Pressing Concerns: Mother of Earl, Big’n, Radio Free ABQ, Miners

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Hey there, everyone! Welcome to the final month of the year. Within the next few weeks, you’ll find out what Rosy Overdrive’s favorite records of 2024 are, but I plan to have plenty of new-new music up on the blog, too. It continues today, with a Pressing Concerns featuring new albums from Mother of Earl, Big’n, Radio Free ABQ, and Miners. Oh, and we did have a Pressing Concerns go up on Thanksgiving (featuring OCS, The Moment of Nightfall and Tony Jay, The Innocence Mission, and Hamburger); if you were busy with family matters or other holiday business and missed it, check it out here.

Oh, and one more thing: the Rosy Overdrive 2024 Reader’s Poll is now open for voting! Head over here to learn more about it and submit a ballot by December 27th.

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.

Mother of Earl – Extinction Burst

Release date: November 15th
Record label: Self-released
Genre: Indie pop, alt-country, folk rock, power pop
Formats: Digital
Pull Track: Departure Street

I first became familiar with the music of Ross Weidman last year via his homespun bedroom folk rock project Promiseland BBQ, which debuted with an inspired full-length called Murder in the Friendly City. Weidman lives in Pasadena but grew up in and until very recently lived in West Virginia–it’s where Murder in the Friendly City was recorded, and it was also where he co-founded the band Mother of Earl in 2019 with Alex Nanni. After putting out an EP and an LP in 2020 and 2021, respectively, Mother of Earl’s pace slowed–Weidman and Nanni, no longer students at West Virginia University, both moved out of state (Nanni is now in Pittsburgh). They continued to work on music together when they could, though, eventually resulting in the second Mother of Earl album, Extinction Burst. Mother of Earl is (understandably, given the full-band setup) more upbeat and full-sounding than Promiseland BBQ, but it’s not hard to see the similarities in the well-worn pop rock music the duo make together–with bits of 60s pop, roots rock, Americana, and college rock floating around in there–with Weidman’s solo material. Weidman handles the drums and Nanni sings and plays most of the guitars, but there’s a regular cast of contributors beyond them (bassists Kaleb Asmussen and Holly Foster, guitarists Tristan Miller, Liam McClelland, and John Kolar, percussionist Kris Sampson)–the revolving musical doors help Extinction Burst hold a casual feel, but the songwriting is strong enough to let us take the album seriously regardless of formality.

Extinction Burst draws plentifully from the well of “pretty pop music, depressing lyricism”–Nanni and Weidman are clearly fluent in it. The opening title track is a meandering, heartbroken lullaby of a first statement that reminds me of another great West Virginia-originating folk-pop-psych songsmith, Mr. Husband. After that, Mother of Earl give us “Life After Death”, a perky song about mortality that enthusiastically declares “Let’s live a lie!” and “Venomous Snake” (which I choose to believe is just a nice song about being a venomous snake with no metaphor attached). Mother of Earl seem to get bolder with their song construction as Extinction Burst advances–the final four tracks on the album all feel like “epics” in some sense of the word. The technicolor “I Saw Stars” finds Nanni doing a pretty solid Brandon Flowers impression for a sweeping, glockenspiel-aided piece of heartland pop, “Just When Things Were Looking Up” is Mother of Earl trying jammy, off-the-cuff retro-rock on for size, “Circus” is a precariously-stacked multi-part prog-pop denouement, and “Everything’s Gonna Turn Out Alright” is the final cooldown. “Ignore the sound above our heads / Just act like everything is fine,” Nanni sings in the verses of the final song, and the title line is qualified with an “I’m still pretty sure”. Their frontperson might sound a bit shaky in this particular moment, but Mother of Earl bring more than enough confidence to Extinction Burst. (Bandcamp link)

Big’n – End Comes Too Soon

Release date: November 15th
Record label: Computer Students
Genre: Noise rock, post-hardcore, post-punk, math rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: South of Lonesome

