Pressing Concerns: Rick Rude, Anika Pyle, Skyjelly, Lupo Citta

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Second Pressing Concerns of the week and it’s only Tuesday! I hope you’ve been keeping up, but even if you haven’t, this is the perfect opportunity to get into some brand-new music. Today we’re looking at new albums from Rick Rude and Lupo Citta, a new EP from Anika Pyle, and an expanded reissue of last year’s Skyjelly EP. If you missed yesterday’s blog post, featuring J. Robbins, Memory Cell, The Maureens, TV Star, and Spiral XP, check that 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.

Rick Rude – Laverne

Release date: February 2nd
Record label: Midnight Werewolf/Best Brother
Genre: 90s indie rock, math rock, power pop, fuzz rock, noise pop
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Laverne

Although Rick Rude has never appeared in Pressing Concerns before, traces of the Maine-originating, New Hampshire-based quartet have turned up on Rosy Overdrive on several occasions.. They contributed an excellent version of “Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere” to one of the Neil Young cover compilations I wrote about, I highlighted band co-leader Jordan Holtz’s solo EP Not Close for Comfort last year, and Holtz has also contributed to alt-country group Footings. Not to mention, the labels that released the band’s first two albums–Sophomore Lounge for 2017’s Make Mine Tuesday and Exploding in Sound for 2018’s Verb for Dreaming–also show up quite regularly on the blog. I’ve enjoyed their previous work (particularly Make Mine Tuesday), and it’s comforting that, despite the six-year gap in releases, Rick Rude (Holtz on bass and vocals, Ben Troy on guitar and vocals, Chris Kennedy on guitar, and Ryan Harrison on drums) sound as great as ever on Laverne, their third full-length. The group are still balancing the poppy and noisy sides of 90s indie rock in a pleasingly Built to Spill-esque way–they’re approaching catchy power pop one minute and whipping up a barrage of guitars the next. 

Laverne may be, on average, a little more accessible than Rick Rude’s previous two albums, but it’s not a huge departure, and the band haven’t lost any of their white-hot ability to turn into huge riff-wielders (or maybe Welders) at any given moment. Between Holtz and Troy, the band remains in possession of two compelling frontpeople whose vocals more than hold their own against the noise the band is still very capable of cranking out. As much as I enjoyed Holtz’s slowcore-y solo EP, it’s very satisfying to hear her perched atop of the heavy, smoking alt-rock of “Real TV”, the twisting guitar maze of “P2PU”, and the excited, hooky fuzz-pop of the title track. Not to be outdone, Troy is able to ground the math-rock-as-power pop opening track “Wooden Knife” with a stoic but arresting performance, and the stop-start lost 90s-hit-single vibes of “Winded Whale” might just be the strongest song on the entire record. After one last noisy pop song in “Swept Up Slept In”, Rick Rude bow out with the two oddest tracks on the record–the choppy but roaring instrumental of “Area Woman Yells at Junk Mail” and “The Ells”, a lo-fi piano ballad written and sung by former member Noah Lefebvre. I do like that Rick Rude close the album by nodding to their past–after all, they’ve more than proven to be a strong rock and roll band in the present tense with the rest of Laverne. (Bandcamp link)

Anika Pyle – Four Corners

Release date: February 2nd
Record label: Self-released
Genre: Folk rock, alt-country, singer-songwriter
Formats: Digital
Pull Track: Arizona

Last time we heard from Anika Pyle in Pressing Concerns, it was 2021, Rosy Overdrive was still in its infancy, and the former Chumped and Katie Ellen frontperson had just released Wild River, their first-ever solo album. Wild River was a pretty big departure from the indie pop punk of their previous bands–it’s an incredibly sparse album, built from minimal synths, quiet acoustic guitar, and Pyle’s vocals, which were spoken as often as sung. Pyle did release a live version of Wild River the following year, but they’d been pretty quiet since then. However, the Colorado-based artist has now returned with yet another left turn in the form of the four-song Four Corners EP. Hardly the minimalist indie music of their last record but not pop punk either, Four Corners finds the singer-songwriter embracing folk rock and alt-country enthusiastically. The EP is more upbeat than Wild River, so that aspect of it might appeal to Katie Ellen and Chumped fans, but it doesn’t abandon their last record’s personal, writing-first approach (even though it does expand up on it). I love a good geographic conceit, and the Four Corners EP (in which each song takes place in a different “four corners” state in the southwestern United States) delivers an enjoyable one. As it turns out, Pyle (who grew up in Colorado and moved back there from the East Coast circa Wild River) has plenty of regional material from which to draw. 

Although Four Corners plants its flag out West, Pyle’s time in Philadelphia is felt in its impressive guestlist (Slaughter Beach, Dog’s Zack Robbins, Petal’s Kiley Lotz, All Away Lou’s Lou Hanman, Kayleigh Goldsworthy, and Mike Brenner, among others), which helps develop “Arizona” and “New Mexican Blues” into wide-eyed Americanca/country rock (for the former) and laid back, full-on country music (the latter). As impressive as they are musically, neither of the instrumentals take away from the experiences Pyle describes in the songs, and the quieter second half of the EP only further emphasizes Pyle’s writing. “Diné Utah Homecoming Queen” is a delicate piece of quiet but poppy folk–it’s the only song that’s not directly about Pyle, but their recounting of the story (of Mahala Sutherland, the “first Indigenous person to win homecoming royalty at Southern Utah University”) is delivered with no less care and thoughtfulness. The only completely stripped-down song on Four Corners is the closing track, “Colorado Sage”, in which Pyle sings about the farmhouse in which they grew up armed with only an acoustic guitar. It’s a chilly song, but the ending (“I felt rich, wild, and free / Running through the fields of Colorado sage”) reverberates beyond its modest instrumental and setting. (Bandcamp link)

