Pressing Concerns: Jobber, Tullycraft, Winter, Spaceface

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We’ve got four albums in today’s Thursday Pressing Concerns! These four albums are coming out tomorrow, August 22nd! These four albums are by the bands Jobber, Tullycraft, Winter, and Spaceface! Read all about ’em! And check out this week’s earlier blog posts (Monday: P.G. Six, Friend’s House / MyVeronica, DÄÄCHT, and Awkward Ghosts; Tuesday: Supreme Joy, Tony Jay, The Moment of Nightfall, and TTTTURBO) if you missed them.

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.

Jobber – Jobber to the Stars

Release date: August 22nd
Record label: Exploding in Sound
Genre: Fuzz rock, alternative rock, grunge-pop, power pop
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Nightmare

We’ve been waiting for this one for a while now. Just under three years, in fact, which was when Brooklyn quartet Jobber released their debut EP, Hell in a Cell, on Exploding in Sound Records. Co-founded by a couple of members of the underrated Hellrazor–guitarist/vocalist Kate Meizner and drummer Mike Falcone–and quickly joined by Miles Toth on bass and Michael Julius on guitar and keyboard, Jobber’s first record was an exciting and inspired combination of 90s alt-rock fuzz, huge pop hooks, and professional wrestling-themed writing, all of which continue to be found on the band’s first LP. Jobber to the Stars is the first Jobber record featuring all four members, and it was recorded by Justin Pizzoferrato in Massachusetts and Aron Kobayashi Ritch in New York over two and a half years; there are a lot of unknowns going into this record, but the quartet pull off the challenge admirably. Jobber are a band that really know how to put a bigger stage to use, keeping the smart hooks intact but adding heavy lumbering alternative rock moments and zippy, jagged Exploding in Sound-style underground rock into their sound.

Stuff like opening track “Raw Is War” is just straight-up impeccable–if this is the result of Jobber spending multiple years hammering out an album, I encourage them to keep on taking their time. Meizner’s larger-than-life guitar chops and slices through taut verses, and her voice ascends in the sweeping, surprising chorus. The biggest pop moments on Jobber to the Stars seem to take full advantage of Julius’ ability to pull out huge, Rentals-like keyboard hooks–the previously-released five-minute masterpiece “Summerslam” and the melodic meltdown of “Nightmare” are the most obvious examples, but the blaring “Clothesline from Hell” and even the bizarro, warped alt-rock of “GoInG InTo bUsinEsS FoR MySeLf” qualify too. But we knew Jobber were good at this kind of thing already thanks to Hell in a Cell; what else do they got? Well, there’s a slow-moving heaviness to power ballad “Pillman’s Got a Gun” and a mid-record unresolved-tension piece called “Jobber to the Stars Pt. I” (and “Jobber to the Stars Pt. II”, which closes the record, is far from the pure-catharsis big finish one might expect). “Extreme Rules” is a more subtle version of Jobber’s pop music–there are parts that might even pass as “slacker” or “twee” with a different cast of musicians. It’s Jobber behind the wheel on Jobber to the Stars, though, and we’re all going up. (Bandcamp link)

Tullycraft – Shoot the Point

Release date: August 22nd
Record label: HHBTM
Genre: Twee, indie pop
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
Pull Track: The Ledge

Calling all twee fans: the long-running Seattle indie pop quartet Tullycraft is back with a new album. Vocalists Sean Tollefson and Jenny Mears and multi-instrumentalists Corianton Hale and Chris Munford have been at it for thirty years now; Shoot the Point is their eighth full-length album since 1996, and their second for indie pop sanctuary HHBTM Records after 2019’s The Railway Prince Hotel. I admit to Tullycraft being mostly a blind spot for me before now (I’m actually more familiar with Tollefson’s first band, the noise pop group Crayon), but I feel like I understand their music-nerdy, hyper-referential style of twee just by virtue of knowing “Pop Song’s Your New Boyfriend’s Too Stupid to Know About” and the like. Based on that, I’m not sure I would’ve pegged Tullycraft as the 90s indie pop band to still be going strong in the year 2025, but here we are with Shoot the Point, a very strong collection of pop music that might be “mature” in some ways but without “slowing down” in any. Bouncing power pop hooks, tambourine-shaking barebones 60s throwbacks, two wisened but still animated personalities at the reins–it’s hard to find any fault with where Tullycraft are at these days.

“The Ledge” opens Shoot the Point with a well-timed wink, but it’s easy to miss between Tollefson and Mears’ vocal tradeoffs and that eagerly slapdash rhythm section. When we get to “Love on the Left Bank”, we’re greeted with muttering verses from Tollefson giving way to a big power pop chorus, a piece of whiplash that both explains how Tullycraft could reasonably be seen as “outsider music” and makes it feel impossible that this label could ever be affixed to them. It wouldn’t be a Tullycraft record without songs with titles like “Jeanine’s Up Again and Blaring Faith by The Cure”, “Street Hassle Plays on the Repeat”, and “Modern Lovers”–the (ironic, yes, to a degree) handclap-fest of the first one is the biggest  “hit”, but it’s the chilly, undersold melodies of “Street Hassle…” that make it the big winner for me (yes, that’s definitely the guy from Crayon in there). There are just way too many big pop home-runs on Shoot the Point–lesser bands have built entire albums around mid-record stocking-stuffers like “Rhinestone Tease” (surf rock!) and “Tarrytown” (nursery rhyme-level cadence and advanced storytelling–I mean, come on, this shit rules). So here’s to Tullycraft, a band thankfully eager to prove that they are, right now, at the top of their complicated game. (Bandcamp link)

