Pressing Concerns: Closet Mix, Non La, Sunglaciers, With Patience

Posted byrosyoverdrivePosted inPressing ConcernsTags:, , , , , , , ,

It’s the second day of April, and it’s also time for the month’s second edition of Pressing Concerns. It’s a really good one this time, featuring new albums from Closet Mix, Non La, and Sunglaciers, plus a new EP from With Patience. If you missed yesterday’s blog post (featuring Hello Emerson, Fanclubwallet, The Church, and Magana), check that 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.

Closet Mix – 04 CD

Release date: March 29th
Record label: Old 3C
Genre: Post-college rock, 90s indie rock, keyboard rock
Formats: CD, digital
Pull Track: My Appeal to Heaven

One of my favorite kinds of releases to cover in Pressing Concerns is “debut album by a group of musicians who have been making music in some form for decades”–and that’s exactly what we’ve got with the first full-length from Columbus’ Closet Mix, given the very utilitarian title of 04 CD. The quartet is made up of vocalist/bassist Paul Nini, guitarist/vocalist Keith Novicki, keyboardist Chris Nini, and drummer Dan Della Flora–between the four of them, they’ve played in plenty of Ohio bands over the years, including Log, Peck of Snide, Househearts, Vena Cava, Van Echo, and the legendary Great Plains. Closet Mix (named after Lou Reed’s version of the 1969 Velvet Underground album, of course) came together in the mid-2010s, with their debut 01 EP arriving in 2016 and introducing their laid-back, keyboard-driven meandering rock stylings. Work on the Closet Mix debut album began shortly after–a few singles trickled out while completion was delayed by the pandemic, and 04 CD triumphantly arrives a little eight years after that first EP. Closet Mix’s slow pace yields plenty of rewards on their first album–it’s a dozen songs pushing fifty minutes, but still, just about every moment feels like the right step for the individual track and the record to which it belongs.

04 CD is a difficult-to-categorize album–it’s not an overly loud or noisy indie rock record, but Novicki does get to show off on guitar frequently, sometimes playing jangly melodies that might fall under vintage “college rock” and other times straight-up ripping classic rock solos. It’s reminiscent of recent records from Eleventh Dream Day, Royal Ottawa, and Mint Mile, all bands made up of musicians who’ve been at it for so long they’ve created their own languages. The main difference here is Chris Nini’s keyboards, which feature prominently throughout 04 CD and provide a nice, steady counterweight to the more showy guitar work. Paul Nini’s vocals are also an essential component to 04 CD–when he opens the record on “Hey World” with “Sorry about the mess we made / Sorry about the CIA … / Sorry about the Everglades” he sounds clear but distant, like a 20th century ghost coming in and out of focus. Songs like “My Appeal to Heaven” (with its early-R.E.M. instrumental and quick tempo) and “Contact Buzz” (with a handful of particularly evocative metaphors from Paul) feel like timeless pop rock songs unearthed from another era, and the darkly minimal “The Bastards Won Again” sounds beamed in from a cyclical future. As disparate as Closet Mix can feel, they’ll also stake their flag squarely in the present when they want to, as well—layered, attention-grabbing indie rock tracks like “Rabbit Hole” and “Sanctuary City” both sound like the band still have a fire lit under them. As long as there’s a spark, Closet Mix can work with that–04 CD is a record taking place in ashes and embers, but they’re still glowing. (Bandcamp link)

Non La – Like Before

Release date: March 29th
Record label: Mint
Genre: Fuzz rock, lo-fi indie rock, singer-songwriter
Formats: Vinyl, cassette, digital
Pull Track: Hold Me Down

Coming out the same week as Sunglaciers’ Regular Nature (which appears directly below) is a different ambitious indie rock record originating from Western Canada, although Non La’s Like Before earns this distinction by working in a few different arenas than their neighbors to the northeast. DJ On grew up in Vancouver and played in a few local bands (including Megamall), but they began their Non La project after living in Taiwan for a period and subsequently returning to Canada. They debuted Non La in 2020 with Not in Love via Lost Sound Tapes (Olivia’s World, Zowy, The Ashenden Papers) and Kingfisher Bluez (Janelane, Robert Sotelo, Allison Crutchfield) but they’ve jumped to Mint (Kamikaze Nurse, Tough Age, Dumb) for their sophomore full-length, Like Before. Compared to Regular Nature’s sprawling art rock, Like Before is much more insular–On plays everything on the record themself and recorded it at Dumb’s Choms studio, all of which gives the record a downbeat but loud, lo-fi, fuzzed-out indie rock sound. Stoic on the surface but with plenty going on underneath, Like Before is an apt vehicle for On’s lyrics which reflect extensively on queer love and navigating the relationships sprung from it.