Skyjelly – Spirit Guide م​ر​ش​د ح​ق​ي​ق​ة (Deluxe Edition)

Release date: January 26th
Record label: I Heart Noise/Wormhole World/Mahorka
Genre: Psychedelic rock, art rock, experimental rock, desert blues
Formats: CD, digital
Pull Track: What Have You Done

Skyjelly are a somewhat-mysterious trio from Fall River, Massachusetts (the names I have are Rick “Skyjelly Jones” Lescault, Scott Levesque, and Andrew Payne) who make “psychedelic, Middle-Eastern blues”–I’m not sure if I’ve seen a modern band cite Red Red Meat as an influence before, let alone live up to the comparison the way that their latest release does. Spirit Guide م​ر​ش​د ح​ق​ي​ق​ة was initially released in 2023 as a six-song EP and got a decent amount of buzz (at least, from the kind of places that would be open to something like this), and so we’ve been gifted an expanded, “deluxe” edition of the record to take with us into 2024. There are in fact three different new versions of Spirit Guide م​ر​ش​د ح​ق​ي​ق​ة: Boston label I Heart Noise, U.K. label Wormhole World, and Bulgaria’s Mahorka have all put out CDs featuring the initial six tracks of the EP and four songs from the same sessions, but all three of them offer different, exclusive bonus material aside from that. Since I Heart Noise is the one who initially contacted me about this release, their version is the one I’m most familiar with, but it does seem worth pointing out that Wormhole World’s CD includes two bonus tracks and the Mahorka version features an entire album’s worth of remixes from across Skyjelly’s discography.

The original six songs of Spirit Guide م​ر​ش​د ح​ق​ي​ق​ة are freewheeling psychedelic rock at its best, holding together quite well even as you’re never sure exactly where Skyjelly will take you next. “I Know” is a captivating opening statement, keeping one foot in rock and roll even as all sorts of inspired instrumental choices swirl around the band. “Killer B” is the one that really earns the Red Red Meat comparison, a piece of desert blues with prominent slide guitar that wanders aimlessly but impressively. The EP continues to be engrossing with the curious psych-ballad “Laisse Jeyedin Jeden”, the explosive rhythms of “What Have You Done”, and the fractured blues rock of “Yaslemle”. The “culled from the same sessions” bonus tracks are pretty enjoyable too, and add another layer to Spirit Guide م​ر​ش​د ح​ق​ي​ق​ة–there’s nothing quite like the swaggering glam rock of “B Sharafek” or the garage-y psych rock of “The Cops Came In” on the original EP, at least. I Heart Noise’s two bonus tracks certainly feel removed from the rest of the record, with the ambient post-rock “Providence (Episode One)” and the weird, thumping electronica of “Motorola Monkey” sounding like two completely different bands–but, of course, it’s all Skyjelly. (Bandcamp link)

Lupo Citta – Lupo Cittá

Release date: January 12th
Record label: 12XU
Genre: Garage rock, 90s indie rock, noise rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Rust Belt River

Lupo Citta are a new band out of Boston made up of three longtime indie rockers in Sarah Black (guitar/bass), Chris Brokaw (guitar/vocals), and Jenn Gori (drums/vocals). Brokaw has long been familiar with me due to his work with 90s indie rock groups Come and Codeine, and more recently as a solo artist and part of The Martha’s Vineyard Ferries. Black and Gori, meanwhile, go way back together–they used to live in Minneapolis and played in the bands Bleeding Hickeys, the Lie-Ons, Pointing Geenas and Brandy Thunders. Although I’ve not been familiar with Black and Gori’s previous bands, they seem well-matched with Brokaw; as Lupo Citta, they make ragged garage rock with plenty of impressively screeching guitars in a way that’s not too far off from Come or Brokaw’s solo work. Neither as dramatic as Come nor sprawling as Brokaw’s solo albums, however, Lupo Cittá’s rock and roll is more precise and punctual–it still has a Crazy Horse looseness to it, but it’s doled out in more measured portions.

Considering Lupo Citta’s background, they’ve more than earned the right to lead off their debut album with something as strange as “Onde”, which floats through atmospheric, spoken-word verses, kicks up a bit of dust in its chorus, and then goes back to impenetrability. We’re ready for just about anything after that, and that’s exactly what we get–the next three songs are all disparate but memorable, from the fuzzed-out garage-y punk of “White Bracelet” to the rhythmic, classic rock-feeling “Rust Belt River” to the cavernous, country-inspired “Gallup to El Paso”. Lupo Cittá develops a recognizable sound but never quite “settles into a groove”–after they bash out two different punk-y fuzz-rockers in “Shawano Pickup” and “Machine Operator”, the mid-tempo indie rock of “Sucker” cleans up their sound to just as effective ends. Brokaw and Gori find the same territory as lead vocalists, able to sound afraid or emotionless to fit the music, a key piece of harmony that goes a long way towards holding Lupo Cittá together–given how well the three of them gel as instrumentalists, however, it only makes sense that the rest would follow accordingly. (Bandcamp link)

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  1. Pingback: Spirit Guide – Report Card 5 – Skyjelly

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