Pressing Concerns: Dru the Drifter, Dennis Callaci and L. Eugene Methe, Fazed on a Pony, Immaterialize

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The first Pressing Concerns of the week offers up new albums from Dennis Callaci and L. Eugene Methe, Fazed on a Pony, and Immaterialize, plus two new albums from Dru the Drifter. Read ’em below!

The blog will next update this Thursday.

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Dru the Drifter – The Atomizer / The Thinker

Release date: January 1st / January 29th
Record label: Self-released
Genre: Garage rock, punk rock, garage punk, lo-fi punk, synthpunk
Formats: Digital
Pull Track: Who’s Outside My Door? / I Left My Keys in a UFO

I first heard of the Nashville musician Dru the Drifter early last year when they released Power Drifter, a split EP with the very good Virginia egg/synth/garage punk group Power Pants. After looking into Dru the Drifter some more, I learned that they’re quite prolific, averaging seemingly about one (typically digital-only, self-released) album a month (a non-exhaustive list of 2025 Dru the Drifter titles: The Hunter, The Plumber, The Creeper, The Spider, The Timer, The Bank Robber). With that in mind, it’s not all that surprising that one of the first new records that crossed my path in 2026 was a Drifter album–specifically The Atomizer, which dropped on New Year’s Day. If you’re looking for some distorted, lo-fi southern garage punk to liven up your winter, then The Atomizer is twenty-eight minutes of what you’re seeking.

There’s a bit of the synth-y, hooky garage punk of Power Pants in here, but Dru the Drifter strikes me more as an iconoclast less inclined to commit to one tenet of rock and roll for too long (like somebody who doesn’t stay in one town for long…if only there was a more concise word for that). We’ve got garage-y power pop songs like “Who’s Outside My Door?”, “Doctor Doctor”, and “Utility Hat”, lo-fi pop nuggets like “Something” and “Arson for Hire”, heavier, nearly Ty Segall-esque garage heaviness like “Clam Sauce”, and whatever you want to call the melting, radioactive four-minute conclusion that is “Atomizer”. This is the first Dru the Drifter album I’ve listened to on the whole, and if they’re really putting something as good as The Atomizer out every month, I’m not planning on it being the last. I’ll be paying attention this year.

But wait, there’s more! In the time between I wrote about The Atomizer and publication date, Dru dropped another album called The Thinker, and I, true to my word, immediately queued it up when I saw that it had been released. Featuring fifteen songs, none of which are over two minutes long, The Thinker is more slapdash than The Atomizer’s occasional heaviness, but it’s otherwise every bit the tour de force of garage punk with varying levels of “pop”, “hardcore”, and “synth” that Dru’s previous LP was. Plus, it has a song called “I Left My Keys in a UFO” that lives up to its title. Perhaps The Atomizer is the more adventurous listen, and The Thinker is the straight-shooter, so you can chart your own course when it comes to dipping a toe in the Dru the Drifter world. Now I better hurry up and publish this before they release another album. (Bandcamp link 1) (Bandcamp link 2)

Dennis Callaci and L. Eugene Methe – The Last Chance Lottery

Release date: January 23rd
Record label: Shrimper/Gertrude Tapes
Genre: Experimental rock, lo-fi indie rock, post-rock, sound collage
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: I Only Came Here to Hear About You

Between his time in the underappreciated Inland Empire, California indie rock group Refrigerator (which he co-founded with his brother, Allen, in 1990) and his work as the leader of long-running lo-fi label Shrimper Records (which is still going strong, recently releasing records from Goosewind, Son of Buzzi, and Ben Woods), Dennis Callaci has led a singular and impressive music life. Meanwhile, over in Omaha, L. Eugene Methe has his own record label called Gertrude Tapes (Linda Smith, Dan Melchior, Andrew Weathers) and has played violin and/or piano on records from the likes of the Mountain Goats, Simon Joyner, and, yes, Refrigerator. A collaborative record between the two of them (co-released by their respective imprints) makes a load of sense, but it’s hard to predict what they’d make together based on their wide-ranging backgrounds. 

