Pressing Concerns: Micah Schnabel and Vanessa Jean Speckman, The Notwist, Land Whales, Corespondents

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

We’ve got four new albums for you in this Monday Pressing Concerns, all of which came out last week: new LPs from Micah Schnabel and Vanessa Jean Speckman, The Notwist, Land Whales, and Corespondents. Check ’em out!

No Tuesday post this week. Due to personal life business and whatnot, we may be down to two posts a week for the foreseeable future. But we’ll be back on Thursday!

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.

Micah Schnabel and Vanessa Jean Speckman – The Great Degradation

Release date: March 11th
Record label: Self-released
Genre: Country punk, cowpunk, alt-country, singer-songwriter, Americana
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
Pull Track: Bongos

Two Cow Garage co-leader and central Ohio cowpunk poet laureate Micah Schnabel is about two years removed from The Clown Watches the Clock, a smart, catchy, and funny opus of Midwestern desperation, poverty, and general ambience (I mean, what’s the difference?) that stands as one of the long-running musician’s best works. The cult alt-country lifer is back with a record called The Great Degradation, made with his partner, poet and musician Vanessa Jean Speckman, and partially spurred on by the two of them getting priced out of their Columbus apartment. The duo assembled a group of collaborators with substantial overlap from The Clown Watches the Clock‘s personnel (engineer Alex Douglas, drummer Jason Winner, organist/guitarist Jay Gasper, bassist Todd May, and pianist Frank Turner) and bashed out The Great Degradation over “2.5 days in two separate basements in Columbus”, and the result is an ornery, more laser-focused sequel to Schnabel’s last LP.

Compared to the bittersweet character sketches that opened The Clown Watches the Clock, Schnabel and Speckman barely even bother with these useful middlemen in The Great Degradation’s opening salvo: the duo’s seething landscape-view look at “MAHA” carnage and transphobia resolves to simply “Hands up! Who’s had enough?”.  There’s still plenty of wit on this record–“Enemy of the State”, for one (“We’re enemies of the state! / Mental, emotional wellbeing? Not great!”), and “C.I.Hey!” also has plenty of memorable lines before the climax, where Schnabel asks if he, too, can receive the Jackson Pollock treatment for his art. The dark folk rock of “Diamond Dave” and “Omaha (Villain)”, conversely, sound like the work of somebody whose relationship with “wit” is nearing its end. Like most Schnabel-helmed records, The Great Degradation is a rollercoaster, and we’re again rewarded with moments of country rock catharsis–the best ones on this album are the transcendent hackeysack/drum circle anthem “Bongos” and the singalong “2P4P” (repeat after me: “We live in a death cult called the USA / Gets a little more expensive every day”). You won’t find Schnabel and Speckman’s art in The Atlantic, exactly, but the inland stories land a lot closer to home (and I don’t mean that in a strictly geographic sense). (Bandcamp link)

The Notwist – News from Planet Zombie

Release date: March 13th
Record label: Morr Music
Genre: Art rock, 90s indie rock, psychedelia, chamber pop
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
Pull Track: X-Ray

I admit that I’m not the most familiar with the oeuvre of The Notwist. I certainly know of them, the long-running German group acclaimed for merging indie rock and electronica around the turn of the century (they’ve actually been around since the 1980s, initially as a punk band). Currently, the “main trio” of the band is comprised of founding members Markus Acher and Micha Acher plus newer recruit Cico Beck, but the “expanded live formation” of the band more than doubles its numbers (specifically, Theresa Loibl, Max Punktezahl, Karl Ivar Refseth, and Andi Haberl). News from Planet Zombie, The Notwist’s tenth album and first in five years, was recorded by the seven of them in their “home base” of Munich; the resulting album subsequently has a strong foundation in solid indie rock music, even if I’d characterize it as largely “unclassifiable” beyond that. Sometimes quick and straightforward, sometimes symphonic and patient, News from Planet Zombie sounds like a veteran band confidently going wherever their ideas happen to take them.

