Pressing Concerns: Fast Execution, Real Companion, Cowgirl, Brown Dog

The first Pressing Concerns of the new week looks at three records that came out last Friday, August 9th (new LPs from Real Companion and Cowgirl, and an EP from Fast Execution), as well as an album from Brown Dog that came out back in May. A bunch of great music below!

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Fast Execution – Menses Music

Release date: August 8^th
Record label: Dandy Boy
Genre: Punk rock, pop punk, fuzz rock, riot grrl
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: All You See Is Weather

Oakland’s Fast Execution are a new punk rock group led by guitarist/vocalist Alex Velasquez (also of Smile Too Much) and featuring her husband, cinematographer Paul Abueg-Igaz, on drums. Their debut record is a six-song 10” vinyl EP out through Bay Area stalwarts Dandy Boy Records called Menses Music, recorded with Dylan Plisken on bass (The 1981’s Alex Halatsis has since joined the band on the four-string, permanently filling the slot). From the title on down, it’s not hard to gather that Velasquez (the band’s main songwriter) is drawing from classic riot grrl on Fast Execution’s first record, although it’s firmly on the more polished and tuneful side of the subgenre–the trio make their brief but memorable first impression to the tune of garage rock, power pop, and West Coast pop punk on Menses Music. As a frontperson, Velasquez does indeed pull off riot-punk sloganeering, but for a record whose press bio says it was inspired by “ire” (at the male-dominated nature of rock music) and “hatred” (of “patriarchal machinations in rock music/modern society at large”), she displays range beyond the anger one would expect across the sub-fifteen minute EP.

Menses Music opens with a song called “Don’t Give Up (Pt. 2)”, which could also be called “the Fast Execution mission statement”. After an audio clip discussing the “hostility” of rock music towards women, the punk guitars launch in a most satisfying manner and Velasquez begins with “I’ve got a message to say, but it’ll probably go unheard / Who’s ever listened to a woman when she’s in rock and roll?”. “Don’t Give Up (Pt. 2)” pulls out all the “punk anthem” stops, but Fast Execution don’t just repeat themselves on Menses Music. The next song on the record, “All You See Is Weather”, is just as catchy but in a more casual way–its hook is a distorted but quite pleasing guitar riff, suggesting a lighter version of the grunge-soaked surf punk of one of their biggest stated influences, Wipers. “What’s Wrong with Me?” is even more of a departure from the opening statement, with the Weezer-esque fuzzy power chords soundtracking a song where Velasquez sounds much more understated, possibly even shy (“Is there something wrong with me? / Why can’t I let it be? / I think I annoyed you once again”). The other sweeping punk anthem on the EP is “Examine Yourself”, which kicks off the record’s second side and revitalizes the acid-tongued punk side of the band. Songs like this one and “Don’t Give Up (Pt. 2)” are clearly the “headlines” of Menses Music (and considering how Velasquez begins the record by speculating she won’t be heard, it makes sense that Fast Execution throw all they’ve got into songs like these)–but what the band are doing below them is almost more compelling. (Bandcamp link)

Real Companion – Nü-metal Heroes

Release date: August 9^th
Record label: Primordial Void
Genre: Country rock, folk rock, alt-country
Formats: Vinyl, cassette, digital
Pull Track: Painted Hammer

Seth Sullivan is “a sober dad who owns a cheeseburger restaurant”, and he’s also the lead singer and songwriter of Boone, North Carolina group Real Companion. After a demo EP last year, the project properly debuts this year with their first album, Nü-metal Heroes. Along with the other member of Real Companion, multi-instrumentalist/producer Derek Wycoff, the duo create a rich record of alt-country and folk-tinged rock music that’s an inspired choice to dress up Sullivan’s writing. Sullivan grew up in nearby Burke County, and much of Nü-metal Heroes is drawn from recollections and stories from earlier in his life, when he was still traversing down the path that would eventually lead to sobriety, child-rearing, and sliders. Recorded at Wycoff’s “backyard studio”, Nü-metal Heroes feels off-the-cuff but fully developed–whether the duo are trying their hand at spirited country-rockers or more streamlined, almost dreamy folk-pop, their instrumental contributions are pleasing but never taking away from the yarns Sullivan spins at the center of the songs. It all amounts to a palpably Appalachian rock record–one that isn’t constrained by its roots, but that bears the marks of them nonetheless.

