-hardcore–but they make their opening statement with their catchiest side. “Maybe” is excellently ragged power poppy-punk rock that still finds some time to stop and start and rip thorough long, guitar-hero instrumentals in between the verses and chorus. I don’t know too much about this band, but they’ve left a strong impression on me, and I’ll be keeping my eye on Rotundos in the new year.
“Pink Slip / White Truck”, Dead Billionaires
From Disaster Preparedness Coloring Book (2023, Possum Lick Farms)
Dead Billionaires are a pop punk/90s alt-rock/power pop trio from Richmond, zippier, scrappier, and maybe a bit more theatrical than the grunge rock of the other such RVA band I know about, Gnawing. “Pink Slip / White Truck” is two minutes of careening, hooky pop rock and roll music, a brief highlight on their brief debut album, Disaster Preparedness Coloring Book. As one might guess from their name, Dead Billionaires are “punk” in more ways than just chord choices, and while “Pink Slip / White Truck” isn’t as explicit about it as, say, “15 Words” from the same album is, frontperson Warren Campbell has a lot to run through before letting it all out in the chorus (“I don’t wanna be a pawn anymore”).
“Asymmetrical”, Capsuna
From Capsuna (2024)
Capsuna are a Belgian band formed by former Cincinnati resident David Enright and fronted by lead vocalist Louise Crosby, and they just released their debut cassette at the beginning of the year. The first ten Capsuna songs are vintage guitar-forward indie pop at its best, with Crosby’s vocals maximizing these songs’ melodies over top of instrumentals that can be somewhat charmingly fuzzy and lo-fi, but not overwhelming so. The garage-y “Asymmetrical” kicks off Capsuna with arguably its loudest moment, but the distorted guitars chug along to a catchy pop song progression and Crosby’s vocals, while somewhat buried, are prominent enough to deliver hooks in that form as well. Read more about Capsuna here.
“Grace”, Lily Seabird
From Alas, (2024, Bud Tapes)
Burlington, Vermont’s Lily Seabird is responsible for the first great “folk rock/alt-country-influenced indie rock” record of the year; throughout Alas,, Seabird offers up both laid-back folk rock and explosive, wall-of-sound country rock reminiscent of both the genre’s heavy hitters (Big Thief, Wednesday) and lesser-known peers (GracieHorse, Florry). My favorite song on Alas, is part of a particularly strong opening punch–“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 cheery verses that introduce us to “Grace” (the song and the subject) are all the more effective when chased with such bombast. Read more about Alas, here.
“Roses After H.D.”, Now
From And Blue Space Is Burning Noon (2023, Sloth Mate)
There is a lot of great music coming out of the Bay Area (to state the obvious to anyone who reads this blog regularly), so it’s not surprising that a couple of good such bands would escape my notice in this recent flurry of activity. I didn’t know about the trio of Now until Rosy Overdrive favorite Chime School listed And Blue Space Is Burning Noon as one of their top albums of last year–and while it’s still new to me, I can safely say it’s–at the very least–one of the most intriguing albums from 2023 that I’ve heard. Singer-songwriter Will Smith (who, of course, also plays in Cindy, because all these Bay Area bands bleed into each other) sounds like a young Scott Miller (or The Telephone Numbers’ Thomas Rubenstein), but the rest of the band are groovier, more psychedelic, and…more rubbery than either of those singers’ bands, exemplified but the excellent exploratory dream-prog-psych-pop of highlight “Roses After H.D.”.
“Armchair”, Yungatita
From Shoelace & a Knot (2024)
On their debut album, Los Angeles’ Yungatita remind me a bit of bands like The Beths–ace creators of pop hooks delivered in indie rock form. That being said, Shoelace & a Knot is more all over the place: messy, energetic, noisy, and, above all, entertaining. “Armchair” is a nervous-sounding power pop song that rides an exploratory indie rock instrumental introduction into a giant-sounding anthem that blows the entire record wide open. Bandleader Valentina Zapata is just as compelling a performer (changing their inflection and delivery in unexpected ways throughout the song) as they are a lyricist (not that “Armchair” is the most straightforward song, but lines like “It’s one thing to call me crazy / But it’s just weird, you’re the one that raised me” offer hints). Read more about Shoelace & a Knot here.
