Pressing Concerns: Vegas Water Taxi, Music City, 2070, Achers

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Welcome to the Thursday Pressing Concerns! It’s got everything, and by “everything”, I mean three albums that are coming out tomorrow, February 6th (new ones from Vegas Water Taxi, Music City, and 2070) and an EP that comes out today (by Achers). The January 2026 Playlist went up earlier this week; check that out if you missed it.

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.

Vegas Water Taxi – Long Time Caller, First Time Listener

Release date: February 6th
Record label: PNKSLM
Genre: Alt-country, singer-songwriter, power pop
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
Pull Track: Chateau Photo

Everybody wants to be the quippy but sad alt-country guy these days, don’t they? Really, it’s kind of surprising how long it took a generation of singer-songwriters to realize that the whip-smart turn-of-phrase nature of classic country plus the poetic beat of David Berman (and, generously, Leonard Cohen) plus just a bit of real rock music (in this current game of telephone, borrowed from the Drive-By Truckers by way of Jake Lenderman) equals instant authenticity (or something close enough to it). Which leads us to Vegas Water Taxi, a London-based alt-country band led by Ben Hambro, a musician whose strange lyricism and singing is such that I assumed he must be from the Netherlands or something and is writing in a second language (but, nope, he’s just like this, apparently). After putting out a debut album in 2023, Vegas Water Taxi’s second album is actually two EPs in one, last year’s Long Time Caller with a new one called First Time Listener tacked onto it.

What does a British guy named Hambro (whose previous act, Lazarus Kane, dealt in “funky electro-pop”) and his band (bassist Fred Lawton, drummer Charlie Meyrick, vocalist Molly Shields, pedal steel player Rhodri Brooks, organist Louis Milburn, and violinist Holly Carpenter) have to say in a facsimile of “Americana”, anyway? Are these Brixton Windmill players really going to be the ones who hogtie the zeitgeist and prove they actually understand those lofty influences better than everyone else? Well, I don’t know about that, but I do know that the songs on Long Time Caller, First Time Listener are quite good, and that helps Vegas Water Taxi’s attempts to do so go down very easy. Couplets like “The cops, they broke the door of my Hummer / Asked me about my long brat summer,” sound not only forgivable but laudable when they’re set right at the center of a beautifully-harmonized Teenage Fanclub-esque guitar pop masterpiece, I can tell you that much.

Some of this stuff just works on every level, and that’s all there is to it. The second song on the album, “Chateau Photo”, where Hambor sings “She left me for a guy who’s working in PR / He’s putting out a press release that I’m crying in a bar” over lilting pedal steel? I’m fully on board with that. The asides about being drowned in Liquid Death and the Matty Healy name-drop in “Brat Summer”? Well, they work in context, but they’re not something I’d clip to my locker, necessarily. The world probably doesn’t need a song called “Ozempic (Celebrity Weight Loss Blues)”, but if you can get past the fact that it’s called “Ozempic (Celebrity Weight Loss Blues)”, you’ll hear a pretty earnest and catchy meditation on body dysmorphia and authenticity (that guitar riff is pretty Lenderman; sure, why not?). Listening to Long Time Caller, First Time Listener, I did find myself more and more willing and able to “get past it”; if Vegas Water Taxi keep doing what they’re doing on this album, I won’t be alone in this. (Bandcamp link)

Music City – Welcome to Music City

Release date: February 6th
Record label: Redundant Span
Genre: Power pop, pop rock, garage rock, glam
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Pretty Feelings

Where is Music City? If Conor Lumsden is to be believed, it’s either Dublin (the musician’s city of origin and where he got his start as part of the power pop quartet The Number Ones) or London (where he’s currently based and where he started his newest project). To make his debut album as Music City, he took advantage from a long history of international touring to call up names like Tina Halladay and Hart Seely of Sheer Mag, Jay Arner of Energy Slime, Alastair MacKay of Dick Diver, and Evan Walsh and Pete O’Hanlon of The Strypes to play on Welcome to Music City. With Lumsden at the head of this wide-ranging orchestra, Welcome to Music City becomes a classic power pop album connected to but distinct from the more garage-y rock and roll of The Number Ones. Lumsden positions himself as a pop rock bandleader influenced by the classic rock and new wave-y pub rockers of his cities of origin and of the polished side of what us Americans probably think of as “music city” (that’s Nashville, Brits).

