Pressing Concerns: Rose Melberg, Shredded Sun, Addicus, The Gabys

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Hey there, all! Welcome to the second Pressing Concerns of the week, which is looking at a new career-spanning compilation from the legendary Rose Melberg, new albums from Shredded Sun and Addicus, and a new EP from The Gabys. If you missed yesterday’s post, featuring Beeef, Mo Dotti, 40 Watt Sun, and Tanukichan, check that one 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.

Rose Melberg – Things We Tried to Hide (Selected Songs, 1993-2023)

Release date: August 2nd
Record label: Antiquated Future/Two Plum Press
Genre: Twee, indie pop, indie punk, lo-fi indie folk
Formats: Cassette, digital
Pull Track: Creaking Gates

Not so long ago, I wrote about The Bed I Made, the long-awaited return from Pacific Northwest indie pop duo The Softies after a twenty-four year gap. I was far from the only one, as plenty of people celebrated a new record that proved Rose Melberg and Jen Sbragia still “had it” all this time later. What a lot of you might not know, however, is that The Bed I Made isn’t the only album featuring Melberg’s music to come out this year. Portland-based Antiquated Future Records has a series of cassettes called “Selected Songs” where they compile music from across an artist’s career in one cassette tape; Fred Thomas, Bonnie “Prince” Billy, and Chris Sutton (Dub Narcotic Sound System) have been among the musicians who’ve gotten this treatment over the past few years. Melberg, who has a sprawling discography stretched across several projects of varying notoriety, is a great choice for this kind of compilation–it’s all laid out in one place as Things We Tried to Hide (Selected Songs, 1993-2023). Per the Bandcamp page, the twenty-five-song cassette comes from ten different projects, twenty different records, and a dozen different labels, ranging from Melberg’s most well-known 1990s acts (Tiger Trap, The Softies, Go Sailor) to perhaps more overlooked bands from the 2010s (Knife Pleats, PUPS, Imaginary Pants).

I’m mostly only familiar with Melberg’s more well-known work, so I’m not really qualified to tell you which underappreciated gems were left off of Things We Tried to Hide. I can only say that the ones that made it onto the compilation are great, both material with which I was already familiar and the new-to-me songs. The Tiger Trap tracks are always welcome–some of the most well-known ones from their sole album are left off in favor of compilation and 7” appearances, leaving songs like “Hiding” and “Sour Grass” to shine bright in this new context. The highest compliment I can give Melberg’s newer material and groups is that they sound right at home next to some of the best indie pop and twee music of all-time–“Creaking Gates” from Imaginary Pants is maybe the best power pop moment on the entire tape, while Brave Irene, PUPS, and her collaboration with Dustin Reske all contribute clear highlights with “Bank Holiday”, “PEI”, and “The Love We Could Have Had”, respectively (and I didn’t know I needed to hear Melberg cover “Mystery” by the Wipers, but her solo version on here is one of my favorites, too). 

It all comes back to The Softies, even here–their signature percussionless, dual-vocal indie pop sticks out among the more upbeat faire, cementing just how special that band is in its ability to do so much with so little. There’s nothing from The Bed I Made here, but the most recent song on Things We Tried to Hide (a cover of Tony Molina’s “Walk Away” from a limited-edition split cassette featuring Molina covering The Softies’ songs and vice versa) is a Softies recording from last year, which also demonstrates the gravity the duo are still able to command. There’s more to Rose Melberg than Things We Tried to Hide, true, but if you’re unsure where to start with one of the greatest indie pop artists of all-time, it’s pretty perfect. (Bandcamp link)

Shredded Sun – Wilding

Release date: September 6th
Record label: Self-released
Genre: Garage rock, power pop, psych pop
Formats: Digital
Pull Track: LA Vibes

