Pressing Concerns: Erik Woods, Percy Higgins, Emma Munger, Lily Seabird

The second Pressing Concerns of the week is here, and we’re popping in on new(ish) EPs from Erik Woods and Percy Higgins and new albums from Emma Munger and Lily Seabird here. Good! There’s also a Pressing Concerns from yesterday (featuring Mike Frazier, JPW & Dad Weed, Chris Brokaw, Blue Cactus), so check that one out 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.

Erik Woods – Visibly Psychotic

Release date: March 23^rd
Record label: 21st Century Lo Fi
Genre: Folk rock, sadcore, lo-fi indie rock
Formats: Digital
Pull Track: Do You Ever?

I used to listen to a podcast by a guy named John Roderick (of the band The Long Winters). There was one episode where (and this was many years ago that I heard this, so forgive me if I’m misremembering any specifics) he talked about growing up in Alaska and the isolation that comes with that, a type of isolation incomparable to anywhere else in the United States…“except maybe, like, West Virginia,” he allowed. I’ve written about Mountain State acts who incorporate a fair amount of darkness in their songs before (like Tucker Riggleman and The Long Lost Somethins), but never more has that particular quote resurfaced in my mind than while listening to an EP from a Huntington-based singer-songwriter named Erik Woods. Woods has been putting out folk/lo-fi indie rock-type music on 21st Century Lo Fi, a label he appears to co-run, for a while now–his latest record is four songs recorded in Charleston over a period of six months with a handful of other West Virginians in guitarist Sean Knisely, bassist David Gravely, and drummer Seth Hughes. Visibly Psychotic is an aurally strange experience–these songs have a dramatic, almost gothic darkness to them, but Woods’ band play them with no inkling of that level of pretension. It ends up sounding like a more Appalachian version of song-forward electric-ish slowcore acts like American Music Club and Idaho.

Between the slow pace of these songs and repeated religious/divine references, Visibly Psychotic kind of feels like a collection of hymns–but certainly not like a trip to church. “Liberated” ought to be the catchiest song on the EP, a mid-tempo, acoustic guitar-led lilting thing with a clear refrain, but Woods’ uncomfortably-up-close vocals forcefully reject any kind of easy listening folk rock experience. The actual “catchiest” song on Visibly Psychotic is probably the closing track, “Do You Ever?”–Emmy Davis and Hank Berlin’s guest vocals help the song come off just a little friendlier than the rest of the record, like it’s drawn from a more recognizably human kind of sadness. On the other end of the spectrum, “My Turtle” is the most memorable track on Visibly Psychotic in its singular strangeness. Gravely’s bass inches along and the guitar floats around in almost a “dream pop” manner, but once Woods takes the mic, it’s hard to focus on anything other than what he’s singing. “Got a mental illness / Made my own mother cry / I’ve got a mental illness / Sometimes I’d rather just die,” Woods sings with frightening simplicity, and in the chorus he simply says “My turtle will live longer than me” (known to live longer than a hundred years in some cases, turtles are discouraged as pets by most animal welfare experts for this reason, a trait they share with certain frequently-caged birds). It’s not a feel-good listen, but I’m not sure why you’d expect that from an EP called Visibly Psychotic–and it’s good for us to get confronted with this kind of thing from time to time, I think. (Bandcamp link)

Percy Higgins – Art Machine

Release date: April 16^th
Record label: Self-released
Genre: Lo-fi indie rock, experimental rock, noise rock, rap-rock
Formats: Digital
Pull Track: Sombre Phones of the Past