“Heavy Hauler”, KNOWSO
From Pulsating Gore (2024, Sorry State)
Cleveland garage punk group Knowso’s latest album, Pulsating Gore, is inspired by singer Nathan Ward’s day job as a trucker–the way Ward pairs his horrifying, mundane, disquieting version of Americana writing with his dead-eyed, lucid vocal delivery is transfixing and effective. The influence of Ward’s line of work is made explicit in “Heavy Hauler”, an early highlight on the record. It’s recognizably garage punk in its structure, as Ward depicts vehicles careening off ledges and futile struggles with nature in the lyrics, and the eerie chorus that answers Ward in the song’s refrain pushes an already-memorable track even further. Read more about Pulsating Gore here.
“Nuclear Football”, Stuart Pearce
From Nuclear Football (2024, Safe Suburban Home)
Last year, I wrote about Red Sport International, the debut studio album from Nottingham’s Stuart Pearce. They’re a band with a clear debt to The Fall, but they succeed more than most Fall imitators in making fresh-sounding music by emphasizing the more flexible and fun end of the band rather than the drab, one-note side (which you realistically need to be a Mark E. Smith to pull off). Nothing emphasizes the appeal of Stuart Pearce better than “Nuclear Football”, the opening track of an EP of the same name (which is otherwise made up of live recordings) and the band’s best song yet. On “Nuclear Football”, Stuart Pearce have their foot on the gas from the get-go–they’ve got plenty to say, some of it quite sharp, but they sound like they’re having a blast while doing so.
“Belt of Orion”, Crystal Canyon
From Stars and Distant Light (2023)
They seem to have a pretty impressive “dream pop bands per capita” ratio going on in Portland, Maine. In last month’s playlist, I highlighted a song from Maine group Little Oso, and Crystal Canyon have made it two in a row this time around with “Belt of Orion”, my favorite track from their 2023 album Stars and Distant Light. They’re more shoegaze-indebted than Little Oso’s indie pop, but “Belt of Orion” in particular has a classic jangly, dreamy, almost college rock-y sound that is the recipe for one hell of a guitar pop song. It’s got a tough-feeling backbeat that’s perhaps the greatest evidence of their ability to get heavier, but on “Belt of Orion”, Crystal Canyon train their might on filling out the song with chiming guitars and sparkling harmonies.
“Mother Mary”, Late Bloomer
From Another One Again (2024, Dead Broke/Self Aware)
It feels so good to have “rock” Late Bloomer back. I thoroughly enjoyed their introspective turn on 2022’s Where Are the Bones EP, but it was the catchy but loud stylings of 2018’s Waiting that initially won me over, so it’s quite exciting that we’re finally getting its follow-up in Another One Again. Of the two singles the Charlotte alt-rock revivalists have released from it, the one I love the most is “Mother Mary”, a five-minute song that’s a bit more restrained and even alt-country-indebted compared to the other one, “Self Control”. What really puts “Mother Mary” over the top is the second half, where its slow build starts to pay off in the form of transfixing guitar soloing and excellent, passionate dueling vocals. I’ll have more to say about Another One Again soon.
“Here”, Texas 3000
From tx3k (2023)
One of my favorite albums from last year was No Guitar by Curling, a trans-Pacific duo made up of Berkeley’s Bernie Gelman and Tokyo’s Jojo Brandel. However, Brandel has a completely different band that also released an entire album in 2023–Nakano City’s Texas 3000, in which he sings and plays guitar along with drummer Hirotaka Sakiyama and bassist Hiro Tamang. Although No Guitar is hard to beat, tx3k has a lot to love on it as well–it’s more emo-indebted than Curling are at this point, but it does feature plenty of Brandel’s other band’s experimental, studio-friendly pop side. The gorgeous guitar pop of penultimate song “Here” is as good as anything by Curling–Brandel is a triumphant, timeless-sounding rock bandleader when delivering the line the entire song leads up to (“All cops die here”).
