I’ve been wanting to acknowledge the passing of David Thomas on this blog ever since it happened on April 23rd of this year, and I suppose Memorial Day is as good a time as any to finally do it. I’m not in the business of writing “obituaries” or “tributes” or any such thing, but Thomas’ music was and is a huge one for me personally and for a lot of the music I write about on Rosy Overdrive. Only Steve Albini has had more of an impact among those who’ve departed from this world during this blog’s lifespan, but while Albini’s passing brought forth a truly amazing amount of tributes from his peers and influences, the reaction to Thomas’ death seemed much more muted; it got the requisite coverage, the “importance” of Pere Ubu acknowledged, and everyone moved on. Sure, Thomas’ death was less shocking–he’d effectively been publicly dying for the past half-decade or even more–but also, this means that everyone had plenty of time to do the (admittedly difficult) task of wrapping their heads around Pere Ubu and what they’ve meant since the 1970s before the moment finally came.
Everything you need to know about David Thomas the artist is in Pere Ubu. He was certainly a fascinating (and frequently frustrating) interview subject, and I’ve seen plenty of memorable quotes of his surface in the past month, but his work as the bellowing ringleader of the Pere Ubu experience gives us so much (he was the only constant member of Pere Ubu, but I believe he would bristle at being compared to other “difficult” one-man-bandleaders like Mark E. Smith, claiming to be on good terms with “almost” all of the band’s former members). It’s not hard to see why the critics who bothered to look past the band’s abrasive surface loved Pere Ubu, and so much of that has to do with Thomas’ mixture of the highbrow and the lowbrow–listening to him sing/speak/yell, you get cultural references on the level of the band’s name, a sincere but not naive love of America and all its strange, freakish wrinkles, crude humor, opaque fury, and, above all, a deeply intentional surrealism. This mixture applied to his very performance, too–was his voice a confrontational statement of his own, or one strange man from Cleveland just throwing all of himself into his work?
It was definitely “Breath” that first made an impression on me. It wasn’t the first Pere Ubu song I heard, and I was aware of their reputation as challenging art rock oddballs, but hearing “Breath” altered everything about Pere Ubu for me–at least at first. A band that can make music as abrasive as some of their most famous works and make pop music as committed and simple (on the surface, at least) as “Breath”? That’s a band to remember. I got into Pere Ubu’s initial albums (from 1978 to 1982) and their “middle years” (1995 to 2002) first, but I always loved “Breath”. It might be my favorite song. I’ve definitely referred to the recording of them playing it on Night Music as “my favorite video on the Internet” before.
The four albums that Pere Ubu released on Fontana after reforming from 1988 to 1993 are referred to as their “pop albums”. This is correct–they’re the band’s most commercial offerings, conscious attempts to make pop music in a way that others could understand. I’ve always liked that all four of them had distinct personalities, though. The first and the fourth of them are the “buffer zone”, where we can see the weirdness of earlier and later Pere Ubu trying to creep in–1988’s The Tenement Year is the busy, chaotic blast-off, effectively brilliant pop music with strange, often frustrating industrial and drilling synth sounds laid over top of it. The final one, 1993’s Story of My Life, is Pere Ubu’s simplest, most stripped-down album from a band lineup perspective, but there’s also a restlessness to it (strange choices, potent injections of oddness) that indicated their time as respectable alternative rock musicians was coming to a close. In between them are the two most pure “pop” albums Pere Ubu ever made, Cloudland and Worlds in Collision. The former is perhaps the band’s masterpiece (it’s certainly the masterpiece of this era of Pere Ubu, but of course it has competition elsewhere)–Cloudland is the sound of Thomas and his band approaching pop music frantically and intensely, obsessed with getting every little detail of it right. Worlds in Collision, conversely, is the closest thing to “comfortable” Pere Ubu ever sounded–they were fully immersed in the world of pop with this one, no longer weirdos pretending, and could focus on just delivering the music.
Still, if I had to pick one era of Pere Ubu to define that band (and, subsequently, David Thomas), it would be the one after their “pop music”, the one that their website calls “The Modern Era” and the one that was collected on a Fire Records box set called Drive, He Said 1994-2002. 1995’s Raygun Suitcase retained some of the accessible structure of the records that came before it, but it’s all wrong and messed up (it is, again, perhaps the band’s masterpiece); 1998’s Pennsylvania and 2002’s St. Arkansas are burned out, dilapidated, rusted-shut Americana records for those of use who don’t believe in the concept of time passing (and thus are constantly bewildered by the change happening around us).
Pere Ubu famously (infamously?) got increasingly difficult during their initial run together–1982’s Song of the Bailing Man is a little less challenging than 1980’s The Art of Walking, but it mostly follows a straight line–but the hardest Ubu albums for me to appreciate have always been the newest ones. When Fire Records did their Nuke the Whales 2006-2014 box set, I was skeptical that those albums deserved a retrospective revisit, but I came away from it fully convinced that three out of the four records included in it (sorry, Long Live Pere Ubu) were great works of art all along. 2006’s Why I LUV Women is a busted rock and roll album that probably would’ve made them garage rock superstars if Thomas hadn’t been so committed to what he saw as an obvious ironic wink in the album’s original title, 2013’s The Lady from Shanghai is a dark electronic cloud that befuddles to fascinating ends, and 2014’s Carnival of Souls is effectively the best of the both of them.
