Pressing Concerns: Sassyhiya, p:ano, Smoker Dad, Blank Banker

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There’s still a bunch of great new music to discuss here in mid-November. Today we’ve got new albums from Sassyhiya, p:ano, Smoker Dad, and Blank Banker to look at below; there’s something for everyone in these records, I’d say!

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.

Sassyhiya – Take You Somewhere

Release date: November 8th
Record label: Skep Wax
Genre: Post-punk, indie pop, twee, power pop, art punk
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
Pull Track: On Our Way

Over the past few years, Helen Skinner has played in the bands Basic Plumbing, Boys Forever, and Barry, with the latter of the three also featuring her real-life partner Kathy Wright. The two of them started making music together as Sassyhiya around the end of last decade, with a live EP and a demo EP (both released in 2022) eventually culminating in the addition of guitarist Neiloy Mookherjee and drummer Pablo Paganotto and the release of their debut album, Take You Somewhere. The first Sassyhiya album affirms that they’re right at home on their new label Skep Wax (Heavenly, Crumbs, Swansea Sound)–it’s just about everything one could want in a new British guitar pop band. It’s incredibly, unashamedly twee (how else could one possibly describe an album featuring odes to puppets, gardening, and the co-bandleaders’ pet cat?) that, at the same time, is a record made by a legitimate rock band that has an equal appreciation for arty, rhythmic post-punk. There’s even bits of dream pop, jangle pop, and psychedelia in Sassyhiya’s first dozen songs, and Wright and Skinner’s writing is equal parts immediately emotional and thoughtfully reserved.

It’s not a perfect division, but Take You Somewhere falls roughly into the “catchy, single-ready pop music first half, more laid-back second half” archetype. If you’re a fan of “indie pop” at all, odds are something in the first half-dozen tracks will hook you–and at the very least, you’re going to remember their perky queer-post-punk-pop tribute to “Kristen Stewart”, their handclap-featuring, lethally catchy tribute to Wright and Skinner’s cat “Crayon Potato” (“She doesn’t like you / She doesn’t like me / She only likes ocean fish”), or their outing at the “Puppet Museum” (“They’ve got Kermit and I want you to meet him”). Nonetheless, there’s a less cheery, more post-punk-friendly sound hinted at in the escape-from-society opening track “Boat Called Predator” and the wobbly “I Had a Thought”, and Sassyhiya really try their hand at stretching out their songs in the second half. The stop-start psychedelic pop of “Perennial” is a pretty big departure, and the hypnotizing guitar leads and locked-in rhythm section in “On Our Way” is another exciting new moment for Take You Somewhere. By the time we get to “Try Try Try”, the “Raincoats-esque” undercurrent isn’t really “under” anymore, with the song’s minimal, deconstructed indie pop/post-punk skeleton hitting just all the right notes. After floating through the B-side, Sassyihya rally for one last upbeat song in “You Can Give It (But You Can’t Take It)”–big guitars and a sharp drumbeat greet us for the grand finale. It’s Sassyhiya at their most “punk”, sneering “When you try to dish it out / You’re gonna get some right back,” right before the title line. But Sassyhiya do it their way–rather than transforming into a vehicle of raw aggression, they still sound limber, smart, and fun. (Bandcamp link)

p:ano – ba ba ba

Release date: September 17th
Record label: C.O.Q.
Genre: Indie pop, soft rock, chamber pop, fuzz pop
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Mariko

Vancouver singer-songwriter Nicholas Krgovich has been busy pretty much this entire century–there’s his ever-expanding solo career, there’s his time in bands like No Kids and Gigi, and he’s also played with everyone from Dear Nora to Rose Melberg to Mount Eerie. Before any of that, though, there was p:ano, the band Krgovich formed with Larissa Loyva in 1999, when the two of them were still in high school. Eventually joined by Julia Chirka and Justin Kellam, the four of them made four albums from 2001 to 2008 before Loyva left and p:ano was retired (the remaining three members put out an EP and an album as No Kids). Zum Records, who put out the first two p:ano records, asked Krgovich if he’d contribute a song to an anniversary compilation last year, and this led to a p:ano reunion–first just for their Zum Audio Vol. 5 appearance, but eventually leading to an entirely new p:ano LP. The writing and instrumentation on ba ba ba is inspired by the members’ roots–they specifically mention formative indie pop/rock bands like Yo La Tengo, Belle & Sebastian, and The Magnetic Fields that were key in bonding the group together twenty years ago, and much of Krgovich’s writing is drawn from his experiences growing up in the Vancouver suburb of Coquitlam, where p:ano originally formed (I would have to guess that “C.O.Q. Records”, a new label seemingly launched to release ba ba ba, is similarly a nod to their hometown).

ba ba ba is a warmly familiar-sounding indie pop record, reaching ten songs and forty-five minutes in length by gliding along humbly but purposefully. The soft-touch guitar pop of Belle & Sebastian is probably the closest of those canonical influences to what p:ano sound like on this album, but Krgovich and Loyva’s lyrics (for the former) and vocals (for the both of them) have a grounded, suburban realism to them that feels pretty distinct from their influences (that’s the Coquitlam touch, I suppose). For a group of musicians who haven’t played together in quite some time, ba ba ba is impressively coherent–it’s best taken in as an entire record in my opinion, but there are some immediately obvious standouts. The fluttering, conversational indie pop of “Mariko” is an attention-grabber, while the Stereolab-evoking drone-pop of “Mikey’s New House” and the slightly fuzzed-out “Old Shoe” emphasize that p:ano is a fully-developed band, not just another Krgovich solo project. p:ano’s minimal, time-warp version of indie pop isn’t totally out of line with the rest of their Pacific Northwest peers, but it’s a fairly unique one in the midst of this scene, and it’s certainly strong enough to shine in 2024. (Bandcamp link)

