Pressing Concerns: Dancer, Bedbug, Chaepter, Fast Eddy

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The third and final Pressing Concerns of the week looks at four records coming out tomorrow, March 15th: brand new full-lengths from Dancer, Bedbug, Chaepter, and Fast Eddy make appearances below. It’s an impressive lineup, and if you missed Monday’s post (featuring Slake/Thirst, Old Amica, The Narcotix, and Porcine) and/or Tuesday’s (featuring Big Hug, Verity Den, Rope Trick, and Opinion), I’d dare say that those are just as great.

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.

Dancer – 10 Songs I Hate About You

Release date: March 15th
Record label: Meritorio
Genre: Post-punk, indie pop, art rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Passionate Sunday

This is going to be the third Dancer record I’ve written about in almost exactly one year, which makes me feel very lucky. The Glasgow quartet introduced themselves last year in the form of two EPs–their self-titled debut’s compelling mixture of bright indie pop and sharp post-punk made it one of my favorite EPs of 2023, and October’s As Well expanded on their sound ever so slightly. The band (vocalist Gemma Fleet, guitarist/keytarist Chris Taylor, bassist Andrew Doig, and drummer Gavin Murdoch) have played in Nightshift, Order of the Toad, and Current Affairs, but Dancer have gotten a bit of buzz independent of those acts, and Meritorio (Whitney’s Playland, Wurld Series, Jim Nothing) has stepped up to release their debut album, 10 Songs I Hate About You. It’s remarkably comforting just how stubbornly Dancer show up in the same clothes on their first full-length–the album was recorded live to tape at Green Door studio with Ronan Fay just like their EPs were, Fleet is still announcing every song’s title before it begins, Doig’s bass is all over the place and a treat to observe, and so on. Dancer had already covered quite a bit of ground on their first two EPs–all the ingredients for an excellent first album were lined up, and 10 Songs I Hate About You knocks it out of the park.

Given how Fleet opens their recordings, 10 Songs I Hate About You can’t really start in media res, but opening track “Bluetooth Hell” feels pretty close to it, as the band launch into an unassuming-at-first but evidently quite brilliant opening track. Between that and “Change”, Dancer zip through two vintage “Dancer-sounding” songs before you know it, and “Troi” (as in Deanna, yes) gets weird but still catchy (in fact, maybe even more so) with its appropriately-spacey synths and a very memorable delivery from Fleet. It’s not like 10 Songs I Hate About You is that much more massive than what they’d done before–it’s a little over 30 minutes long, while Dancer was twenty and As Well fifteen–but if you’re looking for signs that the band is still moving forward, I don’t think they’ve done anything quite like the noise-drama of “A Diagnosis” yet, and the slightly wilder side of Taylor’s guitar playing also scorches penultimate song “Turns Out”. These songs sit side-by-side with tracks like “Rein It In” and “When I Was a Teenage Horse”, which are rock-solid, gripping reminders of why Dancer are one of the most exciting new bands going, and why Fleet is such a huge part of that (the frothing “remember the nineties” aural montage complete with absurd interjections in the former could only be rivaled by a song about how she used to be a horse). My favorite thing on 10 Songs I Hate About You is probably the closing track, however–“Passionate Sunday” is a buzzing indie-noise-pop tune that merges garish, whirring synths with gorgeous melodies in a way that reminds me of The Tenement Year-era Pere Ubu. “Passionate Sunday” features a minute of clattering noise before the band launch into the proper song, and the album version of the track ends with another two minutes of some bare guitar and piano with ambient studio noise in the background. Unfortunately, it has to end eventually. (Bandcamp link)

Bedbug – Pack Your Bags the Sun Is Growing

Release date: March 15th
Record label: Disposable America
Genre: Lo-fi indie rock, emo, bedroom pop, 90s indie rock, indie folk
Formats: CD, cassette, digital
Pull Track: the city lights

The Boston-originating, Los Angeles-based indie rock group Bedbug garnered a following in the second half of the 2010s with a string of three albums (2016’s if i got smaller grew wings and flew away for good, 2018’s i’ll count to heaven in years without seasons, and 2020’s life like moving pictures) released through notable “bedroom pop” imprints Z Tapes and Joy Void while at the same time growing from a Dylan Gamez Citron solo project to a full band (currently featuring bassist Owen Harrelson drummer Minerva Rodriguez, guitarist/vocalist Meilyn Huq, and cellist Drew Cunningham). Citron hasn’t been idle the past few years–they released a collaborative record with Sami Martasian of Puppy Problems as Rose, Water, Fountain in 2021 and self-titled Bedbug EP on Disposable America in 2022–but the gap between life like moving pictures and pack your bags the sun is growing is still the largest between Bedbug LPs. The fourth Bedbug album is also the first one recorded somewhere other than at home–Bradford Krieger’s Big Nice Studio–and while it’s careful not to stray too far from Citron’s roots, the record clearly gains something in its manner of creation.