Pere Ubu released three albums after Carnival of Souls, and they (with the exception of 2017’s 20 Years in a Montana Missile Silo, which is one last rocking ride at the art punk rodeo) still leave me cold and confused to this day. That’s what I’ve come to expect from Pere Ubu, though–The Long Goodbye and Trouble on Big Beat Street don’t really make sense to me right now, but that’s fine, and I won’t be surprised if they lock into place for me a few years down the line. When Pere Ubu announced that Thomas had passed away, they dutifully updated us on what he’d been working on as he stared down his own mortality–a new album, an autobiography, archival Pere Ubu recordings. I took note of all of this, aware that I’ll be exploring all of it some day in the future, and proceeded to do the thing that I always proceed to do when I think about David Thomas. I listened to his music.
Wake up, it’s the Thursday Pressing Concerns! Four records that are coming out tomorrow, May 19th! New albums from Florry and Wipes, a new EP from Forty Winks, and a deluxe reissue of a twenty-year old album from Headphones! And if you missed either of this week’s earlier blog posts (Monday: Rodeo Boys, Beasts, Kilynn Lunsford, and a compilation from Worry Bead Records; Tuesday: Ryan Allen, Mourning [A] BLKstar, Son of Buzzi, and Pretty Rude), check those 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.
Release date: May 23rd Record label: Suicide Squeeze Genre: Synthpop, synth-rock, singer-songwriter, art rock, post-punk Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital Pull Track: Pink and Brown
David Bazan has quite possibly the most fascinating discography in all of indie rock. I didn’t say “best discography” (though I wouldn’t argue with you if you said so), but specifically in the way that he’s been able to stay steady and recognizable across different project names, musical styles, and thematic journeys from the personal to literary (not to mention a change in his religious beliefs and relationship to the Christian Church, which is reflected in his music as well). The simply-titled Headphones and their sole self-titled album have been a particularly well-loved hidden release in Bazan’s career–recorded and released while his band Pedro the Lion was still together but after they’d already put out their final pre-reunion album, this new project found Bazan, frequent collaborator T.W. Walsh, and drummer Frank Lenz (Starflyer 59) making a unique synthesizer-and-live-drums style of music that nonetheless felt in line with the emo-y indie rock that Bazan had been pursuing with his “main” band. Remastered and re-released with two bonus tracks for its twentieth anniversary, Headphones is both wildly of its time and just too potent to be left there, the synths only sharpening and highlighting the darkness of this album.
It shouldn’t be much of a surprise that the person who wrote the frequently-bleak dramas of Winners Never Quit and Control would continue writing uncomfortable tales of interpersonal and geopolitical strife in a new project, but–either due to the minimalist instrumental setup or just because that’s where Bazan was at at the time–Headphones really feels like a trip to somewhere one never wants to end up on purpose. A lot of that has to do with the ugly, humiliated, and murderous opening track “Gas and Matches”; I still don’t quite know what to make of it two decades later, but I still get a visceral reaction listening to it. The fairly rudimentary synths are part of the appeal of Headphones, I think–Bazan would make more layered and fully-developed synth-based music later in his solo career, but I’m not sure stuff like the dead-eyed, dead-hearted hatred of “I Never Wanted You” and the sociopathic shrug of “Shit Talker” would’ve been improved by any kind of refinement.
The bonus material of Headphones also highlights the album’s mean streak–the acoustic version of “Gas and Matches” pulls no punches, and the bright, floating nature of “The Five Chord” only underscores how much it didn’t belong on Headphones. My favorite song on Headphones when I first became a fan of Bazan’s music was “Natural Disaster”, the appeal of which has as much to do with its blatant Bush-era concerns as the fact that it’s the most upbeat thing on the entire album (as obvious as what “Maybe a couple of airplanes could crash into buildings / And put the fear of God into you” is about, there’s still plenty of headscratching stuff in that one, too). Both because of the subject matter and because of a few fairly blunt lines, I wouldn’t expect something like “Natural Disaster” from Bazan in 2025 (and I think he’s gotten stuff like the creepy “Hello Operator” out of his system too), but it’s vivid picture of what 2005 looked like for a very talented writer. (Bandcamp link)
Florry – Sounds Like…
Release date: May 23rd Record label: Dear Life Genre: Country rock, alt-country Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital Pull Track: Pretty Eyes Lorraine
In 2023, I wrote about an album called The Holey Bible by a Philadelphia alt-country group called Florry (I also wrote about an EP from them; it was a busy year for Florry), and at the time I noted that the album reflected a shift from Florry as a Francie Medosch solo project to a raucous, powerful, and comfortable seven-piece band. Clearly, Medosch and company also viewed The Holey Bible as the start of something–when I wrote about it, I called it the third Florry album, but the press material for Sounds Like… calls their previous album their debut and the new album as their “sophomore” one. Medosch has recently moved from Philadelphia to Burlington, Vermont, but thankfully the band (whose members are already spread out between Pennsylvania and North Carolina) are still going strong and met up in Asheville to record Sounds Like… with Colin Miller. Sounds Like… features a similar but not exactly the same lineup as their last one–Medosch, guitarist John Murray, drummer Joey Sullivan, bassist Collin Dennen, pedal steel player Jon Cox, multi-instrumentalist Will Henriksen, vocalist Katya Malison, and a few guests. While (unlike The Holey Bible) Medosch sings lead vocals on all of Sounds Like…, it’s still a very collaborative and collective-feeling album, leaning on the many talents found within Florry to deliver another overstuffed country rock adventure.
