Pressing Concerns: Mt. Worry, Medicine, Ryann Gonsalves, Safari Room

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The final week of February (which is also the first week of March) is upon us, and with it brings yet another Pressing Concerns. Today, we’re looking at new albums from Medicine, Ryann Gonsalves, and Safari Room (the first of which “officially” comes out on Friday but is already available on Bandcmap) as well as a new EP from Mt. Worry. A great start to what is going to be a big week for the blog.

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.

Mt. Worry – Die Happy

Release date: February 2nd
Record label: Mountain of Worry
Genre: Shoegaze, fuzz rock, lo-fi indie rock, noise pop
Formats: Digital
Pull Track: Loud in Here

One of my favorite EPs of 2023 was A Mountain of Fucking Worry, the debut release from Philadelphia fuzz rock supergroup Mt. Worry. It’s no surprise that A Mountain of Fucking Worry is a great record, given that its three vocalists all have successful solo(ish) projects–John Galm with Bad Heaven Ltd., Noah Roth with their solo career, and Rowan Roth with Hell Trash. Still, the band (also featuring drummer Nick Holdorf of No Thank You) developed a sound distinct from the members’ various other records, one that fits in well with their city of origin’s shoegaze/noise pop scene (albeit a bit more “song”-based than a lot of those bands). Now with its members evenly split between Philly and Chicago, Mt. Worry is thankfully still going strong, as a second EP has arrived almost exactly a year after their first one. Die Happy is brief–it’s ten-minutes long, less than half that of A Mountain of Fucking Worry, and features only four songs–but it’s incredibly strong nonetheless, retaining the loose, “anything goes” energy of the debut but while also feeling like the work of a more cohesive unit.

Oh, and it also helps that every song on Die Happy is a hit. They all sound pretty different from each other, too; Rowan Roth takes the lead on “Repeating Dream” to open the EP with a swirling, almost psychedelic shoegaze-slow builder, while the middle two tracks on the EP are sharp pop rock songs that hit immediately. “Loud in Here”, featuring lead vocals from Noah Roth, was my first favorite, and it’s not hard to hear why–Roth has been an excellent deliverer of pop melodies as a vocalist over several different records now, and the bouncy but explosive power pop of this song is one of their strongest ones yet. “Body Hate”, meanwhile, is the one that I’ve grown to appreciate more and more every time I listen to Die Happy. I’m not even sure who’s singing on this one–I think it’s Rowan and Noah together–but their dead-serious intonation of the line that gives the EP its title (“I will die happy or not at all”) works so well that it took me a while to really appreciate just how much the lumbering fuzz rock instrumental adds to it. And then there’s “Pocket”, a piece of mutant, heavily distorted bedroom pop that doesn’t sound like anything else on Die Happy and ends the EP on a confused, somewhat unfinished note–or at least until its ballooning final instrumental wrings everything it can out of the song as time runs out. I’m not sure if that qualifies as “dying happy” or “not at all”, but it’s gotta be one of the two. (Bandcamp link)

Medicine – On the Bed

Release date: February 2nd (Bandcamp)/March 1st (Elsewhere)
Record label: Laner Archival Service
Genre: Shoegaze, fuzz rock, experimental rock, noise pop
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Tell Me Why

The long-running shoegaze/noise pop group Medicine released their most well-known records in the early 1990s, but they’ve been active on and off since their first breakup in 1995, with four different Medicine full-lengths in the past half-decade marking a recent flurry of activity. The band’s lineup has shifted over the years around bandleader Brad Laner–currently, they’re a trio featuring Laner, founding drummer Jim Goodall, and relative newcomer Julia Monreal on vocals (who, I believe, was not yet born the first time Medicine broke up). This trio put out an album called Silences last year, a highly experimental and noisy rock record that’d be remarkable coming from anyone, let alone a thirty-plus-year-old group. It’d be a good record to feature in Pressing Concerns, but I’m going to go with the Beatles cover album they just released instead. Of course, after Silences I wouldn’t expect Medicine to go full mod-revival, and On the Bed is delightfully offbeat, both in its song choices (I say “Beatles cover album”, but several songs here–including the title track–are pulled from Harrison, McCartney, and Starr’s solo careers) and its ramshackle, blown-out recordings.

That being said, the material that Medicine are working with on On the Bed is more accessible than their recent output, and the album (well, most of it, at least) reflects this. On the first half of the LP, Medicine do a speedrun of the history of The Beatles, blasting through fuzz-pop versions of the early years (“Some Other Guy” and “Tell Me Why”), middle era (“The Night Before” and “She Said She Said”) and psychedelic era (represented by a six-minute drone-psych version of “Blue Jay Way”). The second half of On the Bed is where things really diverge from expectations–their version of “On the Bed” (from the instrumental George Harrison album Wonderwall Music) feels like an extension of the noisy but familiar clanging of “Blue Jay Way”, and their take on McCartney’s “Junk”–very sparse, with Monreal on lead vocals–is disarming in its clarity and simplicity. The bulk of the second half, however, is taken up by “The Beatles Story”, a ten-minute sound collage/spoken word piece that’s confusing, amusing, and even kind of chilling. This kind of avant-garde, deliberately-difficult thing is, indeed, part of The Beatles’ story as well–it’s not my favorite moment on On the Bed, no, but it fits, and it makes their return to pop music in their fuzzed-out, sunny version of Ringo Starr’s “Photograph” (sounding like something that came out on Elephant 6 in 1997) that much sweeter. (Bandcamp link)

Ryann Gonsalves – Ouch!

