Pressing Concerns: Dummy, Fig Dish, Dagwood, Prim

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It’s been an entire week since we’ve had a Pressing Concerns, which is pretty rare these days thanks to a troubling devotion by the person running this blog. We did have the August 2024 playlist go up earlier this week, though, which hopefully kept you animals sated until today, where we look at three new albums coming out tomorrow, September 6th: ones from Dummy, Fig Dish, and Prim, plus an EP from Dagwood that came out earlier this week.

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.

Dummy – Free Energy

Release date: September 6th
Record label: Trouble in Mind
Genre: Psychedelic pop, art rock, noise pop, trip hop
Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital
Pull Track: Blue Dada

Los Angeles noise pop quartet Dummy arrived in a big way around the beginning of this decade, dropping a pair of EPs in 2020 and their full-length debut, Mandatory Enjoyment, in 2021. Since the release of Mandatory Enjoyment, the band (Alex Ewell, Emma Maatman, Nathan O’Dell, and Joe Trainor) have been touring heavily while starting to piece together what would become Free Energy, their second album (once again released via the reliably strong Chicago indie-art-rock imprint Trouble in Mind). Mandatory Enjoyment was a delirious sensory-overload of an album, cheerily ratcheting up the levels of psychedelic and space pop to bombardment-level without losing their knack for catchy tunes at the core. Dummy approached Free Energy with the clear intention of making something different (the words “harder”, “dancier” and, uh, “more psychedelic” were used in the record’s bio), and the band indeed grow into something new on their sophomore record. They haven’t gone full-on tropicalia like fellow L.A. noise pop group Peel Dream Magazine, no–the shift on Free Energy is more subtle and harder to pin down to one distinct subgenre, as one would expect from an always-omnivorous band. Like the similarly-minded Aluminum, Free Energy marries fuzzy, distorted shoegaze-pop with alternative-dance elements; in fact, Dummy might even embrace electronics more eagerly than many quieter bands that have made the same transition.

The resultant album is something that’s sleek, slick, and smooth–rather than come at you at full force, Dummy dart around us and leap over top of us with Free Energy. With “Intro-UB”, Dummy give us a little under three minutes to get used to a version of the band where the dreamy guitar pop, while still present, is sidelined in favor of strong, prominent beats. For our trouble, we’re rewarded with “Soonish”, a song that confirms that the band still know their way around a Stereolab-y drone-pop song, but the dance-friendly undercurrent to the song is a big a clue as to where the rest of Free Energy intends to traverse as anything else. The first side of Free Energy follows this muse intently, through the simmering synth-hymn “Unshaped Road”, the bubbling, rubbery “Nullspace”, and the electro-bounce of the first half of “Blue Dada”. The latter of those three songs contains the single-most exhilarating moment on Free Energy–two minutes into the track, where its first section gives way to sudden, joyous organ and the band launch into a brilliant guitar pop tune out of nowhere. The different sides of Dummy aren’t ever as quite explicitly pronounced as they are in “Blue Dada” (well, okay, the sudden flutes in “Sudden Flutes” pull the same trick again, but in reverse, and it’s so good that I don’t mind), but it informs the entire record, especially in second-half songs like “Dip in the Lake” and “Psychic Battery” that introduce us to a more understated version of Dummy. There’s still plenty going on even in the quietest moments of Free Energy; it’s just that Dummy have found new ways to distort this reality. (Bandcamp link)

Fig Dish – Feels Like the Very First Two Times

Release date: September 6th
Record label: Forge Again
Genre: Power pop, alt-rock, post-grunge, pop punk
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
Pull Track: Science Goes Public

