Another month wrapped up neatly in a bow, thanks to the Rosy Overdrive April 2024 Playlist/Round-Up. There’s a ton of new music here: some of which are from records I’ve written about on the blog already, some are from records I will write about on the blog, and some are completely new faces. Fun fact: the first five songs on this playlist are all from bands I’ve never written about before. I’m guessing it’s been a while since that’s happened.
Ther, Sun Kin, and Mister Goblin have multiple songs on this playlist (two each).
Here is where you can listen to the playlist on various streaming services: Spotify, Tidal (missing one song), BNDCMPR (missing one song). Be sure to check out previous playlist posts if you’ve enjoyed this one, or visit the site directory. If you’d like to support Rosy Overdrive, you can share this (or another) post, or donate here.
“Bare Minimum”, Alexander
From Lucky Life (2024, 4711 Idaho)
I’d been vaguely aware of Alexander (the very-difficult-to-look-up project of Boston’s Alex Fatato) for a few years now, but Lucky Life is the first album of his I’ve heard in full. It features some notable guests–Bradford Krieger on guitar and keyboard, Mulva/Kal Marks’ Adam Berkowitz on drums, cellist Eliza Niemi–but I didn’t know that when I first heard (and was immediately blown away by) “Bare Minimum”. It’s an absolutely gorgeous piece of ragged indie rock, as Alexander and his band make self-excoriation (“I look for loops of applause for doing the bare minimum / I congratulate myself for syncing my body with the sun”) sound aching but beautiful. Fatato sings his head off in a vintage Conor Oberst fashion, although the shambling, electric backing band tempers the bite of “Bare Minimum”.
“Heavy Drinker”, Snarls
From With Love, (2024, Take This to Heart)
“Heavy Drinker” is one of my favorite songs of the year so far, simple as that. It’s a single and a highlight from With Love,, the sophomore album from a Columbus-based band called Snarls whose name I recognized vaguely before hearing this one. Based on the rest of their album, Snarls are pretty good at this indie-alt-rock game, but “Heavy Drinker” is a massive song, a career-defining piece of music where, for two and a half minutes, everything lines up perfectly. The guitars are arranged just right, fuzzed out, restrained, or bursting with melody as needed (Chris Walla produced With Love,, by the way), the lyrics are captivating in how they overshare but remain a sense of mystique, and who doesn’t love a classic call-and-response chorus?
“I Don’t Care What Gilchrist Says”, Soup Activists
From Mummy What Are Flowers For? (2024, Inscrutable)
Let’s all give a warm welcome to Inscrutable Records, a new label from the mind of St. Louis’ Martin Meyer (who’s played with Lumpy & The Dumpers, among other bands). Meyer debuted Inscrutable with the release of four intriguing and exciting underground rock and roll records, but the best of the bunch just might be his own music. Mummy What Are Flowers For?, the latest from Meyer’s Soup Activists solo project, scoops up classic indie pop/college rock for the lo-fi garage rock revolution in the vein of acts like Silicone Prairie and Home Blitz. My favorite song from Mummy What Are Flowers For? has to be “I Don’t Care What Gilchrist Says”, a song that takes nearly a minute to get going but is a non-stop hookfest from the moment Meyer begins singing (and the instrumental beforehand is pretty damn catchy, too).
“Lapdog”, Ahem
From Avoider (2024, Forged Artifacts)
“Lapdog” is the opening track and second single from Avoider, the upcoming second album from Minneapolis power-pop-fuzz-punk band Ahem. Kicking off their first new music in five years, “Lapdog” sounds forcibly ripped from somewhere–it’s built of strong, muscular hooks in the vein of Superchunk or fellow Minneapolis-originating alt-rocker Bob Mould, and the song also shares Mould’s penchant for frantically hammering the catchiness out of the track for all its worth. It’s certainly got the mid-2010s “scrappy” indie punk attitude to it, but there’s also an all-in grunginess to the chorus–it’s not “heavy”, but it sure comes off that way. I’ll have more to say about Avoider soon.
“Tidal Wave”, Alana Yorke
From Destroyer (2024, Paper Bag)
Halifax singer-songwriter Alana Yorke released her first album, Dream Magic, in 2015–Destroyer, her second, comes nearly a decade later, and in the aftermath of a hemorrhagic stroke she suffered in 2022. This experience is all over the ten songs of Destroyer, an art pop record that starts off accessible and gets more inscrutable and experimental as it goes on. “Tidal Wave” opens the record with a perfect synthpop single, with Yorke’s vocals absolutely soaring over a sharp, fleshed-out-but-not-overwhelming instrumental (courtesy of both Yorke and her partner, Ian Bent). “Tidal Wave” sounds huge enough to contain entire worlds but Yorke never sounds like she’s doing anything but exactly what the song calls her to do.
