Pressing Concerns: Vista House, Unlettered, Orillia, Luna Honey

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Hello again, readers! This Thursday Pressing Concerns looks at three albums that are coming out tomorrow, November 22nd, provided to us by Vista House, Unlettered, and Luna Honey. We also look at a new album from Orillia that came out earlier this week. Nice! If you missed either of this week’s earlier blog posts (on Monday, we looked at new records from Casual Technicians, Sexores, Dogwood Gap, and Morpho, and on Tuesday we examined new ones from Grey Factor, Red Pants, DUNUMS, and Bondo), check those 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.

Vista House – They’ll See Light

Release date: November 22nd
Record label: Anything Bagel
Genre: Country rock, alt-country
Formats: Cassette, digital
Pull Track: A Lightning Bird Emerges

Tim Howe has been responsible for some of the best alt-country rock of this decade between First Rodeo (his collaboration with Cool Original’s Nathan Tucker) and Vista House, his solo project (although the most recent Vista House photo includes three other people, so maybe there’s a full band behind Howe by now). In particular, last year’s Oregon III was an excellent and adventurous take on alt-country, Americana, indie rock, and power pop, among other diversions, and was in the blog’s top ten favorite LPs of 2023. I wasn’t expecting a full-length follow-up this year, but here we are in late November with They’ll See Light, which Vista House cut at New Issue’s The Unknown recording studio in Anacortes and released (like the last Vista House album) on cassette via Butte, Montana label Anything Bagel. They’ll See Light is far from a departure from Oregon III–once again, Howe is leading the band through loud, rambling country rockers and softer, still-rambling folk-indebted music, but there are differences between the two records. On their newest album, Vista House sound focused and streamlined–Oregon III had the feeling of a record that had been cobbled together and tinkered with for a while, allowing for some surprising choices, while They’ll See Light sounds like the work of a well-oiled rock band recording a bunch of great songs in short order because they know that they’re on a roll.

That being said, They’ll See Light isn’t a solely-barnburners affair; Howe and crew let the album come into focus subtly and casually with the brief “Intro To Heaven” and the mid-tempo “Amber Born Pheasant”, both of which hold back a bit of energy (but not in terms of hooks–they’re both nonetheless quite catchy). It makes “Change The Framerate (Gloria)”, the moment where Vista House fully lean into dizzying, bouncy country-power pop, all that more exciting, and the band has plenty of momentum as they charge into the middle of the record with the electric, rowdy “Appeal to Heaven”, the Crazy Horse-like bluster of “A Seat Behind the Wing”, and the sprawling folk rock of “Retribution Blues”. Vista House also end They’ll See Light in fiery and/or rambunctious mode–the five-minute slow-burn alt-country of “Outta Sight” eventually kicks up plenty of dirt, and “Straight Out the Box” adds horns to the grand power pop finale to make Vista House’s own “Can’t Hardly Wait”. But my favorite song on They’ll See Light is actually the acoustic folk tune that bridges the middle and home stretch of the LP–“A Lightning Bird Emerges”, in which Howe hides some of his best writing yet. The lyrics are surreal depictions of death, fire, folklore, sunlight, soil, animals eating other animals, and cycles thereof, but the simple refrain (which first appeared in “Intro to Heaven”) is all Howe needs to tie everything together: “I keep on coming back again / Yeah, but it’s not like the first time”. (Bandcamp link)

Unlettered – Five Mile Point

Release date: November 22nd
Record label: Self-released
Genre: Noise rock, post-punk
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Dither