I wrote a fair amount about Chicago power trio Shredded Sun last year–between their incredibly strong sophomore album Each Dot and Each Line and the brief but substantial Translucent Eyes EP, they received the prestigious honor of having an entry on both my top LPs and top EPs of 2023 lists (The Reds, Pinks & Purples and Blues Lawyer were the only other ones, if you’re curious). 2023’s Shredded Sun releases depicted a group of underground rock and roll veterans (guitarist/vocalist Nick Ammerman, bassist/vocalist Sarah Ammerman, and drummer Ben Bilow, who have played together since the 2000s, initially in the band Fake Fictions) honing in on a winning combination of fuzz rock, garage-punk, psych pop, and power pop and hitting a creative stride. Even so, I wasn’t expecting another Shredded Sun album in 2024 (this is a band that took seven years in between its first and second full-lengths, after all), but here we are a year and change later with Wilding, thirteen more songs and nearly fifty minutes of brand new Shredded Sun material. If you enjoyed Each Dot and Each Line and Translucent Eyes, the trio pick up right where they left off, but (perhaps ironically given the quick turnaround) some of the tossed-off psych-garage energy of their last two records gives way to something just a little more deliberate and measured.

It’s not a huge departure, of course, and the opening salvo of Wilding in particular recaptures a lot of what makes Shredded Sun’s recent records so great–“Cowboy Skull” scoops up a bit of surf and western energy to create a memorable garage rock drama of an opener, while Nick gets to do his best “Yo La Tengo but cool-sounding” loiter-drone-pop impression on the sun-drenched “LA Vibes”. There’s something to be said for Nick’s relative subtlety as a vocalist, but when Sarah comes bursting through the wall Kool-Aid Man-style with “Breaking Out” and sets her expectations sky-high in “Shake the Clouds” (“If you wanna write me a love song, don’t do it sitting down / Make it loud”), the energy level jumps just as palpably. Shredded Sun stretch out into a more expansive, psych-tinged rock group with “Both Your Houses” and “Serpentine”, but they’re still both pop songs, and the second half of Wilding certainly doesn’t abandon the catchier impulses of Shredded Sun (peek the guitar-showcase “Blood in the Water” the fuzzed-out power pop of “Little Only”). There aren’t many moments as sparse as the quiet, almost-slowcore “In the Worst Way” in the middle of the album, but there’s plenty of restraint to be found on Wilding if you really look–not the least of which is “(Another Song Called) Mirror Ball”, which closes the album with a knowing wink and a sincere, thoughtful look back (and forward, too). The tongue-in-cheek attitude only extends to the song’s title, though, as Shredded Sun deliver an earnest, unapologetically emotional final statement–it’s more than earned. (Bandcamp link)

Addicus – Addicus

Release date: July 24th
Record label: Acid Punk/Leave It at That
Genre: Pop punk, power pop, emo
Formats: Cassette, digital
Pull Track: Oh No! I Forgot My Chill Pill

For most of recorded history, it was thought that there could be no rock music on Michigan’s upper peninsula. This conventional wisdom was disproved last year thanks to Marquette’s Liquid Mike (who, remarkably, had been surviving the region’s climate for several years, putting out three records before their self-titled fourth one got some attention in 2023). It was only a matter of time before more musical life on the UP was discovered–and here we have it with another Marquette-based band, a new power trio called Addicus. They’re a relatively new band, but the group (vocalist/guitarist Lex, drummer/guitarist Josh, bassist Eric) have put out a steady stream of EPs and singles since late 2022–one recording, non-album single “Trolls in My Closet”, even features Liquid Mike’s Mike Maple on lead guitar. Addicus and Liquid Mike are, in a larger sense, both power pop bands, but the muscular alt-rock and heavier punk vibes of the latter aren’t in line with Addicus’ pension for 2010s scrappy indie pop punk and even a bit of emo mixed in, too. Their debut album is a self-titled one, featuring about half new material and half selections from their earlier releases; Addicus is a strong introduction to the band, evoking groups like Remember Sports, Chumped, and Camp Cope but with their own nervous, melancholic stamp on the songwriting.

