Pressing Concerns: Miscellaneous Owl, Ten Things I Hate About You, Chimes of Bayonets, Alexei Shishkin

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The second Pressing Concerns of the week has arrived, and we’re continuing to look at a few records that might’ve slipped through the cracks from the first couple months of the year. New albums from Miscellaneous Owl, Chimes of Bayonets, and Alexei Shishkin appear below, as well as a reissue of the debut album from Ten Things I Hate About You. If you missed Monday’s post, featuring records from Hill View #73, Kora Puckett, Buddy Junior, and Kind Skies, check that one 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.

Miscellaneous Owl – You Are the Light That Casts a Shadow

Release date: March 1st
Record label: Self-released
Genre: Indie folk, indie pop, bedroom pop, singer-songwriter
Formats: Digital
Pull Track: Streaks

Did you know that February is “Album Writing Month”? I’ve never successfully completed an album, so I did not, but this problem doesn’t seem to plague Madison, Wisconsin’s Huan-Hua Chye, aka Miscellaneous Owl. It appears that several albums on her Bandcamp page initially showed up around early March as a result of the challenge, comprising a discography that Chye has built alongside playing in Madison bands like Gentle Brontosaurus, Red Tape Diaries, and TL;DR (as well as in trans-Atlantic duo Vowl Sounds with England’s Tom Morton). Chye’s latest as Miscellaneous Owl is You Are the Light That Casts a Shadow, a dozen-song record she wrote, recorded, and played entirely on her own over the course of February. Given its method of incubation, it’s not surprising that You Are the Light That Casts a Shadow could loosely be described as a “bedroom pop/folk” record, although that doesn’t quite do justice to the music contained herein. Veering between jangly, almost twee indie pop and indie folk, I do hear the offbeat pop songsmiths like Robyn Hitchcock and Stephin Merritt–who Chye namedrops as influences–in these songs, as well as everything from the wordy folk rock of The Paranoid Style, the bookish but at times bluntly personal music of Christine Fellows, and the playfully ambitious acoustic-based pop music of Pacing.

After a self-conscious jazzy introduction, “Streaks” opens You Are the Light That Casts a Shadow with nothing short of one of the finest pieces of pop music of the year so far–after shaking off its meta-narrative, everything locks into place: Chye’s powerful Natalie Merchant-esque folk/college rock voice, the guitar arpeggio, the detail-specific but universally-landing subject matter, the sharp synths, and even some “whoa-oh” backing vocals. At various times, You Are the Light That Casts a Shadow will either show traces of its “writing-prompt” beginnings or make it hard to believe that it was put together as quickly as it was–really, it just seems like Chye is very good at this “songwriting” thing regardless of from where any given track’s inspiration came. Take two of the best songs on the album, the bouncy power pop of “Closing the Capsule Door” and the sparse, acoustic folk of “Chicago Rat Hole”. Both songs’ lyrics seem sprung from a single, tangible idea that I can imagine Chye happening upon while scrolling social media or watching television–Laika the Soviet space dog for the former, and the piece of deformed concrete that was a brief viral sensation for the latter.  

A lesser writer might pen a straightforward song about either of those topics, but Chye merely uses them as jumping off points–“Closing the Capsule Door” in particular is a huge success, the sugary-sweet instrumental unfolding over an excellent meditation on love, death, and irony (and until Pacing writes a song about feeding a rat to a snake, the verse about leaving a mouse in a plastic box for an owl to swoop in and take is the closest we’re going to get). Likewise, the emptiness and loss at the heart of “Chicago Rat Hole” conjure up the image of the world’s most delicate anvil nevertheless crushing us all in cartoon-like fashion. Speaking of impossible-to-forget images, Chye closes You Are the Light That Casts a Shadow with something called “Honey-Eater”, a long spoken-word, synth-haunted train of thought type thing that’s one of the most striking pieces of music I’ve heard on a pop album in quite a while. As Chye weaves threads connecting bears, salmon, fear, death, infinity, The Beatles, and gas station bathroom towel dispensers, she never once loses me–she’s perfectly coherent up to the looping final statement of the record. “Honey-Eater” is more obvious about it, but just about everything on You Are the Light That Casts a Shadow merits this level of thought and engagement. Several long shadows feel cast over this album indeed, and Miscellaneous Owl illuminate what’s behind them with great care. (Bandcamp link)

Ten Things I Hate About You – Ten Things I Hate About You (Reissue)

Release date: January 30th
Record label: We’re Trying
Genre: Emo, punk
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Red

I am admittedly not too familiar (read: not at all familiar) with the DIY emo scene of Honolulu, Hawaii, but Ten Things I Hate About You seem to be right at the center of it–between the four of them, the quartet’s members have played in the bands Earl Grey, Søøn, TV Microwave, Feeble, and Aswang. The band (guitarist/vocalist Erik, guitarist Will, bassist Skayu, and drummer/vocalist Seth) put out EPs in 2020 and 2021, culminating in a self-titled debut album in January 2022 that they self-released on cassette. Two years later, Austin emo/punk label We’re Trying Records has reissued Ten Things I Hate About You, giving it its first-ever vinyl release and putting a spotlight on an underheard record from a part of the world not known for its underground rock music. Ten Things I Hate About You is either emo-indebted punk rock or punk-indebted emo, short on math-y riffs but heavy on shout-along choruses and amped-up fuzz rock. It’s a bit too loose to pass as “pop punk”, but for those of us who like their loud pop music lo-fi and interspersed with less immediate moments, it’s a successful debut album.