I’m always happy to spotlight new projects by 90s indie rock veterans on Rosy Overdrive, and Mike Knowlton’s Unlettered certainly fits the bill. Although he’s currently based in Englewood, Florida, Knowlton is originally from New York, where he played in the noisy indie rock bands Gapeseed and Poem Rocket in the 90s and 2000s. After seemingly stepping back from music for a while, though, the 2020s have been a pretty busy one for Knowlton so far–he’s put out three EPs since 2021 as Unlettered, and Poem Rocket have recently reunited and in fact just released a shelved EP, Lend-Lease, that was recorded in 1999. Even with Poem Rocket now back on the docket, however, Unlettered isn’t slowing down, as they’re gearing up to release their first full-length album, Five Mile Point. The first Unlettered LP is also the formal introduction to Kelly Grimm, Knowlton’s wife and, now, Unlettered’s co-lyricist and co-lead vocalist. Not that Grimm changes the trajectory of Unlettered all that much–if you enjoyed the dark, low-end heavy, noisy post-punk of their last EP (last year’s New Egypt), then Five Mile Point offers a whole album of such things. No matter who’s singing on the album, they’re soundtracked by music that’s straight-up suffocating, threatening to consume and overwhelm either of the stoic bandleaders at any moment.

Unlettered gets right to the hazy, confusing noise rock with “Dither”, a song that feels lost in itself and thus makes it a bizarre (but appropriate) choice to open Five Mile Point. There’s a spirited, sharp rock song buried underneath the mechanical clanging in “Dither”, and that goes double for the second song and lead single “She Is Inside You”, which lumbers and collapses its way into a roaring Sonic Youth-esque final section (while still sounding somewhat buried, yes). Grimm’s spoken-word vocals on “Median Coverage” are given just enough breathing room by the guitars to be discernible, but this relative parting of the clouds doesn’t last–the fuzzed-out “The Great Dwindle” and the glacial post-punk “About Time” are up next, and by the time we get to “12:49”, Unlettered are more or less just lobbing a wall of noise at us with moments of indie rock audible through the cracks. I’m probably making Five Mile Point sound a little taxing (hey, we’re talking about noise rock here), but I remain captivated by Unlettered throughout the album, between the strong, tough sounds of Knowlton’s bass landing blow after blow, the disorienting but beautiful guitarplay, and, of course, the whirlwind of noise. It’s all there in the nearly seven-minute closing track, “Services Rendered”, which even finds some space for odd experimental undercurrents in between the song’s more “rock” sections. “Services Rendered” eventually draws to a stop via the final instrumental echoes and Grimm’s distorted, uncanny voice–but Five Mile Point will be reverberating for a while. (Bandcamp link)

Orillia – Orillia

Release date: November 19th
Record label: Magic Mothswarm
Genre: Folk, alt-country, singer-songwriter
Formats: Digital
Pull Track: Pontoon Boat

Ohio-originating singer-songwriter Andrew Marczak has only lived in Chicago since 2020, but he’s already fully immersed himself in the Windy City’s alt-country scene. He’s the co-frontperson of The Roof Dogs and the lead vocalist of Toadvine, two bands who’ve turned up on this blog in the past; he’s more than earned a run at a solo album, which is where Orillia comes into the picture. Like the most recent Toadvine EP, Orillia’s self-titled debut album was recorded by Doug Malone at Jamdek, but it’s significantly more stripped down than Toadvine’s sextet lineup; a couple of Marczak’s bandmates contribute to these songs (Tristan Hugyen on vocals, guitar, and dobro, Trevor Joellenbeck on vocals, harmonica, mandolin, and piano), but nobody’s crowding anybody else on Orillia. Despite the relatively minimal arrangement, the songs of Orillia are noticeably varied–there’s some traditional folk music, some classic country-indebted songwriting, pin-drop quiet ballads, and sunny anthems in the brief (eight songs and twenty-five minutes, not counting an alternate take of “Cannery Row”) LP. Even though only five of the record’s songs are originals, Orillia nonetheless serves as a strong advertisement for Marczak’s songwriting, and the record feels like a small group of people eager to get a collection of songs they’re excited about down to tape.

