Pressing Concerns: Comprador, From Far It All Seems Small, Jacob Freddy, Animal, Surrender!

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In the second Pressing Concerns of the week, we’re looking at some more great new music that you might’ve missed: new albums from Comprador, Jacob Freddy, and Animal, Surrender!, as well as From Far It All Seems Small: A Compilation from Seattle’s Underground, organized by Supercrush. We actually did have a post go up on Memorial Day (featuring The Noisy, Alice Kat, Drug Country, and Dog Park), so if you missed it in the holiday weekend festivities, be sure to check it out here.

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.

Comprador – Please Stay Off the Statue

Release date: May 16th
Record label: Self-released
Genre: Power pop, alt-rock, art rock
Formats: Digital
Pull Track: No Dice

I was somewhat aware of the band Comprador due to Twitter, but I hadn’t heard their music or even knew anything about them, really, before their latest album, Please Stay Off the Statue, was brought to my attention via an email from bandleader Charlie D’Ardenne. I didn’t know that Comprador has existed in some form for over a decade–first in Arizona, then in Cincinnati, and, for the past five years now, in Philadelphia. I didn’t know that Please Stay Off the Statue was their sixth album (in addition to a bunch of odds and ends on their Bandcamp page). I certainly didn’t know what they sounded like–in their email to me, D’Ardenne mentioned playing shows with Nihiloceros and Kill Gosling, so “somewhere between punk and emo” would’ve been my guess.  As it turns out, Please Stay Off the Statue is both a unique record and one entirely up my alley. D’Ardenne’s writing is touched by classic power pop and even Beach Boys-esque pop rock, while they give the songs a heavier alt-rock punch (with even a bit of prog-pop in there) and a glam rock performance. An omnivorous record that nevertheless retains a strong personality, Comprador sounds somewhat like Jon Brion fronting a post-grunge band, and Please Stay Off the Statue has moments that incorporate everything from pop punk to shoegaze.

One of the first indications that Please Stay Off the Statue is going to be hard to get a handle on is its opening track, “One by Metallica by I Hate Sex by Thorn Tire by Prim”. There’s a lot of brilliant pop music on this album, but Comprador’s opening statement is all Greg Dulli-esque thorniness and tension. Speaking of brilliant pop music, the atmosphere is then punctured by “No Dice”, a perfect song that I really can’t get enough of (to the point where it took me awhile to get into the rest of the record because I just wanted to listen to its absurdly huge Brion-pop-punk-fuzz refrain over and over again). The majority of Please Stay Off the Statue demands to be played loud, from the crunchy drama of “Good Vibrations” to the Pixies-ish “Death Becomes U” to “Better Luck Next Time (Taylor’s Version)”, a gorgeous pop song run through a trash compactor. Gina LC of Lo-Priestess shows up “Ripcord”, a straight-up noise rock song that’s the record’s wildest single moment. D’Ardenne is orchestrating everything, packing all these walls of sound with memorable moments, a trait that also helps tease out stretched-out slow burners like “O M G” and the closing title track. Please Stay Off the Statue is a really consistent and well-developed record, but it’s hardly sterile–something like “Not the Strong Silent Type” is exactly the kind of mid-tempo, mid-record track that’d be a dud on a lesser album, but D’Ardenne practically wills it to be one of the best songs on the entire album. As polished as Please Stay Off the Statue is, it’s something less tangible than any of its individual brushstrokes that make it stand out as a piece of art. (Bandcamp link)

Various Artists – From Far It All Seems Small: A Compilation from Seattle’s Underground

Release date: May 24th
Record label: KR
Genre: Fuzz rock, shoegaze, power pop, punk rock
Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital
Pull Track: The Legend

Wait, you’re telling me that Seattle has a thriving underground rock scene? Who would have guessed? In all seriousness, there’s been a lot of talk about San Francisco, Philadelphia, even Cincinnati as of late, but a new compilation presents a strong argument that “Seattle, the major hub for indie and alternative rock” isn’t something that should be relegated to Sub Pop retrospectives. That’s how Mark Palm of Emerald City power pop group Supercrush saw it, and he followed through on his convictions by compiling From Far It All Seems Small, a collection of fourteen new songs from fourteen Seattle-hailing bands. Released on Palm’s KR record label, From Far It All Seems Small is an impressively cohesive listen that pulls from a few different strains of modern indie rock. There’s a bit of the Bay Area’s foggy indie pop to this new “Seattle sound”, but it’s louder, more distorted, and blown-out in classic Washington state fashion. Supercrush’s power pop anthem “Lost My Head” might be one of the more accessible songs on the compilation, but it’s far from the only one with big pop hooks–they’re delivered in everything from shoegaze to fuzzy garage punk to 90s-style indie rock (even the one hardcore-indebted song, Shook Ones’ “July One”, has a melodic punk undercurrent that surprisingly helps it fit right in).

