Pressing Concerns: Dogwood Gap, Via, Gazed and Bemused, Blue Zero

We roll into mid-November with a steady supply of new music; this Monday Pressing Concerns features a new album from Dogwood Gap, a new EP from Blue Zero, an archival EP from Via, and a compilation of Brisbane shoegaze from 4000 Records. Pretty neat!

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.

Dogwood Gap – Probably Not Enough

Release date: November 14^th
Record label: Revelator
Genre: 90s indie rock, slowcore, folk rock, emo-y indie rock, alt-country
Formats: CD, digital
Pull Track: Something Here

Late last year, I wrote about House Sounds, the debut EP from a Brooklyn project called Dogwood Gap. At the time, Dogwood Gap was effectively the solo project of Massachusetts-originating singer-songwriter (and founder of Revelator Records) Patrick Murray, and House Sounds was a promising debut of Jason Molina-influenced folk rock and alt-country. Fast forward a year later, and Dogwood Gap are now a sturdy quartet, with Murray sharing lead vocal duties with Carlie Houser and the both of them backed by bassist Evan Tannenbaum and drummer Hayden Carr-Loize. Dogwood Gap’s debut album, Probably Not Enough, is also their first record as a full band, and it’s a reinvention of the project’s sound, too. Although the Songs: Ohia influence is still there, it’s a lot less alt-country or folk-inspired, with a quiet but electric 90s indie rock sound now presenting as the dominant strain. Dogwood Gap reference bands like Pile and Unwound as touchpoints, and while they’re not a post-hardcore group now, there’s an exploratory aspect to Murray’s guitar playing that fits well with this kind of electric, slowcore-evoking indie rock (it’s more Idaho and Bedhead, although those aren’t quite right either).

The most “folk” thing about Probably Not Enough is probably Houser’s vocals, which give a traditional slant to the otherwise fairly grungy basement rock of “Red Ribbon” (we’ve stumbled onto the “PJ Harvey combination” here, it seems), as well as the penultimate “Mother Has Closed Her Eyes”. If you’re wondering when the Unwound influence kicks in, I’d point you to the nice circular guitar riff and rumbling bass that co-lead “Changes”, and even the more delicate songs (like, say, “Something Here”, which comes right after it) have a post-punk edge at moments. Call it “slowcore”, “sadcore”, “post-rock”, or even “emo”–none of them fully fit, but I recognize the melancholic, empty-space-heavy sound of songs like “Owl Bridge” via plenty of bands who’ve tread in these waters before. It’s harder to boil Probably Not Enough down to one forebearer like House Sounds could’ve been with Molina–whether that’s attributable to a greater number of creative minds involved in Dogwood Gap or merely more instrumental freedom at Murray’s disposal as a bandleader, the leap that this project has taken in a year is palpable and bodes well for Dogwood Gap in the future. (Bandcamp link)

Via – Via

Release date: November 14^th
Record label: Dromedary
Genre: Noise rock, art punk, proto-“indie rock”
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
Pull Track: Cell

Two live shows, six basement-recorded songs, and “one gig flyer”. This was all that the five-piece underground band Via amounted to during their late-1980s period of activity. The band’s two guitarists, Thalia Zedek and Jerry di Rienzo, went on to have pretty notable indie rock careers afterwards–the former with Come and Live Skull (as well as a bunch of solo records), and the latter with Cell. This alone would be enough to make Via a notable part of Boston music history, but Via is still held in as much regard as their members’ more well-known bands by the people who had been there at the right time to witness them (such as Chris Brokaw, who alerted Dromedary Records to these recordings’ existence in 2024). Finally given a proper release by Dromedary after nearly forty years in obscurity, the six-song Via EP is a still-sharp-sounding brief jolt of noisy underground 80s indie rock.

Via moved from Boston to New York during their brief lifespan, which makes the Sonic Youth comparisons too easy (Brokaw himself acknowledges them in the liner notes to Via). At the same time, a noisy rock band from Boston employing a “tape loops” provider (Phil Milstein of Uzi, who rounded out the band alongside bassist James Apt and drummer Adam Gaynor) also brings to mind Mission of Burma. You could call Via a synthesis of the two, but there’s also plenty of the intense, dark, blues-tinged rock music that Zedek would later go on to explore in Come as well. The shorter songs on Via (“JJ”, “1,000 MPH”, “The Other”) are all pummeling noise punk, and the longer ones are just as punishing in a more difficult-to-understand manner (the six-minute “Cell” is Milstein’s tape-loop showcase, and “Way You Say You Feel” closes the EP with a musical exorcism). It’s hard to believe that this almost stayed in the vault forever, but now’s a good a time as any for Via. (Bandcamp link)