Smoker Dad – Hotdog Highway

Release date: October 24th
Record label: Self-released
Genre: Country rock, alt-country, garage rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Part 2

Oh boy, we get to talk about a six-piece country rock band from Seattle called Smoker Dad today. After a few singles, the sextet (vocalist/guitarist Trevor Conway, vocalist/keyboardist Chris King, guitarist Teagen Conway, pedal steel guitarist Chris Costalupes, bassist Derek Luther, and drummer Adam Knowles) burst onto the scene with a self-titled album in 2022, and they’re back two years later with a sophomore LP entitled Hotdog Highway. Like many classic second albums, Hotdog Highway is greatly informed and shaped by Smoker Dad touring their first album on the road–even the title is a reference to the feeling evoked by seven or eight people crammed into a tour van rolling its way across the western United States. That’s all well and good, but it wouldn’t amount to much if Hotdog Highway didn’t rock–which it does, enthusiastically and expertly. This is hard-charging country rock-and-roll, road-tested and successfully captured by Garrett Reynolds at Seattle’s Electrokitty Sound Studio. In ten songs and forty minutes, Hotdog Highway never flags–every time Smoker Dad bust out a boozy country ballad, there’s a revved-up rocker coming just around the bend.

If you aren’t charmed by the alt-country party anthem “Part 2” that kicks off Hotdog Highway, then there’s no way Smoker Dad are the band for you. If it hits, though, there’s plenty more where that came from–for one, there’s the western garage rock speediness of “Armadillo” one track later, there’s the rambling rock and roll of “Rollin’ On”, and there’s the unhinged “Thinkin’ Bout Drinkin’” (if only the recent Japandroids song on the same subject was half as spirited as this). Like Smoker Dad on their last record, they dredge up one old blues song and turn it into a psychobilly freakout (this time it’s Kokomo Arnold’s “Milk Cow Blues”, which is excellently…well, I already used “unhinged”, but Smoker Dad are no less hinged on this one). In between these fiery bursts are the thinking person’s Smoker Dad songs, like “On My Mind” and “Tonight”, both of which push past four minutes, and “Smoke When I’m Drinkin’” (“I’m only happy when I’m stoned / And I only smoke when I’m drinkin’”, sounding like the world’s saddest logic puzzle). The final stretch of Hotdog Highway is the closest thing to a “breather”–“Smoke When I’m Drinkin’” and “Back Around” pull back just a bit, and the whole record closes with the title track, which has a bit of everything. There’s some bits of polished piano balladry, some smooth-ride country rock, and, of course, wild guitar meltdowns before “Hotdog Highway” comes to a close. Send Smoker Dad out on another cross country van trip; I want to see what they come back with next. (Bandcamp link)

Blank Banker – Intervallic Travails

Release date: September 17th
Record label: Silent Co-op
Genre: 90s indie rock, noise rock, math rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Tollund Blues

Blank Banker are a band from Chicago made up of five noisy indie rock veterans–guitarist/vocalist Orion Layton, guitarist Andrew Rench, bassist Jon Strasheim, drummer Neal Markowski, and vocalist Ellen Layton, who’ve played in groups like Daddy’s Boy, Rectangle, Burn Permits, and Ancient Greeks between them. As it turns out, I’ve actually covered Blank Banker on this blog before, but I didn’t remember until Markowski reminded me in the email alerting me to this album (I called their version of “Don’t Let It Bring You Down” “lumbering” when I reviewed every single Neil Young cover compilation on Bandcamp). Blank Banker’s most recent album is also their first release since 2016, and Intervallic Travails certainly sounds like a group of 90s indie rock refugees that have washed up on the shores of Electrical Audio (where the LP was recorded by Jon San Paolo last September). The biography for the album helpfully references Polvo and Sonic Youth, and fans of those bands will indeed find plenty to appreciate in the controlled-chaos basement rock of Intervallic Travails. Blank Banker are all over the place, but they never don’t sound like they have a vision in their head–they never go full Beefheart, but they’re never a straight-up Crazy Horse tribute act, either.

Blank Banker is split between Chicago and Montana these days, but the geographical and temporal gap doesn’t keep Intervallic Travails from sounding like a symphonic wave of underground rock music for its entire thirty-one minutes. If you’re curious, Blank Banker tack on a brief description of what every song on the album is about at the end of their Bandcamp page (the blustering noise-punk of “Ientaculum” is “Cthulhu’s attitude toward climate change”, the quick-footed “Tollund Blues” covers “laying in a peat bog on purpose”), although what Intervallic Travails is really about to me is hearing a bunch of musicians swerve and careen through indie rock-as-a-second-language, ripping through PRF-core unadorned-rock-fests like “Theme from BB” and “Ientaculum”, turning up the math rock dials on “School” and “Can’t Even”, and even showing off a bit of tenderness in “Anna’s Laminate” (in between the hurricane-force guitar freakouts) and “Tomcats” (a quiet song that doesn’t even have a single tinnitus-inducing moment in it). As tranquil as “Tomcats” sounds, Blank Banker are a band that doesn’t need to use their inside voices as a shorthand for deepness and sentimentality–as closing track “Cairn” demonstrates, the group are just as easily able to take hold of rumbling, yes, lumbering noisy rock to pay tribute to a lost loved one. Intervallic Travails goes out with torrents of guitars lapsing into fuzz, as it should. (Bandcamp link)

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