Hey there everyone! The first Pressing Concerns of what’s going to be a stacked week is an incredibly strong one, looking at new albums from Upstairs, Snakeskin, Best Bets, and Feeling Figures. Read on! Also, a quick programming note: due to the end of September sneaking up on me, the monthly playlist won’t be ready until next week. There’ll still be a ton of new music in the meantime, though!
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.
Upstairs – Be Seeing You
Release date: September 27th
Record label: Obscure Pharaoh
Genre: Art rock, post-punk, experimental rock, indie pop
Formats: Digital
Pull Track: College Jeopardy
Sometime around 2018, a musical quintet associated with the cities of Cincinnati and Chicago and made up of Kyle Stone, Audrey Alger, Geoff Daniels, Paul Vine, and Jon Massey named Upstairs released their first record, an EP called Our Ass Is in the Jackpot Now. Fast forward a half-dozen years, and Upstairs have put out a couple more EPs, released an album called I Could Die Whenever, and Stone has been replaced with Nico (presumably not the famous one). We join the Upstairs band as they gear up to release their sophomore album, Be Seeing You, which happens to be an incredible art rock LP. Regular readers of this blog will be familiar with the work of Massey (who also recorded this album) via his projects Coventry (which is yacht rock for the Drag City/Thrill Jockey crowd) and Silo’s Choice (which introduces an even-more-progressive folk rock into the mix); Be Seeing You contains shades of both, to be sure, but Upstairs is a distinct and more varied group (“group” perhaps being the key word). It alternatively embraces electronics, strings, and “rock” instrumentation across its dozen tracks, veering into several ditches but also using “pop music” as a jumpscare tactic (in the form of swooning, swelling indie folk rock or relatively humble piano-pop).
Speaking of swooning and swelling, “Our Mutual Friend” is certainly a way to snag everyone’s attention with an opening track–it’s plenty offbeat in its own way, but that doesn’t stop it from transcending to “anthem” status fairly easily. Believe it or not, though, Be Seeing You has even more upfront pop moments to come–“College Jeopardy” is the one with the monster jangly/power pop chorus and vocal theatrics to match, while “Dig Out” adds a bit of melancholy and nuance to the hooks and the “just-can’t-take-it-anymore” cheery inferno of “Die By Bus” is a true triumph. The noise pop of “Tommy (Mescaline Version)” is a mess but makes sure to get its point across amidst the tangle of synths, violins, and insistent guitars. One of the weirdest songs on Be Seeing You is “Real Estate”, but Upstairs clearly believe in it, as they made it one of the album’s two singles–showy bass, jittery percussion, weeping violin, and mumbled vocals all go together to create an art rock exploration of private urban development (the title ends up being a nice double-entendre, too). Another memorable moment comes during “Elevator Shaft Fall-Downer”, in which the singer murmurs “You could never be strong / Who the fuck could be free?” over a borderline-krautrock groove. That bastardization of the canonical Guided by Voices lyric is, I think, helpful in contextualizing Upstairs in the grand scheme of things. We need the hopelessly earnest romantics, the jocks, in music, yes–but we also need the people tinkering away in the dorms or muttering on the sidelines in the picture. That’s Upstairs–preoccupied with something bigger and less obvious, but also not above looking out the window, seeing something promising happening, saying “Why not?” and joining in on occasion, too. (Bandcamp link)
Snakeskin – Summoning Suit
Release date: August 23rd
Record label: Substitute Scene
Genre: Art rock, psychedelic rock, dream pop, folk rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Skull Kid
New York musician Shanna Polley has been making music as Snakeskin for over a decade now, first via solo home recordings and then eventually with a more fully-developed sound in the realm of guitar-heavy indie rock and arty/experimental pop music. I first became aware of Snakeskin via their output on New Jersey imprint State Champion Records–they put out two LPs in the late 2010s and an EP earlier this decade, as well as contributing to a couple different releases by onetime Screaming Females bandleader Marissa Paternoster. The first full-band Snakeskin album, 2018’s Hangnail, positioned Polley and her band as absolutely wild guitar heroes, throwing out massive guitarwork across the six-song, thirty-minute album in line with the nearby world of Exploding in Sound Records and, yes, Screaming Females; 2021’s three-song Heart Orb Bone, however, reinvented Snakeskin as massive pop artists, pulling out big 80s-esque, synth-aided heartland rock in the title track and “T.V.”. Snakeskin’s first record in three years is their first for Substitute Scene Records, and Summoning Suit doesn’t really sound like either previously-mentioned record from Polley’s project. On their latest album, Snakeskin embraces a complex, sweeping progressive pop sound–it’s got the long song lengths of Hangnail, but this time these worlds are populated by atmospheric synths, acoustic guitars, and relatively hushed vocals.