Medosch is a smart songwriter and lyricist, but Florry separate themselves from the alt-country pack by emphasizing the group jamming around their wise and trusting bandleader. The yarn that Medosch spills on the awesome six-minute opening track “First It Was a Movie, Then It Was a Book” needs no help emphasizing its brilliance, leaving the guitars more time to devote to their true passions of rocking out. The first half of Sounds Like… is full of unintuitive but immediately-hitting classics like the opener, with the harmonica-aided “Waiting Around to Provide”, the country rock groove of “Hey Baby”, and the lumbering, dramatic “Truck Flipped Over ‘19” all qualifying. “Big Something” and “Say Your Prayers Rock” ensure that there’s plenty of liveliness in the record’s second half, too, but Sounds Like… isn’t entirely a big-tent-party version of that classic “Burlington-Asheville-Philly alt-country sound”. Medosch only gives herself a few real houselights-dimmed, spotlight-fully-trained-on-her moments, and she takes them to get surprisingly sweet and tender with “Dip Myself in Like an Ice Cream Cone” and “Pretty Eyes Lorraine” (the 70s-style pop rock of the latter really goes well with her voice). The eight-minute closing track “You Don’t Know” counts too, I suppose, although I find myself impressed with how orderly and measured Florry are able to play over the length of the entire final odyssey. Even when the music of Sounds Like… veers away from showiness, it’s still key in its success. (Bandcamp link)
Forty Winks – Love Is a Dog from Hell
Release date: May 23rd Record label: Crafted Sounds Genre: Noise pop, fuzz rock, shoegaze Formats: CD, cassette, digital Pull Track: Noise
In the time I’ve been doing this blog, Crafted Sounds has established itself as the go-to record label for Pittsburgh’s burgeoning shoegaze, fuzz rock, and noise pop movements (see Gaadge and Feeble Little Horse and Flower Crown, among others). The imprint’s latest signee is a quartet that fits right alongside Crafted Sounds’ lineage–Forty Winks, who are made up of bassist/vocalist Cilia Catello, guitarist/vocalist Conner McGee, drummer Colin Klink, and guitarist Kyuhwan “Q” Hwang and who have just released their debut EP, Love Is a Dog from Hell. Via these five songs, I certainly can see why Crafted Sounds referred to Forty Winks as “riff evangelists” and “zoomer rock”–they fall somewhere in between the textured experimentation of shoegaze-originating acts like They Are Gutting a Body of Water and fuzzed-out rock and roll groups like Ex Pilots and A Country Western, eagerly mixing chaotic noise, roaring guitars, and pop hooks together in a brief but memorable package. A more rock-devoted version of early Feeble Little Horse might the most succinct comparison for Love Is a Dog from Hell that I can offer, but the quartet pack so much personality in a dozen minutes here that they deserve to be considered on their own already.
“Noise”, an advance single and quite possibly the best pop song on the EP, is saved for last, but Love Is a Dog from Hell isn’t just a delayed gratification-fest. It’s true that the opening track, “liadfh”, is a textural piece featuring dreamy shoegaze guitar tones gliding smoothly over minimal percussion and unobtrusively melodic vocals, but it’s catchy in its own right, plus it leads right into the other possible catchiest song on the EP, “Commie BF”. The skewed, oddly dramatic gaze-pop song is like a more mall-punk version of the Gaadge/Ex Pilots side of fuzz rock; it alone presents an exciting future for this young band. Lead single “Spurs” is a bit more standoffish than these aforementioned tracks, but I can still see why it was an advance track–it’s perhaps the most complete “shoegaze” moment on the EP, the quartet really letting the guitars run wild in this odd but certainly fully-realized track. After getting a bit tricky with “Spurs” (and the interlude of sorts “Faith”, into which the previous song bleeds), “Noise” comes to save the day with a huge noise-pop (no pun intended) conclusion. Punchy and fuzzed-out and delivering the goods in a straightforward way that Forty Winks hadn’t quite hinted at up until now, “Noise” is another reason to keep this band on our collective radar–not that we needed another one by this point in Love Is a Dog from Hell. (Bandcamp link)
Wipes – Don’t Tell My Parents
Release date: May 23rd Record label: Hex Genre: Noise rock, noise punk, sludge Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital Pull Track: Milk Dreams
The hottest new noise rock band is a trio simply called Wipes. No, not “Wipers” (you imbecile), they’re from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania (although their label, Hex Records, is from the same Portland that the legendary, similarly-named proto-grunge band hailed). Two-thirds of Wipes (bassist/vocalist Ray Gurz and guitarist Daryl Fogel) previously played together in Allentown group Tile, which I can only imagine was also a noise rock band, and they reconvened with new drummer Garrett Groller as Wipes at the beginning of this decade. Wipes debuted in a big way in 2022 with a debut album called Making Friends and a split cassette with the band Day Job, both via Hex; they strayed from their label of origin by releasing an EP called Vacuum on Avarice in 2024, but they’re back with Hex for their sophomore album, Don’t Tell My Parents. I don’t know what to say about Don’t Tell My Parents other than the fact that it’s just plain-old good noise rock music. It’s not particularly wedded to any specific part of the genre–some of it is sludgy and metallic, some of it’s punky and furious, but all of it is music that’ll please fans of all rock music that’s heavy and pummeling.
