Hello, everyone! It’s a holiday week in the United States, but Rosy Overdrive is pressing forward with a full slate of new music (and more! stay tuned) nonetheless. This Monday’s Pressing Concerns brings us the fifth edition of Count Your Lucky Stars Records‘ split series (featuring Camp Trash, Expert Timing, Mt. Oriander, and Thank You, I’m Sorry), as well as new albums from The Old Ceremony, Big Nobody, and EggS.
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.
Various – CYLS Split Series #5
Release date: November 22nd
Record label: Count Your Lucky Stars
Genre: Power pop, pop punk, emo, alt-rock, indie pop, slowcore
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Snow Window
From 2011 to 2015, key fourth-wave emo label Count Your Lucky Stars put out four split 7” records, all featuring four different selections from four different bands in the realms of emo, punk, and indie rock. Featuring notable acts like Empire! Empire! (I Was a Lonely Estate), Annabel, Dowsing, Two Knights, and Sinai Vessel, these records were a significant part of an exciting era of emo music. Nearly a decade after the fourth entry in the series, Count Your Lucky Stars is experiencing a renaissance of its own, with both new bands and familiar faces releasing great music on the label over the past few years. It seemed like a perfect time to renew the CYLS Split Series, and label head Keith Latinen didn’t have to look far to find worthy contributors. The four bands on CYLS Split Series #5 have all released great albums on Count Your Lucky Stars within the past two years and change, and the exclusive tracks they bring to this EP are all just-as-strong entries into these acts’ relative discographies. Given that I’ve written about all four of these bands in Pressing Concerns before (and on multiple occasions for three of them), it’s not exactly surprising that I’m high on these songs, but regardless of one’s previous relationship (or lack thereof) with Camp Trash, Expert Timing, Mt. Oriander, and Thank You, I’m Sorry, this is a great place to begin familiarizing one’s self with them.
The first half of CYLS Split Series #5 could be called the “Florida half”, with two Sunshine State bands delivering tracks that bring the energy and hooks. Bradenton’s Camp Trash offer up “Friendship America”, a high-flying but limber piece of power-pop-punk that says the quiet part out loud by explicitly namechecking “Hyper Enough” and “Driveway to Driveway” (the former is the one that applies to “Friendship America”, and, even though this song isn’t slated to be on their upcoming sophomore album, it’s still a reminder of why they’re already on my radar). Orlando’s Expert Timing announced a hiatus of sorts earlier this year, but thankfully we’re getting at least one more song out of them with the fizzy but somewhat unnerved-sounding “Sudden Glow”, a reminder of why I’ve been so high on them even as they aren’t household names (yet). Kicking off the second half, Latinen’s own current emo/slowcore/sadcore project Mt. Oriander contributes a song called “Everything Is Connected, but Nothing Is Working”, and I remain in awe of how many songs like this Latinen seems to have in him. Sure, most bands can probably pull together a few of these soul-baring, stunning, stop-in-one’s-tracks pieces of eternal winter emo chilliness, but to make an entire discography out of songs like this is wild to me. Oh, and Thank You, I’m Sorry ends the EP with my favorite song on the whole thing, a two-minute piece of bummer pop called “Snow Window” that just flat-out rules. The state of Count Your Lucky Stars in 2024 is as strong as it’s ever been, and the label feels like it’s in good hands. (Bandcamp link)
The Old Ceremony – Earthbound
Release date: October 17th
Record label: Robust
Genre: Singer-songwriter, folk rock, college rock, indie pop
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
Pull Track: Valerie Solanas
Django Haskins is a veteran in the worlds of guitar pop, folk rock, and what I’d call “college rock”–the Chapel Hill-based musician started putting out solo material in the 1990s, made a record with The Jayhawks’ Gary Louris, and has toured as part of a long-running Big Star tribute ensemble alongside the likes of R.E.M.’s Mike Mills and Peter Buck, The Posies’ Jon Auer, and Big Star drummer Jody Stephens. In 2004, Haskins founded the self-described “noir-pop” group The Old Ceremony, and the band (which apparently began as an eleven-piece “mini-orchestra” before settling on a quintet of Haskins, vibraphone/organist Mark Simonsen, bassist Shane Hartman, violinist Gabriel Pelli, and drummer Nate Stalfa) put out six albums from 2005 to 2015. It’s been nearly a decade since an Old Ceremony record, but as the band celebrates twenty years of existence, they’ve released their seventh LP, Earthbound, via local label Robust Records. The album sounds like how you’d hope a band named after a Leonard Cohen album might sound–Haskins, thankfully, isn’t attempting to emulate the inimitable, but these eleven songs have both a tenderness and an edge to them, always keeping us on our toes as the band move through folk, orchestral pop, soft rock, and jazz-influenced pop rock expertly.
