Pressing Concerns: Styrofoam Winos, Dom Sensitive, Wavers, The Collect Pond

Hey, all! The second Pressing Concerns of the week is here, and it’s a great one, looking at brand new albums from Styrofoam Winos, Dom Sensitive, and The Collect Pond, as well as an EP from Wavers that came out a few months ago. These records rule, and if you missed yesterday’s post (featuring Upstairs, Snakeskin, Best Bets, and Feeling Figures), be sure to 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.

Styrofoam Winos – Real Time

Release date: September 27^th
Record label: Sophomore Lounge
Genre: Folk rock, alt-country, singer-songwriter, country rock
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
Pull Track: Master of Time

Nashville’s premier alt-country supergroup Styrofoam Winos were one of the first bands to appear in Pressing Concerns when I started this blog up at the beginning of 2021, on the occasion of their self-titled debut album. In the three years since then, all three of the Winos–Lou Turner, Trevor Nikrant, and Joe Kenkel–have put out excellent solo albums, and the Winos as a trio have released a Michael Hurley covers album and toured with MJ Lenderman & The Wind. Still, we’d been missing a new album of original Styrofoam Winos tunes, which Real Time, once again released by the great Sophomore Lounge, finally rectifies. It’s quite satisfying to listen to Real Time and be able to hear the growth that the band has made together almost immediately–part of Styrofoam Winos’ appeal was its range, displaying the work of a group with three distinct songwriters adding their own touch to the songs. Real Time is a different story–the Winos meld together here more than ever before, creating a cohesive album that sounds relaxed and comfortable as a whole. It’s not like “laid-back country rock” is new territory for Styrofoam Winos, but the way that they do it here–effortlessly passing the torch between the three of them, creating a singular vibe across these ten songs–is a palpable leap.

The serene sophisti-pop of Kenkel, the more traditional folk and country of Turner, and the expansive dreaminess of Nikrant all go into Real Time’s sound–it’s an album that isn’t shy about evoking their hometown but doesn’t sound tied to any particular time, movement, or genre. Any album that starts off with something as stark as “Angel Flies Over”–a timeless country specimen that the Winos sing like they were born to do so–isn’t a particularly hurried one, a reality that also shades one of the best songs on the album, “Master of Time”, not long afterwards. Nikrant’s delicate but deft talk-singing is perhaps the most “Lambchop-esque” moment on the record, although 1990s Kurt Wagner didn’t have two more of him backing himself up like Nikrant does with Turner and Kenkel. The Styrofoam Winos eventually get around to the “rock” part of country rock, in a way-“Rollin’ with You” and “Don’t Mind Me” are a little more electric than the songs before them, although it feels like those just happened to be the instruments nearest Styrofoam Winos when it came time to put these tracks to tape (the latter of the two, which breaks into a steady cruise-control jam in its second half, is hard to imagine any other way, however). Real Time is a pretty mellow album when it’s all said and done, and the Winos take pains to give songs like “Dial Tone” and “Don’t Know What” the space they need. I can still hear all three of the band’s individuals on Real Time, but what I hear above anything else is a trio of musicians working as part of something distinct from (and larger than) themselves. (Bandcamp link)

Dom Sensitive – Leather Trim

Release date: September 27^th
Record label: Dinosaur City/Chrüsimüsi
Genre: Art rock, post-punk, psychedelia
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
Pull Track: Critical Energy

Leather Trim by Dom Sensitive is a “how did we get here?” kind of album. By that, I mean that musicians don’t really ever start out by making music that sounds like this, but rather it’s something that one arrives at after exhausting more traditional avenues. Port Adelaide, Australia’s Dom Trimboli spent the early part of his musical career exploring garage rock, post-punk, and weirdo country rock fronting the bands Wireheads and Dom & The Wizards, largely putting out music via Melbourne imprint Tenth Court (Spice World, Joe Ziffer, Mope City). Wireheads is still going strong (the sextet’s most recent album came out last year), but Trimboli clearly had an itch to make something different than the Aussie rock and roll of that group–enter Dom Sensitive. The project’s name implies a solo endeavor of some kind, but plenty of frequent Trimboli collaborators contribute to its debut album, Leather Trim–bandmates Vic Conrad, David John Wilke, Liam Kenny, Daniel Heath, and Tom Spall all receive either writing or performing credits on the record. Leather Trim spans six songs in over a half-hour, and it’s about as far from a “traditional punk” album as a bunch of punk-reared musicians could possibly make–there are traces of the more rambling, exploratory sides of The Fall and Tropical Fuck Storm here, sure, as well as the ghosts of many a burned-out bar piano player.