“I’m in the Band”, Sun Kin & GUPPY
From Sunset World (2024)
As a songwriter and frontperson, Sun Kin’s Kabir Kumar has a wide-encompassing nature that finds them jumping across genres (folk, pop, and electronica among the most prominent) with confidence and enthusiasm. “I’m in the Band” is one of my favorite songs on their latest album, Sunset World, and it features contributions from Kumar’s bandmates in GUPPY (Miguel Gallego wrote the music, J Lebow co-wrote the lyrics and sings on it) as well as Illuminati Hotties’ Sarah Tudzin. Compared to some of the more grandiose moments on Sunset World, “I’m in the Band” is decidedly lower-stakes in its depiction of awkwardness and minor indignities that come with being a musician, but Kumar doesn’t approach the song like that’s the case at all–that soaring chorus (“In my defense…”) has gotta be one of the best “indie pop” moments of the year thus far. Read more about Sunset World here.
“Lost Data”, Mister Goblin
From Frog Poems (2024, Spartan)
Of the three f-bombs on Frog Poems, my favorite is probably the one in mid-record highlight “Lost Data”, a roaring mix of post-hardcore, pop music, and slick alt-rock that’s marked Sam “Mister” Goblin’s music since his days leading Maryland’s Two Inch Astronaut. “I don’t need a fucking job or retirement plan,” he sneers, a moment of defiance in the midst of a mundane workplace horror anthem that’s decidedly light on answers. The “underworked, overpaid” narrator of “Lost Data” is “old enough to be / dying of liver failure, cancer, or my injuries”, as he admits in the song’s bridge, which trades venom for pensiveness just for a moment. Read more about Frog Poems here.
“Piece of Mind”, Rain Recordings
From Terns in Idle (2024, Trash Tape)
Previously only a remote collaborative duo, Carrboro-based Evren Centeno and Stockholm, Sweden’s Josef Löfvendahl met up last year in Asheville to make an album together in person for the first time. The resultant record, Terns in Idle, contains plenty of the underground 90s indie rock influence that seems to mark their record label, Trash Tapes, although the duo do take advantage of a proper studio to develop and expand these songs. Throughout the record, there’s some Neutral Milk Hotel-ish folk ambition, as well as the earnest, wide-eyed 2000s version of indie rock mixed in–one of my favorite songs, “Piece of Mind”, is an Elephant 6-curious modest pop tune that (like a lot of the tracks on Terns in Idle) excitedly builds to something huge and all-in. Read more about Terns in Idle here.
“Ghost Ship”, ADD/C
From Ordinary Souls (2024, Let’s Pretend)
ADD/C’s first new music in over a decade is a sweeping, wide-ranging punk rock record featuring seventeen songs in under forty minutes. One of the best tracks on Ordinary Souls is “Ghost Ship”, a mid-tempo pop punk power chord-heavy anthem about the deadly San Francisco warehouse fire. “I’ve got no right to remember it / Wasn’t my people who were lost in there / But that was only due to random chance,” is the empathetic and contradictory heart of the song, acknowledging both that it’s strange for a punk band to be ruminating on an electric/house music tragedy while at the same time being perfectly lucid about the thin line between the people at punk basement shows and the Ghost Ship (and, really, just about every community below the surface of society). Read more about Ordinary Souls here.
“Matthew”, Ther
From Godzilla (2024, Julia’s War)
“The book of Matthew is open on the couch,” observes Heather Jones with a quiet intensity, and then the band roars up to swallow up the rest of the song with alarm-blaring guitars (massive yet workmanlike-sounding) and Max Rafter’s frantic saxophone (finally let loose after lurking underneath the surface). Thus ends “Matthew” by Ther, an indescribable highlight of Godzilla, their latest and best record yet. Both Jones and their backing band are tapping into something powerful and elemental here (it reminds me of Joel R.L. Phelps & The Downer Trio in a way that very few bands have ever done)–Jones’ vocals hold their own in a swirling sea, and the verse that begins with “I was a sinking stone in a pond full of water” is a really vivid allegory. And as for the music, the pure catharsis that the band embraces as “Matthew” draws to a close is…well, I already said “indescribable” earlier, and I wasn’t kidding around with that. Read more about Godzilla here.