“Kill Your Body, Metaphor”, Uncouth
(2024, Ratbag)
One of my favorite new bands of the past couple of years has been Athens, Ohio jangle pop group The Laughing Chimes, so when I heard that the Chimes’ core duo of Evan and Quinn Seurkamp were part of a brand new quintet that had just released its debut single, I was keen to spin it. Uncouth (also featuring Chason Anthony, bassist Scott Moore, and drummer Casey Rees) are a bit darker than The Laughing Chimes’ sparkling sound, although “Kill Your Body, Metaphor” is still quite catchy. Uncouth is an attempt to merge the Seurkamps’ guitar pop influences with emo and post-hardcore brought forth by the rest of the band, and what they’ve created is something that isn’t quite either of them. “Kill Your Body, Metaphor” is a weird convergent evolution version of post-punk, one that is both poppier and angrier than the wild-type variety of it. It’s very good!
“Mock the Hours”, David Nance
From David Nance & Mowed Sound (2024, Third Man)
Anyone who’s been following his Bandcamp page hasn’t exactly been hurting for new David Nance material as of late (his album-length cover of Devo’s Duty Now for the Future is certainly worth a listen, as is an alternate version of his 2018 album Peaced & Slightly Pulverized called, naturally, Pulverized & Slightly Peaced). Still, it’s been over three years since the last “proper” album from the Omaha garage rocker (2020’s Staunch Honey)–but he’s now with Third Man Records, and judging by the first single from the upcoming David Nance & Mowed Sound, the man hasn’t lost a step in the time since. “Mock the Hours” is an excellent fuzz-roots-Americana-whatever anthem–I hear all kinds of inspired instrumental choices going on underneath the surface, but it still has that hot-to-the-touch quality of earlier Nance.
“Burned”, Veruca Salt
From Cinnamon Girl: Women Artists Cover Neil Young for Charity (2008, American Laundromat)
I listened to a lot of Neil Young covers compilations in January, but Cinnamon Girl: Women Artists Cover Neil Young for Charity is the only one of them that’s streaming, so I’m choosing my favorite cover from this one for the playlist. That would be by none other than Veruca Salt, who make the inspired choice to turn Buffalo Springfield’s 1966 song “Burned” into a ripping alt-rocker. Appearing on a compilation that features a lot of folk rock and adult alternative, their version of “Burned” immediately sticks out, both by being a somewhat less-obvious song to cover and because Veruca Salt turn it into a “Veruca Salt song” with amazing ease. Read more about Cinnamon Girl: Women Artists Cover Neil Young for Charity here.
“Leash Biter”, Savak
From Flavors of Paradise (2024, Peculiar Works)
I saw Savak live when they were fresh off recording Flavors of Paradise–I didn’t know the name of the album, let along any of the songs on it, but they played just about everything that ended up on the record that night and I thoroughly enjoyed hearing them. “Leash Biter” (which in my notes from that concert I decided to call “Dogs on Every Corner” in honor of its first line) is classic Savak, somewhere between garage rock, post-punk, and catchy alt-pop-rock in a way that’s distinctly them. It’s got a loitering sleaziness to it–it wouldn’t have struck me as the lead single when I heard it live, but it’s both representative and a strong track on its own as a finish product. I’ll have more to say about Flavors of Paradise soon.
“The Rougarou”, Field Studies
From The Rougarou (2024)
Well, well, well, if it isn’t another pretty-sounding indie pop band with “Field” in their name. It’s not Field Guides nor Field School nor The Field Mice–it’s Field Studies, and the Maine quartet (again, Maine with the vintage guitar pop music!) just put out their first non-demo release, the three-song EP The Rougarou. The opening title track is the best song on the record–it’s an incredibly strong statement of purpose, singer/keyboardist Bekah Hayes sounding confident up front while the rest of the band (guitarist Zach Selley, drummer Tim Scanlon, and bassist Josh Denk) put forth a gently rolling but still relatively “brisk” instrumental. Selley’s guitar reaches for a winning dream-jangle combination, while Denk’s low-end is prominent enough to feel a little post-punk inspired.
