Pressing Concerns: Dancer/Whisper Hiss, Stomatopod, The Great Dying, Bandy

I seem to have come down with something as I’m writing this, but here’s hoping by the time this goes up on Monday morning I’ll be feeling better. I imagine you, the reader, will be feeling great after checking out the records featured in this edition of Pressing Concerns: new albums from Stomatopod, The Great Dying, a split LP from Dancer and Whisper Hiss, and a new EP from Bandy.

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.

Dancer / Whisper Hiss – Split

Release date: October 4^th
Record label: HHBTM
Genre: Post-punk, indie pop, dance-punk, punk rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Limbo Land

Split LPs aren’t quite as prevalent as they used to be, but don’t tell that to HHBTM Records. I believe that they were responsible for the last full-length split album I wrote about on this blog, a cassette that connected two southeastern U.S. lo-fi guitar pop projects in Mythical Motors and Antlered Auntlord. HHBTM is back at it again with a split 12” record, this time with two more geographically-separated bands–one from the Pacific Northwest, one from Scotland. They’re also two bands I’ve written about in Pressing Concerns before–Glasgow’s Dancer, in fact, have had their entire discography appear in this column, two EPs last year and their debut album, 10 Songs I Hate About You, earlier this year. Dancer have become a regular fixture on this blog, it’s true, but Portland’s Whisper Hiss also appeared here in July 2023 on the occasion of the release of their own debut LP, Shake Me Awake. Both groups are post-punk bands that know their way around a pop hook, but they’re fairly distinct to me–Dancer are the irreverent, offbeat Brits who mix new wave-y art punk with fluffy indie pop, and Whisper Hiss are the heavier, more serious Americans who certainly have listened to their fair share of Dischord and Kill Rock Stars records. Both of them get six songs to make the case for their version of indie rock, and both bring strong material to the table. 

The biggest departure on the Dancer side of the record is that Gemma Fleet is no longer announcing each song title before the band kick in–otherwise, these half-dozen tracks sound just like the powerhouse “mutant disco post-punk” group that hasn’t missed a step yet. If anything, these songs are even catchier than the ones on their own LP, Dancer showing no heed for the “save the ‘hits’ for the proper albums” conventional wisdom. Opening track “Priority Girl” distills Dancer down to its purest elements–tight, dance-friendly rhythms, occasional siren synths, guitar stabs, Fleet doing Fleet things. It’s great, but the more full-bodied “Didn’t Mean To” (an infectious, bounding piece of twee…post-punk…something) and “Paging Planet Earth” (Dancer as jangle pop) are perhaps even more rewarding. “Limbo Land” closes the first half with some tightrope-walking power chords and eventually builds to a fuzzed-out power pop conclusion–almost like they’re trying to meet Whisper Hiss halfway. The Oregonians are in rare form with “Fawn”, an energetic Side-B opener that recalls kinetic, electric early 80s post-punk and even a bit of goth rock. Whisper Hiss return to this well on the closing track, “Envision Another”, which is two minutes of classic death rock in an indie pop package. The middle of Whisper Hiss’ side is a bit more upbeat and less spooky, but Rhiannon Flowers’ organ-keys remind us of the catacombs even as the quartet dance through the Pylon-punk of “Moveable Objects” or strut through their rainy but confident Cascadian take on indie pop with “Never Twice”. I’d like to see more bands try split albums, although Dancer and Whisper Hiss have set a high bar together with this one. (Bandcamp link)

Stomatopod – DrizzleFizzle

Release date: October 4^th
Record label: Pirate Alley
Genre: Garage rock, punk rock, 90s indie rock
Formats: CD, digital
Pull Track: Someone Else’s Enemies

I first encountered Chicago’s Stomatopod in early 2022, when I wrote about their six-song, Steve Albini-recorded Competing With Hindsight–as one might guess from the engineer and locale, the power trio (guitarist/vocalist John Huston, bassist/vocalist Sharon Maloy, and drummer Elliot Dicks) could be reasonably described as “noise rock”, but it’s their own version of it–streamlined but expansive, unmistakably Midwestern, punk-y and garage-y, dark but “pop music”. DrizzleFizzle is their fourth album and the follow-up to Competing With Hindsight–and it’s a doozy, nearly twice as long as their last one and made up of ten enormous songs. The snapshot of brilliance that was Competing with Hindsight is blown up onto the big screen here, and Stomatopod are ready for primetime. Recorded earlier this year at Electrical Audio with Jon San Paolo, is a dizzyingly complete, uncomfortably-up-close version of Stomatopod–three rock and roll veterans hammering out songs because they must be hammered out. There have been some heavy losses in the world of Stomatopod-rock in between Competing With Hindsight and DrizzleFizzle–Albini, Froberg, Romweber–but Stomatopod are still here, still alive, and sounding as driven as ever.

