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and his band (guitarist Pete Galub, drummer Matt Houser, and bassist Brandon Kalber, the latter of which has since been replaced by Bob Bannister) recorded Faith & Credit with none other than Mitch Easter at his Fidelitorium studio and enlisted a healthy amount of guest performers,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 place in noise rock history 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 of the group was 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 have 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)
Welcome to the Monday Pressing Concerns! We have new albums from four artists who’ve shown up in these pages before: Smug Brothers, Hill View #73, Saoirse Dream, and Axis: Sova. I think you’ll enjoy these!
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.
Smug Brothers – Pinhole to Vortex
Release date: September 18th Record label: Anyway Genre: Lo-fi power pop, 90s indie rock, garage rock Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital Pull Track: Exit to Chagrin
A new Smug Brothers release is always a welcome occasion in the world of Rosy Overdrive, and we’ve had plenty of such occasions thanks to the nose-down persistence of the Columbus quartet when it comes to making southwestern-Ohio-style indie rock. Smug Bothers took a rare and well-earned victory lap earlier this year with the career-spanning compilation called Gravity Is Just a Way to Fall commemorating twenty years of bandleader Kyle Melton creating lo-fi Robert Pollardesque power pop nuggets under the name; they subsequently got right back to work, as the brand-new collection Pinhole to Vortex shows. Aided by the lineup of longtime drummer Don Thrasher, bassist Kyle Sowash, and guitarist Ryan Shaffer (which stabilized on last year’s Stuck on Beta), Melton leads Smug Brothers in fifteen somewhat dadaist, sometimes rocking, always catchy pop songs that ensure the “Smug Brothers legacy” remains an expansive work-in-progress.
Garage rock, psychedelic pop, 90s indie rock from Guided by Voices and others, and classic rock all go in a blender to create the likes of prog-pop mini-epics like “I’ve Seen Them Patch the Same Hole Trying to Get It Right”, effortless post-college rock anthems like “Blitz Meridian” and “Kind Enough to Share the Drop”, and underground flag-waving garage rockers like “Exit to Chagrin” and the particularly smoky “Bolt Through the Blackout” all in Pinhole to Vortex’s opening stretch. Dreamy psych-pop/chamber pop interludes “Speeding By the Way Things Used to Look” and “Wake Up (Be Your Own Planet)” are Smug Brothers’ version of breathers, key ingredients in tapestries that also serve to make stuff like the nostalgic thumper “Back at Earth”, the sixties-tinged garage rocker “Extra All the Time”, and the triumphant “Picasso Waltzes” hit harder. It’s impressive enough that Smug Brothers were able to release a two-decade “best of” compilation earlier this year, and it’s even more so that they’ve followed it up with an album that would rival any such retrospective from many of their peers. (Bandcamp link)
Hill View #73 – Flame Dreams
Release date: September 26th Record label: Trash Tape Genre: Lo-fi indie rock, fuzz rock, noise pop Formats: CD, digital Pull Track: The Light
Hill View #73 is Awsaf Halim, an Atlanta-based musician who put out their debut album under the name, Night Time Is the Grace Period, back in 2024 on Trash Tape Records (Rain Recordings, Tombstone Poetry, Tanner York). Night Time Is the Grace Period is a beautiful indie rock record, spurring me to mention artists like Alex G, Jeff Mangum, and Dwaal Troupe (to whose Hallogallo scene in Chicago Hill View #73 have connections). Halim returned this year with the second Hill View #73 album, Flame Dreams, a nine-song, thirty-three-minute record that focuses and cleans up the sound of their previous LP without abandoning what made it work. Hill View #73 are less totally reliant on fuzz and distortion on Flame Dreams; they’re wielded judiciously in between moments of clarity much like one of Halim’s biggest influences, Phil Elverum (for example, the electric guitars come crashing in after a slower track to announce “Noise Song”, which is surprisingly the best pop song on the album).
Mix Elverum’s transcending of “lo-fi” with some Asheville “alt-country” (or, more accurately, general rootsiness) and just a bit of Elephant 6-ish indie pop from neighboring Athens, and you’re in the ballpark for Flame Dreams. Halim enlists a bunch of guest musicians (violinists Anna Zhai and Charlie Johnston, trumpeter Will Lovell, trombonist Paris Watel-Young, guitarist Nathan McMurray, cellist Ian McNinch, bassist Henry Tartt, pianist Woody Montilus, drummer Dante Andrade, and multi-instrumentalist Desiree Lily) to fully develop the sound of Flame Dreams, a crew that’s just as helpful on upbeat pop songs (like the particularly Elephant 6-sounding “The Light”) as on the quiet ones (penultimate track “Dragon” being one of the best examples of this side of Hill View #73). With Flame Dreams, Hill View #73 have matched their debut and pressed forward, cementing their status (to those in the know) as a remarkably talented and underappreciated indie rock artist. (Bandcamp link)
Saoirse Dream – Grimdark
Release date: October 9th Record label: Lauren Genre: Chiptune pop, indie pop, pop punk, hyperpop Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital Pull Track: Dolled Up
The February 2025 self-titled debut album from Portland, Oregon’s Saoirse Dream was an unlikely favorite for me: the Catherine Egbert solo project’s first release for Lauren Records found the hyperpop-associated musician honing in on “a charged mix of chiptune pop blasts, pop punk guitars, emo angst, [and] lo-fi bedroom pop intimacy” (as I said at the time), leading to what was honestly one of my favorite pop albums of last year. A year and a half later, Saoirse Dream have already returned with their second album for Lauren, an eight-song, twenty-six minute collection called Grimdark. I suspect someone like Catherine Egbert will never make “casual” music, but this album does feel lower stakes than Saoirse Dream, somehow–that record was incredibly eager to prove itself with one massive pop song after another, but here, Egbert seems more content to try some odder things and see where they lead her. Maybe that means leaning fully into chiptune pop on opening track “Death vs Dying”, inviting collaborators Left at London, Estelle Allen, & Leastfavorite! into the fold for the transgender-experience-by-committee masterpiece “Dolled Up”, or getting surprisingly hushed with it on “Onlooker” and “Speechless”. I don’t love it as much as I loved Saoirse Dream, but that doesn’t matter: Grimdark is eight more songs from a very strong artist who is making very strong artistic decisions right now, and Egbert ought to be encouraged to keep creating Saoirse Dream records of all stripes at this time. (Bandcamp link)
Axis: Sova – Flowerage
Release date: October 23rd Record label: Drag City Genre: Garage rock, psychedelic rock, power pop, post-punk Formats: Vinyl, cassette, digital Pull Track: Flowerage
Back in 2023 I wrote about Blinded by Oblivion, the fifth album (and first in a half-decade) from Chicago trio Axis: Sova. That Ty Segall-produced record fell in the realm of the garage rock, psych rock, and glam rock camps in which I’d expect a Segall-recorded, Drag City-released album to fall, and I complimented both the pop songwriting of frontperson/guitarist Brett Sova and the rhythm section of bassist Jeremy Freeze and drummer Josh Johannpeter. Three years later, Axis: Sova have returned with Flowerage, nine more songs and thirty-six more minutes of enthusiastic, electric, and pop-forward rock and roll music. Classic rock and classic “alternative” rock both loom large over Flowerage; the forward-charging post-punk of opening track “Blow Up” reminds me of the Dischord Records/Mission of Burma sensibilities I hear in SAVAK, while the sweeping grandiosity of “Fictional Autonomy” feels closer to the Hüsker Dü-informed space rock of Upper Wilds (which whom they’re currently touring). On the title track, Axis: Sova sound like a more hard rock-indebted The Cowboys, and their similarity to that power pop act underscores something I love about Flowerage: how consistently crisp and clear-sounding these recordings are. Made by post-punk/garage rock lifers or not, Flowerage is brilliant pop music, and Axis: Sova correctly treat it as such. (Bandcamp link)
Welcome to a Thursday Pressing Concerns! It has four records coming out tomorrow (November 6th): new albums from Lou Turner, Wilder Maker, and Slack Times, plus a split EP between Really Great and Miss Bones. The October 2026 playlist went up on Monday, so check that out too if you haven’t yet.
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.
Lou Turner – Strangels
Release date: November 6th Record label: Spinster Genre: Folk, country, singer-songwriter Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital Pull Track: Rattle Yr Dags
Lou Turner hasn’t yet properly gotten her due as one of the great folk artists of this decade thus far, but the Nashville singer-songwriter is thriving in her lane(s) nonetheless: her alt-country group Styrofoam Winos has gotten a bit of well-deserved attention this year, she’s been touring as part of Ryan Davis’ Roadhouse Band, and she’s returned with her first solo album in four years, Strangels, this month. Like her previous solo album, Microcosmos, the title of Strangels is a portmanteau that sheds a little light on Turner’s unique way of seeing things, but while Microcosmos took a laid-back folk rock journey through contentment and domesticity, the cosmos and the living room are traded for the earthbound and outdoor on Strangels. Recorded almost entirely by Turner herself at home (engineering and pedal steel from her partner and Styrofoam Winos bandmate Trevor Nikrant being the only other contribution), Strangels looks away from humanity (on the surface, at least) on a collection of songs populated by animals from horses to snakes to ants.