“Battering Ram”, Fust
From Songs of the Rail (2024, Dear Life)
Before North Carolina’s Fust was a full band releasing great alt-country records, songwriter Aaron Dowdy put out seven EPs (featuring four songs each) in 2017 and 2018. The new digital-only Songs of the Rail compiles all seven EPs–nearly 90s minutes of music–in one place. Dowdy’s intimate, lo-fi bedroom pop take on folk/country is pretty far from where his band ended up, but it’s a brilliant and singular documentation of a productive time period. My favorite song on Songs of the Rail, “Battering Ram”, has an oddness to it that feels like a half-remembered dream, especially when Dowdy is repeatedly spelling out “Cabbagetown” as the song winds down. Read more about Songs of the Rail here.
“Paul’s Song”, Arcwelder
From Continue (2024)
The trick to making good “funny” music is to not put all your eggs in that particular basket, no matter how good the joke is. For instance, I’d been listening to Continue (the first new album from Minneapolis Touch & Go legends Arcwelder in over twenty years, by the way) for quite some time and enjoying “Paul’s Song” in particular even before I listened closely enough to understand what the song’s actually about. The conceit and execution of “Paul’s Song” are both genuinely hilarious, but everything from Scott Macdonald’s stoic swagger to the (explicitly) McCartney-influenced songwriting are key to both selling the song and having it stand on its own as a piece of hooky indie rock. Read more about Continue here.
“Sunny”, Flesh Tape
From Flesh Tape (2024, Power Goth)
Flesh Tape are a new shoegaze-y quartet from Fort Collins, Colorado who’ve been getting a bit of buzz lately around the release of their self-titled debut album (mastered by Heather Jones of Ther). The whole thing is worth a listen–some of the songs are full-on, wall-of-sound noisy shoegaze, others have a more downcast 90s indie rock feel to them, but of course the song I liked the most from Flesh Tape is the least representative one. The bright guitar pop of “Sunny” doesn’t exactly discard the heaviness of the rest of the album, but it pushes it to the periphery for three vibe-y minutes, revealing the band (Larson Ross, Nick Visocky, Jae Smith and Jake Lyon) as bittersweet but potent pop songwriters beneath the distortion.
“The House That I Grew Up In”, Loto
From A Year in Review (2024)
Loto is Lautaro Akira Martinez-Satoh, a Montreal-based musician who seems to be quite busy and juggling several different projects at the moment but still found time to put out A Year in Review, a brief but impressive collection of lo-fi music that’s surprising and all-over-the-place but quite accessible when it wants to be. “The House That I Grew Up In” reflects both Loto’s penchant for storing pop melodies inside of slapdash-feeling and chaotic packages and their frequently dark and pained writing. When they sent me the lyric sheet to A Year in Review, they purposefully left this one out–beneath the charging, lo-fi indie fuzz rock, the chorus (“I think I’m gonna die inside the house that I grew up in”) says more than enough to understand where the track’s mind is at. Read more about A Year in Review here.
“Shotgun”, Tucker Riggleman & The Cheap Dates
From Restless Spirit (2024, WarHen)
Three years in the making, the second full-length from West Virginia country rockers Tucker Riggleman & The Cheap Dates is just a few weeks away, but you can hear “Shotgun”, possibly my favorite song from the record, already. One of Restless Spirit’s rockers, “Shotgun” is one of the most complete-sounding songs from Riggleman yet, glomming onto a polished, swaggering country-rock-power-pop tune and letting Riggleman’s self-effacing side battle it out with a less-frequently-seen confidence (for a lifer like Riggleman, it’s fitting that the key line in the chorus is “I let the music bring me back around”). I’ll have more to say about Restless Spirit soon.
“Understand”, Twikipedia
From Still-Life (2024)
Twikipedia is a “19 year old experimental artist and producer” from Rio de Janeiro, per their Bandcamp page. They’ve put out a couple of records, most recently the six-song Still-Life EP at the beginning of this year (Small Albums shared this one, is how I found it). Still-Life is a charming lo-fi bedroom pop EP that’s primarily built around guitars but with some electronic and synth touches throughout. My favorite song on the EP, “Understand”, is one of the more low-key songs in terms of instrumentation, but don’t mistake that for something lightweight–the two-minute, acoustic guitar-based track is a muted but brilliant pop song, and by the end of its runtime it feels like an anthem in spite (or maybe, somehow, because of) Twikipedia’s insular delivery of it.
