Pressing Concerns: Ethan Beck & The Charlie Browns, Babe Report, Neutrals, Winston Hightower

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I probably say this most weeks by now, but that doesn’t make it any less true: this Thursday Pressing Concerns is one for the books. New albums from Ethan Beck & The Charlie Browns, Babe Report, and Neutrals, plus a vinyl compilation from Winston Hightower–all great, all out tomorrow (May 31st), all to be found below. For more fun, check out Monday’s blog post (featuring The Noisy, Alice Kat, Drug Country, and Dog Park) and/or Tuesday’s post (Comprador, From Far It All Seems Small, Jacob Freddy, Animal, Surrender!).

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.

Ethan Beck & The Charlie Browns – Duck Hollow

Release date: May 31st
Record label: Douglas Street
Genre: Power pop, college rock, jangle pop
Formats: Cassette, digital
Pull Track: Fear and Loathing in Gramercy

Ethan Beck is a musician from Pittsburgh, and when he’s not attending college in Brooklyn or writing about music for Paste and Bandcamp Daily, he’s leading a new power pop group called Ethan Beck & The Charlie Browns. After soft-launching the project with a live EP last year, Duck Hollow is the proper full length debut from the Pittsburgh group (also featuring bassist/vocalist Esperanza Siegert Wilkinson, guitarist/vocalist Atticus Crowley, and drummer/percussionist Mike Stolarz), and it’s an instantly-enjoyable collection of immediate, compelling guitar pop. Beck references Material Issue as an inspiration (among others) for the Charlie Browns’ sound, and Duck Hollow certainly backs it up in places, pulling together giant hooks with electric alt-rock, although the album also contains more delicate pop songs that are more reminiscent of Fountains of Wayne, The Tisburys, Hurry, and Matthew Milia. Beck has a natural-sounding gift for melody in his vocals–typically front and center in the mix–and as a writer, he pulls from his upbringing and the city around him. Duck Hollow is loosely a Pittsburgh-based concept album, with everything from the titular neighborhood to the one where Beck grew up (Squirrel Hill) to the Wabash Tunnel populating these songs.

I’m not sure if I’ve heard a better start to a record this year than “Fear and Loathing in Gramercy” and “Monk Eric”, which launch Duck Hollow with nothing less than two perfect power pop songs. The former track is effectively the platonic ideal of a power pop song, balancing a soaring, almost smirking confidence in its construction with the humble earnestness of Beck’s performance sitting in the middle of it all (and the chorus, which moves from a stumble to a steady strut, would guarantee this one sticking out even if the rest of the track was a clunker). “Monk Eric” is a pure sugar rush, with The Charlie Browns skipping along to Beck’s sympathetic but unfailingly honest character sketch. Songs like “And And And” and “Does This Bus Stop at Douglas?” could only ever be considered “subtle” in comparison to what comes before them, but they’re just as catchy in a slightly-more-laid-back way (and “Fear and Loathing in Squirrel Hill” shoots the energy level back up to “high” one song later, anyway).

The Charlie Browns have some tricks up their sleeves in the second half, too– “Matthew’s Song”, which shifts from a mid-tempo crooner to a waterfalling power pop anthem, and the all-too-brief, restrained-sounding, percussion-led “Brenda and Eddie” are both highlights. The band locks in for the home stretch, with “Pair of Twos” and “Wabash Tunnel” being two of their strongest moments as rockers. The latter of the two features another classic chorus, with Beck bundling up everything about the less-than-ideal relationship at the center of the song and declaring “Go ahead without me / It’s alright if you leave”. Duck Hollow, recalling many great power pop records before it, succeeds in placing us emotionally and geographically right next to Ethan Beck as he traverses the Monongahela River. (Bandcamp link)

Babe Report – Did You Get Better

Release date: May 31st
Record label: Exploding in Sound
Genre: 90s indie rock, noise rock, post-punk, garage rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Kathleen

Chicago’s Ben Grigg played in early Exploding in Sound band Geronimo!, but keeping track of his various projects since that band’s dissolution in 2015 gets pretty tricky. There’s his solo project, Whelpwisher, then there’s FKCR JR, which features guitarist Emily Bernstein among others, and Big Big Bison, which reunited Grigg with his old Geronimo! bandmates. And then we have Babe Report, which began as a “lockdown-inspired” project from Grigg and Bernstein, but by the time their debut EP, 2022’s The Future of Teeth, had rolled around, they’d added a rhythm section in bassist Mech and drummer Peter Reale (formerly of Yeesh). This lineup (with Grigg and Bernstein handling guitar and vocal duties) is the one that they take into their debut album, Did You Get Better, which is also (I believe) Grigg’s first release with Exploding in Sound since his Geronmino! days. Grigg’s recent work has covered everything from lo-fi pop to cacophonous noise rock, and I’m pleased to hear Babe Report incorporate a bit of everything–thorny, electric, and punk rock, but not without some pop smarts peeking through everything now and then.

