Pressing Concerns: American Culture, ME REX, S. Raekwon, The Ar-Kaics

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Another solid week for new music comes to a close with the Thursday Pressing Concerns, looking at three great albums coming out tomorrow (May 3rd) from American Culture, S. Raekwon, and The Ar-Kaics, as well as an EP from ME REX that came out earlier this week. If you missed Monday’s Pressing Concerns (featuring The Sylvia Platters, Rural France, Writhing Squares, and The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick) or the Rosy Overdrive April 2024 Playlist/Round-Up that went up on Tuesday, be sure to check both of those out too.

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.

American Culture – Hey Brother, It’s Been a While

Release date: May 3rd
Record label: Convulse
Genre: Punk rock, Madchester, power pop, jangle pop, noise pop, college rock, psychedelic rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Survive

Denver’s American Culture have been around for a decade or so, and while they aren’t precisely rock stars, I’m surprised I hadn’t heard of them before–they released a split a few years back with Boyracer, and their third album, 2021’s For My Animals, came out via HHBTM. American Culture’s sound has a lot of familiar ingredients, but it’s a unique and captivating blend that’s found on Hey Brother, It’s Been a While–they’re “punk rock” in a loose sense, yes, although in the older underground version of the term (fellow Four Corners band the Meat Puppets clearly have influenced the group, and they namecheck J. Mascis in one of these songs), while also leaving room for indie rock and pop of several different stripes (mid-to-late Replacements jangly power pop, and even some psychedelic Madchester influences like their Convulse labelmate, Dazy, have dabbled in). Some of the variety of Hey Brother, It’s Been a While can be explained by the band having two main singer-songwriters, Chris Adolf and Michael Stein (who are aided by Lucas Johannes on bass and drummer Scott Beck to complete the quartet).

The context behind Hey Brother, It’s Been a While is key, so I’ll try to get into it a bit–Stein, a longtime heroin user, fell deep into drug use during the pandemic, culminating in him living homeless in Las Vegas for three months after a failed attempt to get sober, all the while with his friends and family (includes his bandmates) unsure whether he was even alive. I didn’t actually know all of this the first few times I listened to this record in full, but I loved how it sounded without any of that information (and am only now piecing together how everything from the title of the record on down deals with a community-level traumatic event from two different perspectives in Stein’s and Adolf’s songwriting). The first voice you hear on Hey Brother, It’s Been a While is actually neither of the bandleaders, however–it’s Madeline Johnston of Midwife, who might seem like an odd fit for anyone familiar with her “heaven metal” slowcore music, but it’s a perfect anchor for a song in “Let It Go” that leans hard into alt-dance and Madchester.

Hey Brother, It’s Been a While is a reunion, but more than anything else, it’s a union–everything I’ve addressed in the past two paragraphs locks in together in a way that makes perfect sense, to the point where Stein and Adolf’s songwriting feels like it overlaps significantly. The former might lean into psychedelia and distortion more than the latter’s penchant for guitar pop (see “Circle the Drain” and “Human Kindness”), but at the same time, Stein’s “Survive” is catchy punk-pop as hooky as anything else on the record (the refrain, “I still don’t wanna live forever, but I think I’d like to survive,” being Stein’s biggest mark on the track). Meanwhile, the bridge between the rock-and-roll and “baggy” ends of the band is built with songs like “Body Double” (a noisy, fuzzed-out, incredibly-damn-cool sounding pop tune) and “Break It Open” (which brings back Johnston on vocals for an uplifting but more streamlined take on the album opener’s sound). Closing track “Two Coyotes” is also somewhere between the two ends, but it’s also on a psychedelic desert oasis of its own, letting flutes and a bit of cosmic country play the record out on a previously-unheard note. It gets there by crystallizing a single moment in the back of a van, from the melted plastic on the dashboard to the air flowing from the windows–the elements are listed individually, but at this point American Culture don’t need to explain how they add up to something more than that. (Bandcamp link)