It’s not lost on me that the first half of Leather Trim is the more confrontational and “out there” of the two. Dom Sensitive wants to introduce himself via the five-minute staggering-drunk opening track “Digital Random Hat” (Trimboli claims to be inspired by “patchwork hip-hop production”, which explains how they ended up with that as the song’s percussion) and an eleven-minute thing called “The Second Day of Spring”. It’s worth looking at that latter song in a bit more detail–there’s Trimboli’s bizarre sober-psychedelic lyrics, true, but the rest of the song is just as wacky, from the extended part where the guest vocalist sings “Nothing but remorse, nothing but remorse” over and over again in a memorable cadence from the rinky-dink piano to the nearly-two minute-outro that leans on little more than the drumbeat and a simple bass riff pounded into the ground. Blowing everything to smithereens with “The Second Day of Spring” that early on is an inspired choice; after leaving it all out there like that, songs like the somewhat corroded garage-y post-punk of “R&D” and the drum machine/horn-heavy punk-hop rager “Critical Energy” start looking like pop music. Although Leather Trim is clearly a heavily-labored-over album, the personalities and players leading it ensure that it stays interesting and attentive, and it only ups the catharsis of the extended guitar solo that marks the end of closing track “Weather Maps”. So, we’ve traced how we arrived at Leather Trim, and now it’s in Dom Sensitive’s hands to figure out where it goes next. (Bandcamp link)

Wavers – Wavers

Release date: May 21^st
Record label: Musical Fanzine
Genre: 90s indie rock, fuzz rock, lo-fi indie rock, lo-fi pop
Formats: CD, cassette, digital
Pull Track: Voyeur/Liverwalk

I’ll give some behind-the-scenes information about how this EP got here, because everyone loves meta-writing. Back in March of this year, I got an email from Joshua Hoey, an Olympia, Washington-based musician who’s played in the bands Pigeon Pit, Fastener, and Parasol, but was now the guitarist in a new quartet called Wavers. Wavers was going to release their debut EP on Musical Fanzine later this year, Hoag told me, and wondered if I wanted to write about it. I really liked the Wavers EP, said I would write about it when it came out, and promptly forgot about it for several months until I saw it on my computer, checked to see if it had been released, and saw that it indeed had back in May. So here I am writing about the debut EP from Wavers, a Pacific Northwest quartet (also featuring vocalist Rosie, bassist Jake, and drummer Charlie) who proudly declare their love of Discount, J Church, and Versus on their Bandcamp page (with “any of the emo stuff that NUMERO GROUP has reissued” helpfully added on for those of you who aren’t familiar with those could’ve-been-canonical-indie-rock groups). In under ten minutes, Wavers sketch out their sound–a little bit of emo, some 90s indie rock, lo-fi indie pop, and even a bit of punk attitude in between the cracks.

It’s all too brief, but Wavers is more than enough to give the new band an incredibly strong and personable debut. In about ninety-seconds, “Parking Lot” builds a world of emotion based on interactions in the titular location and burns it down with Rosie’s voice and buzzing, soaring guitarplay. The EP’s lead single, “Voyeur/Liverwalk”, is a little longer (it crosses the two-minute mark), and Wavers find an unlikely Pacific Northwest guitar pop anthem in its aimless, late-night wandering. The most upbeat song on Wavers is the fuzz-punk of “Work Don’t Work”–there’s some bite to it, but the guitars drown out the vocals just enough to prevent it from fully taking shape as an angry rocker and it becomes something a little fuzzier. There’s no cover or shelter of any kind on such a short release–every moment of the EP counts, and Wavers continue to nail their hyper-specific sound in the EP’s final two tracks, “Orange to Blue” and “Birthday”. The former is the longest song on the record and arguably Rosie’s best vocal performance–there’s a bit of rootsiness to the blurry emo-tinged ballad, the vocals flying above the instrumental rather than being shaded by it. “Birthday”, meanwhile, ends Wavers on a bittersweet note, a song about loss that doesn’t wallow but rather injects the band’s last bit of energy to close the track out. Rosy Overdrive exists to spotlight bands like this, I think. I’m on the Wavers train, and I think you’ll want to be, too. (Bandcamp link)

