Pressing Concerns: Bill Orcutt, Missed Dunks at Summer League, Dialup Ghost, The Foot & Leg Clinic

Posted byrosyoverdrivePosted inPressing ConcernsTags:, , , , , , , ,

In this Thursday Pressing Concerns, we look at four albums coming out tomorrow, March 13th, from Bill Orcutt, Missed Dunks at Summer League, Dialup Ghost, and The Foot & Leg Clinic. Check them out below, and if you missed Monday’s blog post (featuring Railcard, Star Moles, Timeout Room, and The Early), 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.

Bill Orcutt – Music in Continuous Motion

Release date: March 13th
Record label: Palilalia
Genre: Experimental rock, post-rock, jazz rock
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
Pull Track: Giving Unknown Origin

What’s Bill Orcutt up to now? Indie rock fans may remember his 90s noise rock/experimental band Harry Pussy, but the Miami-originating, San Francisco-based musician has reinvented himself as a prolific solo artist over the past decade and a half. Though Orcutt is known for free improvisation, his hit 2022 album Music for Four Guitars (I mean, as much of a “hit” as this kind of thing can be) spotlit a strong compositional element (and it also birthed the Bill Orcutt Guitar Quartet, featuring Wendy Eisenberg, Ava Mendoza, and Shane Parish). Once again released via his own label Palilalia, Orcutt’s latest solo album, Music in Continuous Motion, finds the guitarist returning to the realm of four-guitar compositions (all played by himself, of course). I only have a passing familiarity with Orcutt’s work (for instance, I haven’t heard any of the five solo albums that came in between this one and Music for Four Guitars), but the fluid spirit of Music in Continuous Motion drew me in pretty quickly.

I mean, it’s called Music in Continuous Motion, and that’s exactly what it sounds like. The four guitars intertwine and play off of each other, but they’re always moving towards something–and moving quickly, as Orcutt wraps up every one of these songs in under three minutes (and the LP itself in under thirty). Even the titles flow into each other; I’m not sure if all twelve of them combined make a coherent statement per se, but the ones adjacent to each other all seem to be in communication, at least (“Because sharp also smooth”, “And warm to the touch”, “Now nearly gone”, “Unfinished not fragile”, “Yet always moving”, et cetera). The songs are somewhat chaotic but outwardly melodic; “Giving unknown origin”, the opening track, positively chimes along, and the next few songs are all markedly tuneful (even “Now nearly gone”, the most abrasive song up until that point on the record, has some tasteful and understandable guitar solos baked into it). I don’t regret peeking into the world of Bill Orcutt; if Music in Continuous Motion is at all representative, it’s a quite vibrant one. (Bandcamp link)

Missed Dunks at Summer League – Fared Well

Release date: March 13th
Record label: Machine Duplication
Genre: 90s indie rock, lo-fi indie rock, fuzz rock
Formats: Cassette, digital
Pull Track: Missed Dunks at Summer League

I have my pre-conceived notions on what “Memphis rock music” sounds like. It’s the land of the Oblivians, Jay Reatard, and Goner Records (not to mention “rock and roll”); I would come to an album released on an underground “always documenting, always DIY” cassette label (Machine Duplication Recordings, run by True Green and Big Clown’s Zach Mitchell) expecting some relatively unhinged mixture of “garage rock” and “punk rock”. If you’re in the same boat as me, I’d encourage you to shelve your expectations when it comes to Missed Dunks at Summer League, a new indie rock band from Jordan Petersen-Kamp. Petersen-Kamp began this project not long after landing in Memphis from Grand Rapids, Michigan, and his debut album under the name, Fared Well, is largely a solo effort (Mitchell and Elijah Poston provide additional percussion, and Spence Bailey is credited with production and additional bass).

Compared to the bands around them in their adopted hometown, Missed Dunks at Summer League’s influences are a bit more…esoteric? The dominant sound of Fared Well is greyscale, chilly, introverted 90s indie rock–Machine Duplication mentions Built to Spill and the Mountain Goats as ingredients, though they don’t particularly sound like either one of those acts. Fared Well does rock in its own way–the opening title track features a nice bass groove and a hypnotic guitar riff, “Miller’s Thumb” trudges forward in an Electrical Audio kind of way, and “Don’t Slip” could very nearly be called “garage rock”. They aren’t the only relatively upbeat moments on Fared Well, but the plodding, introspective side of Missed Dunks at Summer League is already apparent there, and Petersen-Kamp dives fully into it with “Pinaceae” and “Big Lake”. There are more apt choices if you’re looking for a quick hit of Memphis rock and roll music, but if you’re down for a band with a little more deliberation in their stride that can still get it up for rockers like “It Feels Good to Be Bored”, Missed Dunks at Summer League are here to help. (Bandcamp link)

