Pressing Concerns: Dick Texas, Private Lives, George Children, Film Studies

Hello everyone! For the first Pressing Concerns of the week, we’ve got new albums from Dick Texas, Private Lives, and Film Studies, and a new EP from George Children. You’re gonna love these! I can tell!

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.

Dick Texas – All That Fall

Release date: March 7^th
Record label: Life Like/Tortilla Flat
Genre: Alt-country, country rock, post-rock, slowcore, art rock, folk rock, psychedelia
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Flies

Valerie Salerno has been a fixture in the realm of Michigan indie rock for a while now–in the late 2010s, she played in the Grand Rapids noise rock/post-punk group Sojii, and she began Dick Texas as a solo project around the end of last decade. In between 2019 and now, Salerno moved to Detroit, released a couple of songs as Dick Texas, and eventually formed a full band (drummer Willy Kipps, bassist Adis Kaltak, and guitarist Jack McKay) to play the songs live. All That Fall, the first Dick Texas album, has been over a half-decade in the making, but it’s pretty believable that letting this music marinate for as long as it did helped make the album as special as it turned out to be. A lot of Mitten State hands were on deck for its release–in addition to the players, Shadow Show’s Kate Derringer and Ape Not Kill Ape’s Cam Frank co-engineered it, and Fred Thomas’ Life Like Tapes co-released it. Loosely speaking, All That Fall is a country rock record–and “loose” is the right word to use here, as Dick Texas’ lost, woozy, incredibly slow playing style really does sound on the verge of falling apart more often than not. The songs–all seven of ‘em, that’s all we need–sprawl out in their self-contained desert worlds, and Salerno is the steady center with vocals that murmur along with the music’s psychedelic haze, declining to hog the spotlight but still leaving a distinct mark on Dick Texas’ landscapes.

All That Fall starts on an incredibly high note with “Long Dirt Driveway”, a six-minute dispatch of slowcore and post-rock from the American Midwest. The languid opening instrumental becomes a swirling dust storm over the song’s first two minutes, but once it’s died down we’re left to continue along the winding path with Salerno and Dick Texas to the tune of slightly psychedelic folk rock. All That Fall kind of sounds like reversed-engineered country music, like if you tried to gather up all the second/third-hand country influences on psych/Paisley Underground/alt-rock groups like Mazzy Star, The Breeders, and Spacemen 3 and tried to recreate the original thing out of them. Sometimes, Salerno’s post-punk background peeks through a little more, like in “Slow Down Friend”–it’s her most standout vocal performance, and there’s just a little bit of desert-goth in the music, too. “I Wanna Be Like Jesus” and “Last January” might be the clearest proof that Dick Texas can do straight-up country and folk (respectively), but neither track is without its quirks, and the grainy “Mars” (featuring Indira Edwards’ viola) once again takes the roots to the cosmos. Even so, none of this quite compares us to the out-of-nowhere closing track “Flies”, an electronic-fried krautrock/psych rock creation that ends All That Fall on just as high of a note as it begins. The fog that surrounds All That Fall doesn’t clear on “Flies”, exactly, but the shapes we can just barely make out are clearly moving faster. (Bandcamp link)

Private Lives – Salt of the Earth

Release date: March 21^st
Record label: Feel It
Genre: Power pop, garage rock, post-punk
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: On My Own

Garage rock quartet Private Lives formed at the beginning of the decade from a handful of other Montreal groups, and the band has snugly fit on Feel It Records’ roster via their 2022 self-titled debut EP and 2023’s Hit Record. Vocalist Jackie Blenkarn, guitarist Chance Hutchison, bassist Josh Herlihey, and drummer Drew Demers are back a little under two years later with Salt of the Earth, Private Lives’ sophomore album (and, given that a lot of Hit Record was made up of songs from their first EP, their first full-length collection of all-new material). Private Lives make it all sound so easy on Salt of the Earth; in under thirty minutes, the quartet bowl strike after strike down the lanes of power pop, garage rock, proto-punk, and indie pop. These ten songs sound ramshackle but precise at the same time, stubbornly insisting that they need no more than a power trio rock-and-roll setup and a powerhouse vocalist to work–and they’re right! It’s not like Private Lives are the first band to make sugary, loud power pop-garage rock (they’re in good company on Feel It between CLASS, The Cowboys, and Romero, for three), but Blenkarn is the group’s secret weapon, consistently delivering a strong, possessed performance evoking everything from riot grrrl to twee-pop to 60s pop rock over the band’s tuneful racket.