The sixty-second acoustic bedroom pop opening track “Dark Room” is one of the most immediately captivating moments on Like Before, and On deftly segues from its skeletal structure to the full-on mid-tempo fuzz rock of “Hold Me Down” and its surging, desperate chorus that sets up the emotions and desire that trigger the rest of the record’s subject matter. Just glancing at the song titles that follow–“Every Lie”, “Hurtful”, “I Don’t Wanna Know”, “Forget”–is enough to know that Like Before is headed into choppy waters, but On doesn’t shy away from the harder stuff, from the bleak frankness of “Every Lie” (“And now I’m so embarrassed / Cause I let you sleep in my room / And you made a mess of it”) to the gorgeously desperate plea of “Forget” (“I need you / You need me,” is what it all boils down to). The title track is the loudest moment on the record, thundering, distorted alt-rock/power pop soundtracking uncertain lyrics about the changing nature of a relationship and the sheer impossibility of understanding what it could mean. The tenderest moments on Like Before (like the zen-like “Take Care”) are well-earned, as are its ugliest ones: On chooses to end the record with “Matter”, an audibly pained song where its rough lyrics (“I’ve bit my tongue so much it hurts / Because you matter to me / And you won’t do the same for me / Do I not matter to you”) are buried underneath the guitars, perhaps in an attempt to blunt the hurt a bit. Non La ask a bunch of questions on Like Before, even the ones where the mere fact that they must be verbalized answers them. (Bandcamp link)

Sunglaciers – Regular Nature

Release date: March 29th
Record label: Mothland
Genre: Post-punk, art rock, psychedelic rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Right Time

I’m fairly certain I’ve never written about any band that’s even close to being from Alberta in Pressing Concerns before, but we begin our foray into Canada’s Prairie Provinces with a doozy. Calgary’s Sunglaciers are a quartet who put out two EPs and two albums between 2017 and 2021; their third full-length, Regular Nature, is the first I’d heard of them, but it immediately got my attention. This record is an expansive collection of all-over-the-place art rock, with shades of punchy Devo-y new wave/post-punk as well as layered, rhythmic psychedelic rock, synthpop, and even a bit of an ambient odyssey hidden in here as well. Over fifteen songs and forty-one minutes, the group (vocalist/guitarist/synth players Evan Resnik and Nyssa Brown, drummer Mathieu Blanchard, and bassist Kyle Crough) rarely sound satisfied to stay in one place for long, and their ambitions are aided by a cadre of guest musicians including Calgary psych pop legend Chad VanGaalen on several instruments throughout the majority of these songs, and Daniel Monkman of Zoon and OMBIIGIZI’s guitar on lead single “Cursed”.

Sunglaciers open things up with the energetic egg-punk “Fakes”, yelping “All style, not a lot of substance!” as they rush into the chorus–the song’s title ends up being somewhat appropriate, though, as we’ve only really touched the tip of the iceberg that is Regular Nature. The first half of the record also features a few more revved-up rockers in the form of the frantic garage rock of “Kafka” and the fuzzed-out post-punk-glam “I Remember the Days”, but we also get the slick, almost krautrock-y chugging “Right Time”, the psychedelic synthpop of “Undermine”, and “Cursed”, an exciting collision of electronica and rock music. After the instrumental interludes “Interlude” and “Frog Mask”, lesser bands would start wrapping things up, but Sunglaciers are only halfway through with Regular Nature, with several side two highlights remaining (including the three-song run of “A.I.”, “Reef”, and “Not Ready”, a cacophonous and loud stretch that might be the best section of the entire album). Regular Nature is indeed a lot to take in at once, but I admire the commitment that Sunglaciers display–if they’d tried to trim the record down to a more “digestible” dozen songs, we probably would’ve lost some late-record curiosities like the VanGaalen-y synth-rock of “Gov Shut” or the relatively brief but spirited “One Time or Another”, which would’ve been a shame. One of Regular Nature’s best qualities is how much it sounds like a band aiming high and coming away with something rewarding for doing so. (Bandcamp link)

With Patience – Three of Swords

Release date: February 13th
Record label: Self-released
Genre: Post-hardcore, noise rock
Formats: CD, digital
Pull Track: Reasons

Chicago trio With Patience debuted last year with a two-song digital single, but the band’s members have been playing in various Windy City bands for some time now–bassist/vocalist Lance Curran in Careful, drummer/vocalist Lee Diamond in Douglass Kings and Alkaloid, and guitarist/vocalist Chris Wade in hose.got.cable. Just a couple months after their debut single, With Patience have released their first EP, Three of Swords (which is available on a CD combining it with their debut single). Mixed by J. Robbins of Jawbox and mastered by Bob Weston of Shellac, one might imagine that With Patience make music indebted to the noisier side of 90s indie rock–and indeed, that’d get you in the ballpark of what Three of Swords sounds like. The record’s three songs have a fair bit of 90s Dischord in them with their lean, post-punk/post-hardcore attitude, but there’s also a hint of Drive Like Jehu and Hot Snakes in the tracks’ electricity, pounding tempos, and frequently shredded-sounding vocals. 

Three of Swords is quite brief–its three songs only just cross the eight-minute mark in total (to put it in Yank Crime terms, it’s longer than “Super Unison” but shorter than “Luau”). With Patience don’t have time to beat around the bush, and they jump right into things with the fiery post-punk of “Reasons” to open up the record. “Do you, do you, do you need instructions?” Wade barks in the chorus, the offbeat Devo-ism given a performance more akin to Ian MacKaye and Rick Froberg. The Diamond-sung “Obsolete at Production” is the oddest track on the record, alternating between choppy Dischord muscle and a bit of West Coast garage/psychedelia in both the vocal delivery and the speedy instrumental passages. Curran takes the lead for closing track “FOMO”, the record’s biggest “punk” moment–ferocious bass and crashing guitar mark the verses, and there’s a nice Fugazi-ish gang vocal thing going on in the chorus. With Patience do find a few different angles within their well-worn genre of choice, and the vocal trade-offs also add some variety, but Three of Swords works more than anything else because of its energy–the trio sound as excited about noisy rock and roll music as a group of brand-new musicians. You don’t get a debut record like Three of Swords otherwise. (Bandcamp link)

Also notable:

Leave a comment