Chicago’s Fig Dish are perhaps the archetypical cult 90s alt-rock band–they rode local buzz and the post-grunge major-label feeding frenzy to two major-label releases that didn’t go anywhere but could’ve (1995’s That’s What Love Songs Often Do and 1997’s When Shove Goes Back to Push), and then disintegrated into other groups at the end of the decade (most notably underrated one-hit wonder Caviar). The quartet (at this point, vocalist/guitarists Blake Smith and Rick Ness, bassist/vocalist Mike Willison, and drummer Andy Hamilton, the latter of which was a founding member who returned after sitting out their second album) had actually recorded a third album’s worth of material in mid-1998 after being dropped from Polydor Records, but it remained shelved after they couldn’t find a label to put it out. Fig Dish’s sound–a mix of midwestern power pop a la Cheap Trick and Material Issue with some 90s indie rock-like irreverence and just a bit of post-grunge bluntness–has aged beautifully, and it makes a ton of sense that local longrunning indie label Forge Again Records (Triple Fast Action, Extra Arms, Mike Lust) has stepped up to put out “something pretty close to what that third Fig Dish album might have been”, Feels Like the Very First Two Times, a quarter-century later.

So, does it really live up to Fig Dish’s previous work–does it really Feel Like the Very First Two Times? Well, I don’t think this album, had they gotten a label of note to release it before they broke up, would’ve been the one to launch them to stardom–but, considering what that would’ve entailed at the time, that’s hardly a bad thing quality-wise. In hindsight, it’s a little odd that half the band would end up in the more electronic-tinged Caviar, because Fig Dish’s final recordings feel like their most stripped-down and “basement rock band”. Maybe they would’ve polished these songs up some more if they hadn’t split so soon after recording them, but as it is, it’s a pretty refreshing collection of hooky, no-frills alt-rock. The songwriting’s still sharp, the differences between the anthemic power pop of “Burn Bright for Now”, the quiet-loud alt-rock of “The Ragged Ones”, and the rollicking garage-y pop punk of “Science Goes Public” are subtler but still pronounced. There’s nothing on Feels Like the Very First Two Times that feels as rock-radio-ready as their almost-hit “Seeds”, but it’s an incredibly consistent listen, with highlight after highlight (the mid-tempo ballad “Tear the Atmosphere”, the handclap-friendly “Cellophane and Suffer”, the post-Replacements power punk of “Senior Circuit” and “If Not Now When”) continuing well into the record’s second side. Feels Like the Very First Two Times is worthy of sitting alongside lost classics like That’s What Love Songs Often Do on the shelf–I’d encourage those unfamiliar with Fig Dish to check out their initial work, but there’s nothing wrong with starting at the end with this one, either. (Bandcamp link)

Dagwood – Pollyanna Visions

Release date: September 3rd
Record label: Self-released
Genre: Power pop, slacker rock, pop punk
Formats: CD, cassette, VHS, digital
Pull Track: Should Be

The six-song Everything Turned Out Alright EP by New Haven’s Dagwood was the sleeper hit of last summer for me. Sure, I liked “Sheep on Mars” pretty much as soon as I heard it–I still think that that song is one of the best modern power-pop-punk singles in recent memory–but over time, everything from the title track to the offbeat “Dagdream” to the self-explanatory anthem “I Am a Loser” wormed its way into my head, and I named the EP one of my favorites of 2023. The quartet (guitarist/vocalist Grady Hearn, guitarist Mike Nagy, bassist Tim Casey, and drummer Kilian Appleby) have been making music together for over a decade, but Everything Turned Out Alright seems to be a landmark release for Dagwood–it garnered them a bit of attention for their sharp, hooky mix of alt-rock, power pop, and punk, and the band decided it was time to make a record in a proper studio after a decade of home recording. None other than go-to indie punk engineer Justin Pizzofferato was enlisted for the task, and the band traversed up to his Easthampton studio, Sonelab, to record yet another six-song EP, Pollyanna Visions. Perhaps a tinge more laid-back than Everything Turned Out Alright, Dagwood on the whole lose little of their charm in a formal recording setting and continue to deliver hook-heavy, punk-influenced power pop effortlessly.