Percy Higgins is the alter ego of a musician from London named Adam Kingsley, who plays bass and/or drums for a few different noise rock, punk, and metal bands (Muscle Vest, Ishtar Terra, Cannabis Man). Percy Higgins arrived on the scene in 2023 with an EP called Don’t Rag on the Spider, and we’re fortunate enough to join Kingsley for his follow-up record under the name, another EP called Art Machine. Kingsley listed four influences when he sent me this record: Beck, The Birthday Party, Captain Beefheart’s Magic Band, and MF Doom. These are all artists who–full disclosure–I find myself “respecting” more than “liking”. I’m not even sure if Art Machine really sounds like a synthesis of them, but there’s something about the noisy, dissonant, pounding take on hip-hop and fuzz rock music found herein that has drawn me in for whatever reason. Aside from mastering (provided by Muscle Vest bandmate Charlie Webb), Kingsley played and recorded everything on Art Machine, and he sounds like a nervous, irritated mad scientist behind the controls. Maybe Percy Higgins is kind of like Beck, but with all the fun and “coolness” replaced by good old-fashioned British noise rock bile.

Art Machine is a brief jolt to the senses–Percy Higgins only gives us five songs, and only one of those five is over three minutes long (opening track “Creature Feature” comes in at a clean 3:12). It’s a clanging, busy cacophony pretty much from moment one–after a brief warm-up, Kingsley drops into “Creature Feature”, rattling off rattled lyrics (“Uncanny valley, image source: Getty / Wading through knee deep existential confetti”) alongside a rowdy bassline, bullying drums, and occasional blasts of megaphone-aping guitars. “Sombre Phones of the Past” is a snaking post-punk song that revs itself up into just as much chaos as the track before it; “Don’t Think So, Tim” is the closest thing that Art Machine gets to a dial-back, leaning on a nervous bassline for the majority of its length and never fully letting loose. It’s right back to the brittle and banging with “Big Splash in the Almanac”, though, and “Full Weird” lives up to its name (not that it’s any “weirder” than the rest of Art Machine, but the swinging, dizzy finale is the one song where Kingsley’s psychedelic side really comes through). I’m still not entirely sure what to make of Art Machine, but I do think it’s the work of somebody with a keen grasp on “groove, counterpoint, and energy” (as Kingsley puts it so well himself), and it’s quite gripping to hear these used towards these unusual ends. (Bandcamp link)

Emma Munger – Pattern

Release date: January 17^th
Record label: Self-released
Genre: Folk, singer-songwriter
Formats: Digital
Pull Track: Glow

January’s Pattern may be Emma Munger’s first “solo” album, but the Brooklyn-based musician has a lot of experience in a part of the music industry that I interacted with a lot less frequently–music for podcasts. Munger worked at Gimlet Media composing and mixing music for their shows for seven years, and has done plenty of work outside that banner as well (“production, teaching, audio restoration, and sound design”, per their website) . The first Emma Munger album is decidedly song-based and “indie folk”, and it features a couple of established singer-songwriters in Fenne Lily (harmonies) and Margaux Bouchegnies (bass, harmonies). Pattern is rounded out by some more ringers in drummer Theo Munger (Sinai Vessel), producer/multi-instrumentalist Sam Skinner (Pinegrove) and another podcast musician in Bobby Lord (who also played with Milked at one point) on guitar; all hands work towards sharpening Emma Munger’s folk songwriting into bits of soft rock, chamber pop, and even a bit of electric indie rock territory. The music is soft and polished, but Pattern works for me because Munger declines to fade into the background–perhaps after making music designed not to take attention away from podcast hosts, the musician is relishing the chance to let their voice take center stage for an entire album.

Pattern has a pretty unified indie folk sound, although it allows itself a nice range within it–sometimes it’s quieter, sometimes it’s a bit twangy, sometimes it’s a little more electric. The opening title track is the kind of chilly, breathy folk/indie rock/pop music that Phoebe Bridgers has been known to do well on occasion, and “Listening” and “Thread” pick up on this thread while leaning a little more into sparse folk and piano-based pop, respectively. The choppy electric guitars and mid-tempo indie rock of “Glow” make it probably my favorite moment on Pattern–it’s the only song on the record that fully embraces having the might of a rock band behind its vocalist (although the second-half of the slow-burn “Change” also qualifies) and it’s something I think I’d like to see Munger explore more in the future. Pattern is a pretty brief album overall–only twenty-six minutes–but it’s hard to find fault in this, as there’s a relatively unadorned charm to second-half songs like “Heart Rate”, “Chemistry”, and “Nervous Driver” that probably would’ve been diminished by padding for the sake of padding. What Munger gives us on Pattern is sufficient for the album to stand on its own as an LP–and enough for me to mark them as somebody who could have a rewarding career making music outside of the kind that got them established, should they desire to do so. (Bandcamp link)

