Pressing Concerns: Sadurn, Pardoner, Fish Narc, Exploding Flowers

Posted byrosyoverdrivePosted inPressing ConcernsTags:, , , , , , , ,

The Thursday Pressing Concerns! It’s got new albums from Sadurn, Pardoner, Fish Narc, and Exploding Flowers, all of which come out tomorrow (October 16th). Also, check out the Monday blog post (featuring Old Joy, Railcard, Summer Sleeves, and CuVa Bimö) if you missed that one.

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.

Sadurn – The Underworld

Release date: October 16th
Record label: Run for Cover
Genre: Alt-country, folk rock, singer-songwriter
Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital
Pull Track: Mess

I first heard Sadurn on a various-artist compilation in 2021, and at the time I remarked that they might “end up ‘going places’”. The following year they released Radiator, their first album for Run for Cover Records, and (for once) I was proven correct, as it garnered the Philadelphia alt-country quartet a good deal of attention (including from this very blog, who named it one of the ten best albums of 2022). I did not predict, however, that we wouldn’t hear from Sadurn again until four years after Radiator’s release–and neither did they, precisely. Frontperson G DeGroot struggled with both the sudden popularity of their band and an “intense break up” which manifested physically as being unable to sing, halting the band’s ability to record the songs which eventually became The Underworld. The quartet (DeGroot, guitarist Jon Cox, drummer Amelia Swain, and bassist Tabitha Ahnert) mostly recorded these songs with Heather Jones (Ther) in January 2024, and DeGroot finished their vocals a few months later.

The songs of The Underworld were actually written fairly quickly after Radiator, and the album really does sound like a companion piece to that record despite the gap. Sadurn sound quiet and tired–just like they did on Radiator, but quite possibly even more so. The quartet have played together quite a bit in the four years between records, but their chemistry is more subtle than other road-tested, well-oiled-machine rock bands I write about on this blog. The players continue to leave plenty of space for DeGroot’s writing and their voice (a standout in this current era of alt-country, it should be said). The band meander through the electric numbers, occasionally rising to something relatively rousing in “The Weight” and “Never Tell Me”, but just as content to ride out the plain-delivered country of “Mess”. Spending time with the lyrics of The Underworld is to recognize some pretty intimate and appropriately hard-hitting “breakup album” writing, but the “rawness” of The Underworld is very well-crafted and performed in every aspect of the album. Sadurn are a very strong band, and they made another very strong album. (Bandcamp link)

Pardoner – Target Practice

Release date: October 16th
Record label: Bar/None
Genre: 90s indie rock, garage rock, punk rock, fuzz rock, post-punk
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
Pull Track: Don’t Slouch

Pardoner have been doing their thing for over a decade now. I first heard the San Francisco quartet (vocalist/guitarist Max Freeland, bassist Colin Burris, drummer River van den Berghe, and guitarist Trey Flanigan) in 2017 when they put out the chaotic, noisy garage-post-punk LP Uncontrollable Salvation on Father/Daughter, and I’ve kept tabs on them as they’ve ping-ponged between that end of their sound and a more pop-friendly one on albums like 2019’s Playin’ on a Cloud and 2021’s Came Down Different. Pardoner’s quest to make music that sounds like it should’ve been on a Merge Records sampler circa 1995 serves them especially well on their latest album, Target Practice (their fifth LP, I believe).

I don’t know precisely what spurred Pardoner to sharpen their hooks, shorten their songs, and make their most straight-ahead pop album yet, but I’m glad they did it, because it suits them very well. Despite the pop-centric writing, Freeland doesn’t assert himself any more as a lead vocalist than he typically does (again, how Merge Records in 1995 of them), but “Crazy Bass” and “Crop Circle” are about as attention-grabbing as Pardoner can get without going back to noise rock (and, plus, I can hear what he’s saying just fine on “Don’t Slouch”, which might be one of my favorite choruses of the year so far). “I thought I saw a shooting star / But it was only changing mags,” murmurs Freeland in the refrain of closing track “Changing Mags”, sounding almost demure about the whip-smart power pop record his band put together. It reminds me a lot of a certain period in the history of indie rock… (Bandcamp link)

Fish Narc – Uncle

Release date: October 16th
Record label: K
Genre: 90s alt-rock, power pop
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Much Less Me

It’s probably not all that surprising that I’m writing about an Alex Farrar-produced indie rock album that is being released by K Records, but the road that Olympia, Washington’s Fish Narc took to get to Uncle is a long and surprising one. See, Fish Narc is the moniker of Ben Funkhouser, a punk musician from the Pacific Northwest who apparently played a big role in the 2010s emo-rap flap, collaborating with names that I, someone who doesn’t know much about emo rap, nonetheless do recognize like Lil Peep and Wicca Phase Springs Eternal. I didn’t know about any of that when I first listened to Uncle, though, which is a great 90s alt-rock/power pop album in the vein of The Lemonheads, Gin Blossoms, Paul Westerberg, Dinosaur Jr., and the like.

Having returned to guitar music in recent records like last year’s frog song, Uncle is a different kind of new frontier for Fish Narc: shiny, professionally-produced guitar pop. The first proper song on Uncle, “Much Less Me”, is damn near orgcore in its unassuming, raspy vocals and vague rootsiness, and from that point forward Funkhouser displays a workmanlike attitude in fully embracing earnest power pop in “Emma”, “Not to Guess”, and “Wouldn’t You Know”. There’s a subtle tension in Uncle between the meandering Cascadian undertones and the breathlessness with which Funkhouser delivers his pop songs, which would make it an intriguing release even if it wasn’t pound-for-pound full of some of the best power pop I’ve heard in a minute. (Bandcamp link)

Exploding Flowers – Alphabet Window

Release date: October 16th
Record label: Meritorio
Genre: Jangle pop, psychedelic pop, college rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Space in Between

Last March, Los Angeles quartet Exploding Flowers charmed me with Watermelon/Peacock, a strong and capable collection of “hook-fest power pop”, “pure psychedelia”, “throwback San Francisco garage rock”, and “60s-style keys and organs” as I deemed it at the time. Led by Los Angeles music veteran Sharif Dumani and rounded out by Josh Mancell, Happy Tsugawa-Banta, and Mark Sogomian, Exploding Flowers bucked the typical long gap in between their albums this time by only waiting about a year and a half to release Alphabet Window, their fourth LP. Like their previous record, Alphabet Window is another strong guitar pop album over which “college rock”, their region’s Paisley Underground, and Dunedin’s Flying Nun Records loom large (Exploding Flowers’ Bandcamp page displays a complimentary quote from The Bats’ Robert Scott, which I’d imagine they consider a crowning achievement). The haziness of bands like The Byrds and The Bats permeates Alphabet Window to perhaps an even greater degree than their past records, though Exploding Flowers remain a pop-song-first exploration of the psychedelic phenomenon. Alphabet Window is perhaps a bit more of a laid back Exploding Flowers, but it’s still a very upbeat album with all the “vibrant jangle” one could want. If Exploding Flowers want to start making these a more regular occasion, that’s more than alright with me. (Bandcamp link)

Also notable:

Leave a Reply