“Pummeling” is how Don’t Tell My Parents feels from a structural level, too–it’s thirteen songs long, always with its gaze set on maximum noisiness, and thus has a bit of an “endurance test” factor to it. Big, downtuned, grungy riffs begin to drill their way into our skulls with the mission statement opening track “Good Luck in the Future”, and they don’t stop: “Stone Eater” and “Bleeding Gums” are just as mean as their titles suggest. “Inhuman Highway” sounds a little more post-punk in its guitars and almost Devo in its vocals, but it’s hardly a respite, and even if it were, there’s nothing here that could slow down the march of tracks like “Machine” and “Taste the Chain” soon afterwards. Maybe it’s Stockholm syndrome, but I do see new shapes emerging in Wipes’ constant assault towards the end of the album, the trio trying on new tricks with the Dischord-reminiscent post-hardcore of “Speedway”, the dramatic, creepy drone-rock of “Condition”, and the kind-of-catchy garage punk “Milk Dreams”. Don’t Tell My Parents ends in much the same way it begins, though–the four-minute noise rock hurricane of “Ezra”, heavy and slowly inflicting as much damage as possible before things come to a close. (Bandcamp link)
It’s the second Pressing Concerns of the week! This one features brand-new albums from Ryan Allen, Mourning [A] BLKstar, Son of Buzzi, and Pretty Rude. Great stuff! If you missed yesterday’s blog post (featuring Rodeo Boys, Beasts, Kilynn Lunsford, and a compilation from Worry Bead Records), check that one out here.
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.
Ryan Allen – Livin’ on a Prayer on the Edge
Release date: April 25th Record label: Setterwind Genre: Power pop, jangle pop Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital Pull Track: Company’s Eyes
Ryan Allen has been playing around the Michigan indie rock scene for a quarter-century at this point–the bands he’s been in since the early 2000s include Thunderbirds Are Now!, Destroy This Place, Friendly Foes, and Red Shirt Brigade. Allen’s main focuses as of late have been his power pop band Extra Arms and his wide-ranging solo career (sometimes the lines between the two are blurred, as he’s also released a couple of records attributed to “Ryan Allen & His Extra Arms”). Allen’s been as active as he’s ever been these past few years–Extra Arms albums in 2022 and 2024, a solo record in 2023, and now 2025 has brought us Livin’ on a Prayer on the Edge, an album that’s attributed to Allen solo but has as at least as much rocking power pop energy as the last Extra Arms LP (Radar) did. Allen played and recorded almost everything on Livin’ on a Prayer on the Edge himself, and he calls it a record for “that 15-year-old kid inside of me”–formative alt-rock groups like Guided by Voices, Dinosaur Jr., and Swervedriver are mentioned as influences. I won’t say that there aren’t moments on this album that are a little bit shoegaze- or noise pop-influenced, but Livin’ on a Prayer on the Edge is a power pop album, and the names that come to mind are the ones who’ve made great records in this field–Matthew Sweet, Teenage Fanclub, Tommy Keene, Fountains of Wayne, Daniel Romano.
Allen is a zippy, garage-y power pop musician, but his songwriting still has a whimsical side that’s reminiscent of Robert Pollard or even Pollard’s 60s prog-pop influences (not to mention a band you might’ve heard of called “The Beatles”), as evidenced by the absurd “The Construction Man” and the pogo-ing “Spider Sally”. Some of the other fun excursions to be found on Livin’ on a Prayer on the Edge include the snotty but catchy garage punk of “Devil’s Juice” (the most Daniel Romano moment, to me) and “So What Who Cares”, built around some droning synths and guitar chords in the way somebody who likes Stereolab might do (I want to emphasize that it’s a power pop song and thus doesn’t actually sound like Stereolab, but I do hear the connection that Allen makes when discussing the song). Livin’ on a Prayer on the Edge has its share of gorgeous jangle pop, with both “Anxious All the Time” (as in “don’t wanna be”) and “Company’s Eyes” (as in “fail in the”) qualifying. If you think either the nagging mental unwellness of the former and the corporate preoccupations of the latter are particularly emblematic of a middle-aged guy from the Midwest navigating getting older, wait until you find out that there are songs called “When I’m Gone”, “After I’m Dead”, and “In the Next Life” on here, too. Maybe that’s what Allen means when he calls Livin’ on a Prayer on the Edge “the most ME record I’ve ever made”; that fifteen-year-old kid may still be young in some ways, but he’s not naive anymore. (Bandcamp link)
Mourning [A] BLKstar – Flowers for the Living
Release date: May 16th Record label: Don Giovanni Genre: Soul, gospel, experimental rock, jazz-funk Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull Track: Stop Lion 2
New music from seven-piece Cleveland “Afrofuturist collective” Mourning [A] BLKstar is always welcome, and it’s been a rewarding twelve months for those of us who enjoy the work of the genre-melding soul- and gospel–inspired group. The band’s seventh album, Ancient//Future, showed up last July, and Mourning [A] BLKstar is back less than a year later with LP number eight, Flowers for the Living. Saying that Flowers for the Living sounds like a Mourning [A] BLKstar album is (while true) not particularly helpful, as their sound encompasses a bunch of different corners. Compared to the relative brief, more rock-focused Ancient//Future, the septet (vocalists RA Washington, James Longs, and LaToya Kent, drummer Dante Foley, bassist Jah Nada, trumpeter Theresa May, and guitarist/keyboardist Pete Saudek) are more sprawling and slow-moving on the forty-five minute Flowers for the Living. The jazz and funk influences are still there, but delivered in a much more laid-back manner (don’t call it “smooth”, though–the album is large enough to include a little bit of the group’s past experimental tinkering and a song that surpasses the eight-minute mark).