Lily Seabird – Trash Mountain

Release date: April 4^th
Record label: Lame-O
Genre: Folk rock, alt-country
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Arrow

Lily Seabird’s 2024 sophomore album Alas, was an exciting and promising statement of “folk rock/alt-country-influenced indie rock” (as I called it at the time); it was great in its own right and suggested that Seabird might have a case to be seen new alongside fuzzed-out country rock royalty like Wednesday and their various associates. It’s no surprise that Lame-O scooped up Seabird and re-released Alas, later last year, but I wasn’t exactly expecting a full-on follow-up album just a year and change later in Trash Mountain. Trash Mountain does feature some of the same faces as Alas, (namely the acclaimed singer-songwriter Greg Freeman and Robber Robber/Dari Bay’s Zack James), but it was written and recorded much more quickly than Seabird’s previous two albums, and I found myself pretty surprised at where the Vermont singer-songwriter decided to go on her third LP. The explosive bursts of noisy country rock of Alas, are decentered for a quieter, more deliberate, and intimate record, but this pull-back (if anything) only makes Seabird’s writing and singing even more immediate. Trash Mountain is a gorgeously ragged collection of folk rock that finds avenues of contentment rather than searching feverishly for moments of catharsis.

“Harmonia” begins the record with Seabird pouring so much out with just an electric guitar and her voice, and while the band eventually does kick in, it’s not like a sudden jerk forward like on Alas, highlights like “Grace” but more a subtle building-up. “Trash Mountain (1pm)” is harmonica-heavy, strung-out alt-country/folk music–it and the album are both named after a real place, an artist-filled house on a “decommissioned landfill” site where Seabird lived while writing the album. It’s not hard to imagine the run-down but creatively-charged environment informing the framing of songs like the two “Trash Mountain”s, the string-aided acoustic folk of “Sweepstake”, the probing electric alt-country rock of “Arrow”, and the After the Gold Rush-ish piano ballad “How Far Away”. The biggest moment on the second side of Trash Mountain is the sprawling “Trash Mountain (1am)”, but its late-night triumph is only bolstered by the quieter “Albany” and “The Fight” surrounding it. Stripping away a layer of guitars and distortion doesn’t always equal “maturity”, but Seabird has responded to her new circumstances with what feels like her strongest writing yet–all of these nine songs, from the sparsest recordings to the most fully-realized rock songs, stand on their own even without the benefit of the towering, friendly, dilapidated vantage point from which they rest on Trash Mountain. (Bandcamp link)

Also notable:

• Semi Trucks – Georgia Overdrive
• Firstations – Many White Horses
• TV Sundaze – Plastic Bags / Packing Tape
• Bells Larsen – Blurring Time
• The Blue Knots – Becoming Noise
• Matriarch – To See You Glow
• Fullbloods – Playing It Safe
• Helen Ganya – Share Your Care
• The Golden Dregs – Godspeed
• The Tisburys – 2025/04/27 Electric City, Buffalo, NY
• Cathal Francis – Snowblind EP
• Le Chiffre Organ-ization – Illustration
• Sunflower Bean – Mortal Primetime
• Mesías Maiguashca – Cello in My Life
• Ekzilo – Quantum Phase Transition
• Homeboy Sandman & yeyts. – Corn Hole Legend EP
• Homeboy Sandman & Illingsworth – Dancing Tree EP
• Floating Clouds – With a Shared Memory
• Viagra Boys – Viagr Aboys
• Soul Coughing – Live 2024
• The Cat Empire – Bird in Paradise
• The Moonlandingz – No Rocket Required
• Willie Nelson – Oh What a Beautiful World
• Lola Kirke – Trailblazer
• Tennis – Face Down in the Garden