Pressing Concerns: Magic Fig, Crumbs, New Issue, Masonic Wave

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Starting off the week with an all-timer of a Monday post, today we’ve got three albums that came out last Friday, May 17th (new LPs from Magic Fig, Crumbs, and New Issue), and an album from Masonic Wave that came out last month. If you like pop, psychedelia, noise rock, folk rock, or some combination thereof, you’ll definitely want to keep reading! Also, sorry if you got a rough draft version of this blog post via email a couple of days ago. Pressed the wrong button!

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.

Magic Fig – Magic Fig

Release date: May 17th
Record label: Silver Current
Genre: Psychedelic rock, psychedelic pop, indie pop, prog pop
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: PS1

One of my favorite albums of last year was Sunset Sea Breeze by Whitney’s Playland, the debut record from a quartet co-led by San Francisco’s Inna Showalter and George Tarlson that combined sleepy, dreamy Bay Area jangle pop with a lo-fi power pop energy. So I was pleased to hear that Showalter is the lead vocalist of a new band called Magic Fig, and that the quintet’s lineup is rounded out by other Bay Area ringers–The Umbrellas’ Matthew Ferrara plays bass, Emmet “Muzzy” Moskowitz of Almond Joy and Froogie’s Groovies is on guitar, Healing Potpourri’s Jon Chaney provides keys and synths, and Taylor Giffin is on drums. The first Magic Fig record is a self-titled debut album produced by Once and Future Band’s Joel Robinow and released by Oakland’s Silver Current Records (Sonic Youth, Wooden Shjips, Howlin Rain). Considering the lineup’s indie pop pedigree, it’s not surprising how catchy Magic Fig is, but the band are shooting for something a little different with this project.

Showalter describes the album as “progressive psychedelic pop” and mentions the Canterbury scene, among other touchstones, as an influence on its sound, and all of this is borne out in Magic Fig’s six songs and twenty-eight minutes. Featuring an overwhelming blanket of all-in, overstuffed psychedelia, the album merges pop and excess in a way that skips the current wave of Bay Area indie pop and goes all the way back to 1960s San Francisco psych rock–and it’s also more reminiscent of landmark Elephant 6 records from The Olivia Tremor Control and The Apples in Stereo than any of their current geographic peers. Speaking of Elephant 6, the latest album from Jennifer Baron’s The Garment District feels like the closest modern analogue to opening track “Goodbye Suzy”, a huge piece of impressively-done-up 60s pop music.

“PS1” does “Goodbye Suzy” one better a track later–it more openly incorporates jangly indie pop while still keeping one foot in psychedelia, resulting in a careening, ballooning six-minute pop behemoth that never loses its foundation. After closing side one with one last retro rocker, Magic Fig are certainly going to stretch out a bit on the B-side. That includes kicking things off with “Distant Dream”, a hazy, dreamy ballad that shifts the band’s focus into something softer but still massive, and that also entails upping the stakes yet again in the form of the seven-minute climax of “Obliteration”. The multi-movement penultimate track begins as a languid, mid-tempo polished indie pop piece before transforming into a galloping, thundering “big finish” track. Technically, the last song on the album is the spare acoustic “Departure”, which functions as a cooldown after what came before it. Even in “Departure”, though, Magic Fig still embrace progressive and psychedelic touches, as the song shifts from gently picked six-string to a flute-heavy ambient postscript. (Bandcamp link)

Crumbs – You’re Just Jealous

Release date: May 17th
Record label: Skep Wax
Genre: Post-punk, punk, garage rock, indie pop, dance punk
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
Pull Track: You’re Just Jealous

Skep Wax Records first came onto my radar as the label for its co-founders (Amelia Fletcher and Rob Pursey of Heavenly) to re-release their older records, as well as the imprint for putting out new music from their current bands and their ex-Sarah Records contemporaries. However, the label has also been putting out records from relatively new faces for the entirety of their brief existence as well, and while I’ve enjoyed some of their more recent finds before (such as last year’s Special Friend album), they’ve found a real gem with Leeds’ Crumbs. The post-punk quartet (vocalist Ruth Gilmore, bassist/vocalist Jamie Wilson, drummer Gem Prout, guitarist Stuart Alexander) actually put out their debut album, Mind Yr Manners, on Everything Sucks back in 2017, meaning that their sophomore record, You’re Just Jealous, took about seven years to come about. Their second album is lean-sounding but fully-developed–coming in at a dozen tracks in under 30 minutes, every song on the record goes on for exactly as long as it needs to, and not a second further. Crumbs cite bands like Gang of Four, Delta 5, and Chic as influences, and it’s apparent that You’re Just Jealous was made with the perspective that post-punk can and should be catchy and fun to listen to.

You’re Just Jealous ends up equally combining the danceability of 80s post-punk, the hooks of classic indie pop, and the sharp edges of 90s Kill Rock Stars indie rock groups. The record has a “locked-in” sound from the get-go, with the punchy rhythms of the opening title track providing the runway for Gilmore’s vocals to put on a show. Crumbs never let the balance tip too far in one direction–in the more “jangly indie pop” moments like “Dear Deirdre”, Wilson and Prout are still holding up the song’s foundation with a steady, forceful rhythm, while the Dischord/Kill Rock Stars post-punk of “DIY SOS” doesn’t forget to keep the portions of pop hooks the same as in the rest of the record. The entire album is pretty breathless-sounding, but the middle of You’re Just Jealous in particular is Crumbs’ “lightning round”–blink and you’ll miss the agit-punk brilliance of “Let’s Not”, Alexander’s spot-on guitarwork in “4291”, the sleek bluntness of “Call Now”, and the zippy, accusatory punk-pop of “What’s It Means”. The record’s final two songs are the longest two, and the two where Crumbs most clearly indulge (if the word “indulge” can even be used in any context for an album like this) in letting the groove go for a little bit. The nervous-sounding “Mambo No. 6” and their fiery cover of Bush Tetras’ “Too Many Creeps” are still both very tight, however–it’s bullseye vocal melodies, Andy Gill guitar licks, and rumbling rhythms right up to the end. (Bandcamp link)