“Stop Lion 2” is, on its surface, quite simple, but the first song on Flowers for the Living is (perhaps appropriately) hard to categorize. There’s a drum machine beat, gospel ambience, funk bass, and piercing trumpet–it’s not particularly busy, but it doesn’t slot neatly into any of the boxes evoked by those pieces. Oh, and there’s guest vocals from Lee Bains III of the great group Lee Bains III & The Glory Fires (who’ve toured with Mourning [A] BLKstar and share a label with them); the southern rocker really pushes his vocals to fit in on the track, but something tells me that he didn’t have to try that hard. A lot of the first half of Flowers for the Living is similarly slow-moving and striking (“Can We?”, “Letter to a Nervous System”); things start to get a little more busy with the jazz-rock beat of the title track, and the hypnotic percussion is the glue that holds the eight-minute “Legacy to Begin” together. Flowers for the Living is probably at its “liveliest” once it makes it past the high peak of “Legacy to Begin”; between the slightly sunny R&B of “Let Em Eat” (featuring the album’s other notable guest vocalist, rapper Fatboi Sharif) and the dark psych-funk of “Lil’ Bobby Hutton”, two of the most immediately-hitting songs on this album are right near the end of it. Coming down from the dizzying righteousness of the latter of those two tracks, Mourning [A] BLKstar close with another gospel-indebted song in “Choir A’light”. At the very least we can always count on Mourning [A] BLKstar to be entertaining and interesting, but it’s apparent here that they also took great care to properly guide Flowers for the Living to the right conclusion. (Bandcamp link)
Son of Buzzi – Ein Hase, ein Phönix, ein Schwan
Release date: May 16th Record label: Shrimper Genre: Fingerstyle guitar, folk, drone, ambient, post-rock Formats: CD, digital Pull Track: Spiegelebene
Even those who were deep into the world of underground lo-fi rock music of the 1990s may not be aware that one of that era’s most consistent labels, the Inland Empire’s Shrimper Records, remains active to this day releasing new music from longtime indie rock veterans (just in the past year, we’ve seen new music from Refrigerator, Goosewind, and Jad Fair via them). Somewhat surprisingly, though, my favorite thing that Shrimper has released in quite a while is by an unfamiliar (to me), newer face: Son of Buzzi, aka Sebastian Bischoff. Bischoff is a “self taught finger style guitar player” who’s “now” based in Zurich, Switzerland (implying he’s originally from somewhere else, although I don’t know where) and has been making music as Son of Buzzi since 2019. Bischoff’s music seems to be comprised of meandering, peaceful acoustic guitar playing interspersed with synthesizers and “electronic” sounds provided both by Bischoff himself and producer Michael Potter, an experimental musician from North Carolina who appears to be a frequent contributor on Son of Buzzi releases. The acoustic guitar of the latest Son of Buzzi album, Ein Hase, ein Phönix, ein Schwan, was recorded by Bischoff “inside a hut in the Ticino Mountains in Switzerland alone over a long weekend”, and he and Potter put the finishing touches on the LP after the fact.
Ein Hase, ein Phönix, ein Schwan is made up of five songs, and about half of the album is taken up by the first one–the twenty-minute title track, a massive and challenging opening statement if I’ve heard one this year. The first half of “Ein Hase, ein Phönix, ein Schwan” is effectively an ambient/drone piece with occasional harmonics and brief guitar interjections from Bischoff–about halfway through, Bischoff begins fingerpicking in earnest, though the atmospheric synths don’t fade and in fact take over the track yet again before it finally draws to a close. Son of Buzzi wisely don’t try to best “Ein Hase, ein Phönix, ein Schwan” immediately after it takes its final bow–going in a different direction, the plain and bright fingerpicking of “Spiegelebene” is pretty easily the most immediate song on the album, and while “Geschlossene Räume” is a little darker, it’s still a relatively straightforward fingerstyle folk guitar piece and stays that way for a fairly concise four minutes. The nine-minute “RKHS” is a noise/drone number that’s arguably even more challenging than the opening track (at least that song resolves into something eventually), and the brief “Heimweg, Mondlicht am Strassenrand” closes the record with a quieter and more delicate version of the friendlier mid-record songs. Bischoff takes us all manner of places with his playing on Ein Hase, ein Phönix, ein Schwan. (Bandcamp link)
Pretty Rude – Ripe
Release date: May 16th Record label: SideOneDummy Genre: Power pop, pop punk, alt-rock Formats: Digital Pull Track: Things I Do
I’m primarily familiar with James Palko as the bassist and backing vocalist for the awesome New York 90s indie rock revivalists/power pop group Taking Meds, but you may also know the Queens-based musician from his soft rock alter ego Jimmy Montague or his time playing in cult New England emo band Perspective, a Lovely Hand to Hold. So what differentiates his latest group, Pretty Rude, from his slew of other projects? Well, it’s a duo, an equal-parts collaboration between Palko and Matt Cook, who drummed in Perspective, a Lovely Hand to Hold until they broke up a couple years ago. And, judging from their debut album together as Pretty Rude, Ripe, this partnership has led to a cleaner embrace of power pop and catchy radio-ready alt-rock than either of them have ever dared to pursue before. Fuzzed-out power chords and hooky riffs, suave vocals, and even some classic rock guitar heroics mark Ripe, a record that, at its most immediate, is right up there with Supercrush and The Trend in terms of modern Weezer-inspired giant power pop. Sometimes their version of catchy rock music is limber and targeted, other times it’s a wall of sound that leans on some of Pretty Rude’s less “punk” influences, but Ripe establishes its own language soon enough.
