Pressing Concerns: Quivers, Jr. Juggernaut, Energy Slime, Share

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It’s time for the Thursday Pressing Concerns, and today we’ve got a bunch of great albums that are coming out tomorrow, August 9th, to look at below. New LPs from Quivers, Jr. Juggernaut, Energy Slime, and Share grace this edition, so check them out and get excited for ’em below. This is a great finale to a great week on the blog, which also featured a Monday Pressing Concerns (looking at records from Biz Turkey, Friendship Commanders, TIFFY, and Smokers) and the July 2024 playlist on Tuesday, so 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.

Quivers – Oyster Cuts

Release date: August 9th
Record label: Merge
Genre: Indie pop, power pop, college rock, jangle pop
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
Pull Track: Pink Smoke

I’ve written about a fair amount of Australian indie pop bands on this blog before, but, believe it or not, I’ve only really scratched the surface of everything going on down there. For instance: before now, I’d never written about Quivers, a Hobart-originating, Melbourne-based quartet who were last seen in 2020 releasing an album-length cover of R.E.M.’s Out of Time and then an original album (Golden Doubt) on Bobo Integral and Ba Da Bing! the following year. Quivers actually have roots going back even further than that–half of the band (vocalist/guitarist Sam Nicholson and guitarist Michael Panton) appeared on the first Quivers record, 2018’s We’ll Go Riding on the Hearses, but Golden Doubt added bassist/vocalist Bella Quinlan and drummer Holly Thomas, and this is also the lineup that appears on Oyster Cuts, their debut for Merge Records. On their third album of original material, Quivers are dogged pursuers of perfect guitar pop–their mix of college rock, C86, power pop, and new wave is as shined up and sparkly in its presentation as Nicholson and Quinlan’s vocals are intimate and distinct. For all its ambition, Oyster Cuts stubbornly declines to embrace anonymity–it doesn’t hide the fact that it was made by Australian lifers who love The Chills and Pavement, nor does it stop at that surface-level descriptor.

I don’t want to get too hung up on the first track, because all of Oyster Cuts is worth dissecting, but “Never Be Lonely” is such an incredible proof-of-concept song for the entire idea of “indie pop”. It’s just as effective in its laser-precision as “real” pop music with its chugging power chords and flourishes of guitars and synths, and Quinlan touches something palpably emotional as a vocalist. But at the same time, Quivers have the freedom to sing something like “All I ever wanted was a true friend / All I wanted was a friend with benefits / All I ever wanted was transcendence,” let it linger with the power of the greatest 80s pop songs you could name–and then move onto something completely different with “Pink Smoke”. “Pink Smoke” recalls the more low-key, laid-back side of Aussie guitar pop, but when Quivers sing “People go together ‘til they’re intertwined” as a unit, it sounds just as huge as the song that preceded it. The “Shady Lane” nod in “Apparition” is pretty undeniable, both in how good Quivers make it sound and its ability to commune with the rest of the track (another key lyric: “I can hear you loud and clear, but I don’t know what you’re saying”). Oyster Cuts indulges in three different five minute power ballads, but that’s hardly an issue given their quality (the smooth soft rock of “Grief Has Feathers” is my favorite, but I won’t hear a bad word about the swooning “Screensaver” or the smoky “Reckless”, either). This side of Quivers is quite impressive–but then, so is their ability to seemingly put everything they’ve got into something like that and then turn around and rip through a two-minute power pop tune like “Fake Flowers”. (Bandcamp link)

Jr. Juggernaut – Another Big Explosion

Release date: August 9th
Record label: Mindpower/Nickel Eye
Genre: Alt-rock, power pop, grunge pop, fuzz rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Come Break My Heart

Who doesn’t love Sugar’s Copper Blue? I’ll tell you who certainly loves Sugar’s Copper Blue–Jr. Juggernaut, a Los Angeles-based alt-rock/power-punk trio who’ve just put together an album honing in on the sound Bob Mould’s band achieved on their 1992 classic. Jr. Juggernaut have actually been around for quite a while–since 2005, they’ve put out three full-length albums and a handful of EPs and singles (including a split release with the great Two Cow Garage in 2009). Singer/guitarist Mike Williamson and drummer Wal Rashidi have been in the band since the early days, but they welcome bassist Noah Green to the fold on Another Big Explosion, their fourth LP and first in eight years. Green’s main band, The Pretty Flowers, makes more laid-back, Replacements-indebted pop punk, but Jr. Juggernaut embraces a louder, more dramatic sound pulled from the moment “underground rock” bubbled to the surface. There’s nothing on Another Big Explosion that could be described as “slacker” or halfhearted, from Williamson’s 110% all-the-time vocals to the Modern Rock Radio-ready hooks to the cranked-up, heavy-duty alt-rock sheen of the music (Washidi and Williamson co-produced the record, and were clearly on the same page as to how huge it should sound).