“Astronaut”, Jay Alan Kay
From Songs Before Work (2024, Setterwind)
Steeped in lo-fi power pop, with just a bit of twang and the punk rock of his main band Singing Lungs also discernible–the debut album from Jason Kotarski (aka Jay Alan Kay) clearly belongs in the “indebted to Guided by Voices” world. The first Jay Alan Kay record is full of strong pop songs, simply adorned and enthusiastically delivered, all captured on a Tascam 238 cassette–it feels like the work of someone freshly inspired. Songs Before Work is a rich and generous album–it’s thirteen songs and nearly 45 minutes long, but feels consistent and lacking in filler. It’s difficult to choose a single best song on the record, but the messy, slapdash power pop of “Astronaut” in particular walks a very difficult tightrope between looseness and punchiness. Read more about Songs Before Work here.
“New Guy”, Sea Urchin
From Destroy! (2024, Ba Da Bing!)
Just a fucking brilliant song. Sea Urchin is a person from New Jersey named Matthew Strickland, and the Bandcamp description for their latest album, Destroy!, sums up that record better than anything I’d be able to write here. For “New Guy” in particular–it’s a batshit opening statement for the record, a massively catchy piece of power pop that’s also a perfect send-up of “power pop” (particularly the 50s-influenced, “dead teenager songs” that Strickland cops to being influenced by). Imagine if the roster of Alternative Tentacles was set loose on the Brill Building in its heyday, as Sea Urchin take the obsessive and repressed-macho undercurrents of this kind of music to its sociopathic, divorced-from-reality, and downright gory conclusions (content warning for murder and…cannibalism?).
“Front-load the Fun”, Greg Saunier
From We Sang, Therefore We Were (2024, Joyful Noise)
One thing that stuck out to me reading about We Sang, Therefore We Were was Greg Saunier (of Deerhoof, whose band was on Kill Rock Stars in the 1990s, by the way) mentioning being inspired by Kurt Cobain, both melodically and lyrically, when making the album. Saunier’s musings have a Cobain-esque sardonic, detrital quality to them amidst the chaos of the record, to be sure, particularly in the otherworldly swagger of “Front-load the Fun”, which repeats with a sincere deadness lines like “We care for each other, and it didn’t make the news / Celebrities I agree with”. Like most of his debut solo album, Saunier’s music is recognizably “Deerhoof-esque”, throwing jagged, catchy guitar riffs and shapeshifting, form-fitting vocals over top of everything in a keen manner. Read more about We Sang, Therefore We Were here.
“Auzzy’s Song”, Townies
From Of This I Am Certain (2024, We’re Trying)
Do you like emo-y pop punk? Well, I do–when it sounds like “Auzzy’s Song” by Townies, that is. Of This I Am Certain (produced by Joe Reinhart) is the long-in-the-making debut album from the Boston-originating, Los Angeles-based trio, and Townies take the opportunity to fully embrace making emotional and huge-sounding punk music and nothing less. “Auzzy’s Song” is my favorite song on the record–it’s one of the songs where their stated Menzingers influence shines a bit more brightly, as its earnestness and power chords are both uncontainable (although, singing “And we’re hanging in the living room / May as well be called a dying room / Cause with how little we’re contributing to society / We may as well be dead,” as the bass plods along melodically is a very Green Day move).
“Highway Song”, Soup Dreams
From Twigs for Burning (2024, BabyCake)
I’m surprised as you are that there are multiple bands with “soup” in their name on here, but “Highway Song” clearly belongs on this playlist. It opens the latest EP from Soup Dreams, a Philadelphia quartet who’ve been around for a few years and are made up of Emma Kazal (bass/vocals), Nigel Law (drums/keyboard), Isaac Shalit (guitar/vocals/songwriting), and Winnie Malcarney (guitar). “Highway Song” is rickety but beautiful folk rock that does indeed describe driving on the highway (and a near-miss with a truck early in the morning), rolling along slowly but steadily picking up speed. Enter the sudden backing vocals that show up in “It’s a long drive from Ohio to New Jersey” into the Indie Folk Harmony Hall of Fame, by the way.
