Pressing Concerns: Mike Frazier, JPW & Dad Weed, Chris Brokaw, Blue Cactus

New blog post! New albums from Mike Frazier, JPW & Dad Weed, Chris Brokaw, and Blue Cactus! They’re good! You should know this by now!

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.

Mike Frazier – April Days

Release date: April 25^th
Record label: Geneva/Den Tapes
Genre: Alt-country, country rock, Americana, singer-songwriter, folk rock
Formats: Vinyl, cassette, digital
Pull Track: Pyramids in the Sky

Almost exactly a year ago, Mike Frazier put out an album called Secrets of Atlantis, a beautiful psychedelic pop LP that the singer-songwriter had recorded from 2020 to 2022 in his hometown of Winchester, Virginia, moving to Seattle shortly after its completion. Unbeknownst to me at the time I wrote about it, however, Frazier was also dealing with the debilitating effects of long-undiagnosed temporal lobe epilepsy, and in fact spent the day before Secrets of Atlantis‘ release getting brain surgery (a “right temporal craniotomy”, to be specific). Thankfully, Frazier’s surgery was a success, and was soon feeling well enough to begin working on his seventh album. Frazier’s writing in April Days is clearly informed by his health journey (“a record made out of necessity”, the Bandcamp page calls it), although this goes beyond the more obvious lyrical references to illness and recovery. There’s a refreshing directness to April Days–recorded live, it’s a departure from the layered psychedelia of Secrets of Atlantis and a return to Frazier’s Appalachian folk-country roots even as he sets up shop in the Pacific Northwest. It’s just as much of a “PNW album” as a “brain surgery album”, although perhaps it’s just an album about appreciating the most important things–nature, health, and peace. 

“I’ve been feeling like something is wrong / The voice in my head has been here for too long / One day I will get / To live life again,” Frazier sings in the opening title track, a gorgeous Neil Youngian folk piano ballad, and he pleads for “a break in the pain” in the next track, “What’s Wrong with Me?”. Frazier also is a dead ringer for Young in Side Two’s “Humboldt County” (I’m not special for noticing this; there’s an amusing anecdote Frazier tells about his brain surgeon listening to his music and telling the singer-songwriter that it reminds him of Young), but the influence goes beyond the musical. Between the plea for peace in “April Days”, the fervent hope for a “World Without Empires” in a second half highlight, and the held-at-bay-for-now spectre of greed hovering over the beautiful green mountains of Cascadia in “Oregon Stars”, there’s a clear-eyed idealism in Frazier’s writing that only feels sharper after what he’s been through. My favorite moment on April Days is “Pyramids in the Sky”, though, a raucous country rock tune about–what else?–aliens and their spaceships of choice. I could sit here and draw parallels between the extraterrestrial narrative of “Pyramids in the Sky” and the topographical, neurological, and pacifist themes of April Days, but, really, more than anything, I think it rules that Mike Frazier went from somebody who held up a copy of his last LP from his hospital bed because he was too unwell to do any other kind of promotion to somebody jamming out with a bunch of country musicians in a basement via a song about UFOs, all in a few months. (Bandcamp link)

Some of you may already be familiar with Jason P. Woodbury due to his work as a writer and interviewer for the great blog Aquarium Drunkard (among other places). Like many other music writers (i.e. Sam Sodomsky with The Bird Calls, Winston Cook-Wilson with Office Culture), Woodbury also makes music himself–he released an album called Something Happening / Always Happening in 2022 via Fort Lowell Records. Last year, the Phoenix-based Woodbury linked up with another Arizonian musician, Zach Toporek, who makes music under the name Dad Weed, and the two released a collaborative EP called Two Against Nurture. That record turned out to just be the start, as the duo have made an entire album together called Amassed Like a Rat King (credited to JPW & Dad Weed–who needs to come up with fancy side project names, anyway?). That album title is honestly pretty metal, but that couldn’t be further away from the music the two of them make here–recalling power pop, jangle pop, and college rock of the 1960s through the 1980s and lightly baked by the southwestern sun, JPW & Dad Weed’s first album together is a comfortable but undeniably hooky guitar pop LP.

Woodbury and Toporek couldn’t ease us more smoothly into the world of Amassed Like a Rat King if they tried–the opening title track is almost impossibly laid-back, an excellent chugging bass guitar setting the stage for a hazy, lazy desert pop introduction. “It’s Happening” is a little more lively and even a little bit nervous (in a Lowe/Crenshaw/Costello sense) at times, but the duo don’t forget to nail the power pop chorus. The no-bullshit, all-business jangle-power pop of “Everybody’s Talking (Again)” crosses the economy of Dazy with the southwestern vibes of Dust Star and the most recent Young Guv album. The quiet, lo-fi “Far Off Road” indulges the stranger sides of JPW and Dad Weed, and though they get back to power pop soon enough (check the floppy rock and roll of “Frightening” right afterwards), they return to the odd well for the alleyway country of “Not Sure What I’m Looking At” and the Segall-ish psychedelia of “Figure of Speech”–not to mention the record’s final two songs, both of which opt for minimalist instrumentation and simple drum machine beats. By the second half of Amassed Like a Rat King, the gap between songs like this and stuff like “Straight Lines” (a more obvious but nonetheless meandering pop song) starts to blur together, and the album starts to feel more and more like a friendly drive through the desert with some friends. It’s a party on the road, and oblivion on both sides of you. (Bandcamp link)

Chris Brokaw – Ghost Ship

Release date: April 25^th
Record label: 12XU
Genre: Post-rock, slowcore, ambient
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Palatine Light