Being a Michael Hurley acolyte and a Roadhouse Band member, Turner is committed to both the storytelling core of “folk music” and non-rock explorations (her Alice Coltrane influence isn’t just lip service). The flute-aided mini-chamber folk beginning “Ants Underfoot” (leading up to Turner switching between “bewilder me” and “rewilder me”) and the twinkling, pedal steel-heavy country shamble of “Rattle Yr Dags” are the opening salvo, leading to Turner’s more patience-seeking compositions in the middle. “Hidden Lake” and its meditation on the noble serpent (perhaps my favorite denizen of Strangels) is immediately likable upon engagement (much like, well…), while the self-harmonies and dream-folk atmospheres of “Sure Ain’t a Horse” require a bit of letting go. In the semi-titular closing track “Strange Angels”, Turner lets the music do most of the talking: all she says is “Strange angels / Find them / Flying / Close to the ground”. This is, of course, exactly what Strangels does. (Bandcamp link)
Really Great & Miss Bones – Laugh It Off
Release date: November 6th Record label: Disposable America/Don’t Live Like Me Genre: Pop punk, power pop, folk rock, indie pop Formats: Cassette, digital Pull Track: Walk It Off
Miss Bones and Really Great are two bands right in the middle of Boston indie rock at the moment–in addition to the sizable amount of good music both of them have put out, they’re connected to (T-T)b, Lonesome Joan, The Michael Character, King’s Evil, and Bedbug between the two of them. Really Great (led by vocalist/guitarist Owen Harrelson) hews towards pop punk and emo-tinged power pop while Miss Bones (led by vocalist/guitarist June Isenhart) operates in the realms of folk rock and folk-pop, but the two acts aren’t so disparate where a split cassette EP couldn’t possibly work. What’s more, the two bands even cover one another’s songs on Laugh It Off: each side features two originals and a take on one of the other group’s.
Really Great make the commendable decision to take on one of the best Miss Bones songs, “I-93”, turning the alt-country banger into something that rocks harder than I would’ve thought possible; it’s pretty distinct from the Really Great originals here, but the dramatic opening track “Bird” and the relatively streamlined pop rock of “Calling Me Back” hold their own. My favorite song on Laugh It Off comes from the Miss Bones side in the almost-title track “Walk It Off”; it’s a pretty and catchy two-minute pop song featuring some of the best “Two Princes”-themed wordplay I’ve ever heard. Meanwhile, “Snacktime” might be the oddest thing I’ve heard Miss Bones do yet–they have a weirdo art punk side too, who knew?–and their version of “Skateboard Amp” taps into that excitable energy that Really Great always bring to the table. Laugh It Off is a quick and easy introduction to two good Boston bands that stands up on its own, too. (Bandcamp link)
Wilder Maker – Smoking the Bunny
Release date: November 6th Record label: Western Vinyl Genre: Experimental rock, jazz-rock, post-rock, psychedelia, folk rock Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull Track: City of Gold (Room 23)
I first heard Wilder Maker back in 2022, and the Brooklyn band were a pop group then–they’d just put out Male Models, a record full of accessible folk rock and chamber pop. Wilder Maker bandleader Gabriel Birnbaum has significantly changed things up since then, however; starting with last year’s The Streets Like Beds Still Warm, Birnbaum and his bandmates (bassist Nick Jost, drummer Sean Mullins, and guitarist Adam Brisbin) began exploring more experimental climes, adding elements of jazz and post-rock to their recordings. The Streets Like Beds Still Warm is apparently the first of a planned trio of likeminded records, with the second entry, Smoking the Bunny, following a little over a year later. This seventeen-track, forty-one-minute album is a fragmented affair, featuring full band recordings run “through tape machines and guitar pedals and then back into computers” by Birnbaum. The Tortoise, Talk Talk, and late-period Lambchop influences are keenly felt, as early songs like “Hands Off the Suit, Creep” and “Last Call at the Star’s Ascent” embrace the gaping holes at their centers. The electric blues-tinged rock instrumental of the title track and the relatively straightforward, rustic folk rock of “City of Gold (Room 23)” are some of the more obvious surprises found along Smoking the Bunny, but there are no shortage of intriguing moments in the strange corners of the LP’s second half, too. I appreciate when a band takes a big, bold swing, and Smoking the Bunny is very much that. (Bandcamp link)
Slack Times – Casting
Release date: November 6th Record label: Meritorio Genre: Jangle pop Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull Track: Swing the Dial
The Deep South has a rich history of jangle pop, thanks to classic college rock groups like Alabama’s The Primitons and Mississippi’s The Windbreakers, among others. It’s nice to hear new bands continuing that legacy, which brings us to Birmingham janglers Slack Times. Vocalist/guitarist Chris McCauley and guitarist Stuart Norman co-founded the group at the beginning of this decade alongside departed member Will Stewart; they’ve recorded with Bronson Tew and Matt Patton (Drive-By Truckers, The Great Dying) at Dial Back Sound, put out music on local label Earth Libraries (Cash Langdon, The Medium, Sonny Falls), and eventually welcomed vocalist/drummer Abby Anderson (circa 2024) and bassist Jonathan Ruiz (2025) to the fold. Slack Times have typically put out music as EPs–the nine tracks and twenty minutes of Casting make it the band’s biggest release yet. Casting is smooth, sneakily-hard-to-categorize jangle pop: Slack Times aren’t full-on 60s psych pop revivalists, nor are they fully committed to 1980s, post-punk-influenced indie pop or twee disciples, either. It’s just strong guitar pop music. “Swing the Dial” has a simple power pop bounce to it, while the sweeping guitar lines of “Cast-Out” feels like a less-distorted version of what their Canadian labelmates Prism Shores are doing. It’s a good time to check up on what’s going on down south. (Bandcamp link)
It’s the October 2026 Playlist! We’ve got a bunch of great songs from albums I enjoyed in the past month below.
Artists with multiple songs on this playlist: The Olivia Tremor Control (3), Old Joy (3), Paper Jam (2), Charlie Kaplan (2), Fish Narc (2), Dummy (2), Bliss? (2), Pet Fox (2), Dazy (2).
Here is where you can listen to the playlist on various streaming services: Spotify (missing one song), Tidal. Be sure to check out previous playlist posts if you’ve enjoyed this one, or visit the site directory. If you’d like to support Rosy Overdrive, you can share this (or another) post, or donate here.
“Lovely Girl”, Paper Jam From This and That (2026, K/Perennial)
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. 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. This and That is ten songs and twenty minutes of everything good about the “peppy” and “brisk” sides of twee music, as songs like the jangle pop hit “Lovely Girl” prove. Read more about This and That here.
“My Brother”, Old Joy From Why Burn Bridges You Can Live Under (2026, Candlepin)
Why Burn Bridges You Can Live Under, the third Old Joy album, is something of Alex Reindl’s goodbye to Chicago–shortly after he recorded it at Jamdek with Keifer Douglas and Doug Malone and a long list of Windy City musicians, Reindel relocated to Austin. On this oversized guitar pop LP, Old Joy invoke greats from Big Star to Elliott Smith to Fountains of Wayne to Death Cab for Cutie–it’s a mixture of classic power pop and sprawling indie rock that feels very fresh. Read more about Why Burn Bridges You Can Live Under here.
“Failed”, Charlie Kaplan From Dobro (2026, Glamour Gowns)
After releasing the relatively intense and personal art rock double LP A Hat Upon the Bed, last year, it makes sense that New York folk rocker Charlie Kaplan found himself embracing a “back to basics” approach on his next album, Dobro. Coming in at a clean twenty-eight minutes and nine songs, Dobro is the polar opposite of A Hat Upon the Bed; it’s Kaplan’s breezy, jaunty, and sometimes even funny version of classic folk-country-rock. Album highlight “Failed” is a piece of folk rock brilliance with an appropriately silly music video to go along with it (it’s a song that references “Peyton Manning’s chicken parm”, mind you). Read more about Dobro here.
“Much Less Me”, Fish Narc From Uncle (2026, K)
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. Ben Funkhouser, a punk musician from the Pacific Northwest and sometimes emo-rapper, takes inspiration from names like The Lemonheads, Gin Blossoms, Paul Westerberg, and Dinosaur Jr. on his project’s latest album. The earnest power pop of the first proper song on Uncle, “Much Less Me”, is damn near orgcore in its unassuming, raspy vocals and vague rootsiness. Read more about Uncle here.