“Complex Weather”, Fanclubwallet
From Our Bodies Paint Traffic Lines (2024, Cool Online)
The five-song Our Bodies Paint Traffic Lines EP is the first “full band” Fanclubwallet record, expanding from a solo project helmed by Ottawa, Ontario’s Hannah Judge. The dream-y bedroom pop sound of Fanclubwallet is still intact on Our Bodies Paint Traffic Lines, but there’s definitely a hefty backbone to these songs that helps this EP stand out in a crowded scene. After the slow-moving synth-dream-pop title track, the band launch into the starry-eyed, big-chorused indie rock of “Complex Weather”, a song that manages to sound huge while at the same time feeling almost like a secret in how Judge delivers the refrain (“Complex weather / Get your shit together / No one feels bad for you anymore”). Read more about Our Bodies Paint Traffic Lines here.
“Hourglass”, Jim Nothing
(2024, Melted Ice Cream/Meritorio)
One of my favorite albums from 2022 was In the Marigolds, a classic New Zealand guitar pop record from Christchurch’s Jim Nothing–familiar ingredients, but executed just about perfectly. With that in mind, I’ve eagerly been keeping an eye on the singles slowly trickling out from the group (featuring members of Wurld Series and Salad Boys)–last year’s “Raleigh Arena”, March’s “Easter at the RSC”, and April’s “Hourglass”, my favorite of the three yet. Taken from an album (as of yet unannounced) expected to come out later this year, “Hourglass” polishes up Jim Nothing’s sound a bit but doesn’t lose the simple pop charm of their previous work–this time around, the hooks are just as likely to be delivered by soaring, melodic guitars as by James Sullivan and Frances Carter’s vocals.
“Thank Me for Playing”, Cloud Nothings
From Final Summer (2024, Pure Noise)
Cloud Nothings have been churning out loud, pummeling, hooky rock music at a steady clip for a decade and a half now, and they haven’t lost a step on their first proper album in three years. To me, Final Summer sounds like Dylan Baldi, Jayson Gerycz, and Chris Brown at their most comfortable, trying out little detours but without losing their ability to crank out classic, fizzy power-pop-punk in the vein of “Thank Me for Playing”. It’s classic Cloud Nothings, even as it might be a little friendlier and polished-sounding than some of their most famous work–built on the twin pillars of punchy, hooky verses and a chorus that rides one line into the ground until it loses all meaning and then regains all of that meaning and then some (“I’m done with your game / Thank me for playing”). Read more about Final Summer here.
“Smokescreen”, Nisa
From Shapeshifting (2024, Tender Loving Empire)
Shapeshifting is the debut album from Brooklyn-based singer-songwriter Nisa Lumaj (although she’s put out several EPs, including one produced by This Is Lorelei/Water from Your Eyes’ Nate Amos). Single “Smokescreen” caught my attention immediately–it’s not incongruous with the more synth-based art pop of the rest of the record, but for this song, Nisa adopts a punchy, guitar-forward alt-pop-rock sound with ease and flair. The understated but polished verses give way to a huge-sounding chorus, a confident solo-chant from a pop songwriter who I’ll be watching from this moment forward.
“As Simple Goes”, Blue Ranger
From Close Your Eyes (2024, Ruination)
I touched on Blue Ranger a bit when I wrote about To Sample & Hold, the Neil Young benefit covers compilation that the Albany-based band organized a couple of years ago. After hearing their most recent album, last month’s Close Your Eyes, I’m pleased to say that there’s more than a bit of Neil Young in their original material, too. At least, I hear it in album highlight “As Simple Goes”, a piece of Crazy Horse-touched fuzzy, lightly psychedelic country rock. The band (led by Joshua F. Marré, brother of Russel the Leaf’s Evan Marré, who is also in the quartet along with Connor Armbruster and Matt Griffin) buzz through “As Simple Goes” with a breeziness befitting its title (“As simple as simple goes / You do this to do that,” now that’s a line), and I hear a little bit of Friendship’s Dan Wriggins in Marré’s vocals in the bridge.
“Center of the Universe”, Faulty Cognitions
From Somehow, Here We Are (2024, Dirt Cult)
A Texas-based power-pop-punk band whose debut record just came out on Dirt Cult Records? I’m listening…San Antonio’s Faulty Cognitions aren’t just a Dirt Cult band, they’re the newest band from Dirt Cult founder and punk lifer Chris Mason, formed after he moved to the Lone Star State from Portland, Oregon. Somehow, Here We Are balances melodic punk and garage rock with the skill of someone who’s been doing it for a long time now, but my favorite song, “Center of the Universe”, is a low-key piece of college rock/alt-rock that contains giant hooks in its (relatively) subtle guise. “Center of the Universe” looks back on a few key memories, with the titular phrase seeming to serve a more reflective, vastness-evoking purpose than its typical associations in pop punk music (i.e. narcissism). It’s catchy as hell, too, of course.
