Pressing Concerns: Female Gaze, 2070, Sugar Candy Mountain, The Wendy Darlings

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Hey there! Welcome to the second Pressing Concerns of the week! This is a good one; we’ve got new albums from Female Gaze, 2070, and The Wendy Darlings to examine below, as well as a ten-year-anniversary reissue of an album from Sugar Candy Mountain. If you missed yesterday’s post, featuring Magic Fig, Crumbs, New Issue, and Masonic Wave, you’re gonna wanna check that one 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.

Female Gaze – Tender Futures

Release date: May 17th
Record label: Fort Lowell/Totally Real
Genre: Psychedelic rock, art rock, desert rock, post-rock, jazz rock
Formats: Vinyl, cassette, digital
Pull Track: Severance

Tucson trio The Rifle debuted about a decade ago, releasing three records in six years and growing from the solo project of guitarist/vocalist Nelene DeGuzman (2014’s Rib to Rib) to a 60s-tinged guitar pop act (2017’s Anababis) to incorporating a bit of desert psychedelia into their sound (2020’s Honeyden). Honeyden would prove to be The Rifle’s last album, but they didn’t break up, exactly–DeGuzman and bassist Kevin Conklin continued on as Female Gaze, with drummer Nicky David Cobham-Morgese replacing The Rifle’s Randy Rowland. Female Gaze debuted in 2021 with the one-off garage-indie-pop single “The Joy of Missing Out”, and while there’s a shade of darkness to that song, it doesn’t prepare one for the huge leap that the trio make on Tender Futures, the trio’s debut album. Stretching five songs across thirty-two minutes, Tender Futures is an expansive, vast record, with DeGuzman and her band embodying the American southwest more than they ever have before. Inspired in part by DeGuzman’s chronic health issues that had left her in a “painful limbo”, Tender Futures does with garage rock what Itasca’s Imitation of War did with folk music–it explores the desert using empty space and towering nothingness as its language.

Tender Futures intentionally evoke haziness and disorientation and, according to the band, can be started from any song and played “on a loop”. Female Gaze choose to begin the “proper” version of the album off with the sparsest moment on the record in “Ghosts”–it’s not the most accessible moment on Tender Futures, no, but there’s a captivating quality to how it sounds, a simple guitar part echoing cavernously with only DeGuzman’s, well, ghostly vocals as accompaniment. “Ghosts” also prepares one to expect extremes throughout the album, which the next song does as well, in a different way. “Broadcast” slides into focus by introducing us to Female Gaze the three-piece rock band, with elements of psychedelia and pop in their sound. It’d be a good choice for the “single”–if it wasn’t ten minutes long, expanding and probing all the while. The middle of the record is completely instrumental, most of which is comprised of the nine-minute title track, an impressive song that slouches towards post-rock and even a bit of jazz-rock (Conklin’s bass gets a nice showcase here), while the echoing piano of “In the Mezzanine” serves as a three-minute coda. By this point, the disorientation is at a high, as we’re feeling lost out in no-man’s land somewhere–but the last song on Tender Futures is its clearest olive branch. “Severance” is not a departure from the rest of the album, but it’s where everything snaps into focus, as the trio set their sights on fluttering guitar pop for six minutes. Ending with the triumphant is Tender Futures on easy mode, though–let’s see how quickly we get lost if we start with the title track… (Bandcamp link)

2070 – Stay in the Ranch

Release date: May 3rd
Record label: Free World Vessel
Genre: Lo-fi indie rock, garage rock, shoegaze, noise pop
Formats: Digital
Pull Track: Ratbike

I hadn’t heard of Los Angeles’ 2070 before Stay in the Ranch, their sophomore album, appeared in my inbox a couple of days before its release, but it wasn’t long before I was fully on board with their brand of noisy, fuzzy indie rock. A quartet, 2070 is led by vocalist and guitarist Trevor Coleman II and rounded out by drummer Rogers DeCoud Jr., guitarist Khari Cousins, and bassist Danny Rincon (although they frequently switch instruments throughout Stay in the Ranch, and original bassist Tchad Cousins plays on several of the songs as well). Their debut album, Shordy, came out on Already Dead Tapes back in 2022, and it’s a sprawling hourlong, twenty-four-song collection of lo-fi pop and blown-out, shoegaze inspired rock music. With Stay in the Ranch, 2070 have trimmed things down to a tidy sixteen songs in 35 minutes, and the band embrace both their “humble fuzzy pop” and “noisy and experimental” sides on their second record. Citing lo-fi pop outsiders both well-known (Guided by Voices, The Cleaners from Venus) and lesser known (Doug Hream Blunt, Dwight Sykes), 2070 hone in on a sound somewhere between the foggy, offbeat pop music of Cherub Dreams Records bands like Sucker and Buddy Junior and the experimental, shoegaze/“noise pop” of Julia’s War/Candlepin acts like Saturnalias and Guitar.

