Pressing Concerns: Mary Timony, Careen, Geotic, Little Kid

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In the final Pressing Concerns of the week, we’re looking at three records that come out tomorrow (February 23rd): new albums from Mary Timony and Little Kid, and a new EP from Careen. In addition, I’ve also got some words below on the Geotic album that came out yesterday. If you missed Monday’s blog post (featuring Tucker Riggleman & The Cheap Dates, States of Nature, The Special Pillow, and Shadow Show) or Tuesday’s (on the Mint Mile album that also comes out tomorrow), check both of those out, too.

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.

Mary Timony – Untame the Tiger

Release date: February 23rd
Record label: Merge
Genre: Folk rock, progressive rock, power pop
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
Pull Track: Untame the Tiger

Last year, I wrote about a posthumously-released live album from Sonic Youth. Part of the reason why I covered it on the blog was that it rules, but the second bird that stone killed was that I was able to acknowledge the work of living indie rock legends who immeasurably shaped and touched a ton of the music I write about on Rosy Overdrive. I feel the same way writing about Mary Timony on this blog–but unlike Sonic Youth, I actually get to talk about brand new music this time around. Between her work in Autoclave, Helium, and Ex Hex, Timony has been a key member of three bands who did definitive work in three different genres–not to mention her several solid solo records and participating in the rare actually good supergroup Wild Flag. She’s been active enough that I can’t be the only one to not realize it’s been fifteen years since a Mary Timony solo album (the last Ex Hex record came out in 2019, and she’s been playing bass along with several other longtime Washington D.C. musicians in Hammered Hulls as of late). Any rock musician who’s taken influence (directly or otherwise) from the math-y punk of Autoclave, the deceptively-styled “slacker” rock of Helium, or Ex Hex’s meaty power pop should get out their pen and paper for Untame the Tiger, a record that shows that Timony is still better than most at creating something intricate, immediate, and shockingly deep.

Mary Timony has no peers. The two most prominent musicians other than Timony herself on Untame the Tiger are Chad Molter of the Dischord groups Farquet and Medications on bass and Dave Mattacks of Fairport Convention on drums, and Timony is equally at home in either world. Untame the Tiger is a rich rock record that positions some of Timony’s odder impulses (like the progressive rock that grew increasingly less hidden in Helium’s music and is also quite prominent in her recently-reissued solo record Mountains, as well as a favoring of the acoustic guitar) front and center, but somehow retains the fun and catchiness of Ex Hex. Nowhere is this more apparent than in opening track “No Third”, a six-minute rolling folk rock tune that still feels like pop music (yes, even when the prog synths kick in). “Summer” and “Looking for the Sun” are in some ways mirror images–the former being smooth rock and roll with stranger touches, the latter straight-up hippy psych-folk shit with hooks baked right into it. As pleasing as it is to hear Timony roll out something as classic-sounding as “Don’t Disappear”, it’s even more exciting to stumble into “Dominoes”, which turns its stop-start “Dischord but acoustic” riff into something just as cathartic and catchy.

Timony’s prog instincts are definitely intact in the way she’s constructed Untame the Tiger, gaining speed before gearing up to take us up the mountain in the form of “The Dream”, a psychedelic classic rock song that’s the record’s most insular moment, and the first third of the title track, which is an instrumental, atmospheric piece of prog-folk. It’s only then that Timony unleashes the biggest pop moment on the album in the rest of “Untame the Tiger”. This song (and the album as a whole) was colored by the dissolution of a long-term relationship, and lyrics like “What did I get for loving you? Nothing but pain” seem to reflect this, but the tone of the song, even down to its title, isn’t mournful. More than anything else, Timony sounds surprised to be here–free, untamed, still pressing ahead in the form of inventive, unique rock music released under her own name. And Untame the Tiger is a surprising album, somehow both basking in the sun in plain sight and sneaking up on you at the same time. Given Timony’s background, it’s not surprising that it’s a good record, but that hardly prepares us for the contents of it. (Bandcamp link)

Careen – Cycle 3

Release date: February 23rd
Record label: Death Metal, Florida
Genre: Noise rock, 90s indie rock, post-punk, shoegaze, post-hardcore
Formats: Digital
Pull Track: Last Winter

Back in 2022, I wrote about Careen Love Health, the fourth EP from Bellingham, Washington quartet Careen. I liked it when it came out, but that record has only continued to grow on me with time. I really enjoy spotlighting this kind of Pacific Northwest indie rock–noisy but insular, inspired by bands like Unwound and Polvo–on the blog, and Careen Love Health is a particularly strong modern example of it. At some point last year, I noticed they’d uploaded a retrospective compilation on Bandcamp, which made me worried that the band (guitarist/vocalist Desi Valdez, bassist Bryan Foster, drummer Neto Alvarado, and guitarist Aiden Blau) had hung it up, but that’s thankfully not the case, as they’re back with yet another EP in 2024. Perhaps the compilation signaled the dawning of a new era of Careen, as there is a subtle but noticeable shift between Careen Love Health and Cycle 3. Less sprawling and post-hardcore-influenced than their most recent EP, Cycle 3 finds the band taking a turn towards a more concise format, with a little more punk and post-punk shining through. The EP isn’t as accessible as some of their more pop-focused 90s indie rock revivalist peers like Late Bloomer and Pardoner, but it’s beginning to look in that direction.

