Pressing Concerns: FACS, The Moles, The Bird Calls, May Leitz

This lovely first week of February concludes with a Thursday Pressing Concerns, featuring four LPs that’ll be coming out tomorrow (February 7th). New albums from FACS, The Moles, The Bird Calls, and May Leitz are featured below, in a blog post that already feels like an instant classic. If you missed Monday’s Pressing Concerns (featuring Really Great, Magana, Power Pants, and Distant Relatives) or the January 2025 playlist/round-up (which went up on Tuesday), be sure to 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.

FACS – Wish Defense

Release date: February 7^th
Record label: Trouble in Mind
Genre: Noise rock, experimental rock, post-punk
Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital
Pull Track: Talking Haunted

In some ways, FACS are the platonic ideal of the “overlooked indie rock band”. Since the Chicago trio rose from the ashes of Kranky band Disappearers in 2017, they’ve released an impressive six albums for Trouble in Mind Records, all with the same basic ingredients (Windy City noise rock, Dischord-esque art rock, dub, industrial, no wave, post-rock, and the like) but always fresh-sounding and distinct when you sit down and listen to them. Every FACS album that’s come out during the lifespan of this blog has either been on my year-end list or an honorable mention for that year, yet they’ve never been in Pressing Concerns and their consistency has probably been overlooked by me. They’re an obvious match for Steve Albini, whose productivity as an engineer was also taken for granted in his lifetime; every single FACS album has been recorded at Electrical Audio, but, somewhat surprisingly, Wish Defense was the first to be engineered by Albini. It would also tragically prove to be the last record of anyone’s engineered by Albini, who passed away the evening after the second day of recording (Sanford Parker, who recorded the two previous FACS records, stepped in to record the final touches to Wish Defense).

The circumstances undeniably shade Wish Defense for me, but they do not obscure the fact that this LP is actually a rebirth and revitalization of FACS. They welcome back original guitarist Jonathan Van Herik for the first time since their 2018 debut Negative Houses, now playing bass after founding bassist Brian Case moved over to guitar to replace him. 2023’s Still Life in Decay and even 2021’s relatively accessible Present Tense found FACS pushing and probing their sound to the outer margins of “rock music”, a direction seemingly necessary for the band to continue to sound inspired and forward-glancing. The reintroduction of Van Herik seems to have changed this calculus, allowing FACS to find heretofore undiscovered life in the realms of (relatively) brief bursts of power trio post-punk and noise rock.

They’re still the haunted-sounding, negative-space experimentalists we’ve all come to know and love (check out the empty-warehouse vibes of opening track “Talking Haunted” if you don’t believe me–even if there’s an interesting instrumental bridge that I can only describe as “FACS new wave” contained therein as well). It’s not like “Ordinary Voices”, “Wish Defense”, “A Room”, and “Desire Path” are uncharted territory for FACS, but the trio’s comfort in rattling off these tracks one after another, shifting slightly enough to accommodate the Dischord-dub touches of the latter two tracks after the sleeker post-punk of the former two, is wildly refreshing. The six-minute overstimulating ball of nerves of “Sometimes Only” is the exception rather than the rule, although I also do hear a bit of it in closing track “You Future”, which adds just a bit of the squall to its iron-tough skeleton. FACS aren’t “feel-good music”, but they’ve continued to feel their way to good music without flagging for a bit. (Bandcamp link)

The Moles – Composition Book

Release date: February 7^th
Record label: Splendid Research
Genre: Folk rock, jangle pop, indie pop
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
Pull Track: Alvin Hollis

Richard Davies is a longtime pop believer. The Australian musician never fit in geographically with the plethora of indie pop “scenes” that have sprung up concurrently to his music career, but he’s pushed forward for over thirty years nonetheless, first in Sydney (where he first led the band The Moles in the late 80s and early 90s) and later in Boston, Massachusetts (where he formed the duo Cardinal with Eric Matthews and began releasing solo albums). As of late, “The Moles” has been more or less interchangeable with Davies’ solo output–around a decade ago, he revived the name with a rotating cast of musicians for 2016’s Tonight’s Music and 2018’s Code Word. These Moles revival records have featured members of Sebadoh, Sugar, and Califone, among others, reflecting Davies’ reach over the years–another notable admirer is Guided by Voices’ Robert Pollard, who made a record with Davies under the name Cosmos in 2009 and has selected The Moles as one of the first acts to put out new music on his newest record label, Splendid Research.