These days, I hear so many street punks making capable power pop that it’s easy to forget how much the genre owes to good old-fashioned nerds (music nerds, yes, but they still count). Lumsden hasn’t forgotten that, I think, and Welcome to Music City walks an impressive tightrope between well-earned swagger and a more bookish pop rock attitude. I don’t know how well “When That Day Comes By” would play in a basement, for instance, but I do know that it’s made by and for people who love the “craft” (hello, music blog readers!). On the other hand, “Common Sense”, featuring Halladay on co-lead vocals, leans about as heavily into “snottiness” as Music City can (if you have the vocalist for Sheer Mag on your track, some musical adjustments do seem to be in order, after all). Much of the best of Welcome to Music City, like “You Remember” and “Pretty Feelings”, transcends this “either/or”-type thing and just shoots for all-encompassing, unflagging power pop brilliance. The former is crisp and rubbery at the same time, and the latter is a stately, technicolor rave-up. Music City’s assembled quite the greeting committee. (Bandcamp link)

2070 – Big Blue

Release date: February 6th
Record label: Danger Collective
Genre: Art rock, dream pop, fuzz rock, lo-fi indie rock
Formats: Digital
Pull Track: Transducer

Guitarist/vocalist Trevor Coleman started a project called 2070 over a decade ago while living in Michigan, but it was after he moved to Los Angeles that the group became a full-fledged band and started regularly putting out full-length records. I first heard 2070 thanks to their 2024 sophomore album, Stay in the Ranch, and the lineup that made that “noisy, fuzzy indie rock” LP (drummer Rogers DeCoud, guitarist Khari Cousins, and bassist Danny Rincon) are back on board for the third 2070 album, Big Blue. Perhaps reflecting their most stable lineup yet, Big Blue (their debut for Danger Collective Records) takes a step back from the excitable, kinetic attitude of Stay in the Ranch and gets to work at creating a more subdued, cohesive statement. 

The shoegaze and lo-fi pop of Stay in the Ranch haven’t gone anywhere–indeed, they’re key ingredients in the hazy, murky, psychedelic pop music of Big Blue. Kicking off their album with a shimmering ambient-fuzz-pop instrumental called “VI Tape Lament, Tribute Etc.” is a bold decision by 2070, and while the next two songs on the album (the wonky, crawling “Transducer” and the slacker pop chugger “Birdschool (Off Sludge)”) are pretty catchy, neither of them beats you over the head with it. Songs on Big Blue are relatively brief but not “quick”, and 2070 float through them in a way that starts to blend them together after a while. The “Float On” interpolation in “Windowpane” sticks out, as does the fuzz-rock heights of “Cauldron”, but I don’t think that necessarily makes them better or more essential than the subtle cuts like “Scapegoat” and “The 1619”. The Stereolab-like drumming and synths of penultimate track “Modern Day Gold” is a curveball, but it fits with the exploratory energy 2070 bring to Big Blue as a whole, and, along with the laid-back finale of “V3”, it’s a fitting finale for the trip. And that’s how 2070 wrap up a new and distinct chapter in their growing history. (Bandcamp link)

Achers – Bottom of the Hill

Release date: February 5th
Record label: Everything Sucks
Genre: Noise rock, post-hardcore, post-punk, emo
Formats: Cassette, digital
Pull Track: Bottom of the Hill

Achers may be from London, but this British quartet make music inspired by all kinds of noisy 1990s American indie rock, specifically the Pacific Northwest (Unwound, Lync), San Diego (Drive Like Jehu), and Washington, D.C. (take your pick). Guitarist/vocalist Pat Smiley, bassist, Sabrina Amade, drummer Ilia Lebedev, and guitarist Pavel Borisov started the band in 2022, and, after releasing a demo EP the following year, Lebedev left and was replaced with Vicki Butler. The five-song Bottom of the Hill EP represents a bit of “firsts” for Achers: their first new music with Butler, their first physically-released record, their first for their new label Everything Sucks (Good Grief, Schande, Crumbs), and their first professionally studio-recorded music (by Rich Mandell of ME REX and Happy Accidents).

The opening title track is a nice and dreary introduction to Achers, a dour Unwound-like guitar riff circling around a post-punk instrumental (the defeatist tune is, according to Smiley, about “class melancholia”). “Broken Clocks” has the cacophonous, dragging Drive Like Jehu-ish noisiness to it, a trait it shares with the frantic repetition in closing track “Go In”. Achers aren’t straightforward punk rockers; Bottom of the Hill almost always opts for the zag, relying on atmospherics and dynamics rather than pure white-hot energy first and foremost. That energy is still present, though, especially in the middle of the EP with “Blue Lights” (maybe the most “Dischord Records” song on the record) and the stumbling, sharp-pointed “Asahi Bear”. Bottom of the Hill is hardly the friendliest opening statement you’ll hear this year, which is a good indication that Achers already have a strong grasp on what makes this kind of music work. (Bandcamp link)

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