The Joliet, Illinois-originating, Chicago-based band Big’n are a key part of Windy City noise rock history. During their initial run from 1990 to 1997, they put out a bunch of singles, splits, and EPs as well as two LPs, both recorded by Steve Albini–1994’s Cutthroat and 1996’s Discipline Through Sound (which came out on legendary underground label Skin Graft). The quartet (vocalist William Akins, guitarist Todd Johnson, bassist Michael Chartrand, and drummer Brian Wnukowski) quietly returned in 2011 with an EP called Spare the Horses, and they’ve been intermittently active since then–at some point, Fred Popolo replaced Chartrand on bass, and the group struck up a relationship with the label Computer Students, who put out their 2018 EP Knife of Sin and reissued Discipline Through Sound in 2022. It all has led up to the third Big’n album and first in twenty-eight years, End Comes Too Soon, recorded by Shane Hochstetler at Electrical Audio in two sessions in 2023 and 2024. Big’n’s return to the big screen is both “bombastic” and “lean” at the same time–the music is sharp and cutting, the most mechanically pulverizing rock music this side of Shellac, while Akins is an unhinged, prowling noise rock frontperson in the vein of David Yow or even Michael Gerald. Big’n (and Akins’ voice in particular) have aged like a fine wine or moldy cheese–they’ve grown into the unflappable, unhurried rock-blacksmiths this kind of music aspires to evoke.

Big’n plow through fifteen songs in thirty-five minutes like a combine harvester–efficiently and all-consumingly. Six of End Comes Too Soon’s tracks are under a minute long and don’t even have proper titles (labeled “XMSN-17”, “XMSN-24”, etc.), but the band put just as much effort and energy into them than the “real” songs–it’s actually kind of disconcerting that Big’n fit full-on noise rock song ideas in forty seconds and it doesn’t feel any less complete than their three-to-four minute tracks. Still, I’m glad we get Big’n in larger increments too, because it allows them to really show off how well they’ve got this whole “pounding, rhythmic” thing down. “South of Lonesome” and “Them Wolves” are immutable, unmoving anchors of rock songs, and Akins is the prowling Sisyphus trying to make something dynamic out of the stone and going insane in the process. You’re not going to get any big surprises after Big’n effectively define themselves by the first few tracks, but there’s enough–the spoken-word, metallic “XMSN-40” and “XMSN-44”, the fiery, drum-led “Arkansas Death Cult”, the eternal damnation of “Capsized”–to make it feel like Big’n are pushing at their edges rather than just going through the motions. And that must be hard for them, given how great they are at going through those motions. (Computer Students link)

Radio Free ABQ – Destination

Release date: November 1st
Record label: Hamlet Street
Genre: Alt-country, folk rock, roots rock, college rock, psychedelic rock
Formats: CD, digital
Pull Track: Before It’s Gone

Dave Purcell is a thirty-some-year veteran of indie rock, playing in bands like Pike 27 and Ghost Man on Second in Cincinnati and Chicago before relocating to Albuquerque a few years ago and starting up his most recent project, Radio Free ABQ. On their debut record, Destination, Purcell and his new bandmates (bassist Scott Brewer, keyboardist Ryan Goodhue, and trombone player/guitarist Travis Rourk) fully embrace the bandleader’s new southwestern habitat, turning in a desert-set roots rock/Americana album that contains bits of regional legends like Calexico, Alejandro Escovedo, Giant Sand, and Dave Alvin. Just because Radio Free ABQ’s peers aren’t hard to point to doesn’t mean that Destination isn’t a unique record, though–apparently, Purcell had been making primarily instrumental music before returning to rock with this new band, and his latest project enthusiastically throws together mid-period R.E.M.-like college rock, Los Lobos-esque Chicano-inspired rock and roll, and, most surprisingly, synthesizer/space pop-influenced “noir pop” moments in the instrumentals, too. It all amounts to a forty-six minute statement that’s a strong reintroduction to a musician who’s been around for quite a bit but still has plenty of ideas and things to say.

