Pressing Concerns: Is/Ought Gap, Rave Ami, Vulture Feather, Oort Clod

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Time to begin the week with some new music! Today’s Pressing Concerns features three records that came out last week–a long overdue reissue/compilation of material from 1980s post-punk group Is/Ought Gap, a new album from Oort Clod, and an EP from Vulture Feather–plus an album from Rave Ami that came out last month.

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.

Is/Ought Gap – SUA

Release date: April 5th
Record label: HHBTM
Genre: Dance-punk, post-punk, new wave, college rock, garage rock, punk rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Her Peace

I’ve covered plenty of new bands in Pressing Concerns that have taken influence from the fertile Athens, Georgia music scene of the early 1980s. I’ve even covered The Stick Figures, a band from Florida who were contemporaries of bands like Pylon and The B-52’s and were inspired by them. Is/Ought Gap, however, were right in the middle of all of it. Bryan Cook (Time Toy, Hindu Love Gods, Club Gaga) and Tom Cheek (Killkenny Cats) co-founded the band in Athens in 1981, who then collected Haynes Collins and Allen Wagner and made an album called Lucky 7 that was never formally released before the band went their separate ways a few years later. It took until 2014 to Is/Ought Gap to resurface–they played some shows, gave some old demos a proper recording, and self-released a limited number of Lucky 7 CDs. It took another decade after that for SUA to come together, but it’s safe to say that HHBTM Records (Outer World, The Primitives, The Garment District) have put together the definitive statement on Is/Ought Gap, collecting the original album, the newer recordings, and some live material.

Is/Ought Gap take shape on this compilation as a band who put together a record’s worth of music that’s as vibrant and current-sounding as anything to come out of Athens from the same time period, as well as containing glimpses of something beyond that specific “scene” from time to time. Lucky 7 makes up the first seven songs on SUA, and it rules. It’s not hard at all to imagine this album cementing Is/Ought Gap–if not into the kind of immortality that their peers in Pylon have enjoyed, than at least a Suburban Lawns-level art punk cult following. “Artsy Peace and Love” is a perfect opener, a fiery and fun piece of lower-tech B-52’s dance-punk that could’ve been the theme song of the whole movement from whence it sprang. What I love about Lucky 7, though, is that it doesn’t stop there–“Wake Up Wet” is a shocking dead-ringer for early (I mean really early) R.E.M., right down to those mystical-feeling guitar lines, and the combination of Talking Heads yelping and grandiose pop rock that marks “Her Peace” is when it starts to feel like there’s a clear “Is/Ought Gap sound”. 

Pretty much all of Lucky 7 is a highlight on this compilation–the jangle-punk of “He Said”, the New York-punk-indebted title track, and the synth-dance-new wave “Voices” all make their marks. The newer studio tracks have a bit of a heavier, garage rock edge, but Is/Ought Gap doesn’t lose the fun (particularly in “Miss Meyers”, which sounds right out of the Cleveland underground circa 1978). The live recordings might stealthily be some of the best stuff on SUA–the only repeat track, “Artsy Peace and Love”, sounds completely unhinged live and I think I prefer it to the studio version, while covers of “Personality Crisis” and “Feeling Called Love” (not to mention some of the interstitial banter) capture the band at their ornery garage-punk best. And then there’s the title track, noisy and strange and all-over-the-place but still very alive. “SUA” strips away all of Is/Ought Gap’s bells and whistles and only makes it more abundantly clear that they were tapping into something at their core, which is a good explanation as any as to why their music still sounds this strong forty years later. (Bandcamp link)

Rave Ami – No Arc

Release date: March 8th
Record label: Self-released
Genre: Art rock, post-punk, alt-rock, dance punk, psychedelia, glam rock, noise rock
Formats: Digital
Pull Track: Glimmer Twins

I don’t think I’d listened to Pittsburgh trio Rave Ami before this year, but the group have been around for a while–their first record, Mock Pop, came out back in 2017, and No Arc is their fourth full-length, a self-release after putting out albums on Misra and Wild Kindness Records. After the large number of collaborators who showed up on their last album, 2021’s Let It Be, guitarist/vocalist Joe Praksti, bassist Pat O’Toole, and drummer/vocalist Evan Meindl decided to record the follow-up almost entirely on their own, with Patrick Breiner’s bass clarinet and saxophone on “Those Endearing Young Charms” being the only outside contribution on No Arc. The result is a weird and unique-sounding record–the band who wrote these nine songs can clearly write for a large-scale, orchestral indie rock ensemble, but the stripped-down nature of No Arc turns it into a different kind of art rock. Rave Ami instead slip between psychedelic pop, post-punk, dance-punk, alt-rock, grunge-y glam rock, and noise rock with ease, sounding both lean and dense at the same time.

