Pressing Concerns: Name Names, Buttchug 69, Poem Rocket, Flower Show

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This Monday Pressing Concerns features new albums from Buttchug 69 and Flower Show, a new EP from Name Names, and a reissued compilation from Poem Rocket. Check ’em out!

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Name Names – Waste in My Enrichment Area

Release date: September 18th
Record label: Self-released
Genre: Garage rock, fuzz pop, garage punk
Formats: Digital
Pull Track: A Million Bugs

One of the great indie pop bands of the 2010s was Bent Shapes, a Boston-originating “jangle punk” group led by the inimitable Ben Potrykus until they broke up in 2017. They put out two distinct-from-one-another records of sugar-rush tempos, over-the-top cleverness, and massive hooks; both Feels Weird and Wolves of Want get regular play from me in 2026. On multiple occasions over the past few years, I’d throw on “Behead Yrself, Pt. 2” on my car speakers to give me a jolt of energy and keep me awake driving home from attending a show in the city and idly wonder if I’d ever hear new music from Potrykus again. There was a relocation to Rhode Island and a pandemic-era project called Fruiting Body that released one tantalizing song in 2020, but nothing further ever materialized from them, and another half-decade passed in radio silence from the New England college rock poet laureate. Then, without warning, we got Waste in My Enrichment Area, the debut EP from a brand-new Potrykus band called Name Names. Name Names is a quartet featuring the former Bent Shapes leader (billed as Ben Moy) on vocals, guitar, and keys, alongside Moy’s sister (and occasional Bent Shapes member) Kate Virginia on vocals and guitar and a rhythm section (drummer Ethan Cannon and bassist Dan Paul Mary) who used to play together in the band Courters.

It’s been a decade since Wolves of Want, and the lineup is completely different other than Moy, so it’s no big surprise that Name Names doesn’t exactly sound like Bent Shapes. But it gets pretty damn close. The five-song, eight-minute Waste in My Enrichment Area is way too short, but it packs a punch for every second. The polish of the final Bent Shapes album is entirely dispensed with here, and Name Names instead bash out five relatively snotty and gritting garage punk tracks recorded in a basement. Nonetheless, everything that made Bent Shapes great–the indie pop melodies, Moy’s lyrics, the overall shout-along-vibe–is still there upon a closer listen. “A Million Bugs” is seventy-two seconds of fizzy power-garage-pop-punk (“You make me feel like a million bugs! / Crawling all over me, I can’t get enough!” bellows Moy at the onset) featuring great intertwined sibling vocals starting the EP perfectly. There’s something about the runaway-train guitar chord and metallic-smack drumbeat that kicks off “Translucent Report” that feels spiritually Bent Shapes, even as it’s one of the least-Bent Shapes songs overall on the EP (Kate’s verses are chain; the chorus is egg punk). The crunchy white-hot pop-punk of “Bleeding Out”, the clinking, biting garage rocker “(No Subject) Empty Body”, the “bit of this, bit of that” closing track “Spread Ego”–it’s all essential. It’s a triumphant return for Ben Moy and hopefully the start of something new and exciting for Name Names. (Bandcamp link)

Buttchug 69 – Keep on Rocking for Free in the World

Release date: August 9th
Record label: Self-released
Genre: Garage rock, twee, indie pop, 90s indie rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: For Free

The memorably-titled Buttchug 69 are a trio that came out of Columbia, Missouri in the “mid-2010s”, playing shows but never releasing anything before the three members all moved to different cities (Chicago, New York, and Denver). That’s a familiar story for many bands who formed and disbanded in Midwestern college towns (and all over the world, sure), but vocalist/guitarist Jonas Weir, bassist/vocalist Em Downing (who has also played in Hour), and drummer/vocalist Loretta Kyle reunited in 2023 to play some more shows and eventually get around to recording their debut album. All these years later, Keep on Rocking for Free in the World (which is hands-down the album title of the year) is here; the full album is only available on vinyl and digitally on the co-op streaming platform subvert.fm, so it may involve more mouse clicks than normal for you, the listener, to hear–but it’s worth that Herculean effort, especially if you like the kind of music that Rosy Overdrive typically covers.