Dialup Ghost – Donkey Howdy

Release date: March 13th
Record label: Self-released
Genre: Alt-country, folk rock, indie pop
Formats: CD, digital
Pull Track: Sunny Boy

The Nashville alt-country quartet Dialup Ghost have been making music since 2018, when they released their debut album, I’m Fine, I’m Fine. At the time, their lineup was solidifying into vocalist/guitarist/songwriter Russ Finn, bassist/guitarists Jade McPeak and Jordan Smith, and drummer Jack Holway; eight years later, the four of them have just made their fifth album together, Donkey Howdy. The album’s goofy title is “an attempt to free the band from over-seriousness and over-thinking”, and these eleven songs (recorded last year with Truck Roley at Bunker Noise) also represent an attempt by Dialup Ghost to incorporate musical ideas beyond their alt-country roots (Roley’s synthesizer and McPeak’s trumpet feature prominently in a few songs). Both Finn’s writing and Nashville drawl help Dialup Ghost stay squarely in the big-tent version of “alt-country”, but Donkey Howdy is a subsequently adventurous and weird album reflecting a band still restless after several records together.

If you can hang with the first two songs of Donkey Howdy, you’ll enjoy the rest. There are some genuinely fun country rock moments on this album, so Dialup Ghost’s decision to open their album with an acoustic guitar-led folk-y ballad in “Seafoam Ceiling” and the depressing synth-Americana number “Shallow Ends” is pretty bold. The duality of Dialup Ghost is on full display with the goofy, endearing, power pop/country synthesis in the most accessible songs on Donkey Howdy, “Bigger Households”, “Yer the Only One on My Mind”, “Soot Sprite”, and “Sunny Boy”. Those are the ones I’d direct any skeptics to at first, but there’s plenty to like in Dialup Ghost’s weirder areas; the seven-minute trumpet-folk meditation on a lost stand of pines of “The Giving and Taking of Shade” is slowly becoming one of my favorite tracks on the record. It’s a good sign that Dialup Ghost find success at both ends of Donkey Howdy. (Bandcamp link)

The Foot & Leg Clinic – Sit Down for Rock and Roll

Release date: March 13th
Record label: Bingo
Genre: Post-punk, garage rock, art rock, psych/prog-pop
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Where Did All the Fruit Go?

Sometime around the beginning of this decade, four musicians from Glasgow made the good decision to begin playing music together, and the not-so-good decision to call their band “The Wife Guys of Reddit”. After a smattering of EPs and singles across the last few years, the quartet (co-led by vocalists/songwriters/multi-instrumentalists Arion Xenos and Niamh R MacPhail, joined by pianist Angus Fernie and drummer Elise Atkinson) have linked up with Bingo Records (The Bug Club, U.S. Highball, Tulpa) to release their debut LP. They’ve rechristened themselves The Foot & Leg Clinic (a marginally better name, I suppose) and asked us to Sit Down for Rock and Roll with an offbeat, catchy, and surprising collection of British indie-art-rock (“wonk rock”, they call it).

Sit Down for Rock and Roll is a bit hard to get a read on at the outset: listening to “Intro – Showtime”, it sounds like we’re in for a bunch of low-key twee indie folk-pop, while the inchworm rhythms, quote unquote angular guitar riffs, and sing-muttering of “The Early Bird” suggests that The Foot & Leg Clinic are one of those new-fangled “British post-punk bands”. The truth is that neither description comes all that close to capturing Sit Down for Rock and Roll, an album stocked with catchy, pop-forward garage rock like “Dear Bongo” and “Where Did All the Fruit Go?” that imagine a more polite version of their labelmates in The Bug Club, as well as the psychedelic, folk, and even prog undertones to pieces like “Music for Baby Fairy”, “…Halcyon”, and “The Mariposal Antidote” (the latter of which is actually nearly as catchy as the previously-mentioned cohort). The Foot & Leg Clinic seem to contain multitudes, and their first album is an oddly compelling listen thanks to it. (Bandcamp link)

Also notable:

Leave a comment