Pressing Concerns: BBsitters Club, Pretty Bitter & Flowerbomb, Lindsay Reamer, Obscuress

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It’s a great Monday here at the Rosy Overdrive music blog. Why? Well, because we’ve got four superb records for you to enjoy right below this introduction. New albums from Lindsay Reamer and Obscuress, a split/collaborative EP from Pretty Bitter and Flowerbomb, and a live compilation from BBsitters Club are all featured in Pressing Concerns today. Read on!

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.

BBsitters Club – Joel’s Picks Vol. 2

Release date: August 16th
Record label: Hausu Mountain
Genre: Jam band, experimental rock, country rock, funk rock
Formats: CD, cassette, digital
Pull Track: Party in My Chevy

Doug Kaplan and Max Allison co-run Hausu Mountain Records, a Chicago-based imprint that’s on the frontlines of some of the wildest experimental electronic music out there–it’s not the kind of fare I typically cover on Rosy Overdrive, though they did put Erica Eso’s R&B-tinged art pop/rock record 192. Kaplan and Allison, perhaps unsurprisingly, are just as into the weirder corners of punk and rock music (in fact, I first heard of them when they guested on the And Introducing podcast to talk about the Minutemen), and BBsitters Club is their outlet for their “rock and roll” instincts. Kaplan’s on MIDI guitar and vocals, Allison plays bass, and they’re joined by guitarist/vocalist Charlie Olvera and drummer Paul Birhanu to round out the versatile core quartet. They’ve only put out one studio album, but they gig pretty regularly around Chicago and embrace their inner Grateful Dead by engaging in lengthy jams and encouraging live taping of their shows. Joel’s Picks Vol. 2 (named after prolific taper and friend of the band Joel Berk) is the second in a series of compilations of these live recordings, following Vol. 1 in 2020, and the hourlong tape (recorded at various shows at Cafe Mustache, Cole’s Bar, and Sleeping Village) has everything one could want in such a record–absurdly long classic rock explorations, previously unreleased gems, and even a Captain Beefheart cover.

Of the tape’s eight tracks, three of them stretch over ten minutes in length, and all three of them seem to be staples of the BBsitters Club repertoire. One of these, “Joel Reprise > Told Ya”, kicks the record off with the explosive opening reprise (whose lyrics are just “Joel!” shouted over and over) and the sprawling country-rock second half serving as the real hook. The other lengthy songs find BBsitters Club delving into funky swamp rock and the capital-B Blues, respectively, continuing the chameleonic nature of the group found throughout Joel’s Picks Vol. 2. On the other end of the spectrum, the record’s two most obvious “hits” to my ears are the relatively brief “Party in My Chevy” and “Cutie Girls”, the former being a previously-unreleased four-chord southern-style rocker that’s full steam ahead for its entire five minutes, and the latter (which appeared on their sole studio album, 2020’s BBsitters Club & Party) shooting for garage rock, early punk, and even a bit of power pop in its urgent catchiness. BBsitters Club somehow get the Red Hot Chili Peppers themselves to appear on the tape, playing their unreleased funk-rock anthem “West of Your State”, which has the potential to be their best single since “Scar Tissue”, and the BBsitters Club return to give Captain Beefheart’s “Kandy Korn” an appropriately noisy freakout of a reading. Part of the charm of Joel’s Picks Vol. 2 is that it’s primarily made up of audience recordings–like many tape-friendly bands before them, it’s thrilling to peek in on something from a somewhat muddy (but just clear enough) remove. (Bandcamp link)

Pretty Bitter & Flowerbomb – Take Me Out

Release date: August 1st
Record label: Self-released
Genre: Emo-y indie rock, alt-rock, indie pop
Formats: Digital
Pull Track: Never Better

Pretty Bitter and Flowerbomb are a pair of like-minded Washington, D.C.-based indie rock groups–the former is a quintet led by vocalist/lyricist Mel Bleker and also featuring Ekko Astral drummer Miriam Tyler on bass, Zack Berman on guitar and keyboard, Chris Smith on guitar, and drummer Jason Hayes, while the latter is a power quartet led by vocalist Rachel Kline and rounded out by Dan ABH (drums), Connor White (guitar), and Abby Rasheed (bass). Both bands have been around since late last decade (Pretty Bitter put out LPs in 2019 and 2022, Flowerbomb put out an album in 2020 and two EPs earlier this year), and both of them have a sound that blends the more stripped-down side of “stately” 2000s indie rock with emo and just a hint of indie pop/power pop/pop punk–one of them cites Rilo Kiley as an influence, and the fact that I can’t remember which one of them it was is pretty telling. All things considered, the two bands are natural partners for a collaborative/split EP (featuring two songs from each band and one credited to the both of them)–I imagine very little onboarding was needed to turn Take Me Out into a success.

Take Me Out was co-produced by emo busybody Evan Weiss, and the EP sounds at home in this world from the get-go. Pretty Bitter kick the record off with an instant hit in “Never Better”, an earnest, propulsive song whose gigantic emo-synth hook from Berman hints at a way to tell the two bands apart. Flowerbomb have an anthem of their own with “Nothing to Do With Me”–the guitars crash and Kline soars, but between the less-obvious chorus and the thematic mess at the center of the track, this one is more rewarding with repeat listens. Both bands get a little more experimental on their second songs–on “Youbuiltafinelife”, Pretty Bitter try a dance-friendly bassline and bubbling synthpop on for size, while Flowerbomb embrace synthesizers themselves on the curious “I Always Knew”. When two bands who are collaborating sound as similar as Flowerbomb and Pretty Bitter do, Take Me Out benefits from both of them bringing such an openness to the table–and the closing title track, featuring writing credits from members of both bands and credited to both of them, continues this thread. Nothing on the EP leads us to expect country guitars and banjo, but that’s what “Take Me Out” puts forward, with Bleker leading a combination Pretty-bomb band in an upbeat alt-country-folk-emo conclusion. Everyone on the last track sounds equally comfortable in this guise–it sounds natural even as it’s pretty different than everything else on Take Me Out. (Bandcamp link)