Winter – Adult Romantix

Release date: August 22nd
Record label: Winspear
Genre: Dream pop, indie pop, shoegaze, jangle pop
Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital
Pull Track: Just Like a Flower

I only first touched on the dream pop/shoegaze project Winter earlier this year, when Samira Winter released a collaborative EP with Philadelphia duo Hooky. Winter may have been hooking up with a relatively new indie rock group there, but she’s been making music on her own for a good deal longer: the Brazil-originating musician started releasing albums under-the-radar in the mid-2010s in Boston, eventually linking up with Bar None Records for 2020’s Endless Space (Between You & I) and 2022’s What Kind of Blue Are You?, gaining international popularity, and moving to New York City (oh, and she lived in Los Angeles somewhere in between residences in those two East Coast cities, too). Winter’s shoegaze-touched indie/dream pop feels ahead of the curve, as plenty of festival-tier “indie” musicians have found great success making some version of this sound in recent years, and it feels just that Winter’s been able to experience some success in its wake. Her first album for Anti-, Adult Romantix, was recorded in Los Angeles by Joo-Joo Ashworth (Dummy, Spiral XP, Mo Dotti), features members of Horse Jumper of Love, Tanukichan, and Alex G’s band, and ends up being an odd but undeniably strong pop reintroduction album.

“Just Like a Flower” affirms Winter’s ability to pen and perform a monster truck of a jangly guitar pop anthem which is absolutely dripping with melodies, hooks, and exuberance. As one might expect from some of Winter’s previous collaborators, she’s not afraid of mixing in electronic and 90s alternative-dance elements into her music, and Adult Romantix has a lot of winners in this department from the Tanukichan-featuring dance-gaze of “Hide-a-Lullaby”, the downcast trip-hop-influenced backbeat of “Existentialism”, and the minimal dream pop floating of “Candy #9”. The common thread is strong pop writing, whether Winter is letting cult slowgaze act Horse Jumper of Love inject a bit of their greyscale New England personality into “Misery”, chugging through the fuzz-pop forest of “Like Lovers Do”, or drifting through the murky, acoustic-and-static maze of “Running”. Winter fits in well with the current cast of modern dream pop acts, but Adult Romantix, upon a close listen, isn’t easy to mistake for the work of a newcomer–only somebody who’s been sculpting this kind of music for a decade can make it this streamlined and effortless-sounding. (Bandcamp link)

Spaceface – Lunar Manor

Release date: August 22nd
Record label: Mothland
Genre: Psychedelic pop, neo-psychedelia, space pop
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Look into the Sky

Spaceface formed in 2012, but their roots go back even further than that–the band’s two co-leaders, Jake Ingalls and Eric Martin, met in elementary school. The duo formed the band while attending the University of Memphis, and over the next dozen years they moved to Los Angeles, added a rhythm section (bassist Marina Aguerre and drummer Garet Powell), and released LPs in 2017 and 2022. Spaceface’s biggest claim to fame was happening concurrently with all of this–Ingalls was a member of The Flaming Lips for nearly a decade, playing guitar and keyboard for the legendary neo-psychedelia band before departing “amicably” in 2021. 2010s Flaming Lips is probably a good starting point for how to describe Lunar Manor, the third Spaceface LP–rubby, synth-heavy psychedelic pop music that also reminds me of other psych bands from around that time period like Unknown Mortal Orchestra and Pond. This kind of sound doesn’t always “hit” with me, but I like Spaceface’s version of it because it feels pretty authentic and rooted in the same 90s post-pop and 60s studio rock of a lot of their peers–Ingalls and Martin were making music like this before it became all zeitgeisty, and they’re still here chasing the sound in 2025.

A lovely chamber pop vocal and a synth-funk instrumental collide in “Be Here Forever”, a fitting opening to Lunar Manor. As adventurous as Spaceface get with their musical ingredients (there’s a sizeable list of guest musicians in addition to everything Ingalls and Martin are doing on the album), most of Lunar Manor is pop-forward to the point of being effectively streamlined. Plenty of instrumental choices in the slick groove of “Acceleration” stick out, but none are stickier than the song’s core hook, for instance. Some of the most rewarding moments on Lunar Manor come at the end of the album (and I’m not talking about their wonky cover of “Bittersweet Symphony”, though there’s nothing wrong with that). “Look into the Sky” is as beautiful as anything else on Lunar Manor, and the subdued “All We Have” and the surprisingly instrumental piece “Watching You Watch the Moon” let the glitz fade into the background for just a few minutes. The shiny psych-pop instincts never fully disappear on the album, though, nor should they: it’s an essential part of what makes Spaceface enjoyable and, in fact, real. (Bandcamp link)

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