Pressing Concerns: Space Jaguar, Steatopygous, Save My Skin, Barpinson

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It’s New Year’s Eve, and that means it’s time for the final Pressing Concerns of 2025! To wrap up this year, we’re looking at new EPs from Space Jaguar, Steatopygous, and Barpinson, and a new album from Save My Skin. Be sure to check out Monday and Tuesday’s blog posts (featuring Izzy Oram Brown & The Bird Calls, Humbug, Capsuna, and Super Pattern and Constant Greetings, Pelted, Baby Grand, and Blood Cannery, respectively), if you haven’t yet, and check back soon for the results of the 2025 Rosy Overdrive Reader’s Poll.

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.

Space Jaguar – Every Room Is an Escape Room

Release date: December 14th
Record label: Subjangle
Genre: Jangle pop, indie pop, power pop, folk rock, college rock
Formats: CD, digital
Pull Track: Go Home

This July, Irish musician Mark Grassick debuted his new power pop project Space Jaguar with its debut album, If You Play Expect to Pay, receiving help from producer and multi-instrumentalist Andrew Taylor (The Boys with the Perpetual Nervousness, Dropkick) and bassist Michael Wood (Whoa Melodic). If You Play Expect to Pay nailed the 90s-inspired jangly-power pop sweet spot, earning its place next to records by Taylor’s bands and Hurry (whose Matt Scottoline also guested on the album). We didn’t have to wait too long for the second Space Jaguar record, thankfully, as Grassnick (once again backed by Taylor and Wood) put out a surprise seven-song EP called Every Room Is an Escape Room in the middle of December. 

It’s a little more like a “grab-bag” than the LP–see opening track “Red Rain” (which transforms from a minimal acoustic folk rock tune to signature Space Jaguar guitar pop in under two minutes), “Question” (another acoustic one, this one stubbornly sticking to its stripped-down setup), and the closing track (a cover of Freedy Johnston’s “Bad Reputation”, which admittedly sounds a lot like a “Space Jaguar song”). On the whole, though, Every Room Is an Escape Room is every bit as capable at throwing out perfect power pop as its predecessor was–the breezy, effortlessly-simple-sounding “She Goes” just might be their best song yet, and “A Bright Future” and “Go Home” can’t be far behind. It’s a nice appendix to a promising debut, and it has more than enough to stand on its own, too. (Bandcamp link)

Steatopygous – Songs of Salome

Release date: November 7th
Record label: Sketch Book
Genre: Post-hardcore, riot grrl, garage punk, screamo
Formats: Cassette (forthcoming), digital
Pull Track: Wallplug Slug

Hailing from Trowbridge, Wiltshire, Steatopygous are a quartet of teenagers (Poppy, Eliza, Ewan and Rufus) who got their start not so long ago live playing Bikini Kill covers and riot grrl-inspired original material, eventually opening for bands like Other Half, Perennial, and Teenage Tom Petties. Their first release, a three-song demo cassette, came out on local label Sketch Book last December (the imprint’s debut release, in fact), showcasing the band’s explosive punk rock inception. All three of those songs are on Steatopygous’s first proper EP, the six-song Songs of Salome, alongside three new tracks suggesting that the group have grown and evolved quite a bit over the past eleven months. 

The older Steatopygous songs are fun, violent blasts of classic riot grrl and I’m glad they’re included here, although they’re a world away from “Wallplug Slug”, the new song that opens the EP. A meandering, sludgy trip into screamo and post-hardcore, “Wallplug Slug” doesn’t quite herald an entirely new direction for Steatopygous (one of the new songs, “Female CD”, is every bit the punk whirlwind that older tracks “Cassowary” and “Maries Wedding Song” are), but there’s something tougher and heavier about them now (“Septic”, the final new song, is the other really off-the-rails moment in this regard). I wouldn’t have been disappointed if Steatopygous had held more firmly to their original sound, but it bodes well for them that they weren’t content to stay there for long. (Bandcamp link)

Save My Skin – Different Bubble

Release date: November 15th
Record label: Chrüsimüsi
Genre: Garage rock, post-punk, fuzz rock, 90s indie rock, psychedelia
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Different Times

The Swiss band Save My Skin was formed in Biel about a decade ago by guitarist/vocalists Chri Frautschi and Nicolas Raufaste, and, after putting out a bunch of self-released digital albums on Bandcamp from 2018 to 2023, they’ve linked up with Chrüsimüsi Records (Dom Sensitive, Spllit, Leopardo) to release their newest album, Different Bubble, on vinyl. Now a quartet featuring bassist/vocalist Marie Rebmann and drummer/vocalist Vera Trachsel, Save My Skin recorded Different Bubble live last year with prolific Swiss producer Louis Jucker, and the four of them came up with eight songs of garage-y, post-punk-y, ultimately difficult-to-classify indie rock. If they were from the States, we’d probably call Save My Skin “Americana” of some sort; it’s a European version of the blustery, wandering barebones-country-rock practiced by David Nance and other distorted Neil Young disciples overseas. Nonetheless, the listlessness of Different Bubble also feels very continental Europe, from the aimless, nearly psychedelic six-minute mid-tempo opening track “Different Times” to the Sonic Youth-esque chug of “Bubbles” to the vaguely toe-tapping political statement of some kind “The Candidate”. The second half of Different Bubble continues to be a strong, belated bid to open the tour that produced Arc and Weld, halfheartedly pushing on their four-piece limits up to similarly sighing closing track “The Beauty of Life”. It’s a perfect album-length retreat for the dead of late December. (Bandcamp link)

Barpinson – Population

Release date: December 12th
Record label: Lisdia
Genre: Power pop, garage rock, pop punk, new wave, jangle pop
Formats: Cassette, digital
Pull Track: Dance Off!

Indonesian musician Prabu Pramayougha is new to me, but not to making music–he’s been the vocalist and guitarist of the Bandung-based punk group Saturday Night Karaoke since 2008. With Saturday Night Karaoke, Pramayougha has pursued speedy, hooky, Ramones-inspired pop punk, and his new solo project, Barpinson, reflects this, too. The first-ever Barpison release is a four-song EP called Population that keeps up the infectious energy of Pramayougha’s past but seeks to inject an even more prominent new wave/power pop sound (influenced by names like Elvis Costello, Wreckless Eric, and Nick Lowe) into his songwriting. Quick-paced, punk-infused power pop is what indeed greets us with opening track “Freaky Adoration”, a topsy-turvy motor-mouth performance but one in which Pramayougha sticks the landing. The appropriately-titled “Dance Off!” throws some Attractions-style keyboards into Barpinson’s power pop rock and roll, but it’s the second half of Population where Pramayougha reveals there’s a life for his music after “punk rock” after all. A cover of British new wave act The Tours’ “Foreign Girls” is light on its feet, and the EP ends with a song called “Mid 30s” that surprisingly veers into mid-tempo, jangly pop rock; in terms of 90s alt-rock bands, it’s closer to the Gin Blossoms than Green Day for the first time in Barpinson’s history. I’m guessing it won’t be the last, though. (Bandcamp link)

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One thought on “Pressing Concerns: Space Jaguar, Steatopygous, Save My Skin, Barpinson”

  1. Thank you so much for including steatopygous!! And thanks for the whole blog in general…have a great new year!! Simonx

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