Pressing Concerns: The Gentle Spring, Little Oso, Teen Driver, Prism Shores

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Hello everyone! It’s a Monday Pressing Concerns on a Tuesday (yes, I took a day off for the U.S. holiday; it’s still January, after all). This post looks at four great records that came out last week: new albums from The Gentle Spring, Little Oso, and Prism Shores, and a new EP from Teen Driver. We’ll be bumping things up to three posts a week again soon, but for now enjoy this and I’ll be back on Thursday!

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.

The Gentle Spring – Looking Back at the World

Release date: January 17th
Record label: Skep Wax/Too Good to Be True
Genre: Indie pop, folk rock, singer-songwriter, twee, chamber pop
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
Pull Track: The Ashes

Michael Hiscock will always have a claim to indie pop fame as the co-founder and bassist of London twee group The Field Mice, who released two “mini-albums” and one LP for Sarah Records before splitting in the early 1990s. In the years and decades after The Field Mice broke up, Hiscock has popped up on various releases by that band’s other co-founder Bobby Wratten’s subsequent projects (Trembling Blue Stars, Lightning in a Twilight Hour), but seemingly only in supporting roles. As of late, however, Hiscock has been living in Paris, where he’s linked up with a “new musical partner” (vocalist/keyboardist Emilie Guillaumot) and begun a new project called The Gentle Spring (which also features guitarist Jérémie Orsel). After quietly debuting in 2023 with the “Dodge the Rain” single (which also appeared on last year’s Under the Bridge 2 compilation), The Gentle Spring have made a substantial statement at the beginning of this year with their first album, Looking Back at the World. On their debut LP, The Gentle Spring sound expansive but intimate and ornate but minimal; their languid version of indie pop, soft rock, and folk music is a simple mix of piano keys, acoustic guitar strums, sturdy basslines, and two intertwined vocalists that nonetheless captures something unique.

It’s a bit bold for a new band to call their first album “Looking Back at the World”, but it’s not like The Gentle Spring came out of thin air; as it turns out, Hiscock and Guillaumot have plenty on which to look back throughout this ten-song, forty-five minute journey. The Gentle Spring do indeed sound like indie pop veterans in their subtle, polished arrangements, but that doesn’t stop their writing from sounding as wistful and romantic as the classics of the genre. “Comments in the Streams”, “I Can’t Have You As a Friend”, “Severed Hearts”, and “The Reason Why You Lie” are all staggering examples of this, with tales and inter- (and intra-) personal dramas flowing freely out against the trio’s tasteful instrumentals. There’s even a lot to take apart in the tracks that aren’t as immediately flooring in their narratives–like the introductory “Sugartown”, which sketches out The Gentle Spring’s worldview in a more abstract way, or “Untouched”, a song that, like much of the album, is built around the passage of time and introspection, but one that does so in a more present and, oddly enough, defiant way. Sometimes Looking Back at the World involves fixating on a moment as simple as hearing a song from an old folk band on the radio (“He was listening to The Ashes on the radio / His eyes were closed, he wore a smile upon his face”, Guillaumot situates us at the beginning of “The Ashes”); The Gentle Spring only have an LP’s worth of time to look back on their collective years, but they do a pretty good job of getting the most out of it. (Bandcamp link)

Little Oso – How Lucky to Be Somebody

Release date: January 17th
Record label: Repeating Cloud/Safe Suburban Home
Genre: Jangle pop, dream pop, indie pop
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Metaphorical Ohio

Little Oso are not a new band, precisely–their first EP came out back in 2018–but there is a lot of “new” surrounding the Maine-based quartet as of late. The band’s founding duo of vocalist/guitarist Jeannette Berman and guitarist Ricky Lorenzo moved from Philadelphia and New Jersey to Portland last year (2023’s Happy Songs cassette EP was their first release in their new climes), they added a permanent rhythm section (bassist Dana Guth and drummer DJ Nelson), and they’ve linked up with local imprint Repeating Cloud Records, who’s putting out their first proper album, How Lucky to Be Somebody (co-released by Safe Suburban Home over in England). I called Happy Songs a “sturdy, subtly impressive collection of reverb-y, poppy indie rock tunes” after I first heard it about a year ago, and I’m happy to report that How Lucky to Be Somebody delivers on the promise that Little Oso flashed on that EP. The quartet’s guitar-driven dream pop sound is in full bloom here–every aspect of the record (from the chorused guitar chords to the floating leads to Berman’s confident and anchoring vocals to guest musician Eddie Holmes’ synth contributions to even the bass at various points) is shedding great melodies all over the place.

This is a band that called their last record “Happy Songs”, so it’s understandable that there’s a good deal of positivity and aural sunlight to be found on How Lucky to Be Somebody. It’s not a cheap version of this, though–when Berman sings “You may not be happy, but you won’t be afraid” in opening track “Good Things”, it sets the tone for writing that isn’t ignoring darkness so much as deliberately offering an alternative to it. Of course, it helps that Little Oso sound great as an entire band while doing this, and the record’s elaboration via fully-developed guitar pop anthems keeps things fresh. Single “Metaphorical Ohio” is just about perfect–I love when bands that aren’t from the Midwest mythologize Ohio, by the way, and it makes so much sense that this track features probably the most beautiful incorporation of the phrase “four-piece chicken” into a song’s lyrics ever put to tape. Another single, “Other People’s Lives”, finds Berman singing “We could build a good life in the end times”; while she finds something worthwhile in watching others in this track, her writing encompasses life beyond humanity in “Tendril Thoughts” (“If broccoli can make it through December, then so, so, so can we”) and “The Frogs Sing for No Reason” (“…and so do we”). It’s a key ingredient in How Lucky to Be Somebody (and the clearest link to the record’s title), but it’s hardly the only reason why the album works. (Bandcamp link)

Teen Driver – NO AC!