A brief record that leaves us anything but shortchanged, Pretty Rude get in there and do their business in eight tracks and under thirty minutes. If you’re looking for a Pretty Rude-defining anthem, the opening track (which also happens to be called “Pretty Rude”) will do the trick between its post-Rozwell Kid grunge-power-pop guitar explosions and Beach Boys backing vocals hidden in the rough, while the choppy, meaty alt-rock slickness of single “Call Me, Ishmael” also does the trick. The breezy power pop of “Things I Do” bridges the two songs and its windows-down collapsing euphoria harbors what’s actually the sneakily best hook between the three of them, but this is a theme for Ripe–“Debbie and Lynn” figures to be a relatively nondescript mid-record track until the slight XTC influences starts showing up in the verses and the spirit of Fountains of Wayne possesses them for the chorus, for example. In the second half, the surprisingly bright rock and roll of “Polish Deli” and the 2000s alt-rock/pop-punk-via-Beach Boys charms of “The Work” are both highlights–I’ve named nearly every song on the record at this point, but that’s what happens when you’ve got a no-filler declaration of a debut LP like what Pretty Rude have done here with Ripe. (Bandcamp link)
On this perfectly okay Monday morning, Pressing Concerns is here to present to you new albums from Rodeo Boys and Kilynn Lunsford, a new vinyl release of an album from Beasts that originally came out last year, and a compilation benefiting the Trans Youth Emergency Project put together by Worry Bead Records.
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.
Various – True Names: A Benefit for Trans Youth
Release date: May 2nd Record label: Worry Bead Genre: Lo-fi indie rock, bedroom pop, folk rock Formats: Digital Pull Track: You’re a Yo-Yo
I usually try to prioritize these benefit compilations if I decide that I want to write about them, but I had the wrong release date written down for this one, and its chosen cause is unfortunately going to be relevant for the foreseeable future, so I’m giving True Names: A Benefit for Trans Youth a bump a few weeks after its release. This compilation was put together by Worry Bead Records, a Queens-based label run by Matt O’Connor (of the lovely Candlepin Records-associated band Tuxis Giant) and their partner, Jenny Ruenes; all proceeds from it go to the Trans Youth Emergency Project, which “helps families of trans youth find healthcare providers, travel to appointments, and pay for medication”. Like I said, these are essential services, and I’m pleased to see that many great artists chipped in to provide a song for this compilation–just among bands I’ve written about favorably on this blog before, 2nd Grade, Remember Sports, (T-T)b, Really Great, Michael Cormier-O’Leary, and Léna Bartels all contribute demos, live recordings, and/or straight-up exclusive songs. True Names primarily draws from the worlds of East Coast bedroom pop and lo-fi indie rock, but there’s a lot of range to be found within the compilation, making it a pretty compelling listen.
Philadelphia indie punk heroes Remember Sports give us a live version of “Cut Fruit”, a song that they’ve been playing live for a bit now but as far as I can tell has never been released anywhere else–it rips, it fits right in with the songs from 2022’s Like a Stone, and I’m glad there’s a good-sounding version I can listen to now. On the other side of the compilation is a new song from a band that shares members with Remember Sports, 2nd Grade–although I wouldn’t be surprised if “You’re a Yo-Yo” is a Peter Gill solo recording (it has a full-band sound though, and it’s an excellent little sub-two-minute lo-fi power pop nugget). Perhaps surprisingly given the theme of the compilation, the title of the song “M-F” by Michael Cormier-O’Leary actually stands for “Monday through Friday”, and the song itself–a fuzzed-out, anxiety-ridden lo-fi pop song–is just as surprising (pleasantly!) coming from the modern classical and indie folk musician. A bunch of the songs from bands that either are new to me or at least I’ve never written about are worth highlighting, too–“Villain Story” by King’s Evil (a band that doesn’t seem to have released any other music) is really cool synth-y slacker pop, Dust from 1000 Yrs puts on their Harvest-era Neil Young hat for “Big Moon”, and Squirrel Flower (who’ve never really grabbed me but now I’m wanting to rethink this) balances fun and intimate with their demo of “Intheskatepark” (the final version of which was on 2023’s Tomorrow’s Fire). You get to explore everything True Names has to offer and give to a good cause at the same time; that’s a good deal! (Bandcamp link)
Rodeo Boys – Junior
Release date: April 25th Record label: Don Giovanni Genre: Garage punk, pop punk, alt-rock Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull Track: Peonies
Rodeo Boys are, in some ways, the archetypal Don Giovanni Records band. They’re a punk band whose music can be reasonably described as grungy, angry, and hooky in equal measure, their queerness (at the very least, that of frontperson Tiff Hannay) is central to their songwriting, and they’re pure road dogs (in their relatively brief existence, they’ve played with Cloud Nothings, Smoking Popes, Laura Jane Grace, Screaming Females, and The Menzingers, among others). They aren’t from Philly or Jersey (which probably would’ve completed Don Giovanni Bingo), but their Midwesternness (they hail from Lansing, Michigan) certainly helps them conjure up a version of punk Americana that’s on even ground with the Atlantic City crew. Coming not so long after their debut album, 2023’s Home Movies, Junior is the classic leveling-up sophomore LP–Rodeo Boys enlisted The Menzingers’ Tom May to record it, and it’s hard to argue with what the group put to tape with him. Junior balances “polish” with “ragged”–Hannay’s impactful vocals (they’re always “giving their all” in that department) collide with huge-sounding, shined-up guitars, initiating some sort of chemical reaction the final product of which is a forty-minute cathartic punk rock record.
We really don’t get much warning before Junior really launches into the heavy stuff–maybe the thirty-second instrumental opening “It Is Happening Again” counts as a “warning”, but the record really starts with the furious, stomping, righteously murderous “Sam’s Song” (the lyrics are drawn from an experience of a friend of Hannay’s who was groomed as a student by a teacher–they handle the subject exactly as they should in a punk band setting). It’s tough to come up with that much to say about stuff like “Let Down”, “Lonesome Again”, and “Pump Six” other than that they rock and are extremely successful at what they do–punk songs that happily draw from the genre’s past but which are too imbued with the personality of their frontperson to come off as overly derivative or too reverent. “Peonies” kicks itself off with just Hannay delivering a dark and huge melody over electric guitar chords, which is a big “hell yes” moment in my book. The first half of Junior is so big that I feel like I’m neglecting the B-side a bit, but there’s still plenty of quality rock songs to be had down that road between tracks like “Venus Fly Trap” (yes, we get it Tiff, you work with plants) and “Cowgirl in the Dark”. It feels like Rodeo Boys traverse quite a lot of ground on these fourteen songs; it might be only their second album, but this band is champing at the bit to get to “elder statesmen status”, and I think they’ll wear it well, too. (Bandcamp link)
Beasts – The Shearing (Vinyl Release)
Release date: April 18th Record label: Rockerill/La Base ASBL Genre: Noise rock, noise punk, rap-rock Formats: Vinyl, cassette, digital Pull Track: The Shearing
Who are Beasts? Well, they’re a project from Belgium, led by the Charleroi-based Antoine Romeo. Romeo used to play in a band called Run Sofa, and while he is joined by a backing band for Beasts’ first album (drummer Tijl Van de Casteele of Whorses and François Hantson of Feel and Mingawash on “hybrid bassguitar”), the band bio does refer to it as a solo project. The Shearing is far from your typical solo project, though, mind you–the debut Beasts album is an explosive, low-end-worshipping noise rock album that also owes plenty to punk and (in Romeo’s vocals) rap-rock. It’s an intense record from what seems like a pretty intense person–Beasts comes with a “manifesto” that declares them to be against fascism, multinational corporations, and “elitist culture”, among other things, and they back this up by declining to make The Shearing available on any streaming service (although there is one song on Bandcamp as a sampler). You can stream it on their website, as well as buy a vinyl copy (the album originally came out on cassette last year via French label Solium). Perhaps you’re the type of person who’s intrigued by a Belgian antifascist noise rock/punk-rap album–maybe even to click through to an unfamiliar website! I’ll try to lay it out for you a little more first, though.