We join Private Lives as they kick the record off with “Dealer’s Choice”, a song that rides a post-punk-worthy bassline into a sunset of garage rock-pop harmonies and surging guitars. “Feel Like Anything” and “Disconnected” are timeless-sounding rockers, leaving us behind in their wakes to ponder how they accomplish so much with such recognizable tools–it’s not until album centerpiece “Time” that it feels like Private Lives let up on the immediate assault just a bit. For three minutes, “Time” finds Private Lives shifting gears just slightly to pull off plodding, offbeat British Invasion and 60s psychedelic pop (“Time is a merry-go-round” indeed, Private Lives), but the roaring, ripping, rock-and-rollers kick back up immediately with “I Get Around”. In fact, the second half of Salt of the Earth leans even harder on the gas pedal than the A-side does–“Psychic Beat” has a tough, pounding, and prominent backbone, “On My Own” is a revved-up girl group power popper, “Be Your Girl” takes on an early punk attitude with a Private Lives-level hook pursuit, and the closing title track makes up for a slightly less brisk tempo with a slightly blues-punk-tinged heaviness. There’s even a complete changeup in “Salt of the Earth”, with Private Lives surprising us all with an acoustic-guitar-led folk-pop-rock finale–for the most part, Private Lives aren’t trying to shock us, but they certainly don’t sound complacent on Salt of the Earth either. (Bandcamp link)

George Children – Kitchen Sink Drama

Release date: February 20^th
Record label: Dandy Boy
Genre: Lo-fi folk, lo-fi pop, bedroom pop
Formats: Cassette, digital
Pull Track: Beautiful Stranger

Raise your hand if your favorite Guided by Voices album is Tonics & Twisted Chasers. It’s not the prolific band’s most famous record–in fact, of their 1990s albums, it’s their least-known by a sizeable margin–but I bet there’s an outsized number of people who live and die by it due to its unique sound. Originally a fanclub-only release, Tonics & Twisted Chasers is the sound of just two people–Robert Pollard and Tobin Sprout–making lo-fi, casual, frequently acoustic guitar pop together, resulting in a singularly off-the-cuff looseness. I have reason to suspect that Inland Empire band George Children are quite fond of Tonics & Twisted Chasers. Jordan Chipman is the leader of George Children, and while there are other members of the band (they appear to be a quartet in the photo on their Bandcamp page, and Manny Trujillo and Ely Martinez are credited on bass and drums respectively on their past releases), it wouldn’t surprise me if Kitchen Sink Drama, the project’s latest EP, is all Chipman. Featuring just a plainly-strummed acoustic guitar and Chipman’s vocals for the most part, George Children’s latest cassette EP moves through five songs (four originals and a cover) in nine minutes. Melancholic but still quite pop-friendly, Kitchen Sink Drama makes for an all-around strong stop-gap release (they’re planning on putting out an LP on Dandy Boy Records later this year or early next).

The secret weapon on Kitchen Sink Drama’s first two tracks, “Beautiful Stranger” and “Lucille”, appears to be tambourine (and by “secret weapon”, I mean “just about the only other instrument on the tracks”). The former of those two songs is the record’s “hit” to my ears–not that the rest of the EP isn’t also catchy, but Chipman stumbles onto a timeless pop song for ninety seconds in “Beautiful Stranger”, synthesizing acoustic Dunedin sound pop, lo-fi LVL UP/early Trace Mountains, and Chipman favorite Bill Fox superbly. “Paranoid Sweetness” is the first downcast song on Kitchen Sink Drama–armed with a nice little melodic guitar line overdub, this one reminds me the most of Tobin Sprout, specifically his “Awful Bliss” in its gorgeous but vaguely sad balladry. “Today Is Empty” continues George Children’s downer streak, another minor-key, acoustic, depressing ode that nonetheless has something to it. Chipman ties it all together with the last song on the EP, a pretty faithful cover of none other than Guided by Voices and their “Key Losers”, maybe the best song from Tonics & Twisted Chasers (and if you ever hear me say the same thing about “Ha Ha Man” or “Dayton, Ohio – 19 Something and 5”–no, you didn’t). It’s a triumphant bummer, which pretty much sums up Kitchen Sink Drama’s whole deal. (Bandcamp link)

