Pressing Concerns: Pet Fox, Female Gaze, Porcelain, Paper Jam

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Hello, readers! This Monday Pressing Concerns features new albums from Pet Fox, Female Gaze, and Porcelain, plus a reissue of Paper Jam‘s debut LP. Check them out below!

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.

Pet Fox – Balance

Release date: October 23rd
Record label: Exploding in Sound
Genre: Math rock, 90s indie rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Holding On

Pet Fox are royalty in the realm of 2010s New England indie rock, with its members having connections to Ovlov, Palehound, Grass Is Green, and Gouge Away, among other acts. It’s surprisingly been four years since the Boston-based trio (vocalist/guitarist Theo Hartlett, bassist Morgan Luzzi, and drummer Jesse Weiss) put out an album, but Balance picks up right where 2022’s A Face in Your Life left off, more or less. Pet Fox do the “pop music via math-y 90s indie rock bands” thing that several vintage Exploding in Sound Records bands have done (see: Astronaut, Two Inch), but their version has always been a smooth, unhurried, and low-key take on it. Inspired by his work on Truth Club’s Running from the Chase, Pet Fox enlisted superproducer Alex Farrar to record Balance at his Asheville studio Drop of Sun, and it’s apparent that Farrar understands what makes Pet Fox as potent of a band as they are.

The opening title track to Balance is everything one could want in a Pet Fox hit: propulsive, rousing (for them), and full of melodies in every nook. The more reflective math-y indie pop of “Moving Along” sets the tone for where Pet Fox explore for most of the LP: the chilly ballad “Avoidant” (featuring some good music-and-lyrics synergy) and the even-toed “My Only Virtue” surround the sparkling post-punk of “Holding On” and blunt that one’s kinetic energy. Pet Fox make limbonade out of the feeling of limbo permeating “Leveled Out” and “I’ll Wait”, B-side album tracks with all the ingredients of “sleeper” favorites to those with patience–and speaking of patience, those who follow Pet Fox down these math rock-probing detours are rewarded with the explosive guitars that kick off closing track “For Sale”. Instead of a big finish, though, “For Sale” fades out as Balance draws to a close; like the best of Pet Fox’s music, it’s a familiarly unfamiliar approach. (Bandcamp link)

Female Gaze – Linea Nigra

Release date: October 23rd
Record label: Fort Lowell
Genre: Psychedelic rock, art rock, desert rock, post-rock, jazz rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Bury You

The Tucson, Arizona trio Female Gaze came to my attention in 2024 thanks to Tender Futures, their debut album. Guitarist/vocalist Nelene DeGuzman, bassist Kevin Conklin, and drummer Nicky David Cobham-Morgese (the first two of whom previously played together in The Rifle) probed the outer reaches of power-trio psychedelia on that five-song, thirty-two minute LP; I said that it “explores the desert using empty space and towering nothingness as its language”. Female Gaze have returned this year with their second album, Linea Nigra, another collection of southwestern desert-psych that DeGuzman says is inspired by “navigating labor, delivery, and the prospect of mothering while the world is on fire”.

The forty-six minute Linea Nigra contains twice as many tracks as Female Gaze’s previous LP, but the trio haven’t abandoned epic-length songs: the title track, sitting right in slot number two, stretches its crawling expanse to over ten minutes in length, and there’s a trio of six-minute songs in the fluid, brisk “The Center Cannot Hold”, the lumbering “Sa Loob”, and the fuzzy closing track “Happysadfree”. Like Tender Futures, Linea Nigra is a quietly intense album in which it’s easy to get lost–the songs on this one are a little more discrete this time, but Female Gaze are still pretty far from embracing traditional rock/pop structures here (the closest they get to them is in single “Bury You”, which is a welcome outlier). For those interested in bands making their own little worlds in their records, Female Gaze have continued to prove their ability in this niche with Linea Nigra. (Bandcamp link)

Porcelain – Today’s Minor Victories

Release date: October 23rd
Record label: Todo
Genre: Noise rock, post-hardcore, 90s indie rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Shotgun

Porcelain are an Austin, Texas noise rock band made up of people who have previously been in other Texas noise rock bands–guitarist/vocalist Steve Pike was in Exhalants, which had a bit of a moment at the beginning of this decade, bassist Jordan Emmert was in Super Thief (shout out to Post-Trash for getting me into them way back in 2017), guitarist Ryan Fitzgibbon was in US Weekly, and drummer Eli Deitz is in Votive. Porcelain’s self-titled debut album in 2024 got some attention among those of us who enjoy the heavier side of the 90s indie rock revival–Unwound, Lync, various Touch & Go and Dischord Records bands, you get the gist. The quartet are back for a second round on Today’s Minor Victories, their sophomore album, and it’s an excellent example of the lean and post-punk sides of “post-hardcore”. On the “hard-hitting punk rock” end of the spectrum we have stuff like the rhythm-driven “Apocalypse”, the frantic “DSD”, and the lumbering “Infodump”; more adventurous listeners may be intrigued by the six-minute art-punk centerpiece “Shotgun”, the cavemen lurch of the title track, and the ten-minute closing track “Closure”. If you wish Porcelain’s music was “prettier”, you might like “Waltz”, which actually is somewhat beautiful while keeping a foot in posthardcorenoiserock. There’s a lot to like about Today’s Minor Victories and a lot to like about Porcelain, who are very good at what they do. (Bandcamp link)

Paper Jam – This and That

Release date: October 23rd
Record label: K/Perennial
Genre: Twee, indie pop, jangle pop, pop punk
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
Pull Track: Roaming Eyes

The Texas indie pop group Paper Jam quietly debuted last year with a self-released album called This and That, a brief and infectious collection of twee pop music made with a clear reverence to classic K Records bands like Tiger Trap (as well as Slumberland, Sarah Records, Flying Nun, and so on). This and That was an underground indie pop hit, garnering praise from every “similar to Rosy Overdrive” blog and newsletter out there. Much like their fellow Texas twee revivalists Touch Girl Apple Blossom, they were then summarily conscripted into K Records itself, with the Pacific Northwest label re-releasing This and That for a wider audience this year. Maybe I’m “late” to the party on this one, but that’s no reason not to shine a light upon This and That, ten songs and twenty minutes of everything good about the “peppy” and “brisk” sides of twee music. The candy-coated avalanche of opening track “Polka Dot Girl” (seventy-eight seconds long, by the way) is a great kickoff, and while Paper Jam only go full twee-punk a couple more times on the LP (shout out “Skyscraper”), that doesn’t stop jangle pop hits like “Lovely Girl” and the ever-so-slightly post-punk-tinged “Roaming Eyes” from sounding just as breathless. Paper Jam are right where they’re supposed to be at the forefront of the current twee revival, and I’m looking forward to where they go from here. (Bandcamp link)

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