Pressing Concerns: Remember Sports, Gentle Brontosaurus, Sanpaulo, Middleman

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Welcome to the Thursday Pressing Concerns! We have four records coming out tomorrow, February 13th: new albums from Remember Sports, Gentle Brontosaurus, and Middleman, plus a “mini-album” from Sanpaulo. If you missed Monday’s blog post (which featured Dru the Drifter, Dennis Callaci and L. Eugene Methe, Fazed on a Pony, and Immaterialized), check that out, too.

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.

Remember Sports – The Refrigerator

Release date: February 13th
Record label: Get Better
Genre: Pop punk, power pop, alt-alt-country
Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital
Pull Track: Roadkill

It was 2021’s Like a Stone that cemented Remember Sports as one of the great bands of their generation in my eyes. They’d followed an agreeable, well-worn path to get there–the Midwestern scrappy college indie-punk group moves to a major city (Philadelphia) and makes a more “mature” album (2018’s Slow Buzz). It’s all good, but Like a Stone was like a culmination everything they’d done up until that point and they sounded sharper than ever before to boot. It’s startling to realize that it’s been five years since Like a Stone, although there was an EP called Leap Day in 2022 and solo albums from vocalist/guitarist Carmen Perry and bassist Catherine Dwyer (as Spring Onion) in the interim. The original trio of Perry, Dwyer, and guitarist Jack Washburn welcomed new drummer Julian Fader (Sweet Dreams Nadine, Lane) into the group shortly after their last album, and the four of them went to Chicago’s Electrical Audio to self-produce The Refrigerator in 2024 (“just after” the sudden passing of the legendary studio’s founder, Steve Albini).

Remember Sports have been in Philadelphia for nearly a decade now, and they’re solidly enmeshed in the city’s indie rock scene–their members have spent recent years either playing in or with members of Friendship, 2nd Grade, and The Fragiles. I’m thinking about all the power pop and alt-country that’s come out of the city lately–the former has always been a part of Remember Sports’ sound, and Like a Stone even hinted at the latter, but The Refrigerator is the album that confirms that they’re all intertwined. The genre transition is a lot more natural and intuitive than, say, Waxahatchee’s, and they aren’t high-stakes “Americana” strivers like Wednesday–but, looking around now, these are Remember Sports’ peers. Remember Sports’ approachability, for lack of a better word, sets them apart. They don’t set out to inspire the kind of hyperbole those other acts inevitably attract; they just happen to make perfect albums.

In some ways, The Refrigerator picks up right where Like a Stone left off; specifically, the first four songs hit the exact same sweet spot of emo-ish introspection, rollicking indie-punk tempos, and massive power pop hooks. Having proved they still “have it”, Remember Sports then get weird with a five-minute piece called “Ghost”. With twangy violins, a locked-in rhythm section, and, oh right, a shocking amount of bagpipes, “Ghost” is like nothing Remember Sports have ever done before, but it’s still quite “them”. The Refrigerator is broken open from that point forward. The band offer up stuff like the hushed semi-title track “Fridge”, the torrential distorted-pop-fest “Roadkill”, and the quiet-loud 90s-esque euphoria of “Soothe Seethe”; no two songs are all that similar, but they all fit together. This is, of course, what great bands do in their second decade as a unit. (Bandcamp link)

Gentle Brontosaurus – Three Hares

Release date: February 13th
Record label: Self-released
Genre: Indie pop, power pop, twee pop, chamber pop, jangle pop
Formats: CD, digital
Pull Track: Bend the Knee

I’ve written about the Madison, Wisconsin singer-songwriter Huan-Hua Chye via the two most recent albums from her solo project, Miscellaneous Owl; however, she’s also been the primary (but not only) lead vocalist and songwriter for the five-piece band Gentle Brontosaurus for even longer than Miscellaneous Owl’s inception. Three Hares is the band’s third album and first one since 2018; those of you who enjoyed Chye’s clever, catchy indie pop songwriting in Miscellaneous Owl will find plenty of it here. I’ve gotten used to Chye’s albums being scattershot (indeed, “miscellaneous”) collections of wide-ranging songs both thematically and musically; Gentle Brontosaurus is different, and both Chye’s writing and the band’s playing make conscious efforts to cohere.

Relationship dissatisfaction and interpersonal dead-ends are noticeable recurring themes; the complete incompatibility of “Tumbleweed”, the bouncy power pop send-off “Bend the Knee”, and the complex, thorny pornography/mythology meditation “My Favorite Monster” (“My favorite monster looks like loneliness / And loneliness looks just like a man,” a refrain in which Chye resists her more straightforward side) all qualify. The crown jewel of this side of Chye’s writing is “Cassini”, a ballad in which she plays the other woman to a married Neil deGrasse Tyson fan (this is, I think, the epitome of “down bad”). “Cassini” was co-written by a frequent Chye collaborator, England’s Tom Morton, and “collaboration” is what sets Three Hares appart from a busier Miscellaneous Owlbum. For one thing, the five-piece band setup (featuring horns, keys, and all the “rock band” instrumentation one could want) adds a lot to the music; I’ve heard Chye tackle self-image in her writing before, but, by bringing the race and gender exploration of “Blue” to Gentle Brontosaurus, the band turn it into something soaring and jaw-dropping.

