Catching Up on What We Missed

Hey everyone! Rosy Overdrive is up and running again, as you can see. As I get things back to “normal” I’ve realized I can’t spend too much time trying to write about every single album I want to write about that came out during the blog’s hiatus, but I also don’t want to ignore something just because it had the misfortune to come out during the two weeks Rosy Overdrive was down. So, we’re going to quickly run through a dozen albums that probably would’ve been in Pressing Concerns had the blog been active before we move forward.

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.

The Mountain Goats – Days

Release date: August 7^th
Record label: Cadmean Dawn
Genre: Folk rock, the Mountain Goats
Formats: Vinyl, cassette, CD, digital
Pull Track: Charlie Sheen Reaches Out to the Feds

After a few years marked by the loss of twenty-year bassist Peter Hughes and several high-concept LPs, the Mountain Goats needed a palette cleanser, and Days is probably the closest we’ll get to it. Not that it’s a “light” album by any means, but there’s something familiar about this collection of tracks featuring names and faces strewn across the history of rock music set to what still loosely falls under “indie-folk-rock”. (Bandcamp link)

Shredded Sun – Never Odd or Even

Release date: August 14^th
Record label: Repeating Cloud
Genre: Power pop, indie pop, garage rock
Formats: Vinyl (abridged version), digital
Pull Track: Hotel Meridian

Chicago garage-pop trio Shredded Sun have been responsible for a steady stream of quality records ever since their 2023 debut album, and their first release for Rosy Overdrive staple Repeating Cloud Records is a fizzy, expert-level power pop album that stands as perhaps their best work yet. (Bandcamp link)

Stomatopod – Evidence to the Contrary

Release date: August 7^th
Record label: Self-released
Genre: Garage rock, punk rock, 90s indie rock, post-punk
Formats: CD, digital
Pull Track: Mine All Mine

The Chicago-based “PRF-core” garage rock trio return with another furious indie rock and roll record recorded by Jon San Paolo at Electrical Audio, hot on the heels of 2022’s Competing with Hindsight and 2024’s DrizzleFizzle. (Bandcamp link)

Public Opinion – The Curse of the Public Opinion

Release date: August 7^th
Record label: SideOneDummy
Genre: Punk rock, garage punk, pop punk
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Modern Convenience

The Denver punk group Public Opinion burst onto the scene in 2024 with Painted on Smile, introducing a novel and explosive mixture of power pop, hardcore, and Hivesian garage rock–all of which return for an exhilarating sophomore LP in the ten-track, twenty-three-minute The Curse of the Public Opinion. (Bandcamp link)

Lee Bains – Free South 2025

Release date: August 7^th
Record label: Don Giovanni
Genre: Country rock, alt-country, southern rock, synth-rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: (In Remembrance of the) 40-Hour Week

As the leader of Birmingham, Alabama group The Glory Fires, Lee Bains has been responsible for some of the strongest southern rock of the past decade or so–but, while Free South 2025 contains a selection of songs from those great albums, this solo live album transforms the musician’s work in a completely new way. Instead of trying to recreate the country rock of his band, Bains leans into synthesizers and drum machines here, creating a mixture of 80s-fluent synthpop and alt-country that does surprising justice to these protest songs. (Bandcamp link)

Kiwi Jr. – Blowin’ Up

Release date: August 14^th
Record label: K/Perennial
Genre: Jangle pop, power pop, indie pop, 90s indie rock
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
Pull Track: Blowin’ Up

On their first album in four years, the beloved Toronto indie rock institution Kiwi Jr. make their blend of classic power and jangle pop, 90s indie rock, and synth-rock (which they tone down from 2022’s Chopper but don’t abandon) sound as seamless and patient as ever. (Bandcamp link)

Why Bother? – Beyond Step One

Release date: August 7^th
Record label: Feel It
Genre: Garage punk, synthpunk
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Come Undone

Beyond Step One just might be horror-tinged Iowa garage punks Why Bother?’s magnum opus–eighteen songs and forty-one minutes long, featuring plenty of dark, synth-damaged basement art punk moments connected by even more primordial dread. (Bandcamp link)

Imy3 & Towhead – Imy3 & Towhead

Release date: August 7^th
Record label: Cherub Dream
Genre: Lo-fi indie rock, folk rock, post-rock, 90s indie rock, slowcore
Formats: Cassette, digital
Pull Track: What You Mean

The latest dispatch from San Francisco label Cherub Dream is a split release, a cassette featuring three songs each from Philadelphia’s imy3 and Oakland’s Towhead; the nearly-thirty-minute EP pairs the relatively short folk-pop underground of the former with the sprawling post-rock/slowcore of the latter. (Bandcamp link)

Drug Country – Country Drugs

Release date: August 14^th
Record label: Self Aware
Genre: Lo-fi indie rock, fuzz rock, garage rock, lo-fi pop
Formats: Cassette, digital
Pull Track: Apple Grove

John Russell’s fuzz rock group Gnawing sadly broke up last year, but the Richmond, Virginia musician is plowing forward with the most substantial release yet from his solo project Drug Country. Country Drugs is a hazy, lo-fi, sprawling indie rock album, a forty-minute affair raging from the blistering Dinosaur Jr./Nirvana worship of his old band to pin-drop folk songs to diamond-in-the-rough lo-fi pop music. (Bandcamp link)

Ceremony – Tell Me Your Dream

Release date: August 7^th
Record label: Relapse
Genre: Punk rock, garage punk, post-punk
Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital
Pull Track: Death Destruction Mayhem

On their seventh album, the notorious, shapeshifting California punk group enlist John Reis to produce a record that rolls out a ferocious garage-punk sound that nonetheless takes detours into dance-funk, moody post-punk, and synthpunk in a clean thirty-minute runtime. (Bandcamp link)

Real Numbers – Was It Always This Way

Release date: August 14^th
Record label: Slumberland
Genre: Indie pop, jangle pop, post-punk
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
Pull Track: This Empty Frame

The first Real Numbers album in a decade is a lovely one; Was It Always This Way finds the Minneapolis group situating themselves smack dab in the middle of 1980s U.K. indie, offering up ten songs with various amounts of jangle pop, C86, post-punk, and twee impulses. (Bandcamp link)

Nature’s Neighbor – Ten Years of Pidji (Anniversary Edition)

Release date: July 31^st
Record label: Pigeon Infirmary
Genre: Chamber pop, art pop, folk rock, orchestral rock
Formats: Digital
Pull Track: Hot As Hell Here in the Haze

This year marks the tenth anniversary of Pidji, the sophomore album from the prolific Chicago-originating, Kyoto-based project Nature’s Neighbor. To celebrate, bandleader Mike Walker had the album remixed and remastered, and it’s been re-presented as a formidable LP that veers from gorgeous chamber folk to experimental art pop to electric alt-rock. (Bandcamp link)

Also notable: