Pressing Concerns: Lightheaded, HLLLYH, Ryli, Jeanines

Posted byrosyoverdrivePosted inPressing ConcernsTags:, , , , , , , ,

Happy Thursday! Tomorrow (June 27th), plenty of good new records will be released, and this blog post looks at four of them: new albums from Lightheaded, HLLLYH, Ryli, and Jeanines. It’s an indie pop-heavy edition! If you missed either of this week’s earlier blog posts (Monday’s Pressing Concerns featured Six Flags Guy, Dave J. Andrae, Nac/Hut Report, and Peaceful Faces, and Tuesday’s featured The Stick Figures, Hectorine, Grey Causeway, Docents), 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.

Lightheaded – Thinking, Dreaming, Scheming!

Release date: June 27th
Record label: Slumberland/Skep Wax
Genre: Jangle pop, dream pop, indie pop
Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital
Pull Track: The Lindens, The Lindens, The Lindens!

Thinking, Dreaming, Scheming! is an EP, but it’s also an LP. Maybe it’s a “double EP”, or a compilation with extra new material? Regardless of what one ought to file it under (I’ll figure it out later), the latest record from the New Jersey indie pop group Lightheaded features great brand-new guitar pop and provides a great excuse to revisit their earlier material. This makes three records in three years for the Cynthia Rittenbach/Stephen Stec project–they burst onto the scene in 2023 with a cassette EP called Good Good Great!, and the full-length Combustible Gems followed the year after. The 2025 Lightheaded release features five new songs recorded by Gary Olson (The Ladybug Transistor) and Alicia Vanden Heuvel (The Aislers Set) and “drenched in lush reverb on tape” by Fred Thomas. The vinyl and CD editions of Thinking, Dreaming, Scheming! don’t stop there, however–they both include the entirety of Good Good Great!, marking the first time those songs have been available on either format. Placing their earliest and newest material right beside each other allows us a chance to really witness the progress of the band (who I believe have changed members beyond the founding duo recently).

I’ve already written about Good Good Great! before (and I have nothing to add; it still sounds very good), so I’ll focus on the first five songs on the album (and the only five songs on the cassette version, if you’re keeping track). These new songs feel like Lightheaded’s most confident, smoothest pop recordings yet to my ears; they may have let Thomas reverb them up, but the first three tracks in particular are bright, shiny jangle pop tunes that can’t be obscured by a little bit of echo. “Same Drop” is the sweeping opener, taking a full three minutes to unfurl and build into Lightheaded’s version of “maximalism”; the next three songs are all under two minutes, lest we worry that Lightheaded might get a little too lost in the woods. “The Lindens, The Lindens, The Lindens!” might actually be my favorite one, a bright chorus that arrives and leaves in the blink of an eye. “Me and Amelia Fletcher” is an on-brand creation from a band who wear their influences on their sleeves and seem to take every opportunity to work with them–I’m sure I won’t be the first one to point out that Thinking, Dreaming, Scheming! is being co-released by Fletcher’s label Skep Wax. “The View from Your Room” and “Crash Landing of the Clod” close out this chapter of Lightheaded by reembracing their regal, airy, dream pop side–the former is as short as the mid-section of the EP and the latter sprawls to four minutes, but both sort through the haze of indie and pop music past to find curious sweetness. As good as the older songs that follow them are, the new recordings on Thinking, Dreaming, Scheming! are what’ll keep my eyes on Lightheaded. (Bandcamp link)

HLLLYH – URUBURU

Release date: June 27th
Record label: Team Shi
Genre: Art rock, noise pop, power pop, 2000s indie rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Yellow Brick Wall

The story behind the album URUBURU by the band HLLLYH is a bit convoluted, but this project is effectively a new version of a 2000s art punk group from Los Angeles called The Mae Shi who put out a few albums before dissolving, seemingly for good. The Mae Shi were very much a “blog rock” band in my eyes (and this is a blog, after all); their sound was very technicolor, noisy 2000s indie rock/pop music with all sorts of bizarre stuff thrown into the mix, somewhere between, say, The Unicorns and Parts & Labor. Three years ago, Mae Shi co-founder Tim Byron (now based in the Bay Area) got a bunch of former members together–original vocalist and the other co-founder Ezra Buchlan, as well as Jeff Byron, Brad Breeck, and Corey Fogel–to create what they envisioned as the final Mae Shi album. Instead, they decided that it was something new–something called HLLLYH (which means, somewhat confusingly, that The Mae Shi’s 2009 album, also called HLLLYH, will remain their final LP). Tim Byron has since welcomed three new members to HLLLYH and plans to make “several interconnected albums” under the name; the degree to which the other former Mae Shi members will be involved in those records isn’t clear to me, but we’re getting a bit ahead of ourselves here.