“Unwritten Rules”, Song People From Tho I Seem Tame (2026, Strange Mono)
Song People’s 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, Shaina Kapeluck, who “began her music life as a ballad singer, drawing from traditions of the British Isles, the US and Maritime Canada”). Rounding out the trio, Benjamin Schurr’s post-punk bass work and Darian Scatton’s jangly guitar playing contribute to the gentle “push and pull” feeling we get in songs like “Unwritten Rules”, the album opener. Read more about Tho I Seem Tame here.
“Halfway Down”, The Olivia Tremor Control From The Same Place (2026, Elephant 6 Recording Co)
I’ve been listening to The Same Place a lot ever since it finally came out last month. I wasn’t sure if we ever would actually hear the long-in-the-works, posthumously-released third Olivia Tremor Control album at all after twenty years and the deaths of both of its primary architects, let alone that it would be as good as this. There are three tracks from it on here, and narrowing the album down to that was incredibly difficult: almost every song that wants to be a hit very much is a hit. That includes “Halfway Down”, a triumphant psych-pop tune that’s probably my favorite “pure pop” song on The Same Place and deserves a place alongside Dusk at Cubist Castle’s strongest Beatles-worthy moments.
“Full Spectrum Dominance”, Dummy From Do You Love the Color of the Sky? (2026, Polyvinyl)
Beloved Los Angeles noise pop quartet Dummy broke away from their shoegaze beginnings on their excellent 2024 sophomore album Free Energy, embracing slick and smooth alternative-dance/electronic pop-rock. Their first album for Polyvinyl, Do You Love the Color of the Sky?, continues to paradoxically streamline and expand their sound–they’re further than ever from their fuzz-rock roots, but the pop hooks feel almost as natural as they’ve ever been on this gliding, crystal clear psychedelic dance-pop album. “Full Spectrum Dominance” has just a bit of trip hop in it, redirecting a palpable love of anything-goes late-90s “alternative” into massive pop music.
“Give Me a Reason”, Aluminum From Iconoclast HaHa (2026, Felte/Dandy Boy)
Over the past few years, San Francisco shoegaze/noise pop quartet Aluminum have established themselves as one of the best and most exciting rock bands to come out of the Bay Area, as impressive as that is with all the competition they have out there. Their second album, Iconoclast HaHa, comes out swinging with the swirling wall of sound opening track “Give Me a Reason”; it feels like Aluminum proving they can still make loud, electric, guitar-overload 90s-style shoegaze with the best of them. Read more about Iconoclast HaHa here.
“Suddenly (The Joy Pt. 1)”, Bliss? From The Freezing Light (2026, Psychic Spice)
Emerging from Baton Rouge, Louisiana in early 2025, Bliss? are a college rock/power pop/reformed punk group who’ve been on an incredible run ever since. Their sophomore album, however, represents a marked departure: described by drummer/vocalist Robert DeMouy as “a song cycle about growing up in South Louisiana’s schools, kitchens, and chemical plants, told by a narrator attempting to escape the state’s oppressive institutions and cycles of poverty and addiction,” the sixteen-song, sixty-eight-minute The Freezing Light is an overwhelming Americana album delivered out of nowhere from a couple of red state punks. Read more about The Freezing Light here.
“Holding On”, Pet Fox From Balance (2026, Exploding in Sound)
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. The sparkling post-punk of “Holding On” has a kinetic energy, blunted but not halted by the more subdued material surrounding it. Read more about Balance here.
“Unreasonable Person”, Dazy From MAXIMUMBLASTSUPERLOUD Vol. 2: 24 Songs from 2023-2026 (2026, Lame-O)
James Goodson still has a pop fastball after five years of burning through miscellaneous Dazy EPs and singles. Oddly enough, he chooses to use that fastball on the quieter songs among the MAXIMUMBLASTSUPERLOUD Vol. 2 compilation’s new tracks: “Unreasonable Person” immediately sticks out as unusual and very welcome entry into the Dazy discography. Read more about MAXIMUMBLASTSUPERLOUD Vol. 2: 24 Songs from 2023-2026 here.
“Bury You”, Female Gaze From Linea Nigra (2026, Fort Lowell)
Female Gaze have returned this year with their second album, Linea Nigra, another collection of southwestern desert-psych that frontperson Nelene DeGuzman says is inspired by “navigating labor, delivery, and the prospect of mothering while the world is on fire”. Like their debut album, 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. Read more about Linea Nigra here.
“Wanna Wish”, Classic Traffic From Real Music (2026, Same View)
Classic Traffic are a trio from New Jersey; their fourth full-length album, Real Music, displays an obvious reverence for 1990s power pop acts like Sloan, Teenage Fanclub, and Matthew Sweet. There’s a noticeably fuzz rock/pop punk/hard rock edge 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 “Wanna Wish”, an early highlight on Real Music. Read more about Real Music here.
“Sludge Metal”, Roxanne Izzo From Made (2026, Hell for Breakfast)
This isn’t a “Sludge Metal” song; not even close, to be clear. It’s a really good emo-tinged pop punk song in an album full of them, courtesy of Montreal-based singer-songwriter Roxanne Izzo. Made dips its toe into fuzzy indie rock of the late-2010s variety, but “Sludge Metal” is spiritually pop punk from its hometown-resenting refrain (“You’ll drown in the water if you don’t paddle / But this city’s so shallow maybe it won’t matter”) on down.
“Simple Matters”, Summer Sleeves From I’m Shelling Real Daggers (2026)
If any album I’ve written about recently deserves the “college rock” tag, it’s probably Summer Sleeves’ I’m Shelling Real Daggers; bandleader Jeremy Wayne’s list of influences (The New Pornographers, The Rentals, Elvis Costello) share a fondness of new wave glitziness, 60s pop fluency, power pop catchiness, and (and this is important) blaring keyboard hooks. Throw in a bit of that pre-1990s jangle pop rootsiness and you’ve got I’m Shelling Real Daggers, an underdog power pop album that nonetheless isn’t shy about wrecking balls of key-led hooks in tracks like “Simple Matters”. Read more about I’m Shelling Real Daggers here.
“Mess”, Sadurn From The Underworld (2026, Run for Cover)
On their sophomore album, The Underworld, Sadurn sound quiet and tired–just like they did on 2022’s Radiator, but quite possibly even more so. The alt-country 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 frontperson G DeGroot’s writing and their voice; the band meander through the electric numbers, content to ride out the plain-delivered country of “Mess”. Read more about The Underworld here.
“Accolades”, Lydia Loveless From Accolades (2026, Honey, You’re Gonna Be Late/Bloodshot)
It’s now been over a decade since Lydia Loveless’ wildly beloved initial three-album run on Bloodshot Records; since then, they’ve transitioned nicely from an insurgent 2010s alt-country star to an elder statesman in the genre. Loveless claims a Tom Petty influence on the Accolades EP as well as a desire to “focus more on telling stories than dumping my life on everyone”; thankfully, though, the master of uncomfortably-personal-lyric alt-country songwriting still gives us a bit of the latter on the EP’s opening title track. Read more about Accolades here.
“Don’t Slouch”, Pardoner From Target Practice (2026, Bar None)
I don’t know precisely what spurred Pardoner to sharpen their hooks, shorten their songs, and make their most straight-ahead pop album yet with Target Practice, but I’m glad they did it, because it suits the San Francisco 90s indie rock revivalists very well. Despite the pop-centric writing, frontperson Max Freeland doesn’t assert himself any more as a lead vocalist than he typically does–but 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. Read more about Target Practice here.
“Garden of Light”, The Olivia Tremor Control From The Same Place (2026, Elephant 6 Recording Co)
“Garden of Light” was initially released as an advance single for The Same Place (alongside the album’s title track) on November 29, 2024, the same day that Olivia Tremor Control co-founder Will Cullen Hart passed away at the way-too-young age of 53. Neither Hart nor the other Olivia Tremor Control head, Bill Doss, are here for The Same Place finally seeing the light of day twenty-seven years after their last album, Black Foliage, but at least Hart saw the release of this incredible jangly, orchestral, 60s-sun-drenched pop song. It sounds great on its own, but it’s even better in the context of The Same Place, which I’m listening to pretty much every day right now.
“Election Day”, Lily Seabird From Lightspheres on Their Way (2026, Lame-O)
Lily Seabird has released three albums in three years, and each one of them has added another wrinkle to the Vermont folk rocker/alt-country musician. The ambitious, electric (Magnolia-Co.-style) Lightspheres on Their Way takes a step back from the more pensive moments of last year’s Trash Mountain and instead looks back to the explosive fuzz-rock moments found on 2024’s Alas,. The main difference is that Seabird, who’s grown exponentially artistically in a short period of time, brings sharpened songwriting to the fray: see “Election Day”, a dramatic, frantic, roaring country-rocker that’s light years (or -spheres) away from anything on Trash Mountain.