The most obvious point of comparison for Buttchug 69 is Beat Happening due to the droll monotone vocals of (I assume) Weir, although the frequently interjections from Kyle and Downing and the simple, straightforward musical choices also help with the similarities. Nonetheless, there’s a Midwestern rootsiness to the irreverence of Keep on Rocking for Free in the World; the trio chug along cheerfully to blustery electric cowboy chords and rudimentary rhythms much like the Canadian musician who inspired the album’s title and his most famous backing band. It’s sort of like surf rock if it was slower, landlocked, and more like alt-country. It’s a dozen fun pop songs by a band fluent in underground indie rock. “For Free” and “Ghost Party” are a couple of immediate standouts, but Keep on Rocking for Free in the World is a really consistent listen from the soft-launching opening of “Intergalactic” to the meandering finale of “Water & Water”. (Bandcamp link)

Poem Rocket – Felix Culpa (30th Anniversary Edition)

Release date: June 4th
Record label: Silver Girl
Genre: Noise rock, post-punk, post-hardcore, art punk, 90s indie rock, post-rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Eject

It’s been a good few years for fans of the turn-of-the-century New York City noise rock group Poem Rocket. Not only have the band started playing shows again, but guitarist Mike Knowlton has been prolific recently as Unlettered and the band finally released their 1999-recorded “lost EP” Lend-Lease in 2024. Apparently the resuscitation of Lend-Lease was the prelude for a discography-wide reissue campaign for all of Poem Rocket’s releases, starting with Felix Culpa. Originally released in 1995, wasn’t a proper “album” but rather a CD compilation of the band’s earliest EP and singles; these songs predate Knowlton’s involvement in the band, as they were recorded in 1994 and 1995 with the original lineup of vocalist/guitarist Michael Peters, vocalist/bassist Sandra Gardner, drummer Andrew Nelson, and guitarist/keyboardist Dennis Bass.

Now reissued on double vinyl to coincide with its 30th anniversary, Felix Culpa is a time capsule straight from the 1990s New York art rock scene. Largely recorded by William Gilmore Weber and Jerry Teel of The Chrome Cranks, the screeching feedback, post-punk rhythms, and noise rock abrasion of Felix Culpa make names like Sonic Youth and Blonde Redhead obvious points of comparison for Poem Rocket. Although it’s a very “New York” sound, the punk heaviness of Felix Culpa’s “rockers” feels less like coastal no wave and a little more…inland (primary songwriter Peters has roots in Ohio, which may explain it). Of course, with Felix Culpa spanning nearly an hour in length, Poem Rocket have plenty of time to nail both relatively straightforward noise rock rippers like “Eject” and “Small White Animal” as well as quieter things like “Milky White Entropy” and “Pretty Baby” and wild experimentation like “The Furry Evil Bird”. It all ends with the massive ten-minute “Blue Chevy Impala”, a destructive march that ensures Felix Culpa is a gripping listen all the way through. (Bandcamp link)

Flower Show – A Cake in a Daydream

Release date: September 4th
Record label: Self-released
Genre: Baroque pop, indie pop, folk-pop, Britpop
Formats: Digital
Pull Track: Planets in My Eyes

Last May, I wrote about the debut album from Liverpool’s Flower Show, a self-described “charity shop pop” sextet whose first LP displayed a very British grasp of guitar pop music (I mentioned David Bowie, Jarvis Cocker, and The Bevis Frond as names who come to mind at various points on Painted Nails & Silver Bells). The second album from the band (vocalist/guitarist/synth player Craig Sinclair, guitarists Dave Miller and Simon Gabriel, bassist Dominic Price, synth player Lloyd Gabriel, and drummer Terry Green) has arrived a year and a couple of months after Painted Nails & Silver Bells, and while A Cake in a Daydream is similarly a lot to take in at once, it also sounds like the work of a group of musicians who’ve taken a large leap forward together as a band and have thus made something remarkably coherent.

A Cake in a Daydream opens with a string of hits: if the mid-tempo, in media res opening track “The Morning Horn” isn’t exciting enough for you, the quick jangle pop of “Planets in My Eyes” and the bouncy post-punk hooks of “Three Day Week” should do it. The minimal ballad “The Only Way Is Down” (which opens side two) is the first moment on A Cake in a Daydream where Flower Show “slows down”, but “Size Queen”, “Lorraine”, and “Noises Off” all ensure that the LP is vibrant as it draws to a close. Flower Show are well on their way to developing a distinct footprint two albums and two years into their run, and A Cake in a Daydream has all the development one would want to hear in a sophomore album, too. (Bandcamp link)

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