Release date: January 18th
Record label: Automatic Transmission
Genre: Art punk, post-punk, garage punk, synthpunk, noise rock
Formats: Cassette, digital
Pull Track: Moving Deck Chairs

I introduced the Rosy Overdrive world to western Massachusetts post-punk/art punk group Teen Driver back in July of 2023, when the quartet debuted with a five-song EP called Learner’s Permit. I used phrases like “krautrock”, “jittery”, “new wave”, and “the Minutemen” to describe Teen Driver’s first record, a whirlwind of an opening statement that got the Northampton group (co-led by guitarist/vocalist Mark Gurarie and synth player/vocalist Riley Hernandez) firmly on my radar. For their next release, the six-song NO AC! cassette, Teen Driver have broken in a new rhythm section (bassist Brendan Robinson and drummer Jugo), but they’ve hardly lost a step–this EP is Teen Driver’s wildest, most chaotic work yet.  NO AC! is full of synth-bursting art-punk anti-anthems, haphazardly led by a band that sounds plenty furious but rarely overly serious. Teen Driver have drifted further away from “pop music” in a recognizable sense on this record, but it’s still there, baked into the DNA of these mutated new wave songs, raucous punk rock assaults, and the one song that’s still somehow kind of power pop (“Moving Deck Chairs”).

It’s hard to believe I’ve written three paragraphs about Teen Driver so far in my life without ever mentioning Pere Ubu, but NO AC!’s opening track, “Accumulation”, seems designed to break this streak. The vocalist (probably Gurarie, who’s credited as the lyricist) bellows like they learned all they knew from Dave Thomas, while the synth skitters and slinks along over top of the icy but dynamic punk guitars. It’s not hard to guess from where the fury at the heart of “Accumulation” arises (“Senseless slaughter / US bombs / Panopticon”), nor is it difficult to get the gist of the next song, “Rest in Pissinger” (you’ll never guess what they rhyme with the title), a prog-punk breakdown that does its best to lift up to its lofty name. Pretty much an entire decade catches a stray in “Hairspray”, a frantic mishmash of 1980s imagery and sonic choices that uses the tools of its victim to lash out at it (“Only Devo will be spared! / No new wave, new wave / … / Skinny tie can die, die”), and the aforementioned “Moving Deck Chairs” throws a big “la la”-soundtracked party before everyone involved goes down with the ship. If “Moving Deck Chairs” truly foretells our doom, than “Debate Me” is probably what hell sounds like–Teen Driver end the EP with a white-hot, sneering piece of ugliness that devolves into the ghoulish narrator lobbing taunts (“Are you mad? Did my facts hurt your feelings? You should go touch grass”) at us all. It’s only January, but it’s getting awfully hot in here. (Bandcamp link)

Prism Shores – Out from Underneath

Release date: January 17th
Record label: Meritorio
Genre: Jangle pop, dream pop, fuzz pop, C86
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Overplayed My Hand

Prism Shores are a new-ish indie-jangle-dream-gaze-pop quartet from Montreal, a city I wouldn’t think of at first for the genre but which has stealthily been a good spot for indie rock incorporating these influences lately between Laughing, The Submissives, and Feeling Figures. Meritorio Records, meanwhile, has had a hand in releasing some of the best guitar pop music of the past few years (including the aforementioned Laughing record). This is all to say that I’m not too surprised at A) what Out from Underneath sounds like, more or less and B) that it’s quite good at what it does. Prism Shores put out an EP in 2019 and an album in 2022, but their Meritorio debut finds the quartet (guitarist/vocalist Jack MacKenzie, bassist/vocalist Ben Goss, appropriately-named drummer Luke Pound, and new guitarist Finn Dalbeth) marrying classic jangly guitar pop with British wistfulness and ample amounts of distortion and reverb like they belong right at the center of this specific revival. Although the C86-worthy hooks are certainly present, Out from Underneath isn’t as studious of a recreation of bygone college rock as, say, Laughing or Humdrum–Prism Shores are more inclined to let the fuzz overtake their writing at various points on the record.

If one doesn’t mind washes of feedback in their pop music on occasion, though, there’s virtually nothing to complain about on Out from Underneath, as these ten songs are all smartly-penned and enthusiastically-delivered. Even though there’s a pessimistic streak to Prism Shores’ lyrics, it hardly shows itself in the music of opening track “Overplayed My Hand”, an all-hands-on-deck, surging jangle pop beginning. The melancholic guitar pop of “Holding Pattern” reminds me of the more electric moments of The Reds, Pinks & Purples, and the amped-up Teenage Fanclub vibes of “Tourniquet” and the cloudy bouts of guitars that fight against the sunny melody of “Southpaw” continue an incredibly strong start. Side two of Out from Underneath does contain a few more jangle pop winners–see the wobbly but undeniable “Fault Line” or gorgeous penultimate track “Drawing Conclusions”, featuring violin from guest musician Owen Fairbairn–it also contains Prism Shores’ clearest (or, I suppose, least-clear-sounding) forays into distortion and straight-up shoegaze. Of course, the brisk scorcher “Weightless” and the five-minute galaxy-adrift closing track “Unravel” both have smart pop hooks in them, too. If there’s one thing that holds Out from Underneath together, it’s its stalwart devotion to zeroing in on the catchy and universal no matter what the band are doing around these songs’ cores. (Bandcamp link)

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