“Gut Shot”, Old Joy From Why Burn Bridges You Can Live Under (2026, Candlepin)
The final Old Joy LP of the project’s Midwestern era is nothing less than bandleader Alex Reindel’s finest work yet, an ambitious thirteen-track, fifty-five minute affair that ping-pongs between immediately-hitting guitar pop anthems and more “involved” indie rock numbers. Look no further than the crazy eight-minute opening track “Cinco de Mayo” spilling into the sparkling guitar pop of “Gut Shot” to get an immediate sense of what Why Burn Bridges You Can Live Under is capable of doing. Read more about Why Burn Bridges You Can Live Under here.
“Banyan Trees”, Wagging From Wagging (2026, We Are Busy Bodies/Having Fun)
After establishing themselves as an intriguing indie pop band on their 2024 debut album My Own Private Rodeo, the Asheville, North Carolina quartet have embraced their roots a bit more strongly on their second, self-titled album. Wagging isn’t a full-on alt-country record, but, taking advantage of their hometown being the epicenter for the genre’s current movement, the band enlisted Alex Farrar to record a record with a bit more twang that reminds me a lot of classic Ratboys. That being said, “Banyan Trees” is every bit a twee-pop hit single; as best as I can tell, the song’s about growing up in Florida, and the sunny, vibrant thoughtfulness of frontperson Alison Antaramian’s performance is exactly how something like that should be delivered.
“Chemical Reaction”, Charlie Kaplan From Dobro (2026, Glamour Gowns)
Once again, Charlie Kaplan has gathered up a few regular collaborators (his Office Culture bandmates Winston Cook-Wilson and Jason Burger on piano/organ/keys and drums, respectively, Julian Cubillos on bass, Little Mystery’s Ivy Meissner on backing vocals, Market’s Nate Mendelsohn on engineering and organ, and Andrew Daly Frank on guitar) to give stripped-down, casual, but nonetheless polished readings to his latest album Dobro’s tracks. The upbeat songs on Dobro are some of the most fun songs I’ve heard in a minute–such as the drinking song “Chemical Reaction”, featuring “honky-tonk piano” from Cook-Wilson. Read more about Dobro here.
“Cadillac Horses”, Jacob T. Simons From Shadow Creek (2026)
As one might expect, Shadow Creek sounds like folk rocker Jacob T. Simons’ most recent band, Moon Orchids, only more stripped down; I would chalk that up to a combination of the record’s relatively short gestation time (coming a year and change after Moon Orchids’ first album), Simons’ self-imposed restrictions he outlines on the album’s Bandcamp page (ranging from “no doubling of vocals” to “no slide or steel guitar”), and sheer necessity. The power chord-featuring heartland rock of “Cadillac Horses” is somewhat of an exception, but hardly sounds out of place. Read more about Shadow Creek here.
“Not to Guess”, Fish Narc From Uncle (2026, K)
I don’t talk about Rosy Overdrive’s main rival website, Pitchfork, very much, but their take on Fish Narc’s Uncle, specifically one of my favorite songs on it, “Not to Guess”, has stuck with me a bit for whatever reason. Basically, the author of that mixed review expresses frustration that the lyrics aren’t direct enough for him to enjoy, a criticism I couldn’t relate to any less. Maybe it’s because I’m a Guided by Voices fan, but I can’t get enough of esoteric-leaning guitar pop. If you can’t do anything with “When you call me cancer, you could ask for directions / And I offer you the hammer I’ve been using on myself,” I think that’s on you. We could all use a bit more imagination when it comes to power pop. Read more about Uncle here.
“Space in Between”, Exploding Flowers From Alphabet Window (2026, Meritorio)
Los Angeles quartet Exploding Flowers bucked the typical long gap in between their albums this time by only waiting about a year and a half after last March’s Watermelon/Peacock 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. 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. Read more about Alphabet Window here.
“You Ought to Know”, Dropkick From Throughlines (2026, Hurrah! Musica/Sound Asleep/Rock Indiana)
Andrew Taylor remains one of the most consistent and prolific sources of Teenage Fanclub-inspired power pop between The Harmonizers, The Boys with the Perpetual Nervousness, Space Jaguar, and his more-or-less solo project Dropkick. Less than two years after 2025’s Primary Colours, the Scottish musician has helmed yet another strong guitar pop Dropkick LP, this one a 27-minute affair called Throughlines. The vibrant, jangly guitar melodies and vocal harmonies are all in the right place in immediate highlight “You Ought to Know”.
“Roaming Eyes”, Paper Jam From This and That (2026, K/Perennial)
The ever-so-slightly post-punk/new wave vibes of “Roaming Eyes” are just one more reason why Paper Jam’s This and That is capable of packing more pop hooks per second in a twee-pop album than just about anyone else has in recent memory. One can’t go wrong with any of the all-too-brief record’s ten songs, but “Roaming Eyes” in particular is a nonstop success from its 80s-invoking beginning to the wistful indie pop immediately starting when the vocals kick in. Read more about This and That here.
“When You Smiled and Turned Away”, The Cat’s Miaow From When You Smiled and Turned Away (2026, Slumberland)
Australian 1990s indie pop quartet The Cat’s Miaow were inspired by the reception of two recent retrospective compilations to get back together and record their first-ever proper studio album–some thirty-four years after they initially debuted. The minimal, refined, guitar pop band that I heard on Songs ‘94-’98 is very much alive on When You Smiled and Turned Away, a fourteen-song, thirty-one-minute LP that breezes through melancholic, simply-executed indie pop songs with the same paradoxically speedy slowness of The Cat’s Miaow’s past work. Read more about When You Smiled and Turned Away here.
“Things I Deserve”, Blair Gun From Nonstop Bullets (2026, sonaBLAST!/Enabler No. 6)
When I first heard San Diego group Blair Gun in 2024 (upon the release of their second album, There Are No Rival Clones Here), I commended their mixture of “garage rock, post-punk, and classic 90s indie rock”, all of which continue to go into the group’s third LP, Nonstop Bullets. Perhaps my favorite song on Nonstop Bullets is “Things I Deserve”, a nice and snotty ninety-second garage-punk song that marries Pixies-style “ugly-pop hooks” with the garage-y noise rock of Blair Gun’s home California city.
“Omen Globe”, Dummy From Do You Love the Color of the Sky? (2026, Polyvinyl)
The second Dummy song on this playlist, “Omen Globe” is another sterling example of how Do You Love the Color of the Sky? does more with less over and over again. The Los Angeles art rock/post-shoegaze/psychedelia/post-rock/alt-dance et cetera group build “Omen Globe” out of a basketball-dribble main beat, clear and melodic vocals, and increasingly bold psychedelic sound effects (which, according to the band’s Joe Trainor, are probably “guitars we processed/self sampled or vocals we processed/self sampled”).
“Pocket”, Old Joy From Why Burn Bridges You Can Live Under (2026, Candlepin)
In terms of sheer volume, Old Joy’s Why Burn Bridges You Can Live Under has to be under consideration for one of the best power pop albums of the year–thirteen songs and fifty-four minutes and chock full of quietly-successful guitar pop brilliance like “Pocket”. There’s a certain niche of relatively sensitive, pop-forward 90s indie rock revivalist bands that get regular coverage on Rosy Overdrive–Buddie and Poppy Patica both come to mind–and Old Joy deserves to be mentioned among those names with this one. Read more about Why Burn Bridges You Can Live Under here.
“Ugly”, Dazy From MAXIMUMBLASTSUPERLOUD Vol. 2: 24 Songs from 2023-2026 (2026, Lame-O)
The first MAXIMUMBLASTSUPERLOUD cassette tape came out back in 2021, and it marked the passing of an incredibly fruitful year for the Richmond, Virginia musician James Goodson’s solo project Dazy. I’ve been talking about Dazy and their recognizable mixture of power pop, pop punk, Madchester, and turn-of-the-century electronic-y alt-rock since beforeMAXIMUMBLASTSUPERLOUD even came out, and I’ve been happy to follow them over the next five years. MAXIMUMBLASTSUPERLOUD Vol: 2 is pretty much every Dazy song since the first compilation came out except for the 2022 album OUTOFBODY, plus seven new songs, one of which is the excellent “Ugly”. Read more about MAXIMUMBLASTSUPERLOUD Vol. 2: 24 Songs from 2023-2026 here.
“Blue Earth”, Spiral XP From Blue Earth (2026, Danger Collective/Den Tapes)
In a world full of indie rock bands (often on the West Coast) making not-so-memorable music that falls under the “shoegaze to dream pop” spectrum, Seattle’s Spiral XP remain one of the strongest song-based bands in the field. While I believe the quartet has experienced some lineup changes since their flurry of activity in 2023 and 2024 (when they released an EP, an LP, and a collaboration with TV Star), “Blue Earth”–the opening title track to a new EP of the same name–continues doing what Spiral XP does best: fuzzed-out but strongly melodic indie rock.