I could spend all the space I’ve allotted myself here going over everything that Chris Brokaw has done in his illustrious indie rock career–I won’t, but an introduction of some sort is in order for the Massachusetts-based guitarist. Brokaw formed part of two key 1990s indie rock groups–first Codeine in New York City, then Come in Boston–and continues to play intermittently with them today. The decade after that, he became the drummer for slowcore greats The New Year, and more recently he’s been playing in Lupo Citta and The Martha’s Vineyard Ferries as well as appearing on records by everyone from Hilken Mancini to Gramercy Arms to his Come bandmate Thalia Zedek. Oh, and he’s kept up with a prolific solo career for all of this century, too–his label 12XU says he’s put out “over two dozen solo albums”, as well as doing a fair amount of soundtrack work for films. So, while it’s been four years since the last Brokaw solo album, 2021’s Puritan, he’s hardly been idle in the intermittent time. Brokaw’s music really runs the gamut, so it’s not surprising that his latest LP, Ghost Ship, is a pretty stark departure from the electric, shambling Crazy Horse-reminiscent indie rock and roll of Puritan. 

Comprised entirely of Brokaw and his electric guitar, Ghost Ship is a slow, quiet, and atmospheric (but nonetheless still mostly song-based) “landscape meditation (at sea)” across nine tracks. It’s a floating record, unbothered, unhurried, and unoccupied by anything other than trying to sculpt the image that Brokaw has in mind. And what is this image? The grey sea, clouds, and land formations on the album cover are probably a good start; Brokaw envisioned the record as an “8 song statement” that turned into nine and somewhat apologetically refers to it as “Twin Peaks-ish”. It’s three songs and nine minutes into Ghost Ship before we hit the only real choppy waters–the peaceful “Over My Body” and the mystical vibes of the title track give way to two minutes of turbulence in “Anything Anymore”, but “Palatine Light” and “Vampire of Rathmines” steady the ship (leaving us with an eeriness that might even be more unnerving than the chaos before it). The only other song on Ghost Ship that comes close to rousing us from our land-lost stupor is “8 or 9 Things”–there’s a nervousness in this somewhat-buried song, like a darker Yo La Tengo demo adrift without the collaborative aspect of the band to tether it. Brokaw will undoubtedly step off the Ghost Ship and onto something completely different soon, but his journey on it is one worth mapping. (Bandcamp link)

Blue Cactus – Believer

Release date: April 25^th
Record label: Sleepy Cat
Genre: Country rock, folk rock, alt-country, Americana
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
Pull Track: This Kind of Rain

Vocalist/lyricist Steph Stewart and multi-instrumentalist Mario Arnez are a pair of Research Triangle ringers–the latter has played on records from H.C. McEntire and Chatham Rabbits, the former had a quasi-solo project called Steph Stewart & The Boyfriends (and also handles PR for her label, Sleepy Cat Records, so I’d received many emails from her before hearing her own music). They started making alt-country music as Blue Cactus in the mid-2010s, and they put out two records (2017’s self-titled album and 2020’s Stranger Again) before going quiet for a few years while Stewart dealt with chronic health issues. Blue Cactus are ready to return now, though, with a delicate but confident Americana album called Believer. The duo reference classic folk-country singer-songwriters like Gillian Welch and Emmylou Harris as inspiration for their co-written material, and Believer does its best to balance the simple intimacy of the former with the polish of the latter. Plenty of experienced Nashville-associated hands touched this record (singer-songwriter Erin Rae, Third Man jazz artist Rich Ruth, keyboardist Ryan Connors), but Blue Cactus’ writing is sufficiently far removed from the bright lights of the city on Believer.

The country rockers on Believer all hit immediately–opening track “This Kind of Rain” is an alt-country classic, laid-back but electric in a way that’s in the same universe as the best of Lilly Hiatt and recent Waxahatchee, among others. “Bite My Tongue” is a mid-tempo country rock showcase for Stewart’s talents as a vocalist and lyricist–the chorus finds her pleading “When you gonna really hear me?” in a voice that should be unignorable. The title track is an electric ballad as well; it starts out fairly restrained, but the soaring guitar soloing to which the song builds up might be the most exhilarating thing on all of the album. The quieter, more acoustic songs on Believer aren’t any less well-executed, from the folk-pop of “Resolution” in the album’s first half to the quieter material that ends up closing out the album. “Kings” is patient, meandering cosmic folk rock that eventually (via the interlude “Counting the Days”) bleeds into the pindrop quiet “Paper Cup”. Classic country and pop music from long ago merge with something a little more dreamy and freer in the album’s final track, “Gone”; like most of Believer, it’s low-key and intuitive, the sound of two musicians traversing down a well-worn path they know quite well but never find themselves tired of traveling. (Bandcamp link)

Also notable:

• Bill Fox – Resonance
• Eyed Jay – Strangeland
• Belljars – Belljars
• Flathead – Flathead
• EVINSPRÄGG – The Neo Forms of Soliloquy
• Cold Meat – Cake and Arse Party EP
• Sean Armstrong – Velvet Ever After
• Lizzy Dutton – See It All
• Replaced by Robots – The Experiment EP
• The Tisburys – 2025/04/25 The Stone Pony, Asbury Park, NJ
• The Segments / Flathead – Split EP
• Numbdome – Kept So Quiet
• Adrian Younge – Something About April III
• Roach Squad – Roach Squad
• Little Barrie & Malcolm Catto – Electric War
• Edgar Hurley – Sissy Fairy Faggot Folk Singer
• Ron Gallo – 7AM Songs of Resistance For the Internet
• Okonski – Entrance Music
• Linying – Swim, Swim
• Jefre Cantu-Ledesma – Gift Songs
• Fuzz Evil – Smear Merchants
• Dedicated Serves – Colors
• Nico Georis – Music Belongs to the Universe
• Not Me But Us – Piano Twoness EP
• Tekamolo – Best Tunes for Your Answering Machine