Pressing Concerns: Retirement Party, Wavers, Moviola, Laminate

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We’re back on a Tuesday! After a holiday weekend, Pressing Concerns has returned to look at a new EP from Retirement Party and new LPs from Wavers, Moviola, and Laminate.

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.

Retirement Party – Nothing to Hear Without a Sound

Release date: August 28th
Record label: Rat Poison
Genre: Power pop, pop punk
Formats: Digital
Pull Track: Residual

If you were standing at the intersection of underground emo, pop punk, and power pop in the late 2010s, you probably heard the name Retirement Party. The Chicago quartet garnered notoriety with their sleeper hit 2018 debut album Somewhat Literate and momentum continued building with 2020’s Runaway Dog, but the band abruptly broke up in early 2022. That might’ve ended the “original lineup” of Retirement Party, but bandleader Avery Springer has kept the project alive by playing a few shows under the name, and now a four-song EP called Nothing to Hear Without a Sound is here to formally usher in a new era of the band. Springer plays everything other than drums on these songs (those are provided by Sam Brown), but that doesn’t stop Nothing to Hear Without a Sound from pursuing and acquiring a muscular, full band-evoking power pop sound. The combination of big melodic guitar lines and Springer’s earnest Midwestern vocals both help this iteration of Retirement Party keep their place among the best of the current crop of bands arising from the punk/indie rock underground with a firm grip on “guitar pop” (Oso Oso, Camp Trash, Remember Sports, The Glow).

At around eleven minutes in length, Nothing to Hear Without a Sound is short and sweet, a no-filler reintroduction to a power pop band I didn’t realize I was missing. Both of the songs that make up the EP’s first half have a strong claim to be the record’s “hit”–in the first slot, we have “Sixth Sense”, which wields a dangerously-catchy power pop guitar riff in its hand at the starting bell and only lives up to its potential when Springer steps into the ring as a vocalist. “Residual” might be even better–nobody this side of Carmen Perry is as good at making “bummer pop” sound as euphoric as Springer does, and the immaculately-executed jangly power pop instrumental showcases her skills as an arranger, too. The second half of Nothing to Hear Without a Sound is a classic “B-side”; neither of these tracks are as openly catchy as “Sixth Sense” and “Residual”, but they’re “pop” in their own ways and they expand the EP’s sound to boot. “Jockeys” is “darker” and “more rocking” than the rest of the EP, but those are relative designations, as there’s still a hook right in the middle of it, and “Moving Forward” is the classic ninety-second acoustic closing track. “Moving Forward” is something of a full circle moment; it sounds like it belongs on a (very good) 2010s bedroom folk-pop solo project album, and while that’s certainly part of Retirement Party in 2025, that doesn’t begin to describe all of it. (Bandcamp link)

Wavers – Look What I Found

Release date: August 29th
Record label: Salinas/Musical Fanzine/Reach Around
Genre: 90s indie rock, lo-fi indie rock, indie pop, twee, fuzz pop
Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital
Pull Track: Landscapes

I enthusiastically introduced the Olympia, Washington quartet Wavers to Rosy Overdrive’s readership last year, thanks to their excellent self-titled debut EP. Despite featuring members who’ve played in notable groups like Pigeon Pit, Fastener, and Parasol, Wavers–released by the small Rhode Island label Musical Fanzine–flew under the radar a bit. It shouldn’t have–in under ten minutes, the band’s spirited mix of “emo, some 90s indie rock, lo-fi indie pop, and even a bit of punk attitude” (as I said at the time) made its mark, and I named it my favorite EP of 2024. Thankfully, Salinas Records was paying attention, and the stalwart underground indie rock label are putting out the first Wavers full-length, Look What I Found, on vinyl. It’s a great match, as Wavers sound like a more Pacific Northwest-indebted version of classic Salinas Records bands like P.S. Eliot and Swearin’, and Look What I Found retains the sound that made Wavers sound so great. Vocalist/guitarist Rosie, bassist Jake, guitarist Josh, and drummer Charlie give everyone who missed Wavers the perfect second opportunity to jump on board–it’s effectively their debut EP expanded to thirteen songs and twenty-eight minutes, to the point where a few of the songs from their last record are presented re-recorded here.

Wavers eagerly name the likes of Discount, J Church, and “Numero Group-core” 90s indie rock as influences, but the pop side of the band can’t be overstated. Like their sibling band Pigeon Pit does with folk punk, Wavers merge their chosen genre(s) with lo-fi pop from Olympia and wider Cascadia (think early Built to Spill/Modest Mouse as well as K Records in general). It’s all there in “Heartbeats”–heart-on-sleeve lyrics delivered with vulnerability and confidence from Rosie, fuzzed-out, slapdash guitars, surprisingly melodic bass lines. The vocal-trade-off between Charlie and Rosie in “Pink” animates a fuzz-pop-punk tune that hardly needed any more animation, and Jake’s bass playing is vintage emo-worthy in the middle of the sweeping, heartland pop track “Landscapes”. As of the time I’m writing this, Wavers have yet to gain a rabid cult following, but they’re already starting to look like a band with the mythology to attract and sustain such a phenomenon. The call-backs and connections (from “Heartbeat” to “Lake Michigan”, from “Orange to Blue” to “‘For Jake’”) help, as do the hooks (huge and undeniable, but with a lost and somewhat faded quality to them) and the independent yet communal vibe that permeates everything about them. (Bandcamp link)