“Hazy Road”, Bong Wish
From Hazy Road (2023, Feeding Tube)
I found this album and band through Post-Trash’s best of 2023 list–that’s probably my favorite music blog, so most of the records on that list I’d already heard or at least heard of, but somehow Bong Wish’s Hazy Road slipped by me. Rest assured, though, it’s an excellent collection of Feelies-ish indie rock that’s deserving of “best of year” honors, merging jangly guitar pop with psychedelia, folk rock, and dream pop in a really friendly and welcoming way. The title track hits on a bright, sunny guitar riff and rides it out for over four minutes, never losing steam as it adds in some arresting bass playing and unpredictable synth touches throughout its length.
“The Shopkeeper”, Healing & Peace
From Healing & Peace (2023)
So there was this band from Columbus called Kneeling in Piss who released an album and a few EPs’ worth of garage-y post-punk from 2019 to 2021 on Anyway Records (St. Lenox, Smug Brothers, Joe Peppercorn). Apparently, head piss-kneeler Alex Mussawir got tired of being in a band called “Kneeling in Piss”, so last year he rechristened the project Healing & Peace and debuted it with a self-titled EP. Healing & Peace actually does reflect the new name, offering up a casual, lo-fi, and friendly collection of folk-y indie rock. “The Shopkeeper” opens the EP with a slow, deliberate vignette that’s also a pretty catchy piece of Pavement-ish indie pop. It’s quite good, and I’m ready for the Healing & Peace era.
“Prose Kaiser”, Rip Van Winkle
From The Grand Rapids (2024, Splendid Research)
I’ve liked-to-loved every Guided by Voices album that the band’s most recent, surprisingly stable lineup has put out, but Robert Pollard is always at his most brilliant with a little bit of unpredictability. This is why I’m particularly excited for whatever his Rip Van Winkle project is–of course, it helps that the first single from the upcoming EP, “Prose Kaiser”, rules. It’s got a lo-fi brittleness to it that harkens back to the underappreciated Please Be Honest or even Plantations of Pale Pink, but what’s different from those two is that Pollard appears to be plowing through a multi-part, nü-Guided by Voices-esque prog-pop skeleton of a song with a relatively rudimentary setup (sounding kind of like the transitional but brilliant August by Cake). Whatever The Grand Rapids EP ends up sounding like, it’s already got one winner on it.
“Uranium Baby”, Christy Costello
From From the Dark (2024, Hollander)
I hadn’t heard of Minneapolis’ Christy Costello (aka Christy Hunt) before this year, but she’s been playing in bands since the 1990s–leading or co-leading Ouija Radio and Pink Mink, and playing guitar in The Von Bondies. From the Dark is surprisingly her first solo album, but it rocks–it’s an excellent and spirited collection of garage-y power pop which also includes a girl-group-influenced cover of the Smoking Popes’ “Need You Around”. Hard-charging single “Uranium Baby” is my favorite song from the record, a massively catchy piece of new wave-y power pop (Matt Pahl is credited with “Elvis Costello Style keys” on the track, and lives up to the billing).
“When You Find Out”, The Umbrellas
From Fairweather Friend (2024, Slumberland/Tough Love)
In between their first and second albums, San Francisco jangle pop quartet The Umbrellas toured with Fucked Up and Ceremony, and while I’m not going to say I heard any hardcore in Fairweather Friend, it does “rock” a bit more than the pure platonic indie pop of their debut record. There’s more than a bit of fuzzy punk-pop and quick tempos on Fairweather Friend, although it comes in bits and pieces for the most part–my favorite track on the album, “When You Find Out”, is pretty clean-sounding, but its giddy energy takes it beyond its guitar pop foundation. Read more about Fairweather Friend here.