“Precious Cargo”, Melkbelly
From KMS Express (2024, Exploding in Sound)
It’s been a busy month for Chicago’s Miranda Winters, who just released an album as Mandy called Lawn Girl and also saw her band, Melkbelly, return with their first new music in four years via a two-song single (both released via Exploding in Sound). “KMS Express” and its b-side, “Precious Cargo”, both reminded me just how much I enjoy Melkbelly’s frantic noisy alt-rock (if you like The Breeders but always wished they sounded even more fucked up, have I got some records for you). After the pummeling noise rock of the A-side, “Precious Cargo” is the more immediate of the two, a really weird but bizarrely catchy math-y punk track. Winters gives an all-time vocal performance on this one (from the scale-singing about toilet snakes to the spilling-out of the “come on come on come on come on” part), and the guitars are just as aggressive but hooky.
“Kool Aid Blue”, The Sylvia Platters
From Vivian Elixir (2024, Grey Lodge)
Vancouver’s The Sylvia Platters continue to assert themselves as one of the best guitar pop bands going with Vivian Elixir, offering up power pop songs of varying stripes but consistent in quality and catchiness. At least half of the eight-song record has a claim as “maybe the biggest pop song on the album”, but closing track “Kool Aid Blue” is the one I’m giving the nod to on the playlist. It’s a positively gorgeous piece of jangle pop that could only have been made by a band that loves Teenage Fanclub but is strong enough at songcraft to where the finished product easily steps out of the long shadow cast by their idols. The chorus glides with a fascinating ease, and the rest of the song is certainly more than just a journey to get to their moment of zen. Read more about Vivan Elixir here.
“Nothing at All”, Schedule 1
From Crucible (2024, Council/Mendeku Diskak)
Vancouver’s Schedule 1 mix goth-y post-punk with a harder-edged, almost hardcore-indebted punk rock sound, and their hard-hitting debut full-length album Crucible is a good a reminder as any that, while The Cure and Joy Division have reputations as mopey sad-boys, those bands still could deliver intense and heavy rock music. The smoking punk rock guitar riff that slams into the listener at the beginning of “Nothing at All” is particularly exhilarating, but the geared-up, gritty roaring post-punk song that follows fits right in with the record–like the rest of Crucible, it understands that the best 80s post-punk records balanced real beauty with the ugliness and darkness with which they’ve become synonymous. Read more about Crucible here.
“Court of the Beekeeper”, Mythical Motors
From Upside Down World (2024, Repeating Cloud)
Chattanooga lo-fi power pop enthusiast Matt Addison brings a lot of energy and consistency with him to his latest as Mythical Motors, Upside Down World. At this point, I expect a certain baseline of quality from his records, but some of the project’s strongest moments can be found within this 27-minute, fourteen-song collection. Right in the middle of Upside Down World lies the chaotic, synth-heavy power pop single “Court of the Beekeeper”, a huge-sounding song that isn’t dampened a bit by the electronic discord around it. It rides a spirited delivery from Addison, sweeping guitars, and some superb “ooh oohs” hidden throughout the song straight to being an instant Mythical Motors highlight. Read more about Upside Down World here.
“Lost Appeal”, Vessel
From Wrapped in Cellophane (2024, Double Phantom)
For a debut record, Vessel’s Wrapped in Cellophane is impressive in its cohesion–the Atlanta quartet already sound solidly in command of their sound, and are able to swing between urgent post-punk, big-sounding party music, and laid-back grooves that cede ground to vocalist Alex Tuisku’s vocals. My favorite song on the album, “Lost Appeal”, veers away from their stoic art-punk side into a dramatic, beautiful pop chorus that’s maybe Tuisku’s single best moment as a vocalist (and in terms of saying quite a bit with relatively little, “Who do you believe when it’s not me?” is one of her best as a lyricist). Read more about Wrapped in Cellophane here.