Moviola – Earthbound

Release date: August 29th
Record label: Dromedary
Genre: Alt-country, folk rock, Americana
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
Pull Track: Earthbound

I’d heard of Moviola before now, but I don’t think I really understood or appreciated the magnitude of them. This is a band that’s been around since 1993; they’re a Columbus-based group who’ve been players in the Ohio indie rock world to the tune of thirty-plus years and eleven albums. They’ve released split singles with Eric’s Trip, Cobra Verde, and The Handsome Family (among others) and put out records on Columbus institution Anyway Records. After a gap in new music beginning at the onset of the 2010s, Moviola has returned in the past half-dozen years; Earthbound is their third album since 2019, and, interestingly, their first with a new label, Dromedary (Dauber, The Whimbrels, Night Court). Right now, they’re a five-piece band featuring drummer Greg Bonnell, guitarist Jerry Dannemiller, bassist Ted Hattemer, and guitarist/keyboardists Jake Housh and Scott Tabachnick; I believe most if not all of them have been with Moviola since the early days, and all of them contribute songs to Earthbound. I get the impression that Moviola have long existed in the realms of Midwestern alt-country and “Americana”, and Earthbound is a laid-back and leisurely roots rock album that does indeed sound like the work of a band with plenty of experience in those genres.

Earthbound is a full listen–fourteen songs and forty-two minutes, to be exact. I hear plenty of “Columbus” in Moviola’s sound, from the heart-on-sleeve folk rock of onetime labelmates Hello Emerson to the stream-like, keyboard-shaded indie rock of associates Closet Mix. Moviola cycle through a few different modes in the beginning of Earthbound, from the opening earnest rootsiness of “Dark Cloud” to the almost lullaby-like folk-piano-pop of “Kid Familiar” to the steady alt-country mid-tempo rocking of the title track to the violin-touched ballroom ghost of “Dancing Divorcees”. I don’t know which member of Moviola contributes what to Earthbound, but there are a bunch of little quirks that I suspect will start to reveal themselves if I continue to throw this album on my speakers. Importantly, Earthbound is a record that invites repeated listening, with the make-up of an album with surprising depth–even “Hillbilly Effigy” (in which the narrator sings of getting “choked by the bootstraps of J.D. Vance”) is too surreal to be a throwaway. Look beyond the ringing keys and unhurried tempos if you’d like, or just take them in for the moment–either works with Earthbound. (Bandcamp link)

Laminate – Kiss Unltd.

Release date: August 29th
Record label: Den Tapes/Sifter Grim
Genre: Post-hardcore, noise rock, post-rock, fuzz punk, shoegaze
Formats: Cassette, digital
Pull Track: Orange Julius

They’ve still got crazy post-hardcore up in the Pacific Northwest, thankfully. Laminate are a quartet from Seattle made up of Mark Carranza, Jacob Roos, Alfredo Arnaiz Sibila, and Benjamin Rea (AKA Jealous Yellow), and their sophomore album Kiss Unltd. comes out four years removed from their first album, 2021’s I. Out via Den Tapes (Fluung, Apples with Moya, Coral Grief) and Sifter Grim, it also follows the latest album from Rea’s Jealous Yellow project, but the freaky synthpunk of last year’s Czech Vampires is subbed out for something heavier and harder-hitting. One aspect of Jealous Yellow that Kiss Unltd. does retain is its offbeat, trickster side–ferocious post-hardcore rockers turn on a dime into strange noise valleys or even just full silence throughout the album. On top of all of this, bits of shoegaze, noise pop, and even straight-up alternative rock percolate throughout Kiss Unltd., and the occasional but very real hooks Laminate sneak into a few of these songs are just as jarring as the sudden drop-outs.

In classic Seattle fashion, Kiss Unltd. seems to open with it back to us–the soft-loud post-hardcore barnburner “Lazy Boy” sets the blistering pace, “No Bedtime” is rubbery but explosive in an almost Brainiac way, and the chaos and walls of sound continue to surge throughout “No. 3”. Laminate pretty much swing the album right into the ditch between the stop-and-start “Construction Orange” and the particularly extreme contrasts of “Destruction”; ironically, the second half of the album is where everything I would consider “pop songs” lie. The fuzz-pop shout-along of “Caterpillar” is easily the catchiest thing on Kiss Unltd. up until that point, but it’s not the last time Laminate break out the big choruses–it’s got two chief rivals in the somewhat triumphant-sounding slacker rock of “Orange Julius” and the first half of sprawling closing track “Off Orange”. Odder moments like “Josephine” and “Lizzy” temper this side of the band, and “Off Orange” itself devolves into a giant, destructive ball of noise in the back half of its seven-minute runtime. Laminate are as dynamic as any other band in their region, and they’re good at everything they try on Kiss Unltd., too. It’s a confounding album sometimes–for as much as they accomplish, Laminate aren’t overly interested in making it easier for us to explore it. Tread carefully, though, and you’ll be alright. (Bandcamp link)

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