Pressing Concerns: Ducks Ltd., Worse Off, Itasca, The Problem With Kids Today

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Hard to believe it, but we’re already at our first “Three Pressing Concerns in one week” moment of the year. This one looks at four albums that are coming out tomorrow, February 9th: new ones from Ducks Ltd., Worse Off, Itasca, and The Problem With Kids Today. If you missed Monday’s post (featuring J. Robbins, Memory Cell, The Maureens, Spiral XP, and TV Star) or Tuesday’s post (featuring Rick Rude, Anika Pyle, Skyjelly, and Lupo Citta), I recommend those as well.

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.

Ducks Ltd. – Harm’s Way

Release date: February 9th
Record label: Carpark/Royal Mountain
Genre: Jangle pop, power pop
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
Pull Track: The Main Thing

I’ve spent plenty of time on Rosy Overdrive talking about Toronto’s stealthily robust guitar pop scene, whether it’s mid-level standard-bearers like Kiwi Jr. and Young Guv or lesser-known gems like Dan Darrah and Motorists. One band I haven’t touched on before but who seem to be right in the middle of it all is Ducks Ltd., the duo of singer/guitarist Tom McGreevy and guitarist Evan Lewis who showed up in 2021 with two records’ worth of energetic and quite impressive jangle pop in the form of the Get Bleak EP and the Modern Fiction LP. Harm’s Way, the duo’s second full-length, was recorded in Chicago and features a wide cast of guests (members of Finom, Ratboys, and Dehd contribute to the instrumentals, and members of Dummy, Lawn, and Patio supply backing vocals). The Ducks Ltd. of Harm’s Way do seem to have expanded their palette a bit compared to previous releases, but it’s not a radical reinvention–the core of the band is still quick-darting jangle pop with excellent, almost nonstop melodic guitar leads from Lewis, ushered forward by a brisk rhythm section (now provided by their live lineup, drummer Jonathan Pappo and bassist Julia Wittman).

Like every other Ducks Ltd. release, Harm’s Way is a short one (nine songs, 27 minutes), but the band do so much in every track that they make it impossible to feel like you’re being shortchanged in any way. The record feels very much in line with the more “pure pop” end of classic Flying Nun bands, the ones like The Bats and The Chills that always seem to be chasing the perfect hook, although the band also has a caffeinated peppiness to them (both in the tempo and in the guitar leads) that sets them apart from those bands’ tendencies to ramble a bit (and reminds me of one of the best jangle pop albums of the decade thus far, Chime School’s self-titled debut record). Harm’s Way is at its most immediately enjoyable when Ducks Ltd. just put the foot fully on the gas–I’m not sure if I’ve heard songs more invigorating than “Train Full of Gasoline” and “On Our Way to the Rave” yet this year, and Lewis’ guitar playing sounds positively giddy throughout “The Main Thing”. 

The chiming guitar riff that begins “Hollowed Out” is probably one of my favorite “opening statements” of the year, and I like how it leads into a song that feels lost and hopeless despite everything going on around it (enjoyably, it all comes to a head when McGreevy sings “I’m hollowed out from the inside” in the chorus). “Deleted Scenes” feels like a particularly reflective moment lyrically, but even in that one the band can’t resist deploying plenty of sparkling guitar moments over top of it. Only on closing track “Heavy Bag” do they pull their punches; “I keep on listening to ‘The Boys Are Back in Town’,” McGreevy sings over top Lewis’ subtle guitar picking. When the drums pick up again as the song wraps up, closing Harm’s Way with a string-clad, full-band instrumental, it doesn’t sound like Thin Lizzy, but it is the sound of a band who aren’t going to let their music fade off into the sunset without one last swing. (Bandcamp link)

Worse Off – Over, Thinking

Release date: February 9th
Record label: All We Got!
Genre: Pop punk, punk rock
Formats: CD, cassette, digital
Pull Track: Always-Life Crisis

New York punk duo Worse Off have been kicking around for a while (“established 2015 technically”, per their Bandcamp), but they made their on-record debut earlier this decade with their 2021 EP You Win Some, You Lose…a Lot. 2024 has brought the band’s first full length album, Over, Thinking, and it’s a sturdy and energetic collection of vintage, 90s-style pop punk. Over eleven songs and twenty-eight minutes, the band’s core duo of Jac Falk and Colin Jay range from catchy power pop to Worriers/Chumped-esque scrappy “indie punk” to speeding skate-punk, but the connecting threads are also Over, Thinking’s strongest assets–big hooks, melodic but punk-y vocals, and, uh, plenty of power chords. Aside from a couple of guest contributions (guitar on “Dislike, Unsubscribe” and “Fun Fact II” from Patrick Bradford, backing vocals on “Fun Fact II” by Jared Hart), Over, Thinking is all Falk and Jay, who trade off lead vocal duty, each matching the other and ensuring that the record doesn’t flag for a moment.

