Pressing Concerns: 2nd Grade, THEMM!, Dazy, Podcasts

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You know how last week was a great week on the blog? Well, guess what: this one is going to be just as good, if not better. We’re getting started with a mostly EPs edition (I didn’t plan it that way, it’s just how things shook out!): new ones from THEMM!, Dazy, and Podcasts, plus the hot new 2nd Grade full-length, are detailed below.

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.

2nd Grade – Scheduled Explosions

Release date: October 25th
Record label: Double Double Whammy
Genre: Power pop, lo-fi pop
Formats: Cassette, digital
Pull Track: Out of the Hive

Every indie rock band wants to be Guided by Voices. And why wouldn’t they? They’re critically acclaimed, they’re successful enough to make it their job, they’ve got a devout cult following, their live shows are renowned parties, they’ve put out a ton of music–and they’ve done it all while being fiercely independent. 2nd Grade are assuredly one of these bands–frontperson Peter Gill has even gone so far as to not play guitar live as inspired by Robert Pollard’s stage presence. Like any power pop band with a penchant for shorter songs, 2nd Grade have been blessed or cursed with Guided by Voices comparisons pretty much since their inception as a Gill solo project, even if I thought that their earlier work (which I did enjoy a fair deal, by the way) didn’t have much in common with classic Pollard fare aside from runtime. It’s actually way harder to sound like Guided by Voices than the RIYLers of the world make it seem. You can’t just slap tape hiss on a Romantics B-side and call it a day; there’s a mix of uninhibited rock and roll and self-conscious basement pop, a balance between wonderment and darker, sadder feelings. On Scheduled Explosions, the fourth and best album from the Philadelphia power pop group, Peter Gill and company, for the first time in 2nd Grade’s relatively brief but fruitful career, unambiguously shoot for and subsequently nail this balance.

Scheduled Explosions is actually a step back in terms of fidelity from their last album, 2022’s Easy Listening–the rest of the band (Remember Sports’ Catherine Dwyer on guitar, MJ Lenderman & The Wind/Friendship’s Jon Samuels also on guitar, Psychic Flowers/Big Heet’s David Settle on bass, and Ylayali’s Francis Lyons on drums) drift in and out of these twenty-three songs, never once appearing on the same track together. Gill is the only constant. It lends a patchwork–dare I say collage-like–quality to the record, correctly trusting Gill’s writing and vision to hold these songs together. At this point, Gill’s ability to produce a bucket of winning hooks is well-established, and this, of course, goes a long way towards making Scheduled Explosions the instant classic that it is, as does Gill’s inability to be anything other than a big pop music fan, as the references to everything from Dougie Poole to Otis Redding to “Wild Thing” to “I Want to Tell You” keep reminding us. Also key is 2nd Grade’s refusal to abandon the “power” side of power pop even as it’s not really a record made by five musicians playing a room together–from “Live from Missile Command” to “Out of the Hive” to “Fashion Disease” to “Like a Wild Thing” to “American Rhythm”, there’s always a moment of, ahem, explosive rock and roll lurking just around the corner of the record.

Now that I’ve referenced the title, we might as well nod to the reality that we’re talking about an album called Scheduled Explosions with songs with titles like “Live from Missile Command” and “Jingle Jangle Nuclear Meltdown” and featuring multiple references to the price of gas being too high to “take you for a ride”. If it were the kind of 1980s unearthed basement pop that those early GBV records are often romanticized as, we’d call it “Cold War-informed”; the fact that it came out in 2024 confronts us with facts about this current day and age that your average power pop fan would rather not face. One of the final songs on the album is “68 Comeback”, one of the record’s most overtly Guided by Voices-esque songs about the titular Elvis Presley video concert special that’s distorted and blown-out to all hell. Gill’s alone on this one, and the words spill out of his mouth: “Right here right now is a child / Skipping dreamstones / On the surface of the retroverse / In the midst of a nuclear meltdown / Crying for help in the Sunset Sound echo chamber”. There’s a fire here, too, just as white-hot as it’s ever been. (Bandcamp link)

