Pressing Concerns: Understanding, Prathloons, BRNDA, Shallowater

Posted byrosyoverdrivePosted inPressing ConcernsTags:, , , , , , , ,

This Tuesday Pressing Concerns introduces to us new albums from Prathloons, BRNDA, and Shallowater, and a new EP from Understanding. Pretty cool if you ask me! If you missed yesterday’s blog post (featuring Dragnet, Carson McHone, Miss Bones, and Dan Darrah & The Rain), check that out here.

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.

Understanding – The Joy of Living

Release date: August 29th
Record label: Cooked Raw
Genre: Art pop, indie pop, piano rock, folk rock, chamber pop
Formats: Cassette, digital
Pull Track: Taxi2

It’s time for some Understanding. I am, of course, referring to the brand-new quartet out of Toronto, who’ve just put out their debut EP on Cooked Raw Records. Understanding may be fresh out of the gate, but the majority of their lineup has been featured on this blog as members of other acts before: bassist Alex Baigent and keyboardist/vocalist Lucas Temor are one-half of Westelaken, while guitarist/vocalist Nolan Jakupovski co-leads Cootie Catcher. Drummer Avalon Tassonyi (Whitney K, Eliza Niemi) rounds out the group for The Joy of Living, a record that doesn’t really sound like either of Understanding’s sibling bands but contains shades of both nonetheless. The Joy of Living, for the most part, pursues a rambling, keyboard-heavy indie rock sound that streamlines the sprawling folk rock of Westelaken and/or mellows out the chaotic, electronic-tinged twee pop of Cootie Catcher. Recorded by yet another member of Westelaken, Squiggly Lines’ Rob McLay, The Joy of Living is six songs of Understanding locking into place and riding a low-key but fervent vibe to a memorable debut.

The prominent, ringing piano-keys combined with the rootsy rest of the band’s sound reminds me of classic-era Okkervil River, although the singer(s) come more from the 90s indie-slacker school of lead vocalist approaches. The polished, smooth indie pop of opening track “Flesh Is Word” is nearly in Silo’s Choice territory, although the strange, muted performance by the lead singer (I think it’s Temor) keeps the song something of an enigma. Showy pianos and (relatively) shrinking vocals are the core of The Joy of Living, an interesting mix that feels like Understanding attempting to navigate the task of centering an instrument with so much gravitas while also making music that works best with a little bit of remove. “Carry Me Up” and “Tracing Hands” are Understanding’s version of “piano pop”, quick-paced but meandering, and even slight detours (the slower-paced “Nature Knows a Shape”, the swiftly humming “Taxi2”) keep the ivories front and center. The EP’s weird coda, a two-minute AutoTuned breakbeat-pop experiment called “As a Builder”, seems like it should be the only respite from the piano on The Joy of Living, but it’s in there beneath the effects, too. Understanding seem to have figured out what their deal is, even when they veer as far away from it as seemingly possible. (Bandcamp link)

Prathloons – Breadbox

Release date: September 12th
Record label: Self-released
Genre: Slowcore, 90s indie rock, emo-y indie rock, folk rock
Formats: Digital
Pull Track: The Days We Had Each Other

When I wrote about Prathloons in 2022, the Colin Dall-led project was based in Minneapolis and had just released their third album, The Kansas Wind. For a certain subset of indie rock fans, The Kansas Wind is a bullseye, incorporating bits of slowcore, emo, and post-rock in an ornate, string-laden package, and Dall and company have stayed busy since then. Despite a move to Chicago, Dall has remained accompanied by much of the same cast (John O’Brien, Matt Ciani, Nico Ciani, Audrey Alger-Daniels) on last year’s Incredible Things in High Speed EP and this year’s LP, Breadbox. Even for a Prathloons album, Breadbox is pretty hushed and low-key–it largely eschews the swooning crescendos in which The Kansas Wind occasionally indulged and instead seeks to expand and open up the space around Dall’s voice even further. The most upbeat song on the album, “The Days We Had Each Other”, is just a little perky in an early Death Cab for Cutie way, but Breadbox as a whole is the closest that Prathloons have veered (in the time that I’ve been listening to them, at least) towards straight-up slowcore music. The glacially-paced indie rock, post-rock detours, and similarly-slowed down folky string parts are all natural extensions of what Prathloons have been doing lately, although Breadbox also feels like new terrain, entered carefully but deliberately. (Bandcamp link)

BRNDA – Total Pain

Release date: September 12th
Record label: Crafted Sounds
Genre: Post-punk, garage rock, art punk, no wave, indie pop
Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital
Pull Track: Everyone Chicago

It’s been four years since BRNDA’s Do You Like Salt? graced the pages of Pressing Concerns, meaning we’ve been due for new material from the Washington, D.C. post-punk weirdos for a bit now. For their fourth LP, BRNDA (drummer Leah Gage, guitarists Dave Lesser and Mark McInerney, and bassist Nick Stavely–all vocalists) have given us Total Pain, an album that both re-ups the group’s penchant for bizarre, groovy art-dance-punk-whatever stuff and expands their range beyond that. Sure, BRNDA are their regular old no wave nonsense selves on stuff like “Books Are Bad”, but they’ve also followed their muses into the realms of buzzy, fuzzy noise pop (“Peach Pit”), low-key, Velvets-y indie pop (“MT Eyes”), and starry-eyed, toe tapping mid-tempo guitar pop (“Cool Night”). Even the hilarious and absurd “Everyone Chicago”, a post-punk rant-raver that sounds just like a slightly darker Do You Like Salt? cut, distinguishes itself thanks to what I can only call “blistering noise rock flute soloing” (credit Mike Gillispie, who also plays on “A Little Balloon”). It’s just a nice reminder that BRNDA are one of the more interesting bands operating in the District of Columbia currently in case any of us forgot, and a confirmation that they can still pick up some new tricks. (Bandcamp link)

Shallowater – God’s Gonna Give You a Million Dollars

Release date: September 5th
Record label: Sans Soleil
Genre: Slowcore, post-rock, 90s indie rock
Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital
Pull Track: God’s Gonna Give You a Million Dollars

This Texas slowcore thing is pretty good, I’d say. Shallowater are a trio currently based out of Houston, but I believe they have roots in the desolate western half of their home state (perhaps near the Lubbock County town from which they took their name). Their debut album, There Is a Well (released on December 30th of 2023), was a cult hit of a sort–it’s bolded on Rate Your Music, if that means anything to you. They’ve been on the rise ever since–every post about them I’ve seen mentions that they’ve been “co-signed” by Ethel Cain (this is what they mean by that, I believe), they’ve toured with Horse Jumper of Love, and their sophomore album, God’s Gonna Give You a Million Dollars, was recorded by Alex Farrar, the guy who’s recorded every one of those Asheville bands. God’s Gonna Give You a Million Dollars sounds like how you’d hope an album with this kind of pedigree sounds–six songs and forty minutes, with song titles like “Untitled Cowboy” and “Highway”, with a recognizable “country rock” sound occasionally rearing its head only to get swallowed up by the vast blank expanse of eight-plus-minute behemoths like “Ativan” and the aforementioned nameless cowboy ode. Feels like a million cursed bucks. (Bandcamp link)

Also notable:

One thought on “Pressing Concerns: Understanding, Prathloons, BRNDA, Shallowater”

  1. I’ve been really digging that BRNDA record! I read somewhere that Gage and Lesser are the parents of a toddler. I remember those days, and to me, it feels like that sort of frazzled mind state informs the entire record (not derogatory).

    Like

    Reply

Leave a comment