Pressing Concerns: Friko, Tim McNally, Otherworldly Things, Loveblaster

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Welcome to the second Pressing Concerns of the week! This Friday (February 16th) is such a big release week that I’m going ahead and starting early by looking at two records coming out then: a new album from Friko and a new EP from Otherworldly Things (although the latter is already up on Bandcamp if you just can’t wait). In addition, two records from January that flew under the radar appear here as well, in the form of new albums from Tim McNally and Loveblaster. If you missed yesterday’s post, featuring Guitar, Westall 66, Dead Bandit, and Pinkhouse, check it 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.

Friko – Where We’ve Been, Where We Go From Here

Release date: February 16th
Record label: ATO
Genre: Indie pop, college rock, fuzz rock, 90s indie rock
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
Pull Track: Get Numb to It!

One of my favorite albums last year was Turtle Rock by Sharp Pins, and one of my favorite reissues was Dwaal Troupe’s Lucky Dog. Both of those records were either wholly or partially the work of singer-songwriter and zine-maker Kai Slater, but more generally, both acts are also part of an exciting Chicago indie rock scene that also features the acclaimed Horsegirl, another one of Slater’s bands in Lifeguard, and Friko. Friko was founded by Niko Kapetan, Luke Stamos, and drummer Bailey Minzenberger in Evanston (where Kapetan and Stamos had previously played together in a group called Thee Marquees), but became associated with Chicago’s “Hallogallo” scene (named after a Neu! song, which is the name of Slater’s zine as well) early in the band’s lifespan when they played a show with Horsegirl in 2020. Many shows with other Hallogallo bands, several singles, and one EP later, the debut Friko album is finally here–Where We’ve Been, Where We Go From Here is a communal effort, largely made by the band’s core trio with producers Scott Tallarida and Jack Henry but with vocal and instrumental contributions from musicians around the Windy City (such as Free Range’s Sofia Jensen and Finom’s Macie Stewart).

The “Hallogallo” bands range from blistering post-hardcore to dreamy, reverb-y indie rock, but Friko come the closest to the playful guitar pop of Sharp Pins and Dwaal Troupe–albeit with a bit more “rock” in tow. Kapetan is a compelling vocalist, sounding in command but close to breaking while delivering sharp melodies (the writing is credited to him and Minzenberger) over top of instrumentals that veer into noisy indie rock freak-outs and then back to gorgeous chamber pop with ease. Friko are incredibly energetic and excited-sounding about these songs, with Kapetan and Minzenberger layering guitars, pianos, cellos, and violins in an overwhelming but never-not-tuneful way. Although Stamos departed the band after recording, the bassist’s playing leaves a mark on Where We’ve Been, Where We Go From Here–the record’s first three tracks, “Where We’ve Been”, “Crimson to Chrome”, and “Crashing Through” are all (at least partially) noise pop rave-ups, but the low-end still finds moments to stick out impressively. Friko have more than a bit of range throughout the record, as they began to intersperse the still-very-exhilarating rockers (“Chemical”, “Get Numb to It!”) with the dreamy piano-and-strings “For Ella”, the refined, gentle pop of “Until I’m With You Again”, and the spare acoustic closing track “Cardinal”. Where We’ve Been, Where We Go From Here swings drama and intensity around, but the projectiles are enjoyably well-crafted, going a long way towards defining Friko as standouts in a crowded and talented scene. (Bandcamp link)

Tim McNally – On the Way to Pompeii

Release date: January 11th
Record label: Self-released
Genre: Folk rock, alt-country, roots rock, singer-songwriter
Formats: Digital
Pull Track: Lake Pontchartrain

Tim McNally is a name I’ve only just now heard of, but that doesn’t mean that the New Jersey-originating, Philadelphia-based singer-songwriter hasn’t been busy before now. In fact, McNally’s been a pretty hard-working musician over the past few years–he released three different albums in 2021 and another one in 2022. McNally’s fifth solo album, On the Way to Pompeii, is the first one I’ve heard (he took a little under two years to follow up his previous record, Sundown–an eternity compared to his previous pace), and I was pretty immediately taken by his fresh take on Jersey/Philly folk and roots rock. McNally may be a somewhat under-the-radar musician, but he writes with a confidence and a faith that whoever is paying attention will give these songs the close looks they deserve. Although sometimes dressed as an acoustic folk troubadour, McNally carries himself through On the Way to Pompeii with a rock and roll swagger, whether that means Springsteen-esque bombast or an interconnected intricacy reflecting of the more esoteric moments of Cooley and Hood.

