Pressing Concerns: Chime School, Melt-Banana, Edie McKenna, Giant Day

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Hello, everyone! As I said last Thursday, last week was a huge one for new music, and we’re starting off Monday with a Pressing Concerns featuring four records that came out last Friday (August 23rd). New albums from Chime School, Melt-Banana, and Giant Day, plus a new EP from Edie McKenna, appear below.

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.

Chime School – The Boy Who Ran the Paisley Hotel

Release date: August 23rd
Record label: Slumberland
Genre: Jangle pop, power pop
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
Pull Track: Desperate Days

Back in late 2021, I heard the self-titled debut album from San Francisco’s Chime School and instantly knew there was something special about it. The solo project from Seablite drummer Andy Pastalaniec, Chime School introduced its sole member with a jolt of jangle pop electricity, zipping through one sugary, energetic guitar pop song after another unfailingly. The sophomore Chime School LP has been one of my most anticipated records ever since, and nothing that’s happened in the intermittent three years (Pastalaniec appearing on another Seablite album, Chime School putting out the excellent “Coming to Your Town” non-album single) has dampened that enthusiasm. The Boy Who Ran the Paisley Hotel, once again self-recorded and largely piece together by Pastalaniec himself, is anything but a disappointment–those who simply want more hard-hitting pop music will find plenty of twelve-string jangle and quick tempos, but those who didn’t want just a carbon copy of Chime School will see plenty of development. It’s only really “mellow” compared to the last Chime School album, but it does find a few moments of musical subtlety in the midst of its jangling barrage. At the same time, though (as hinted at by the brightly acidic “Coming to Your Town”), some of the deepest moments on The Boy Who Ran the Paisley Hotel are in the middle of the shiniest pop songs.

Pastalaniec’s decision to open The Boy Who Ran the Paisley Hotel with “The End” feels like a calculated brake-tapping–one of the (relatively) slower songs on the record, Chime School take their time to accentuate every polished guitar melody across the track. “Why Don’t You Come Out Tonight?” is a reminder that Chime School can still rev up their motors and lay down something this speedy, but “Give Your Heart Away” and “Another Way Home” feature a push-and-pull between cannon-deployed blunt force power pop and more melancholic indie pop–and the latter fully wins out by the time we get to mid-record ballad “Words You Say”. If pushed, I’d say that The Boy Who Ran the Paisley Hotel is still at its best on the more upbeat tracks–the stretch from “Wandering Song” to “Desperate Days”, which fully embraces that side of Chime School, is probably my favorite run on the album. That being said, the best song on the album, “Desperate Days”, marries pep with Pastalaniec’s whip-smart social commentary, walking the streets of San Francisco all-too-vividly aware of what’s going on around him (“All the color’s gone away / From streets of houses painted gray / Cuz that’s what the markets say / In a couple of years they’ll wash away”). In the gorgeous closing track, “Points of Light”, Pastalaniec sings of  “A place where we can go…there’s no need for compromise”. Chime School may be informed by the compromises one has to make every day when living somewhere like the Bay Area, but it isn’t constrained by them. (Bandcamp link)

Melt-Banana – 3+5

Release date: August 23rd
Record label: A-Zap
Genre: Noise rock, noise pop, art punk, post-hardcore
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
Pull Track: Code

As is the case with a lot of aggressively abnormal rock bands, the idea of Melt-Banana maybe overshadows the band’s actual music at this point in their career. The legend of the long-running noise punks from Tokyo who recorded with Steve Albini in the 90s, shaped the sound of offbeat rock music for the following decade, and soldiered on despite steadily losing members (since 2013, it’s been the duo of vocalist Yasuko Onuki and guitarist Ichiro Agata)–it threatens to outshine the real, impressive story that one gets when you actually listen to their albums. Those paying attention know how Melt-Banana went from completely bonkers noisemakers in their first few albums to creating a blistering, warped version of pop music on mid-career highlights like 2003’s Cell-Scape and 2013’s Fetch, the latter of which was also their most recent album until now. Melt-Banana never stopped pummeling, but they clearly excelled at this hyperactive take on pop music (I’m going to call this kind of music “hyperpop”; I just thought of that!), and their records have been reverberating around in my head so confidently that I didn’t realize it’d been over a decade since they’d put an album out. But it indeed has been that long–and along comes the appropriately-titled eighth Melt-Banana album, 3+5, to add to an already impressive catalog.

I’m not sure if the kind of music that Melt-Banana make could ever be called “effortless”, but 3+5 feels like Onuki and Agata effortlessly picking up where they left off. It’s a nine-song, twenty-four minute trip, with nothing in the way of fat or “rest” to be found anywhere on it–it might actually be a step away from the (again, very relatively) ornate Fetch, but the duo still have a deathgrip on pop music on this one, too. Opening song “Code” is probably the most dramatic, intricate song on the album, both in its skronky intro and in the choral noise punk that it eventually shifts into–it’s an orchestrated, tuneful drilling session. From there, Melt-Banana hunker down and do what they do best, with “Puzzle” and “Case D” featuring drums flying off the handle, Onuki verbally sprinting to keep up, and the entire structures careening but never toppling. “Stopgap” isn’t really what its title suggests (there’s no time for that), while “Scar” does have a few moments where the song briefly comes to a halt, but in a cartoon-like, Wile E. Coyote-freezing-before-falling-off-a-cliff way, and then it’s immediately back to the grind. It’s not until closing track “Seeds” that Melt-Banana call back to the grandeur of “Code”, although they, of course, deconstruct it, the holy-sounding opening half turning into Melt-Banana’s take on riff-rock before closing with the synths and guitars rising in chaotic harmony. It sounds just like Melt-Banana. (Midheaven link)