“Inaka”, Mei Semones
From Kabutomushi (2024, Bayonet)
“If I’m with you, I don’t care where we are / In the country, by the ocean, on a farm / I would move to the middle of nowhere if I’m with you,”–alright, I admit I’m a little suspicious of the chorus of this song. “Ohhh, I’d move to a farm in the country with the person I love, I’d make such a huge sacrifice for them, it’d be so hard…” I kid, I kid. It’s a beautiful song and I appreciate the sentiment behind it. Of course, it helps a lot that it’s delivered in a very enjoyable and impressive jazz-influenced indie pop package courtesy of Brooklyn-based singer-songwriter Mei Semones. I hadn’t been familiar with Semones before hearing Kabutomushi (she’s been putting out singles and EPs for a couple of years and seems to have gotten a bit of buzz despite no full-length albums as of yet), but “Inaka”–a multi-lingual, multi-part pop song that throws in bossa nova, orchestral pop, jazz, and earnest torch-song balladry in the chorus–is a quite compelling statement.
“We Only Hear the Bad Things People Say”, The Reds, Pinks & Purples
From Unwishing Well (2024, Slumberland/Tough Love)
Unwishing Well feels much more insular and subtler in comparison to last year’s The Town That Cursed Your Name–jangle pop wizard Glenn Donaldson sounds worn out by the world throughout this album but hardly spent, snagging some all-time great Reds, Pinks & Purples moments out of the mess we’re all in. As is often the case with this kind of album, the flipside of Unwishing Well is my favorite half–entering the homestretch, Donaldson throws ugliness, grief, and sadness together with sparkling indie pop music with really affecting results. “We Only Hear the Bad Things People Say” is the record’s penultimate track (and the last one with lyrics), and it’s a truly remarkable and memorable piece of guitar pop music that’ll stick with me for a long time. “In my dreams, you’re still shining / It was all just bad timing,” that’ll be rattling around up there for a bit. Read more about Unwishing Well here.
“Escalator Man”, Dr Sure’s Unusual Practice
From Total Reality (2024, Marthouse/Erste Theke Tontraeger)
Dr Sure (aka Melbourne’s Dougal Shaw) has plenty of people on board for Total Reality, the third album from his Unusual Practice project–the instrumental credits reach into the double digits. Shaw takes full advantage of everything at his disposal to make a weird, hypnotic, and ambitious rock record that lands somewhere between sleek, lean, synth-colored “egg punk” and a more psychedelic, layered sound. “Escalator Man” finds Dr Sure barreling through a piece of bouncy, garage-y “Devo-core” post-punk–it’s a foot-on-gas, barnstorming yet nervy rock and roller that’s one of the most accessible moments on Total Reality. Read more about Total Reality here.
“#3 Dream”, Pleasant Mob
From Pleasant Mob (2024, Inscrutable)
Another LP from Inscrutable Records’ impressive opening salvo is the self-titled debut record from Chicago’s Pleasant Mob. The project of Spread Joy’s Raidy Hodges, Pleasant Mob debuted in 2022 with a two-song single that dropped the chaotic no-wave-punk of Hodges’ other band for a laid-back guitar pop sound, and Pleasant Mob expands on this (with the backing of a full-fledged five-piece band) by rolling out a bunch of excellent C86 and 60s psychedelia-influenced indie pop. My favorite of Pleasant Mob’s ten songs is the low-key but instantly memorable opening track, “#3 Dream”, which is all lighter-than-air–in the dueling vocals, in Daniel Lynch’s keyboard accents, in the steady, almost Stereolab-recalling rhythm section.
“Stephanie”, The Juniper Berries
From Death and Texas (2024, Earth Libraries)
On his third album as The Juniper Berries, Death and Texas, bandleader Joshua Stirm’s writing is sharp but friendly, incorporating shades of folk rock, alt-country, power pop, and dream-y psychedelia across the record’s eleven songs. Stirm is a classic pop songwriter, but Death and Texas also has a rambling looseness to it, not being afraid to extend and stretch things out rather than doggedly focusing on precision and conciseness. The buzzing, dramatic “Stephanie” is the best of both sides of the record–it manages to turn in a pop anthem out of a slow-building, dramatic instrumental that bursts into something huge and memorable (although the hooks don’t cheapen the darkness seemingly surrounding the titular character that Stirm notes amidst the grandiosity of the track). Read more about Death and Texas here.
