Pressing Concerns: Ugly Stick, The Terminal Buildings, Pressure Wheel, Pohgoh / Samuel S.C.

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The Tuesday Pressing Concerns is a pretty chaotic one this week. We have an expanded reissue of an album from Ugly Stick, a new EP from Pressure Wheel, a split EP between Pohgoh and Samuel S.C., and four new records in one from The Terminal Buildings. There’s something for everyone here! If you missed yesterday’s blog post (featuring Dogwood Gap, Via, Gazed and Bemused, and Blue Zero), 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.

Ugly Stick – Absinthe (Vinyl Release)

Release date: October 16th
Record label: Hovercraft
Genre: Cowpunk, alt-country, college rock, garage punk
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Wild Men of Borneo

Who were Ugly Stick? The four-piece “cowpunk” band rose out of Delaware, Ohio (that’s a little north of Columbus) in the late 1980s and released a few records before initially breaking up sometime in the 1990s. The group (drummer Jeff Clowdus, guitarists Al Huckabee and David Holm, and bassist Ed Mann) seem to have been sporadically active this century–they put out a new album in 2008, they play live shows on occasion, and they’ve reissued some of their earlier material, too. The latest of these reissues, through Hovercraft Records, is a double-vinyl release of Absinthe, an album that originally came out only on CD in 1993. It’s hard to find much info on Ugly Stick out there, but I believe Absinthe was their third album following a self-titled debut and a sophomore record called Shaved; the Bandcamp page for the original version of the album lists seventeen songs compared to the reissue’s twenty-three, which would suggest that the final six are the “bonus tracks” that the reissue proclaims to provide.

So, what does Absinthe sound like? It’s an undeniably weird mix of roots rock, punk rock, and “college rock” that doesn’t really fit with anyone I can think of–more countrified than Great Plains (the band I think of when I think of “central Ohio underground college rock”), wilder than the likes of Guadalcanal Diary and other college radio hitmakers, more punk than NRBQ, not as traditionalist as Uncle Tupelo, and not quite as psychedelic as the Meat Puppets. But those are the names we’ll have to start with, and it’s good enough to describe the strong opening stretch of Absinthe: the stoner-blues-psych-garage opening thing “Serpent Mound”, the careening garage punk “Move”, the surprising acoustic country “Crib Death Reel”, and the awesome college rock hook found in “Wild Men of Borneo”. Most of my favorite songs on Absinthe are found in the opening half, but digging through the C-side and the bonus tracks turns up plenty of intriguing curios, too. I’ve written about reissues of albums that have earned canonization or at least “sizeable cult following” status, and I’ve been happy to do so, but reissues like this one–the ones that encourage further digging–are the most important ones. (Bandcamp link)

The Terminal Buildings – A Binful of Bells / Belles of the Bucket / Further Transcriptions: A Binful of Bonus / The Room in Your Heart

Release date: August 8th / August 29th / September 1st / September 5th
Record label: Self-released
Genre: Lo-fi power pop, bedroom pop, indie pop, jangle pop, power pop
Formats: Digital
Pull Track: Time Travelin’ / A Beer and Play Guitar / Sorry Suzanne / Waiting at the Lights

The home-recorded project of a Scottish musician known only to me as Finlay, The Terminal Buildings arrived on my radar thanks to a digital compilation called Coming to Terms with the Terminal Buildings: Best Ones 2021-2023. Coming to Terms was not only an excellent collection of low-key indie pop/power pop/jangle pop etc., but it also ended up being the capstone for a prolific two-year period for the project. After a quiet 2024 (partially due to Finlay moving from Glasgow to Aberdeen, apparently), though, the next era of The Terminal Buildings starts now with a slew of new releases: two new LPs, an EP, and a collection of “covers and demos” released over the span of one month. Belle of the Bucket is maybe the “star” of these records, the closest thing to a power pop parade of the set thanks to “A Beer and Play Guitar”, “That Wheel”, and “Big Hat”, among others. There’s still a bit of bedroom folkiness to that one, though, and this is explored even more thoroughly in the dreamy, psychedelic-tinged indie pop of A Binful of Bells (there are plenty of hooks in this Martin Newell-esque wandering excursion too, of course). A Binful of Bonus may only be for the real Terminal Buildings heads out there, but more covers of The Bats are always welcome, and all three tracks on The Room in Your Heart are good enough to have been on the full albums (perhaps these are songs that were penned in between the previous records’ completions and release; quality-wise, there’s no reason to separate them).  Upon The Room in Your Heart’s release, Finlay wrote that the EP would be the last Terminal Buildings record for “a wee while at least”–oh, is that all, then? (Bandcamp link)

Pressure Wheel – Atomic Woe

Release date: October 17th
Record label: Alchemy Hours
Genre: Punk rock, garage rock, post-hardcore, power pop, noise rock
Formats: Digital
Pull Track: Heat Death

The Philadelphia supergroup Pressure Wheel don’t neatly slot into the “punk rock musicians’ power pop side project” archetype, but it feels like a spiritually similar endeavor. The quartet’s debut EP, Atomic Woe, is the result of members of Restorations (bassist Dan Zimmerman and drummer Jeff Meyers), Signals Midwest (guitarist/vocalist Maxwell Stern), and Timeshares (vocalist/guitarist Jon Hernandez) zeroing in on the catchier sides of punk rock, garage rock, emo-punk, and even post-hardcore. “A little less scalpel, a little more sledgehammer,” claims the band’s bio, and indeed, Atomic Woe eschews the more high-concept aspects of the members’ other bands to land a half-dozen blunt-force rock and roll blows. “Economy of Lies” is Dischord Records/Hot Snakes fodder with a Guided by Voices– (or top-tier Militarie Gun-, if you prefer) level hook, “Cut It” and “Don’t” are slick, emo-tinged fuzz rock/punk-pop hits, and my favorite track on the EP, “Heat Death”, marries the heart-on-sleeve earnestness of all three of the members’ other bands with precision guitar pop. There’s a tug-of-war between “just rocking out” and delving just a little deeper throughout Atomic Woe, and Stern and Hernandez’s contributions both play the game. All of Pressure Wheel seem on the same page as to what kind of band they want to be, and even if Atomic Woe doesn’t fully reveal what all that might entail, it’s a high-speed journey to wherever that may be. (Bandcamp link)

Pohgoh / Samuel S.C. – Split

Release date: October 8th
Record label: New Granada/Waterslide
Genre: Emo, punk rock, pop punk, 90s indie rock, twee-punk
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Evergreen

I’ve written about Samuel S.C. (previously just known as Samuel) before on this blog; the State College, Pennsylvania-originating emo band released three EPs and singles in the mid-90s, reunited in 2021, and put out an LP featuring new and “reimagined” old material in 2023. I’m less familiar with Tampa, Florida’s Pohgoh, but they have a similar story: they also made music combining Superchunk-esque indie-punk-rock with emo in the mid-1990s, and they also reunited over the past decade, putting out new albums in 2018 and 2022. A four-song split EP makes plenty of sense for the two bands, and both of them brought very good material to the table for this one. Pohgoh’s “I’m a Fan” is a lovely punk-pop song that should win anyone unfamiliar with them over, and despite being the EP’s only “slow” song, the appropriately-titled “The Interlude” is beautiful in a sparse way, too. The Samuel S.C. songs are nothing short of some of their best material yet: “Evergreen” is tough, fevered, and surging anthem-emo-rock with a scorching refrain, and “A Serious Sound” is similarly animated and finds another gear with its chorus, too. Bands hiding their best songs on stopgap between-album split singles? It feels like the mid-90s all over again. (Bandcamp link)

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