“Drop Me Anywhere”, The Bear Quartet
From Cosy Den (1993, A West Side Fabrication)
This was a highlight from my 1993 deep dive that I completed at the beginning of the year. It turns out, Sweden had some good indie rock happening around this time too–at the very least, they had The Bear Quartet. Cosy Den (one of, it looks like, two different albums they put out in 1993) is some excellent melodic indie rock music that’s right up my alley—if you like the more “polished” sides of Pavement and Dinosaur Jr., this is a 16-song, 50-minute treat, and my favorite song from the album, “Drop Me Anywhere”, sounds like a refined reunion Dino-era J. Mascis song before that band had even gotten there. There’s a little bit of distortion, but for the most part this falls under “indie rock as power pop”, which is perfectly fine by me.
“Axe Falls”, Be Safe
From Unwell (2024, Count Your Lucky Stars)
Frostburg, Maryland’s Be Safe are a new band comprised of several indie rock and emo veterans–together, the quartet meet at the intersection of thorny but oddly tranquil math rock, chilly emo, vintage slowcore, and the golden era of basement indie rock on their debut album. Unwell does “rock” on occasion, but Be Safe rarely ride this side of them for an entire song, and the band’s ability to sharpen their sound a bit makes the quieter moments of Unwell hit even harder. The instrumental outro to “Axe Falls” comes after some all-in emo-rock in its first half, and it subsequently feels like the aftermath of its own title. Read more about Unwell here.
“Crazy Man”, Freakwater
From Feels Like the Third Time (1993, Thrill Jockey)
Freakwater’s Feels Like the Third Time was one of the many new-to-me 1993 albums to appear in my most recent listening log post, and even though my impressions of it at the time were somewhat mixed, “Crazy Man” is easily one of the best songs I heard through that project. As I said previously, the album as a whole is a successful re-creation of traditional, bluegrass-y folk-country, but it’s at it’s best when it sounds particularly inspired by its subjects, which “Crazy Man” achieves effortlessly. Hearing Catherine Irwin and Janet Beveridge Bean sing “I won’t have far to go when I go crazy” with the kind of zeal they bring to the song is the kinda thing that country music is all about.
“No Connection”, Power Pants
From PP5 (2024)
Power Pants is a new-to-me band, but they were all over the place last year, releasing four full-length albums in 2023. The Winchester, Virginia-based band kicked off 2024 with their fifth album (PP5), and that record’s opening track, “No Connection”, does a pretty good job of summing up Power Pants’ whole deal in under two minutes. Lo-fi, punky, and catchy, “No Connection” is right in the center of “egg punk”, “power pop”, and “synthpunk”, with worried-but-hooky guitars and synths intertwining over top of nervous-sounding lyrics whose Internet-inspired poetry would make Devo proud. It’s a pleasant surprise to find an Appalachian band making this kind of music, and, even more pleasantly, Power Pants seem like they’ve become quite good at it, too.
“Muriel’s Big Day Off”, Being Dead
From When Horses Would Run (2023, Bayonet)
Being Dead’s When Horses Would Run showed up on quite a few “best of 2023” lists, including a few by people/organizations that I actually trust, so I added it to the “check out during the early January lull” pile. It’s pretty dang good—all-over-the-place poppy indie rock that’s not always my thing but hitting on plenty of moments of brilliance. One of these moments is the entirety of “Muriel’s Big Day Off”, which cycles through different moments of indie pop, trippy indie rock, and jazz-rock, but is always catchy, energetic, and transfixing. Congratulations to Being Dead, who made something that I have no problem at all with being “critically acclaimed”, even though it’s not something that’d be on my personal list.
“Eu Não Existo”, Fantasma
From Demo 2023 (2023)
I discovered Demo 2023 through the year-end list of Zachary Lipez’s Abundant Living newsletter–realistically, if you’re looking for good demo EPs from underground punk bands, there’s probably not a better follow out there. The six-song EP from the New York-via-Brazil duo is some excellent blunt-object-post-punk, with monotone vocals perching threateningly over top of instrumentals that can feel immovable and surprisingly liquid at various points. “Eu Não Existo” is my favorite of the three, a sub-two-minute piece of dead-eyed punk rock that gets a lot of mileage out of a frightening guitar lead accompanying its title line.
