Pressing Concerns: The Feelies, Whitney’s Playland, Michael Robert Chadwick, Little Mazarn

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Happy Juneteeth, everybody! Perhaps because of the holiday, it appears like this Friday (6/20) is a bit of a light week in terms of new music, but since there were enough upcoming releases I wanted to write about to make a full Pressing Concerns, we’re doing it anyway! We have an archival album from The Feelies, an EP from Whitney’s Playland, and new albums from Michael Robert Chadwick and Little Mazarn! If you missed Monday’s Pressing Concerns (featuring Hallelujah the Hills, Idiot Mambo, Drunken Prayer, and a compilation from Chapter Music) or Tuesday’s (featuring Emery/The Western Expanse, Nape Neck, W. Cullen Hart and Andrew Rieger, and Frizbee), check those out, too.

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.

The Feelies – Rewind

Release date: June 20th
Record label: Bar/None
Genre: Folk rock, post-punk, dad rock, classic rock, garage rock
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
Pull Track: I Wanna Sleep in Your Arms

Everybody shut up and pay attention: The Feelies are playing your favorite cool-dad rock classics. Well, I should say “played”, because Rewind is an archival compilation of cover songs that the legendary New Jersey post-punk/proto-indie rock group have recorded across their entire career. Of these nine songs, seven are from the band’s initial run from 1976 to 1992, and two of them from their “reunion” era in the 21st century (specifically the year 2016). But I do think “are playing” still makes sense when talking about these songs, as The Feelies are somewhat well-known for their affinity for playing cover songs live; indeed, judging by recent setlists, you’re likely to hear at least a few of these at a Feelies show in 2025. To me, the purpose of Rewind feels like cementing a key part of The Feelies’ whole deal that hadn’t really been properly documented (aside from their recently-released live album tribute to The Velvet Underground, which perhaps began setting this right on its own). Rewind may be a hodgepodge, but these recordings–forty-some years apart or not–have a unified feel to them. Veering away from the folky and pastoral side of the band, these nine recordings find The Feelies reveling in their love and understanding of electric, rollicking classic rock that’s just too simple and powerful to ever lose anything to time.

If you’re looking for “variety” or “obscurity”, Rewind may not be the covers album for you. There are two Beatles songs and two Neil Young songs, and the rest of the artists covered here are, in order: Patti Smith, Bob Dylan, The Doors, The Rolling Stones, and The Modern Lovers. The trick of Rewind is how the band take all these well-worn songs made by bands and artists with distinct auras and flatten them with their signature nervous-rocking steamroller into a single statement. The opening version of “Dancing Barefoot” is the biggest outlier simply because bassist Brenda Sauter sings lead vocals on it; otherwise, the band tune it to the key of the simple rock and roll rhythms and chords that they go on to hone for the rest of the album. Dylan’s “Seven Days” and The Doors’ “Take It As It Comes” are the newest recordings–if I don’t consider either a highlight of the album as a whole, that has more to do with the originals being my least favorites among their selections than with the band’s energy (which sounds no weaker here than it did decades previously). Including “Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey” from their classic debut album Crazy Rhythms feels like cheating, but I can’t argue that it doesn’t fit on here, particularly in the extra-frantic second half of the album also marked by a wild “Paint It Black” and an explosive “Sedan Delivery”. And then off The Feelies go, uncoupled from time in more ways than one. (Bandcamp link)

Whitney’s Playland – Long Rehearsal

Release date: June 20th
Record label: Meritorio/Dandy Boy
Genre: Jangle pop, power pop, psych pop
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Long Rehearsal

One of my favorite debuts of 2023 was Sunset Sea Breeze by Whitney’s Playland, a San Francisco-based indie pop group co-founded by George Tarlson and Inna Showalter and whose first statement delivered several records’ worth of lo-fi power pop hooks. Apparently, the quartet (rounded out by Evan Showalter and Paul DeMartini, who had joined by the time of Sunset Sea Breeze’s release but didn’t play on it) took a “brief hiatus” after the release of their first record, although a little over two years is hardly too long for a follow-up release (and, plus, Inna Showalter put out an album with her other band, Magic Fig, in the meantime). Admittedly, the second Whitney’s Playland record, an EP called Long Rehearsal, is pretty short–three songs in about ten minutes. Still, this gives the quartet plenty of time to revisit and reaffirm their ability to hit all the high points they did on their last album–jangly, bubblegum-flavored guitar pop, electric and fuzzy power pop, and rainy, dreary, dreamy indie pop all make appearances on Long Rehearsal. The quick break, the doubling of their membership–neither seems to have caused Whitney’s Playland to deviate from their established talents for even a moment.

