Pressing Concerns: The Human Hearts, Krill, Live Skull, CLASS

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This Thursday Pressing Concerns features four new albums coming out tomorrow, November 13th (from The Human Hearts, Krill, Live Skull, and CLASS). Check them out below, and if you missed Monday’s blog post (featuring Smug Brothers, Hill View #73, Saoirse Dream, and Axis: Sova), 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.

The Human Hearts – Faith & Credit

Release date: November 13th
Record label: Dromedary
Genre: Indie pop, 90s indie rock, jangle pop, college rock, post-punk
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
Pull Track: Still in Error

It’s been more than thirty-five years ever since Franklin Bruno emerged from the Inland Empire of southern California as the leader of indie rockers Nothing Painted Blue (coming out of the same scene in which the Mountain Goats, Refrigerator, and Goosewind also originated), and it’s been twenty since Bruno’s current project, The Human Hearts, put out their first LP. A compilation album called Viable in 2023 collected miscellaneous Human Hearts songs from 2011 to 2025 on one record, but Faith & Credit is the first new Human Hearts album since 2012’s Another. Bruno and his band (guitarist Pete Galub, drummer Matt Houser, and bassist Brandon Kalber, the latter of which has since been replaced by Bob Bannister) recorded Faith & Credit with none other than Mitch Easter at his Fidelitorium studio and enlists a healthy amount of guest performers, including horns and strings provided by Pere Ubu’s Tony Maimone. The long-awaited third Human Hearts album is a welcome reintroduction to one of the more unique and consistent voices in (loosely speaking) indie pop music.

Bruno’s arrangements and melodies are befitting of an active student of pop music (of both the “indie” variety and several other, mostly bygone from “pop” status, strains). His lyrics, typically the focal point of Human Hearts’ material as much as anything else, tap into that kind of history, too–it’s a lot harder to pull off this kind of writing, “direct” but not necessarily “simple”, than Bruno makes it sound. The prominent horns throughout Faith & Credit put The Human Hearts closer to Motown or even Broadway; not that that’s unfamiliar territory for them, but the effort is a little more concerted this time. The true pop core of Faith & Credit, as exemplified by the romantic financial tangle of the title track, the nearly six-minute centerpiece ballad “Untimely Beggar” (in which Bruno ponders  “Is it wrong to write rhymes when my rhymes write no wrongs?”), and the big-finish finale “Enemies of Song”, is very nearly showtune-level.

Opening track “Still in Error” is perfect jangle pop, though, “Boring Postcards” is also fairly Easter-friendly, and the infrastructure-week-anthem “Shovel-Ready” splits the difference between “power” and “pop” (as The Human Hearts define it elsewhere on Faith & Credit. Elsewhere, The Human Hearts have fun and remind us that they’re very much a Real Band with stuff like the art-funk “A Different City for a Different Life”, the surprising groove of “Cover Your Tracks!”, and the SAVAK-like post-punk of “Our Films, Their Films”. I’m not sure if “Guesthouse” is a proper sequel to “Houseguest”, one of Nothing Painted Blue’s biggest hits, but it’s classic Bruno through and through from the ornery Nothing Painted Blue-like instrumental to the narrative (“I know when I’m not wanted / Sometimes I don’t care,” begins the refrain). I know “classic Franklin Bruno” when I hear it, though describing the constituent parts doesn’t really do it justice (even though I did just try to do that just now). You can file Faith & Credit under “pop/rock” with a shrug, but you’ll be reaching for it enough that it doesn’t really matter, anyway. (Bandcamp link)

Krill – Secret Language

Release date: November 13th
Record label: Exploding in Sound
Genre: Post-punk, 90s indie rock, math rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Driving

Krill are Boston indie rock legends thanks to their initial run from 2010 to 2015, emerging out of the same scene that birthed groups like Pile, Ovlov, and Speedy Ortiz and releasing three albums and two EPs (plus a posthumous third) before breaking up. The final Krill lineup (vocalist/guitarist Jonah Furman, bassist Aaron Ratoff, and drummer Ian Becker, the latter of whom joined in 2013) plus new member Joe Demanuelle-Hall released an album under the name Knot in 2020 that sounded an awful lot like a Krill album, but this turned out to be a blip rather than the start of a new era. It wasn’t until Furman and Becker found themselves both living in Chicagoland that they decided to recruit guitarist Andrew Clinkman (Moontype, Spirits Having Fun) and formally launch a Chicago-style Krill (as well as deciding to retroactively declare Knot a “Krill album”). The trio dropped their first single under this new lineup back in July, and they’ve jumped into things fully with a brand-new album called Secret Language (once again released by Exploding in Sound, who’ve released and/or re-released most of the Krill discography).