The ambient sounds of rain and thunder roll underneath Orillia’s soft-launch opening track, a version of the song “My Rifle, My Pony, and Me” from the 1959 western Rio Bravo. As insular as “My Rifle, My Pony, and Me” is, the first original song “Pontoon Boat” is in another world entirely–we’re greeted by Joellenbeck’s bright mandolin playing and some excitedly-strummed acoustic guitar to launch us into what’s just an excellent song (I’m torn between “There’s a cave in Kentucky where the snakes all know my name” and “Gonna get a big-girl job at the hotel bar, it’s gonna make my life so easy” for my favorite part of the track). “Things” first appeared on Toadvine II, but that song’s dramatic folk-country balladry is still quite strong in a leaner package, and the two Marczak compositions in the second half (the hazy, dazy, but still dangerous “Shrimp Shack” and the beautiful, regal folk of “Tonight We Sleep Like Kings”) also benefit from this kind of reading. The latter in particular–which ends with “I saw you crawl underneath that truck / Looking for shelter”–is a new high for the quieter end of Marczak’s writing. Orillia isn’t the only Chicago alt-country band to use a pontoon boat as an effective vessel in their writing in recent memory, nor are they the only quasi-solo indie folk group to say the quiet part out loud and cover a Songs: Ohia song on their most recent release (in this case, it’s an excellent take on “Whip-poor-will”). This is country music–it’s about being in good company and finding new ways to walk down these well-trod avenues. (Bandcamp link)

Luna Honey – Bound

Release date: November 22nd
Record label: Self-released
Genre: Noise rock, art rock, post-punk, experimental, avant-prog
Formats: CD, cassette, digital
Pull Track: Kerosene

Luna Honey are a trio of Philadelphia-based weirdos who started making music together in 2017 in Washington, D.C., and have put out five full-lengths (plus a collaborative LP with longtime Swans guitarist Norman Westberg) since then. The band’s core is vocalist/tenor baritone guitarist Maura Pond, bassist Levi Flack, and guitarist Benjamin Schurr, although the three of them play all sorts of instruments on their sixth album, Bound. As one might expect from a band who made a record with a former member of Swans, Bound is a noisy, experimental, and dark art rock album, taking nearly an hour to get everything it can out of its ten tracks. Bound was partially recorded by prolific Philadelphia engineer Dan Angel (Bungler, Webb Chapel, Slaughter Beach, Dog) and it represents the first record Luna Honey has made since 2019 with all its members living in the same city (they’d been split between D.C., Philly, and Richmond until recently). It’s an intense listen; there’s a lot going on in Bound, with the band seemingly taking advantage of their close proximity to keep adding and expanding to their music (a good portion of the record was recorded in the band members’ various homes). 

Luna Honey don’t make the same song twice–this is one of those “check to make sure I’m still listening to the same record” kinds of albums. I will also say that it’s incredibly bold to start off your record with a mechanical-sounding noise rock song called “Kerosene”–but it’s not like Luna Honey aren’t equipped to light the kind of fire necessary to pull that move off. Nothing on Bound is quite as fiery as “Kerosene”, but then, there’s nothing on the record that’s quite as catchy as the groovy, warped post-punk dance number “Barbie Cake”, and nothing embraces clanging industrial music as much as the title track does. The first half of Bound is the most immediately taxing side, I think–it’s also made up of a prog-folk slow-burner called “Lead” and “Vacuum Cleaner”, an eight-minute experimental, shrill Frankenstein’s monster that’s probably the most cursed-sounding thing on the record–but the second half doesn’t exactly offer up “relief”. “Snarge” and “Lemons” pull back the reins a bit but maintain at least some structure, which can’t really be said for the final three tracks on the record. By the end of the lengthy ambient studio piece “Gravity”, the amount of silence that’s crept into Bound is unnerving, given how much noise the group had been making just minutes previously. Luna Honey never return to it, though–the final song is called “Shore”, and it’s six minutes of minimal and droning but still somewhat “pop” music in there somewhere. At least, I think there’s a little bit of pop music in there–hard to say after listening to Bound for an hour. (Bandcamp link)

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