Summoning Suit is a visual album, with the entire record receiving video treatment via frequent collaborator William Bottini–these videos are clearly an important part of Polley’s art, but as someone who’s primarily listened to Summoning Suit as an audio-only affair, I can assure everyone that the music stands just fine on its own, too. The latest post-shed version of Snakeskin seems to land somewhere in the realm of the headier projects helmed by Mary Timony (the ones it took some time for people to warm up to); plenty of this feeling has to do with the band’s choice to put some of its more difficult material right up front. Not that there isn’t pop music to be found in the seven-minute dream-folk odyssey of “Skull Kid”, the wobbly, swelling overture of “Spinning Heart”, and the eight-minute collage-like “Wasabi” (okay, so maybe there’s not a whole lot of “pop” in the latter of those three). There’s just enough accessible moments to get us to the “hit”, “Big Wave” (although even that one’s climax is a surprising, smooth talk-singing diversion that sounds a bit like power pop Laurie Anderson, and it also indulges in some classic prog lyrical callbacks). Perhaps the clearest example of the pop heart of Summoning Suit is “Cross Country”, another seven-minute song that floats and meanders but, when it’s time for the refrain, there’s no mistaking it (“Whatever way you want me, you got me / I’d move across the whole fucking country”). Yep, hard to beat that. (Bandcamp link)
Best Bets – The Hollow Husk of Feeling
Release date: September 27th
Record label: Meritorio/Melted Ice Cream
Genre: Power pop, garage rock, pop punk
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Pillory Parade
Rangiora, New Zealand power pop quartet Best Bets made their opening statement in 2022 with On an Unhistoric Night, with Meritorio and Melted Ice Cream Records introducing the wider world to the songwriting duo of drummer Olly Crawford Ellis and guitarist James Harding as well as their bandmates Joe Sampson (bass, also of Salad Boys and T54) and Matthew Phimmavanh (guitar). On their sophomore album, Sampson (who also recorded the LP) steps up for songwriting duty, too, and The Hollow Husk of Feeling feels like a record that’s full to the brim of smart pop craft and energy. Eschewing the hazier, less tangible sides of their home country’s guitar pop scene, The Hollow Husk of Feeling is a grounded, unsubtle collection of power pop, garage rock, and even glam rock that’s closer to American pop rabble rousers like Guided by Voices, The Replacements, and maybe even Green Day than their fellow Kiwi bands. The album as a whole is a cathartic listen–there’s an edge to Best Bets’ jangly, fuzzed-out tunes, and its vocalists are more likely to sound pensive or even aggravated than clearly blissful. The “feeling” may be a hollowed-out husk at this point, but Best Bets are going to squeeze every last spark out of it before their latest album is all said and done.