One of the most striking moments on Destination is the opening track “Tito (Far Away, Not Lonely)”, which combines Escovedo-style Tex-Mex rock with swooning, spacey synths to create a New Mexico “Space Odyssey”. Rourk’s horns and Goodhue’s accordion are welcome additions to “Before It’s Gone”, a five-minute parade of a track that’s the record’s strongest moment as a catchy college rock group. In between the swinging choruses, though, Purcell adds a bit of strangeness and chilliness–“I’m not reminiscing about something that never happened like Norman Rockwell / When you carve it all in ones and zeroes, don’t forget my name,” he sings in the final stanza. This exploratory, unsatisfied guiding light takes us through the rest of the record’s more “traditional” first half (marked by a couple more should’ve-been-hits in “Figure It Out” and “Far Away from Everything”) and into a more experimental, spacey second half, populated by more instrumentals (three) than songs with vocals (two). The instrumentals aren’t mere interludes, and are key to the final journey of Destination–the wandering throughout the desert with a synthesizer in “Chapala, Quizas” gives way to “Run Past Temptation”, “End of the World” (the last song with words), and “Mojave Phone Booth”, which close the record by throwing bits of blues, jazz, funk, ska, dub, and even zydeco into Radio Free ABQ’s sound. Purcell and his crew are still picking up a strong signal out in the middle of the desert. (Bandcamp link)

Miners – A Healthy Future on Earth

Release date: October 18th
Record label: Flesh & Bone/Kitty
Genre: Shoegaze, noise pop, fuzz pop
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Game Theory

Wollongong, Australia trio Miners have been flying under the radar since the mid-2010s, with a debut EP in 2015 followed by a split 7” with the similarly-named Wollongongers Chimers and a self-titled debut cassette LP in 2021. Guitarist/vocalist Blake Clee, bassist Nick Johnson (who also plays in Mope City), and drummer Wilson Harris have gotten some help from Chicago underground label Flesh & Bone (Greet Death, Doused, Gentle Heat) to get more ears on their sophomore album, A Healthy Future on Earth, and the trio’s fuzzed-out, echoing version of pop music is more than ready for primetime on their latest record. Miners do call themselves a “shoegaze” band, but they seem to be interested in the hallmarks of that particular genre as a way of beefing up their 90s-style indie rock sound (they mention Swervedriver as an influence, which I think helps explain from where the trio are coming here). Miners differ from their main sources of inspiration and a lot of their present-day noisy Australian counterparts due to their love of a good pop hook–if you (like me) find yourself drawn to the Guided by Voices-y, heavy-melodic version of shoegaze-pop practiced by American bands like Gaadge and Ex Pilots, Miners are the Aussie indie rock group for you.

A Healthy Future on Earth, like the best records in this vein, fervently believes that beauty and noise can and should go hand in hand, leading to a ton of truly remarkable moments in the album’s ten tracks. “Sapphire” doesn’t open the album with Miners’ most blatantly accessible side, but there’s still a lot of smart melodies baked into the adventurous multi-part indie rock journey. “Why Can’t I” is Miners’ burnt-out dream pop, taking a minute to get to the full-on fuzz roaring and keeping the delicate core of the track intact when they finally reach it. “Game Theory” is the kind of steady, droning underground pop song that one might pull together after listening to a lot of Sonic Youth and/or Bailter Space–plenty of bands hang their hat on this kind of music entirely, but on A Healthy Future on Earth it sits alongside noise-punk wall-of-sound excursions like “Dead Malls”, slacker rock bursts like “Fade”, and restrained, almost slowcore basement rock exercises like “Caution Horses”. A Healthy Future on Earth isn’t going to turn Miners into international stars (probably), but it’s the kind of album that suggests its creators could have a very long and fruitful partnership together making this kind of music. (Bandcamp link)

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  1. Pingback: Pressing Concerns: Festiva, Andhi & the O’Neills, C’mon Tigre, Monnone Alone – Rosy Overdrive

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