Pressing Concerns: Hour, The Smashing Times, Song People, Classic Traffic

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This is the Thursday Pressing Concerns! It’s got new albums from Hour, Song People, and Classic Traffic, plus a reissue of an album from The Smashing Times. Earlier this week, the September 2026 playlist went up, so check that out too.

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.

Hour – Ghost Bridge

Release date: October 9th 
Record label: Dear Life
Genre: Post-rock, contemporary classical, orchestral, chamber music
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
Pull Track: So Long Without a Word

We checked up on the chamber music/contemporary classical ensemble Hour in 2024 when they put out their fourth studio album, Ease the Work, and then again in February of last year when they put out the live album Subminiature. While releasing folk-leaning music under his own name, drumming in the alt-country group Friendship, and co-running Dear Life Records, the Philadelphia-based Michael Cormier-O’Leary has nonetheless found time to lead Hour in a brand-new collection of music in the form of their fifth LP, Ghost Bridge. While Ease the Work was made in Maine, Cormier-O’Leary built the latest Hour album close to home, calling on a familiar group of collaborators to realize these compositions: Peter Gill (2nd Grade, Friendship) on electric bass, Frank Meadows (Fust, Dear Life Records) and Pat Keen (Flora Hibberd) on upright bass, Abi Reimold on electric guitar, Em Downing (Buttchug 69) on violin, Peter McLaughlin (Jordan Holtz, Dead Gowns) on drums, and Lucas Knapp (2nd Grade, Nina Ryser, Joey Nebulous) on synth and pump organ, to name about half of them.

Hour has always felt somewhat related to 1990s Chicago post-rock, and Tortoise and Jim O’Rouke are indeed cited as influences on Ghost Bridge. The record’s title apparently comes from an “an unrealized movie concept” of Cormier-O’Leary’s, and Ghost Bridge is subsequently more inspired by soundtrack work–in his essay about the album, Office Culture’s Winston Cook Wilson also references ECM Records and Van Dyke Parks. Longer compositions like “So Long Without a Word” and the title track are slow and expressive, languid with well-timed moments of dissonance (a key aspect of Ghost Bridge more outwardly apparent in the relatively shorter “Centralia” and the ever-so-slightly rousing “Pearls”). Heeyoon Won (who’s also contributed to Gill and Cormier-O’Leary’s solo projects) is brought forward to sing vocals on “Sky Is Blue”, a lovely orchestral/chamber pop song that rises from and recedes back into the larger Hour soundscape with smoothness. Ghost Bridge is another strong entry into the Hour discography, moving forward from the Ease the Work/Subminiature era subtly but deliberately. (Bandcamp link)

The Smashing Times – Come Along with Me

Release date: October 9th
Record label: K/Perennial
Genre: Jangle pop, lo-fi pop, psychedelic pop
Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital
Pull Track: Shade, The Changing Man

From 2021 to 2024, Baltimore group The Smashing Times put out four superb albums of vintage jangle pop and folk rock, evolving into a five-piece band led by Thee Jasmine Monk on guitar and vocals. Before that hot streak, though, came Come Along with Me–The Smashing Times’ debut album, initially released only on cassette in 2019 and featuring an earlier lineup of Monk, Alex (AKA Zelda-Anais), and former member Ole Johnson. The Smashing Times’ labels of K and Perennial (who’ve put out their two most recent LPs) have given Come Along with Me a reissue and first-ever vinyl and CD pressings, augmenting the original seven-song cassette with four previously-unreleased tracks from between the time of this album and 2021’s Summer Inside.