Various – Gazed and Bemused: Hazy Sounds from the Meanjin Underground

Release date: October 23^rd
Record label: 4000
Genre: Shoegaze, dream pop
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Broken Walls

Beginning in the late 2010s, the Brisbane (Meanjin), Australia label 4000 Records has been documenting its city’s underground music scenes–everything from jazz to electronic to post-rock has been featured on the imprint’s sixty-something releases. Their latest album is a various-artist compilation, Gazed and Bemused: Hazy Sounds from the Meanjin Underground, which zeroes in on Brisbane’s practitioners of “shoegaze, dreampop, post-punk, alt. rock and myriad sub-genres awash with heavy reverb, cymbal storms, and atmospheric vocals” (couldn’t have said it better myself, 4000!). I don’t write about them all that often, but there’s a certain romantic appeal to this kind of “time capsule”/scene documentation album; I’m thinking of historical ones like Chapter Music’s one for early Australia post-punk, or what Third Man’s Southeast of Saturn did for a different shoegaze scene (Michigan). Could Gazed and Bemused be held up in a few decades similarly? No idea, but we can imagine. Hearing a dozen (in some cases, starkly) different bands held together by a love of distortion getting one chance to make an impression with a song actually works pretty well for this kind of music–we get slow, percussionless dream pop (from Relay Tapes) and tight shoegaze-y alt-rock (from Wasted) back-to-back to start the album, and all of the most obvious standouts from that point on (DARLING.’s starry-eyed guitar pop, the dour goth-tinged contribution from The Double Happiness, the nervous static of Ultra Material) aren’t all that similar, either. It’s a fun journey, and now we’re all intimately familiar with modern southeastern Queensland shoegaze to boot. (Bandcamp link)

Blue Zero – Confusion

Release date: October 29^th
Record label: Self-released
Genre: Fuzz rock, 90s indie rock, shoegaze, noise pop, post-punk
Formats: Cassette, digital
Pull Track: Confusion

Blue Zero’s debut record, Colder Shade Blue, came out about a year ago, and Oakland musician Chris Natividad played every instrument on the album. If there’s one thing about Natividad I know, though, it’s that he loves playing in bands–he leads Marbled Eye and Public Interest and drums in Aluminum and Tanukichan–so it’s not so surprising that Blue Zero are a solid quartet on their next record, the four-song Confusion EP. Lauren Melton (Sucker), who contributed some vocals to Colder Shade Blue, is now bassist and co-vocalist, with drummer Rick Altieri (Blue Ocean, Above Me) and guitarist Maddy Allard rounding out the lineup. This self-released cassette is a big step forward for Blue Zero, with the shoegaze-y fuzz pop of their debut exploding into an intense, focused, but still quite catchy brand of Sonic Youth-style indie rock. The opening title track is the biggest hit the band have put together yet, a wall-of-sound hurricane with Pixies-level pop instincts, and “Rotten Angel” (where Melton holds her own as co-leader) is nearly as exciting. The second half of Confusion is only “subdued” in comparison to the first half, and closing track “Don’t Be Long” in particular is a smooth, Ride-like marriage of timeless pop rock and strong guitars. A welcome check-in from a band on an upward trajectory. (Bandcamp link)

Also notable:

• Spencer Radcliffe – Ohio Vision
• The Webstirs – High Up in the Trees
• Safari Room – How to Keep a Fire Burning EP
• Red Devil Ryders – Is It Love?
• Pintail – Bury a Body, Grow a Person EP
• The Westerlies – Songbook, Vol. 3
• Playland – Playland 2
• Ralph – Ralph EP
• Dar Stellabotta – Into Thin Air
• The 5.6.7.8.’s featuring Miss Ludella Black – Beat Girls EP
• Kim Ware and the Good Graces – Grand Epiphanies EP
• End Times Vision – A Career in High-Potency Capsules
• Silo Kids – II EP
• Roberta Faceplant – Brisket & Cigarettes EP
• Strange Men – Come Yesterday
• Horsegirl – Julie in Twos EP
• Fugazi – Fugazi Live at First Avenue Minneapolis MN USA 10/15/95_FLS0736 
• Spares + Treasure Pains – Split EP
• Bright Eyes – Kids Table EP
• Slothrust – Wildcard EP
• Old Saw – The Wringing Cloth
• Abandcalledlove. – Thriving Season EP
• Thimastr – Muscle Memories
• I’m the Villain – This Joyful Nostalgia
• Ibibio Sound Machine – Anyone Like You EP