Pressing Concerns: Franklin, DUM1, Brian Ennals & Blockhead, Tiger Bear Wolf

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This Thursday Pressing Concerns features four records coming out tomorrow, July 17th: new albums from DUM1, Brian Ennals & Blockhead, and Tiger Bear Wolf, plus an expanded reissue of Franklin‘s debut album. Read ’em below! If you missed Monday’s blog post (featuring Hurry, William Matheny, TIFFY, and Twin Bloom), check that out too.

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Franklin – Go Kid Go (Expanded)

Release date: July 17th
Record label: Solid Brass
Genre: Post-hardcore, emo, noise rock, 90s indie rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Sliding

From 1992 to 2000, Franklin were a pillar in the Philadelphia chapter of 1990s underground indie-punk. The quartet (initially guitarist/vocalists Ralph Darden and Brian Sokel, drummer Greg Giuliano and bassist Roy Binnion, the latter of which was eventually replaced by Joshua Mills) put out three albums in addition to the era’s requisite 7” singles and compilation appearances. Franklin played shows with The Jazz June, The Van Pelt, and Unwound during their period of activity, a range that’s reflected in this recent expanded reissue of 1995’s Go Kid Go via Solid Brass Records. This double LP edition of Franklin’s first album contains the band’s “complete recorded output from 1993–1996”, gathering up odds and ends to supplement the original eleven-song Go Kid Go with eleven more Franklin recordings.

Go Kid Go is certainly a Rites of Spring-influenced punk record, very much in the vein of bands synthesizing Dischord Records post-hardcore and noisy indie rock into the first wave of emo music. The original album is a hard-edged and wonky version of this sound–it’s not at all surprising to me that Franklin ended up going in a weirder direction in later releases after they got these initial emotional bursts out of their system. It’s a noisy and unpredictable album, but not exactly “confrontational”; I do hear a link to the more drab Pacific Northwest version of post-hardcore/noise rock in these songs. Much of Franklin’s most straightforward “punk” material can be found in the second half of the expanded Go Kid Go; if anything on here could be called “anthemic”, it’s either the alternate version of “Sliding” or “Sprinkler” later in the album. Of course, we also get Franklin messing around in this “bonus” material with stuff like “The Didelpho” and “Slow into Questionable”, where a see-sawing between emotional rock songs and instrumental blasts of noise starts to look somewhere else entirely. The moment that Go Kid Go captures is an exciting one, and what Franklin were doing for three years in the mid-90s still sounds very current. (Bandcamp link)

DUM1 – On a Dime

Release date: July 17th
Record label: Take a Turn
Genre: Indie pop, lo-fi pop, jangle pop, power pop
Formats: Cassette, digital
Pull Track: No1’s Good

Another Oakland lo-fi indie pop group? One that began as somebody’s solo home recording project but is now a full-fledged band? Well, I’m listening. DUM1 was started last August by Mack Narragan, who’s also been seen playing in Dandy Boy Records group CVCC. Narragan initially started quickly writing and recording songs in response to “the loss of several family members and a close friend”, soon having an entire album’s worth of homespun folk rock, slacker-pop, and jangle pop that’s now being released on Ray Seraphin’s Take a Turn label as DUM1’s debut album (you’ll only hear Narragan on these recordings, but DUM1 is now a quintet featuring members of The Greasy Gills, Rip Room, and CVCC). 

Of Narragan’s stated influences, the one I hear the most in On a Dime is Paul Westerberg; namely, Westerberg’s lo-fi demo-core output towards which he tended after some time removed from The Replacements. There’s that similar uncertain quality of “I’m keeping these songs close to the vest and/or letting them speak for themselves” to this cassette’s low-key presentation. Every once in a while, DUM1 pulls a sparkling jangle-pop nugget out of nowhere (see “No1’s Good” and “Gilbey’s Landing”), but On a Dime is equally marked by frostier cuts like “From Here to Sebastia” and “Plastic Clovers”. Much of On a Dime lands somewhere in between, living and dying with songs like “Mercury Sabre” and “Pacing” that are propulsive and “power pop” but relatively unadorned while on their missions. These mysterious qualities, balanced with unambiguous pop moments in every track, form the basis for a promising first album from DUM1. (Bandcamp link)

Brian Ennals & Blockhead – Boatshoes

Release date: July 17th
Record label: Phantom Limb
Genre: Experimental rap, jazz-rap
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Signed Sealed Delivered

One of my favorite rap albums in recent memory was A City Drowned in God’s Black Tears, the third LP from the inimitable Baltimore duo of Infinity Knives and Brian Ennals. That wide-ranging, genre-hopping, experimental, fun record was more than enough to get both of its creators on my radar, and it turns out that I didn’t have to wait too long for new music from one of them, as Ennals has returned this year with a brand-new album called Boatshoes. This LP pairs Ennals with Blockhead (AKA Tony Simon), a prolific New York composer who’s had a hand in records from Armand Hammer, Aesop Rock, and Open Mike Eagle, among others. Ennals reveals himself to be just as capable and clever on Boatshoes as he is with Infinity Knives to back him–it’s Blockhead’s slippery, streamlined, and just-a-bit-jazzy production that separates this album from Ennals’ previous work. There aren’t very many “party” moments on Boatshoes compared to A City Drowned in God’s Black Tears, but there are plenty of tracks that are gripping and fascinating nonetheless; I’m definitely intrigued by the team that can come up with stuff like “Smirnoff, Via a Straw”, “Now That’s What I Call a Posse Cut”, and “Soy Boy”. In terms of harder-hitting material, “Roll Call” and “Signed Sealed Delivered” are riots, and I mean that in a different way than I would’ve used in the context of Ennals’ last album. Ennals deserves props for turning around and making something so different so soon, and Blockhead deserves plenty of credit for facilitating it. (Bandcamp link)

Tiger Bear Wolf – Tiger Bear Wolf

Release date: July 17th
Record label: Ernest Jenning Record Co.
Genre: Psychedelic rock, southern rock, garage rock, noise rock, post-punk, math rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Wolf

Tiger Bear Wolf emerged in the early 2000s out of Greensboro, North Carolina, releasing two self-titled albums of garage punk and post-hardcore with a distinct Southern flavor in 2003 and 2005 before seemingly going the way of so many other forgotten bands from that era. The quartet (guitarist/vocalists Jonathan Moore and Noah Howard, bassist Matt Bostick, and drummer Lawrence Holdsworth) never broke up, however, and in fact had been working on the third Tiger Bear Wolf album (self-titled again, naturally) for the past sixteen years. Geographical separation and a (temporarily) lost hard drive slowed the release of Tiger Bear Wolf (2026), but it couldn’t stop this bizarre and fascinating collection of southern rock riffs, math rock twists, and full-on punk rock energy from surfacing eventually. The Tiger Bear Wolf stew is attention-grabbing from the get-go, with “Bronco Town, USA” taking its time winding through heavy psych-fuzz-rock riffs to get to its gigantic final form and “Silver Heart” riding a steady groove through noodly garage rock until all of a sudden it isn’t. “Hands Out Honey” is the most “indie rock” song on Tiger Bear Wolf up until that point (it kind of sounds like if The Grifters were overachievers), but don’t think that doesn’t mean “Silver Tongues” and “Wolf” aren’t waiting around the corner to ambush you, to say nothing of the MC5-like fuzz-punk shit-kicking “Floater” or eight-minute closing track “Bayonet”. On its surface, Tiger Bear Wolf doesn’t seem like an album that took sixteen years to make, but it’s probably not as easy as Tiger Bear Wolf make it sound. (Bandcamp link)

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