“Phone Calls”, Vegtable From Hit by a Car (2026, Field Work)
The press release for Hit by a Car, the second album from Singaporean trio Vegtable, calls them “Singapore’s only slowcore band”. I’m not yet well-versed enough in Singaporean indie music to properly vet that claim (the only other Singapore-based group I’ve written about that I can remember off the top of my head is the more dreamy-power-pop Subsonic Eye), but I do know that Hit by a Car is a successful journey into that greyscale, low-key style of “indie rock”. “Phone Calls” starts with a slow and beautiful guitar riff and then creeps into a plodding tempo and whispered vocals–what more could you want?
“Avoidant”, Pet Fox From Balance (2026, Exploding in Sound)
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 chilly ballad “Avoidant” is a highlight of this team-up, featuring some good music-and-lyrics synergy. Read more about Balance here.
“Good People Bad People”, Jordan Krimston From Halcyon (2026, DHCR)
San Diego indie-punk underground ringer Jordan Krimston has played in bands like Weatherbox, The Obsessives, and Oso Oso over the past twenty years, but he also makes strong pop music under his own name. Hot on the heels of last year’s emo-pop experimentations of Count It All Joy, this October’s Halcyon is a more subdued, synth-touched affair. “Good People Bad People” is a meditative, repetitive number, an earworm that practically begs to roll around one’s head.
“The Spinning Continuous”, The Olivia Tremor Control From The Same Place (2026, Elephant 6 Recording Co)
The Same Place starts with three hit singles–for most bands, “Begin Now!”, “Advice from the Oceans”, and “Timewaster” would be the crown jewels of any of their albums, but none of them even made this playlist due to extreme competition from the rest of The Olivia Tremor Control’s final LP. The album’s fourth song, “The Spinning Continuous”, might be my favorite thing on The Same Place, as difficult as that is to say right now. The six-minute (relatively) dark psychedelia pop of “The Spinning Continuous” marries the busy paranoia of Black Foliage with hooks on the level of Dusk at Cubist Castle (or “the first three songs on The Same Place“).
“God Hates Cops”, Bliss? From The Freezing Light (2026, Psychic Spice)
Bliss? give us plenty of great rock songs on The Freezing Light–it’s somewhere between Elvis Costello and early 1980s Los Angeles punk rock, with a bit of stuff like The Silos and Alejandro Escovedo’s solo work in there now too. Arguably its best moment is completely new terrain for the Baton Rouge trio, however, in the six-minute jawdropping acoustic (mainly) folk ballad “God Hates Cops”. There’s a lot to sift through in this one, a mess of small-time Louisiana petty thieves, police state anxiety, Greek philosophy, and Biblical agricultural creationism. Read more about The Freezing Light here.
Hello, all! In this Thursday Pressing Concerns, we have two new albums coming out tomorrow (October 30th) from Charlie Kaplan and Aluminum, an LP from 2nd Grade that comes out physically tomorrow (and digitally in December), and a new EP from Lydia Loveless that also comes out tomorrow. Check them out below, and if you missed Monday’s blog post (featuring Pet Fox, Female Gaze, Porcelain, and Paper Jam), 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.
2nd Grade – Girls and Boys
Release date: October 30th (physical) / December 4th (digital) Record label: Lame-O Genre: Power pop, jangle pop Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital Pull Track: Slingerland Girls
Why don’t they make the entire airplane out of the black box? Why can’t they make a cake that’s all edge pieces? Why not make a power pop album that’s entirely songs titled “___ Girls” and “___ Boys”? It’s hard not to look at the twenty-song tracklist of 2nd Grade’s Girls and Boys and think about the academic way Peter Gill, a graduate student of power pop if there ever was one, must’ve approached this album. It’s not enough to just keep making excellent guitar pop albums like 2022’s Easy Listening and 2024’s Scheduled Explosions, nor is it enough to have a solo project where Gill can be a little looser and weirder (WPTR, whose Redness & Swelling at the Injection Site was actually Gill’s first release on 2nd Grade’s new label home of Lame-O Records).
Writing songs about various cohorts of “boys” and “girls” has resulted in a 2nd Grade album that doesn’t feel like any of their other records–it shouldn’t be that big of a deal, you’d think, but it is. Gill clearly believes songs gifted these titles ought to sound a certain way, and while on a typical 2nd Grade album they’d be interspersed with a few different strains of power pop, pretty much all twenty of Girls and Boys’ songs evoke the same feeling to me: vaguely hazy and nostalgic, heard from some kind of distance despite the crystal-clear sound and construction, and also almost always with a surprisingly long, meandering, but breathlessly delivered lyrical text.
For the first time ever, half of the songs on a 2nd Grade album are sung by bassist Catherine Dwyer, who you might know as a member of Remember Sports or through her solo project, Spring Onion. It’s a decision I puzzled over a lot while listening to Girls and Boys, because (aside from a literal interpretation of the album’s title) I wasn’t sure why Gill had decided to share the reins–Dwyer’s voice isn’t particularly different from Gill’s, so it’s not to sing songs Gill can’t, and the intimate, personal bedroom pop frontperson of Spring Onion wouldn’t have felt like an obvious choice to helm sparkling power pop.
Gill, who is certainly a more advanced scholar on the subject than I am, probably arrived at the decision due to some power pop trigonometry that I couldn’t understand–I trust him, and the songs are good, so at the end of the day it doesn’t really matter. But after thinking about it a fair amount, I do think that Dwyer’s less-than-typical approach to “power pop frontperson”, which does diverge from admitted Robert Pollard disciple Peter Gill, might be the key to placing Girls and Boys in its unique position in space and time, somehow evoking an extremely specific era and location but never tipping its hand as to where and when, exactly, that is. Or maybe it just is because Dwyer is a girl and Gill is a boy. Girls! And Boys! On the same album! Who would’ve thought of it? (Bandcamp link)
Charlie Kaplan – Dobro
Release date: October 30th Record label: Glamour Gowns Genre: Folk rock, singer-songwriter, alt-country Formats: Digital Pull Track: Failed
The New York folk rock singer-songwriter Charlie Kaplan has released an album every year since 2023, an impressive clip that came to a head of sorts last year when he put out the intense (for him) and personal art rock double LP A Hat Upon the Bed. It makes some sense that, after putting so much out there with that album, Kaplan found himself embracing a “back to basics” approach on his next album, Dobro. Coming in at a clean twenty-eight minutes and nine songs, Dobro is the polar opposite of A Hat Upon the Bed; it’s Kaplan’s breezy, jaunty, and sometimes even funny version of classic folk-country-rock. Once again, Kaplan gathers up a few regular collaborators (his Office Culture bandmates Winston Cook-Wilson and Jason Burger on piano/organ/keys and drums, respectively, Julian Cubillos on bass, Little Mystery’s Ivy Meissner on backing vocals, Market’s Nate Mendelsohn on engineering and organ, and Andrew Daly Frank on guitar) to give stripped-down, casual, but nonetheless polished readings to these tracks.
The upbeat songs on Dobro are some of the most fun songs I’ve heard in a minute–specifically, the drinking song “Chemical Reaction”, featuring “honky-tonk piano” from Cook-Wilson, “Failed”, an incredibly catchy piece of folk rock brilliance with an appropriately silly music video to go along with it (it’s a song that references “Peyton Manning’s chicken parm”, mind you), and “On Sunday”, Kaplan’s take on a weekend driving song (part of the melody reminds me of Crooked Fingers, and I figured I’d mention that because this album does feel in the same realm as Crooked Fingers). “Sick of You” is another sharp pop song, although the groove-based sound is a bit of an outlier (this is the most “Julian Cubillos” song on the album to my ears), and the gait of “Sleepwalking” is nonetheless a jaunty one (I’ve already said “jaunty” once in this review, but, in my defense, Dobro is quite jaunty). There isn’t anything lesser about the slower folk-country numbers like opening track “Why Not Try LA?” or closing track “Let’s Play a Show Together”, either; these songs, too, benefit from the straightforward performances. Kaplan wears the side of him we hear on Dobro very well. (Bandcamp link)
Aluminum – Iconoclast HaHa
Release date: October 30th Record label: Felte/Dandy Boy Genre: Shoegaze, fuzz pop, psychedelia Formats: Vinyl, cassette, digital Pull Track: Give Me a Reason
Over the past few years, San Francisco shoegaze/noise pop quartet Aluminum have established themselves as one of the best and most exciting rock bands to come out of the Bay Area, as impressive as that is with all the competition they have out there. Founding members vocalist/bassist Ryann Gonsalves (Torrey), vocalist/guitarist Marc Leyda (Nothing Natural, Wild Moth), and guitarist Austin Montanari (also Nothing Natural and Wild Moth) are joined by new drummer Rick Altieri (Above Me, Blue Ocean, Blue Zero) on their second album, Iconoclast HaHa. Aluminum’s debut album, 2024’s Fully Beat, expanded on the shoegaze of their 2022 debut EP to include prominent alt-dance, Madchester, psychedelic and electronic elements; I would’ve expected Iconoclast HaHa to continue further in this vein, but Aluminum LP2 isn’t exactly as neat of an evolution.
