Pressing Concerns: Big Hug, Verity Den, Rope Trick, Opinion

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A strong Tuesday Pressing Concerns looks at four records that might not’ve been on your radar: new EPs from Big Hug and Rope Trick plus new albums from Verity Den and Opinion. British emo-punk, New England heavy psych, North Carolina post-rock, and French fuzz rock–this edition has it all. If you missed yesterday’s post (featuring new music from Slake/Thirst, Old Amica, The Narcotix, and Porcine), check that one out here.

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Big Hug – A Living You’ll Never Know

Release date: March 1st
Record label: Self-released
Genre: Emo, punk, math rock
Formats: Digital
Pull Track: Cruellemonde de la Hi Fi

An emo-punk trio from London, Big Hug burst onto the scene last year with Don’t Threaten Me With a Good Time, their debut EP. On that record’s five songs, the band (guitarist/vocalist Tom Watkins, bassist/vocalist Henry Langston, and drummer Owain Mumford) teased out a sound indebted to alt-rock and pop punk, although with a slightly heavier backbone that belied their love of second-wave emo and 90s indie punk. Anthemic and promising, Don’t Threaten Me With a Good Time got a bit of a buzz, and Big Hug haven’t sat on their laurels since–almost exactly one year after their first EP, they’re back with another one called A Living You’ll Never Know. It’s a brief dispatch from the world of Big Hug–it’s only four songs long, including one instrumental, and comes in at under a dozen minutes in length–but it’s not without new developments. Big Hug still like a big chorus hook, but A Living You’ll Never Know is a little more slippery, filling the space in between them with math-y riffs and more interesting structural choices.

That instrumental I mentioned earlier actually kicks off A Living You’ll Never Know–“Pyrrhic Opposites” is a one-minute introduction to the EP, with Watkins’ guitar and Henry Langston’ bass locking in and orbiting around each other while some ambient synths float in the background. Big Hug seem intent on making a second impression that’s as far away from their first one as possible–and while “Cruellemonde de la Hi Fi” brings us back into the world of emo-rock one song later, it does so with a jagged guitarline that veers into frame memorably before Watkins’ refrain eventually takes the reins from it. “Nothing Changes” is even more dodgy; it stops and starts, still a pop song but one broken into bits and pieces and seemingly reluctant to ever put it all together (by the time all three instruments start locking into a groove, Watkins’ voice has become an overshadowed bellow in the background). With A Living You’ll Never Know being as short as it is, Big Hug don’t have room for filler, and they pull off their consistent streak by landing closing track “Gary on Earth”. The song starts off as a straight-up anthem, veers all over the place, then comes together for a louder version of where it started, summing up the journey of Big Hug quite well, incidentally. (Bandcamp link)

Verity Den – Verity Den

Release date: March 1st
Record label: Amish
Genre: Shoegaze, post-rock, experimental rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Priest Boss

Verity Den was formed in 2023 by three North Carolina-based musicians who’ve played in a variety of indie rock bands separately and who came together via a tape loop, strings, and electronics-based improv ensemble (which is where Casey Proctor and Trevor Reece met each other). After a cassette-only release last year, the trio of Reece, Proctor, and Mike Wallace have linked up with Amish Records for their self-titled debut album, which does indeed sound like the work of a rock band with roots in the avant-garde. Citing groups like Swirlies as inspiration, Verity Den have made a sprawling album that sometimes offers up layered but relatively straightforward shoegaze and indie rock, but is just as likely to drift into wandering post-rock, ambient, and even noisy droning. The seven-track, 37-minute Verity Den is an enticing portrait of a new band who are already melding together–the three members trade off vocal and instrumental duties, and their ability to create both harmony and discord together is key in balancing the record’s prettier and more chaotic moments.

This is all very loosely-fitting, but Verity Den follows the “more accessible A-side, weirder B-side” format to a degree. At the very least, “Priest Boss” shows up in the record’s first half, and–even though the track spreads out for five minutes–it’s Verity Den at their most upbeat and generous with melodies; the noise only really takes over towards the end of the track. Meanwhile, opening track “Washer Dryer” is vintage shoegaze, balancing a strong pop core with copious distortion and layered instruments, and “Prudence” is a six-minute down-tempo indie rock ballad that the band pull off with the requisite subtlety. The eight-minute “Other Friends” that opens the record’s second half is still a “rock” song for most of its length, although the reverb-drenched instrumental and rhythmic, mechanical drumbeat turn it into something decidedly more esoteric than we’d been dealing with on the album previously (and there is, indeed, a couple minutes of loose, floating guitar lines and whatnot to close the song). Although nothing else on Verity Den is quite as long as that song, the final two tracks are even harder to get a handle on–“Everyone Thought You Were Dead” is a swirling piece of rock music absolutely drowning in distortion, while “Crush Meds” ends the album with a straight-up piece of sound collage noise. Even left stranded in the junkyard that is Verity Den’s endpoint, I still find myself glad for the journey. (Bandcamp link)

