Pressing Concerns: Christina’s Trip, Donald Beaman, Lithobrake, Dogbear

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The second Pressing Concerns of the week is a nice and varied assortment of great records from the past couple of months for you to explore–we’ve got new LPs from Christina’s Trip, Donald Beaman, Lithobrake, and Dogbear all featured below. If you missed yesterday’s post, featuring new records from Macseal, West of Roan, Other Half, and Tension Pets, check that one 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.

Christina’s Trip – Forever After

Release date: July 5th
Record label: Cherub Dream
Genre: Indie pop, dream pop, noise pop, twee, 90s indie rock
Formats: Vinyl, cassette, digital
Pull Track: I’ll Take It

Earlier this year, I wrote about a couple of different releases from San Francisco-based Cherub Dream Records. Both records–an EP from Sucker and an LP from Buddy Junior–reflected the distorted, insular, and experimental side of the Bay Area’s thriving guitar pop scene, although both contained a fair amount of pop hooks amongst the noise. The latest Cherub Dream release is the debut record from Oakland’s Christina’s Trip, an indie pop quartet led by its namesake, Christina Busler (vocals/guitar), and also featuring Buddy Junior’s JB Lenar on guitar, Nick Bruder (ex-Culture Abuse) on bass, and drummer Alec Moore. Despite the nods to noisemakers Sonic Youth and Eric’s Trip in the band and album names, Forever After is the most pop-forward record I’ve heard from Cherub Dream yet–led by Busler’s clear vocals, the record’s eight songs float pop melodies towards the listener wistfully but confidently. The guitars are loud but not overly distorted or blanketing, recalling undersung 90s indie rock groups like The Spinanes and Velocity Girl and even early guitar-based dream pop, while the band’s lo-fi, off-the-cuff attitude evokes prime K Records.

Every song on Forever After begins with the same metallic cowbell countoff from Moore, the first unique stamp that Christina’s Trip give their take on the genre. Opening track “Swim” is just about a perfect introduction to the group, with everything from the soaring guitar leads, Busler’s Cocteau Twins-esque breathing-as-instrument, and the understated but nevertheless undeniable central vocal melody all ensuring that it’s a pop classic (“If I were to die today, it would’ve been worth it / Just to swim in the ocean” is also a hell of a first lyric). The rest of Forever After’s first half offers up distorted (“My Friend”), dark (“Depresso”), and nostalgic (“Companion”) versions of Christina’s Trip’s sound, but the second half actually outpaces the first half both in terms of pop music and inventiveness. After the jangly dream pop of “Can’t Hurt Me Now”, “I’ll Take It” is a searing four-chord ballad that’s breathtaking in its blunt discomfort. The only way to follow something like that up is to change tack completely, and Christina’s Trip subsequently launch into another one of my favorites on the record, “Playthings”, immediately afterwards, embracing lo-fi indie punk and American twee in ways they hadn’t previously (“Are we born to be our parent’s playthings? / To be bought and sold and fucked,” absolutely blistering delivery here) and “Burning” closes the record out with a steady flame. I’ve gone through the whole record at this point, but the overall consistency is key in just how strong a debut Forever After is. I’m excited to hear more from Christina’s Trip. (Bandcamp link)

Donald Beaman – Fog on Mirror Glass

Release date: June 14th
Record label: Royal Oakie
Genre: Folk rock, singer-songwriter
Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital
Pull Track: Glass Bottom Boat

A neat thing about having a music blog is that I regularly find out about people who’ve been making good music for decades that I wouldn’t have come across otherwise. Not that there haven’t been opportunities for me to discover Donald Beaman before now–either via his previous life as a member of buzzy New York 2000s indie band The Double (they put out an album on Matador and everything!) or his current run as an Oakland-based solo artist, releasing five solo albums since 2015 and sharing bills with everyone from Jonathan Richman to Mdou Moctar. We join Beaman with the release of Fog on Mirror Glass, his fifth solo album and first for Royal Oakie (Curling, Sugar Candy Mountain, Sea Dramas), and while watching an artist grow and mature in real time is exciting, there’s also something to be said for just dropping in on someone’s career to find them in the midst of making confident and relaxed music like a veteran singer-songwriter. Fog on Mirror Glass is folk rock at the opposite end of the spectrum from labelmates Sea Dramas’ dreamy, layered sound–Beaman’s songs sit fairly unadorned throughout the record, with his singing and guitar playing only intermittently accompanied by bassist Kirt Lind and drummer Michael Nalin.

It’s difficult to describe just how serenely Beaman opens Fog on Mirror Glass–“Glass Bottom Boat” is an almost impossibly-tranquil sounding song, gently rolling guitar and simple vocals tugging each other along ever so slowly. It’s a subtle throwing down of the gauntlet, declaring with pin-drop quiet that Beaman needs very little to make an impact. Although Fog on Mirror Glass doesn’t quite embrace pure zen in the same way as the opening track (with the arguable exception of closing track “Bamboo”), Beaman offers up plenty of other highlights featuring just his voice and guitar, from the daydreaming reminiscences of “Awhile” to the (relatively) rough-around-the-edges folk of “Makeshift Room” to the skeletal balladry of “Usual Phantom”. When Beaman is joined by Lind and Nalin, there’s a difference, but not a disjointed one–rather than the bass and drums transforming his songs, it feels like Beaman’s shifting them, taking them on wandering, floating odysseys across the sweeping “Valley Floor” and the tiptoeing “Paper Screen”. “Old Universe” is probably the most upbeat song on the record, with the trio morphing into a slow but sturdy country groove (you can add the “cosmic” modifier to that, it fits). If I was more familiar with Beaman’s previous work, I’d probably be tempted to view Fog on Mirror Glass as some kind of culmination, but instead I’m either cursed or blessed to see the album as a rewarding record on its own. (Bandcamp link)