Opening track “Painted Hammer” is a keyboard-aided alt-country triumph, its laconic lyrics living up to the music (“My boss was an asshole when I was 21 / I’m almost 40 now and I ain’t got one”), but Nü-metal Heroes doesn’t wait too long to display its other side with the contemplative small town reminiscing of “Amy Lynn” (“Wet swimsuits in an empty grocery bag / Six grandkids all squeezed into the back”). The record’s “rockers” are some of Real Companion’s most immediately impactful moments–the breezy, traditional southern rock of “Great Valley” is a blast, while the psych-tinged “Liberty Dreams” (with poignant lyrics about rural North Carolina teenage goths) and the six-minute “Piedmont Reason” (which is perhaps the western Carolinian version of krautrock) both register as highlights. On the other end of the spectrum, the drum machines and synths placed prominently in tracks like “Weekend Ritual” and “Wild Oak Love Song” give these tracks a more casual, almost bedroom pop feeling (even as the extra instrumental touches the duo give them ensure that there’s a bit more going on under their surfaces). Somewhere between these two ends is “Hometown Snakes”, a slow-moving country-folk shuffle in which Sullivan’s sung-spoken observations conjure up the work of Bill Callahan. “Optimism is at an all time low / But Oxycodone keeps the living slow,” sings Sullivan at the beginning of the track, and while I wouldn’t reductively call the song’s one-word refrain (“Hosanna”) “ironic”, it’s clearly shaped by the lines before it (“A decade of rope / A decade of chains / It’s all the same”). (Bandcamp link)

Cowgirl – Cut Offs

Release date: August 9^th
Record label: Safe Suburban Home
Genre: Power pop, fuzz rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Fading Lights

After a handful of singles and EPs, York quartet Cowgirl made their full-length debut back in 2021 with a seven-song, nineteen-minute self-titled record. Short and sweet, Cowgirl put the band in line with a secretly strong York guitar pop scene also populated by Sewage Farm, The Illness, and their own record label, Safe Suburban Home. For their second album, the band (co-led by singer/guitarists Danny Trew Barton and Sam Coates and rounded out by bassist Jack Jewers and drummer Jack Holdstock) have decided not to fix what isn’t broken–Cut Offs once again spans seven tracks and finishes in slightly under twenty minutes. Nonetheless, Cut Offs (recorded by Euan Hinshelwood at London’s Vacant TV Studios, same as Cowgirl) has plenty of time to impart several albums’ worth of fuzzed-out power pop hooks before it’s all said and done. The record veers from messy garage rock to (relatively) polished college rock throwbacks, but just about everything on Cut Offs is a pop success that ensures the short runtime doesn’t leave anyone feeling shortchanged. With multiple songwriters in the group, it’s perhaps not surprising that the record ranges from “basement Weezer/Velvet Crush ambitions” and “leisurely following pop melodies wherever it takes them”, but Cowgirl ensure that this becomes one of their most endearing qualities.

Cowgirl hit the ground running–the insistent drumbeat of “Against the Night” and the aural coolness of the verses of “Wake Up” start Cut Offs with the quartet at their zippiest. The energy is already there, but the middle of the record is where the band really launch themselves into the power pop stratosphere–between “Fading Lights” (a genuine slacker-pop anthem that pulls together the best of Evan Dando and Gerard Love in its jangly college rock construction and go-for-broke chorus) and “Adeline” (an easy entry into the “power pop songs whose titles are just a girl’s name” hall of fame), some of the best guitar pop music I’ve heard this year is right in the center of this little album. The Flying Nun-tinged guitar-hook excellence of “Out of Place” would be a clear highlight in most places, but here it merely keeps the massive momentum Cowgirl have conjured up rolling steady. With no space for “weak spots”, the stop-start, distortion-laden “Nobody Cares” is probably the closest thing Cut Offs has to an “album track”, but there’s still plenty of catchiness strewn about that one, and “Wasting Time” indulges just a bit in dramatics to create a memorable final rock and roll sendoff. It’s a strong final statement–but once again, it’s just Cowgirl keeping things consistent. (Bandcamp link)