Long Rehearsal opens with the title track, which comes in at under two minutes and spends every second of it offering up melodies in its jangly guitars and Inna Showalter’s vocals. It’s a high point for a band that’s already collected several of them, and it should be pretty hard to top. “Only Daughter” follows and holds its own against “Long Rehearsal”–neither it nor the song after it are as concisely, immediately brilliant as the opening track, but they’re not exactly trying to best “Long Rehearsal” at its own game. “Only Daughter”, for one, is the most electric song on the EP, opening with a nice, coiling guitar solo and the guitars continue giving off static (albeit in a more backgrounded form) as the track advances. The B-side of Long Rehearsal, meanwhile, is occupied by “Talk”, a five-minute song that veers into the wilderness of Whitney’s Playland’s sound. Don’t expect anything as far-out as the psychedelia of Magic Fig, exactly, but the melancholic, mid-tempo guitar-led dream pop is fairly far removed from the rest of the EP and classic “B-side” fodder that eventually floats away in a blissed-out finale. I do hope that the next Whitney’s Playland release gives us more than three new songs, yes, but Long Rehearsal is a strong collection regardless of size. (Bandcamp link)

Michael Robert Chadwick – Illusion of Touch

Release date: June 20th
Record label: Anxiety Blanket
Genre: Synthpop, sophisti-pop, jazz-pop, soft rock
Formats: Cassette, digital
Pull Track: Dirt Nap

Michael Robert Chadwick is a Los Angeles-based visual artist who’s made music videos and/or album artwork for Stuck, Amby Moho, and Sam Wilkes, among others, according to his website. He has also been “prolifically making music for almost 20 years”, although I had to do some more digging to find that–if this Discogs page is to be believed, he played in the bands Plum Professional and The Armchairs as well as appearing on the three most recent Weyes Blood albums (playing synths, which seem to be his instrument of choice). He also put out two jazzy, synth-y indie pop albums in 2019 called Tourist and Salad, which seem to be his only solo releases before now. Illusion of Touch is Chadwick’s first album for Anxiety Blanket Records (La Bonte, Jac Aranda, Daniel Brouns), and while it’s been six years since those aforementioned solo records, this new one isn’t so far off from what he was doing with them. Made “over several years in several different places”, Illusion of Touch is a more polished, teased-out version of what I must assume is the “Michael Robert Chadwick sound”–synth-led pop music that recalls a nice bite-sized, portable version of soft rock and sophisti-pop. 

The icy synths that kick off opening track “Dirt Nap” eventually give way to bass grooves, jazzy saxophones, and smooth indie pop vocals, setting up a lot of the key ingredients that go into Illusion of Touch. The squirmy jazz-pop of “Longing for Scissors” and the minimal synth balladry of “Vans of Desire” find Illusion of Touch stretching itself towards different extremes, although songs like singles “A Song for the Cows” and “Pleasure Picture” always return to a centering of sharp pop hooks. The latter of those two songs features a vibrant chorus where Chadwick sings “I don’t subscribe to the theory of friendship / It’s only a guess”; Illusion of Touch is a “solo album” in more ways than one, very much coming off as the work of a single artist tinkering away on his own. Chadwick is an animated leader, though, and both his friendly, pleasing arrangements and his unadorned emoting as a vocalist prevent Illusion of Touch from coming off as too much of an “exercise”. Maybe it is an exercise, though, and making intricate yet breezy one-man-show pop music is how Michael Robert Chadwick stays in shape. Whichever need or desire got us to Illusion of Touch is a productive one. (Anxiety Blanket link)

Little Mazarn – Mustang Island

Release date: June 20th
Record label: Dear Life
Genre: Folk rock, psychedelia, chamber pop
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
Pull Track: Dark Pleasure of Endless Doing

Perhaps the platonic ideal of a Dear Life Records band, the Austin experimental folk group Little Mazarn first became known to me via their 2022 sophomore album, Texas River Song. They were a duo then, with Lindsey Verrill on vocals and banjo and Jeff Johnston on singing saw; I called them “somewhat spacey” at the time and enjoyed how they were able to conjure up a cosmic, Lone-Star-big sound with simple and slow ingredients. Little Mazarn have been busy in the three years since Texas River Song–there’s been an EP, a live album, and Verrill helped organize two benefit compilations (for Los Angeles and western North Carolina). Still, it’s been a minute since the last Little Mazarn LP, which Mustang Island now rectifies. The third Little Mazarn album is their first as a trio, with the Chicago-based Carolina Chauffe (of Hemlock) officially joining the band on harmonies on every song. Synths and flutes join the familiar sounds of banjos and singing saw on Mustang Island, but while there are a few busy moments of psychedelic pop music, the trio’s expanded sound still frequently finds its way to the big wide empty.

Warm harmonies and Casios welcome us into Mustang Island on opening track “Crystal Cave”; it’s a smoother version of Little Mazarn than the one I heard on their last album, but it’s still incredibly intimate. The slow, loping “New New San Antonio Rose” injects just a bit more traditionalism into the mix, but the fluttering, synth-led dream pop of “Dark Pleasure of Endless Doing” comes out of nowhere to completely rearrange the whole Little Mazarn sound in a couple of sweet, bright minutes. There’s nothing else quite like “Dark Pleasure of Endless Doing” on Mustang Island, but that hardly means the rest of the record doesn’t keep expanding–“Remember the Night Rainbow” is some more nice, strange banjo-led art folk, the title track is a flute-heavy psychedelic odyssey, “The Gate” takes synthpop to minimalist, ambient places, and so on. The last couple of songs on Mustang Island are two of the most “folk” moments on the record, but closing track “The Golden Hour” quietly bows out with only a cello to accompany Verrill. Making transportive music with just singing saw and banjo is an impressive achievement, yes, but so is being able to return once again to these inaccessible heights from a different path. (Bandcamp link)

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