Second Pressing Concerns of the week! A new album from Party’z, a tape from Inland Years, a live record from Earth Ball, and a reissue of an album from Fotokiller. Also, there was a Pressing Concerns yesterday featuring Telethon, The Unfit, Quinine, and LP Gavin.
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Party’z – Afterparties
Release date: March 7th
Record label: Storm Chasers LTD/Friend Club
Genre: Fuzz rock, punk, alt-rock, garage rock, emo-rock
Formats: Vinyl, cassette, digital
Pull Track: Night Ride
Back near the beginning of 2022, a new band from Chicago called Party’z made their debut with a four-song self-titled EP. At the time, Party’z was a quartet led by Kittyhawk/Joie De Vivre’s Mark Jaeschke and also featuring bassist Clare Teeling, keyboardist Delia Hornik, and drummer Andy Hendricks, and despite Jaeschke’s (and the other members’) background in notable fourth-wave emo bands, the Party’z EP was a full-bodied embrace of lo-fi, amp-cranked, fuzzy power pop. Party’z eventually received a vinyl release through Storm Chasers LTD, who are also co-issuing Afterparties, the band’s debut album. Three years later, the band have added two new guitarists in Danny Radovanovic and Johnny Fabrizio–but despite the extra six-string firepower, Party’z actually backs off of the noisy distortion-fest of their debut EP and shoot for something more layered and (relatively) mellow. Mentioning names like The Cure and The Pains of Being Pure of Heart as inspirations, Jaeschke is still making loud garage-y indie rock on Afterparties, but it’s shot through with classic indie pop and even a bit of new wave melancholy–the result isn’t unlike a certain other Chicago band who famously (or infamously, depending on your point of view) attempted to merge these disparate worlds (I’m talking about The Smashing Pumpkins, if that wasn’t clear).
The fuzzed-out basement rock of “Titled” opens Afterparties by consciously calling back to their previous release, but it’s the full-band might and the clear Jaeschke vocals that the song offers up as it reaches its climax that most prepare us for what Party’z has planned for the rest of their debut LP. “The Last Garage on Planet Earth” also looks toward the past (it’s supposedly about defunct venue Gnarnia and 2010s Chicago DIY music more broadly), but the huge-sounding, anthemic rock and roll sound that Party’z embrace on the song is totally new territory for them. Afterparties contains at least one other straight-up rocker with the strength to rival “The Last Garage on Planet Earth” in the pissed-off, Siamese Dream-esque “Dust Settles Grey”, but some of the best moments on the record are the more subtle ones. “Night Ride” and “All Old Songs” are both first half-highlights and they’re the best of both worlds for Party’z– sweeping alt-rock undeniably in their DNA, but with sincere, almost shy indie pop cores that actually aren’t all that removed from what modern Slumberland bands like The Laughing Chimes are doing. Both of those songs eventually balloon to thundering conclusions, but “Save Grace” and “The Only One” in the record’s second half hold just a bit back (and the latter, with its bold synth touches, is a unique late-album highlight). Party’z last foray into something new is five-minute closing track “Only When We Speak”, which injects some weary, Keith Latinen-y emo-rock into the persevering instrumental. One imagines that it’s refreshing for the members of Party’z to try their hand it something different, and Afterparties feels stronger for it. (Bandcamp link)
Earth Ball – Actual Earth Music – Volumes 1 & 2
Release date: March 7th
Record label: Upset the Rhythm
Genre: Free jazz, noise, experimental rock, noise rock, improvisational
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Live at the Fox Cabaret
Hailing from the forgotten city of Nanaimo, British Columbia, the experimental/improvisational band Earth Ball was formed by John Brennan, Isabel Ford and Jeremy Van Wyck sometime around the beginning of this decade, and they later added Kellan McLaughlin and Liam Murphy to make a clean quartet. Earth Ball releases have come at a steady clip since 2021, and they linked up with London label Upset the Rhythm last year for the LP It’s Yours–and, all the while, gaining a reputation for wild live shows where the band attacks noise rock and free jazz with their improvised chops. Their newest release for Upset the Rhythm is called Actual Earth Music – Volumes 1 & 2, and it brings all this together–it’s a full-on live album, with each side of vinyl capturing an Earth Ball set from the past two years. Side A is from The Fox Cabaret in Vancouver on August 4, 2023 (the band were opening for noise legends Wolf Eyes), and the flipside is a show the following year at London’s famed Café OTO with two renowned experimental musicians (Chris Corsano on drums and Steve Beresford on piano) sitting in. The first two volumes of Actual Earth Music are distinct beasts, but they both capture a group that manages to hang together despite being fully set loose on stage.
