Pressing Concerns: Hypnolovewheel, Styrofoam Winos, …or Does It Explode?, The Pines of Rome

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It’s a Thursday Pressing Concerns! We have new albums from Styrofoam Winos, …or Does It Explode?, and The Pines of Rome, plus a retrospective compilation from Hypnolovewheel. Check them out below, and if you missed Rosy Overdrive’s Top 40 Albums of 2026, So Far, which went up earlier this week, check that out too.

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Hypnolovewheel – Parallel Universe

Release date: June 19th
Record label: Octopeace
Genre: Fuzz pop, college rock, 90s indie rock, garage rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Bridget Because

Hypnolovewheel were one of the great lost college rock bands of the late 1980s and early 90s; they formed in New York in 1986 and released five LPs before dissolving in 1993. Their music was pop with a healthy amount of distortion, psychedelia, and post-punk attitude–it would’ve fit in well with what was going on in New Zealand at the time, and it did fit in well with their sonic and geographical neighbors in Yo La Tengo. I gather that there was some kind of dispute over the rights to Hypnolovewheel’s music at some point, but bassist Dan Cuddy, guitarists Stephen Hunking and Dave Ramirez, and drummer Peter Walsh were able to release a vinyl-only retrospective compilation called Parallel Universe in 2020 (compiled by Yo La Tengo’s James McNew, in fact). Walsh unfortunately passed away the following year, but the rest of the band has finally secured the ability to release their discography digitally, which they’ve begun by re-releasing Parallel Universe with a bunch of previously-unreleased demos as bonus tracks.

The first fifteen songs on Parallel Universe are from the band’s five studio albums, presented in no particular order–well, no particular chronological order, I mean. The front end of Parallel Universe is stacked with could’ve-been-hits like “I Dream of Jeannie” and “Bridget Because”, as well as the noise pop masterpiece “Peace of Mind”. There are plenty of hits in the second half of the record too (check out the garage-y “Nature’s Little Sunshine”, the desperate guitar pop of “Kiss Big”, and the hazy “What’s Going On”), and the demos (largely built from two sessions, one from the near the beginning of Hypnolovewheel’s career and one towards the end) reveal that they sounded nearly as great in a less formal setting. Hopefully this is just the beginning of a long-overdue revisitation of the Hypnolovewheel discography, but Parallel Universe is just the right collection to get us started. (Bandcamp link)

Styrofoam Winos – Any River

Release date: June 19th
Record label: Dear Life
Genre: Alt-country, country rock, folk rock
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
Pull Track: Somebody Wants to Send You a Message

If you’re a fan of modern alt-country music, you either know Styrofoam Winos or know somebody connected to them. The exploits of the Nashville-based supergroup and its members are numerous, spilling over into neighboring scenes in Louisville and Asheville and sharing members with both Ryan Davis and MJ Lenderman’s bands. And that’s not to mention Lou Turner, Trevor Nikrant, and Joe Kenkel’s impressive solo careers, too. Still, albums like their 2021 self-titled one and 2024’s Real Time showed that there’s something special about when Turner, Nikrant, and Kenkel get together, swapping instruments, lead vocals, and song ideas to the tune of breezy but adventurous folk rock. Aside from a truly incredible bass clarinet solo from Equipment Pointed Ankh’s Jim Marlowe on “Somebody Wants to Send You a Message”, Any River is entirely the work of the three of them, and it sounds like a band still very in-tune with one another.

Any River is fun and meaty from the start of the chiming, meandering, Turner-sung opening track “Pearls”, and the lovely Neil Young/60s campfire folk journey of “BBQ” is a curveball and another fastball at the same time. The Winos are as quick as ever with a turn of phrase (Turner has one in “I Felt You” that ends with “I wanna meet you on the gastro-plane” that’s sticking out to me right now), and they stitch together a quilt made from sunny southern rock (“Swimmin’”), a particularly Kenkel-esque soft touch (“New Friend”), and good-old fashioned, gently-loping country-folk music (most of the rest of the album). Any River is “merely” another great album from a great band made up of great singer-songwriters; it is, now as ever, a great time to appreciate the Styrofoam Winos. (Bandcamp link)

…or Does It Explode? – Realities Disguised as Symbols

Release date: June 18th
Record label: Middle-Man
Genre: Emo, post-hardcore, post-rock
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
Pull Track: Do You Feel It Too?

I first heard the Madison, Wisconsin emo band …or Does It Explode? last year when they released Tales to Needed Outcomes, their third LP. Tales to Needed Outcomes found the band (guitarist/vocalist Shawn Bass, guitarist Brandon Boggess, bassist J Granberg, drummer Erik Rasmuson, and vocalist Katya Pierce) exploring post-rock, slowcore, and even orchestral music, which, as it turns out, was something of an outlier for the quintet. Their “normal” sound is much more indebted to the post-hardcore side of 1990s emo, and it’s to this genre they return on their fourth album, the Electrical Audio-recorded Realities Disguised as Symbols.

Like Tales to Needed Outcomes, Realities Disguised as Symbols is sprawling (thirteen songs and nearly an hour long for the CD and digital editions), but the endlessly floating ambience of the last LP has been replaced by something noisier and grittier. Fans of vintage Touch & Go noisy post-rock will enjoy the one-two opening punch of “Instincts” and “Do You Feel It Too?”; “Lucky Even Dead” is the first trace of Tales to Needed Outcomes on this album, but it of course builds to a distorted squall, too. Realities Disguised as Symbols covers plenty of ground, from relatively straightforward rockers like “Ground and Leaves”and “Weaker Gods” to messy post-hardcore like “Noise in the Quiet” and “Baby’s First Rorschach Test” to “big ones” like seven-minute closing track “Shelter”. I quite liked the sound of …or Does It Explode?’s last album, but I do not mind at all that they’ve returned to their roots on Realities Disguised as Symbols; their foundation is as strong as ever. (Bandcamp link)

The Pines of Rome – When You Are as Full as the Moon

Release date: June 19th
Record label: Solid Brass
Genre: Slowcore, 90s indie rock, alt-country
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
Pull Track: Pawns

The Providence, Rhode Island band The Pines of Rome formed in the late 1990s, with the trio of vocalist/guitarist Matthew Derby, guitarist John Kolodij, and drummer Rick Prior releasing albums in 1999 and 2003 before a two-decade period of inactivity. They returned in 2023 with a new member (bassist Steven Kimura), a new label (Solid Brass, also home to Bondo, Convinced Friend, and The Black Heart Procession), and a new album called The Unstruck Bell. The fourth Pines of Rome album, and second of their second act, is called When You Are as Full as the Moon, and it sounds like an album made by a self-admitted slowcore band who toured with Songs: Ohia, June of 44, and Silkworm twenty years ago. The Pines of Rome aren’t “heavy” in the way some of their contemporaries were on When You Are as Full as the Moon (why, I’d even call opening track “New Zealand” a pop song), but the Jason Molina scholars among us know that “heavy” is a destination with many different roads. You can find it in long, alt-country-flecked, sprawling slowcore songs like “Pawns”, “Bad Timing”, and “Holler Gold”, each one of which is very nearly its own universe. It’s hovering around the edges of rockers like “Brass Knuckles”. It’s integral to The Pines of Rome, a band who’s exactly right where they should be right now. (Bandcamp link)

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