ME REX – Smilodon

Release date: May 1st
Record label: Self-released
Genre: Indie pop, synthpop, folktronica(?)
Formats: Digital
Pull Track: Canada Water

One of my favorite bands going, Mint Mile, once said, “We like four-song EPs because we cannot bury a song in the middle of Side B. Nothing is transitional. Everything either leads off or finishes an experience.” With that in mind, the discography of London trio ME REX starts to look more and more impressive. The majority of their releases at this point have been four-song EPs, and even though they’ve branched out with longer-form releases in recent years (2021’s “shuffle album” Megabear and the proper full-length Giant Elk last year), they haven’t abandoned their roots (2022’s Plesiosaur, for instance, was one of my favorite EPs of that year). Their first release since Giant Elk returns to the preferred format of the band (vocalist/guitarist/pianist Myles McCabe, drummer Phoebe Cross, and bassist/synth player Rich Mandell) in the form of Smilodon. The digital-only, self-released EP feels like a conscious attempt at a “lower-key” release–only, the songs didn’t seem to get the memo. If you’ve enjoyed the band’s unique sound on previous records–smartly-written indie folk rock in the vein of the Mountain Goats or Frightened Rabbit but with a wholehearted embrace of synths and sparkling pop music–you will find plenty to enjoy on Smilodon, an EP that does everything you’d want a ME REX record to do in ten minutes and change.

Smilodon is bookended by a pair of huge-sounding anthems that should take their place in the pantheon of “classic ME REX performances”. “Goodbye Forever” kicks the record off with a runaway synth line and McCabe at his emotional motormouth best, then the trio all gel together at the thumping chorus, and they save just enough energy to burst out from underwater when they get to the part where McCabe sings “I see you becoming viscous, turning to liquid…” In comparison, closing track “Canada Water” comes out of the gate roaring with its roller-rink synth hook and full-band lurch–the band keep the energy at this high opening level until the second half of the song, which slows down into an exercise of handclaps, restrained synths, and a call and response from McCabe to the rest of the band (Cross and Mandell’s Greek chorus “We cannot wait!” response is a reminder that, even though ME REX began as a McCabe solo project, the tightness of the full band is their secret weapon). The two middle songs on Smilodon, while not as giant-sounding, still have a lot to commend–“Hale-Bopp” is another kind of classic, the mid-tempo, rousing singalong, a church choir singing about comets and relationships passing in the night. “Fleck” is the weirdest song on Smilodon, a dark-seeming, percussionless ballad in which McCabe’s vocals are AutoTuned for much of its brief (90 second) runtime. In its own way, it’s as memorable as the huge conclusions of “Goodbye Forever” and “Canada Water”–at this point, that shouldn’t be surprising from a ME REX record. (Bandcamp link)

S. Raekwon – Steven

Release date: May 3rd
Record label: Father/Daughter
Genre: Indie pop, bedroom pop, R&B/soul, jazz-pop
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
Pull Track: Steven’s Smile

Buffalo-originating, New York City-based singer-songwriter Steven Raekwon Reynolds (aka S. Raekwon) first came to my attention via his 2022 EP I Like It When You Smile, a brief but strong collection of sunny pop music built around R&B, bouncy pianos, and a bit of dream pop. It was an extension of the sound found on the musician’s debut LP, 2021’s Where I’m at Now, but I suspected that Raekwon wasn’t going to be content to just hit those same beats over and over again based on the impressiveness of his 2022 non-album single “Single Mom’s Day” and some interesting choices at the margins of his last EP. Now we’ve got Steven, Raekwon’s sophomore album and his strongest work yet–it focuses his disparate tendencies into a single coherent statement without losing any depth. Raekwon and longtime drummer Mario Malachi recorded the album in a “makeshift studio” at his in-laws’ house in southern Illinois, seeking to balance craft (Raekwon composed the songs on guitar completely ahead of time, instead of producing and recording while still in the writing stages as per his “normal” creative routine) and spontaneity (the duo focused on single takes, and the material was completely new to Malachi before recording began).