The result of Callaci and Methe’s team-up, The Last Chance Lottery, is on the more “experimental” end of the two’s spectrums. Neither the warm lo-fi pop of Callaci’s main band nor the (relatively) straightforward folk music with which Methe has been intermittently associated are the dominant elements of this LP. Methe, responsible for the music on the album, conjures up a broken tapestry of pianos, strings, and abstract atmospherics. Callaci, who lends his voice, moves between a Howe Gelb-esque lazy talk-singing and a more frightened, nervous undercurrent. It reminds me of the stranger corners of New Zealand underground music, weird Xpressway albums that eschewed the “pop” side of Dunedin but clearly were made by people connected to that scene nonetheless. There’s a haunting beauty to the album’s piano ballads, namely “This House at Night” and “Faded Temple University”, and there’s sharp if scattered construction at the core of the noirish “Cherry Red Blues”, the post-rock claustrophobia of “Black Napkins”, and the simmering “I Only Came Here to Hear About You”. The late David Thomas was fond of saying, regarding his band: “Pere Ubu is not experimental. We know what we’re doing”. It’s a quote that came to mind listening to The Last Chance Lottery. (Bandcamp link)

Fazed on a Pony – Swan

Release date: January 23rd
Record label: Meritorio/Melted Ice Cream
Genre: Folk rock, alt-country, indie pop
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Wrong Party

I first heard New Zealand singer-songwriter Peter McCall and his project Fazed on a Pony in late 2022, when he released his debut album, It’ll All Work Out. At the time, I noted that McCall (while still being indie pop-ish) sounded more in line with American folk rock groups like Wild Pink and Friendship than the kind of indie rock for which his home country is known, and McCall continues to pursue this avenue in Swan, the second Fazed on a Pony LP. Swan is catchy and, at times, jangly enough to fit on the two esteemed guitar pop record labels that are co-releasing it, and McCall works to combine that side of his sound with folk-y indie rock and whatever the New Zealand version of “Americana” is on this album. For one, Fazed on a Pony employ a pedal steel player throughout the album (Shaun Malloch, who rounds out the quartet’s lineup with bassist Rassani Tolovaa and drummer Hamish Morgan) and the album’s Bandcamp page isn’t shy about invoking the likes of MJ Lenderman, David Berman, and Sparklehorse.

The alt-country influence is incorporated tastefully and reverently, but I think it makes the most sense to approach Swan as an indie pop album first and foremost. The acoustic-led opening track “The Perfect Swan” and the violin-aided “Heart Goes Blank” are the exceptions–in between and around them, there are pop-forward, earnest indie rock anthems like “Flashes”, “Wrong Party”, “Wait Forever”, and “Not Even Trying”, all of which are as good as those from any “heartland rock”/power pop-straddling band over in the United States (in Philadelphia, or anywhere). Even way into the album’s B-side, I’m struck by how concise and economical of a pop songwriter the person who’s penning stuff like “Rising Star” and “Anything Else” must be. McCall might’ve chosen a different way of going about making guitar pop than many of his Kiwi peers, but that doesn’t mean Fazed on a Pony isn’t partaking in a rich tradition on Swan nonetheless. (Bandcamp link)

Immaterialize – Perfect

Release date: January 23rd
Record label: Fire Talk/Angel Tapes
Genre: Dream pop, synthpop, indie pop, electronica
Formats: Cassette, digital
Pull Track: Never Rained

Last December, Angel Tapes (the “emerging artists” sublabel of Fire Talk Records) released an EP called Sea Songs by Dorothy, a trio from London made up of three musicians who’d already put out a decent amount of music via other names. The first Angel Tapes release of 2026 comes from a similar type of group, albeit from Chicago this time–the duo Immaterialize are made up of Alana Schachtel (who has a solo project called Lipsticism) and Erik Fure (who’s released ambient music as DJ Immaterial). Immaterialize began in 2024 with a pair of non-album singles, one of which featured Windy City producer Angel Marcloid (AKA Fire-Toolz), who then went on to master the duo’s debut album, Perfect, and contribute bass guitar and songwriting to album opener “Everything But Myself”.

Together, Fure and Schachtel make what I’d call “dreamy indie pop”, although the nine-song, twenty-nine minute Perfect is wide-ranging enough that it’s still a little challenging to get a handle on Immaterialize. “Everything But Myself” opens the record with some late-90s-style electronic-tinged pop (it’s not quite trip-hop, but the beat is nonetheless a key ingredient in the song). “It’s a Vision” continues this thread in a more subdued fashion; “Cheesecake Factory”, a slow-moving, explosive synthpop ballad, feels like the first outlier on Perfect, but it’s not the last, as the minimal guitars of “Holds the Key” ensure just a couple of tracks later. If Perfect ever settles into a “groove”, it’s probably the delicate, deliberate pop music exemplified in the second half of the album by “Never Rained” and “Evolution”, although the acoustic guitar-led closing track “Marked Man” throws us one last curveball before Immaterialize end their first LP. Perfect may be the sound of Immaterialize figuring things out, but it’s fun to listen along to the process. (Bandcamp link)

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