Pressing Concerns: King’s Evil, Model Living, Halfway Up a Jagged Hill, Twilark

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In this Thursday Pressing Concerns, we’ve got two albums coming out tomorrow, September 11th (new LPs from Model Living and Twilark), an EP that came out earlier this week (from King’s Evil), and an album that’s out today (Halfway Up a Jagged Hill). Check them out below, and if you missed Monday’s blog post (featuring The Bird Calls, Asher White, Sam and Louise Sullivan, and Off Contact), check that too.

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King’s Evil – King’s Evil

Release date: September 8th
Record label: Worry Bead
Genre: Lo-fi indie pop, slacker pop, bedroom pop, folk rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Sneezed

King’s Evil are a duo co-founded in 2020 by two very good Boston indie musicians in their own right: Sami Martasian of the bedroom pop act Puppy Problems and JM Dussault of chiptune-slacker-rockers (T-T)b. If those two aren’t enough of a Rosy Overdrive cosign for you, their self-titled debut EP also features Alex Judd (Salty Greyhound) on synths, percussion, and production and Nick Dussault ((T-T)b, Really Great) on drums. It’s no surprise to me that King’s Evil is a good record, but it’s nonetheless striking how the duo’s first release is already one of the best things either one of them have made yet. The EP really is the best of both worlds: Martasian and Dussault trade off lead vocals over catchy indie pop like a vintage K Records release, marrying the breezy bedroom pop of the former’s project with the more tinkered-with indie rock of the latter’s. 

The goofy synth hook of “Villain Story” is the most obvious “(T-T)b moment” on King’s Evil, but the sneaky heaviness of the title track and (especially) “Jerry” feel like more holistic incorporations of that band’s sound into King’s Evil. The EP’s one entry into the modern alt-country sweepstakes, “Sneezed”, is a perfect toe-dipping; the “Range Life” guitar riff and the Silver Jews reference situate it right at the center of a hyper-specific movement, but one doesn’t need to have an opinion on Berman versus Malkmus to appreciate what’s ultimately a flawless pop song. The good times come to a careening halt with “Tsavt Tanem”, a sparse all-acoustic closing track in which Martasian sings about a society constantly witnessing death and pleads for a way out of it all. It’s a beautiful song, and coming at the end of King’s Evil cements it as one of the best debut EPs I’ve heard in a minute. (Bandcamp link)

Model Living – The Wall

Release date: September 11th
Record label: Earth Worms
Genre: Post-punk, garage rock, no wave, noise rock
Formats: Digital
Pull Track: Head of Talent

Chicago post-punk quartet Model Living began their career with a pair of EPs in 2023 and 2024, and this September 11th brings us the band’s first-ever full-length album. Vocalist Geoff Daniels, bassist Matt Ciani, drummer Nico Ciani, and guitarist Jay Martinez have put together an assault of a debut LP called The Wall; rather than the “wall of sound”-style assault one might envision based upon the title, The Wall is instead a barrage of words, images, ideas, of a society’s worth of detritus in a blender. Model Living’s version of post-punk is a very American one; they belong to a lineage populated by Protomartyr, Lifter Puller, Bambara, Pardoner, and their neighbors in Stuck.

The Wall is Daniels’ deadpan, droll, grey vocals (and lyrics that are anything but), the Cianis’ blunt, unending rhythm section recalling the Windy City’s noise rock history, and occasional bursts of noise like Sarah Clausen’s saxophone in “Tire Pile” and squealing violin from Audrey Alger (of Upstairs and Prathloons) on “Backwards Racer”. Of the approximately five thousand things Daniels references throughout The Wall, I particularly enjoy the Nimrod Workman cameo in “World of Minds” and a particularly surreal shout-out to Hydroplane’s Selected Songs 1997-2003 in “Head of Talent”. Model Living’s Chicago is tired and dripping with contempt; it’s not particularly fun or easy to listen to, nor should it be. For those who are drawn to the photo-negative, quote-unquote rewarding sides of rock and post-punk music, The Wall has bravely put itself out there for us. (Bandcamp link)

Halfway Up a Jagged Hill – HUAJH

Release date: September 10th
Record label: Vinegar Hill Sound
Genre: Post-hardcore, post-rock, 90s indie rock, noise rock, slowcore
Formats: Digital
Pull Track: Silver Sword

Halfway Up a Jagged Hill are a new post-hardcore duo out of Brooklyn featuring Devin Gilbert on guitar, bass, and vocals and Jeb Polstein on the drums. Their first release is a self-titled-ish album called HUAJH, made with the help of collaborators Reed Black of Vinegar Hill Sound (who engineered it and is releasing it on his record label) and Lucy Mondello of Fish Hunt (who provides backing vocals on half of these songs), not to mention having Nick Corbo of Spirit Was make the album’s artwork. Halfway Up a Jagged Hill’s influences range from the post-rock/emo of The World Is a Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid to Die to the explosive noise rock of Pile to black metal group Liturgy, and I can believe they’re drawing from all of them listening to HUAJH. At its loudest, Halfway Up a Jagged Hill’s music is heavy, downtuned, metallic post-hardcore/emo scorching, and these crashing waves eventually recede to reveal tidal pools of exhausted-but-tense slowcore sections. It actually does remind me a lot of Spirit Was–it’s an album that’s really able to evoke heavier genres of music while still bearing the mark of the underground indie rock from which it was born. And, like the best of their predecessors, HUAJH takes on the tightrope between beauty and ugliness with purpose. (Bandcamp link)

Twilark – Never Learned the Tide

Release date: September 11th
Record label: Self-released
Genre: Indie folk, chamber folk, alt-country
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Tired to Sleep

Twilark is Canon Pence, a Raleigh, North Carolina-based singer-songwriter who released his debut album, The Taming Ties Create, almost exactly a year ago. The Taming Ties Create was co-recorded in Nashville at the Bomb Shelter by Dominic Billett and features pedal steel from Spencer Cullum; this must’ve been a particularly fruitful assemblage, as Twilark is back twelve months later with another Bomb Shelter-and-Billett-recorded album featuring Cullum’s contributions called Never Learned the Tide. The folk music and Americana that Pence makes as Twilark has an earnest little personality to it–there’s traditionalism in here drawing both from Nashville and from Pence’s western North Carolina origins, but it’s also an “indie folk” record displaying bygone decades of pop rock in Pence’s clear, melodious voice and in the songs’ construction and execution. The sleepy folk-country shuffle of opening track “Tired to Sleep” is nonetheless a full-band recording that takes advantage of everyone’s contributions, and the charm of the campfire folk rock of “Oranore” is only enhanced by its swooning mixture of pedal steel, strings, and accordion. Never Learned the Tide is an album out of time and place; it could’ve come out during the height of 2000s indie folk, but it’s not tethered to that era. It sounds just right in 2026, too. (Bandcamp link)

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