Pressing Concerns: Northeast Regional, Comprador, Josephine Network, Lirra Skirra

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

New albums from Northeast Regional, Comprador, Josephine Network, and Lirra Skirra. Simple enough for a Monday Pressing Concerns, right? Perhaps. You can be the judge after reading and listening below.

The April 2026 playlist is on hold until (probably) next week. The blog will 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.

Northeast Regional – In the Desert

Release date: April 10th
Record label: Tor Johnson
Genre: Post-hardcore, garage punk, 90s indie rock, power pop
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
Pull Track: Meander

Northeast Regional are a rock band from Richmond, Virginia founded by vocalist/guitarist Jeff Byers and congealing into a quintet rounded out by vocalist/guitarist Mike Morris, guitarist James Doubek, bassist Tyler Worley, and drummer Tyler Worley over the course of a few singles, an EP, and an LP from 2022 to 2024. They’re back this year with In the Desert, their second album and first made with a firm lineup; the five of them plus percussionist/vocalist Dana Morris recorded the album with Ricky Olson at Spacebomb Studios and have linked up with Rhode Island punk/heavy label Tor Johnson (Late Bloomer, Leopard Print Taser, Aneurysm) to release it. When I first listened to In the Desert, I thought I had a handle on them after the first three songs: a garage-y post-hardcore punk band from the D.C. area, inspired by the punk history surrounding them and inflamed by Byers’ Rick Froberg yelp. 

However, as Northeast Regional have grown into a proper band, Morris has started to sing and contribute songs to the project as well, and his contributions take In the Desert in a different, more power pop-friendly direction. After the grinding noise rock/post-punk of “Deconstructive Surgery”, the fiery garage rock of “MR”, and the Dischord choppiness of “Indulgence”, it’s positively whiplash-inducing for Northeast Regional to hand us over to “Alt Bounce” and “Meander”, two songs that owe more to Superdrag, The Lemonheads, and even Teenage Fanclub than Fugazi or Hot Snakes. The two sides of Northeast Regional are still pretty disparate, but the middle of the record attempts a connection with “Sick Days” and “Long Live the Dullness”, which are both “sprawling” in their writers’ different ways. I like plenty of Froberg/Swami John Reis-inspired punk bands, and I like plenty of 90s alt-rock/power pop revival groups, and I even like a few groups that land somewhere in between, but I can’t recall a band that pingponged between the two so casually as Northeast Regional do on In the Desert. That’s one way to have a new take on some well-worn styles. (Bandcamp link)

Comprador – Please Stay Off My Ass

Release date: April 25th
Record label: Baggy
Genre: Power pop, alt-rock, art rock
Formats: Digital
Pull Track: Reduce Your Motion Blur

Comprador’s Please Stay Off the Statue was one of the more refreshing and inspired albums I heard in 2024. It’s the long-running project of Philadelphia-based musician Charlie D’Ardenne (who also plays in Humilitarian), and Please Stay Off the Statue found an unlikely mid-point between Jon Brion/Brian Wilson-esque power pop/indie pop, heavier alt-rock and post-grunge, and even a bit of “prog/math” rock (in attitude, at least). A little under two years since that album, Comprador are back with a similarly-titled album that once again combines pop brilliance with a vague unease, perhaps more hand-in-hand now than before. The music of Please Stay Off My Ass is largely played by D’Ardenne, recorded in a bunch of different locations from 2022 to 2025 and featuring a few guest contributors including Lung’s Kate Wakefield (cello/vocals), Karl Blau (saxophone/synth), and Parker Drew (bass/guitar).

