Pressing Concerns: Patches, …or Does It Explode?, Future Living, Hour

Posted byrosyoverdrivePosted inPressing ConcernsTags:, , , , , , , ,

Wow, there’s a bunch of good records in this Tuesday Pressing Concerns. The (unfortunately) final EP from Patches, a live album from Hour, and new studio albums from …or Does It Explode? and Future Living are present in this one. It’s a great one, as was yesterday’s (featuring Minorcan, Outro, Above Me, and Nobody’s Dad), so check that one out too if you missed it.

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.

Patches – A Three Legged Chair

Release date: February 3rd
Record label: Self-released
Genre: Dream pop, post-punk, jangle pop, college rock
Formats: Digital
Pull Track: Music for a Silent Film

I’ve got good news and I’ve got bad news. The good news is there’s a new EP from Patches, the college rock/post-punk/jangle pop group formed by three remote collaborators (Evan Seurkamp, Aaron Griffin, and Robin KC) in 2021. The bad news is that A Three Legged Chair also marks the end of Patches, a brief coda after two undersung but very good full-length albums (2022’s Tales We Heard from the Fields and 2023’s Scenic Route). In hindsight, it’s not all that shocking–I remember being surprised that Seurkamp had time for a second band in addition to his main one, The Laughing Chimes, and with the Chimes back with their long-awaited sophomore album, the juggling probably became a bit too much. A Three Legged Chair is a clearinghouse release–these five songs were “scrapped, passed over, or shared elsewhere”, and the band openly state on their Bandcamp page that it “isn’t as good” as their albums (I guess not being a band anymore means not having to promote every release like it’s your creative pinnacle). There’s a Guided by Voices cover that appeared on a compilation I wrote about in 2023, an alternate version of a track from Tales We Heard from the Fields, and three previously-unheard tracks, two of which feature Robin’s sister (credited as “KRMT”) on lead vocals (“without her, this probably wouldn’t have been released,” the band write). 

If you’re only familiar with Suerkamp’s other, more well-known band, you might be surprised by Patches’ darker streak (although at their most “pop” they were as bright as anything by The Laughing Chimes); A Three Legged Chair unearths a couple more highlights in this vein with the two Seurkamp-sung originals, “A Tree” and the alternate version of “A Nice Day to Orbit Saturn”. Patches are a muddy, moody, confused-sounding post-punk band on these recordings, particularly the eerie, almost-gothic “A Tree” (it’s a good song, though I see why it didn’t end up on either album). I touched on their fairly faithful version of “The Best of Jill Hives” when it was first released, but I don’t mind it resurfacing here and hearing Seurkamp sing it is still a fully enjoyable experience. Patches weren’t being self-deprecating when they highlighted the KRMT-sung songs as the best moments on A Three Legged Chair, though; they really do make the EP worthwhile on their own. “Music for a Silent Film” is my favorite of the two; the buzzing, sensory-overload dream pop sound is different than anything else on the EP and probably from anything Patches ever put out, period; “Crossbow” is a more recognizably Patches post-punk/jangle pop combination track, but it closes A Three Legged Chair by asserting that while Patches may be ending, it wasn’t for a lack of new ideas in their signature vein of songwriting. Maybe I just wanted to be able to say I wrote about everything Patches ever released, but A Three Legged Chair does hold its own against a couple of underrated but brilliant albums. (Bandcamp link)

…or Does It Explode? – Tales to Needed Outcomes

Release date: February 1st
Record label: Snmyhymns
Genre: Midwest emo, post-rock, slowcore, 90s indie rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: What Is Tough to See