Film Studies – Lo Fi Indie Pop Rocks

Release date: March 21^st
Record label: Bear Claw & Bug Spray
Genre: Lo-fi indie rock, bedroom pop, slowcore
Formats: Digital
Pull Track: Sick Trick

Film Studies (not to be confused with the California shoegaze band Film School, or the Maine dream pop band Field Studies, or the British chamber pop band Modern Studies) is the solo project of a Connecticut musician named Thomas Higgins. The first Film Studies album, Everything Is Right in Its Place, came out last year, and Higgins has kept full steam ahead with a new LP called Lo Fi Indie Pop Rocks less than twelve months later. Higgins says that “about half” of his newest album originated from Dave Benton of Trace Mountains’ songwriting workshop (regular readers will remember that Film Studies isn’t the first record to appear on the blog with the same genesis), and the album’s tongue-in-cheek title comes from Higgins’ attempt to the describe the sound of his music to other people–both of these facts are helpful in understanding from where Lo Fi Indie Pop Rocks is coming. Greyscale but undeniably “pop rocks”, Film Studies’ latest album evokes 2010s Bandcamp-core bedroom pop like early Trace Mountains and another band Higgins mentions as an inspiration, Hovvdy–much of the record sounds a little lost in a drum machine-aided haze, although it remains devoted to the kind of music conjured up by its title in brief, pop-sized bursts.

At its most animated, Lo Fi Indie Pop Rocks is more electric and just straight-up louder than the depressedelic folk of his closest-sounding influences; opening track “Sick Trick” is the clearest and best example, not quite on the level of LVL UP but “indie rock” first and foremost. “Take Your Time” and “Sweet Time” are a couple more electric-forward highlights, although the latter one starts to delve into the acoustic/folk-y sound that describes the majority of the rest of Lo Fi Indie Pop Rocks. “Doom”, which comes right after the (relatively) triumphant opening track, is one end of the spectrum, a tired-sounding, aimless thing that captures the uncertainty and confusion Higgins hints at in the lyrics. It’s not always so stark–Film Studies’ bread and butter is somewhere in between, with songs like “Cold Brew” and “Undone” landing somewhere in the lo-fi pop comfort zone between the warm vocals, simple guitar melodies, and steady drum machine backdrops. Although there are a few straight-up acoustic tracks (“Yer a Wizard” and “Days”), the subtle touches Higgins lays onto the more fully-developed songs do add to them (like the nice little guitar lines on “Undone”, which make all the difference), suggesting there’s more to Film Studies than meets the eye (not that Higgins sounds like one to maintain eye contact on Lo Fi Indie Pop Rocks). (Bandcamp link)

Also notable:

• Nagasaki Swim – The View from Up There
• JOCKS – Speedbuster
• Sea of Days – Wound
• Fits – Hits EP
• Marty Bohannon – A Scar Is Born
• Traps PS – Abstractor
• Nights Templar – IV
• Ovlov – Buds Demos
• Clipping. – Dead Channel Sky
• Cataphiles – Shadow Self
• General Mack’s Grapeshot – Revel, Revel
• Boomershack – Hangups
• Nick Frater – Oh Contraire!
• Ameokama – i will be clouds in the morning and rain in the evening
• Cassels – Tracked in Mud
• YAANG – No EP
• ZEMENT – Passagen
• 44th Move – Anthem
• Eliza Waters – The Final Album
• Thin Lear – A Shadow Waltzed Itself EP
• Rizwan-Muazzam Qawwali – At the Feet of the Beloved
• Serpentwithfeet – GRIP SEQUEL
• Natalie Wildgoose – Come into the Garden EP
• Various – Emerald: New Sounds from Moon Glyph Records 
• Nels Cline – Consentrik Quartet