Come Along with Me is a peek into The Smashing Times still in the process of developing their signature sound. That striking mixture of hazy, murky psychedelia, pastoral British ambience, and undeniable guitar pop expertise isn’t apparent yet, but Come Along with Me does prove that Thee Jasmine Monk could already write excellent jangle pop songs at this point. Compared to, say, Mrs Ladyships and the Cleanerhouse Boys, Come Along with Me is a much more streamlined and straightforward listen, although they’re still a bit more fractured than your more typical jangle pop revivalists. Any band who starts their first record with a handful of timeless-sounding guitar pop songs in “Shade, The Changing Man”, “Romani Coats”, and “The Lemon King” is most certainly going somewhere, and one that’s also willing and able to stretch their 60s pop rock out in “Edward Gorey Stories” and “Noburu’s Eyes” is probably going to blaze a trail or two. This expanded version of Come Along with Me is a worthy part of The Smashing Times’ story, one that fulfilled much of this promise in the first half of this decade and one that hopefully opens a new chapter sooner than later. (Bandcamp link)

Song People – Tho I Seem Tame

Release date: October 9th 
Record label: Strange Mono
Genre: Post-punk, jangle pop, college rock, folk rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Silver Flag

Song People is vocalist Shaina Kapeluck, guitarist Darian Scatton, and bassist Benjamin Schurr, a trio of Philadelphia indie music veterans who’ve played in each other’s bands (like Ruah, Hallowed Bells, and Br’er) and contributed to other Philly acts (like Luna Honey and Nyxy Nyx) over the past decade or so. The trio’s debut album, Like Somebody Calling Your Name, came out on Don Giovanni in 2024, and their sophomore LP Tho I Seem Tame has followed a little under two years later. Very few new bands sound like how Song People sound on Tho I Seem Tame, even though I write about a lot of bands who play “jangle pop”, “folk rock”, and even “college rock”.

Tho I Seem Tame reminds me a lot of 10,000 Maniacs, who perhaps similarly built beautiful pop rock (with bits of dream, jangle, and post-punk) via a few talented musical ringers and a striking lead singer (in this case, Kapeluck, who “began her music life as a ballad singer, drawing from traditions of the British Isles, the US and Maritime Canada”). The more “ethereal” and polished sides of Siouxsie and the Banshees are also present, as well as Sinead O’Connor and many of the influences listed for Like Somebody Calling Your Name (Fairport Convention, R.E.M., Talk Talk). Schurr’s post-punk bass work and Scatton’s jangly guitar playing contribute to the gentle “push and pull” feeling we get in songs like “Unwritten Rules” and “Silver Flag”, and Kapeluck’s background very clearly informs her writing in “Mead Hall” (which begins with “I keep coming back to the mead hall, knowing I might be slain”) and “Intervene on My Behalf” (“…for I am weary”, pleads the narrator). Song People virtually have this lane to themselves right now, and Tho I Seem Tame sounds like they’re thriving in it. (Bandcamp link)

Classic Traffic – Real Music

Release date: October 9th 
Record label: Same View
Genre: Power pop, alt-rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Wanna Wish

Classic Traffic are a power pop trio from New Jersey; they formed in 2022, the same year they released their self-titled debut album, and two more LPs followed in 2023 and 2024. Real Music is the fourth full-length from the trio (guitarist/vocalist Andy Altadonna, drummer/lyricist Dante Fotino, and bassist Michael “Dogmeat” Svehla) and their first for Baltimore label Same View Records (formerly known as Strange View Records), who’ve notably put out records from Powerwasher, Beauty, and Robber Robber lately. Beauty’s 2024 album I’d Do Almost Anything for You is especially worth a mention, as Classic Traffic share plenty of similarities with that act: they’re both trios, both from Jersey, and they both share an obvious reverence for 1990s power pop. I referenced Sloan, Teenage Fanclub, and Matthew Sweet when I wrote about I’d Do Almost Anything for You, all of whom very much apply to Real Music, too. If there’s a difference, I think the fuzz rock/pop punk/hard rock edge is more pronounced in Classic Traffic’s music–it sort of sounds like if Thin Lizzy loomed just as large over the Blue Album as the Beach Boys do. Fans of the aforementioned Sloan will love the electric crunchy power pop of “There With You” and “Wanna Wish”, and the relatively quieter songs on the album like “Ghost’s Host” and “It Leaves Your Mind” are nonetheless marked by exciting guitar work. Real Music is quite short, but like the best new power pop bands of this decade, Classic Traffic jam a bunch of great pop music in this short package. (Bandcamp link)

Also notable:

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