Chilly indie rock collides with woodwinds in the six-minute opening track “Teeth”, a winding journey that remains engrossing right until single “X-Ray” kicks in with garage rock structure, post-punk rhythms, and a melancholic vocal melody from Markus Acher. The rocking side of The Notwist returns in “The Turning” and parts of “Silver Lines”, but News from Planet Zombie also encompasses the psychedelic pop of “Propeller”, a beautiful chamber-folk cover of “Red Sun” (an underappreciated Neil Young cut from 2000’s Silver & Gold), and the country ballad of “Projectors”. The compact, smooth-moving Notwist found in “The Turning” and “X-Ray” is what drew me into News from Planet Zombie at first, and it’s the layers of “Teeth” and the quiet “Snow” that kept the record on my mind. It’s a very good way to construct a sturdy, long-haul kind of album–it’s like they’re experts at this or something. (Bandcamp link)

Land Whales – How to Make a Breakfast

Release date: March 13th
Record label: Buh
Genre: Noise rock, experimental rock, punk rock, fuzz rock, shoegaze
Formats: Cassette, digital
Pull Track: Little Glow

Land Whales were started by vocalist/guitarist Martín Schellekens in Havana, Cuba in 2021; initially, they were called Hey Joni, but the name had changed by the time they released an EP (Libélula) and LP (Null Days) in 2023 on local label Death Heaven Flowers. Schellekens recently relocated from Havana to The Netherlands, but not before recording How to Make a Breakfast, the second Land Whales album, with regular collaborator Martín Espinosa. Released via Buh Records, the Lima, Peru-based label that has been chronicling experimental and underground Latin American music for over twenty years, How to Make a Breakfast is an abrasive, maxed-out noise rock record; more accessible influences like Sonic Youth and shoegaze are present, but Schellekens and Espinosa are truly committed to making challenging pillars of noise music as well.

The first two tracks on How to Make a Breakfast make Land Whales’ seriousness abundantly clear: they start the LP with “Pierce”, which is two minutes of droning feedback and then two more of sludgy noise punk, and then “The Trial” is blistering, frenetic, self-destructive post-hardcore. The reprieve (relatively speaking, I mean) comes in the form of “Eyes Out” and “Little Glow”, both of which are distorted but are more or less straightforward indie rock sounds in a Sonic Youth vein, and “Slit Your Guts” is the closest that Land Whales get to straight-up shoegaze on the album. Brace yourself, though, because Schellekens and Espinosa then take us on an eight-minute feedback-laden odyssey called “No Privacy” and follow it up with an appropriately-titled sludgy number called “The Torment”. Land Whales are the real deal, and, though Schellekens may not live there anymore, it’s certainly worth highlighting that How to Make a Breakfast is entirely the product of a Cuban rock scene clearly meriting a spotlight beyond its country of origin. (Bandcamp link)

Corespondents – Exploding House

Release date: March 12th
Record label: Antiquated Future
Genre: Post-rock, jazz-rock, surf rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Strawberry Ashtray

The confusingly-named Seattle quartet Corespondents have been doing their thing for over twenty years now–said “thing” being instrumental, “surf-inspired” post-rock. The four of them (currently Doug Arney, Todd Arney, Olie Eshleman, and Kieran Harrison) are on their tenth album now, Exploding House, out via Pacific Northwest indie rock stalwart label Antiquated Future (Rose Melberg, Guidon Bear, Fred Thomas). Compared to the other long-running, (sometimes) instrumental Seattle post-rock group I know, the noise rock-adjacent Kinski, Corespondents have a wildly different set of influences: psychedelia, jazz, Tropicália, and, indeed, surf rock. Exploding House is a concise one, fitting six compositions into twenty-seven quick minutes. Opening track “Rubbin My Dirt Ball” introduces Corespondents with spindly guitars, strong but casual rhythms, and synths set to “whooshing”; the brighter songs on the album, like “Strawberry Ashtray” and “Queen Nut”, follow in its footsteps. On the more challenging end of the spectrum, the seven-minute “Furtive Lurker” chronicles Corespondents’ full descent into jazz rock, while closing track “Vegan Meditation Part 2: K-hole at the AI Weiwei Jawa Rave: Sisyphus Mix” (sure, sure) is a little closer to ambient-rock. It’s nothing that those of you willingly signing yourselves up for “surf-inspired post-rock” can’t handle, though. (Bandcamp link)

Also notable:

Leave a comment