Rope Trick – Red Tide

Release date: February 1st
Record label: Self-released
Genre: Psychedelic rock, heavy psych, garage-psych
Formats: Cassette, digital
Pull Track: Crescent

You know you’re in for a good time when the psychedelic rock EP is two songs and twenty-one minutes long. That’s exactly what you get with Red Tide, the second record from “experimental heavy psych rock duo” Rope Trick. The band formed in Providence and have actually been around for a while–their debut, Red Tape, came out in 2017–but guitarist/vocalist Indy Shome and drummer Nate Totushek took their time before returning to Rope Trick. Some six years later and now based in Philadelphia, Shome and Notushek are back with two songs of ambitious, exciting heavy psychedelic rock: the twelve-minute “Crescent” on side one, and the nine-minute “Neptune” following. Unsurprisingly, Red Tide has more than a bit of long instrumental sections, but Shome’s vocals are present for a surprising amount of the EP and are hardly an afterthought, holding their own against the chugging guitars and rolling drums.

“Crescent” opens Red Tide by taking us all on a wide-ranging journey in several parts. Shome and Totushek aren’t in any hurry to come out of the gate swinging, rather letting the track slowly congeal into a recognizable piece of heavy rock and roll a couple minutes into its trip. By three to four minutes in, Rope Trick are plowing forward with their propulsive, hard hitting music, and by the fifth one, Shome finally steps up to the mic, sounding like a riff-haunting ghost. The smooth, smoky journey slows down just a bit in the song’s second half, concurrent with Shome once again stepping away from signing and letting the guitar do the talking, but all aspects of Rope Trick are back in the saddle for the song’s punctual conclusion. “Neptune” takes less time to reach its full form–it’s a swaggering piece of Soundgarden-esque heavy blues pretty much from the get-go. Shome begins intoning lyrics about tsunamis and explosions about a minute into this one, sounding particularly dramatic over the stretchy, downtuned guitar riffs being hammered out at the same time. Like in the previous song, Rope Trick slow down a bit only to roar back before the song comes to an end, although “Neptune” feels like it’s starting and stopping right up until the finale of the track. Red Tide is certainly an expansive work of rock music, but Rope Trick don’t neglect the details that make it truly come together. (Bandcamp link)

Opinion – Horrible

Release date: February 23rd
Record label: Flippin’ Freaks/Nothing Is Mine/Les Disques du Paradis
Genre: Fuzz rock, garage punk, noise rock, lo-fi indie rock, grunge
Formats: CD, digital
Pull Track: Hyperglam

Like a lot of young indie rockers these days, Bordeaux, France’s Hugo Carmouze takes a lot of inspiration from distorted and fuzzy genres of music like shoegaze and garage rock, citing everything from Ty Segall to They Are Gutting a Body of Water to Hotline TNT. While some people might enjoy the songs of these aforementioned bands in spite of the distortion, however, it’s pretty clear from Opinion’s Horrible that the fuzz is perhaps the most important part for Carmouze. The latest album from the prolific lo-fi rocker (it’s a one-person home-recording project, although he does have a dedicated live band) is compressed and distorted to ear-splitting levels, with Carmouze veering his garage rock into in-the-red territory plenty of times on the LP. The entire thing was recorded over New Year’s night (2022/2023) with “no amps and/or effect pedals”, and it does have a one-shot deliriousness to it–it’s hard to imagine anyone pouring over these recordings for months of second guessing. This one’s gonna be a hard one for anyone who isn’t down with the recording style to listen to, but there is a charm to Horrible and how it veers between wanting to just make catchy rock and roll and going for maximum noisiness. 

Carmouze sets up both ends of the spectrum early on with the catchy surf-punk opening track “Hyperglam” melting into the seven-minute piece of towering fuzz that is “Talking About Yourself”, which keeps finding new levels of cacophony in which to descend. Having steered the record into the ditch this early on (and not exactly wrenching itself out of it with the briefer but still pummeling “Missing Something That Never Happened”), Opinion find a middle ground in the retro garage rock of “This Generation” and the heavier but still catchy alt-rock of “Smashing Pumpkins” (not an inaccurate title there). If there’s one song that best melds the extremes of Horrible, it’s probably “Bats”, which is a particularly Segall-esque psych-noise-punk track that’s hooky in spite of itself. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Horrible descends into madness towards its end with the drenched-in-fuzz “It Hurts Sometimes” and the ten-minute closing track “Dusthorses”, which is actually pretty crystal clear up until the last couple minutes. The latter song’s meditative slowcore eventually becomes distorted and corrupted into noise, too–it wouldn’t make sense for Horrible to end any other way. (Bandcamp link)

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