As tempting as it would be to compare Stomatopod to other veteran Windy City PRF-core bands like Eleventh Dream Day and Deep Tunnel Project, Huston and his rhythm section inject DrizzleFizzle with much more nervousness and runaway-train energy than most of their peers deal in these days. One thing that’s really struck me about this album is how it just doesn’t let up–“Spatchcocked” is the four-minute attack-helicopter opening track, while the club-evoking (“club” as in the weapon) “Tiger Rider” is even more lethal and razor-sharp. Depending on which unfashionable aspects of indie rock you prefer, there will be different “wow” moments on DrizzleFizzle–for me, it was love at first listen with the revved-up power-punk chorus of “Someone Else’s Enemies”, a big, angry Andy Cohen-type beast that benefits from its players’ experience (Stomatopod know they’re onto something here, and they’ve got the clarity to embrace it seriously and without any self-consciousness). As I emphasized earlier, DrizzleFizzle does not quit–the second half isn’t short on thrillers between the alleyway-pop of “Take Me With You”, the surprisingly delicate, misleadingly-named “Instrumental”, the Greg Sage-isms of the title track, and the haunted, rhythm section-led closing track “Backwards to Infinity”. It’ll take a few listens to take all of this in, especially with the middle of the album containing the twin summits of “Someone Else’s Enemies” and “Ocean Slider”. The latter of those two is heavy in a different way than most of DrizzleFizzle– it’s the deep fissure that wrenches Stomatopod right open for four minutes. “We know / Not everything works as a metaphor” murmurs Huston at the beginning of the song. That doesn’t stop “Ocean Slider” from being as potent as it is, nor does it stop DrizzleFizzle or Stomatopod. (Bandcamp link)

The Great Dying – A Constant Goodbye

Release date: August 30^th
Record label: Dial Back Sound
Genre: Alt-country, country rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: New Years Day Blues

Will Griffith grew up in the Mississippi Delta in the town of Cleveland, eventually ending up in Oxford after gigging around the area’s “D.I.Y. punk house shows”. The first album from his project The Great Dying, 2018’s Bloody Noses & Roses, was co-produced by Water Valley’s Matt Patton and Bronson Tew and was one of the first records released on Patton’s Dial Back Sound imprint. It’s been a bit since their debut, but The Great Dying hasn’t been idle, with Griffith touring heavily with multi-instrumentalist Craig Pratt and recording with Patton and Tew–together, these four musicians form the core of A Constant Goodbye, the project’s second album. Loosely speaking, A Constant Goodbye is a “country-punk” album, combining the two genres in a way that Patton’s other band, the Drive-By Truckers, have been known to do, although Griffith stamps his writing with a pronounced dour streak. The songs on A Constant Goodbye generally hew towards the darker end of the spectrum, but it’s a pleasingly varied-sounding album nonetheless–sometimes The Great Dying band does its best to summon up their traditionalist country side, but we also get moments of southern rock and roll, orchestral folk, and even a bit of gothic synthpop.

“Blood” is one of the most striking opening tracks I’ve heard in a bit–it’s a percussionless song where Griffith is accompanied just by a couple of guitars (frantically strummed acoustic, dramatically roiling electric) and strings. The Great Dying let the song’s desperation sit front and center, with guest vocalist Schaefer Llana in the chorus only underscoring the harsh, vicious world depicted in the track. The polished string accents on “New Meithico” hardly dampen the bleakness of the situation the song’s characters find themselves in, and the rocker “Ride” holds on with a white-knuckle grip. After such an opening trio, I wasn’t expecting an old-fashioned country ballad, but that’s exactly what “Arterial Rain” is. “Arterial Rain” is an excellent performance, but the other straight-up country songs on A Constant Goodbye do it even better–the masochistic singalong “Hurt Me” is a winner, and “The Sky Over Tennessee” is a great song to lose your shit in an airport bar to near the album’s end. On the other end of the spectrum, the whirring synths, programmed drums, and deep country vocals of “Truck Stop” make it easily the oddest thing on the album, but it works, especially with the help of other oddballs like the dark-mariachi-horn-aided “Hard Few Days” and the power pop of “New Years Day Blues” to help it seem less alone. The latter song closes A Constant Goodbye with a perfect starry-eyed ballad, a lost college rock anthem unlike anything else on the record. Except in the sense that it’s incredibly lonely-sounding–in that way, it’s right at home. (Bandcamp link)

