Pressing Concerns: Death by Indie, Bibi Club, Saturnalias, Kill Gosling

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I overheard some people talking at a hipster coffee shop about how this week wasn’t going to be a big week for Pressing Concerns. Well: they were wrong! The Monday Pressing Concerns is here, featuring new albums from Death by Indie, Bibi Club, and Saturnalias, and a new EP from Kill Gosling. Read on to find out how many of these bands I compare to Yo La Tengo and Sonic Youth!

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.

Death by Indie – 7 Day Farmers Market

Release date: May 4th
Record label: Self-released
Genre: 90s indie rock, lo-fi indie rock, experimental rock
Formats: CD, digital
Pull Track: Contract Expand Inhale Exhale

Death by Indie are a fairly prolific indie rock trio from Wilmington, Delaware–the band (drummer Mike Edwards, bassist/vocalist Isa Teixeira, and guitarist/vocalist Declan Poehler) have put out a bunch of music since they debuted in 2020, most of it in the form of EPs. Despite this, they’d only put out one full-length album, 2022’s Paeonia—until this month’s release of 7 Day Farmers Market, their sophomore LP. Considering that they’re an East Coast band who released an EP last year called No Wave Veggie Dogs–and, I suppose, the threat of “indie” contained in their very name–it probably won’t shock you to learn that there’s a good deal of Yo La Tengo and Sonic Youth influence to be found on 7 Day Farmers Market. There’s more to Death by Indie than their combination of noisy indie-punk, wobbly-but-compelling guitar pop, and occasional sonic wanderings, however–for one, the album’s title is a statement against corporate greed and gentrification by invoking the bygone Wilmington grocery store, and it’s not hard to spot the environmentalism in songs like “Taking Off” and (of course) “Treehugger”.

7 Day Farmers Market excels at threading the needle between Edwards, Teixeira, and Poehler’s weirder impulses and their clear ability to write a hook–often, both sides of the group pop up in the same song. The first half of the record contains at least three “hits” of the slacker-y, Barlow/Malkmus school of pop music–“Taking Off”, listless-feeling at first, eventually turns into an unlikely triumph, while “Contract Expand Inhale Exhale” is a bit more ornery structure-wise, taking a few twists and turns but still hovering in the pop realm. Depending on your perspective, “Hummus on My Thumb” either wastes or expertly deploys the most beautiful chorus on the record in a truly absurd fashion. Like vintage Yo La Tengo, Death by Indie can go from delicate to chaotic in a moment’s notice, and their noisy garage-punk side surfaces admirably on “Fallen Angel Begonia #2” and “Sunny the Horse (Mike’s Version)” (and if you don’t like them, they’re done in under two minutes). “Treehugger” is in a similar vein, although the song (presented here in a somewhat muddy live recording) shows the band as surprisingly deft at rhythmic post-punk as well. I haven’t really touched on some of the weirdest moments on 7 Day Farmers Market, but I do appreciate them, too–after all, plenty of bands could write a song as catchy as closing track “Broom Closet”, but to have it fit alongside stuff like “Flansong” by being offbeat in its own way is distinctly Death by Indie. (Bandcamp link)

Bibi Club – Feu de garde

Release date: May 10th
Record label: Secret City
Genre: Post-punk, indie pop, psych pop, art rock
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
Pull Track: Parc de Beauvoir

Bibi Club are a Montreal-based indie pop duo made up of Adèle Trottier-Rivard (vocals/keyboard) and Nicolas Basque (guitar), who debuted in 2019 with a self-titled EP and put out their first full-length album, Le soleil et la mer, in 2022. Both Basque and Trottier-Rivard have connections to long-running Canadian indie rock group Plants and Animals (the former as a full-fledged member, the latter as a collaborator), but rather than the widescreen Arcade Fire/folk rock-indebted sound of that band, Bibi Club seems to be a vehicle for the real-life couple to explore a different set of influences. Feu de garde, the band’s sophomore album, is a polished but not overstuffed pop record that evokes the delicate side of omnivorous indie rock groups like Stereolab and Yo La Tengo, and even the minimalist, dreamy side of post-punk (putting them in the same category as modern groups like En Attendant Ana and Nightshift). Trottier-Rivard (who sings in both French and English) can pull off a more grounded indie pop singing style as well as a spacier dream pop-indebted one, but her melodies are always presented at the front, or at the very least on equal footing with the inspired instrumental display going on around her.

Bibi Club have given themselves a lot to work with on Feu de garde, and their pop music takes turns with regards to which parts of their sound it emphasizes. The subdued, minimal opening track “La terre” is led by Trottier-Rivard’s voice interacting with a steady drum machine and plodding bass notes, while “Parc de Beauvoir” is happy to let a steady, late-era Sonic Youth guitar line take the lead before blossoming into colorful dream pop. Songs like the warbly “Les guides” and the brightly-strummed “Nico” wouldn’t be out of place on an early 2010s Captured Tracks release, while Bibi Club are able to wring pop music just as easily out of orchestral, almost psychedelic backdrops (“You Can Wear a Jacket or a Shirt”) as well as straight-up fast-paced, rhythm-section-workout post-punk (“Le feu”). Trottier-Rivard and Basque aren’t the first musicians to look towards “French pop” to grow and expand their sound–the otherworldly nature of the best of the genre must be tantalizing. Feu de garde is a strong, successful record because of its devotion to the “pop” half of that sound–rather than the genre signifiers being strewn about the album haphazardly, everything that Bibi Club adds to the record is pointed towards it with a compass-like accuracy. (Bandcamp link)