Regular readers will spot five different bands who’ve appeared in Pressing Concerns on From Far It All Seems Small, and, unsurprisingly, all of their contributions are highlights. Supercrush’s loud Copper Blue pop is as sharp as ever on “Lost My Head”, while Spiral XP and TV Star (who released a collaborative EP earlier this year) offer up rainy, fuzzed-out dream-rock and distorted bubblegum pop, respectively. Lo-fi garage pop stars Star Party sprint through “Old As the Sun”, while 90s indie/alt-rock revivalists Fluung offer up one of the most spirited moments on the entire record in “The Legend”. Of course, one of the best things about compilations like this is discovering great new-to-me bands, and From Far It All Seems Small has given me plenty to keep on my radar. There are several good first impressions here, but the two I’ll single out are Hell Baby’s chugging power-pop-punk “Jewelry” and “Sunlight” by Kennero, which injects a bit of emo-adjacent wistfulness into its classic indie rock sound (and while I was already familiar with Shine and Versing, both bands’ distinct versions of wall-of-sound indie rock–Madchester and psychedelic for the former, gray and cloudy for the latter–are both welcome here). Although there are plenty of Seattle bands I like (Telehealth, Megadose, Medejin) not represented here, it’s hard to argue with the selection, especially when it’s sequenced in such a cohesive, hard-charging subterranean pop package. (Bandcamp link)

Jacob Freddy – Songs from a Quiet Aliso Viejo Wasteland

Release date: April 5th
Record label: Fml
Genre: Lo-fi indie rock, power pop, fuzz rock
Formats: CD, digital
Pull Track: All Along

Here’s a new singer-songwriter to watch for you: Jacob Frericks. Frericks is a nineteen-year-old Orange County, California native who recently moved to New York for school–back in California, he’s part of the band Bloom, but my first exposure to his music is through his solo project, Jacob Freddy. Songs from a Quiet Aliso Viejo Wasteland is Frerick’s first record on his own, a nine-song, twenty-five minute collection that he cobbled together between New York and California, mostly on his own (Jonas Moore drums on two songs, Ethan Imler sings backing vocals on one). Recorded “with the speakers of an old Mazda CX5” (hence the album’s cover painting), Songs from a Quiet Aliso Viejo Wasteland is certainly not beating the “lo-fi bedroom indie rock record” allegations–but it’s a pleasingly lively and pop-forward take on the subgenre. Beneath the fuzz, distortion, and frequently mumbled vocals, there’s a singer-songwriter with a knack for classic power pop, a Teenage Fanclub/Elliott Smith/Big Star devotee with the reverb turned up high.

Songs from a Quiet Aliso Viejo Wasteland is a quick, economical listen, not unlike Coming to Terms with The Terminal Buildings, another excellent bedroom power pop record that zips through tons of hooks in under a half-hour. Frericks kicks the record off with “All Along”, a gorgeous Bandwagonesque-esque steady fuzz-power-pop song whose core melody only seems to strengthen in its humble dressing. It’s probably the most immediate moment on the record, but when Frericks leans into his “rocker” instincts elsewhere, similarly strong moments happen–the Big Star swagger of “Somebody New” is probably the one track that gives “All Along” a run for its money, and while “Sorry in Advance” and “Eighties Car” both take a little more time to get going, they’re both soaring by the time they’re through as well. Interspersed with Songs from a Quiet Aliso Viejo Wasteland’s high water marks are quieter, more acoustic pop songs–but that doesn’t stop the bouncy strumming and Elliott Smith-like melodies of “When I Say Bye” and the Mazzy Star-like hazy dream pop of “Memory Lane” from being as strong as anything else on the album. For a low-profile, self-released indie rock CD, Songs from a Quiet Aliso Viejo Wasteland has a highly noticeable discipline and fixation on nailing pop songs again and again. Frericks does this on every track on the record, including closing track “Holy Ghost”–which flirts with ending the album with a noisy guitar squall, only to circle back to that slick refrain one last time. (Bandcamp link)

Animal, Surrender! – Animal, Surrender!

Release date: May 17th
Record label: Ernest Jenning Record Co.
Genre: Post-rock, jazz rock, art rock, slowcore, folk rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: After

Animal, Surrender! is a new project from two prolific musicians. Multi-instrumentalist Peter Kerlin is a member of Trouble in Mind experimental jazz-punker group Sunwatchers and has played with everyone from John Dwyer to Ted Leo to Writhing Squares, while drummer Rob Smith’s credits include The Pigeons, Rhyton, and Animal Piss It’s Everywhere. Given everything the duo have been involved with, the self-titled debut Animal, Surrender! album could sound like just about anything, but it’s clear from just a single listen that Kerlin (who wrote the majority of these songs) and Smith had a singular, cohesive idea in mind while putting together this record. Animal, Surrender! does contain traces of jazz music like Sunwatchers–but that’s where the similarities end. These seven songs embrace the sparse and quiet end of jazz-rock–it’s reminiscent of 90s guitar-driven post-rock, as well as the more experimental and subdued side of the Dischord Records discography. Lengthy instrumental passages and intertwining rhythms abound, but there are some surprising moments of pop music hidden in the vastness of Animal, Surrender!. 

The opening title track of Animal, Surrender! is a soft launch, with guitar and bass hesitantly approaching each other before the percussion begins and the song commences with an increasingly less uneasy push forward. Kerlin and Smith then throw us to the wolves in the form of “King Panic”, a seven-minute piece featuring trippy, wobbling drumwork, spindly guitars, and surprisingly busy-sounding bass. After that is the first of the two covers on Animal, Surrender!, a song originally released a couple of years ago by Mike Wexler called “Again”. With “Again”, Animal, Surrender! shift into “accessible” mode and turn in a quiet and sprawling but still clearly-defined folk song (sounding like the sparser end of another band that Animal, Surrender! evokes, Yo La Tengo). The other cover on Animal, Surrender! is Nick Drake’s “One of These Things First”–the duo once again assume the form of a stretched-out folk rock group, although there’s an uneasiness to Kerlin’s vocals here, with the despair of the original still peaking through Animal, Surrender!’s less transparent aims. Kerlin’s “Sacred and Profane Love” closes the album with its sparest moment, with little more than intermittent guitar and basslines plodding along for three minutes. It feels funereal, but, at the same time, it’s part of a record that shows that there’s plenty of life in Animal, Surrender!. (Bandcamp link)

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