And, yes, there’s plenty of “noir” in Earthbound. It’s there in the opening title track, which leans on Simonsen’s vibraphone and Pelli’s violin to set the mood before the guitar and piano eventually meet them where they’re at. It’s also prevalent in the wandering, jazzy odyssey of “Lonely Mayor”, and in “Picking My Battles”, a string-charged pop tune that really does sound like something a twenty-year-old band might put to tape. Haskins’ “timeless pop songwriting” credentials have been well-established, and the band really put them to use with highlights like “Too Big to Fail” (which is one of those perfect-sounding guitar pop songs that you can’t believe someone hadn’t written yet) and the rueful laugh of “Easy to Believe” (some very nice organ on this one, the band upping their game just enough to match Haskins’ pen). And then there’s “Valerie Solanas”, the record’s one real rocker in which Haskins wildly and fully embodies the titular would-be assassin as the band conjure up some actual electric garage rock. Haskins sounds oddly comfortable on “Valerie Solanas”, threading the complicated narrative needle without tipping his hand too much about what he’s portraying. I saw that The Old Ceremony recently played a show with Rosy Overdrive favorite Franklin Bruno, and he and Haskins feel alike to me–genuine pop ringers and writers, working towards being able to jump from something like “Valerie Solanas” to the retro, soft-Ted Leo-y pop of “Hangman’s Party” or the gently rolling folk-country of “North American Grain” with ease. The returns are very positive on Earthbound. (Bandcamp link)
Big Nobody – Charlie’s Alive
Release date: October 31st
Record label: Legacy Junk
Genre: Power pop, pop punk, alt-rock
Formats: Digital
Pull Track: Peptide
Big Nobody is a new band from Rochester, New York, formed by four local indie rock/emo/punk veterans. Vocalist/guitarist/songwriter Jacob Walsh and bassist JT Fitzgerald had previously played together in the mid-2010s as part of the band Total Yuppies; earlier this decade, they teamed with drummer Connor Benincasa (from another good Rochester band, Comfy) and guitarist Kyle Waldron (who has played with Calicoco) to form Big Nobody. They debuted last year with Ripped from the Dream, and they’ve clearly hit on something as Charlie’s Alive is their second full-length album in as many years. Big Nobody (not to be confused with Philadelphia slacker rock group Big Nothing, although there’s actually a good deal of common ground between the two) seems to continue in the grand tradition of longtime underground rockers setting their sights towards big hooks and big guitars–bands like Rosy Overdrive favorites Dagwood, Rozwell Kid, Virginity, and Late Bloomer, to name a few. At the crossroads of power pop, pop punk, 90s-alt rock, and emo-grunge, Charlie’s Alive is a fun and rousing collection of sharp pop songs, “mature”-sounding but with a foot in youthful energy still. Charlie’s Alive rocks, yes, for the most part, but it’s not exactly a “punk” album–it’s more in the vein of bands like Dinosaur Jr. and The Lemonheads who can pull that kind of thing off but are marching to a different beat on the whole.