“Cocteau Jetplane”, Now
From And Blue Space Is Burning Noon (2023, Sloth Mate)
I had to throw another one from the Now album on here, because it’s just that good. “Cocteau Jetplane” is one of the shorter tracks on And Blue Space Is Burning Noon but it’s still quite substantial–it starts off as scampering, rhythmic indie pop and it blossoms into a chaotic piece of orchestrated but ramshackle psychedelic pop in its second half. The Bay Area group made something that’s worth taking in as a full statement with this record, but the smart, unpredictable, and overflowing-with-ideas energy of songs like “Cocteau Jetplane” ensure that it’s got plenty of “single-worthy” moments as well. Definitely a band on my radar now.
“Scaling Walls”, Pile
From Hot Air Balloon (2024, Exploding in Sound)
There’s nothing like a good Pile song, and the band’s latest EP has plenty of them. Hot Air Balloon kicks off with “Scaling Walls”, a song that’s both fairly unclassifiable and recognizably Pile–laser-precise drumming, Rick Maguire’s weary, haunting vocals, eerie, dramatic synths, and a weird, distorted, almost country-ish guitar line come together in a way that only would ever make sense for this band. Although Maguire isn’t yelling like on earlier Pile records, he’s still a dynamic vocalist–as “Scaling Walls” builds to a chaotic crescendo, he’s more than able to deliver a performance matching it. Read more about Hot Air Balloon here.
“Härvest”, Poison Ruïn
From Härvest (2023, Relapse)
I came to Philadelphia’s Poison Ruïn all backwards–at first I heard Mopar Stars, Poison Ruïn band member Nao Demand’s independent power pop side project, and from there I’ve gone on to check out his more well-known, Relapse-signed garage punk/post-punk group. Härvest is not as much “my thing” as Mopar Stars’ Shoot the Moon EP is, sure, but I’m enjoying its title track quite a bit. It’s got a one-minute atmospheric instrumental opening which then kicks into a catchy piece of post-punk that kind of sounds like if the Ramones were dead serious all the time. It also reminds me of the most recent Flat Worms album, which is high praise because I think they’re one of the best modern post-punk bands going.
“Gloom and Doom”, Raul Gonzalez Jr.
From Wanderer (2023)
Another discovery from Small Albums, Raul Gonzalez Jr. appears to be a prolific bedroom rocker from Austin, Texas–last year, there were two different Gonzalez Jr. LPs and three EPs. The Wanderer full-length was the first of these, coming out last January, and it seems to have a lot of gorgeous, lo-fi guitar pop on it. There are some moments on the album that are more “rock”, but my favorite is the dream pop/post-punk “Gloom and Doom”, which polishes up Gonzalez Jr.’s sound and deploys prominent bass guitar to create a complete four-minute indie pop picture that I find quite impressive.
“Beware Magical Thinking”, Zowy
From Beware Magical Thinking (2024, Lost Sound Tapes)
As Zowy, Zoë Wyner embraces electronics and synths in a way that her previous bands (Halfsour, Temporary Eyesore) didn’t even really hint at, although the Beware Magical Thinking EP remains accessible both due to her strong pop songwriting and due to how similarly Wyner seems to approach making guitar- and synth-based music. There’s a rock band exuberance and energy to be found within its four songs–the drum machine backbeats are hard-hitting, not in a cold, industrial way but rather a punchy rock-and-roll kind of way, and the synths rise and fall and drop in and out like guitar leads would. The EP’s title track begins with a lo-fi chamber pop instrumental, eventually beginning to march forward alongside some dreamy guitar playing that works well alongside swooning synths. Read more about Beware Magical Thinking here.
“Cow Calls”, Fust
From Songs of the Rail (2024, Dear Life)
I wouldn’t necessarily say that Songs of the Rail is my favorite Fust release at this point (those two proper albums are going to be very hard to beat), but it’s a fascinating compilation that I just keep coming back to and finding new things to enjoy. “Cow Calls” is a beautiful piece of Lambchop-esque ambient country rock, with Aaron Dowdy’s low, possibly manipulated vocals gliding over slow, choppy electric guitar and saxophone from Ryan Hoss, one of the few non-Dowdy musicians on the record. When Dowdy pushes himself in the chorus, it’s very recognizable as the Fust we all know and love, however. Read more about Songs of the Rail here.
Rosy Overdrive 