Pressing Concerns: Teenage Tom Petties, Cowboy Boy, Footballhead, True Optimist

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In a superb Thursday Pressing Concerns, we’re looking at four new records coming out tomorrow, August 2nd: new LPs from Teenage Tom Petties, Cowboy Boy, and True Optimist, as well as a “mini-album” from Footballhead. It’s been a great week on the blog, so if you missed Monday’s post (featuring Nightshift, Sylvia Sawyer James, Goodbye Wudaokou, and Manners Manners) or Tuesday’s (featuring Birdie, Miserable chillers, Rated Eye, and Lowmoon), be sure to check those 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.

Teenage Tom Petties – Teenage Tom Petties

Release date: August 2nd
Record label: Safe Suburban Home/Repeating Cloud
Genre: Lo-fi power pop
Formats: Cassette, digital
Pull Track: Handstands for Your Love

Three years, three Teenage Tom Petties albums–and oddly enough, two self-titled ones. The Teenage Tom Petties emerged in 2022 as the lo-fi power pop solo project of Bath, England’s Tom Brown, previously best known as one-half of Rural France (who are still going strong, having released an LP earlier this year, as well). The home-recorded first Teenage Tom Petties album was an entirely Brown affair, but the group ballooned to a three-guitar, five-piece rock and roll band for last year’s Hotbox Daydreams, an impressive step forward in more ways than it being the act’s first “studio” album. Brown writes at too quick of a clip for his own band to keep up with him (the fact that two of them live in the United States seems like it’s also a hindrance), so, while there are “plans” for future full-band Teenage Tom Petties albums, the latest record under the name finds Brown back in his bedroom, recording (mostly) alone yet again (Safe Suburban Home’s Jim Quinn contributes some bass, and Repeating Cloud/Lemon Pitch’s Galen Richmond some backing vocals). In a very Weezer-esque move, Brown has declared the second Teenage Tom Petties to be a sequel to the first one by giving it the same title (what nickname will TTP-heads eventually give this record to differentiate it? “The one with the kid on the cover” doesn’t even work).

Brown’s been a sharp pop songwriter for as long as I’ve known of him, but Hotbox Daydreams was a real leveling-up moment for him–it’s just hit after hit. Maybe the band brought it out of him at first, but Teenage Tom Petties II is a worthy sequel not just to its homonymous predecessor, but to the group’s sophomore record, bedroom or no. Opening track “I Got Previous” is a massive-sounding power pop/slacker rock anthem (yes, it’s worth of the A-word) that balances instant mythmaking (the title phrase, which I suspect will enter my lexicon as soon as I figure out how to incorporate it), nods to the trailblazers (“I got a plan, though / I’m Evan Dando”, as well as The Blue Album just in the song’s whole vibe), and self-effacement (the humble delivery of “Hey Jeanine / Yeah, it’s me / Tom from ‘93”, as well as the use of “clusterfuck” and “liquid lunch” as personal descriptors)–all over a wobbly but effective wall of guitars. “Hawaiian Air” is the archetypal “second track” for this kind of music–a little weirder, a little “cooler”, sneakier but just as effective in its hooks (if we’re doing the sequel thing, it qualifies as a more subtle version of “Lambo” from the first album).

The breezier moments on the first half of the album do exactly what they need to do–in the case of “Tuff Top”, it’s to trail off while Brown sings a bit of Jackson 5 over the chords, and “This Autumn Body” has to tilt towards jangly college rock but without abandoning the swagger of the louder side of the Teenage Tom Petties. In both cases, they’re just light enough to compliment “Dumb Enough”, a straight-up Superdrag/Rentals torpedo of a track that would easily be the best thing on the record if there wasn’t also a lot of other very good songs on it. A lot of these rivals are found on the second half of Teenage Tom Petties, which could very well be the best half of the record–it’s a strong argument between “Night Nurse” (a sub-two-minute careening thing that has enough juice for a song that’s three or four times its size), “Handstands for Your Love” (a big-hearted, timeless-sounding thing that was my first favorite and will probably be yours, too), and “Ex Gf Day” (Brown landing an airplane that I didn’t even realize we were on, calling back to the opening track and ending the album on the phone with an ex). Once Teenage Tom Petties became a “real band”, they could’ve slowed down and started putting out increasingly polished and “developed” albums every couple of years or so, like a “normal” act. Luckily for us, Tom Brown isn’t following any trajectory but his own. (Bandcamp link)