“Volcano”, the acoustic folk-pop song that opens On the Way to Pompeii, finds McNally headed toward Vesuvius armed with little more than a guitar and a harmonica and his mind decidedly elsewhere. The album offers up a couple of fuzz-rockers in its first half–most notably “Deafening Silence”, but “Lonesome Adventures” works its way up to it as well–both of which capture the restlessness of McNally’s writing just as effectively as his folk songs. McNally pushes forward, expanding what he’s developed in the second half of the album, ripping through the almost psychedelic alt-rock of “AM Radio” or sounding in motion yet completely lost on “Roam”. The final stretch of On the Way to Pompeii is its strongest section–“Different Reasons” is a curious-sounding epiphany, the peace and equilibrium it seeks to establish sounding fairly uneasy. The record’s best song is “Lake Pontchartrain”, an absolutely gorgeous piece of orchestral guitar pop in which McNally’s protagonist’s entire journey unspools itself in a seedy ecstasy, before a sudden shift happens and the record ends with the plodding country-folk “Vampires” instead. The aural shrug mirrors the record’s opening track and offers little concrete answers to the fear and displacement running through On the Way to Pompeii, a record that sounds completely at home wandering. (Bandcamp link)

Otherworldly Things – Heavy Dream Cycle

Release date: February 16th
Record label: Magic Door
Genre: Power pop, jangle pop, psychedelic pop
Formats: Digital
Pull Track: Work Out Right

Otherworldly Things is a New York band led by songwriter, guitarist, and vocalist Jim Browne–they’ve been around for a decade and put out their debut album, Beeline to the “A” List, back in 2017. I hadn’t heard of Otherworldly Things or Browne before the announcement of their long-awaited second record, the five-song Heavy Dream Cycle EP, but there are plenty of familiar faces involved with this band–the current lineup features bassist Jason Binnick of Upper Wilds and drummer Travis Harrison (Guided by Voices’ in-house producer and unofficial sixth member), and it’s being released by Magic Door, the label co-owned by current Guided by Voices drummer Kevin March. The quartet (also featuring guitarist/keyboardist Matt Revie of Clouder) recorded Heavy Dream Cycle at Harrison’s Serious Business Studios, and if you were to guess that it’s a record full of power pop and psychedelic pop–two classic Guided by Voices-core genres–you’d be right. It’s more of a case of drawing from similar influences, I think–Browne’s songwriting is too straight-up power poppy and not quite prog enough to feel like a direct descendant of Robert Pollard. 

More than anything, the EP reminds me of recent material from Daily Worker, the power pop project of Cotton Mather’s Harold Whit Williams. The five songs on Heavy Dream Cycle similarly aim for big-idea psychedelic power pop despite their relatively barebones garage rock band foundations, and Otherworldly Things succeed at pulling this trick off. Opening track “I’m Tired of Monsters” is completely infectious, with the lo-fi-sounding but still quite discernible guitar and bass melding with Harrison’s pounding percussion to make a straight-up anthemic rock and roll song, and “No Use” cranks up the 60s influences in the form of a skewed but incredibly catchy piece of psych-garage-pop. The 90-second singalong “Work Out Right” reminds me of bands like Connections and other such undersung creators of jangly but hefty guitar pop, while the keyboard touches on “Time Turns to Memories” push its chugging psychedelia over the top. The one song on Heavy Dream Cycle that truly strikes me as “Pollard-esque” is “Escape”, a shockingly sparse, acoustic-guitar-and-vocals closing track that could’ve been pulled from one of the Suitcases the way it sounds both off-the-cuff and fully-formed, eerie, and transfixing. Even though it’s the EP’s starkest moment, the extra shade feels like the final piece in cementing Heavy Dream Cycle as something substantial beyond its meager fifteen-minute runtime. (Bandcamp link)

Loveblaster – The Way Things Work

Release date: January 5th
Record label: Pounds of Love
Genre: Slowcore, folk
Formats: CD, digital
Pull Track: Wings Over Madison

There are a lot of bands these days making the Duster version of slowcore–electric guitar-based, mumbling, and fuzzy. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy plenty of it, but it’s reassuring to hear bands still making my personal favorite kind of slowcore, the kind with clear vocals, a debt to folk music, and, above all, a love of vast empty space. That’s the kind of territory in which we find Madison, Wisconsin’s Loveblaster–think early Low, Ida, and Idaho–on their first album, The Way Things Work. The trio (vocalist/guitarist Marley Van Raalte, vocalist/drummer/pianist Abby Self, bassist/vocalist Neal Jochmann) deliver eight songs at the pace of molasses–the percussion is spaced widely (when it’s even there at all) but steady, the pianos are quite pretty but not attention-grabbing. The band members’ voices intertwine over top of the sparse instrumentals, making them (to me) the clear star of the record–what’s there is more than enough to carry us through the moments of (near) silence where no one is singing.

The Way Things Work’s opening track, “Halfway”, is (graded on the slowcore curve, to be clear) one of the more lively songs on the record, the occasional drum kicks sounding dramatic against the vocal tradeoffs that sit comfortably but somewhat coldly at its center. “Without Work” is the genre at its “can’t-look-away” best, with the vocalists wringing something absolutely vital out of little more than a steady beat, their shared singing, and Self’s piano. “(More Than) Bad Luck” feels particularly minimalist, floating through the clouds before we get to the polished, slow folk of “Wings Over Madison”, probably the most beautiful song I’ve ever heard that steals its name from a local chicken wing restaurant. It’s a great first half, but plenty of the most interesting moments on The Way Things Work come on the second side, particularly the four-minute-long sigh of “Watching You Change” and the aching “The Need to Fail”. Closing track “The Low Hum” starts off as a piano ballad before trailing off into noise–but it’s only after Loveblaster finish what they set out to achieve on The Way Things Work that they allow the static and distance to take over. (Bandcamp link)

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