Lithobrake – Lithobrake

Release date: May 31st
Record label: Cassowary
Genre: 90s indie rock, garage rock, post-punk
Formats: Digital
Pull Track: Props

Last year, I wrote about the debut EP from a new Washington, D.C.-based band called Lithobrake. The trio, comprised of vocalist/guitarist Craig Grande, bassist Kyle Nicholson, and drummer Al Shipley (who I was already familiar with due to his solo project, Western Blot, as well as his work as a music writer), debuted a familiar but compelling sound on EP1, one that delivered 90s-style “slacker” indie rock with a rough (but not really “lo-fi”) punk edge to it. If you missed the Lithobrake EP, not to worry, as its five songs are all included in their self-titled debut album, which arrives a year and change later (but if you’ve already listened to it quite a bit, as I have, the songs are helpfully tacked onto the end of the album behind eleven brand new, previously-unreleased recordings). It makes sense to include the EP’s songs on Lithobrake, as the band’s first full-length statement is very much in line with their first release, with no huge departures or “polishing up” of their sound to be found (they might’ve all been recorded at the same time, I’m not sure). If anything, Lithobrake sound like they’re embracing the looser, more ramshackle aspects of their sound here, viewing it as a feature rather than a bug.

Just about every song on Lithobrake sounds like the trio have stumbled onto the perfect take of the track, although if anyone follows the recording diaries of Shipley (who also produced and mixed the album), you’re aware that real work went into making this album sound “incidental”. The crashing guitars and shouting refrain of “The Decays” make it a perfect indie punk kickoff song, and while the next few songs on the record (the speedy “Fascinated”, the messy post-punk-pop of “Props”, the slightly Dischord-tinged “Sad Moon”) aren’t quite as immediately cathartic, they’ve all got a clear energy to them that’s coming into focus as one of Lithobrake’s clearest strengths. As the record progresses, you’ll get Lithobrake in short bursts (“Melting Down” and “Tablecloth”, two sub-two-minute tracks that are exactly as long as they need to be) and in the five-minute “Salvia”, a slow-burner that really shows the band locking in together as a “power trio”.  I still think the low-key guitar pop of EP1’s “Bats” is my favorite Lithobrake song overall, but I’ll happy take it as a hidden gem in the midst of a fully-loaded forty-five minute LP in addition to its original position as the leadoff to a tight, five-song EP. (Bandcamp link)

Dogbear – Herd Your Horses

Release date: May 8th
Record label: Self-released
Genre: Art rock, experimental rock, prog-pop
Formats: Digital
Pull Track: Further

Dogbear are a mysterious “studio-based duo” from Los Angeles, and the project’s two anonymous architects have been making music together since at least the beginning of this decade. They released a seven-song, twenty-five minute record called Un Petit Déjeuner back in 2020, but they consider Herd Your Horses their “debut album”, and given that it’s twice as long as Un Petit Déjeuner, this seems like a reasonable delineation. Pretty much all the context I have for Herd Your Horses is this lengthy Spotify playlist of inspirations for the album, and while I can’t say that I hear all of it in this record, it’s sufficient to take note on how Dogbear is pulling from experimental, ambitious rock music from across several decades (The Beach Boys, King Crimson, Melvins, Deerhoof, Animal Collective, Grizzly Bear). In particular, Animal Collective is worth highlighting, as Herd Your Horses shares with them a mutated, contorted vision of classic pop rock (a trait also found in the modern band Dogbear reminds me the most of, Curling). Psychedelic, jazz, electronic, and even a bit of punk shades the record’s eleven tracks, in service of a stuffed, saturated debut album whose strengths stretch far beyond its humble anonymous origins.

Dogbear’s opening shot is the sensory overload of “Further”, which manages to pack an entire microcosm of Herd Your Horses into its futuristic, blaring kitchen-sink pop four minutes. The somewhat frazzled yacht rock of “So We’re Not Talking” is a little more laid-back, although it’s still relatively busy, and the frantic freak folk strumming that introduces the next song, the six-minute “Scattershot”, kicks off a song that lives up to its title. “Bird’s Nest” shifts the “Dogbear sound” into something more streamlined and fast-paced, a hard-charging number that seems like their version of “punk rock”, but this doesn’t signal a sea change, as some of the hardest songs to grasp on Herd Your Horses (“Doap”, “Don’t Fuck with Lorna Doom”) follow shortly afterward. The headiest section of Herd Your Horses is arguably its final third–“Windows Down” is Dogbear’s version of a Crimson-esque prog-rock steamroller, and then the penultimate “Systems Theory/Ryanomics” is an uncompromising detour into post-rock, jazz, electronics, and ambient music. “Beachside” closes Herd Your Horses with a grand send-off, but it’s once again on Dogbear’s terms–acoustic guitars and chimes offer an olive branch in the midst of frantic percussion and opaque lyricism, a spirited and unique punctuation mark on a record worth digging into. (Bandcamp link)

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