Composition Book is Davies’ first new music of any kind in the better part of a decade, and the record is appropriately grizzled-sounding; between the unhurried tempos and unbothered vocals, Davies sounds like an indie rock veteran on these eleven tracks. That being said, Davies and his current band of collaborators (Malcom Travis of Sugar and Kustomized on drums, High Risk Group’s Sue Metro on pedal steel, David Gould on bass, and vocalists Caroline Shutz and Katherine Poindexter) still spend the bulk of Composition Book showing they know how to navigate their way around a good pop song. The acoustic guitar-led folk-y pop music of opening duo “Feel Like a Dollar” and “Chimes” is positively disarming; apparently, this album was recorded on an iPad, and it sounds like the device captured a bunch of musicians happily, casually, and intimately making music together.

Still, when the jaunty piano and handclaps introduce excellent highlight “Alvin Hollis”, it’s as deft as anything from the golden era of 60s pop revivalists like The Minders and The Ladybug Transistor, and there are moments throughout the LP (like the languid group chorus of “Since I Don’t Know When”, the brisk Flying Nun guitar pop of “Rattlesnakes, Vampires, Horse Tribes and Rocket Science”, and the suave Velvet Underground nod in “Blow Yer Mind”) that remind us of the expertise of this ship’s captain. It’s these moments that allow us to follow The Moles down some of the odder and less outwardly “indie pop” moments on Composition Book with an open mind–the clattering of “Lost Generation” and lullaby-like closing track “Promised Land” reveal themselves over time, and their cover of The Bats’ “Had to Be You” seems like a key link to the past (in addition to, you know, sounding very good, too). Composition Book really is the kind of album that could only be made well into an artist’s career, and I’m grateful Richard Davies got around to making it. (Bandcamp link)

The Bird Calls – Melody Trail

Release date: February 7^th
Record label: Ruination
Genre: Folk rock, soft rock, singer-songwriter, synthpop, sophisti-pop
Formats: CD, digital
Pull Track: I Don’t Wanna Be a Cowboy Anymore

Longtime music writer and singer-songwriter Sam Sodomsky seems to have reached a productive balance with his solo project The Bird Calls as of late; since linking up with New York label Ruination Record Co. at the beginning of this decade, he’s put out one album a year, sometimes more or less on his own, sometimes with musical assistance from collaborators like Charlie Kaplan and Office Culture’s Winston Cook-Wilson. Last year’s Old Faithful was my formal entry point into The Bird Calls, and I found myself quite enjoying the casual country-folk ruminations from which Sodomsky built that record. 2025’s Bird Calls album has arrived early, and I’m pleased that Sodomsky has put together something a bit different with Melody Trail. The album was assembled entirely by Sodomsky and producer Ryan Weiner (of the band Tiny Hazard), and while these songs certainly sound like they were written and sung by the same artist who made Old Faithful, the duo give Melody Trail a more polished pop reading. It’s a path down which many of Sodomsky’s influences–Dan Bejar, Elvis Costello, Bruce Springsteen–have wandered to rewarding ends, but Melody Trail retains the greatest strength of Sodomsky’s previous work: namely, that he’s able to evoke the art of such idiosyncratic, larger-than-life figures while coming off more or less as a regular guy.

Sometimes Sodomsky and Weiner embrace full-on 80s synthpop trappings on Melody Trail, while other times they settle on a more subtle “sophisti-pop”-indebted style, but the entirety of this record–even when it could be reasonably described as “folk rock”–distinguishes itself with its presentation. It’s a more focused record than Old Faithful in that way, even though Sodomsky the writer isn’t restrained by any of this. I could imagine Sodomsky playing songs like early highlight “Makeover Scene” on an acoustic guitar on his own, but the tasteful inchworm electric guitars, drum machines, and full-sounding bass guitar pave the way for Sodomsky’s self-conversation as clearly as open chords could’ve done. The advantages of Weiner’s production only get more and more pronounced–it helps Sodomsky get away with the lovely Kaputt-indebted ballad “Critic Meets Artist”, and it’s also hard to imagine The Bird Calls reaching the surprising pop heights that they do on this record without it. Specifically, I’m talking about the twin punches of “Butterfly Strokes Home” and “I Don’t Wanna Be a Cowboy Anymore”, either one of which would be the pinnacle of most “indie pop” records. The two songs achieve their aims by decidedly different means–“Butterfly Strokes Home” is a more traditional “Bird Calls”-sounding track dressed up all nicely, while “I Don’t Wanna Be a Cowboy Anymore” sounds like Sodomsky and Weiner tried to rebuild The Bird Calls from the ground-up with new wave and synthpop. The production launches these two songs into the clouds, but it still comes down to the singer-songwriter at their centers to holds them–and Melody Trail as a whole–together. (Bandcamp link)