In another world, Rave Ami clean up the messiness of No Arc to create the polished, festival-ready modern rock record that I can see peeking through its cracks sometimes–but I like this universe’s version of the record better. I love that they start the record with the genuinely confusing-sounding “Ave Atque Vale”, a song that’s juggling several things at once, and I enjoy that the catchy angst in the chorus of “Corporate” feels like it’s about to topple over. I appreciate that “Get Crucial” can’t decide if it wants to go for full-on power pop sugarness or a Brainiac-y nervousness and instead rides the median, and it makes perfect sense to me that the most straight-up catchy song on the album (“Glimmer Twins”) is in the penultimate slot. I like that there’s a very groovy dance-rock track in the middle of the record out of nowhere (the charmingly out-of-fashion “Waiting Room Boogie”, most likely the catchiest song ever to name-check Zarathustra). I’m into the theatrical alt-rock thing that Rave Ami tap into and I like when they inject a bit of Beatles-y melodies into it like in “Heavenly Gravitating Star”–it reminds me a bit of the underrated Chainsaw Kittens, or even the good Stone Temple Pilots albums. I’m down with the six-minute “indie jam” vibes of closing song “Give Me a Shot”, too. A rock-solid, unimpeachable rock record that feels “hammered out” in a great way, workmanlike but unpredictable. (Bandcamp link)

Vulture Feather – Merge Now in Friendship

Release date: April 5th
Record label: Felte
Genre: Post-punk, art rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Terminal Fair

I enjoyed Liminal Fields, the debut record from northern California trio Vulture Feather, when I wrote about it back in June of last year–although I didn’t necessarily expect it to land on my list of favorites from 2023. The debut of a new band from guitarist/vocalist Colin McCann and bassist Brian Gossman, who played together in Baltimore’s Wilderness in the 2000s, plus new drummer Eric Fiscus, there was just something about Liminal Fields that kept me returning to it in the following months. Vulture Feather’s first album felt both like a startlingly present update of Wilderness’ sound and like it was pulled from another world where time works differently–after something like that, I wasn’t anticipating new music from the trio so quickly, so Merge Now in Friendship is a pleasant surprise. Vulture Feather are presently recording their second full-length album, but they’ve also given us this brief but substantial three-song EP in the meantime. Recorded around at the same time as Liminal Fields, Merge Now in Friendship is an intriguing appendix to that record–it’s just as easy to see why these songs didn’t fit on that album as it is to see why Vulture Feather wanted them out in the world regardless.

Liminal Fields’ strength (well, one of its strengths) is its singularity–the album stays in the same register, the same tempo, and uses the same base ingredients all the way through. While not huge departures, the three tracks on Merge Now in Friendship would’ve all felt like outliers on the LP–“Friendship” takes Liminal Fields’ sound and streamlines it, “Terminal Fair” blows it up dramatically, and “Your Last Night” adds a screechiness unheard anywhere else in Vulture Feather’s discography. The cavernous, chiming instrumental side of Vulture Feather is slightly de-emphasized in “Friendship” as McCann truncates his sweeping, Lungfish-esque delivery to a two-minute “pop” song without losing any power. McCann’s incessant, high-pitched guitar is the star of “Your Last Night”, adding a uniquely overt edge of dread to the band’s typically subtlety. It’s the six-minute “Terminal Fair” that’s the crown jewel of Merge Now in Friendship, however–a multi-part anthem, the first couple minutes of the track are so urgent and intense that it would’ve overshadowed anything on Liminal Fields (just like it does here). Just as intensely as Vulture Feather build “Terminal Fair” up, though, they recede–the rest of the song is more subdued, returning to a more familiar sound for the band. Even at their strangest and discordant, Vulture Feather are still unshakeable. (Bandcamp link)

Oort Clod – Cult Value

Release date: April 5th
Record label: Safe Suburban Home/Repeating Cloud
Genre: Garage rock, lo-fi indie rock, jangle pop, fuzz rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: The Lake

The latest album to come from the trans-Atlantic partnership between Repeating Cloud and Safe Suburban Home Records is the debut full-length from Manchester’s Oort Clod, led by guitarist/vocalist Patrick Glen and rounded out by guitarist/vocalist Matt Kings, bassist Jack Carpenter, drummer/vocalist Bruce Sargent, and keyboardist Rhys Davies. After releasing a split record with fellow Manchester group Priceless Bodies in 2021, Oort Clod are ready to helm an album entirely on their own in the form of the eleven-song, thirty-two-minute Cult Value. On their first LP, Oort Clod land somewhere between lo-fi guitar pop and 60s-indebted psychedelic garage rock–the quintet make ample use of Davies’ keyboard (set to “organ”) throughout the record, and plenty of songs on the album develop into loud, fuzzed-out rockers, but hooks can be found throughout Cult Value as well (and it seems worth noting that, between Oort Clod, Casual Technicians, Dignan Porch, and Teenage Tom Petties, Repeating Cloud has really built an identity for themselves as the premier home for a certain brand of lo-fi, hooky, Guided by Voices-y brand of indie rock).

I hear a bit of West Coast psych/garage rock in songs like “Number 7”, “Wrong Attention”, and their cover of ? and the Mysterians’ “96 Tears”, but Oort Clod don’t forget that nuggets like these ought to be quite catchy, too. Elsewhere on Cult Value, the band explore a more British (or perhaps more accurately, Kiwi) style of lo-fi pop, which marks the low-key triumphs of opening track “The Lake” and the murky, jangly melodies of lead single “Car Talk”. “Paper Cuts” shows that the group’s earnest indie pop side can still rock, as they barrel through a giddy indie pop-punk instrumental that nevertheless has a surprising amount of wistfulness hidden therein. It kind of feels like the second half of Cult Value is the louder one–that streak from “Paper Cuts” to “Imagination” is just one ripper after another–but we also get “Inner Rat”, a song that closes the album on a decidedly weird note. Everybody in the band seems to be slightly off from one another, creating a five-minute cacophony of noise pop that descends into layered lo-fi psychedelia as the record draws to a close. If you’re open to the kind of world Oort Cloud inhabit, it’s the perfect ending. (Bandcamp link)

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