…or Does It Explode? is an emo band hailing from Madison, Wisconsin that have been around since the beginning of the decade, more or less. The quintet (made up of guitarist/vocalist Shawn Bass, guitarist Brandon Boggess, bassist J Granberg, drummer Erik Rasmuson, and vocalist Katya Pierce) put out two albums in 2022 and 2023 that mixed Dischord Records-influenced post-hardcore with more cavernous and exploratory Midwest emo sounds. Even in their more “punk” earlier work, this more intimate side of …or Does It Explode? is discernible among the noise, and it’s this aspect of their sound that they’ve chosen to explore much more fully on their third album, Tales to Needed Outcomes. Interestingly, Bass initially conceived this record as a solo side project, but the rest of the band were fully on board with taking their sound into this direction, and not only do they all play on Tales to Needed Outcomes (recorded by Nick Tveitbakk at Pachyderm Studios in Cannon Falls, Minnesota), but …or Does It Explode? also bring in a host of guest musicians (Rin Ribble on violin, Logan Lamers on cello, Becky Lipsitz on trumpet, and Amy Wiegand on flute) to fully flesh this record out.

Spanning a dozen tracks in about fifty minutes, Tales to Needed Outcomes is an ambitious record that seems dead-set on getting the most out of the circumstances of its creation–a stable of talented musicians and a week at a world-famous recording studio. It’s a lot to take in, but it’s all very well-thought-out and just-as-well-executed, so take your time if you find …or Does It Explode? challenging your attention span at first. Tales to Needed Outcomes is operating in the world of horn/string-laden Midwest emo, orchestral slowcore and post-rock, and good old-fashioned 90s basement indie rock–it has the core of the bedroom project it began as, but it benefits greatly from the full punk-trained band backing it up at all times. It’s hard for me to single out specific tracks on Tales to Needed Outcomes because it’s such a cohesive experience–the post-hardcore backing vocals on “Cyclic Living” stick out like a sore thumb, but that’s in large part because the rest of the song is entirely in line with the rest of the record. When …or Does It Explode? “rock” on Tales to Needed Outcomes, it’s generally in a dramatic, slowcore-influenced indie rock kind of way that reminds me of 90s bands like American Music Club and Idaho (as well as more recent acts in this vein like 40 Watt Sun). There aren’t a ton of current groups making music like this, but maybe by mixing it with more traditional horns-and-guitar-noodling Midwest emo, …or Does It Explode? have found a way to get it to the masses. Maybe not, but it works for Rosy Overdrive. (Bandcamp link)

Future Living – Get Vasectomy

Release date: February 14th
Record label: Silent Co-op
Genre: Garage rock, psychedelic rock, post-punk, 90s indie rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Diver

Last year, I wrote about the Chicago/Montana five-piece band Blank Banker, a bunch of noisy indie rock veterans who recorded their most recent album, Intervallic Travails, at Electrical Audio with Jon San Paolo and released it on drummer Neal Markowski’s label Silent Co-op. As it turns out, Markowski is also the drummer in another noisy indie rock band who recently recorded an album at Electrical Audio with Jon San Paolo that is seeing a vinyl release via Silent Co-op–this time, it’s the Kalamazoo/Chicago quartet Future Living, who’ve just released their sophomore album, Get Vasectomy. Future Living are co-led by vocalist/guitarist Anne Hensley (of Petrillo) and vocalist/guitarist Chafe Hensley (of OUT, Minutes, and Wowza in Kalamazoo), joined by guitarist John Patterson and Markowski behind the kit. Compared to the scuzzy, math-influenced basement rock of Blank Banker, Future Living are more regal–their sound is heavy, laser-precise, pummeling, almost psychedelic in its intense lumbering (the Bandcamp page for the album is tagged “space rock” and the biography mentions “shoegaze, post-punk, hard rock, and ’90s D.C. hardcore” as influences, all adding up to a somewhat hard-to-categorize but clearly heavy-on-the-rock indie rock album).

