Pressing Concerns: Dancer, Liquid Mike, Spite House, $500

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The Thursday blog post is here! We’ve got four new albums coming out tomorrow, September 12th, from Dancer, Liquid Mike, Spite House, and $500 below. Earlier this week, the August 2025 playlist went up, so check that out if you missed it.

It’s a shorter than normal blog post today, you may notice. I’m doing what I can to keep Rosy Overdrive rolling while being busy in my life outside of it, and I’m hoping to return to full force sooner rather than later.

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.

Dancer – More or Less

Release date: September 12th
Record label: Meritorio
Genre: Indie pop, post-punk, art rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Happy Halloween

Hopefully I’ve been clear enough on this blog that Glasgow’s Dancer is a special group. We’ve all had plenty of chances to see as much over the past two years, from the two EPs in 2023 to a debut full-length and a split LP with Whisper Hiss last year. Dancer have continued their winning streak into 2025, as their sophomore album, More or Less, is their most substantial release yet at a dozen tracks and nearly forty minutes. It’s the band’s first album with new drummer Luke Moran, who’s replaced founding member Gavin Murdoch behind the kit, but despite the lineup change and the fact that half the band (bassist Andrew Doig and vocalist Gemma Fleet) have been busy with their side project The Chop, More or Less has Dancer sounding more fluid and locked-in as a band than ever before. The jerky post-punk/offbeat indie pop structures are still part and parcel of More or Less, yes, but they’ve been more effectively ironed into a wider tapestry of expansive, exploratory art rock and (for Dancer, at least) more laid-back pursuits of pop music. There’s still boundless energy in songs like “Happy Halloween” and “Deadline”, but the almost late-period Sonic Youth-esque fuzz rock of the former and the spacey synthetic pop meandering of the latter display an occasional bout of patience, too. Dancer may be taking their time, but they aren’t slowing down. (Bandcamp link)

Liquid Mike – Hell Is an Airport

Release date: September 12th
Record label: Self-released
Genre: Power pop, pop punk, alternative rock, fuzz rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Crop Circles

I can’t say it enough: Liquid Mike have taken their moment and seized it better than any band I can think of in recent memory. I liked the Marquette, Michigan’s 2023 self-titled breakthrough album perfectly fine, but it was the record that Mike Maple and company made with the spotlight on his project, last year’s Paul Bunyan’s Slingshot, that made me really appreciate them as one of the best power pop acts currently operating. Hell Is an Airport strikes while the iron is hot: Maple apparently quit his job at the USPS to focus on Liquid Mike full-time, and founding members Maple and synthesizer player/backing vocalist Monica Nelson have been joined by drummer Cody Marecek, bassist Zack Alworden, and guitarist Dave Daignault to make a well-oiled five-piece alternative rock and roll band. If a tad less grandiose than Paul Bunyan’s Slingshot, Hell Is an Airport is the smoother and tighter album: fourteen songs of 90s-fuzz-laden, pop punk-baiting power pop in under thirty minutes. Everything on Hell Is an Airport feels like a hit, and the songs bleed and squeal into each other like Liquid Mike are running frantically from one idea to the next before the fire burns out. The urgency makes for exhilarating listening, but I don’t think there’s any act currently going that needs to worry less about their flame being extinguished than Liquid Mike.

Spite House – Desertion

Release date: September 12th
Record label: Pure Noise
Genre: Post-hardcore, punk rock, emo-punk
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
Pull Track: 10 Days

If you like 90s-style punk albums that evoke names like Jawbreaker and Knapsack, then–well, maybe “enjoy” isn’t the right word, but you should check out Spite House. I wrote about the Montreal trio’s New Morality Zine-released debut album in 2022, referencing names like Seaweed and Samiam while talking about a catchy but heavy punk album inspired by the death of vocalist/guitarist Max Lajoie’s mother. Regarding Spite House’s second album, Desertion, Lajoie says “There’s nothing happy about these songs,” and he’s not overstating things a bit. Writing not only about his mother’s death from cancer but also the death of his father when he was a teenager, Lajoie (with aid from bassist Nabil Ortega and drummer Marc Tremblay) leans more than ever into hard-hitting, intense post-hardcore as some kind of release on Spite House’s first album for Pure Noise. These are still, stubbornly, “punk anthems”, with Lajoie’s roared refrains, the gigantic guitars, and the pounding rhythms from the rest of the band all wielding an uncomfortably blunt hammer with arresting force. Much of Desertion is delivered in relatively brief missives like “10 Days” and “Ashen Grey”, but these two-minute bursts of revisited turmoil just end up being more concentrated punches. (Bandcamp link)

$500 – Twelve Eyes

Release date: September 12th
Record label: Self-released
Genre: 90s indie rock, slowcore, fuzz pop
Formats: CD, digital
Pull Track: Dead C

There are probably a few different 90s indie rock-inspired collectives in New York City and the surrounding areas these days, but one particularly strong one seems to center around the power trio Slake/Thirst and its associated acts like Beagle Scout and bcc:. We can now add Kingston-based trio $500 to the list–bassist/vocalist Kaitlyn Flanagan and guitarist Ian Donohue perform the same roles in Slake/Thirst, and they’re joined by the new-to-me Jonathan Crisafulli on drums. All of these aforementioned bands have made their statements via relatively brief EPs or “mini-LPs”, but $500 have cut to the chase by making their debut release a full-length ten-track album–there’s an eight minute song on here and everything! Twelve Eyes, like $500’s associates’ records, has one foot in the world of the “pop” side of Pavement, Built to Spill, and the Exploding in Sound Records roster, although there’s a more probing, almost droning element to $500’s pop music here. Between Donohue’s friendly but unpredictable guitars and Flanagan’s eager shadowboxing performance as a frontperson, I’m reminded a bit of the underappreciated Rick Rude. Don’t worry if you don’t know them or any of the other acts I mentioned earlier, though–just listen to the ninety-second fuzz-pop showcase “Dead C” and you’ll start to pick up on everything. (Bandcamp link)

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