Admittedly, I’m not as well-versed in music that’s as far out there as this–it reminds me of noise/jazz-rock bands like Sunwatchers and Writhing Squares, but blown up and stretched-out into two twenty-minute, towering blocks. The Fox Cabaret side is the more “rock” side to my ears–not that we’re listening to Boston or anything, but for the most part Earth Ball take the form of a thundering, booming noise rock band on this first volume. There are a few stretches with vocals–they’re a real curiosity, and far from an afterthought, but they’re also not exactly the main draw here. Perhaps the squealing horns are the main character of Volume 1–at the very least, they’re the most consistent noisemaker on top of the rhythms. The Café OTO is even more “out there”–we can thank Beresford for that, as his unbridled piano playing (the bio for the album mentions a moment where he was “scraping children’s toys along the strings”) takes this recording to strange and uncharted territory almost immediately. Volume 2 never becomes the full-on squall of noise that Volume 1 consistently is–scurrying pianos, jabbing strings, piercing horns, robotic vocals, and limping percussion all drop in and out for twenty minutes in an unsettling, unsatisfying orchestra. It seems like it’d be even harder to coordinate something like this second volume, but I doubt Earth Ball think of it in those terms. (Bandcamp link)
Inland Years – Keep Your Eyes on the Road
Release date: February 14th
Record label: BSDJ
Genre: Lo-fi pop, bedroom pop, lo-fi indie folk
Formats: Cassette, digital
Pull Track: Make You Feel Better
Ryan Daniels is a musician who played in a few hardcore/screamo/metalcore groups in Massachusetts in the late 1990s and early 2000s (Hassan I Sabbah, The Fall of Leningrad, The Red Chord), but the now-Brooklyn-based artist has made lo-fi indie rock/pop on his own under various aliases (his own name, Double Entendre, Inland Years) for a while now. The oldest Daniels release on Bandcamp is from 2004, but Inland Years really came into focus in 2023–Keep Your Eyes on the Road is the fourth Inland Years record since the beginning of that year. Released on cassette via Tokyo label BSDJ and recorded and played entirely by Daniels himself, Keep Your Eyes on the Road is thirteen songs of hissing, lo-fi, folk-ish guitar pop music delivered in seventeen minutes. It seems like Inland Years has garnered comparisons to Guided by Voices and The Cleaners from Venus in recent years, and those (particularly the former) aren’t wrong, but between Daniels’ low-key but emotional vocals and the acoustic skeletons from which most of the songs are built, it reminds me more than anything of Lou Barlow’s Sebadoh (and honestly there’s a little bit of J. Mascis in here, too). Daniels is a hazy frontperson, the songs come in and out of focus, and the tape is over before you know it but not without nailing a lot of excellent lo-fi pop.