THEMM! – El Pastor

Release date: September 13th
Record label: Self-released
Genre: Punk rock, garage rock, Texas rock and roll
Formats: Digital
Pull Track: Hot Death

For almost the entire twenty-first century, Austin, Texas quintet The Midgetmen roamed the Lone Star State, playing gigs and putting out albums (usually on their own) of their self-described “slop-punk”. A couple of years ago, The Midgetmen (bassist/vocalist Marc Perlman, guitarists Alex Victoria, Jon Loyens, and Scotty Loewen, and drummer Justin Petro) rechristened themselves as THEMM!, but as far as I can tell, the vibe has largely remained the same (one of their first releases as THEMM! was a three-song single called THEMM! Try Crack, if you’re worried about them becoming too buttoned-up). 2024 has been THEMM!’s formal launch year–February brought Mmm, an EP in which the quintet re-recorded some of their earliest songs released under their old band name, while September sees the launch of El Pastor, THEMM!’s first record of all-new, all-original material. Recorded on the Mexican border near El Paso at Sonic Ranch with Ross Ingram of EEP, the five-song EP is THEMM! doing what they do best–cranking out hooky, unbothered punk rock that flirts with massive anthem-slinging but never takes itself too seriously.

Somewhat surprisingly, THEMM! open El Pastor with a State of the Republic in “Live Laugh Love”, a dispatch from the crumbling empire of their home state that touches on abortion rights, transphobia, fascism, and name-checks Ken Paxton over a flag-waving punk anthem. Lest you worry about where THEMM! stand, they not only reject the dark cloud hanging over their state but the excuses for falling in line, too–“I’m from a small town, I won’t go back / Go it alone when you can’t trust the pack”. “Hot Death” is the other song on El Pastor that rivals “Live Laugh Love” in “mega-punk-anthem” status, the guitars flying high as the band melt into the sand in the midst of dusty trails, cacti, and cicadas. 

There’s a messiness and even darkness that runs deeper than the sloppy, cathartic take on pop punk that THEMM! practice on El Pastor, particularly present in the garage rock venter “Red Fangers” (“I’m in the tent because your mom and dad fight”) and the southern punk of “Steaks and Snakes”, whose narrator works a “contract job in the panhandle” while watching their domestic life circle the drain. After juggling phone calls from lawyers, THEMM! finish “Steaks and Snakes” by looking to the one constant in their life–the music, dude (“Hope we get cash tonight or we sleep in the practice space / Who can think of an ex-wife when you’re opening for Lee Bains”). Those may be the final lyrics of El Pastor, but the actual final statement is the uncharacteristically long instrumental the band launch into right afterwards. It’s the sound of getting up off one’s ass and moving somewhere. Maybe Texas is too big to escape, but it’s large enough that there’s always a new corner. (Bandcamp link)

Dazy – IT’S ONLY A SECRET (If You Repeat It)

Release date: October 25th
Record label: Lame-O
Genre: Power pop, fuzz rock, fuzz pop, pop punk, alt-dance, Madchester
Formats: Digital
Pull Track: Big End

It’s short, and it’s very sweet. One of the first releases from James Goodson’s Dazy project that got any kind of attention was a three-song EP called Revolving Door back in 2021, so why shouldn’t the one-man fuzzy-power-pop band return to the well a few years later? Of course, a lot has happened in the world of Dazy between Revolving Door and now–an all-timer of a compilation cassette called MAXIMUMBLASTSUPERLOUD, a blockbuster signing to Lame-O Records, a debut LP called OUTOFBODY and a companion EP called OTHERBODY. Dazy has been uncharacteristically quiet as of late, as it’s been a year since the last new music from Goodson, the one-off “Forced Perspective” single (not counting an appearance on a song from the dance group Bodysync). Nevertheless, IT’S ONLY A SECRET (If You Repeat It) picks up the thread right where Goodson left off, with his instantly recognizable huge hooks that are equal parts pop punk and Madchester losing no potency over time. The dance-pop and electronic elements from the Bodysync collaboration and “Forced Perspective” are very present in these three tracks too, but there’s also plenty of punk energy and huge guitars, too–Goodson even lists Deedee from wild art punk group MSPAINT on the title track.