There’s a pretty distinct Krill sound–it’s jittery “post-punk”, nervous and somewhat agitated music marked by Furman’s unique voice beating a few key lines into submission and instrumentals corralling that whole adventurous Exploding in Sound kind of post-hardcore/math rock into an uneasy version of “pop music”. This is what you’ll hear on Secret Language; in terms of Krill albums, it’s closer to the punchier Lucky Leaves and further away from the jammier A Distant Fist Unclenching, but it is (appropriately) easiest to understand as a belated follow-up to Knot. “Belated” is a key word in multiple senses here; Krill are loosier and more unhurried here than I’ve heard them in the past. They’re still pretty tightly-wound, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t really see Krill circa 2013 pulling off something like the Ditch Trilogy-esque sing-speaking “Commemorative Plaque” or the deep exhale of “Hawaii”. Even though a decent amount of Secret Language’s runtime is given over to these diversions, it’s hard to imagine a longtime Krill fan being disappointed when they also get to hear the band back in rare form on “Porch”, “Driving”, and “Theme from Krill 2”, weird rock and roll songs that stand up with some of the group’s best. It does feel pretty special to get another Krill album, but, Secret Language works because it doesn’t seem overly concerned about being “special”. (Bandcamp link)

Live Skull – What Could Go Wrong?

Release date: November 13th
Record label: Bronson
Genre: Noise rock, post-punk, 90s indie rock, no wave
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
Pull Track: Freak Out! Jackpot

The New York band Live Skull secured their legacy as noise rock legends over thirty years ago–they emerged from the Big Apple’s “no wave” moment in the early 1980s and are often spoken about in the same breath as Sonic Youth and Swans. Notable musicians like Come/Via’s Thalia Zedek and Chavez’s James Lo did time in the band, but the core guitarist/vocalists Mark C. and Tom Paine; they broke up in 1990 when the latter decided to quit music. I’m not sure what spurred Mark C. to bring the Live Skull name back twenty-six years later, but he, drummer Richard Hutchins, and new recruits Dave Hollinghurst (guitar/vocals) and Colyn Hunt (bass) have doubled the band’s initial four-LP output since returning in 2016. Their newest album, What Could Go Wrong?, is a surprisingly polished and limber collection of post-punk and jammy indie rock that sounds closer to mid-to-late-period Sonic Youth than the no wave beginnings of their contemporaries. The dour but kinetic instrumentals of What Could Go Wrong? are a good fit for Mark C.’s lyrics, which frequently find their way back to the right-wing authoritarianism and fascism that’s been in the American air lately (nothing’s quite as direct as “Youth Against Fascism”, but Live Skull get the point across). What Could Go Wrong?’s main draw nonetheless is Mark C. and Hollinghurst’s explosive guitars, doing battle with the surprisingly deep anchor provided by Hunt’s bass. In that respect, Live Skull is totally wired enough to match decades of younger bands who’ve imitated this sound since their original heyday. (Bandcamp link)

CLASS – Scratching the Ceiling

Release date: November 13th
Record label: Feel It
Genre: Punk rock, garage rock, garage punk, power pop
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Are You Feeling Okay?

The Tucson, Arizona-originating punk group CLASS have been responsible for some of the most consistently fun rock music of the 2020s so far–from 2022 to 2024, they put out three strong LPs and two EPs of first-wave punk rock, early power pop, and snotty garage rock overflowing with hooks and energy. The two-year gap between 2024’s A Healthy Alternative and Scratching the Ceiling is by far CLASS’ longest one yet, but I can understand needing a breather after their initial sprint. CLASS were a quintet last we heard from them, but they’re apparently pared down a bit since–longtime members Andy Puig (vocals/guitar) and Erik Meyer (guitar/bass) are joined by a new recruit in Erik’s brother Martin (Soup Activists, Lumpy and the Dumpers, Inscrutable Records) on drums. Scratching the Ceiling is a new era for CLASS–it doesn’t reinvent the wheel, really, but there’s an extra level of garage-punk sneering that the stripped-down power trio lineup seems to have brought out of them. “Distort the Truth”, “Animal”, and “Coward Age” are all relatively punishing early hits, and even the sweet hook of “Are You Feeling Okay?” has a nice edge to it. Blink and you’ll miss the surf-y rave-up of “Take Me With You”, and the trio slide the slightly mod-tinged “Trouble in the Neighborhood” and jangle-curious finale “Into the Night” towards us as some kind of last peace offering. There’s a lot to recommend in all of CLASS’ return, however. (Bandcamp link)

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