Saturnalias – Bugfest

Release date: May 10th
Record label: Candlepin
Genre: Lo-fi indie rock, shoegaze
Formats: CD, digital
Pull Track: JSUK

Saturnalias began as the solo project of Durham, North Carolina’s Alex Tung, who released two albums under the name (2021’s Planet Philistine and 2022’s Saturnalias) via local label 47 Eyez on Me before linking up with Candlepin Records for Bugfest, the latest Saturnalias record. Bugfest also appears to be the first album from Saturnalias as a full band (featuring bassists Connor Vaselovic and Elijah Hasskamp, guitarist Luca Moreno, and drummer Isa Pietrosemoli), although the record (partially recorded in Tung’s apartment, partially in Raleigh’s Found After Dark Studio) still has a lo-fi feel to it. The messy, noisy basement shoegaze sound of Bugfest is a great fit for Candlepin Records’ roster–Saturnalias clearly belong right in the current wave of new and exciting shoegaze-inspired bands, from groups like Guitar on the West Coast to more geographically-similar acts (Asheville’s Tombstone Poetry, Tennessee’s Carry Ripple, Atlanta’s Hill View #73). Saturnalias may have something of an “experimental” sound, but Bugfest is still solidly a rock record–just a chaotic one. Sometimes the guitars are clean and bright, other times a wall of distortion, but they’re always doing something on Bugfest.

After the noise-collage vibes of opening track “Renaissance Fair”, the first “full” song on Bugfest is “Borrowing”, a mess of guitars that buzz and chime, pulling together bits of math rock and even slowcore before skating to a full-on noisy conclusion. Saturnalias seem to delight in being a bit unpredictable–“JSUK” has an energy and occasional accessibility that makes the choice to make it a single understandable, but the song (which features guest vocals from Rayna Phillips) is hardly linear, jumping through a few different modes (downcast 90s indie rock, pummeling fuzzed out shoegaze, and then repeat) over its four minutes. If the first half of Bugfest is dynamic but consistently rocking out, the second half is just as dynamic and even looser. The B-side is where you’ll find the experimental, flute-heavy instrumental “Voluntary Pinael DMT”, as well as a few songs (“Formant Character”, “Window VI”) that stretch Saturnalias’ sound out into a distorted, unmoored haze of noise. On closing track “New Feel”, Saturnalias are able to hold it together for three whole minutes–a deliberately-stepping, clear-feeling piece of indie rock–before the tempo picks up and the assault of fuzz kicks in right as the song ends. “Control” isn’t the word that comes to mind when listening to Bugfest, but it’s not like its crashing waves are happening accidentally. (Bandcamp link)

Kill Gosling – Waster

Release date: April 24th
Record label: We’re Trying
Genre: Pop punk, emo-punk, power pop
Formats: Cassette, digital
Pull Track: Impatient

If I were a pop punk band whose sound was clearly indebted to Weezer, I don’t know if I’d be confident enough to open my record with a song called “Bobby Hobby” that borrows the “Buddy Holly” riff at its climax. Columbus, Ohio’s Kill Gosling have done just that, however, and I can’t fault the quartet for it, because they clearly know how to incorporate their influences without getting stuck on them. Kill Gosling (guitarist/vocalist Chandler, bassist/vocalist Walter, guitarist Violet, and drummer Marcus) are just too busy to try to recreate their past–Waster is the band’s third EP, and they zip through a half-dozen songs in under ten minutes with speed, energy, and a lot of ideas they want to get through before time’s up. Nothing on Waster is over three minutes (and only one song is over two), but there are more than enough hooks here, displaying an eagerness to channel punk rock into bite-sized pop pieces like two other acts they evoke and cite as influences, Joyce Manor and Jeff Rosenstock.

“Bobby Hobby” is a pure sugar rush no matter what its exact lineage is, and the chugging, Weezer-y power chords and Rentals synths that soundtrack “Untitled” would hardly be worth a mention if the song didn’t have a huge chorus to match them. The first half of Waster is rounded out by “Cow Tools”, a nice piece of emo-tinged power pop punk reminiscent of bands like Camp Trash (with one good moment of screaming for good measure), but the second half of the EP might stealthily be my favorite half. The transition between the sub-60-second Green Day-esque melodic punk of “Forget” and the dramatic punk showtune “Impatient” is second-half-of-Worry.-worthy, and the latter song in particular is some of Kill Gosling’s best writing. “What’s the point in learning something I know / Where’s the joy if you can never let go?” goes the chorus of “Impatient”, and I enjoy how the refrain takes on a different meaning between the first time around (in euphoria at a show) and the next one (at home, crashing and expelling alcohol from one’s body involuntarily). Kill Gosling might sound like they’re just reveling in their favorite music throughout Waster, but they’re all too aware of all the baggage the party brings with it. (Bandcamp link)

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