“So I’m taking my time, not gonna rush right over the line,” Hearn sings in opening track “Trying to Be Kind”–it’s an apt line, as the four-minute, mid-tempo college rock song moves along at its own, unhurried pace. Dagwood continue to mine this “slacker-friendly guitar pop” vein with “Should Be”–at the very least, this song eventually builds to a sharply-executed fuzz rock refrain. Almost to prove that they can be punctual if they want to be, the ninety-second “Candy Apple Green” is Dagwood at their sharpest and most economical, bouncing through an incredibly cheery pop rock number deftly. Pollyanna Visions continues keeping it short after “Candy Apple Green”, although Dagwood finds different ways to do so–“Stay Around” is the EP’s “ballad”, Hearn singing relatively gently in a sea of fuzz (the band is still animated enough that the “whoo!” in the last fifteen seconds isn’t out of place), while “Earth Spins” (sneakily maybe the best song on the record) is a two part mini-epic that holds the percussion until halfway through what becomes a high-flying piece of power-punk. Dagwood end Pollyanna Visions with a curveball in “Left the Place a Mess”, a choppy piece of alt-rock that feels significantly darker than the rest of the EP–although it’s certainly catchy enough through its roughness to fit in with the rest of the songs. I thought home-recorded Dagwood sounded just fine, but if the studio (or, perhaps, the self-imposed challenge of making a “studio record”) helped continue the band’s hot streak, then I’m all for it. (Bandcamp link)

Prim – Move Too Slow

Release date: September 6th
Record label: Sunday Drive
Genre: Fuzz rock, alt-rock, noise pop, punk
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Miss Out

Rosy Overdrive loves a good “portrait of the local scene” various artist-compilation, and one of the best in recent memory was this May’s From Far It All Seems Small, featuring fourteen Seattle bands largely specializing in shoegaze, fuzz rock, punk, and noisy, loud pop music. One of the new-to-me acts included therein was Prim, whose contribution (“Glad We’re Here”) painted them as fuzzed-out 90s indie rock revivalists. Not knowing anything else about them, I was surprised to learn that the quartet was originally formed in Houston, Texas by a couple of hardcore punks in Kevin Flores (guitar/vocals) and Mark Ramos (drums), who at some point between 2020 and last year relocated to the Pacific Northwest and added guitarist/vocalist Evelyn Frances and bassist Shane Juretic to the group. Move Too Slow is the quartet’s first full-length, and while it’s certainly not a hardcore record, the slacker rock of “Glad We’re Here” isn’t quite an accurate comparison, either. On Move Too Slow, Prim sound like a fire’s been lit under them, congealing into a sharp, catchy, hard-hitting alt-rock group with bits of punk and even power pop in tow. 

The dozen songs of Move Too Slow follow in the tradition of indie rock guitar heroes like Dinosaur Jr. and fellow Washington State group Milk Music, although Prim put their own hyped-up stamp on them. “I’ll Drive” in the opening slot sets the tone with a pure fuzz-pop car anthem, a level of instant gratification that Prim prove they can reach again in the rolling “Miss Out” just a few songs later and via second-half highlight “It’s Just You”. Although Prim can be quite noisy at times, Move Too Slow doesn’t feel like a shoegaze album, exactly–there are moments on songs like “Make Your Bed” and “Cruisin” where the guitars play a peripheral role (or none at all), and the band instead pump out heavy dream pop (in the former track) and a strangely fascinating hardcore-goes-power-pop Frankenstein (the latter). The band’s punk energy (it’s in their foundational DNA) is a key part of Move Too Slow’s sound, whether it’s showing up in the foot-on-the-gas tempo of “Hot Enough”, the muscular chugging power chords of closing track “Livelihood”, or the assertive vocals on the otherwise-straight-ahead fuzz-rock of “Gonna Be”. It’s less obvious on the record’s more polished numbers (“Don’t Count on Me”, “I’ll Drive”), sure, but Move Too Slow is as enjoyable as it as in large part because it goes down in one substantial, lightning-fast piece. (Bandcamp link)

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