On most indie rock albums, “Heaven” would be the unquestioned best track–Best Bets are college rock carpenters here, hammering out every pop detail for four minutes (if you insist on a Flying Nun comparison, it kind of reminds me of The 3D’s at their most “anthemic”). The Hollow Husk of Feeling’s party is now in full swing, as “Sylvania Waters”, “Monster”, “Hairshirt”, and “Spooky Signals” find the band zipping through jangle pop melodic-bombs. I did mention “glam” earlier, and “The Last Grand Prix” has you covered there, Best Bets tearing amiably through one of their most infectious instrumentals (it still has a bit of bite to it, though). Now in the record’s second half, the quartet continue to keep things fresh with “Pensacola”, featuring a tight rhythm section and more or less functioning as the band’s (winning) entry into the “jangle pop/post-punk” sweepstakes. The final stretch of The Hollow Husk of Feeling also brings Best Bets’ best Teenage Fanclub impression (“When You Walk Out”) and my actual favorite song on the album, “Pillory Parade”. It all comes to a head here–huge power pop hooks, withering lyrical invective, post-ironic showmanship, pop punk snottiness, garage rock fuzz. “Pillory Parade” hits the sweet spot that maybe only the Teenage Tom Petties are also achieving in 2024. If the exhilaration of The Hollow Husk of Feeling feels drawn from frantically attempting to outrun something, the wind at its back for forty minutes blows all the same. (Bandcamp link)
Feeling Figures – Everything Around You
Release date: September 27th
Record label: K/Perennial
Genre: Post-punk, garage rock, 90s indie rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Doors Wide Open
Last November, I wrote about Migration Magic, the debut album from Montreal indie rockers Feeling Figures. I was charmed by the band’s concoction of rock and roll, controlled chaos, and pop, and I wasn’t the only one, as its adventurous journey through several decades’ worth of underground rock music garnered the quartet (guitarist/vocalists Zakary Slax and Kay Moon, bassist Joe Chamandy, and drummer Thomas Molander) a bit of buzz. Determined to strike while the iron was hot, Feeling Figures went right back to work crafting a second album and–hang on a second. It actually says here that Everything Around You, the sophomore Feeling Figures LP, was actually recorded before Migration Magic was. Rather than Migration Magic’s quick, spur-of-the-moment coming together, Everything Around You captures a portion of the members’ pandemic output, recorded in early 2022 after gestating for a while. Like Migration Magic, it’s a pretty varied listen, but it’s a deeper and more deliberate version of Feeling Figures here–the jams are heavier and jammier, the pop songs more polished and poppy, and the garage punk moments come with a bit more of an audible snarl. I hear similar influences in both albums (Sonic Youth, Eric’s Trip, Sebadoh, The Velvets, a bunch of bands from their label K Records), but Feeling Figures made two different beasts out of them.
The scuffed-up, fuzzed-out garage rock of “Co-operator” opens Everything Around You on a catchy but still somewhat standoffish note, but “Doors Wide Open” one song later brings vamping indie-pop-punk bounding right through that unobstructed barn gate, the band breathing incredible life into a song that feels like it contains much more than its sub-two-minute runtime ought to allow. The middle of Everything Around You is where Feeling Figures get incredibly slippery, coming off as electric garage rockers (of the laconic kind in “The Falcon” and of the more spread-out variety in “Space Burial”), experimental, almost-prog-folk adventurers (“Skin I’m In”), and even a bit dreamy-noise-pop-curious (“Swimming”). The two songs that rival “Doors Wide Open” in terms of pure pop success both come towards the end of Everything Around You–the title track comes out of nowhere with its slightly jangly, slightly psychedelic, slightly twee take on go-ahead guitar pop, and where “We Not the You” has a little bit of mid-tempo weary wooziness, its core is just as strong. Speaking of “strong”, Feeling Figures close out Everything Around You with what is by far their longest song to date, the seven-minute Velvet-y garage groove of “Social Anatomy”. It’s pretty different from anything else Feeling Figures have released so far, but the band spent the entirety of Everything Around You getting us prepared to expect moments like this. (Bandcamp link)
Also notable:
- Happy Accidents – Edit Undo
- It Thing – Spirit Level EP
- Adeline Hotel – Whodunnit
- Leafing – Folding Then to Now
- Memory Location – Early Autumn EP
- Adam Remnant – Big Doors
- Dave – Dave II
- Oruã – PASSE
- Modern Silent Cinema – Aphonia
- Superdestroyer – Nelson Comes to Visit
- Tatxers – Ezpatei disdira!
- BASIC – This Is BASIC
- Cold Gawd – I’ll Drown on This Earth
- The Half-Cubes – Pop Treasures
- Matt Hunter and the Dusty Fates – Reindeer Soul
- Snoozer – Mid-Earth
- Allie – Every Dog
- Yannis & The Yaw – Lagos Paris London EP
- Callahan & Witscher – Think Differently
- Sex Week – Sex Week
- The Harlem Gospel Travelers – Rhapsody
- Artie Do Good – Socialist Dance Party
- Gardens & Villa – Ultra Terrestrial
- Criibaby – When I’m Alone I Feel Weightless
- konoha 木ノ葉 – komorebi
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