Brown Dog – Lucky Star Creek

Release date: May 28^th
Record label: River House
Genre: Alt-country, folk rock
Formats: CD, digital
Pull Track: Auditorium

Back in 2021, Berkeley’s Brown Dog released See You Soon, the act’s first record. At the time, the band was a duo made up of singer-songwriter Milo Jimenez and multi-instrumentalist Haniel Roland-Holst, but in the past few years a live lineup has congealed featuring bassist Stew Homans, pedal steel player Jeff Phunmongkol, and drummer Elihu Knowles, all of whom (along with backing vocalist Sayler McBean) contribute to Lucky Star Creek, the second Brown Dog LP. As the presence of pedal steel suggests, Lucky Star Creek does indeed fit comfortably into the worlds of alt-country and twangy folk rock, but what the expanded lineup does not portend is loud, electric country rockin’. There are a few noisier moments on the album, sure, but on the whole Lucky Star Creek is a restrained and pensive listen, the extra instruments being more likely to dress up a song indebted to bedroom folk and even slowcore than they are to launch a rambling rocker. Jimenez sounds weary as a writer and vocalist throughout Lucky Star Creek, and the rest of Brown Dog manage to sound full and clear while still matching (or, at the very least, not contradicting) their frontperson.

Brown Dog move through a dozen songs in 34 minutes in Lucky Star Creek–a lot of these songs are on the brief side, and along with their laid-back delivery, require a couple of listens to really reveal themselves. One such song is “Red Teeth”, the minimal, pin-drop quiet opening track, a Sparklehorse-esque piece of rural creek folk music that never gets louder than the mandolin, banjo, and harmonica-led introduction of the song. If that doesn’t hook you immediately, there’s a good chance you’ll perk up with the advent of the record’s next couple of tracks, the pedal steel-heavy alt-country of “Auditorium” and the deliberate but fully-developed country rock of “No Answers”. The majority of Lucky Star Creek falls somewhere between these two tentpoles–the chilly “Estuary Sara” and (especially) the downcast drama of “Shoulders” bring the electric side of Brown Dog to the forefront later on in the record, but they still sit nicely alongside quieter fare like “Apartment 12” and “Four Miles”. Lucky Star Creek departs just as quietly as it came into frame–the instrumental, ambient-country “Leaving Words” gives way to one last acoustic folk song, in this case the title track. “Lucky Star Creek” ends with a little bit of post-song noise–maybe it’s the band shutting off the recording and leaving the room to let you sit with the album alone. (Bandcamp link)

Also notable:

• Oso Oso – Life Till Bones
• Google Earth – Street View
• MAITA – Want
• Blaine Todd – Goodbye ‘Til I Do Good by You
• Baby Tyler Band – Baby Tyler Band
• Bruxa do Mangue – Marianna and Júlia
• Dime – Dime EP
• Vicious Dreams – Turn Off My Brain
• Citric Dummies – Trapped in a Parking Garage EP
• What’s Important – Bloodsoaked Castle
• Lucta – Eterna Lotta
• Cool Sorcery – Terra Invaders
• Desert Mambas – Pastel Southwestern EP
• Die Verlierer – Notausgang
• Evening Shadows – C.B.E.P.
• Kevin Fowley – À Feu Doux EP
• Anastasia Coope – Darning Woman
• Sam Wilkes, Craig Weinrib, and Dylan Day – Sam Wilkes, Craig Weinrib, and Dylan Day 
• WHY? – The Well I Fell Into
• Storefront Church – Ink & Oil
• Slowey and the Boats – Slowey Goes West
• Joe Ely – Driven to Drive
• Painted Shield – Painted Shield 3
• Savings – How Do You Feel? EP
• Pretty Sick – Streetwise EP