There’s a Mouldian “pop music as endurance test” element to Another Big Explosion–the ten songs are almost all in the four-to-five minute range, and they’re roaring at full blast pretty much the entire time. It’s a key ingredient in making the album feel like a towering mountain, but Jr. Juggernaut summit it nonetheless, from the triumphant yet chilly all-in opening of “Come Break My Heart” onwards. Lyrically, Williamson traverses well-trod pop music territory, with songs like “Hang On”(punched up by pop punk “woah-ohs”)  and “Everything I Touch” (“…turns black and blue”) taking the shapes of their title sentiments. I don’t mean to make it sound like faint praise, but the simplicity works on Another Big Explosion–the most impressive and important part is that Williamson, after leading a punk band for two decades, can tap into something this primal to match the urgent, frantic, sweeping pop songs that Jr. Juggernaut are playing here.  Williamson’s howls are all of that, but they’re also form-fitting, able to sell the moments of might and of shier power pop hooks in tracks like “Million Miles”, “I Believe”, and “Lonely Boy” (which bounce between a few different classic punk-pop tricks, keeping things just fresh and distinct enough). Another Big Explosion also separates itself from the pack by going just as hard in the clear “album tracks” (like mid-record pounder “Inclined” or closing barnburner “Total Darkness”) as in the obvious singles like “Everything I Touch” and “Come Break My Heart”. It would’ve been a record worth fishing out of the bargain bin thirty years ago, and it’s worth taking in as a whole now. (Bandcamp link)

Energy Slime – Planet Perfect

Release date: August 9th
Record label: We Are Time
Genre: New wave, synthpop, post-punk
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Clowning Around

As a producer and engineer, Vancouver’s Jay Arner has worked with bands like Tough Age, Apollo Ghosts, and Fortunato Durutti Marinetti, but he’s made his own music for just as long–he spent the 2000s playing in Western Canada groups International Falls and The Poison Dart, and he put out three solo albums in the 2010s. All of Arner’s solo material has featured instrumental and vocal contributions from his spouse, Jessica Delisle, and the couple also have a project they co-helm called Energy Slime. Energy Slime debuted back in 2014 with a lo-fi psych pop EP called New Dimensional–after a decade away, Planet Perfect is the group’s first full-length, and it finds the duo adapting their sound for the big screen. Arner and Delisle are still pretty offbeat–psychedelia, prog-rock, and synth-funk shade these ten songs–but on Planet Perfect, these odd detours are kept to the margins and only ever employed in the service of dressing up pop songs. Planet Perfect is a home-recorded synthpop album that isn’t at all constrained by the circumstances of its creation, both in the memorable vocal hooks (delivered by both Delisle and Arner) that would shine through no matter what and in the maximalist yet streamlined arrangements the duo give these tracks.

To some degree, Planet Perfect sounds like giving a couple of 80s pop wizards the keys to the recording studio and letting them cook–with the lack of excess or obviously dated production choices being the primary timestamp suggesting otherwise. The record is one lavishly-presented polished pop exercise after another, with “Throw Me a Bone” featuring soaring synths and a real-deal guitar solo right in the midst of its lackadaisical structure, while “Negative Attention” is a piece of garishly-bright pop balladry, and “Magic Wand” bubbles under the surface of Arner’s relatively subtle vocals. The synth-led power pop of “Clowning Around” combines that robotic main riff with propulsive verses and an almost prog-pop chorus–it shouldn’t be on paper, but it’s one of the most immediately accessible songs on Planet Perfect. The new wave-y “High Society” recaptures some of that energy in Side Two, but the album’s back end is also where Energy Slime let some of their more groove-based tendencies rise to the surface. Although this manifests in “Live or Die” mainly via a greater emphasis on rhythms, the title track is full-on electro-funk, spoken-word segment and everything, and “After Life” embarks on a five-minute steady synthpop trek to close out the album. Planet Perfect starts to feel like a real place after a while–after ten years away, Energy Slime are immersed in it enough to fully embody the feeling the phrase evokes. (Bandcamp link)

Share – Have One

Release date: August 9th
Record label: Forged Artifacts
Genre: Alt-country, garage rock, basement rock
Formats: Cassette, digital
Pull Track:  County Lines

Share is a new band made up of three Bay Area indie rock veterans–singer/guitarist Jeff Day has played in post-hardcore groups Calculator and Never Young, Peter Kegler (also singer/guitarist) leads alt-country group Half Stack, and bassist/drummer Dylan Allard has been busy between Freak No Hitter, Fake Fruit, and Jay Som. Share arose during the pandemic–all three of them had songs they were working on, and this new project allowed them to bring all their ideas to the table as “creative equals”. Day moved to Los Angeles in 2021, delaying their on-record debut, but they continued to piece Have One together, finally finishing it last year and releasing it via Forged Artifacts (Greg Mendez, Ahem, Sonny Falls). The three-headed composition is perhaps why Have One is such an odd-sounding record–it’s certainly in the realms of “slacker rock” and “college rock”, putting it alongside new records from indie rock lifers like Dogbreth, Dusk, and their labelmates Ahem, but it’s not as cleanly devoted to power pop as those acts. That’s certainly a part of it, but Share is a repository for all sorts of rock and roll ideas, from garage rock to post-punk to psychedelic alt-country.

“Fallin Back on U” kicks off Have One with a pleasingly Frankensteined-together rock anthem–there are moments of Thin Lizzy-esque guitar soloing, country rock dust, jangle pop, and a lead vocal that’s way more aggressive and almost paranoid-sounding for this kind of song. It’s kind of an “anything goes” mission statement opener–which means that, even though the mid-tempo, Big Riff-led garage-y post-punk of “It Spins” that immediately follows it is a sharp left turn, it’s not exactly “out of nowhere”. The highest concentration of “Share as a pop band” is found right in the middle of Have One–“(Surfing to) My End” is some pleasing West Coast psychedelic country pop, “Memories” finds the trio polishing up their sound for a bit of smooth, propulsive alt-rock, and “County Lines” provides enough “power pop” for the entire record in its four-point-five-minute windows-down ecstasy. The back end of Have One does offer up one last slacker-rock singalong anthem (“Cruiser”), but the record bows out with a six-minute tune called “The Light, It Pulls You In” that spends the majority of its length meditating on a simple, slow-building instrumental before finally finding blown-out catharsis in its final minute. It’s a memorable cap for a record that doesn’t have a “central” leader but nonetheless never feels aimless or directionless. (Bandcamp link)

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