New Issue – Diminished & Transmitting

Release date: May 17th
Record label: Anything Bagel/Fontee Fount
Genre: Dream pop, slowcore, folk rock
Formats: Vinyl, cassette, digital
Pull Track: New Solution

New Issue is an Anacortes, Washington-based trio made up of three Pacific Northwest indie rock veterans in Nicholas Wilbur, Allyson Foster, and Paul Frunzi. Between the three of them, they’ve played on records from Your Heart Breaks, Generifus, Mount Eerie, Hoop, and Alien Boy, among many others–and that’s in addition to Wilbur’s production work as the owner and operator of recording studio The Unknown (where the entire band lives, as well). The trio made a few records in the early 2010s as Hungry Cloud Darkening, most recently 2014’s Glossy Recall, but (most likely being busy with other projects) it’d been a decade since Wilbur, Foster, and Frunzi had made an album together. I don’t know what spurred the three of them to get back to it, but recently they chose a new name (New Issue) and “quickly” recorded what became Diminished & Transmitting at The Unknown. The resultant album is a sublime collection of minimal indie rock that sounds both like a vintage Pacific Northwest record and like the work of three people incredibly in tune and comfortable with each other. The proximity to Mount Eerie is felt in Diminished & Transmitting’s thirteen songs, and New Issue’s stark folk music approaches Carissa’s Wierd-reminiscient slowcore as well.

The glacial-paced drone pop of “Cue” that opens Diminished & Transmitting is a strong declaration of a first statement–minimal percussion, plain but dreamy vocals, eerie synths, but somehow welcoming in spite of all that. Not everything is so dramatically bare on Diminished & Transmitting–the rhythm section that marks the slow but full-sounding dream pop of “New Solution” and the steady backbone of “Ginger” shows that New Issue have plenty of discipline when the moment calls for it–but it’s a good primer for some of the depths the record goes onto explore. On the record’s folkier songs like “Curb” and “Busted”–and even on “Itchy Void”, which is technically rock music–there’s an ambient quality to their shaped emptiness, reminding me a bit of Dave Scalon’s recent solo material. If any of this sounds lulling or head-nodding to you, New Issue take a page from the “fuzzed-out” end of the Phil Elverum handbook mid-record with “Vision Limited”–and now that you’re awake, you can appreciate late-record adventurousness with the widescreen folk rock of “Loose Structure” and the warehouse pop of “Bad Dream”. The record ends with “I Broke a Lamp” and “Faking It”, two very quiet and intimate-feeling tracks that almost seem like secrets for those still paying attention. A comfortable and safe-feeling record, it makes sense that Diminished & Transmitting ends with New Issue’s members embracing it in every aspect of their writing. (Bandcamp link)

Masonic Wave – Masonic Wave

Release date: April 12th
Record label: War Crime
Genre: Noise rock, post-hardcore, art punk
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Bully

As long as the greater noise rock community of Chicago, Illinois insists on starting new bands and making good music together, I will continue to write about it in Pressing Concerns. This time around, we’ve got Masonic Wave, a Windy City quintet featuring a bunch of longtime musicians–vocalist/saxophonist Bruce Lamont, bassist Fritz Doreza, drummer Clayton DeMuth, and guitarists Scott Spidale and Sean Hulet. The five of them have played in an absurd number of Chicago bands over the years (between them, they’ve spent time in Yakuza, Naked Raygun, Sybris, God Damn Your Eyes, Land of the El Caminos, and Sünken Ships), but Masonic Wave is a brand new endeavor–their self-titled debut album is their first record of any kind. I enjoy bands like this because they exist against the forces of entropy–playing in an anti-commercial genre and lacking any members with even cult fame, it’d be assuredly much easier for the members of Masonic Wave to hang it up. They’re entirely in it for the love of the game at this point.

Masonic Wave is inspired and dangerous to touch, coming off as a radioactive swill of the music the band’s members have enjoyed over the years–there’s a Kowloon Walled City-type almost-metal-edge, the sheer exhilarating nature of the Rick Froburg/John Reis universe, some 80s underground sludginess, and–while they don’t overuse Lamont’s saxophone–just a bit of Chicago jazz-y noise sprawl. Masonic Wave advances and retreats with all their might, with opening track “Bully” flitting between committing to post-rock/math rock atmospherics and noise rock aggression, before “Tent City” absolutely lets loose with blunt force post-hardcore-punk power in a potent two-minute burst. Masonic Wave is a warped punk-prog album in its own way–three different songs slip past the six minute mark, and “Idle Hands” spends almost all of its eight minutes building up the tension that the heavy metal-punk of its final 60 seconds finally releases. It’s a bit too metal and maybe not enough “caveman rock” to slot into the Jesus Lizard/Scratch Acid/Swans/Daughters continuum, but people who’ve enjoyed that offshoot of noise rock would, I think, enjoy the heights that Masonic Wave climb to in “Justify the Cling”, “Mountains of Labor”, and “Bamboozler”. It’s an album for people who want to be taken somewhere scary and fascinating that only this kind of music can transport them to–it’s why Masonic Wave do what they do, and it’s why I enjoy Masonic Wave. (Bandcamp link)

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