Pressing Concerns: Ambulanz, Creative Writing, Time Thief, Nape Neck

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The day is Tuesday. That means it’s time for the second Pressing Concerns of the week, featuring new albums from Ambulanz, Creative Writing, and Nape Neck, plus the debut EP from Time Thief. Check ’em out below, and if you missed yesterday’s blog post (featuring Kilkenny Cats, Matthew Smith Group, Why Bother?, and Novelty Island), peep that 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.

Ambulanz – III

Release date: September 26th
Record label: It’s Eleven
Genre: Garage punk
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Flowers

Call an Ambulanz! But not for me. Well, maybe for me after all–I first heard this Leipzig quartet in late 2023 thanks for their sophomore album II, and their spirited version of garage punk (“quite hooky, although it retains a post-punk edge…‘synthpunk’ but with a fairly guitar-forward sound…loose and unhinged on occasion, but never ‘sloppy’”, I said at the time) quickly made them my favorite act on upstart east Germany post-punk label It’s Eleven. The third Ambulanz album is called (of course) III, and the five-song album (half of which is taken up by a ten-minute closing track) picks up right where the band left off.

“Joy” and “Flowers” both come right out of the gate with catchy, kinetic, somewhat unpredictable post-punk/garage punk hybrid creations, and “Number” and “Repetition”–despite both leaning towards the darker ends of Ambulanz’s sound–still keep the immediately-hitting momentum going strong. Which leads us to the prog-punk epic (at least, by Ambulanz standards) “Slime”: four minutes of classic Ambulanz punk ripping, a few minutes of ambient scraping, and then surfy garage punk once again bubbles up into the mix (and fades in and out until closing time). The strange detours are a nice compliment to the main appeal of Ambulanz for me, and I don’t mind them tweaking their formula like this if they bring the right amount of energy to it. (Bandcamp link)

Creative Writing – Baby Did This

Release date: October 3rd
Record label: Meritorio
Genre: College rock, jangle pop, psychedelia
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Memory Light

Meritorio Records’ latest guitar pop procurement is a quartet from western Massachusetts made up of a bunch of indie rock veterans. Wes Nelson, Patrick Battleship, Jeffrey Morkeski, and Jedediah Smith have played in groups like Huevos II, Luxor Rentals, Sore Eros, Jeanines, and Estrogen Highs between the four of them, and Creative Writing is a chance for Nelson and Battleship to co-helm a group. Their debut album, Baby Did This, follows an EP called True 90s that came out in January, and continues a strong start that owes as much to the psychedelic and more classic rock-focused sides of “college rock” as the light and jangly ones. Fans of bands like The Vulgar Boatmen and fellow New Englanders Miracle Legion (not to mention the Paisley Underground) will find plenty to enjoy on Baby Did This, which starts with a four-minute meandering introduction called “I Love You” and continues into jangle pop hits like “Hallway” and “Sister” with a casual indifference. The haze attached to songs like “Can’t Thank You Enough” and “Glass Days” doesn’t diminish their pop appeal, though–it’s only when the clouds part for sunny power pop like “Memory Light” that Creative Writing’s greyscale streak appears in hindsight. And then you’re ready for the seven-minute psychedelic-Paisley-fog pop song called “Rain” that closes out Baby Did This. (Bandcamp link)

Time Thief – Time Thief

Release date: September 12th
Record label: Musical Fanzine/Lost Sound Tapes
Genre: Lo-fi indie rock, indie pop, 90s indie rock, post-punk
Formats: Vinyl, cassette, digital
Pull Track: Mean Girls

Time Thief are a new band from Providence, Rhode Island made up of two familiar faces in Zoë Wyner and James Walsh. The latter previously played in the band Dump Him and currently runs Musical Fanzine Records (most recently seen releasing an album and an EP from the excellent Olympia group Wavers), while the former was in Halfsour and currently has a solo project named Zowy (and, apparently, was briefly in Dump Him with Walsh). The first Time Thief release is a self-titled 10” record and cassette tape that introduces an even-keeled duo with a clear, wide-ranging love of lo-fi indie rock and pop music. Over the course of fourteen minutes, Time Thief masters melancholic but wired Pacific Northwestern indie rock like that of their aforementioned labelmates (“Mean Girls”), unabashed jangly indie pop (“A Brief History of Ordinary Letdowns”), slightly psychedelic, 60s-ish folk-rock (“Baby Boy”), and choppy, bass-led, post-punk-influenced indie pop (“Field of Depth”). Compared to the most recent Zowy EP, Time Thief has a nice, full-band sound, but the instrumentals (recorded entirely by Wyner and Walsh themselves) are hardly overly polished or showy. The main draw of Time Thief is something a little trickier to pinpoint, but palpable nonetheless. (Bandcamp link)

Nape Neck – The Shallowest End

Release date: September 19th
Record label: Dot Dash/OCCII, Amsterdam/Red Wig
Genre: Noise rock, art punk, post-punk
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: The Floor of the Forest

2025 appears to be the year of Nape Neck. The Leeds-based trio have been around for a few years, but this March saw the release of a self-titled LP compiling the group’s entire recorded output up until that point, June saw a live cassette called Live at Sonic Protest Festival 2023, and now September has brought The Shallowest End, the band’s first “proper” full-length studio album. A metallic, drilling art punk/noise rock band I was all too happy to compare to The Ex when I wrote about Nape Neck, the trio (bassist Claire Adams, drummer Kathy Gray, and guitarist Bobby Glew) haven’t slowed down a bit on The Shallowest End, a ten-song torrent of noisy, communal, and ferocious rock and roll music. The three instrumentalists of Nape Neck (they share lead vocal duties) remain equally important to the band’s sound–it’s a primal, active-listening endeavor where somebody is always taking command of something. The energy level of The Shallowest End is at a constant high, with pummeling rhythms, scratchy guitar attacks, and vocals that range from “sneer” to “dread” never flagging. 2025 won’t be the only year of Nape Neck if they’re able to keep this up. (Bandcamp link)

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