“Think I’d Be Fine Without You”, Janelane
From Love Letters (2024, Kingfisher Bluez)
Love Letters delivers on the potential Janelane had flashed on previous releases, as Los Angeles’ Sophie Negrini proves herself more than strong enough as a pop songwriter to carry an entire ten-song, thirty-five minute album. The debut Janelane LP has a slight fuzziness to it, falling on the pop end of the dreamy/jangle pop continuum, while also throwing in a good deal of 60s pop/girl group bittersweet songwriting touches in for good measure. My favorite song on Love Letters is a two-minute late-record gem called “Think I’d Be Fine Without You”, in which Negrini ramps up the tempo a bit to “fizzy indie-pop-punk”, expelling a bit of relationship frustration (key lyric: “Guess I come off somewhat dramatic / In comparison to Mr. Apathetic”) with a bit of power pop success. Read more about Love Letters here.
“Meter Run”, Bad Bad Hats
From Bad Bad Hats (2024, Don Giovanni)
Bad Bad Hats are always good for a couple of classic pop songs per album. Back in 2021, I anointed “Detroit Basketball” from that year’s Walkman, and the one that’s really jumping out from their recent self-titled fourth album is “Meter Run”. No, the Minneapolis indie-power-pop-rock duo haven’t gone metric on us all of a sudden–the “meter” in question is of the pay-to-park variety. Wordless vocals, whistling hooks, spit-shining polish–don’t try this stuff at home, kids, Bad Bad Hats are professionals at this, turning what would be vices in the hands of most bands into pure gold. “What is your idea of fun? / Baby, spend the night, let the meter run with me,” sings Kerry Alexander in the chorus–I mean, come on.
“The Lake”, Oort Clod
From Cult Value (2024, Safe Suburban Home/Repeating Cloud)
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 Rhys Davies’ keyboard (set to “organ”) throughout the record, and plenty of songs on the album develop into loud, fuzzed-out rockers. Hooks can be found throughout Cult Value as well, though, as they don’t forget that West Coast psych/garage rock nuggets ought to be quite catchy, too. The low-key triumph of opening track “The Lake”, maybe my favorite song on Cult Value, is a murky pop song that feels indebted to vintage British and Kiwi indie pop, although Oort Clod add their own fidgety twist to it (there’s a bit of classic punk rock in the secondary vocals in the chorus, for one). Read more about Cult Value here.
“Grown Man”, Mister Goblin
From Frog Poems (2024, Spartan)
“I’m a grown man, like a little fucking baby / It’s not cute and it’s not endearing anymore”–now that’s how you do it. “Grown Man” comes early in the runtime of Frog Poems and feels like new terrain for Mister Goblin, taking utilitarian percussion, electronic tinges, and shined-up acoustic guitars and declaring them congruous parts of the Mister Goblin sound. And of course, over top of all the catchy-as-hell acoustic folk-pop, Sam Goblin is having a complete breakdown. “Excuse me, that’s Mister to you,” goes another memorable line at the song, grasping at the title as the sink fills with dishes and mold crawls across the shower curtains. Read more about Frog Poems here.
“Stay Away from the Widow, Sidney”, Rural France
From Exacatamondo! (2024, Meritorio)
Before Tom Brown achieved household name status as the leader of bicontinental lo-fi pop sensations Teenage Tom Petties, he played in a band called Rural France alongside Rob Fawkes, putting out an album back in 2018 and another in 2021. They’re still at it, thankfully–the third Rural France album, Exacatamondo!, is similar enough to Brown’s other band, but with a bit more of a pastoral/vintage 80s college rock/C86/indie pop undercurrent. They’ve got some surprises, too: Rural France put harmonicas front and center in penultimate track “Stay Away from the Widow, Sidney”, which might be the band’s finest single moment yet–huge pop chorus, gradually unspooling folk rock narrative, exploratory around the edges. Read more about Exactamondo! here.
“All the WeWorks Are Dead!”, Sun Kin
From Sunset World (2024)
Another song from Sunset World, because it’s very good and you should be hip to Sun Kin if you aren’t already. The press release for Kabir Kumar’s latest record under their quasi-solo project namedrops Steely Dan and Frank Ocean as fellow “apocalyptic LA pop” practitioners, and highlight “All the WeWorks Are Dead!” might be the clearest distillation of that vast, ruinous, and frankly quite appealing vision. Lyrically and vocally, it’s Kumar at their all-over-the-place, mile-a-minute best (“All the WeWorks are dead, WePlay now / Drinking lemonade in the ruins of downtown” are the first two lines of that one, and that’s just the beginning), while musically it’s a moonshot of an indie pop song–Rundgren/XTC-esque studio pop? R&B? Jazz-pop? Late capitalist disco? Whatever’s going on in “All the WeWorks Are Dead!”, it’s a joy to listen to. Read more about Sunset World here.