For another, Chye isn’t the only singer-songwriter here; guitarist Scott Stetson brings two songs to the table, and keyboardist/trumpet player Nick Davies (also of Spiral Island) gets one. Stetson brings a slight post-Paul Westerberg Midwestern college rock edge to his songs (ironically, given one of the songs is called “Edge to Lose”, as in “I talk as if I ever had an…”) that Gentle Brontosaurus are able to shoehorn into their twee-horn-power-pop sound nonetheless. Davies’ sole song is the album closer, “Feeling of an Earthquake”, in which the band dabble in tasteful chamber pop and soft rock. Closing their album on a song led by somebody who hadn’t sang lead vocals anywhere else on the LP while also exploring a style they hadn’t really pursued up until that point is a statement about the big tent of Gentle Brontosaurus in and of itself; whether it’s the trumpet or the general sentiment that more ties back “Feeling of an Earthquake” to what came before it, the most important thing is that it does. (Bandcamp link)

Sanpaulo – Konstrukts Vol 1

Release date: February 13th
Record label: Tone Scholar Recordings/Old 3C
Genre: Post-rock, ambient rock, post-punk, minimal synth stuff
Formats: Digital
Pull Track: ¡Maybe It’s Mold!

It’s been a good time for members of the band Closet Mix as of late. The quartet of Columbus, Ohio indie rock veterans put out an LP in 2024, and guitarist/vocalist Keith Novicki’s other band, Eleven Plus Two = Twelve Plus One released an album at the beginning of this year, too. Not to be outdone, Closet Mix vocalist/bassist Paul Nini (who’s also played in Great Plains, Log, and Peck of Snide) has now booted up his solo project Sanpaulo for a new digital EP called Konstrukts Vol 1. Nini also runs the Old 3C Label Group, a “cooperative…[of] artist-run, micro-indie record labels” that have released music from all of the aforementioned bands, and Sanpaulo’s discography has all been under this umbrella as well. Much of Sanpaulo’s output has been in the form of two-track singles, so this eight-song, eighteen-minute EP is a pretty substantial release for Nini.

Directly inspired by Young Marble Giants’ Testcard EP (an instrumental release decidedly less beloved than that band’s lone full-length), Konstrukts Vol 1 is indeed a collection of minimal, languid indie rock instrumentals (or, yes, “constructs”). The more “guitar rock”-based tracks, like “¡Welcome Webelos”, “¡Maybe It’s Mold!”, and even the post-rock-ish “¡Aggrieved Am I!”, feel like an extension of Nini’s even-keeled work with Closet Mix without vocals, while “¡Amazon Prime Minister!” and “¡Pancake Day!” find Nini messing around with synths and organs a little more in true Testcard fashion (although both still have one foot in rock music). Really, if there’s an outlier on Konstrukts Vol 1, it’s penultimate track “¡The Age of Steam and Sail!”, which pairs vibrant, uplifting guitar picking with water sound effects; it’s kind of a “cosmic country/folk”-type diversion, in an interesting way. Konstrukts Vol 1 is a curiosity from somebody who’s been making music for a long time but seems to be still looking for new angles on it; that bodes well for Nini’s future endeavors, and this EP is entertaining on its own, too. (Bandcamp link)

Middleman – Following the Ghost

Release date: February 13th
Record label: Evil Speaker
Genre: Punk rock, post-hardcore, 90s indie rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Carry the Lie

Middleman know their underground rock history, I can tell you that much. Over the course of two very good EPs (2022’s Cut Out the Middleman and 2024’s John Dillinger Died for You), the London quartet (Noah Alves, Harper Maury, Rory White and Ted Foster) honed decades of indie, garage, punk, and even emo-rock history with an affinity for the likes of Hüsker Dü, Dinosaur Jr., Jawbreaker, and Guided by Voices. They’re in the realm of fellow 90s indie rock revivalists Fluung and Late Bloomer (and similarly can veer from punk rock to surprisingly melodic moments), although they’ve got a British polish to their sound that makes it feel like they aren’t merely trying to recreate their favorite records. Their debut album, Following the Ghost, is short and sweet–at twenty-six minutes, it’s their largest statement yet, but it’s still a quick run-through of angsty, catchy, laser-focused punk rock. Following the Ghost’s resting state is “post-hardcore garage rock”, injected with regular bursts of J. Mascis-esque guitar soloing and/or Robert Pollard-worthy arena rock flourishes. The album’s slower tracks like “All But the Flame” and “Morning All the Time” demonstrate that Middleman are just as fluent in “guitar pop” as their other interests, but that isn’t to say that the rockers aren’t just as catchy (I’d earmark the guitar workout “Vacant Days”, the bottle-rocket “Long Goodbye”, and the light-on-its-feet “The Furthest Place” in particular). It’s a consistent step forward from a band that looks to be quite reliable already.

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