Ten Things I Hate About You both opens and closes by turning the dial away from cathartic rock music–opening track “Gold Turns Grey” is chilly, slow-emo for two minutes before finally introducing the electric side of the band in its final third, while the band close the album with the ten-minute “Killing Time”, which alternates between lumbering, all-in alt-rock and quiet post-rock several times before it’s all said and done. In between these two pillars, Ten Things I Hate About You put together a full emo-punk experience–they’ve got “Giant Camera”, “Red”, and “Alone”, which are the band at their catchiest, punching through pop songs at full blast, they’ve got the mid-record, slow-building centerpiece “Chamberlain Field”, the punk ripper “Costco”, and the token acoustic track “Gasoline”. It’s easy to take Ten Things I Hate About You for granted; everything I’ve described is archetypal emo music to some degree, but to do all of it on one album, and all of it equally well, feels remarkable to me. I’m interested in hearing more from Ten Things I Hate About You (or, at the very least, one of the half-dozen other bands in which its members play). (Bandcamp link)

Chimes of Bayonets – Replicator

Release date: February 29th
Record label: Peterwalkee
Genre: Noise rock, post-hardcore, math rock, post-punk
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Human Mascot

Chimes of Bayonets are a noise rock trio from Ithaca, New York who’ve been around for a few years–their first EP came out back in 2018–but have only now just released their debut full-length. Replicator was mastered by Bob Weston of Shellac, and their most recent EP by J. Robbins of Jawbox, which should help give you a starting point for the band’s sound–the group has clearly spent a lot of time with anything noisy, math-y, and/or post-hardcore-indebted from the 1990s, with the scenes in Washington, D.C., Louisville, and Chicago all coming to mind. There’s also a weary Rust Belt punk sound to Replicator that can also be found in fellow Ithaca act (and onetime Habitforming Records labelmate) Grass Jaw, even as Chimes of Bayonets spent the majority of their record displaying their identity as a tightly-coiled, lean post-punk group. Replicator is a balanced record–the unpredictable guitar, sharp rhythm section, and plainspoken vocals are all essential to the record’s sound, but none towers over the other for more than a moment.

Chimes of Bayonets kick off their debut with “Attacking in Twos”, the only song on Replicator that’s under four minutes in length. It’s a noisy piece of post-punk/alt-rock with a burgeoning bass that does its best to make itself known over the song’s anthemic qualities. “Reactor Eye” feels a little more directly related to sloganeering D.C. post-hardcore, with the slashing guitars failing to flag as the song crosses the five-minute barrier. “Human Mascot” balances a fiery, almost garage rock riff with a stop-start structure reminiscent of Unwound, while “Channel Marker” tries to play sinewy, straightforward post-punk but gets swallowed up by noise. The weird stitched-together art punk of “Who Wants to Die for Art?” is perhaps the most interesting left turn for the band, cycling through swirling noise, bass-driven aggression, and a closing sprint before it’s all said and done. Closing track “Index” finds Chimes of Bayonets spreading out in a different way–the majority of the song is instrumental, probing math rock that feels very Quarterstick-esque, but then they begin to bring things together for a swooning post-hardcore finish. Even so, “Index” trails off more than burns out, with the band displaying they’ve picked up something more than an ability to make loud rock and roll music from their influences. (Bandcamp link)

Alexei Shishkin – Dagger

Release date: February 2nd
Record label: Rue Defense
Genre: Lo-fi indie rock, dream pop, bedroom rock
Formats: Digital
Pull Track: Ladder

Alexei Shishkin is a Queens-based singer-songwriter who’s been putting out music steadily for the past decade, although he describes himself as “a label’s worst nightmare” due to his aversion to playing live. From 2014 to 2021, Shishkin put out nine records on Forged Artifacts (Sonny Falls, Greg Mendez, First Rodeo); since then, a half-dozen Shishkin releases have shown up through Houston imprint Rue Defense. Dagger is Shishkin’s first album of 2024 (expect at least one other record later in the year), and it’s an enjoyably hazy collection of lo-fi bedroom rock that feels descended from the kind of reverb-y, psychedelic pop music that labels like Forged Artifacts specialized in around a decade ago. Shishkin home-recorded everything on the record himself other than the drums, and says these ten songs began as “‘stream–of-consciousness’ style experiments” to which he continued to add extra layers. The result is an album that’s hardly straightforward or intuitive, but despite its subversive nature, Dagger is a pop album at its core; sometimes recalcitrantly, other times more openly.

Even if the rest of Dagger was forgettable, I’d certainly remember opening track “Tappin Out”, a muddy and bizarre piece of bedroom pop that effectively merges a Sparklehorse/Grandaddy-ish chorus with verses that are closer to something by the Butthole Surfers. Shishkin doesn’t quite attempt “Tappin Out” again but thankfully Dagger has plenty more to offer, with the rolling “Wind Picks Up Again” (sounding like Dinosaur Jr. trying to do a Stereolab song), the relaxed, pensive lo-fi pop of “Ladder”, and the mutated soft rock of “Languid Waterfalls” all being highlights. Although the second side of Dagger might be a little less immediate, it also features what I’d consider to be the album’s biggest “no-strings-attached” pop song, the effortless-sounding “Rain Beat Down”, which builds something quite sturdy around some nice piano chords and handclaps. Dagger feels like it’s deliberately steering clear of big, consequential moments–the titular object in “Ladder” is leaning up against a wall, leading to nowhere, and in closing track “Digits Change” Shishkin is literally watching the clock. Dagger ends up asserting that, for someone like Shishkin, there aren’t “down moments”, though. (Bandcamp link)

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