Iconoclast HaHa comes out swinging with the swirling wall of sound opening track “Give Me a Reason” and keeps its foot on the gas with the high-octane rocker “Killing Time”; between those two and “Lovely People” not long after them, it feels like Aluminum proving they can still make loud, electric, guitar-overload 90s-style shoegaze with the best of them despite the detours featuring heavily on their debut album. The clearest Fully Beat callbacks happen in the middle of the LP–that’s where you’ll hear the loopy dream pop “Distant Noise”, which turns the non-shoegaze elements of Aluminum surprisingly towards late-90s alternative pop, and the one truly weird electronic moment on the LP with the minimal beat of “An Opportunist”. The acoustic fuzz pop of “Paper Cup” is the bridge back towards more shoegaze-rockers, and “Styptic Powder”, “I’ll See You There”, and “So Low” all ensure Iconoclast HaHa exits with as much zeal as it had upon its entry. The story of Iconoclast HaHa is one of a band with plenty of tools in its arsenal at this point carefully choosing the best ones with which to execute these thirteen tracks, resulting in a distinct but just-as-fun second album. (Bandcamp link)
Lydia Loveless – Accolades
Release date: October 30th Record label: Honey, You’re Gonna Be Late/Bloodshot Genre: Alt-country, singer-songwriter, heartland rock Formats: Digital Pull Track: Accolades
Lydia Loveless has been making music pretty much their entire life, and it’s now been over a decade since their wildly beloved initial three-album run on Bloodshot Records. It might’ve not felt possible at the time, but they’ve transitioned nicely from an insurgent 2010s alt-country (actual alt-country, not what they’re calling that these days) star to an elder statesman, acknowledging the canonical status of their previous work (like in 2024’s Something Else, a piano re-recording of their 2014 LP Somewhere Else) while making new albums with a keen understanding of their strengths (like 2023’s Nothing’s Gonna Stand in My Way Again, a strong collection of songs that felt somewhere in between their earlier work and the departure of 2020’s Daughter).
That brings us to Accolades, a six-song EP featuring five new Loveless originals and a reprise of the title track. Loveless claims a Tom Petty influence on Accolades as well as a desire to “focus more on telling stories than dumping my life on everyone”; that’s a bold claim from one of the masters of uncomfortably-personal-lyric alt-country songwriting, and while it’s still Loveless as we know them (that title track really throws us right into it at the onset of the EP), I think they live up to their ambitions on this one. The title track and “Oklahoma” are great pop songs that walk the tightrope between “nice, polished Americana production” (courtesy of Matt Ross-Spang, who’s been behind the boards for Jason Isbell, the Mountain Goats, and the Drive-By Truckers) and “not getting in the way of Loveless’ writing”. “Avoiding Highways” and “Let Me Get My Hopes Up” nail the slower side of Loveless, and “What We Learned” does something else entirely by steadily building into an emotional alt-rock finale. It’s nice to get a strong check-in from a unique songwriter in the landscape–thank you, Accolades. (Bandcamp link)
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)
Welcome to the Thursday Pressing Concerns! We’ve got a new compilation from Dazy, plus new albums from The Cat’s Miaow, A Country Western, and Billiam. All of them are out tomorrow except for A Country Western, which came out yesterday. Check them out below, and if you missed Monday’s blog post (featuring Bliss?, Jacob T. Simons, The Knickerbocker5, and Sea Scouts), 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.
Dazy – MAXIMUMBLASTSUPERLOUD Vol. 2: 24 Songs from 2023-2026
Release date: October 23rd Record label: Lame-O Genre: Power pop, Madchester, alt-dance, fuzz pop, pop punk, Dazy Formats: Cassette, digital Pull Track: I Don’t Wanna Think About the Money
It’s time for the second Dazy compilation. The first MAXIMUMBLASTSUPERLOUD cassette tape came out back in 2021, and it marked the passing of an incredibly fruitful year for the Richmond, Virginia musician James Goodson’s solo project. I’ve been talking about Dazy and their recognizable mixture of power pop, pop punk, Madchester, and turn-of-the-century electronic-y alt-rock since beforeMAXIMUMBLASTSUPERLOUD even came out, and I’ve been happy to follow them over the next five years. MAXIMUMBLASTSUPERLOUD Vol: 2 is pretty much every Dazy song since the first compilation came out except for the 2022 album OUTOFBODY (still their only “proper” LP), the 2023 companion EP OTHERBODY, and some collaborative singles. That means the twin I Get Lost (When I Try to Get Found) and It’s Only a Secret (If You Repeat It) EPs from 2024 are here, as well as the longer 2025 Bad Penny EP, plus a few miscellaneous singles and seven new songs. I’ve covered a little under half of these songs in Pressing Concerns, which means it’s totally fine to feature MAXIMUMBLASTSUPERLOUD Vol: 2 despite some repeats.
Goodson makes the interesting choice to present MAXIMUMBLASTSUPERLOUD Vol: 2 in reverse chronological order, which really helps underscore just how much the project has grown since its inception. The electronic parts to these songs have gotten more intricate and subversive-feeling; opening track “Beat Change” rules, but it’s very far from the “Dazy pop song” archetype that put the project on the map initially. Goodson still has a pop fastball though, which, oddly enough, he chooses to use on the quieter songs among the new tracks: “Ugly” and “Unreasonable Person” both immediately stick out as unusual and very welcome entries into the Dazy discography. I don’t need to talk too much about how great Bad Penny and the 2024 EPs are because I’ve already done that, but in this context these supercharged, twitching pop songs seem to serve as the bridge between the “early” Dazy era and where Goodson is right now. Goodson has talked about how his fairly unorthodox release schedule is what keeps Dazy interesting to him–revisiting OUTOFBODY, it’s even more obvious that he really had to go against his own personal grain to make even one “normal” album. I’ve no clue what to expect regarding the next Dazy release (on an even more basic level than any other band I write about here), but that’s fine–in fact, it’s more and more clear that that’s part of the draw. (Bandcamp link)
The Cat’s Miaow – When You Smiled and Turned Away
Release date: October 23rd Record label: Slumberland Genre: Indie pop, jangle pop, dream pop Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital Pull Track: When You Smiled and Turned Away
Many indie pop fans (including myself) have had the pleasure of getting acquainted with the work of Australian quartet The Cat’s Miaow this decade due to a pair of World of Echo-released archival compilations covering the band’s initial six years of activity: Songs ‘94-’98 in 2022 and Skipping Stones: The Cassette Years ‘92-’93 in 2024. Vocalist Kerrie Bolton, bassist/guitarist Andrew Withycombe, guitarist/bassist/vocalist Bart Cummings, and drummer Cam Smith (the first three of which played together in Hydroplane after The Cat’s Miaow’s initial breakup) were inspired by the reception of the compilations to get back together, and, on the heels of Hydroplane’s first album in twenty-some years in 2025, The Cat’s Miaow have released their first-ever proper studio album thirty-four years after they initially debuted.
