Pressing Concerns: Dragnet, Carson McHone, Miss Bones, Dan Darrah & The Rain

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Hey there folks! We’re here with a Monday Pressing Concerns looking at new albums from Dragnet, Carson McHone, Miss Bones, and Dan Darrah & The Rain. It’s looking like these blog posts will be on the shorter side for the foreseeable future, but it’s the price we must pay for keeping the blog updated regularly at the moment. There will be a post tomorrow!

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.

Dragnet – Dragnet Reigns!

Release date: August 15th
Record label: Spoilsport/Idiotape
Genre: Post-punk, garage rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Alta Vista

I’ve enjoyed the stylings of Geelong, Australia garage punks Vintage Crop for a while now, but it’s taken me all too long to get around to checking out lead singer Jack Cherry’s other group, Dragnet. As it turns out, Dragnet sounds a lot like Vintage Crop: Aussie garage rock and thumping post-punk in the instrumentals, Cherry talk-singing like a madman on top of it. Originally begun as a Cherry solo project, Dragnet are now a sextet featuring Dane Brunt, Tom Woodruff, Daniel Oke, Meaghan Weiley, and Alicia Nolan (the latter two of which amicably left the band after the recording of Dragnet Reigns!) and two whole Dragnet LPs have come out since the most recent Vintage Crop album. Dragnet Reigns! is less than twenty minutes of tension being hastily built up and then torn down ad nauseum: the opening post-punk lurch of “What It’s Worth” gives way to the fiery “Red Square” and the garage rock joyride “Alta Vista” before we’ve had a chance to process any of it. One can certainly hear traces of high concept “egg punk” godfathers Devo and Pere Ubu (not to mention, unsurprisingly given their name, The Fall) in Dragnet’s whole deal, but they’re too “rock and roll” to indulge all too much–the spoken-word “Heroic Dose” is the main exception, and it’s over in ninety seconds. It seems like the right amount of time to me. (Bandcamp link)

Carson McHone – Pentimento

Release date: September 12th
Record label: Merge
Genre: Folk rock, singer-songwriter
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
Pull Track: Downhill

I first heard of Carson McHone thanks to her work in the Canadian phenomenon Daniel Romano’s Outfit, but the Austin, Texas-originating, Ontario-based singer-songwriter has been making folk-country records under her own name for a decade as well. McHone’s third album, 2022’s Still Life, was put out by Merge Records (as well as a 2024 covers EP called Odes), and that’s who’s putting out Carson McHone LP number four, Pentimento. Featuring backing from Romano (who is McHone’s husband, by the way) and a crew of other Canadian music veterans, Pentimento is an album that could look intimidating from a distance (between the rambling, sixteen-track length and the spoken-word interludes which regularly crop up) but is quite friendly at its core. McHone’s music isn’t nearly as boisterous as Romano’s, but it’s “Americana”-tinged folk rock with a pulse and a more-than-passing interest in pop music. The polished, technicolor refrain of “Winter Breaking” (not to mention those handclaps), the electric jangle of “Downhill”, and the slightly psychedelic “Idiom” are first-half winners, and letting oneself get immersed in the likes of “Wake You Well” and “Fruits of My Tending” in the second half of Pentimento comes recommended as well. The warm “September Song” is an excellent bookend, like the rest of Pentimento made stronger by what it takes to get there. (Bandcamp link)

Miss Bones – Sap Green

Release date: September 13th
Record label: Self-released
Genre: Indie folk, folk rock, folk-pop, pop rock
Formats: Digital
Pull Track: I-93

There’s a nice little indie folk/folk rock/pop rock scene happening up in Boston, the participants of which have appeared on this blog a few times. There’s James Ikeda’s longrunning project The Michael Character, and current Michael Character bandmembers Amanda Lozada and June Isenhart have their own projects called Lonesome Joan and Miss Bones, respectively. Sap Green, the first Miss Bones album, follows a 2023 EP called Grey Lady and features Isenhart backed by an assortment of Boston-area musicians: Eugene Umlor on synths, Jasper Park on bass, Mat Bloomfield on drums, Melisande Pope on guitar, and Rachel Eber on vocals (not to mention Lozada as co-recording engineer). More pop-forward than Lonesome Joan, more laid-back than The Michael Character, Sap Green is a rock-solid coming-out party from the could’ve-been adult alternative/folk rock hit “What’s the Story, Mother?” (in which Isenhart pleads “I’ll split my head wide open just to prove / That you and I share the same skull”) on down. The roots-pop anthem “I-93”, the multi-layered folk-pop closing ballad “Moving Song”, the soaring heartland rock “Sign-Off”–any of these could be the center of Sap Green. We get it all on Sap Green, though, and a handful of more patience-requiring moments, too. (Bandcamp link)

Dan Darrah & The Rain – There’s a Place

Release date: June 13th
Record label: Sunday Drive
Genre: Jangle pop, folk rock, power pop
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: You-Shaped Forever

I wrote about Dan Darrah & The Rain in the waning moments of 2023–it was mid-December, but I had to make sure everyone who reads Rosy Overdrive heard the blissful, wistful jangle pop of Rivers Bridges Trains. I am yet again slightly late to the Darrah train, as There’s a Place came out back in June, but once again the LP is strong enough that I can’t let it slip by without a mention in Pressing Concerns. Once again somewhat uncharacteristically released by emo-punk label Sunday Drive Records (Prim, Squint, Broken Head), There’s a Place features the same backing cast as the last Darrah record (bassist/producer Scott Downes, guitarist Darian Palumbo, vocalist Danielle Clark, and drummer Jacob Hellas) and is nothing less than forty-six minutes of sprawling, unhurried, melancholic guitar pop. The record’s opening trio is a (relatively speaking) tight parade of pop hits, whereas the middle of There’s a Place finds The Rain stretching into folk and even country tinged-numbers. “The Last Green Valley” and “Maze/January Runner” inject some energy into the album’s second side, but one shouldn’t sleep on subtler highlights like “George (Was My Favourite Beatle)” either–you’re listening to There’s a Place all wrong if you do. (Bandcamp link)

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