URUBURU–there’s a lot of good stuff on it! It’s drawn from “unearthed half-written Mae Shi songs” as well as freshly-written material–regardless of where and when these songs came from, HLLLYH have done an excellent job of recapturing that supercharged, ornery kaleidoscopic rock and roll energy that The Mae Shi had (Do they sound a little older? Sure, but I’m not sure I’d say it’s a more “mature” album). It’s an exhilarating start between two huge-sounding, big-picture indie rock anthems in “Uru Buru” and “Evolver” and the writhing, taunting post-punk-revival scorcher “Flex It, Tagger” that connects the two. “Evolver” in particular twists and turns and refuses to settle into anything too comfortable–traits it shares with my personal favorite song on the record, “Yellow Brick Wall”. “Yellow Brick Wall” is perfect glitzy power pop in spite of itself, and instead of trying to top that peak, HLLLYH just get weirder throughout URUBURU (although, after a wonky middle, the big rockers come back towards the end with “(Guess Who’s) Back from the Spirit World”, “Black Rainbows”, and “Dead Clade”). In classic Mae Shi/HLLLYH fashion, URUBURU feels like it has multiple ending-worthy moments between the leaving-it-all-out-there avant-pop rock of “Dead Clade” and the surprise acoustic closing track “I’m Glad You’re Alive”. It’s business as usual for the forces behind URUBURU, which means that it sounds like anything but that. (Bandcamp link)

Ryli – Come and Get Me

Release date: June 27th
Record label: Dandy Boy
Genre: Jangle pop, power pop
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
Pull Track: Bad July

I’ll stop writing about indie pop albums from the San Francisco Bay Area when they stop being good, but I don’t think we’re anywhere near the end of this era yet. And, if you’re already reasonably familiar with the bands and labels associated with this scene, it’s no surprise that the debut album from Ryli keeps the winning streak going. Ryli are effectively a supergroup when it comes to Bay Area jangle pop–the group’s “co-leaders” are Yea-Ming Chen (of Yea-Ming and the Rumours) on lead vocals and guitar and Rob Good (of The Goods) on lead guitar, and the rhythm section features Luke Robbins of R.E. Seraphin and The Rumours on bass and Ian McBrayer, formerly of Sonny & the Sunsets, on drums. The first Ryli single, “I Think I Need You Around”, came out on Dandy Boy late last year, and the quartet have moved quickly, as they’ve already put together a full-length called Come and Get Me. Chen writes the lyrics and all four of them write the music; compared to Chen’s work in The Rumours, Ryli’s version of jangle pop hews closer to “power pop” and contains a bit less of the folky tones of her most recent album with her other band, I Can’t Have It All.

Still, Come and Get Me is an album led by Chen’s vocals, and her stately, striking voice (one that doesn’t suffer in the least with a more electric backing band) is a clear connecting thread. Everybody in Ryli is familiar with what goes into making a solid pop song, and Come and Get Me absolutely reflects this–practically the entire first half of the album is one long parade of brisk tempos, jangly arpeggios, deft lead guitars, and tons of hooks. The cool-down moments on the LP are few and far between, but they’re there–like “Silent Colors” and “Downtown” in the middle of the record, bookending a new version of “I Think I Need You Around” that doesn’t mess with the sublimity of the original, and “Careful” and “Still Night”, which wrap the album up on a subdued (and, in the latter’s case, folk-y and acoustic) note. Everything else rocks, from the riffs-and-drums-based “Bad July” to the cautionary tale “Friend Collector” to early-R.E.M. jangly bliss of the title track. I have no complaints when it comes to Come and Get Me–it’s another solid record from a bunch of people with a good track record of making them, and it lays the foundation for Ryli to keep pursuing this noble goal. (Bandcamp link)

Jeanines – How Long Can It Last

Release date: June 27th
Record label: Slumberland/Skep Wax
Genre: Indie pop, jangle pop, power pop, twee
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
Pull Track: You Can’t Get It Back

Two Slumberland Records bands from the American Northeast are releasing LPs on the same day, and they’ve both teamed up with Skep Wax Records to release them in the United Kingdom and Europe. And furthermore, these two bands–Jeanines and Lightheaded (see above)–are touring the Kingdom together next month, with shows with British acts like Heavenly, Sassyhiya, The Gentle Spring, and Swansea Sound on the docket. Of the two, I’d say that I have less history with Jeanines–last time I wrote about them was three years ago and they were a duo in Brooklyn, but now they’re a trio in Massachusetts (founding members Alicia Jeanine and Jed Smith have since formally welcomed Maggie Gaster, the band’s longtime live bassist, into the group). It’s been a minute since their last album, yes, but they’ve remained active, putting out a single and an EP in between then and How Long Can It Last, and this new record sounds a lot like the Jeanines I remember. Compared to the reverb of Lightheaded, Jeanines favor a much more clean and direct sound–they’re still very much in the world of “jangly indie pop”, but the more streamlined side of classic folk rock is in there too, and Jeanine’s distinct vocals are right in the center throughout the album.

Jeanine’s singing style is perhaps the most immediately noticeable aspect of How Long Can It Last–conversational and laid-back, absent-minded to almost bored-sounding (perhaps “lackadaisical” is a better word). In terms of the music behind Jeanine, she and her co-composer Smith keep it simple and impactful; the skipping percussion and cheery bass guitar of opening track “To Fail”, for instance, are so completely capable of holding down the fort on their own that it’s actually kind of startling when the strings kick in. How Long Can It Last remains wedded to the “Jeanines ethos”–of the record’s thirteen songs, only two are (barely) longer than two minutes, and the entire thing is done in under twenty-two. “You Can’t Get It Back” hurries along with the perfunctory spookiness of a 1960s folk-pop tune, “Coaxed a Storm” is automatic, classic jangle pop, “On and On” is Jeanines’ version of a pogo-anthem, and so on. No time is wasted on How Long Can It Last–the trio launch into a smart, fully-realized, tiny pop song, bring it home, and move onto the next one with little fanfare. I can still hear plenty of excitement in the Jeanines way of doing things–they may cut out some excess, but that always stays intact. (Bandcamp link)

Also notable:

One thought on “Pressing Concerns: Lightheaded, HLLLYH, Ryli, Jeanines”

  1. Pingback: Selected Quotes about URUBURU

Leave a comment