The minimal, refined, guitar pop band that I heard on Songs ‘94-’98 is very much alive on When You Smiled and Turned Away, a fourteen-song, thirty-one-minute LP that breezes through melancholic, simply-executed indie pop songs with the same paradoxically speedy slowness of The Cat’s Miaow’s past work. The artists that would eventually become the more atmospheric Hydroplane are present here, but The Cat’s Miaow are able to retrain their focus on short, self-contained pop songs like the title track and “Luminosity” like they hadn’t been away at all. Even as a young band, The Cat’s Miaow’s patient take on indie pop felt mature and timeless; unsurprisingly, the passing of time hasn’t shaken their ability to step right back into this world at all. When You Smiled and Turned Away is less an outwardly triumphant return and more a quiet reaffirming of The Cat’s Miaow’s music–as it should be. (Bandcamp link)
A Country Western – Audition Tape
Release date: October 21st Record label: Crafted Sounds Genre: Fuzz rock, shoegaze, lo-fi indie rock, slowcore Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital Pull Track: No Alcohol
Philadelphia shoegaze group A Country Western really impressed me back in 2024 when they put out Life on the Lawn, which shook off some of the odder experimental touches of their earlier releases to make “an incredibly confident and cool-sounding record” that “embrace[s] rock music with hardly a shred of self-consciousness”, as I said at the time (I also compared them to Swervedriver, notably). A Country Western’s fourth album, Audition Tape, is another change-up for the quartet (Derek Hengemihle, Garrett Miades, Erik Hilbert, and Paris Parker), albeit one that has plenty of links back to Life on the Lawn. The sometimes lo-fi, chilly, grayscale indie rock A Country Western embrace on Audition Tape is less singularly focused on pursuing loud, blaring, distorted rock and roll–it often does, but it’s just as indebted to slowcore and mid-tempo, slightly dreamy 90s-style indie rock. The opening of the LP, in which the five-minute doomy journey “45 Degrees” gives way to the rippers “Audition” and “Blood Eagle”, is a bit of a fake-out–the midsection of the record is made up of curious, relatively quiet little tracks like “Not Far Enough” and “I Found”. Aside from “45 Degrees”, the songs of Audition Tape are pretty quick, too; whether they’re a rocker like late-record detour “No Alcohol” or something more acoustic like “Baseball Game”, A Country Western do embrace brevity throughout the LP. Audition Tape displays a willingness to evolve like many good bands in their sphere, and A Country Western sounds like they’ll be making strong records for a while. (Bandcamp link)
Billiam – Fang the Sniper
Release date: October 22nd Record label: Chain Smoking/BDK/Ubac Genre: Garage rock, garage punk, synthpunk, egg punk Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital Pull Track: Unemployable
The mononymous Australian musician Billiam has been making garage punk and self-described “Autismcore” at a frenetic pace across this decade, eventually graduating from the song-a-minute intensity of early releases to more “mature”, relatively normal albums like 2023’s Corner Tactics and 2024’s Animation Cel. Billiam’s official website, eggpunk.com, proclaims that his fourth album, Fang the Sniper, “is the first time Billiam has tried to make something good”. It’s a bold proclamation, but the result is inarguably a particularly strong effort from the Melbourne artist. All the hallmarks of recent Billiam are here on Fang the Sniper: the twenty-six-minute runtime, the chaotic cartoony vibe of both the artwork (done by Edan D) and the music itself, which is foot-on-grass Aussie garage rock with bits of post-punk, synthpunk, noise rock, and “egg” in the mixture. Billiam rips through plenty of quick punk keepers like “Human Body Units”, “Birdman Rally”, and “Unemployable”; some tracks, like “Asbestos and Me”, “Gossip Sesh [Feb 24]”, and “Another Brick in the Floor”, are a little more synth-heavy, but they’re right at home with the tougher tracks. The seething garage rock of “Skinning Dolphins Alive” is another sort-of outlier, but it ultimately contains the same amount of energy as the rest of Fang the Sniper, just redirected elsewhere. It’s pretty much all we could want from an Australian punk record in 2026. (Bandcamp link)
It’s a Monday Pressing Concerns! We’ve got new albums from Bliss?, Jacob T. Simons, and The Knickerbocker5, plus a reissue from Sea Scouts. Check ’em 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.
Bliss? – The Freezing Light
Release date: October 16th Record label: Psychic Spice Genre: Power pop, art rock, college rock, post-punk, Americana Formats: CD, cassette, digital Pull Track: God Hates Cops
Emerging from Baton Rouge, Louisiana in early 2025, Bliss? are a college rock/power pop/reformed punk group who’ve been on an incredible run ever since: their debut LP, Pass Yr Pain Along, was one of my favorite albums of last year, and last November’s compendium EP Keep Your Joy to Yourself was just as strong. Pass Yr Pain Along was recorded with the lineup of guitarist/vocalist Gale Higdon, bassist Hunter Kiser, and drummer Robert DeMouy; Kiser left soon afterwards, and Keep Your Joy to Yourself was recorded by Higdon and DeMouy as a duo. Even though their most recent EP was recorded with the duo lineup, those songs were written at the same time as their debut album, meaning that Bliss? LP2, The Freezing Light, is the first to entirely originate from the two-piece version of the band. I will miss the tight power trio that recorded Pass Yr Pain Along and made it a true diamond-in-the-rough punk-informed Costellian power pop revival album, but Kiser and DeMouy have reinvented themselves as a more expansive, risk-taking, and just-as-exciting underground rock duo on this double LP.
Described by DeMouy as “a song cycle about growing up in South Louisiana’s schools, kitchens, and chemical plants, told by a narrator attempting to escape the state’s oppressive institutions and cycles of poverty and addiction,” the sixteen-song, sixty-eight-minute The Freezing Light is an overwhelming Americana album delivered out of nowhere from a couple of red state punks. In classic rock terms, they’ve graduated from My Generation to Tommy, although the sound of Bliss? is still somewhere between Elvis Costello and early 1980s Los Angeles punk rock, with a bit of stuff like The Silos and Alejandro Escovedo’s solo work in there now too. The first dozen minutes of the album are comprised of a two-part suite called “Suddenly (The Joy Pt.1)” and “For Rozz Williams (The Joy Pt. 2)”, the vibrant jangly pop rock of the former giving way to the chilly slowness of the latter. Bliss? still give us plenty of great rock songs on The Freezing Light, but arguably its best moment is completely new terrain for them in the six-minute jawdropping acoustic (mainly) folk ballad “God Hates Cops”. In the span of less than two years, Bliss? have made two masterpieces of incredibly different stripes; I’d be one of many lauding them if the world was a just place, but part of the reason The Freezing Light exists is because that isn’t the case. (Bandcamp link)
Jacob T. Simons – Shadow Creek
Release date: September 4th Record label: Self-released Genre: Folk rock, country rock, singer-songwriter Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull Track: Cadillac Horses
Last February, I wrote about the debut album from a Kalamazoo-originating project called Moon Orchids led by the singer-songwriter Jacob Simons, a Michigan indie rock veteran who’d been playing in bands like Dori over the past decade. Moon Orchids was a lovely folk rock record, inspired by the cleaner and less “proto-grunge” sides of Neil Young & Crazy Horse that new bands seem less apt to try to rip off; however, by the time the album was released, Simons had relocated to Boulder, Colorado, and Moon Orchids was dissolved shortly thereafter. Unsurprisingly, Simons continued writing songs, and last year linked up with Mark Anderson, a producer and multi-instrumentalist who runs the Cowboy Cowabunga in Evergreen, Colorado. Shadow Creek is made up of those Anderson sessions alongside some home-recorded ones, ten tracks (nine songs “plus one brief recording of a rainstorm from our balcony”) also featuring contributions from violinist Olivia Shaw and keyboardist Paul Robert Fake.
As one might expect, Shadow Creek sounds like Moon Orchids, only more stripped down; I would chalk that up to a combination of the record’s relatively short gestation time, Simons’ self-imposed restrictions he outlines on the album’s Bandcamp page (ranging from “no doubling of vocals” to “no slide or steel guitar”), and sheer necessity. Some of the songs on Shadow Creek have drums and some are little more than Simons and an acoustic guitar; the relatively electric vibes of the noirish/“Revolution Blues”-style “Black Elephant” and the power chord-featuring heartland rock of “Cadillac Horses” are the exceptions but hardly sound out of place. The stripped-down acoustic country-folk (in attitude if not always in instrumentation) of “Turtledoves”, “The Wanderer”, and “Seasons of a Lifetime” is the heart of Shadow Creek to my ears, lovely, slow-moving recordings marked by occasional bouts of harmonica or fiddle. Shadow Creek may have heralded a pretty quick start to Jacob T. Simons’ Colorado era, but it’s a success that hardly sounds hurried. (Bandcamp link)
The Knickerbocker5 – Snore Loud
Release date: September 26th Record label: Self-released Genre: Dance-punk, post-punk, funk rock, jazz-pop Formats: Cassette, digital Pull Track: How Do You Still Love Me
About two years ago I introduced the readers of Rosy Overdrive to The Knickerbocker5, a trio (not quintet) of Japanese musicians living in Brooklyn who’d just put out their first album, Disco Princess (Where We Are Now). The group (bassist Yoko, guitarist Arii, and drummer Ayako) have played in a bunch of New York groups (Hard Nips, First President of Japan, Juice, and Invisible College, among others, between the three of them), but The Knickerbocker5 seems to be the musicians’ chance to make “funky- groovy little bit jazzy rock’n roll” as they themselves call their sophomore album, Snore Loud. Like Disco Princess (Where We Are Now), Snore Loud is also a seven-track affair, but this one is even shorter, paring down the trio’s dance-post-punk explorations to a quick twenty minutes. It’s subsequently a more pop-focused record, ditching some of Disco Princess (Where We Are Now)‘s wilder moments and extended jam sessions for brief bursts of fun new wave/jazz-marked pop songs. It’s still relatively wide-ranging, of course–“Panic Mania” has fuzzy garage punk in its bones, “Limitación de la Vida” moves towards jazz and even dub, “How Do You Still Love Me” brings the funk grooves, the saxophone-featuring “Zammer kan kan girl” is very nearly ska, et cetera–but, again, this is all in the context of quick power-trio-pop bursts. The Knickerbocker5 are one of the more exciting and intriguing bands of the Brooklyn underground, and Snore Loud only cements this. (Bandcamp link)
Sea Scouts – Beacon of Hope (Remastered)
Release date: September 18th Record label: Zum Genre: Noise rock, post-hardcore, 90s indie rock, post-punk Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull Track: Song for Ché
Sea Scouts were a noise rock band who came out of Hobart, the capital city of the Australian island-state Tasmania–a place I don’t believe Rosy Overdrive had ever covered before now. They were active from 1994 to 2000, co-founded by vocalist/guitarist Tim Evans and coming to feature bassist Alex Pope and drummer Monika Fikerle by the time they recorded their second and final album, 1998’s Beacon of Hope. Co-released on CD by Unstable Ape (Evans’ own label) and Patsy Records (the label run by onetime Sleater-Kinney drummer Laura MacFarlane), Beacon of Hope is an intense Australian post-hardcore album capturing a power trio less than two years away from dissolving. The album shares plenty of overlap with contemporaneous underground American rock music–the murky, standoffish attitude reminds me of a less obviously punk-influenced Unwound, while Fikerle’s unique drumming (she would play standing apparently, and her style is largely a furious pounding on toms with occasional cymbal crashes) gives Beacon of Hope some Swans-like characteristics, too. The marriage of earsplitting guitar feedback, tortured vocals, and incessant rhythms is extremely late 1990s, although they’re also proudly from the same continent as The Birthday Party. It’s a tough album in more ways than one, and it’s very deserving of this remastered reissue (and first-ever vinyl release) all these years later. (Bandcamp link)
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)
Hey there! I was on vacation last week, but the blog still kept on updating. Now I’m back home (thus concludes the “personal life update” portion of this blog post), and I’m bringing you new albums from Old Joy, Railcard, Summer Sleeves, and CuVa Bimö here in Pressing Concerns. Read ’em 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.