Cowboy Boy – Lipstick on a Pig

Release date: August 2nd
Record label: Get Better
Genre: Pop punk, power pop, alt-rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Nice Girl

The latest album from Los Angeles duo Cowboy Boy begins with vocalist Olivia Maria singing “Somebody said on the internet, ‘You’ll never meet your soulmate at Great Scott’ / And it makes me laugh ‘cause I think it’s true in every single other case but ours”, and one of the last things on the record is a song called “Dume” in which Maria decides against saying “hey” or apologizing to an ex and declaring “That’s why I can’t love you anymore”. It’s been a long time since high school English, so I don’t think this fits the definition of “dramatic irony” (if you’re reading this, Mr. Adams, I’m sorry)–but it’s certainly dramatic and ironic. As is putting together a whirlwind messy breakup album in which the central relationship is intertwined with serious self-image issues and then titling said album Lipstick on a Pig. But such is the way of Cowboy Boy–Maria and Mike Nevin, who began making music in Boston in the mid-2010s, putting out a couple of EPs (2017’s Princess, 2021’s Good Girl) before emerging in southern California with their first proper full-length album. The band’s early recordings were intriguing combinations of alt-rock, pop punk, and even a bit of emo, but Lipstick on a Pig feels like a big step forward, Maria and Nevin moving in lockstep to make a tour de force power pop album that sounds big enough to capture Maria’s writing.

Maria truly runs the gamut throughout Lipstick on a Pig, appropriately for an album that charts her mental trajectory in incredibly frank terms. “Great Scott” uses the now-defunct Boston venue as a jumping-off point for a genuinely incredible love song; she’s dusting the wreckage off of herself in “Nice Girl”, she pulls off sheer desperation in “Dissolver Part 2”, and she just lays it all out there in mid-record power ballad “Perfectly”. The main theme of Lipstick on a Pig is expanded upon via songs like “Grown Up”, a reckoning with being failed and abandoned by some kind of parental/guardian figure, and “Clean Girl”, a classic despairing “endless scroll” anthem. The subject matter of “Clean Girl” is hardly an original one these days (in fact, their labelmates Bacchae had a good one about it on their new album last month); in context, though, it adds to the poisonous concoction ticking in Maria’s mind. The guitar solos help, too–Nevin’s ambitious, showy guitar playing puts the “power” in Cowboy Boy’s “power pop”; it’s a bit like another “break-up soundtracked by guitar heroics” album from recently, The Dreaded Laramie’s Princess Feedback. While that record had something of a self-aware remove to it, though, Lipstick on a Pig features much less clarity–Maria comes off as much more “in the thick of it” throughout the entire album, right up to the switching between “I wish I didn’t love you anymore” and  “That’s why I can’t love you anymore,” in “Dume”. “Are we over, is this over yet?” she sings in the final track “Over”–there’s no answer, but the guitar that plays the song out sounds great. (Bandcamp link)

Footballhead – Before I Die

Release date: August 2nd
Record label: Tiny Engines
Genre: Alt-rock, pop punk, emo-punk, fuzz rock, grunge-gaze
Formats: Digital
Pull Track: Before I Die

Last year, I wrote about Overthinking Everything, the self-released debut album from Chicago’s Footballhead. Led by Ryan Nolen and aided by collaborators Adam Siska and Snow Ellet, Footballhead’s first LP offered plenty of catchy, 90s alt-rock-indebted power pop and and caught the ear of the newly-revived Tiny Engines, who re-released the record this March as one of their first post-hiatus records. Those of us who had heard Overthinking Everything beforehand didn’t have to wait long for Tiny Engines to put out brand-new Footballhead music, however–just a few months later, we’re greeted with Before I Die, a “mini-album” featuring seven new Footballhead songs. Engineered and mixed by Snow Ellet, the latest from Footballhead continues the band’s exploration of slick, polished alt-rock with pop punk hooks–they already sounded like a heavier and darker version of Snow Ellet’s own music, and Before I Die hones in on these traits. Guitar pop music at its most greyscale, Footballhead is dead serious about walls of guitars and supercharged hooks–no grinning, not even a smirk, just craft.