Intense, intricate pop music is the name of the game in the opening salvo of Please Stay Off My Ass– the atmospheric beginning of “Having Fun” gives way to a confused, nervous, and fuzzed-out mid-tempo pop song, and “Reduce Your Motion Blur” walks an interesting tightrope between “grand, sweeping anthem” and “apologetic”. “Constant State of Shock” flirts with “jaunty”; it’s Comprador’s foray into the realm of 60s-ish folk-pop, I think. After the hard-charging rocker “Bleed & Crawl” (not too hard to figure out what that one’s about for anyone who cares to read the lyrics), Please Stay Off My Ass commits to a noticeably quieter second half–not that “U Got the Dud” and “Now Is a CIA Psyop” aren’t powerful in their own ways, of course. “Party Buzz”, the record’s grand finale, does an excellent job of summing up Please Stay Off My Ass–buzzing, twinkling, crescendoing, and swerving orchestral (in mindset, and, in this case, instrumentation) indie rock music that raises questions as compellingly as possible. (Bandcamp link)

Josephine Network – Hooked

Release date: March 12th
Record label: Lolipop
Genre: Power pop, glam rock, indie pop
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
Pull Track: Hooked

The power pop contingent of Rosy Overdrive’s readership (which, I must assume, is effectively all of you) have hit the jackpot with this one. Josephine Network, led by the titular singer and songwriter, have been turning heads in their home of New York City and elsewhere with a regular live show regimen (including with the likes of Sheer Mag, The Lemon Twigs, and Geese) and a steady stream of rock and roll records (including the 2020 and 2023 LPs Music Is Easy and No One’s Rose). Hooked is, I believe, the third Josephine Network album (featuring the lineup of Josephine with help on the drums from Nat Brower and “Hershguy”), and it’s an all-too-brief jolt of classic, retro power pop piecing together Cheap Trick, 60s girl groups, Sparks, The Beach Boys, and Thin Lizzy.

Fans of the aforementioned Sheer Mag as well as Romero and recent Diners will find plenty to enjoy in these ten songs and twenty-six minutes–opening and closing your record with twin bar-rock songs about rock and roll (“Rock & Roll Singer” and “The Rockers”) is a Bat Signal for a certain kind of guitar pop fan. Most of Hooked qualifies as a “highlight”–the Big Riff that ensnares us in the title track might be my favorite moment on the album, but the exuberant “Mary Jane Girls” (the requisite Song About The Concept of Girls), the silky-smooth-sigh of “All I’ll Do”, the toe-tapping, crushed-out “Babbling Fool”, and the groovy 70s rock throwback “Revved Up Things” all merit mentions too. Like I alluded to earlier, I would’ve been happy to take another twenty minutes of Hooked, but there’s something to be said about Josephine Network’s surgically-precise journey to the heart of “power pop” on her latest LP. (Bandcamp link)

Lirra Skirra – On Chemical Lawns

Release date: April 17th
Record label: Dead Definition
Genre: Post-rock, experimental, slowcore, ambient, electronic, folk rock
Formats: Cassette, digital
Pull Track: Swamp Thing

Chrystine Rayburn and Patrick Glennon are Lirra Skirra, an experimental duo who have been putting out music on their label Dead Definition for a decade now (their debut release, a split with New England ambient act Moves, was in fact also the imprint’s debut release). From 2016 to 2021, Lirra Skirra was based in Philadelphia and putting out a record a year; now they’re in Richmond, Virginia, and On Chemical Lawns represents their first new release after a half-decade away. The duo claim Mark Hollis as an influence, and while I certainly hear Talk Talk-like empty-space chamber-post-rock on this album, Lirra Skirra’s compositions can more cleanly be divided into “electro-acoustic ambience” and “slowcore-esque folk rock beauty”. Opening track “Grimrock” decidedly falls into the former camp, and I’d slot the woodwind-touched “Plant Engineering” and the sleepy “Cargloumic” on that end of the spectrum, too. Blog readers who hew towards the “indie rock” side of things will more likely gravitate to the other four songs on On Chemical Lawns, particularly the slightly electronic but mostly guitar-based slowcore of “Swamp Thing” and the very nearly “breezy” folk attitude of the title track. Throw the brief but compelling jazz-folk of “Four” and the downcast chamber music of “Two”, and you’re left with an album that covers a lot of ground while being pretty quiet about it. (Bandcamp link)

Also notable:

Leave a comment