According to Daniels, Inland Years’ home-recording setup is “cassette 4-tracks, a digital capture and one microphone setup”–it’s certainly lo-fi, and parts of it are a headache to try to listen to on a car stereo, but Keep Your Eyes on the Road still delivers pop music unencumbered. At its catchiest, Keep Your Eyes on the Road really does feel like a power pop album, if a somewhat bashful one–“Better Off on My Own” kicks things off with a gorgeous melody that sees itself out in under sixty seconds, “Alone” is a somewhat noisy, somewhat folky, somewhat 60s-pop bedroom creation, and “Make You Better”, “What I Always Said”, and “Put Me Down” are a surprising second-half trio of unvarnished jangle pop. Inland Years really earns the “90s basement indie rock” comparison when Daniels deviates from this script, though–either by getting a little more intimate with quiet strummers like “When Is the Right Time” and “What Can You Do” or upping the noise with messiness like “Fools Paradise”. These diversions help situate us in the realm of a lo-fi indie rock alchemist, although they (like the rest of the record) are brief–Inland Years does indeed keep its eyes on the road. (Bandcamp link)
Fotokiller – Eerie Nostalgia (Reissue)
Release date: February 7th
Record label: It’s Eleven
Genre: Post-punk, college rock, new wave, goth, garage rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Control
Eerie Nostalgia, the debut album from Berlin post-punk trio Fotokiller, is less than two years old–but it already has an extensive release history. Following a demo cassette in 2021, Eerie Nostalgia was originally released on vinyl and digitally by order05records in 2023, then on cassette via Colossus Tapes the next year. This year, Fotokiller linked up with It’s Eleven Records (Ambulanz, Mantarochen, Distant Relatives), and the first order of business for the new partnership was getting Eerie Nostalgia back in print on vinyl (the “limited-edition” order05 run had been sold out for a while now), and now that I’ve heard the album I can see why. Like all the It’s Eleven-associated bands I’ve heard, Fotokiller make music where “post-punk” and “garage rock” intersect, but they’re a lot less dark and noisy than most of their roster. The trio (made up of guitarist/vocalist Sofy, drummer Kitty, and bassist/synth player Damon) are a good reminder that The Cure and Siouxsie and the Banshees could write killer pop songs in addition to their canonical goth-rock work, and though they cite Joy Division explicitly as an influence, there’s plenty of New Order in Eerie Nostalgia, too.
Like a good post-punk band, pretty much everything on Eerie Nostalgia is being led by Damon’s bass, but it’s also very likely to be the melodic centerpiece on any given song here, as well. Fotokiller sound fairly laid-back overall on their first album, so it’s probably not hard for the low-end to take the reins away from these songs, anyway–Sofy’s vocals are confident but not overbearing, content to let these songs speak for themselves without the drama-queen overselling you’ll get with this kind of music on occasion. “Control” and “Stop the World” open Eerie Nostalgia by being just about as “casual” as post-punk/garage rock could possibly be, all driving bass and unhurried melodic guitar accents that bleed into each other. “Confidence Killed” is a bit more heavy-duty in its execution, and there’s darker hues in the distant-sounding “Sea of Thoughts” and the fairly tense closing track “Echoes”, but these aren’t huge departures, and they come among tracks like “Isolation” and “Asleep” that continue Fotokiller’s propensity for hook-first post-punk and new wave at full speed. It’s really a seamless first statement for a punk rock band, and now that Fotokiller have linked up with a label that’ll keep it in stock, hopefully we’ll hear where they’ll go from here soon. (Bandcamp link)
Also notable:
- Spring Onion – Seated Figure
- Miranda Spatula & Nowhere Flower – Around and About You
- Nuevos Mundos – Nuevos Mundos
- Boyracer – Really Stupid – The Primitives Covers
- The States – Gimme Joy
- PAL – Under Your Radar
- Change of Heart – In the Wreckage
- No Frills – Sad Clown
- Soft Blue Shimmer – They Will Leave Us With Nothing
- Eliza Waters – Lunacy / You and Me, Pt. 2 / Sidestreet
- Flora from Kansas – Homesick EP
- Dana Gavanski – Again Again EP
- La Marimba – Tengo Lo´ Podere´
- Prêcheur Loup – Prêcheur Loup
- The Loft – Everything Changes Everything Stays the Same
- The Thingz – From A to Z
- Real Sickies – Under a Plastic Bag
- Red Fang – Deep Cuts
- Tiny Voices – Reasons I Won’t Change
- Radio Ghosts – Normal Songs EP
- Various – Primordial God / Primordial Energy
- Circuit des Yeux – Halo on the Inside
- Drunk Uncle – Fiction Years II EP
- Niall Ashley – Subject Access
- Edwyn Collins – Nation Shall Speak Unto Nation
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