“It’s not all that bad for me / ‘Cause I find peace in apathy,” Nolen sings in Before I Die’s title track, one of the most vibrant moments on the mini-album. One part grunge-gaze and one part power pop, the great compromise of “Before I Die” arrives smack dab in the middle of a record that spends its first half diving into the depths of Footballhead’s sound. “My Direction” sprints with the energy of 90s punk rock, with Nolen’s skulking lead vocal performance not too laden with chains to soar in the chorus, while “Crushing Me” is the record’s first indication that Footballhead could have a very nice career appealing to the subset of alt-rocker who can’t go two sentences without mentioning Hum or Deftones, should they choose to pursue it. The title track and the similarly-minded “Stupefied” (whose scribbled alt-rock guitar hook almost sounds–dare I say it–fun) offer up something of an olive branch, but Footballhead still bring a jagged edge to the rest of the record– “Your Ghost” is a furnace of guitar riffs, and the otherwise-atmospheric “As for What?” has a genuine hardcore breakdown right in the middle of it. As mid-tempo closing track “In Motion” trails off towards its uncertain conclusion, Footballhead wrap up an intriguing record–something that feels fairly distinct from Overthinking Everything, and a record that in the future we’ll be able to categorize as either an interesting detour or the first indication of where the next Footballhead full-length would go. Right now, though, I’m just appreciating Before I Die as some enjoyably sharp and dour alt-rock. (Bandcamp link)

True Optimist – Mental Health

Release date: August 2nd
Record label: Self Aware
Genre: Post-punk, art rock, experimental rock, jazz-pop
Formats: Digital
Pull Track: One Way

Evan Plante is a punk veteran–since the late nineties, he’s played in several emo, screamo, hardcore, and post-hardcore groups from Massachusetts and Virginia (Light the Fuse and Run, Forcefedglass, Bastian) before eventually settling in Charlotte, North Carolina. Plante continued in playing in bands like Black Market and Hello Handshake up until at least the mid-2010s, but somewhere along the way became fairly disillusioned with “the same old music” and “didn’t touch an instrument” for four years. The void left by punk rock became filled with bossa nova, afrobeat, and pop music of several decades past, with Plante being drawn in by music emphasizing some of the furthest concerns from his previous output–namely, well-crafted, polished pop hooks and hypnotic, meditative rhythms. Eventually he found himself wanting to try a hand at making that kind of music and True Optimist, Plante’s first solo project, was born. Assisted mainly by his wife, Susan Plante, on keyboards and backing vocals (you may remember her as one-half of 90s alt-rock revivalists Faye), Mental Health is low-key but inspired, featuring snaking basslines and perfunctory percussion traversing the landscape alongside Plante’s low, in-command crooning.

We’re a long way from hardcore punk, but Mental Health’s opening track, “Do, Be”, is confrontational in a different way–it’s five minutes of minimal, mechanical percussion, circular keyboard and bass rhythms, and ambient piano, with fairly infrequent vocals popping up throughout the song. “One Way” is a little louder, but still feels captivatingly scattered–the bare post-punk rhythm section occasionally is accompanied by almost random-seeming moments of guitar (often sounding “too loud” in comparison to the rest of the song), while Plante’s falsetto is more coherent but almost out-of-place. “Almost” is a key word for True Optimist–after living in the world of the perfunctory, Plante gets to explore the offbeat and intangible throughout Mental Health, like how “What You Wear” never quite congeals into the brisk post-punk song it hints at, or how “People” almost points towards reggae and jazz but never clearly breaks through. That being said, when Plante really embraces the “pop” side of True Optimist, the wrinkles become less pronounced–the sunny, dreamy synthpop of “Stayin Alive”, the bedroom jazz-rock charm of “Race the Sun”, and the sturdy, warm keyboard tones of “The Argument” (which pleasingly evokes Smoke Bellow) give Mental Health some varied “hits” in its second half. By the time we reach closing track “Bloviator”, Plante sounds the most confident he’s been yet, adopting a smooth falsetto (and centering it in the mix) to sing nothing but the song’s title over and over again. Head-scratching, but there’s undeniably something there. (Bandcamp link)

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