Pressing Concerns: The Symptones, Anton Barbeau, Material Objects, Beagle Scout

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We’re still getting three Pressing Concerns a week for the time being! I’ve been pretty busy outside of the blog as of late, but today we’re still taking the time to look at new albums from Anton Barbeau and Material Objects and new EPs from The Symptones and Beagle Scout. If you missed yesterday’s blog post (featuring Karl Frog, Fortunato Durutti Marinetti, Williamson Brothers, and Perfect 100), check that one 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 Symptones – Ricardo Papaya

Release date: July 8th
Record label: Self-released
Genre: Roots rock, power pop, pop rock
Formats: Digital
Pull Track: MRI

I first heard the Minneapolis five-piece group The Symptones in 2023 via their self-titled sophomore album. Highlighting my favorite song from The Symptones (“Is It in My Head”) in a monthly playlist, I wrote that the band’s second LP incorporates “power pop, soul, R&B, and Springsteenian heartland rock” and that, while “not everything on [it] is ‘up my alley’”, “when it hits…it’s undeniable”. The group (vocalist/guitarist Taylor Tuomie, drummer Steven George, guitarist Andrew Polski, bassist Jeremy Gullikson, and trumpet player/percussionist Jake Nemec) are back a little under two years later with a new record called Ricardo Papaya–the four-song EP may be a smaller statement from The Symptones, but it does a great job of highlighting the group’s strengths and pulling a front-to-back rock-solid record together out of them. In my experience, a lot of modern rock groups who try to graft soul and R&B into their music come off gimmicky and/or totally unequipped to do so, but The Symptones make it sound easy and natural on Ricardo Papaya, an obvious-in-hindsight extension of their foundational power pop reminiscent of formative acts like Big Star and NRBQ (see also The Tisburys, the modern band that seems to understand this linkage the most thoroughly). 

That being said, Ricardo Papaya isn’t exactly beating the “first song is the best one” allegations. I can’t really fault The Symptones for putting “MRI” right at the top of the EP, though–when you have a pop rock song this strong and triumphant, there’s no point in trying to bury it. There are bits of The Replacements and even Wilco in the slightly rootsy Midwestern power pop of “MRI”, although neither act ever really made something this cleanly, unreservedly big and retro-polished. “Wind Up Toy” is the only song on Ricardo Papaya that’s under three minutes long, and it’s the other unrestrained power pop hit single on the EP. The Symptones kick up the tempo a little more than normal–it’s effectively a more buttoned-up Telethon song, just as Midwestern and earnest in its construction. The rest of Ricardo Papaya indulges the other sides of pop music that The Symptones have been known to explore–I have to give it up for the closing track, “Palace of Straw”, in particular, which introduces guest musician David Klein on saxophone to complete the maximalist combination of jazz-y pop bass grooves, yacht rock polish, and Springsteenian excess. It all amounts to a brief, shiny record that has enough going on underneath the glitz to make sure The Symptones stand out in the crowd. (Bandcamp link)

Anton Barbeau – Glitch Wizard / Dig the Light

Release date: July 11th
Record label: Think Like a Key
Genre: Psychedelic pop, art pop, pop rock, post-punk
Formats: CD, digital
Pull Track: Nightcrawler / Dogstar

Did somebody order two new Anton Barbeau albums? Well, if you did–first of all, you probably didn’t need to formally request them, as the California-originating, Berlin-dwelling pop oddball has made it clear over and over again that he’s going to continue to release records at a furious clip (said clip being the only thing about Barbeau’s music that could realistically be called “furious”). Ever since the monster 2023 double album Morgenmusik/Nachtschlager, Barbeau has still been active but working more informally–records like Ras!, Ambient 1: Music for Entities, and In His Own Image found the artist reimagining/re-recording his old material and embarking on unusual genre excursions. It was high time for all-new Anton Barbeu pop music, and Glitch Wizard and Dig the Light are two new albums of it, released on the same day by Think Like a Key. Receiving help from notable names like XTC’s Dave Gregory, The Soft Boys’ Andy Metcalfe, and Julian Cope collaborator Donald Ross Skinner, Barbeau sculpts two different moods on his latest two LPs: Glitch Wizard is moodier and more meditative, inspired by the death of Barbeau’s father, while Dig the Light seeks–as the name implies–something brighter.

Glitch Wizard is my favorite of the two, and the one more likely to stick out in Barbeau’s vast discography. The album’s Bandcamp page calls it “krautfolk”, and that’s pretty accurate to what this album sounds like: Metcalfe’s bass is the glue holding everything together, leading everyone else on a post-punk psychedelic journey that somehow feels low-key and (occasionally) somber nonetheless. “Nightcrawler” lodges itself into our brains with its practically danceable groove, and “Off the Hook” gets a little showy with Barbeau’s prog-pop smarts, but Glitch Wizard is best experienced as a steady, deliberate wave washing over us. Listening to Dig the Light, I’m struck by Barbeau’s ability to sound like the same old Barbeau while making self-evidently different music; he’s like Mark E. Smith or Robert Pollard in that way, I suppose. There’s nothing on Glitch Wizard like the electric strut of “Dogstar”, for instance, but it sounds just as much like an “Anton Barbeau song” as the best ones on Glitch Wizard do. Dig the Light’s surrealist Barbeau-isms of “Come the Hummingbird”, “Mushroom Madness”, and “Life Gives You Lemons” are more obviously “him” than the ones on Glitch Wizard, but you’ll hear him say sentences that have never before been uttered on both albums. In this way, there’s really no wrong way to enter Barbeau’s world; every record seems to offer the same full experience, just different takes on it. (Bandcamp link)