Despite its similarities with more than a few “bedroom pop” projects, Stay in the Ranch has plenty of moments where an honest-to-god rock band emerges from the static. After an intro track, “Ratbike” kicks off the record properly with a blown-out piece of tuneful, almost post-punk racket, and “Je Vais Aller Dormir” is a blast of fuzz-punk not long later. “Macho Man Confusion” adds a lumbering, mid-tempo garage rock dimension to 2070’s sound, while “Larf Finds Away” is a spirited, bashed-out guitar pop belter that reinvigorates things around halfway through the album. In between these tracks are the less immediate moments on Stay in the Ranch, but stuff like the gray slowcore of “IG Post”, the uncertain timbre of “Fan Reel (Tonite I Might)”, and the basement groove of “My City Punch” aren’t filler–they’re key to the makeup not just of Stay in the Ranch, but 2070 as a whole. When the record gets especially wobbly in the second half with songs like “Beem Ja’s Last Mistake”, “Bronze”, and “Never Had That”, it’s gripping–and when they crank it up again in “Uh Oh, I’m Yawning” and then ride off into the sunset with “Operator”, Stay in the Ranch makes its strong closing statement as a document of an exciting new band realizing a bunch of ideas all at once. (Bandcamp link)

Sugar Candy Mountain – Mystic Hits (Reissue)

Release date: April 12th
Record label: Sugar Candy Mountain/Royal Oakie
Genre: Psychedelic pop, garage rock
Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital
Pull Track: Soak Up the City

Sugar Candy Mountain came out of the Bay Area’s thriving psychedelic rock and pop scene around a decade ago, with the duo of Will Halsey and Ash Reiter self-releasing their first record together in 2011. Mystic Hits followed in 2013, released through Oakland’s Royal Oakie Records and beginning a streak of popular psychedelic records that’s lasted into the 2020s. Out of print for several years now, Royal Oakie and Sugar Candy Mountain are marking Mystic Hits‘ 10th anniversary by reissuing it on vinyl (on the band’s own self-titled imprint) and cassette (via Royal Oakie). Although Sugar Candy Mountain occasionally have an electric edge that puts them in conversation with the more garage-y/heavier In the Red/Levitation Sessions end of psychedelic rock, Mystic Hits is more interested in taking that attitude and incorporating a different side of the genre. Long influenced by Tropicália and Brazilian pop music, the duo traveled to São Paolo to record the album, finishing it back in Oakland. The result is a record that’s both “California” and “Os Mutantes”, slippery synths and rock-solid rock-and-roll both populating and fleshing out these thirteen (fourteen on the cassette) pop songs.

“Uva Uvam Vivendo Varia Fit” opens Mystic Hits with an instant success, with mid-tempo, horn-laden pop rock easing us into the record, only for just a bit of electric guitar-led psych rock to show up in the song’s second half. “Soak Up the City” is a great 60s-influenced psychedelic pop rock tune that continues the guitar-led moments, but much of the first half of Mystic Hits dives into something a bit hazier, with “I’m a Tiger”, “Echopraxia”, and “Caroline Mountain” all couching their pop hooks in slow tempos and swirling instrumental structures. “Saudade Love” is a relaxed underwater sunshine pop ballad stuck right in the middle of the record, while “Lovely Time” marks Mystic Hits’ second half with some pitch-perfect 60s pop energy. The B-side of the record might actually be a bit stronger, as the duo offer everything found in the album’s first half but also break into some new terrain with “Some Body” (rhythmically and structurally one of the band’s most overtly “Tropicália” moments) and “Hot Topics, Hot Tropics” (which is smart, slick indie pop that closes the record proper without completely losing the psychedelia). The cassette bonus track “Copacabana” was recorded during Mystic Hits’ sessions, and its cavernous, psych-dripping feel is a nice coda to a record that has a specific sound in mind but gives itself a lot of leeway in how it goes about achieving it. (Bandcamp link)

The Wendy Darlings – Lipstick Fire

Release date: April 11th
Record label: Lunadélia/Influenza
Genre: Twee, jangle pop, power pop, indie pop, bubblegum pop
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Go Away

Although it’s tempting to slot Clermont Ferrand-based trio The Wendy Darlings into the current wave of French indie pop alongside bands like En Attendant Ana, EggS, and Hobby, the group has actually been around since 2008. Vocalist/guitarist Suzy Borello, drummer Baptiste Fick, and bassist Sylvain Coantic spent the first few years of their music career together putting out singles and EPs, eventually moving onto full-lengths in 2014 (The Insufferable Fatigues of Idleness) and 2019 (Against Evil). They’re back with a third LP, Lipstick Fire, and the thirteen-song, 31-minute record paints a portrait of a band devoted to both vintage indie pop and the genres from which it was initially derived. The trio cite bands like Comet Gain and The Shop Assistants as inspiration and recently toured with Nervous Twitch, but Lipstick Fire reminds me more than anything else as a more rough-around-the-edges version of the most recent Lunchbox album. The Wendy Darlings attack a classic bubblegum pop sound with the twee and punk-pop energy of a band absolutely thrilled to be making music together.

The Wendy Darlings reintroduce themselves by offering up two of the strongest pop hooks I’ve heard this year in the ones that grace “Cowboy” and “Go Away”, Lipstick Fire’s first two songs. The former is bubblegum pop punk at its finest, a sugary revenge anthem that sets itself apart from the 1960s mostly due to its charming explicitness. “Go Away” isn’t as much of a runaway train, but it saunters up to its cathartic, shout-along chorus with just enough confidence to pull it off. Lipstick Fire doesn’t exactly let up from there, with “Ridicule” and “Devil” giving “Cowboy” a run for its money in terms of ramshackle, zippy pop music. Obviously, there are multiple songs on the album that start with the “Be My Baby” drum part–“Don’t Flirt” is my favorite of the two, a nice slow-builder in an instant-gratification record, but “Kisses” is impossible to dislike as well. Lipstick Fire doesn’t lose any steam, with the last four songs on the record comprising one of the most spirited, strongest streaks on the album–in particular, “A Ok Telephone” is a late-record highlight that stretches The Wendy Darlings’ indie pop out to a gargantuan three and a half minutes and still finds catchiness and melody all the way through. This kind of music is baked into our culture at this point, so to really make it work in 2024 you’ve got to feel it–and The Wendy Darlings clearly do. (Bandcamp link)

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