pack your bags the sun is growing has a familiar sound but it’s still somewhat hard to pin down. The earnest bedroom pop of acts like Pickle Darling (and earlier Bedbug albums) is still there, but there’s also a sprawling Pacific Northwest indie rock side to the band now reminiscent of early Strange Ranger/Sioux Falls (not to mention Modest Mouse, likely a huge influence on both groups) and even a bit of Microphones-y indie folk thrown in for good measure. It’s not “emo” in a strict application of the term, but the more I listen to pack your bags…, the more I experience songs like the seven-minute “leave your things, the stars are returning” (which is like their version of a The World Is a Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid to Die song) and the gentle, communally-sung “seasons on the new coast”, the more I feel like “emo” is right (hell, it’s even got a “voicemail set to music” song in “mount moon”). pack your bags… exhales in its second half after climbing to some impressive heights earlier on, with the band backing off to give “new kinds of stars”, “postcard”, and “sunset (finale)” some space. Nevertheless, the other instruments sneak back in towards the final of three songs and also show up a bit in closing (non-bonus) song “pack your bags, it’s time to go home”. Bedbug is still very much Citron’s project, but it’s now big enough to fit everyone else in frame. (Bandcamp link)

Chaepter – Naked Era

Release date: March 15th
Record label: Candlepin
Genre: Post-punk, fuzz rock, art rock
Formats: Vinyl, cassette, digital
Pull Track: Post Touch

For whatever reason, I’ve been finding Naked Era by Chaepter to be one of the most difficult albums I’ve tried to describe in Pressing Concerns. There are times when the album resembles “post-punk”, but it’s hardly interested in adhering to that genre’s ideas of rhythm and punctuality. There’s a haze of noise and layered instruments throughout the record, too, but it’s not either “psychedelic rock” or “shoegaze” (and despite its cover art, Naked Era isn’t very “punk rock” either). Maybe a bit of context will make it make more sense–Chaepter Negro (aka Chaepter) is initially from central Illinois and, like most Midwestern weirdos who make music, eventually ended up in Chicago, where he’s lived since 2019. His first full-length as Chaepter, 2022’s Kicking the Cat, is a strange, experimental R&B album, while last year’s The Moon Is an Emotional Island was a lo-fi folk EP. Naked Era is therefore a complete departure for the musician, which makes sense to me; this album is rock music made by somebody coming at it from an unusual angle, somebody who’s not getting too caught up in hitting the right beats and instead just playing what he feels.

Chaepter has a full-time band (drummer John Golden, guitarist Ryan Donlin, and bassist Ayethaw Tun) who play on parts of Naked Era, but even the sections where everything but the percussion is being played by Chaepter feel very full-sounding. Opening track “Post Touch” is Chaepter at their most recognizable, rolling out a speeding post-punk first statement, even as Chaepter’s vocals, confused and somewhat unpredictable, don’t really “fit” this kind of music (I’d like to thank another good Chicago band, Friko, for calling it “krautrock-y”, because they’re right). The six-minute “New Era” and the upbeat “The Noise!” continue to show off this side of Chaepter, although Naked Era declines to follow this formula lest it overstay its welcome. Particularly in the second half of the record, Chaepter and his collaborators set their sights on making something noisy and opaque–the synths that open “I Feel It All Too” might make you think that he’s diving back into R&B, but the instrumental that follows is murky, lo-fi fuzz rock, while “Nobody’s Cool Anymore” starts off unassuming before whipping itself into a frenzy, too. Perhaps Chaepter’s next album will be as big of a left-turn as this record was from his previous ones–if that’s the case, I’ll remember his Naked Era as a particularly strong one. (Bandcamp link)

Fast Eddy – To the Stars

Release date: March 15th
Record label: Beluga/Spaghetty Town/Boulevard Trash
Genre: Garage rock, power pop, punk rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Spirit Commander

Fast Eddy are a Denver-based garage rock quartet who are new to me but have been around for awhile–their first album came out back in 2017, and they seem to have played with just about every garage or punk band out there over the past few years. To the Stars is their third full-length, and the group (drummer Arj Narayan, vocalist/guitarist Micah Morris, guitarist Lisandro Gutierrez, and bassist Devon Kane) clearly have a knack for the catchier end of punk rock and garage rock based off these eight songs. To the Stars is a brief record–around 27 minutes–but Fast Eddy still find the time to bust out all-in garage punk rippers and some more thoughtful, melodic mid-tempo rock and roll as well. For a garage punk group, Fast Eddy punch above their weight in terms of thematic ambition on To the Stars, which they describe as a concept album about “the destructive mess we’ve made out of the madness”–to me, that sounds like a good excuse to break out some good-old-fashioned punk rock nihilism.

To the Stars comes out of the gate raring to go with “Steppin Stone”, a polished piece of power pop that nevertheless is pretty pessimistic (lyrically, Fast Eddy is concerned with humanity attempting to flee Earth once we’ve used up all its resources, with the chorus landing with “We’re not gonna take this / To the stars”). Fast Eddy enjoyably hit plenty of “punk rock” beats throughout To the Stars–the exhilarating punk of “Lucky Strike” is explicitly pro-crime, while they also have time for a critique of religion (“Rapture”), technology (“No More Neon Lights”) and, um, well, I’m not sure if “Spirit Commander” is a critique of anything, but it’s one of the best garage punk songs I’ve heard this year regardless. Although the earnest pop rock of “In Too Deep” and “Lost Child” suggest there is indeed a heart at the core of Fast Eddy, it’s not until the closing track, “Grey Day”, that the band’s philosophy truly crystallizes: they only want to burn everything down so the seeds in the soil can germinate. They only want us to unplug all the flashing lights so we can stare at the stars again. (Bandcamp link)

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