Material Objects – In Revision

Release date: June 1st
Record label: Resident Recordings
Genre: 90s indie rock, post-punk, noise rock
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
Pull Track: Dreaming Outside

Over the past few years, I’ve discovered that Ithaca, New York is something of a sanctuary city for modern 90s noise rock-inspired underground bands. In the past year or two, I’ve written about new albums from Eighteen Hundred and Froze to Death and Chimes of Bayonets, and now we can add Material Objects to the list. This power trio (guitarist/vocalist Domenic Gagliano, drummer Tre Berney, and a different bassist each time) formed in 2019 and introduced themselves with EPs in 2022 and 2023 (which were collected together on one CD earlier this year)–In Revision is their first full-length album. Like a good noise rock-influenced band, In Revision was partially recorded at Electrical Audio with Greg Norman (the rest of it was recorded closer to home, by Chris Ploss at Sunwood Recording in Trumansburg, New York), and it also serves as the introduction to their latest bass player, Matt Gordon. Cellist Gabriella Evergreen is the only outside musician to play on In Revision, though former bassists Elsy Murphy and Adam Southard receive composition credits–reflecting how long Material Objects have been working on this long-form debut. 

In Revision is anything but the caveman, low-end-worshipping style of “noise rock”; more post-punk-influenced and dynamic, Material Objects have a sound much more reminiscent of Silkworm or even electric slowcore groups like Bedhead and Idaho than Shellac or The Jesus Lizard. Opening track “Wakes and Cells” is effectively a more sturdy version of a vintage Lou Barlow rocker, opening up an album that is equally comfortable veering into drilling, harrowing post-punk seethers (“Working on My Act”), capital I-Indie rock noise pop tunes (“Dreaming Outside”), and sprawling, multi-part odysseys (“Easy Out”). I wouldn’t precisely call Material Objects “post-rock”, but they’re not overly constrained by “normal” song lengths and structures, letting “Making the Case” chime and creak to six minutes in length and allowing the last two songs in particular to turn into towering, sprawling, rock music. “Stay Seated”, the penultimate one, has a perfectly gripping climax, but Material Objects save their full might for closing eight-minute track “Augment Center”–it’s a build-up and then it’s a burn-down, long mazes of confusing but scorching psychedelic rock riffs and surprisingly intricate corners. “Augment Center” kind of “fades away” as the thick, meaty, torrential rock and roll fades to a cello-touched, parachute-deployed finale, but Berney’s continually energetic playing even as In Revision rides off into the horizon is a good sense of Material Objects’ level of commitment. (Bandcamp link)

Beagle Scout – Beagle Scout

Release date: July 11th
Record label: Self-released
Genre: 90s indie rock, lo-fi indie rock, slacker rock
Formats: Digital
Pull Track: Alien

What’s that? A debut EP from a 90s indie rock-inspired power trio from New York City? Alright, let’s check Beagle Scout out. The band is Alex Anastos on vocals and guitar, Justin Tramonti on bass, and Zach McCollum on drums, and they played their first show earlier this year–Beagle Scout follows just a few months later. When they sent me their EP, Anastos mentioned learning about Rosy Overdrive through Ian Donohue of Slake/Thirst, a band with similar influences. Slake/Thirst’s debut EP was crystal-clear both in its exploration of pop music and spacey indie rock, but Beagle Scout is a muddier affair. On these four songs, Beagle Scout mix everything together: noisy, stumbling guitars, gentle, almost whispered vocals, and diamond-in-the-rough melodies all present as one. There’s a bit of an early Built to Spill (or even early Modest Mouse) thing going on in Beagle Scout’s writing, with its casual, kind of shy version of lo-fi guitar pop/weirdness; the trio mention being influenced by shoegaze, and while Beagle Scout is plenty noisy, I’d say that the downward-staring attitude of the name of the genre is a better fit for them than the bands most prominently associated with it.

Look, it’s four songs of catchy, slacker-y golden-era indie rock, what more do you want? Everything sounds good on Beagle Scout–Anastos’ voice is low-key, high-pitched, and always with just the right amount of emotion injected into it, the guitars have just as many smart, secretly-brilliant melodies hidden in them, the rhythm section holds the show together by the skin of its teeth. “Alien” is, for Beagle Scout, pretty dramatic, steadily-creeping guitars and quite sad-sounding vocals nonetheless sending the track on an exciting, sprawling journey. “Sneeze” takes a second to get rolling but when it finally reveals itself as a brisk, intent lo-fi Pavement-ish pop song, it feels like the “hit” of the EP.  That is, until we get to “Marbles”, which is very nearly “jangle pop” between its chiming guitars and jump-rope drumbeat (at the very least, it sounds a hell of a lot like something from 90s K Records). “Codeine Dustbowl” is the big conclusion, one last trip to the fuzz rock/noise pop comfort zone that finds Beagle Scout losing themselves in a way that they hadn’t really done up until that point. Seems like a band to keep an eye on! (Bandcamp link)

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