Lindsay Reamer – Natural Science

Release date: August 16th
Record label: Dear Life
Genre: Alt-country, country rock, folk rock, singer-songwriter
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
Pull Track: Red Flowers

Alt-country/folk rock singer-songwriter Linsday Reamer is from Massachusetts and lives in Philadelphia, although up until last year she worked as a field scientist, taking her across the United States. Her debut EP, Lucky, was recorded during this stint and released in February 2021 by Dear Life Records (right before that label got on my radar, actually; their following release, MJ Lenderman’s Ghost of Your Guitar Solo, was the first record of theirs I wrote about in Pressing Concerns). The lineup on Reamer’s debut album, Natural Science, is a real who’s who of Philadelphia indie rock/country/folk–Lucas Knapp recorded it, Ther’s Heather Jones mastered it, Thank You Thank You’s Tyler Bussey plays guitar and banjo, Florry’s Will Henriksen is on the fiddle, and Eliza Niemi plays the cello, among others. Reamer, at the helm, leads her collaborators through an impressively-orchestrated, polished record that takes advantage of the tools at its disposal but still comes off as breezy and pop-forward. It’s one of the most “instant-gratification” alt-country records to come out of Dear Life in a while–but Reamer isn’t put into a box by that at all, gleefully hopping from upbeat country rock to dreamy, layered folk music throughout Natural Science.

That being said, Natural Science opens with a curveball with the lush cosmic folk-rock of “Today”. Bussey, Henriksen, and Niemi’s instruments swirl together hypnotically for three and a half minutes–and then Reamer’s off to the streamlined folk-pop vibes of “Spring Song” and “Red Flowers”, which feigns a slow start before launching into a jaunty but laid-back electric country tune. The turn towards acoustic and more traditional folk in “Sugar” doesn’t dent the record’s momentum, nor does the grand mid-record “Lucky” (I’d consider the latter the record’s centerpiece, which means the heart of the album is the moment where Reamer wakes up next to last night’s takeout food, says “‘fuck it’ and [takes] a bite”). If “Lucky” isn’t as immediately accessible as “Spring Song” or “Red Flowers”, Reamer’s writing ensures that it’s just as memorable–although it’s not an “either/or” proposition on Natural Science, as the two tracks with my favorite lyrics in the record’s second half (“Necessary” and “Figs and Peaches”) are both pleasing and upbeat numbers. The latter finds Reamer digging deep to pull something worthwhile out of a landscape of invasive species and power plants, while the former gets by with a plainspoken truism for a refrain (“It’s okay to depend on somebody / Not just okay, but necessary”). Natural Science more than earns its epilogue, a star-studded (Michael Cormier-O’Leary, Peter Gill, Frank Meadows, Jon Samuels) cover of Townes Van Zandt’s “Heavenly Houseboat Blues”. (Bandcamp link)

Obscuress – Namesake

Release date: July 26th
Record label: Texas Archives
Genre: Post-rock, slowcore, ambient, folk
Formats: CD, digital
Pull Track: Five Names

Obscuress is a new collaboration between two longtime Texas music oddballs. In the early 1990s, Christina Carter co-founded Houston’s longrunning experimental folk/psych band Charalambides, which has released music on labels like Kranky and Siltbreeze over the past thirty years. Spencer Dobbs has stayed a bit more under the radar, but he’s been putting out solo albums of lo-fi, sparse folk music for a couple of decades, as well (the electric blues-tinged If the Moon Don’t Turn Its Back on You, which surfaced on Bandcamp and streaming services last year, is my personal favorite). Released under Dobbs’ Texas Archives imprint, Namesake is their first record as a duo, and the five-song CD is something distinct from either musician’s most well-known works. It’s a full-length album, with the tracks ranging from five to ten minutes long apiece, and its crawling minimalist instrumentals put it in the worlds of post-rock, ambient, and slowcore. Although there are guitars in this ether, keys and “sampled noise” contribute to Namesake being less easily to categorize as “folk” music than Dobbs’ solo albums, while Carter’s beautiful, traditional lead vocals are the album’s clearest structural force, preventing Obscuress from fully feeling like a free-form project.

About half of Namesake is taken up by its opening and closing tracks, the eight-minute “Nemesis” and ten-minute “Obscure Consensus”, respectively. If everything else about Obscuress–from the previous work of its two members to the record’s haunting cover–wasn’t already clue enough, the glacially wandering opening track is more confirmation that Namesake isn’t going to provide much instant gratification. “Nemesis” builds to nothing–Carter perhaps sounds a little more insistent as the song draws to a close, but little else has changed in the world of Obscuress. The middle three songs of Namesake are the most “accessible” merely by being under six minutes long, although there’s also traces of folk and jazz-influenced slowcore in “Uniform” that reminds me a bit of a more stripped-down Hannah Marcus. The guitars and piano in “Five Names” flirt with sounding a little warm, but “Carousel of Voices” gets Obscuress back into worried and paranoid territory both in the stretched tension of the instrumental and in Carter’s voice. Even as it crosses ten minutes, “Obscure Consensus” closes Namesake with arguably the record’s simplest track–the guitar and Carter’s voice are more constant than most of the album here, the former ringing for just long enough before the next note comes and the latter taking the shape of a slow but steady stream of consciousness. Against all odds, Namesake ends with us fully hooked and engrossed. (Bandcamp link)

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