Did You Get Better is an energy jolt of an album–at ten songs in 26 minutes, Babe Report make a racket for about two minutes and move on just as quickly. “Turtle of Reaper” crashes into focus with some assaulting Chicago noise rock in the verses before surging into an amped-up punk rock chorus, while “Universal” (which was originally recorded by Grigg by himself as Whelpwisher) incorporates a stop-start, rhythmic post-punk layer to Babe Report’s sound while still dealing with noisy garage-y rock and roll. After a couple of other noise-punk ragers, the middle of the record mixes things up a bit–“Voidreader” eventually descends into fuzz-rock but it starts off with a solid Grigg vocal hook, while Babe Report flex their experimental side on “Allergy 2000” with its slow-tempo, showy guitar leads, and murky vocals. A lot of Did You Get Better sounds like it was made by a much less patient Sonic Youth, and nowhere is this more obvious than late-record highlight “Kathleen”, a soaring rock song that captures the controlled-runway noisiness and rhythms that marked SY’s later records. “Kathleen” and “Allergy 2000” suggest a stranger, more esoteric path for Babe Report to wander down in future releases, but “Jane” is yet another interesting alternate route–towering, smoky guitar riffs mark the song, even as Grigg’s vocals are clear and poppy amongst the heavier alt-rock instrumental. Between the album’s extremely high base level of energy and everything else found underneath that sheen, you can’t accuse Babe Report of not making the most out of their first full-length statement. (Bandcamp link)

Neutrals – New Town Dream

Release date: May 31st
Record label: Slumberland/Static Shock
Genre: Jangle pop, indie pop, post-punk, power pop
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
Pull Track: The Iron That Never Swung

After playing around in various Bay Area bands like Giant Haystacks and Airfix Kits for the majority of the 2000s and the early 2010s, Glasgow native Allan McNaughton started up the trio Neutrals in 2016 with Phil Benson of Terry Malts on bass and his former Airfix Kits bandmate Phil Lantz (also of Sob Stories) on drums. Even though there’d only been one proper Neutrals album up until now (2019’s Kebab Disco), the trio have still been quite active in putting music out, from the pair of demo tapes that kicked off their career to EPs like 2020’s Rent/Your House and 2022’s Bus Stop Nights. Somewhere along the way, Seablite’s Lauren Matsui took the place of Benson, and it’s this lineup that put together New Town Dream, the sophomore Neutrals LP and first for Slumberland. McNaughton’s background is in post-punk, but Neutrals’ more indie pop/C86 sound fits well on their current label and the current Bay Area scene, with McNaughton’s plainspoken Scottish-accented vocals contrasting with the jangly and melodic (although sometimes messy in a punk-pop way) instrumentals.

New Town Dream is a continuation of the themes explored on Bus Stop Nights (the title track is even a reworking of a song that originally appeared on the EP)–one might think that a Bay Area band singing about urbanization and development would be drawing from what’s recently happened around them, but McNaughton’s primary inspiration is the plight of postwar “New Towns” in the U.K. and those who lived in them (he even cites Not for Rent, a book co-written by Grrrt, longtime sound engineer for The Ex, for its writing about the Pollok Free State in Glasgow). Reading list aside, Neutrals are a sharp pop band throughout the entirety of New Town Dream, and pretty much any guitar pop fan will be able to enjoy the bouncy “That’s Him on the Daft Stuff Again” and the ramshackle power pop of “Wish You Were Here”. McNaughton’s thematic preoccupations explicitly shade songs like “Stop the Bypass” and “The Iron That Never Swung”, but they’re just as smoothly integrated into indie pop as the rest of the record–the brisk but melancholic undertones of the latter in particular make it one of the best songs on the album. For all of two minutes, New Town Dream does get pretty out there in the form of the experimental synth piece “How Did I Get Here”, but then the band are back to post-punk-pop character studies (“Substitute Teacher”) and chugging, jangly pop anthems (“Phantom Arcade”)–the dream isn’t always rosy, but it’s certainly vibrant and colorful regardless. (Bandcamp link)

Winston Hightower – Winston Hytwr

Release date: May 31st
Record label: K/Perennial
Genre: Lo-fi indie rock, experimental rock, post-punk
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Hipswayer

I hadn’t heard of Winston Hightower before this release, but it feels like I should’ve, given his background. The Columbus, Ohio-based multi-instrumentalist (and pro skater) has been making lo-fi indie rock since the mid-2010s, sometimes just via uploading songs to his Bandcamp and other times via cassettes and CDRs on small labels like Superdreamer, Let’s Pretend, and his own FAH-Q Catalog. Hightower has never released a vinyl record, and is still fairly unknown outside of his local region–two problems that K and Perennial Records are seeking to fix with Winston Hytwr, a vinyl compilation of a dozen Winston Hightower songs selected from across his career thus far. Hightower clearly deserves to be considered as an essential part of Columbus’ lo-fi pop scene alongside acts like Times New Viking, Connections, Smug Brothers, and Healing & Peace (some of which Hightower has played with before), but Winston Hytwr paints a picture of a musician who isn’t constrained to power pop and 90s-style indie rock. Plenty of that is there, of course, but Hightower (who, according to the album’s press release, has earned the nickname “the Black R Stevie Moore”, which is too good not to repeat here) also incorporates more experimental usage of synths and a bit of offbeat jazz sensibilities, among other influences.

Winston Hytwr kicks off perfectly with “Hipswayer”, an understated but immediately enjoyable piece of indie rock built around minimal percussion, spiderwebbing guitars, and a steady bassline. After establishing just how well he can do straight-up lo-fi pop, the rest of the A-side of the record expands on this a little bit–the post-punk-y chant of “Insubordination Rules”, the rhythmic strut of “Deadbeat at Dawn”, the dizzy shuffle of “Wainbow”, and the lo-fi psychedelic rap of “Blind Pig” are all key wrinkles in developing a full image of everything that Winston Hightower encompasses. After the loudest song on the record, the roaring alt-punk-noise of “O N O”, Winston Hytwr comes the closest it ever does to “settling into a groove”–the screech-y synths and reverb-y vocals of “A Moment Like This” might be a little jarring, but Hightower incorporates them seamlessly into lo-fi pop in “Glitter Affair” and “TF” not long afterwards. Late in the runtime of Winston Hytwr, the musician once again delves into experimental, hazy lo-fi noise with “Hue Noise” and bright, almost-garish synth-led-hip-hop in “Apart of It”–by this point, the entirety of the record before these songs has already primed us to expect just about anything from Winston Hightower. (Bandcamp link)

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