Release date: February 14th
Record label: Dandy Boy
Genre: Bedroom pop, indie pop, singer-songwriter, indie folk
Formats: Cassette, digital
Pull Track: Feeder Fish

Get ready to learn Ryann Gonsalves, buddy. The Oakland-based musician is the vocalist and bassist of Torrey (a band who’s putting out their second album next month, more on that in a few weeks) and Aluminum (who released one of the best EPs of 2022 and I’m expecting to hear from again this year), and is also a member of the still somewhat-mysterious Reality TV (who released their debut EP last year). Even with all this going on, they’ve still had time to begin a solo career with a 2022 self-titled EP, and now we’ve got a 12-song, 18-minute cassette under their name called Ouch! on our hands. Gonsalves’ bands have distinct personalities (Torrey is more dream pop/shoegaze, Aluminum is Stereolab-y drone pop, and Reality TV more jangle/power pop), but they all fall under the umbrella of lightly distorted, fuzzy indie pop. For their latest solo release, Gonsalves is still writing pop music, but they’ve chosen to present these songs as crystal-clearly as possible. 

Ouch! is a straight-up bedroom pop album with even some hints of indie folk in it–it’s new terrain for Gonsalves (who plays everything you hear on the record aside from some “synth pads and pedals” added by Rick Altieri of Blue Ocean, who recorded, mixed, and mastered it). The jaunty handclap folk-pop intro of “Big Gulp” is positively jarring when jumping from Gonsalves’ other work–the Adult Mom/Thanks for Coming-ish bedroom guitar pop of “Burrowing” that follows is more representative of the record, but it’s still a bit of an adjustment. Gonsalves’ voice shines in this more sparse context, either meeting the (often deceptively) cheery instrumentals of songs like “Builder’s Diary” and “Feeder Fish” or livening up some of the record’s more downcast material like “Bitter Host”. Gonsalves has clearly taken advantage of the direct nature of Ouch!’s music (by “Feeling It All” and “Ouch Otro”, it’s just them and an acoustic guitar) to match it in their lyrics–when the titular interjection is delivered in the title track, it feels like a wince at some of the rougher moments of self-assessment throughout the record. Ouch! isn’t a tortured-sounding album, however–it’s an honest one, and Gonsalves comes off as nothing but proud of that fact. (Bandcamp link)

Safari Room – Time Devours All Things

Release date: February 23rd
Record label: Self-released
Genre: 2000s indie rock, indie rock, emo-rock
Formats: CD, digital
Pull Track: The Great Outdoors

I’ve been aware of Nashville’s Safari Room for a while now, having heard several singles from them as well as their sophomore album, 2022’s Complex House Plants, a record that combined the earnest, buttoned-up indie rock of mid-period The National with the energy of the polished side of emo-rock. On its surface, the band’s third album, Time Devours All Things, finds itself in the same territory as their previous material, but it also feels like a step forward for the group–everything they’ve done before, they do better, more confidently, and more distinctly here. Bandleader Alec Koukol is an Omaha native who sings like he’s wearing a suit, although one hopes that it isn’t a rental because I’m sure he’s pretty disheveled by the end of Time Devours All Things. Koukol’s bandmates (drummer Austin Drewry and guitarist Chris Collier) are, like their lead singer, polished but not lifeless, presenting these ten songs in a utilitarian but sharp alt-rock package.

“The Great Outdoors” opens Time Devours All Things with a vow and then kicks into a spirited piece of indie rock without Koukol tipping his hand too much. The band proceed to get a bit more exploratory in the next few songs, with “Broken Things” starting as electronic-tinged indie rock and blooming into a full-on piece of studio-pop-rock, “You Are a Ghost” transforming from minimal indie pop to roaring alt-rock, and “Blunderbuss” repurposing a 2010s radio-ready “indie” sheen into something nervous-sounding. The biggest “rocker” on Time Devours All Things is the politely-pissed-off post-grunge of “The King”, which I was on the fence about until its weird gear-shifting closing instrumental, which I thoroughly enjoyed. Safari Room are at their best when putting together big-chorused indie rock, however, with “A Promise to No One” and “Strength to Stand” highlighting the record’s second half. Safari Room are locking their pieces into place with Time Devours All Things, and I’ll be watching what they do with them from here on out. (Bandcamp link)

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