Old Joy – Why Burn Bridges You Can Live Under
Release date: September 18th Record label: Candlepin Genre: Power pop, indie pop, jangle pop, folk rock, 90s indie rock Formats: CD, cassette, digital Pull Track: Gut Shot
For the past decade, Alex Reindl was a fixture in the Chicago indie rock scene, playing in acts like Sonny Falls and Dogs at Large and regularly releasing self-described “scum-pop” music inspired by 90s indie rock, singer-songwriter indie folk, and power pop as Old Joy. Why Burn Bridges You Can Live Under appears to be the third Old Joy album, and it’s something of Reindl’s goodbye to the Windy City–shortly after he recorded it at Jamdek with Keifer Douglas and Doug Malone and a long list of Chicago musicians, Reindel relocated to Austin. The final Old Joy LP of the project’s Midwestern era is nothing less than Reindel’s finest work yet, an ambitious thirteen-track, fifty-five minute affair that ping-pongs between immediately-hitting guitar pop anthems and more “involved” indie rock numbers.
Sonny Falls bandleader Ryan Ensley contributes guitar to several tracks on Why Burn Bridges You Can Live Under, and Sonny Falls’ distorted indie rock hooks are a clear reference point for this album. More polished Windy City guitar pop acts like Truth or Consequences New Mexico and Disaster Kid also come to mind, as well as West Coast indie poppers Poppy Patica. In terms of older influences, Old Joy invoke greats from Big Star to Elliott Smith to Fountains of Wayne to Death Cab for Cutie–it’s a mixture of classic power pop and sprawling indie rock that feels very fresh. Look no further than the crazy eight-minute opening track “Cinco de Mayo” spilling into the sparkling guitar pop of “Gut Shot” to get an immediate sense of what Why Burn Bridges You Can Live Under is capable of doing. “Pocket”, “Crucifiction Song”, and “My Brother” all match “Gut Shot” for exciting power pop moments, and repeated listens reveal more great songwriting in the tracks that stitch these “hits” together. We’ll all find out together what’s next for Reindl in Texas, but this chapter of Old Joy has closed out on top. (Bandcamp link)
Railcard – Two Steps at a Time
Release date: September 18th Record label: Slumberland/Skep Wax Genre: Indie pop, twee, chamber pop, folk rock Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital Pull Track: Hillman Minx
Railcard are indie pop royalty, and so it’s only natural that their debut album comes to us via two labels also befitting of the title in Slumberland Records (the imprint who brought us Velocity Girl, The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, and Boyracer, among others) and Skep Wax (the label founded by members of twee legends Heavenly). Between the four of them (vocalist/guitarist/keyboardist Rachel Love, bassist Peter Momtchiloff, vocalist/guitarist/drummer Ian Button, and trumpeter Allison Thomson), they’ve played with Dolly Mixture, The Catenary Wires, Heavenly, and The Trash Can Sinatras, but they nonetheless released a couple of digital EPs with little fanfare in 2024 until Slumberland and Skep Wax stepped in to release the Railcard compilation physically earlier this year.
Two Steps at a Time quickly followed, and both the album title and the opening track for which it’s named reflect the pace Railcard is setting for themselves. The juxtaposition of “new, fresh project” and “long-time indie veterans” is key to understanding Two Steps at a Time and Railcard as a whole; these indie pop songs sound like they were written and bashed out quickly, but they also sound very carefully-constructed and considered. Songwriters Love, Button, and Momtchiloff (the first two co-writing the majority of the tracks and the latter contributing a couple songs George Harrison-style) have spent their entire musical lives leading up to the ability to make an album like Two Steps at a Time, where they can walk into a room with one another and stuff like the timeless lament of “When You Say You Love Me, Something’s Wrong”, the perky, electric indie-pop-power of “Hillman Minx”, and the chamber pop/dream folk of “Foxy” comes out of it. I’d hurry into the studio too if I knew that Two Steps at a Time was on the other end of the line. (Bandcamp link)
Summer Sleeves – I’m Shelling Real Daggers
Release date: September 4th Record label: Self-released Genre: Power pop, college rock, pop rock Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull Track: Simple Matters
Summer Sleeves is Jeremy Wayne, a Seattle-based musician who expresses a devotion to guitar pop of the “power”, “indie”, and “jangle” varieties, citing everyone from Elvis Costello and The New Pornographers to Elephant 6 and The Rentals as influences. I’m Shelling Real Daggers is the third Summer Sleeves album since they debuted in 2021 with the Jigsaw Records-released In the Throes of Woes, and the twelve-track LP features bass on half of the songs from Ethan Jones of local indie pop trio Model Shop and flute and horns from a few different collaborators (Roni and Peter Schmiedeskamp, Alon Bassok, and Harry Rivera); otherwise, it’s all Wayne. If any album I’ve written about recently deserves the “college rock” tag, it’s probably I’m Shelling Real Daggers; looking at Wayne’s list of influences again, I’m detecting a pattern of new wave glitziness, 60s pop fluency, power pop catchiness, and (and this is important) blaring keyboard hooks. Throw in a bit of that pre-1990s jangle pop rootsiness and you’ve got I’m Shelling Real Daggers, an underdog power pop album that nonetheless isn’t shy about wrecking balls of key-led hooks in tracks like “Anywhere, Anytime”, “Simple Matters”, and “Now You Have Time”. Even the songs that don’t have obvious handclaps and tambourines feel like they could have them. It’s a clean thirty minutes, and the few relatively brief detours away from “pop rock hits” are calculated (the sixty-second piano ballad “Tiny Violins”, the stripped down penultimate track “Delegating Is Nice”). I’m Shelling Real Daggers is an undeniable display of Summer Sleeves’ masterful understanding of power pop songwriting and execution. (Bandcamp link)
CuVa Bimö – New Western Values
Release date: September 4th Record label: Sell the Heart Genre: Punk rock, garage rock, noise rock Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital Pull Track: Charm Offensive
I wrote about CuVa Bimö back at the beginning of last year, when the Oakland group put out their debut album, CB Radio. In a Bay Area full of (very good) indie pop, the self-proclaimed “grunge rock” group’s embrace of garage punk and scuzzy noise rock stood out, and after dropping a single last December, the quartet (guitarist/vocalists Pete Vadelnieks and Sebastian Beltran-Moeller, drummer Ricky Cunliffe, and bassist Jake Bilich) got picked up by Sell the Heart Records (The Blackburns, Onesie, States of Nature) for their second LP. New Western Values is every bit the electric punk record that CB Radio was, from the sneering title track that kicks things off to the oddly melodic “Charm Offensive” to the nervous post-punk energy of “Graysin”. The rock-solid rhythms found in “Sound and Fury” and “800 Meter Tears” among other tracks continue to set CuVa Bimö apart from a horde of basement punk rock groups–there is something heavier and darker in New Western Values, unmistakably so. It’s in the occasionally theatrical vocals, the aforementioned low-end emphasis, but, really, just in how CuVa Bimö carry themselves. (Bandcamp link)