Made up of three interstitial snippets and nine “full-length” songs, Get Vasectomy walks the tightrope between smoking noise-indie-garage-rock and something a bit more high-concept and ambitious from the beginning. Opening track “Diver” begins with a guitar hero-type solo and then transforms into a lost indie rock classic, with Anne Hensley (who appears to sing lead vocals on the majority of these songs) giving an all-in performance as a frontperson. “Jury” starts with a synth sting (it could be from Patterson, who’s credited with “Moog”, or Markowski on “Korg”) which sticks around to help give the track that little “space rock” extra touch. I hear the Dischord and post-punk influence in the guitars on “Hawk”, which is just a little bit more lean than the blunt-force indie-hard rock of much of Get Vasectomy. Things start to get really heady in the back end of the record with “All Around”, an instrumental whose probing, wandering attitude bleeds into the next track, the slow-building jungle of “Duckie”. Future Living decide to end Get Vasectomy by bringing the energy back up to a boil, though, between the Chafe Hensley-sung “Grinning Time” (which, thanks in part to Chafe’s vocals, sounds like a more blunt-object version of Hot Snakes/Meat Wave-style garage-noise-punk) and closing track “Thrusters”. Once again kicking things off with an urgent-sounding guitar riff, “Thrusters” closes the book on Get Vasectomy with a levitating rocker that lives up to its title. After hearing Future Living roar through some serious rock music for an entire LP, you’ll want to Get Vasectomy too. (Bandcamp link)

Hour – Subminiature

Release date: February 14th
Record label: Dear Life
Genre: Post-rock, contemporary classical, orchestral, chamber music
Formats: CD, cassette, digital
Pull Track: I Fall to Pieces

Hour, the Philadelphia-based instrumental ensemble led by Dear Life Records co-founder and Friendship drummer Michael Cormier-O’Leary, debuted in 2018 with two albums of their “chamber folk”/contemporary classical music sound, featuring a cast of contributors including 2nd Grade’s Peter Gill, Dear Life recording artist Jason Calhoun, and viola player Matt Fox. Hour took its time before recording a third album, but they returned in a big way last year, releasing Ease the Work (as well as a single featuring a couple of outtakes) and touring around the eastern United States in support of it. Subminiature is Hour’s first live album (well, aside from an “official bootleg” that’s been unavailable for several years now), a CD and cassette with some seventy-odd minutes of recordings from shows leading up to and following the release of Ease the Work, featuring selections from all three Hour LPs. Hour encompassed more than a dozen “players” over these shows, per the Bandcamp page’s credits, with more recognizable names in Philadelphia DIY–Cormier-O’Leary, Gill, prolific producer Lucas Knapp–appearing alongside skilled musicians that round out the ensemble like cellist Evan McGonagill, violinist Em Downing, and organist/pianist Erika Nininger. Music like this doesn’t conjure up the “DIY circuit”, but Hour pulled it off (playing “machine shops and parking garages, crowded bars and living rooms, churches and theaters”), and Subminiature is the proof of concept.

Different locales, a shuffling lineup, and the “live” recordings don’t take anything away from Cormier-O’Leary’s compositions, and, given that the songs are culled pretty evenly from the three Hour LPs, Subminiature actually functions very well as an introduction to Hour (provided you’re the kind of person that isn’t turned off by the idea of listening to over an hour of mostly-instrumental chamber music). Trying to pick “standouts” from Subminiature kind of misses the point, but the second-half stretch featuring the somewhat-eerie “Dying of Laughter”, the quiet, floating “Tiny House”, and the steady shimmering “The Most Gorgeous Day in History” might be the strongest section of the album. Oh, and I did say “mostly instrumental” earlier, because, towards the end of Subminiature, Hour hide a cover of Patsy Cline’s “I Fall to Pieces” featuring Philadelphia singer-songwriter Jacob Augustine (like Cormier-O’Leary, a Maine expat) on vocals. “I Fall to Pieces” is the moment on Subminiature that feels the most like a traditional “live album” recording–a deviation from a band’s normal fare, a curious moment in time fortunately captured by somebody pressing “record”. The rest of Subminiature? Well, that’s the sound of Hour doing what they do best, no matter who, when, and where they are. (Bandcamp link)

Also notable:

3 thoughts on “Pressing Concerns: Patches, …or Does It Explode?, Future Living, Hour”

  1. Pingback: Pressing Concerns: Califone, Baths, Rapt, The Rishis – Rosy Overdrive
  2. Pingback: New Playlist: February 2025 – Rosy Overdrive
  3. Pingback: Pressing Concerns: WPTR, Graham Hunt, Autos, Subsonic Eye – Rosy Overdrive

Leave a comment