Opening track “Dislike, Unsubscribe” is melodic punk at its best, a high-flying rhythm section and triumphant guitars whipping up a sub-two minute storm and the vocals coming at you a mile a minute. “Grand Scam Home Run” and “Always-Life Crisis” don’t find Worse Off accelerating quite as hard, but they still keep Over, Thinking’s energy up, as they’re both excellent, catchy pieces of pop punk with massive choruses (and stealthily just as catchy verses, too, especially the excellent radio-ready alt-rock of the latter). The other two most “punk” moments on the record are “Fitting to the Hat”–an explicit rebuke of hatred and bigotry that balances catharsis and “being fun to listen to” deftly while not…overthinking it–and the rabble-rousing classic punk rock of “Fun Fact II”. The rest of Over, Thinking is just as alive-feeling–my favorite moment in the album is probably the back-to-back excellence of “Title, Track” (featuring some really ace vocal trading between Jay and Falk in the chorus) and “Apathy” (which rises from its acoustic beginning to a piece of anthemic power pop). The (perhaps ironically so, given the title) confident-sounding “Memorialize My Horribleness” proves Worse Off continue to excel at lean punk-pop, and closing track “Knot” ends Over, Thinking with an example of their ability to spread out. Between the hooks, the energy, and the performances of both frontpeople, Over, Thinking makes quite the first impression. (Bandcamp link)

Itasca – Imitation of War

Release date: February 9th
Record label: Paradise of Bachelors
Genre: Folk rock, psych folk
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
Pull Track: Milk

Imitation of War is the first album by Itasca that I’ve heard, but the project and its leader, Los Angeles’ Kayla Cohen, have been at it for a while now. The two most recent Itasca albums (2016’s Open to Chance and 2019’s Spring) came out via Paradise of Bachelors, who are also releasing Cohen’s first new record in five years, Imitation of War–at first glance, it’s full of the kind of sprawling folk rock that fits well alongside the other acts on her label (Hiss Golden Messenger, Nathan Bowles, Mega Bog). There is no shortage of “cosmic country” artists in this arena, musicians pulling together sunny psychedelia and Americana in their blissed-out records, but there’s something compelling about Itasca’s take on it that I keep coming back to. Imitation of War was co-produced by Robbie Cody of Wand, and while you aren’t going to mistake it for a Wand album, it makes ample use of psychedelic electric guitars in its own way. 

The opening two tracks of Imitation of War go a long way towards defining and establishing Itasca’s version of psychedelic rock. Both songs are marked by spindly, rippling electric guitar lines that sound like they’re being played from up high on some nearby bluff or cliff–in the first song, “Milk”, the guitar is playing what sounds like a molasses-slow Meat Puppets riff, and it also recalls desert rockers The Gun Outfit (in which Cohen currently plays bass, and the band’s Daniel Swire drums on this record, as well). The title track takes what “Milk” hinted at and blows it up, lurching into a mid-tempo rocker that’s just as beautiful as the previous track despite (or perhaps because of) the clutter. Cohen’s more acoustic folk-based past shows up a bit more prominently with “Under Gates of Cobalt Blue” and “Dancing Woman”, but her eclectic guitar work still runs through Imitation of War, dressing the folk rock of “Tears on Sky Mountain” and “El Dorado” in another layer. It’s also, of course, an integral part of the most ambitious song on the album, the nine-minute “Easy Spirit”, which begins as a, well, spirited piece of shimmery psych rock, veering into pop balladry, and then fading away into something quieter but still alive. It’s no surprise that Itasca spend the final moments of Imitation of War coming down from that peak, but as the subtle but intricate guitar playing of “Moliere’s Reprise” and the acoustic “Olympia” show, the valleys are pretty awe-inspiring, too. (Bandcamp link)

The Problem With Kids Today – Born to Rock

Release date: February 9th
Record label: The Problem With Records Today
Genre: Garage rock, garage punk, punk rock, fuzz rock
Formats: CD, digital
Pull Track: What Else Can I Say

Now, let’s hope on over to New Haven for this next one. The Connecticut city has produced some real good music as of late from Perennial, Hellrazor, and Dagwood (and related bands)–The Problem With Kids Today are the latest group to make a bid to be considered among the Constitution State’s best with Born to Rock, their second album. The trio of “rock n roll delinquents” are still a relatively new band–they formed in 2020 and released their debut album Junk a year later–but from the sound of it, guitarist/vocalist Tate Brooks, bassist/vocalist Silas Lourenco Lang, and drummer Reena Yu were born to rock indeed. Born to Rock is garage rock at its excited best, fuzzed out and punk-y but with plenty of big, bad hooks to be found along the scorched-earth trail. It’s full steam ahead from the feedback that kicks off the record, with the trio bashing out eleven rock and roll anthems in under half an hour–any moment the band could be rocking, they certainly are rocking.

The Problem With Kids Today strut onto the scene with “Rock Show”, a piece of tricked-out, revved-up pop music, and “Johnny Rockets” contains more than its share of sharp moments too. Brooks’ vocals on “What Else Can I Say” are frantic, plain and simple, while playful lead guitar and handclaps dance around him in a way that invokes the “fun danger” feeling of first-wave punk rock. Born to Rock is certainly informed by power pop and vintage pop rock, but when the Kids want to bust out a pummeling garage punk tune like “Leather Jacket Blues” or “Slobberknocker”, they sound equally in their own wheelhouse. Retaining a bit of an edge while still effectively making loud pop music helps keep Born to Rock burning bright well into its second side–the hard rock of “Speed Freak” gets a ton of mileage out of its main riff, while “Good Grief” is dramatic garage punk of the shout-along variety. Brooks is both a compelling punk frontperson and rock guitarist, letting the two sides of himself alternatively throttle the listener throughout Born to Rock. The record as a whole is something of an aural DNA test–put on Born to Rock, and if it makes sense to you, then you probably were, too. (Bandcamp link)

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