The best song on Addicus is the first one–“Oh No! I Forgot My Chill Pill” is just about perfect, an unhinged, sugary pop punk tune that would’ve been right at home on Sunchokes or All of Something; although that song’s a tough one to beat, Addicus find plenty more worthwhile material in the same vein across the record’s runtime (almost exactly thirty minutes long). The opening track’s anthemic emo-power pop is mirrored in songs like “Claustrophobia”, and “Can It Get Any Better Than This!”, although the first half of the record works because it intersperses them with interesting left turns like the toe-tapping rhythms of “Useless” and the slightly-less-grand bummer pop of “Backseat” (the guitar lead is that song’s real hook to my ears). Not that anything on Addicus is a huge surprise–they’re just adventurous enough, an attitude that extends to the record’s late highlights like “You’re Not You” (the chilly ballad, which eventually takes off but without abandoning its dour core), “Brb, Getting More Highlander Grogg” (in which Lex says the quiet part out loud by straight-up singing about caffeine) and “Sensitive”, a dynamic meditation on the titular word that closes the album with an impressive performance from everyone from Lex to guest guitarist Andrew Blanchard. Clearly we’ve been ignoring the south shores of Lake Superior for far too long. (Bandcamp link)

The Gabys – The Gabys

Release date: September 6th
Record label: Fruits & Flowers
Genre: Dream pop, indie pop, lo-fi pop, slowcore
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Ode

Little is known about The Gabys, an anonymous British guitar pop duo who are “too shy yet to set foot on stage”, per their record label. I can tell you that they most likely enjoy the music of The Velvet Underground, K Records, and Flying Nun Records–as well as making self-titled records. The first The Gabys was a six-song cassette on Detroit’s All Gone Records in 2021, and four more songs appeared on a self-titled seven-inch via Fruits & Flowers in 2022. We join The Gabys on the occasion of their third release called The Gabys, and their second one on vinyl (which is presumably why it’s designated The Gabys II on streaming services); it’s the best the duo have sounded yet, with hardly a wasted moment among the wistful-sounding indie pop EP’s four songs and ten minutes. Though they may be across the globe, The Gabys fit very well among the quieter side of the current guitar pop revival happening in the San Francisco Bay Area–those who appreciate the molasses-slow, deliberate pop music of Flowertown (and of its two members’ other projects) and April Magazine will find The Gabys’ ability to make timeless-sounding pop songs from the most basic of ingredients quite impressive as well.

The Gabys has a few hallmarks–simple chord progressions delivered with as much feeling as possible, wispy, gazing-out-the-window dream pop-style vocals, unobtrusive drum machines, classic rock and roll slowed to a crawl. “Ode” opens the EP with The Gabys at their best, plugging away at a sub-two-minute song that features all the previously-mentioned aspects for their version of a pop hit–after which, The Gabys say “let’s take it down a notch” and offer up the incredibly-fragile-sounding frozen-in-time 60s pop feeling of “Cursed”. The loudest song on The Gabys is pretty easily “Familiar Dreams”, which will please those of us who like their indie pop with a bit of guitar fuzz–there’s more than a bit of Pacific Northwest twee pop and C86 charm in this one, suggesting that The Gabys’ insular, quieter attitude elsewhere is a conscious choice rather than a necessity. The all-too-brief record comes to an end with “Colour Me Out”, which floats along to its simple percussion and lighter-than-air guitar strumming for three-and-a-half minutes. Dream pop at its most base elements, “Colour Me Out” could’ve gone on for plenty longer and still gotten something out of the track’s core, but The Gabys have gotten the art of giving us exactly what’s needed and nothing more down pat. (Bandcamp link)

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  1. Pingback: Pressing Concerns: Léna Bartels & Nico Hedley, Impulsive Hearts, Entrez Vous, hairpin – Rosy Overdrive

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