“It’s Only a Secret” was the EP’s lead single, but opening track “Big End” is the most obvious “hit” on IT’S ONLY A SECRET (If You Repeat It) to my ears. It’s the one “vintage Dazy” classic song on the EP–it’s got a bit of alt-dance energy to it, but it’s primarily a power pop guitar assault that just happens to have a beat. Goodson’s unflagging, almost robotic high energy is so strong here that even if the rest of the EP was inessential, “Big End” alone would be ample reassurance that Dazy’s still “got it”–“it” being the ability to write a scorching anthem for staring directly at the sun and sounding incredibly cool while doing it. The rest of the EP isn’t inessential, by the way, just different. “Weigh Down on Me” is a nice sideroad for Goodson to go down–the sun-drenched psychedelic pop of this song never explodes like the track before it, but its tightly controlled alt-pop sheen ends up being the glue that hold the two kinetic tracks bordering it together. Which leads us to “It’s Only a Secret”, in which a classic Dazy refrain (the one that gives the EP its title) has to battle an insurgent hardcore-punk vocal from Deedee and Goodson’s own electronic impulses. As one might imagine based on that description, “It’s Only a Secret” is a fairly unique-sounding song–it risks being more “interesting” than good, but the hooks win out–when Goodson, Deedee, and an acoustic guitar lock into place before the song’s big finish, every chaotic flourish feels justified. (Bandcamp link)

Podcasts – Supreme Auctions

Release date: September 13th
Record label: Omegn Plateproduksjon
Genre: Jangle pop, post-punk, power pop
Formats: Digital
Pull Track: Never Been a Problem

The self-titled debut album from Oslo quartet Podcasts was one of the biggest “growers” for me in 2023. I thought it was interesting when I heard it, pretty good when I wrote about it, and firmly enough in its camp by the end of last year to put it on my year-end list. The band (Ellis Jones aka Trust Fund, Kyle Devine, Tore Størvold, and Emil Kraugerud) practiced guitar-based indie pop with a bit of trickiness on Podcasts, favoring unexpected twists and turns over making the obvious move time and time again. The first Podcasts release since their debut LP is a brief but welcome EP called Supreme Auctions, which zips through “3.5 songs” in about eight minutes. It’s Podcasts at their most laconic yet–nothing on this EP is longer than three minutes, and the first song (an instrumental introduction that I’ll assume is the “.5” track) comes in at under a minute. More than just the song lengths, though, Supreme Auctions contains some of the band’s most unvarnished pop songwriting yet–the odd detours in Podcasts’ jangly power pop haven’t vanished exactly, but with little time to spare, they’re kept more towards the margins, giving these tracks a bit more runway with which to take off.

The EP kicks off with “Intro (For Supreme Auctions)”, which blends seamlessly into “Never Been a Problem”, not allowing us to take much of a breath before Supreme Auctions is already halfway over. The sprinting instrumental of “Intro (For Supreme Auctions)” eventually coils into something that resembles “math rock”, but only for a couple of seconds–likewise, “Never Been a Problem” is a polished, sugary piece of power pop that grinds to a complete halt halfway through, only to jam the keys back in the ignition and soar yet again (and then pull a slightly smaller version of the same trick one more time before the song ends). “Down to Melbourne” is the most rhythm-forward track on the EP, and it’s also a masterclass in restraint–it feels like Podcasts are holding back just a little bit throughout the song, to the point where the final refrain becomes a climax without radically altering much of anything. By closing track “Holiday”, Podcasts have become a blissful, carefree mid-tempo guitar pop band, strumming and breezing their way through a song that resists any sort of mid-track lurch or really anything more than a brief between-verses instrumental. Podcasts have more than earned the day off that’s daydreamt in the final track. (Bandcamp link)

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