May Leitz – A Touch of Grace

Release date: February 7^th
Record label: Lonely Ghost
Genre: Noise pop, hyperpop, pop punk
Formats: Digital
Pull Track: Kill Yourself

There’s a whole world of bedroom musicians making some kind of “hyperpop”, by which I mean AutoTuned, abrasive pop music with varying degrees of allegiance to digital hardcore, pop punk/emo, electronica, and hip hop (and varying degrees of listenability). It’s not my scene (if you’re interested in it, there are definitely better blogs to be following than mine), but the latest album from a Colorado Springs artist named May Leitz caught my attention. Leitz is a prolific self-releaser–apparently she’s put out fifteen albums since 2017, and I believe that A Touch of Grace is the first one released via an outside label (Lonely Ghost Records). Look, it’s going to be a polarizing listen for those of you who like the typical stuff I cover on this blog, but I’m quite impressed with what Leitz is doing, consistently and expertly, underneath this record’s initial bratty provocation (and I like the bratty provocation at times, too). A Touch of Grace is a trip, but not unnecessarily so–the core of each of these tracks is undeniably effective pop hooks, and when Leitz throws either 80s synthpop dressings or an assault of pop punk guitars at them (maybe even in the same song), it’s a complimentary balancing act.

For somebody who releases music at a steady clip, it’s impressive how much A Touch of Grace feels intentionally bound together as a single statement. Between the early run-ragged, country-infused “Grindset Blues” (which works way better than you think) to late-record statements “$$$” (a lethally simple tune about money, money, money) and “Radio Killed the Radio Star” (which ends the record with an off-the-rails narrative story), there’s a clear rumination on the costs of fame and success (as a pursuit and as a lifestyle, as well). Kind of an odd thing for a bedroom pop musician from the second-biggest city in Colorado to focus on, but it goes to show that Leitz is thinking widescreen and big-picture on A Touch of Grace. This means maximum maximalism sometimes, like in the opening hyperpop-punk sneering anthem “Kill Yourself” (daring today, aren’t we?), but there are some stranger, surprising odysseys in this vein, too. The absolute restraint of the tropicalia soft pop of “Copium” is positively jarring coming after the opening three songs, while “Wack” (which starts as an excellent 80s pop homage before veering into 70s classic rock guitars all of a sudden) and “You Don’t Know the Difference” (an industrial-grade pop song with its eyes on the prize for its entirety) end up as some of A Touch of Grace’s biggest successes, too. What more could you want from May Leitz? She’s doing everything she can here. (Bandcamp link)

Also notable:

• Glyss – Eternal Return
• Whelpwisher – Same Mistakes
• Eliza Waters – Coral’s Laughter / Songs for the Sea
• Asa Horvitz / Carmen Quill / Ariadne Randall / Wayne Horvitz – GHOST
• Nicole Hale – Some Kind of Longing
• Squid – Cowards
• Kathryn Mohr – Waiting Room
• Rose City Band – Sol Y Sombra
• FKA Smiley – All Good Boys Go to Heaven
• Monda – Austria 2
• Gus Baldwin and The Sketch – The Sketch
• Skull Cult – Can You See What I Mean? EP
• Ain’t Right – Careful What You Wish For EP
• Lilies on Mars and Stefano Guzzetti – Shine
• John Michael Hersey – Smoke Rings
• Ebo Taylor, Adrian Younge, & Ali Shaheed Muhammad – Ebo Taylor JID022
• The Hellacopters – Overdriver
• Mogwai – The Bad Fire
• My Wonderful Boyfriend – An Evening With… EP
• Matt Berry – Heard Noises
• Subculture – Fred EP
• Hiram – Green Green Earth
• Lucero – Lucero Unplugged
• Saartjje Van Camp – In De Naam Van
• Various – Pomegranate Seeds: An International Benefit for Mutual Aid in Gaza