Pressing Concerns: True Names, Rodeo Boys, Beasts, Kilynn Lunsford

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On this perfectly okay Monday morning, Pressing Concerns is here to present to you new albums from Rodeo Boys and Kilynn Lunsford, a new vinyl release of an album from Beasts that originally came out last year, and a compilation benefiting the Trans Youth Emergency Project put together by Worry Bead Records.

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Various – True Names: A Benefit for Trans Youth

Release date: May 2nd
Record label: Worry Bead
Genre: Lo-fi indie rock, bedroom pop, folk rock
Formats: Digital
Pull Track: You’re a Yo-Yo

I usually try to prioritize these benefit compilations if I decide that I want to write about them, but I had the wrong release date written down for this one, and its chosen cause is unfortunately going to be relevant for the foreseeable future, so I’m giving True Names: A Benefit for Trans Youth a bump a few weeks after its release. This compilation was put together by Worry Bead Records, a Queens-based label run by Matt O’Connor (of the lovely Candlepin Records-associated band Tuxis Giant) and their partner, Jenny Ruenes; all proceeds from it go to the Trans Youth Emergency Project, which “helps families of trans youth find healthcare providers, travel to appointments, and pay for medication”. Like I said, these are essential services, and I’m pleased to see that many great artists chipped in to provide a song for this compilation–just among bands I’ve written about favorably on this blog before, 2nd Grade, Remember Sports, (T-T)b, Really Great, Michael Cormier-O’Leary, and Léna Bartels all contribute demos, live recordings, and/or straight-up exclusive songs. True Names primarily draws from the worlds of East Coast bedroom pop and lo-fi indie rock, but there’s a lot of range to be found within the compilation, making it a pretty compelling listen.

Philadelphia indie punk heroes Remember Sports give us a live version of “Cut Fruit”, a song that they’ve been playing live for a bit now but as far as I can tell has never been released anywhere else–it rips, it fits right in with the songs from 2022’s Like a Stone, and I’m glad there’s a good-sounding version I can listen to now. On the other side of the compilation is a new song from a band that shares members with Remember Sports, 2nd Grade–although I wouldn’t be surprised if “You’re a Yo-Yo” is a Peter Gill solo recording (it has a full-band sound though, and it’s an excellent little sub-two-minute lo-fi power pop nugget). Perhaps surprisingly given the theme of the compilation, the title of the song “M-F” by Michael Cormier-O’Leary actually stands for “Monday through Friday”, and the song itself–a fuzzed-out, anxiety-ridden lo-fi pop song–is just as surprising (pleasantly!) coming from the modern classical and indie folk musician. A bunch of the songs from bands that either are new to me or at least I’ve never written about are worth highlighting, too–“Villain Story” by King’s Evil (a band that doesn’t seem to have released any other music) is really cool synth-y slacker pop, Dust from 1000 Yrs puts on their Harvest-era Neil Young hat for “Big Moon”, and Squirrel Flower (who’ve never really grabbed me but now I’m wanting to rethink this) balances fun and intimate with their demo of “Intheskatepark” (the final version of which was on 2023’s Tomorrow’s Fire). You get to explore everything True Names has to offer and give to a good cause at the same time; that’s a good deal! (Bandcamp link)

Rodeo Boys – Junior

Release date: April 25th
Record label: Don Giovanni
Genre: Garage punk, pop punk, alt-rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Peonies

Rodeo Boys are, in some ways, the archetypal Don Giovanni Records band. They’re a punk band whose music can be reasonably described as grungy, angry, and hooky in equal measure, their queerness (at the very least, that of frontperson Tiff Hannay) is central to their songwriting, and they’re pure road dogs (in their relatively brief existence, they’ve played with Cloud Nothings, Smoking Popes, Laura Jane Grace, Screaming Females, and The Menzingers, among others). They aren’t from Philly or Jersey (which probably would’ve completed Don Giovanni Bingo), but their Midwesternness (they hail from Lansing, Michigan) certainly helps them conjure up a version of punk Americana that’s on even ground with the Atlantic City crew. Coming not so long after their debut album, 2023’s Home Movies, Junior is the classic leveling-up sophomore LP–Rodeo Boys enlisted The Menzingers’ Tom May to record it, and it’s hard to argue with what the group put to tape with him. Junior balances “polish” with “ragged”–Hannay’s impactful vocals (they’re always “giving their all” in that department) collide with huge-sounding, shined-up guitars, initiating some sort of chemical reaction the final product of which is a forty-minute cathartic punk rock record.

We really don’t get much warning before Junior really launches into the heavy stuff–maybe the thirty-second instrumental opening “It Is Happening Again” counts as a “warning”, but the record really starts with the furious, stomping, righteously murderous “Sam’s Song” (the lyrics are drawn from an experience of a friend of Hannay’s who was groomed as a student by a teacher–they handle the subject exactly as they should in a punk band setting). It’s tough to come up with that much to say about stuff like “Let Down”, “Lonesome Again”, and “Pump Six” other than that they rock and are extremely successful at what they do–punk songs that happily draw from the genre’s past but which are too imbued with the personality of their frontperson to come off as overly derivative or too reverent. “Peonies” kicks itself off with just Hannay delivering a dark and huge melody over electric guitar chords, which is a big “hell yes” moment in my book. The first half of Junior is so big that I feel like I’m neglecting the B-side a bit, but there’s still plenty of quality rock songs to be had down that road between tracks like “Venus Fly Trap” (yes, we get it Tiff, you work with plants) and “Cowgirl in the Dark”. It feels like Rodeo Boys traverse quite a lot of ground on these fourteen songs; it might be only their second album, but this band is champing at the bit to get to “elder statesmen status”, and I think they’ll wear it well, too. (Bandcamp link)