The Collect Pond – Lightbreaker

Release date: September 27^th
Record label: Candlepin
Genre: Lo-fi indie rock, lo-fi pop, psych pop, post-punk
Formats: Cassette, digital
Pull Track: Disassociating

I was introduced to Boston quartet The Collect Pond last year via their second album and Candlepin Records debut, Underwater Features. It also marked the on-record debut of The Collect Pond as a full band, evolving from a solo project from bandleader Danny Moffat–and the contributions of Roger Maranan, Rob Carrington, and Ben Bonadies helped turn the brief (18-minute) cassette into an impressive mix of lo-fi indie pop and darker, more post-punk-indebted material. When people compare modern bands to Flying Nun/classic Dunedin Sound groups, they’re usually referring to ramshackle guitar pop, but The Collect Pond are a more complete modern version of that era–there’s pop music, sure, but there’s also the less immediate sides of those acts in their forays into hazy psychedelia and greyscale art punk. Their newest record, Lightbreaker, picks up where Underwater Features left off–if anything, it’s an even darker experience than the last cassette, with Moffat and crew seemingly trusting the listeners to be able to pick up on subtler hooks and longer gaps in between moments of jangly guitars and timeless-sounding refrains. The Collect Pond aren’t reinventing themselves so much as seeing how far the rope goes on Lightbreaker.

Lightbreaker starts off fairly accessible with the fuzz-rock title track and first-half highlight “Disassociating”, which gets a lot of mileage out of simple keyboard hooks, backing vocals, and melodic guitar flourishes. Even so, “Disassociating” has a listless mid-tempo feel to it reflecting its title that’s prevalent even in the album’s brightest moments. “Which Part?” is almost an extension of “Disassociating”’s vibe, but “Sympathetic Hero” is catchy in a different way, embracing the jangly lo-fi post-punk sound of groups like The Laughing Chimes. The second half of Lightbreaker is where The Collect Pond really start trying new ideas, knocking off a woozy, tipsy Kiwi-esque lo-fi singalong (“Love on Hold”), sharp, slicing garage rock (“Revolution”), and acoustic psychedelic pop (“Whispers”). Like Underwater Features, Lightbreaker is on the shorter side (around 21 minutes), and after “Whispers” the tape kind of fades away with the twin brief instrumentals of “Flight Cancelled” and “Bloomsday”. It’s enough to stand on its own, though, and in context it’s a welcome dispatch from a band that has a clear “sound” they’re going for but are hardly spinning their wheels in their approach to it. (Bandcamp link)

Also notable:

• Shady Cove – Part II
• The Bad Ups – Life of Sin
• Girl Gordon – Corruptor
• Hataałiinez – Waiting for a Sign
• Soft Self Portraits – Yarns Spun
• Housewives – Housewives
• Mui Zyu – Nothing or Something to Die For (Cantonese Tasting Menu) EP
• A Giant Dog – Raw EP
• Campfire Social – They Sound the Same Underwater
• Joe Sampson – It Must Be Hard Seeing Me Like This
• Zookraught – Vida Violet
• Medium Weekend – Heap
• The Anomalys – Down the Hole
• The The – Ensoulment
• Brevity – Home Is Where Your Dog Is
• Crush the Monster – Death
• Michael Cloud Duguay – Succeeder
• Mirror of Venus – Black Sky EP
• Kite – VII
• Dave Harrington, Max Jaffe, & Patrick Shiroishi – Zebulon!
• Monica Aben – Everything I’ve Ever Known EP
• Hayley and the Crushers – Unsubscribe from the Underground EP
• Bathe – Insides Voice(s): Side A
• Rockers Galore – Vamos a la Playa
• Invertebrates – Sick to Survive