Charlie’s Alive is so catchy that I didn’t really realize how mellow it is until sitting down to right about it. “End” is an incredibly strong opening statement, but it’s one that takes a minute to really get going, having us wait for the (very worth it) payoff, while the creeping alt-rock of “Snake” and the shimmery jangle of “Source” ensure that there are several different layers of energy to be found in the record’s first half (and even the particularly J. Mascis-esque “Run” recalls the Dinosaur Jr. frontman’s later-period, even-more-laid-back work). Oddly enough, the second half of the record might be the louder, more upbeat half–between “My Name”, “Sunken”, and “Peptide”, Big Nobody rip through one fuzzed-out power pop anthem after another like they need to bank a few more before the album comes to a close. Charlie’s Alive ends with a two-minute careening thing called “Telethon”–it feels more streamlined and limber than the rest of the record’s more lumbering, grungy take on hooky power-pop-punk. Not that Big Nobody need to (or do) mix things up on Charlie’s Alive, but they do just fine on this little step off of their well-worn path, too. (Bandcamp link)
EggS – Crafted Achievement
Release date: November 1st
Record label: Prefect/Howlin Banana
Genre: Power pop, college rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Head in Flames
Who doesn’t love EggS? People who haven’t heard them, I suppose. That doesn’t describe me, as the Parisian collective first showed up on my radar with their excellent 2022 album A Glitter Year, which ended up being one of my favorite LPs of that year. The group (led by one Charles Daneau) has been around for a while, but A Glitter Year–their first full-length–was a triumphant announcement of intent, with Daneau and a long list of collaborators (including Camille Fréchou and Margaux Bouchaudon of En Attendant Ana) achieving a boisterous, party-friendly, saxophone-heavy version of vintage 1980s college rock (somewhere between Miracle Legion and Eleventh Dream Day, I called it). EggS’ follow up record, Crafted Achievement, doesn’t flag for a second–it’s only eight songs and twenty-three minutes long, but every moment of it is thrilling, and Daneau maintains strong ties with the local indie pop scene by bringing back Fréchou and Bouchaudon as well as enlisting Erica Ashleson of Special Friend and Dog Park, among others. Daneau’s vocals–in English and front-and-center throughout the album–reach melodic perfection through sheer force, shouting hooks among the tuneful maelstrom of the EggS band to complete the ingredients for a perfect hurricane of catchy indie rock.
With a strong anchor provided by the band’s rhythm section, opening track “Head in Flames” is free to push for the stars for its entire three-minute runtime, and while the title of “Bob Stinson’s Song” nods to the iconic Replacements guitarist, the song itself actually recalls the horn-laden, polished album that immediately followed Stinson’s departure from the band, Pleased to Meet Me. “Your Maze” introduces noisy, mid-tempo guitar tangles into the mix, which, combined with some excellent En Attendant Ana-loaned backing vocals, inject some variety into a record that moves so fast that one might think it wouldn’t have time for such things. Crafted Achievement on the whole is speeding at a breakneck pace, though–“At the End of the Road” is there at the end of “Your Maze” to snatch the hooks and floor the gas pedal with them for another three-point-five minutes, while the ninety-second mod-pop carousel of “Your Maze II” keeps things lean in the album’s second half. EggS close things out with “Angry Silence”; clocking in at a very un-EggS like four minutes in length, Daneau and crew eagerly use this expanded runway to build and build until the album is ready to jet off into the cosmos in a jumble of horns, propulsive guitars, sturdy rhythms, and intermittent but strong vocals. That’s how you do it! (Bandcamp link)
Also notable:
- Orchestre Tout Puissant Marcel Duchamp – Ventre unique
- Lara Ruggles – Anchor Me
- ABSCAM – ABSCAM EP
- Vanity Plate – Garden Path EP
- Think About You – Don’t Die on Me
- Cistern – New Standard
- Little Junior – Little Junior
- Capsuna – One Hit for Trainwreck EP
- Treasure Pains – Charming EP
- Huge Molasses Tank Explodes – III
- The Eggmen Whoooooo! – Fuzzy Eggs, Please
- Wrong War // Compulsion – Split LP
- Si Dios Quiere – No Angels
- Viuda – Provinciana
- BALONCESTO – Primavera tardía
- Ironic Hill – WEAK
- Sean Kiely – Postcards of the Reckoning
- Rain on Fridays – Death to Affection
- Hot Tubs Time Machine – Food & Ruins
- Half Waif – See You at the Maypole
- The Kills – Happier Girls Sessions EP
- Twothousands. – BASIC
- Smoking Popes – Born to Quit (Live Session)
- Joy Buzzer – Pleased to Meet You
- Kendrick Lamar – GNX
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