Beasts – The Shearing (Vinyl Release)

Release date: April 18th
Record label: Rockerill/La Base ASBL
Genre: Noise rock, noise punk, rap-rock
Formats: Vinyl, cassette, digital
Pull Track: The Shearing

Who are Beasts? Well, they’re a project from Belgium, led by the Charleroi-based Antoine Romeo. Romeo used to play in a band called Run Sofa, and while he is joined by a backing band for Beasts’ first album (drummer Tijl Van de Casteele of Whorses and François Hantson of Feel and Mingawash on “hybrid bassguitar”), the band bio does refer to it as a solo project. The Shearing is far from your typical solo project, though, mind you–the debut Beasts album is an explosive, low-end-worshipping noise rock album that also owes plenty to punk and (in Romeo’s vocals) rap-rock. It’s an intense record from what seems like a pretty intense person–Beasts comes with a “manifesto” that declares them to be against fascism, multinational corporations, and “elitist culture”, among other things, and they back this up by declining to make The Shearing available on any streaming service (although there is one song on Bandcamp as a sampler). You can stream it on their website, as well as buy a vinyl copy (the album originally came out on cassette last year via French label Solium). Perhaps you’re the type of person who’s intrigued by a Belgian antifascist noise rock/punk-rap album–maybe even to click through to an unfamiliar website! I’ll try to lay it out for you a little more first, though.

The absolutely wild opening title track wastes no time weeding out anybody who isn’t totally on board for this kind of thing–it starts with an eerie sample, sure, but by a minute in we’re already receiving the full essence of Beasts: lumbering, razor-sharp basslines in the front, Romeo’s chaotic spitting waging battle with the four-string, and de Casteele holding everything together behind the kit. Hantson’s hybrid bass is effectively the co-star of The Shearing–it fills up every moment where Romeo isn’t roaring against the noise and stays just in-frame enough whenever he is. The Shearing is never not unhinged to some degree– “Deep South” is just a little more restrained and seething than the opener, but “Beasts (My Swollen Face)” and “Same Way” are the record’s most pummeling moments yet (and the latter, which circles the drain with a depressing, dour bass-guitar riff, unlocks a new level of darkness for Beasts). “Old Pictures” and “Let Them Children Play” keep the rage coming, and their subject matters hint at some deep-seated origins for what Romeo is exorcising here (“Toxic masculinity a law / Fight in the fields after school / Traumas get passed on and on / Well…I didn’t ask for it” he wails at the ending of the latter of the two songs). Sure, Romeo screaming “Silence the sirens inside!” in closing track “The Fire Inside” is cathartic, but it gets to the next level by having the rest of Beasts operating like an industrial-grade drill right beside him. (Beasts Website link) (Bandcamp link)

Kilynn Lunsford – Promiscuous Genes

Release date: May 16th
Record label: Feel It
Genre: Art punk, post-punk, no wave
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Disney Girls

The New Jersey artist Kilynn Lunsford has been playing in bands in and around Philadelphia for two decades now–most notably the wild art punk group Taiwan Housing Project, with whom she’s put out two albums, a tape, and a couple of EPs since 2015. In 2022, Lunsford decided to try her hand at a solo album, releasing Custodians of Human Succession on Ever/Never Records, and (with Taiwan Housing Project seemingly inactive) Lunsford’s back with a second solo album called Promiscuous Genes this year on Feel It. Like Custodians of Human Succession, it’s a partnership between Lunsford and longtime collaborator Donald Bruno–the two of them wrote and played almost everything on Promiscuous Genes. Bruno and Lunsford are clearly in tune to the same strange frequency–it’s on the more oddball side of the Feel It Records spectrum, choosing to roll with a rank mix of skronky no wave, primordial funk crawling, creepy spoken-word, unusual synth odysseys, rhythmic art punk, and, well, more. Promiscuous Genes is hardly the kind of record that those looking for catchy, pop-fluent rock music would gravitate towards, but those willing to listen in on what Lunsford is attempting to communicate will find something striking nonetheless. 

A lot of Promiscuous Genes is, structurally speaking, fairly simple, but Lunsford and Bruno are still able to make things sound confusing and wrong. “My Amphibian Face”, a minimal synthpunk instrumental featuring Lunsford singing “Slither on the ground, slither on the ground” over and over again is a good early example of it, as is a version of The Beach Boys’ “Disney Girls” (I mean, no shit–the two of them turn the piano ballad into a nervous post-punk toe-tapper featuring prominent use of some kind of referee whistle). Between the unrecognizable burbling no wave of “You Never Give Me Your Money”, the vocally-manipulated intro of “Lillibilly”, and the really unsettling caveman bass-rock of the title track, the first half of Promiscuous Genes is probably the more confrontational one–not that Lunsford ever stops being weird, but there’s a least a more recognizable post-punk energy to songs like “Gateway to Hell” and an early synthpop attitude to “Let’s Eat”. Even the hip-hop-ish “Maisie” is catchy in a hypnotic way, and it eventually starts to make sense that the last two proper songs on the album (“Gagged World” and “Saddest of Dreams”) are some of the most straightforward ones on it. Everything’s moving backwards on Promiscuous Genes, but Lunsford is quite adept at navigating via rear view mirror. (Bandcamp link)

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