“My Appeal to Heaven”, Closet Mix
From 04 CD (2024, Old 3C)
04 CD is the first full-length album from Columbus’ Closet Mix, a new-ish band made up of a bunch of Ohio indie rock lifers. It’s a difficult-to-categorize record, sometimes falling under vintage “college rock” and other times passing that entirely to tap into the core of “classic” rock. Chris Nini’s keyboards feature prominently throughout 04 CD, providing a nice counterweight to the more showy guitar work–it’s an essential feature of “My Appeal to Heaven”, my favorite track on the record. Closet Mix pick up the tempo just a bit in comparison to the rest of the album and offer up an early-R.E.M. instrumental, turning in something that feels like a timeless pop rock song unearthed from another era. Read more about 04 CD here.
“Church”, Hello Emerson
From To Keep Him Here (2024, Anyway/Hometown Caravan/K&F)
To Keep Him Here, the latest album from Columbus’ Hello Emerson, is a concept record about an accident in 2017 that landed singer-songwriter Sam Emerson Bodary’s father, David, in the hospital and the subsequent brush with mortality experienced by an entire family. It’s a chronicle of everything that such an event brings to the surface, from the inevitability of death to the mundane-seeming things that are forever changed by the loss of a loved one to whether or not a near-death experience could (or should) necessitate major life changes once one returns to “the living world”. Bodary does it all with a deft, “rootsy” folk rock touch (which I compared to Jason Isbell when I wrote about the album); album highlight “Church” shows off Hello Emerson’s composition skills, sounding upbeat even as the lyrics wrestle with (as the title implies) some heavy questions. Read more about To Keep Him Here here.
“Tomorrow’s 87”, The Laughing Chimes
From Tomorrow’s 87 (2024, Slumberland)
It’s been a year or two since The Laughing Chimes’ last proper record, 2022’s Zoo Avenue (which I named my favorite EP of that year). Still, the members of the Athens, Ohio jangle pop/college rock revival group have kept busy–for one, vocalist Evan Seurkamp has also been playing in bands like Patches and Uncouth, and The Laughing Chimes themselves have put out three different two-song singles in the time since, as well. The most recent of them is my favorite so far, with A-side “Tomorrow’s 87” being one of the band’s best songs yet. Reflecting The Laughing Chimes’ recent turn towards post-punk and even gothic influences, “Tomorrow’s 87” is a murky tune, but it’s still quite catchy in classic Seurkamp fashion, with his melodic vocals peaking out from the fog just far enough.
“I Feel Like St. Paul on the Road to Damascus”, The Bedbugs
From 2 Songs for St. Paul Westerberg (2023, Bed Go Boom)
According to bandleader Tim Sheehan, Rochester’s The Bedbugs are “lo-fi, basement popsters with 40 albums under their belt”. It seems like a lot of their music isn’t available online to listen to anywhere, but Sheehan has uploaded selections from across their discography to streaming services as of late, including their most recent single, last year’s 2 Songs for St. Paul Westerberg. Sheehan actually emailed me about the A-side, “Westerbergian”, but I found myself drawn to the other one, “I Feel Like St. Paul on the Road to Damascus”, upon listening. Even though it (ostensibly) chooses a different Paul to draw from according to its title, Westerberg is nevertheless all over this song–particularly the Replacements frontman’s solo career, as Sheehan makes his way through a sparse, haunted-sounding acoustic pop song that’s as catchy as it is contemplative.
“Star Wars”, Ther
From Godzilla (2024, Julia’s War)
Godzilla asserts itself in Ther’s discography by embracing electric guitars and loud, dramatic indie rock to a previously unseen degree, but there are still glimpses of previous work from the Heather Jones-led project on the album. The record’s closing track, “Star Wars”, is a link to the past in several ways–both literally in the sense that an experimental synth-rock version of it appeared on last year’s live album I’m Not Good at Making Plans, thematically in the sense that the lyrics feature Jones remembering people in their life now no longer among us, and in its clear, indie folk-like structure. Even so, “Star Wars”, built around a plodding bass, touches of cello, and steady percussion, also feels like new territory for Ther, a fitting cap to a huge step forward for the Philadelphia band. Read more about Godzilla here.
Rosy Overdrive 