Pressing Concerns: Golden Apples, Oruã / Reverse Death, Public Opinion, Frog

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Thursday Pressing Concerns! We have new albums from Golden Apples and Frog, a new EP from Public Opinion, and a split LP between Oruã and Reverse Death. All of these are out tomorrow (September 19th)! Cool! And if you missed either of yesterday’s Pressing Concerns (on Monday we looked at Dragnet, Carson McHone, Miss Bones, and Dan Darrah & The Rain, and on Tuesday it was Understanding, Prathloons, BRNDA, and Shallowater), check those out, too.

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.

Golden Apples – Shooting Star

Release date: September 19th
Record label: Lame-O
Genre: Fuzz pop, noise pop, psychedelic pop, lo-fi indie rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Fantasia

Russell Edling has been making music as Golden Apples (and before that, as Cherry) for several years, but 2023’s Bananasugarfire was a big milestone for the Philadelphia artist. With a solid lineup behind him, Edling’s pop music became louder and fuzzier, incorporating shoegaze and psychedelia into Golden Apples’ sound. The latest Golden Apples LP, Shooting Star, takes the ambition and expanse of their previous album and refocuses it in a decidedly different manner. Pieced together in a handful of different locales with various contributors (Cave People’s Mimi Gallagher, Lowercase Roses’ Matthew Scheuermann, and Slaughter Beach, Dog’s Zack Robbins, among others), Shooting Star pulls off the trick of sounding more like an insular folk-influenced record while at the same time retaining the bright, distorted, kaleidoscopic, psychedelic power pop of Bananasugarfire (I’m only going to say this once: it sounds more like Sparklehorse than anything I’ve heard since the posthumous Sparklehorse album). There are too many great pop moments on Shooting Star to highlight all of them: there’s “Ditto”, the Golden Apples version of a Dazy/Graham Hunt danceable fuzz pop song, the laidback folk rock of “Mind”, the roaring power pop of “Fantasia”, and “Breeze”, a song that makes me wish I hadn’t already used up my one Sparklehorse comparison. Between Bananasugarfire and Shooting Star, there’s now a distinct “Golden Apples sound”–I think I like this new take on it the best so far, but there’s no wrong choice. (Bandcamp link)

Oruã / Reverse Death – Reflectors Vol. I

Release date: September 19th
Record label: Dead Currencies/Half Shell
Genre: Psychedelic rock, psychedelia, post-rock, ambient pop
Formats: Vinyl, cassette, digital
Pull Track: Maldição

Nashville experimental label Dead Currencies (Monde UFO, Simon Joyner, Matthew J. Rolin) have recently announced a split LP series called “Reflectors”, and they’re kicking off this new project with two titans of modern psychedelic music. Reflectors, Vol. I (also available on cassette via Half Shell Records) brings together Seattle musician Daniel Onufer’s Reverse Death and Brazilian Built to Spill associates (and recent K Records signee) Oruã for two distinct but complimentary takes on the spacier, acid-tinged corners of rock music. Reverse Death’s music is a weightless mixture of ambient, drone, and jazz, and it’s impressive to hear Onufer and company turn this towards the realm of pop music (in a very loose sense) on their side of Reflectors, Vol. I. The final three tracks of Reverse Death’s side are actually one long twelve-minute song, a sprawling psychedelic chamber pop suite that gives way to something pretty different from Oruã. 

The Brazilians, all of a sudden, introduce grounding rhythms back into the mix–the first things we hear in “De se Envolver” are a shuffling drumbeat and plodding bassline. Apparently these are all demos or outtakes from Oruã’s upcoming K Records debut, Slacker–two of these song titles appear on that album’s tracklist–so we’ll see how the “final” product holds up, but Oruã’s more rock-focused psychedelia is a nice counterpoint. It’s still a pretty “soft” version of psych-rock–with the one exception of the nine-minute electric guitar explosion of “Maldição”, which is worth the price of admission on its own. The two sides of Reflectors, Vol. I may just be two stops in an infinite journey, but each one is a little world. (Bandcamp link)

Public Opinion – Perpetual Motion Machine

Release date: September 19th
Record label: SideOneDummy
Genre: Punk rock, pop punk, post-hardcore, power pop, garage punk, emo-punk
Formats: Digital
Pull Track: Finale Rack

When I wrote about Public Opinion’s debut LP, Painted on Smile, last year, I said that the Denver group “combine hardcore might, garage rock raggedness, and huge pop hooks”–it was an excellent introduction to a quintet joining the “hardcore bands making music that’s not necessarily hardcore” movement. Since the release of Painted on Smile, Public Opinion apparently signed with SideOneDummy, and the group’s first release for their new label is a three-song, eight-minute EP called Perpetual Motion Machine that manages to roll their best qualities into a bite-sized, sampler portion. “Laughing Academy” features guest vocals from Patrick Kindlon of Drug Church, whose blistering punk frontperson routine (with Hart as the more polished counterpart) makes it the “heaviest” track on the EP. “Finale Rack” is basically just a pedal-on-the-floor, catchy-as-hell melodic punk rock (and roll) rave-up, and the closing title track ends Perpetual Motion Machine with a curveball in the form of a mid-tempo, emo-y pop punk track (with a bit of an edge to it here and there nonetheless). Those who remember the quieter moments of Painted on Smile won’t be fully surprised by “Perpetual Motion Machine”, but Public Opinion giving so much real estate to this side of themselves on a pretty brief (re)introduction feels like a harbinger of some kind. Maybe Perpetual Motion Machine represents three different doors, or maybe Public Opinion will do their best to keep all of them open on their next full-length. I’ll be listening. (Bandcamp link)

Frog – The Count

Release date: September 19th
Record label: Audio Antihero/Tapewormies
Genre: Indie pop, piano pop, folk-pop
Formats: Digital
Pull Track: Chelsea Piers

So we get a second Frog album in 2025. February’s 1000 Variations on the Same Song is barely even cold in the ground, and now The Count has risen from his coffin to greet us. The seventh album from the cult New York group comprised of brothers Daniel and Steve Bateman (and their third LP since returning from a hiatus in late 2023) is both a logical continuation of their most recent record and a unique entry in their ever-expanding discography. Daniel Bateman sings all of The Count in-character as the titular figure (see the album’s Bandcamp page for an entertaining description of him)–and what do you know, this “Count” fellow’s music sounds an awful lot like a Frog album. In fact, it’s more of a “Frog album” than ever: the back-to-school-special pianos, the soulful falsettos, the hip-hop-inspired cadence and attitude (and, increasingly, lyricism) have all been ratcheted up to dangerous levels. It’d be bordering on self-parodic for a lesser band (not that that’s even an inherently bad thing), but The Count feels free above anything else. Maybe Daniel Bateman needed a degree of remove to sing lines like “You took a piece of me like Crimea” (“Come Come Come Var. XIV”) like he means it, but, if so, good on Frog for letting The Count take it away. (Bandcamp link)

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