Vintage soul and R&B has certainly shaded Raekwon’s pop music in the past, but it’s refreshing to hear him and Malachi fully embrace this side and open up Steven with a handful of tracks that absolutely lock into this groove (“Steven’s Smile”, a song that juxtaposes a full-blooming instrumental with Raekwon’s lyrical interjections that contain a barely-papered-over darkness, the slick, timeless pop of “Old Thing”, and the minimal, piano-based, yet quietly seething “Winners & Losers”). Steven doesn’t abandon this sound as the record progresses, but its primary takeaway from that era of LPs is a subtler one–using the sides of a record and a tracklist to chart a journey. This is apparent in just how Raekwon and Malachi give us the sweeping “If There’s No God…” as the record’s centerpiece (its towering zen seeming to answer the quaking, uncertain grooves of “Steven’s Smile”), and the beautifully sparse indie folk of “Does the Song Still Sound the Same?” comes spilling out once he’s got the previous track off of his chest. Peace is a moving target, and Raekwon gives us the six-minute “It’s Nothing”–whose electric climax is the biggest “rock” moment on the entire record–after that before allowing “What Love Makes You Do” and “Katherine’s Song” to offer a bit of respite. It’s only after the latter song trails off that I realized that Steven covers just as much musical ground as Raekwon has in the past–it’s just an incredibly smooth ride. (Bandcamp link)

The Ar-Kaics – See the World on Fire

Release date: May 3rd
Record label: Feel It/Dig!/Bachelor
Genre: Garage rock, southern rock, fuzz rock, psychedelic rock, blues rock
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
Pull Track: Chains

If you’ve been paying attention to this blog over the past couple years, you’re aware that Feel It Records has been the premier label for punk and garage rock as of late. They’ve championed several shades of that kind of music, from Midwestern Devo-core/“egg-punk” (much of it from their current home of Cincinnati) to West Coast-indebted psychedelic garage fuzz to catchy and snotty first-wave punk sounding straight out of New York in the 70s. However, Feel It is originally from Richmond, Virginia, and while the label’s early releases reflected that, not too much of their recent output has recalled the Appalachian and Southeastern environments that are the closest in proximity to their first home. Enter The Ar-Kaics, a Richmond quartet (Johnny, Jake, Kevin & Tim) who put out two albums in the 2010s and have linked up with Feel It for their six-years-in-the-making third full-length, See the World on Fire. To be clear, The Ar-Kaics’ latest LP fits quite well alongside the Segall-esque psych-garage side of Feel It, but there’s also a southern expansiveness to See the World on Fire’s eight songs, a blues-y, swamp-y attitude that seeks to cover vast emptiness with electric guitar jams.

Even when The Ar-Kaics are gazing into the branches of a hemlock tree in opening track “Chains”, they sound haunted and pained, shackled by the song’s titular object. It’s a harrowing opening statement, but it’s one that gets one ready to See the World on Fire. The Ar-Kaics do let themselves embrace the friendlier side of this classic-rock-shaded sound throughout the album–the first half of the record contains the mid-tempo psych grooves of “Fools Are Gone” and the wandering rock and roll of “Stone Love”, while the southern rock singalong of “Cornerstone” and the messy but spirited “Dawning” are the second half’s most accessible moments. These lighter moments bridge the gaps between See the World on Fire at its most intense, particularly at the closing of both of the record’s sides. The six-minute slow-burn of “Land of the Blind” ends the first half by steadily and confidently demolishing their sound into a white-hot tornado, but even that doesn’t quite prepare us for the nine-minute closing song “Never Ending”. Effectively a two-part track, the first half of the song is perhaps the most “peaceful” moment on the record, only to kick up a sudden summer storm of an instrumental as it draws towards the finish line. I wouldn’t expect See the World on Fire to burn itself out any other way. (Bandcamp link)

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