Edie McKenna – For Edie

Release date: August 23rd
Record label: Devil Town Tapes
Genre: Folk, alt-country, singer-songwriter
Formats: Cassette, digital
Pull Track: Kick in the Shin

Chicago’s Modern Nun only have one four-song EP and a couple of non-album singles to their name thus far, but when I encountered them in early 2022 with Name, it already felt like the group was onto something. The trio (now a quartet) earnestly and skillfully married electric alt-country folk rock with uncontrollable queer pop energy on that EP, and vocalist Edie McKenna’s delivery and voice was a huge part of what makes Name work as well as it does. Although we’ll have to wait a bit longer for more music from Modern Nun, McKenna has linked up with Devil Town Tapes (Conor Lynch, Greg Mendez, Noah Roth) to release her first-ever solo record, the four-song For Edie cassette EP. Modern Nun fans will be pleased to hear that, on her own, McKenna largely retains the rootsy sound of her main band, although it’s also not hard to see why she felt that these songs (the writing of which dates back to her teenage years) might be best served under her own name (and released as an EP whose title nods to the personal nature of them, as well). Recorded with producer Seth Beck in Chicago’s Future Rat Recordings, McKenna and her collaborators (including the aforementioned Beck, Zack Peterson, and Eric Beck) pull from upbeat alt-country, breezy folk-pop, and electric indie rock to compliment her writing.

“Kick in the Shin” was McKenna’s debut solo single, originally released last year and reappearing on For Edie in “remastered” form, and it’s a whirlwind of a first impression. Musically, the lethal pop chord progression and alt-country bent makes it the most “Modern Nun”-like song on this EP, but the incredibly blunt and personal lyrics, excoriating a terrible parental figure (“For what it’s worth, I think your pictures looked like shit / And you charged way too much for it”), certainly help make it an “Edie McKenna song” (I don’t know how to say this delicately, but if I ever fucked up so badly that somebody wrote something like the chorus of “Kick in the Shin” about me, I don’t think I’d be able to continue on as a person). The other single from For Edie, “Hail Mary”, is arguably even more sweeping and electric, although its hymn-like repetition of the song title isn’t a weapon trained on an individual but rather a reminiscence and rumination. Interspersed among these attention-grabbers is the more subtle half of For Edie, made up of the sweet, whistle-aided acoustic folk of “Swingin’” and still life of “Lava Lamp”. There’s plenty to like in these songs two, particularly the latter. It’s Edie McKenna’s world, and she’s still onto something singing about faded lava lamps and unused telescopes. (Bandcamp link)

Giant Day – Glass Narcissus

Release date: August 23rd
Record label: Elephant 6
Genre: Psychedelic pop, art rock, dream pop, post-punk
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Walk with a Shadow

Derek Almstead moved to Athens, Georgia in the mid-1990s and quickly became one of the most key members of the Elephant 6 Collective–he has, at various points, played in of Montreal, Elf Power, Marshmallow Coast, The Olivia Tremor Control, and Circulatory System. Vocalist Emily Growden also showed up on several recordings from those bands over the years, as well as contributing to Almstead’s solo project, Faster Circuits–it’s no surprise that the couple, who’ve recently moved to a “historic farm” in southwestern Pennsylvania, have started up a band together while they live their new rural Appalachian life. The debut from Giant Day, Glass Narcissus, is largely built from the duo’s contributions–Almstead wrote the songs (with Growden having a co-write on “Patience”), they both sing, Growden contributes synth and melodica while most of the other instrumentals are handled by Almstead. Glass Narcissus displays “tinkering” touches like a lot of Alsmtead’s other bands, although the dense electronic, post-punk, and futuristic synth-rock found here is clearly distinct from those acts’ canonical output from thirty years ago. The duo get plenty of help in sculpting this sound, from fellow Elephant 6 artists (Bablicon’s Dave McDonnell, The Instruments’ Heather McIntosh), associates (Deerhunter’s Josh McKay), and newer faces (Sunwatchers’ Jeff Tobias), but Glass Narcissus puts its core duo front and center.

Almstead has played with The Olivia Tremor Control since 2010, and it’s hard not to think of that band–particularly their darker, more layered sophomore album, Black Foliage–when reading about what influenced Glass Narcissus (krautrock, 60s psych pop, Broadcast). In practice, Giant Day are sleeker and more languid, following a long trail of arty pop music and ending somewhere near modern Elephant 6-associated groups like The Garment District. Whether the lead vocalist is Almstead (like in opening future-funk track “I Can Take It”) or Growden (the psychedelic washing-over of “Ignore the Flood”), Giant Day skillfully place just enough instrumentation on the songs to give them significant heft without overloading them. The middle of Glass Narcissus seems to have a bit more breathing room–the trio of krautrock/post-punk cruiser “Walk With a Shadow”, the somewhat underwater-sounding 60s pop of “Overtone”, and the slightly robotic pop balladry of “Suspended Animation” are all (relatively) streamlined selections. Don’t worry, though–Giant Day ramp up their sound again towards the end of the LP, with the tinge-darker “We Were Friends” and the seven-minute lush art pop of “Patience” being more secretive with their (still very present) strengths. Glass Narcissus ends with one last left turn in “Reflections on Kettle Black”, a two-minute piece of various synth pads, electronic drums, and other assorted computer sounds bouncing off of each other. I wouldn’t expect anything less. (Bandcamp link)

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2 thoughts on “Pressing Concerns: Chime School, Melt-Banana, Edie McKenna, Giant Day”

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