Plenty of what makes Careen great is still present on Cycle 3–explosive guitars and a pummeling rhythm section shine throughout, although the wide-ranging guitar work in opening track “Last Winter” is just as likely to key in on a twisted melody as kick up pure noise. Valdez sounds pretty restrained as a vocalist this time around, although he does let loose a little bit in “Irreverent”, a dramatic fuzz rocker that’s the band at their most Unwound. “Neto” starts off like a more shoegaze-y version of Dinosaur Jr., blaring guitars sounding cool as hell, and while the band lurch to a stop in the middle of the track, they fire it back up again for a blistering alt-rock finish. “Slice” also finds Careen being open to something more crowd-pleasing, as they focus their energy into making a punk/post-punk-indebted piece of fuzzed-out indie rock that could almost pass for a Pardoner song. Similarly, “Model Kit” ends the record with a multi-part song featuring a pretty catchy moment of heavy shoegaze before swirling into a feedback-laden closing. You still need to be willing to follow the band into choppy waters on Cycle 3, but Careen are more prone than ever to rewarding you for doing so. (Bandcamp link)

Geotic – The Anchorite

Release date: February 21st
Record label: Basement’s Basement
Genre: Folk, ambient, post-rock
Formats: Cassette, digital
Pull Track: The Going 

Chances are a lot of you are more familiar with the music of Will Wiesenfeld than I am. Over the past decade and a half, he’s made a name for himself making electronic pop music under the name Baths, and has concurrently released a ton of music as Geotic, which seems to be his alias for his more experimental and disparate fare. Neither one of those projects has ever really seemed like “my thing”, but the description for the latest Geotic album, The Anchorite, sounded interesting to me, and I’ve found myself enjoying it quite a bit over the past few weeks. Depending on how one measures it, The Anchorite seems to be either the thirteenth or fourteenth Geotic album, and this one is an instrumental record that Wiesenfeld primarily built up from guitar and piano. Over the twelve-song, fifty-minute cassette release, Wiesenfeld shapes these basic elements into interconnected but distinct shapes, with the guitars rising to the surface in the form of folk or even lo-fi bedroom guitar pop in various places, and melting with the piano to create swirling pieces of ambient music in others.

The main guitar line hurries through opening track “The Quarrel” as if chased by the static that surrounds it, creating an instantly transfixing first statement for The Anchorite. Eventually the six-string tires out and Geotic transitions into “The Going” and “The Wood of Corridors”, two songs that are perhaps a little more representative of the album as a whole–the instrumental, folk-inspired playing of the former peacefully traverses along, and the echoing, swirling intertwined instruments of the latter begin to start truly blurring The Anchorite’s various ingredients together. The middle of the record is where Geotic’s various streams seem to meet up and form one big body of water–while “The Monastic Quiet” recalls the tranquil guitar-led “The Going”, the next three songs take the sound of Geotic to deeper and murkier territory than that which Wiesenfeld began the album. For those who stick with Geotic beyond The Anchorite’s continental shelf, the title track sounds a friendly note to welcome them to the record’s home stretch, and while the six-minute “The Lime of Stars” isn’t the most accessible moment on the record, the distorted, almost shoegaze-y post-rock textures are a fine late-album moment nonetheless. I can’t speak for those who’ve been following Baths and Geotic for years now, but as someone who’s new to the world of Will Wiesenfeld, The Anchorite feels like a major work. (Bandcamp link)

Little Kid – A Million Easy Payments

Release date: February 23rd
Record label: Orindal/Gold Day
Genre: Folk rock, singer-songwriter
Formats: Vinyl, cassette, digital
Pull Track: Bad Energy

Little Kid are a Toronto folk band led by singer, lyricist, and multi-instrumentalist Kenny Boothby and also featuring drummer/guitarist Brodie Germain, bassist Paul Vroom, and drummer Liam Cole. A Million Easy Payments is the group’s debut for Orindal Records, and Boothby’s delicate but weighty writing is such a natural fit for the label that I was surprised to learn that they’d been releasing music independently since the early 2010s and weren’t just scooped up by the home of Dan Wriggins and Owen Ashworth and Ruth Garbus the minute they formed. Then again, A Million Easy Payments does feel like the work of a band that’s been at it for a while, both in its glove-like renditions of Boothby’s writing and in its impressively-amassed list of guest contributors (Aaron Powell of Fog Lake on vocals, Seth Engel of Options on percussion, Peter Gill of 2nd Grade on pedal steel, Eliza Niemi’s cello). The record’s eight songs range from swirling, multi-layered orchestral folk rock to breezy alt-country to quiet near-slowcore, with contributor Megan Dunn’s banjo, Niemi’s cello, and Boothby’s voice holding it together at the seams.

On the record’s opening track, “Something to Say”, everything and everyone sounds so friendly and fresh that it’s not hard to imagine Little Kid claiming a spot among the realm of modern big-ticket indie folk/country bands, although A Million Easy Payments has grander aims than that. As fun as the opening track is, “Bad Energy” takes the record to the next level one song later–the seven-minute piano-dreamy-folk-rock epic spreads out steadily, the band charting out a simple but shockingly effective path with which to deliver Boothby’s lyrics. A Million Easy Payments forges its own way forward from there, excitedly offering up songs like the giddy-feeling “Beside Myself” and the mountaintop-summit energy of “Somewhere in Between” while at the same time pulling inward in the acoustic “Eggshell” (featuring just Boothby and an acoustic guitar), the slow-moving piano-country “Nothing at All”, and putting everything together in ten-minute closing number “What Qualifies As Silence”. Compared to the hazy half-remembered dream of “Bad Energy”, the record’s other lengthy song is much more lucid–it’s still not awake, but it’s aware of everything around it and taking it all in. (Bandcamp link)

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