Pressing Concerns: Fig Dish, Closed Quarters, Grant Pavol, Wide Orbit

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

Pressing Concerns #2 (of the week) brings us new albums from Closed Quarters and Wide Orbit, a new EP from Grant Pavol, and a reissue of Fig Dish‘s first album. Read on, and if you missed yesterday’s blog post (featuring Léna Bartels, Bones Shredder, Baltimore at an Angle, and Big Cry Country), check that 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.

Fig Dish – That’s What Love Songs Often Do (Vinyl Release)

Release date: August 1st
Record label: Forge Again
Genre: Alternative rock, power pop, post-grunge
Formats: Vinyl
Pull Track: Seeds

Last year I wrote about Feels Like the Very First Two Times, the long-lost third album from cult Chicago alt-rock band Fig Dish, which finally saw the light of day twenty-five years after its recording thanks to Forge Again Records. I described the band’s sound at the time as “a mix of Midwestern power pop a la Cheap Trick and Material Issue with some 90s indie rock-like irreverence and just a bit of post-grunge bluntness”; needless to say, it sounds great in 2025 and I’m pleased to see that the Fig Dish/Forge Again partnership has now resulted in the release of the band’s first album, 1995’s That’s What Love Songs Often Do, on vinyl for the first time. Recorded by Lou Giordano and originally released on Polydor, That’s What Love Songs Often Do is a mid-90s “alternative rock gold rush” classic, fifty minutes of “slacker” fuzzed-out power pop now available as a double LP. My favorite song on the album, “Seeds”, kind of sounds like Archers of Loaf trying to make a post-grunge hit, while “Weak and Mean” and “Wrong Nothing” are nice and crunchy alt-rock wrecking balls and “Quiet Storm King” is a surprisingly baggage-free piece of garage-pop. Admittedly, That’s What Love Songs Often Do still feels like a “CD album”, but I’ll happily take this occasion as an excuse to revisit a thirty-year-old LP that’s as fresh as this. (Bandcamp link)

Closed Quarters – The Pagan’s House of Leaves

Release date: August 8th
Record label: Gothic Death
Genre: Lo-fi indie rock, experimental rock, goth-folk, lo-fi pop
Formats: Digital
Pull Track: The Sphere

Closed Quarters are a “lofi emo/goth/punk” group from Kansas City, Missouri whose only constant member appears to be a musician named Tim Kruse. The project was fairly active in the late 2010s, releasing three EPs from 2017 to 2020 before going quiet for a half decade. A compilation called Hollow Days (which collected miscellaneous material from the aforementioned period) appeared earlier this year, and it turns out that it prefigured a brand-new Closed Quarters LP called The Pagan’s House of Leaves. Aside from Tyler Perryman playing guitar on two tracks, The Pagan’s House of Leaves was entirely self-recorded and played by Kruse; as a mostly-solo project, Kruse’s Closed Quarters display a knack for the darker corners of lo-fi indie rock, indeed jamming bits of goth and doom-folk into what’s more or less a “bedroom rock” foundation. At Closed Quarters’ friendliest, “The Octopus” and “The Sphere” are fuzzed-out indie rock/pop songs with as many hooks as moments of darkness, but even most of the “pop” moments are unmistakably goth-tinged (the dread-filled “Big Surprise”, the fuzz rock “The Crimson Pagan, Thick in the Pudding, Calls the Rams to Fix My Blood”). Those expecting a “normal” bedroom pop album or gothic-folk LP won’t find it in The Pagan’s House of Leaves, but Closed Quarters made something for the adventurous basement-dwellers here. (Bandcamp link)

Grant Pavol – Save Some Time

Release date: August 22nd
Record label: Sonder House
Genre: Fuzz folk, bedroom pop, psychedelic folk
Formats: Digital
Pull Track: If I Ever Ever Needed You

Grant Pavol is three for three with his 2025 EPs so far. Save Some Time is the third of four EPs planned by the New York singer-songwriter and frequent Shamir collaborator throughout the year; January’s College kicked the project off with some viola-laden folk music, and Left That Party veered into the realms of fuzzed-out power pop in May. Save Some Time was recorded with “several members” of the band Sloppy Jane (one of whom, Isabella Bustanoby, has played on all three Pavol EPs now) and is the hardest of the three to categorize thus far. Pavol names Yo La Tengo, The Velvet Underground and Women as influences for this one–needless to say, there’s a lot of ground contained within those three acts, and Save Some Time reflects this between the fuzz-country-tinged “hit” “If I Ever Needed You”, the sparkling, cavernous studio pop creation “Save Some Time”, the distorted, hushed dirge “Don’t Forget”, and the relatively straightforward dream-folk closer “I Wanna Be Like You”. I can hear moments that wouldn’t have been out of place on either of Pavol’s earlier two EPs in these four songs, a sign that we’re dealing with somebody who’s able to keep himself intact while genre-hopping. Save Some Time is the sound of the pieces coming together. (Bandcamp link)

Wide Orbit – Introducing… Wide Orbit

Release date: September 5th
Record label: 22TWENTY
Genre: Indie pop, pop rock, jangle pop
Formats: Digital
Pull Track: What’s the Point?

We’ve got a new indie pop band from Chicago for you today. Introducing… Wide Orbit, a six-piece group from the Windy City led by one Ryan Tuohy that have just released their debut record. Introducing… Wide Orbit is a generous first statement, a dozen songs in a little over thirty minutes recorded “in a cramped room outside the city”. While it can be pretty neatly labeled “pop rock”, Wide Orbit’s debut has a pretty wide-ranging definition of the term that goes back to the 1960s to present day–bits of jangly indie pop, roots rock/alt-country, psychedelic pop, and power pop shade these tracks, though I’d decline to file the LP cleanly under any of those genres. Wide Orbit are at their best when they really go for it with these songs–the most obvious highlights include the sunny, piano-aided guitar pop of “Full of Feathers”, the alt-country-infused “He’s a Wizard”, the psychedelic, almost jazzy “Soil”, and the jangle pop bubblegum of “What’s the Point?” The songwriting on Introducing… Wide Orbit feels fairly polished but the band’s performances are fairly loose, giving a bit more color to an already pretty strong debut release. Wide Orbit should feel good about their first impression. (Bandcamp link)

Also notable:

Leave a comment