Bandy – VOID

Release date: August 23^rd
Record label: Bandyco
Genre: Garage rock, post-punk, punk rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Cog in a Machine

Bandy are a trio from Chicago made up of a couple of former members of Windy City group MAMA (drummer/vocalist Ross Howard and bassist/vocalist Paul Parts) with Adam Cohen-Leadholm rounding things out on guitar and vocals. Bandy have put out a handful of albums, most recently 2021’s Surf Down, but they’ve never released anything on vinyl until VOID, their latest EP and first new music in three years. VOID, released on their own new label Bandyco, is a quick dispatch from the world of Bandy–just four songs and eight minutes long, the 7” EP reintroduces a group that, in accordance with their shrug of a band name, is pretty much only interested in pumping out lean, punchy Chicago-style punk rock without any of those fancy bells and whistles (like, you know, songs longer than three minutes). I don’t mean to paint Bandy as troglodytes or the like–the group’s clear biggest influence, Mission of Burma, was known for their inventive and skewed take on aggressive rock music, and behind Bandy’s clean guitars and “normal guy” vocals is a subtle but noticeable offbeat streak. It’s maybe not pronounced enough to make Bandy a full-on “egg punk” group–but they aren’t squares, either.

Bandy know how to make a swell first impression with “Cog in a Machine”–the melodic, almost jangle pop instrumental introduction gives way to Howard’s punk-agitating vocal performance, but he’s not so ornery that the chorus doesn’t have a sharp hook to it, too. Cohen-Leadholm takes the mic for the post-punk gallop of “Breezes”, which is probably the most Devo-core song on VOID (Parts, credited to “effects” on the EP, slips in some Martin Swope-esque fuckery via an odd synth undercurrent)–even the guitar is chained to the rhythm here. On “I’m Stuck”, it’s Parts’ turn behind the mic, and the song the bassist helms is the most “Electrical Audio/PRF-core” track on the EP–it’s a garage rocker that’s got a bit of that old Silkworm-y understated charm, the pile-up in the chorus jerking us back just enough to get our attention. And just like that, VOID is over (well, almost over–blink and you’ll miss 90-second closing track “In the Grotto”, which manages to triangulate the sounds of the three tracks that came before it in a flash). The only bone I could possibly have to pick with VOID is its brevity, but at the end of the day, it’s a record of four finely-tuned indie rock songs that didn’t exist before Bandy put them to tape–and the three of them deserve props for making that happen. (Bandcamp link)

Also notable:

• Tucker Riggleman & The Cheap Dates – Live and Restless at Olde Mother
• Cindy – Swan Lake EP
• Lawns – Be a Better Man
• Hearts of Oak – Valley of Dark Hills
• All the Pretty Horses – Witches Up No Mountain Switches Down No Valley
• Nick Flessa – The Politics of Personal Destruction
• Hello Mary – Emita Ox
• CŒUR À L’INDEX – Adieu Minette
• Love Child – Peel Session EP
• Kerosene Kream – Buying Time EP
• Gurriers – Come and See
• Floral Tattoo – The Circus Egotistica; or, How I Spent Most of My Life as a Lost Cause 
• Alien Nosejob – Turns the Colour of Bad Shit
• Pocketboy Solid – Pocketboy Solid
• Ghostwriter – Tremulant
• Willi Carlisle – Tales from Critterland
• Veronica Everheart – Lighter in the Morning (1/2) EP
• Justin Webb & The Noise – Stupid Young
• Jimrat – I Hate Shoegaze/Neck EP
• Bob Sumner – Some Place to Rest Easy
• Ghostkeeper – Cîpayak Joy
• GEL – Persona EP
• Ironic Hill – Taylor Swift
• Maximo Park – Stream of Life
• Unbelievable Truth – Misc. Music