The absolutely wild opening title track wastes no time weeding out anybody who isn’t totally on board for this kind of thing–it starts with an eerie sample, sure, but by a minute in we’re already receiving the full essence of Beasts: lumbering, razor-sharp basslines in the front, Romeo’s chaotic spitting waging battle with the four-string, and de Casteele holding everything together behind the kit. Hantson’s hybrid bass is effectively the co-star of The Shearing–it fills up every moment where Romeo isn’t roaring against the noise and stays just in-frame enough whenever he is. The Shearing is never not unhinged to some degree– “Deep South” is just a little more restrained and seething than the opener, but “Beasts (My Swollen Face)” and “Same Way” are the record’s most pummeling moments yet (and the latter, which circles the drain with a depressing, dour bass-guitar riff, unlocks a new level of darkness for Beasts). “Old Pictures” and “Let Them Children Play” keep the rage coming, and their subject matters hint at some deep-seated origins for what Romeo is exorcising here (“Toxic masculinity a law / Fight in the fields after school / Traumas get passed on and on / Well…I didn’t ask for it” he wails at the ending of the latter of the two songs). Sure, Romeo screaming “Silence the sirens inside!” in closing track “The Fire Inside” is cathartic, but it gets to the next level by having the rest of Beasts operating like an industrial-grade drill right beside him. (Beasts Website link) (Bandcamp link)
Kilynn Lunsford – Promiscuous Genes
Release date: May 16th Record label: Feel It Genre: Art punk, post-punk, no wave Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull Track: Disney Girls
The New Jersey artist Kilynn Lunsford has been playing in bands in and around Philadelphia for two decades now–most notably the wild art punk group Taiwan Housing Project, with whom she’s put out two albums, a tape, and a couple of EPs since 2015. In 2022, Lunsford decided to try her hand at a solo album, releasing Custodians of Human Succession on Ever/Never Records, and (with Taiwan Housing Project seemingly inactive) Lunsford’s back with a second solo album called Promiscuous Genes this year on Feel It. Like Custodians of Human Succession, it’s a partnership between Lunsford and longtime collaborator Donald Bruno–the two of them wrote and played almost everything on Promiscuous Genes. Bruno and Lunsford are clearly in tune to the same strange frequency–it’s on the more oddball side of the Feel It Records spectrum, choosing to roll with a rank mix of skronky no wave, primordial funk crawling, creepy spoken-word, unusual synth odysseys, rhythmic art punk, and, well, more. Promiscuous Genes is hardly the kind of record that those looking for catchy, pop-fluent rock music would gravitate towards, but those willing to listen in on what Lunsford is attempting to communicate will find something striking nonetheless.
A lot of Promiscuous Genes is, structurally speaking, fairly simple, but Lunsford and Bruno are still able to make things sound confusing and wrong. “My Amphibian Face”, a minimal synthpunk instrumental featuring Lunsford singing “Slither on the ground, slither on the ground” over and over again is a good early example of it, as is a version of The Beach Boys’ “Disney Girls” (I mean, no shit–the two of them turn the piano ballad into a nervous post-punk toe-tapper featuring prominent use of some kind of referee whistle). Between the unrecognizable burbling no wave of “You Never Give Me Your Money”, the vocally-manipulated intro of “Lillibilly”, and the really unsettling caveman bass-rock of the title track, the first half of Promiscuous Genes is probably the more confrontational one–not that Lunsford ever stops being weird, but there’s a least a more recognizable post-punk energy to songs like “Gateway to Hell” and an early synthpop attitude to “Let’s Eat”. Even the hip-hop-ish “Maisie” is catchy in a hypnotic way, and it eventually starts to make sense that the last two proper songs on the album (“Gagged World” and “Saddest of Dreams”) are some of the most straightforward ones on it. Everything’s moving backwards on Promiscuous Genes, but Lunsford is quite adept at navigating via rear view mirror. (Bandcamp link)
We’ve got four superb albums that are coming out tomorrow (May 16th) in today’s Pressing Concerns! There are new albums from First Rodeo, Artificial Go, The High Water Marks, and The Gotobeds below–check ’em out! Also, if you missed Monday’s blog post (featuring Festiva, Andhi & the O’Neills, C’mon Tigre, and Monnone Alone) or Tuesday’s (featuring Zero Bars, The Rabies, Strange Devotion, and stef.in), check those 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.
First Rodeo – Rode Hard and Put Away Wet
Release date: May 16th Record label: Bud Tapes Genre: Alt-country, country rock, folk rock Formats: Cassette, digital Pull Track: Nothing
Over the past couple of years I’ve written about a pairof good albums from the Portland, Oregon alt-country act Vista House, which serves as the vessel for the songwriting of one Tim Howe. As much as I’ve enjoyed those Vista House records, my first experience with Howe was as one-half of First Rodeo, another alt-country band he co-leads with the indie pop musician Nathan Tucker. Tucker’s an accomplished artist in his own right (he has a solo project called Cool Original and spent time in Strange Ranger), but the 2022 self-titled First Rodeo album is some of the finest work by either of them, and so I was pleased to hear about Rode Hard and Put Away Wet, the duo’s second album together. Their new label Bud Tapes boasts that First Rodeo have “moved beyond genre constraints to explore collaborative songwriting and arranging”–I’m not entirely sure what they mean by that, but there’s a song on this album where both Howe and Tucker are basically rapping, and there’s certainly nothing like that on First Rodeo, so I can see from where they’re coming. Still, Rode Hard and Put Away Wet isn’t a huge departure (other than that one song), as it’s still grounded in the roots, country, and folk rock on which First Rodeo built their initial foundation.
Rode Hard and Put Away Wet does start off on a relatively traditional note, although First Rodeo find an unlikely source of inspiration for it–they repurpose as a couple-years-old Cool Original song called “The Crying Hour” and turn it into a smooth folk rock ballad (rechristened the “Dry Version”, and Howe sings a verse, too). “See If U Flinch” and “Speak Softly” are classic examples of the Howe-Tucker partnership, a casual marriage of roots and pop music whose interesting detours are relatively subtle–and then the song I alluded to in the previous paragraph, “Nothing”, comes out of nowhere with drum loops, “Steal My Sunshine”-esque guitars, and sung-spoken (very nearly rapped) vocals from Tucker. It took me a bit of time to adjust to it, but I’m fairly certain that this nearly six-minute journey is a masterpiece and exactly what First Rodeo should be doing (in particular, the switch from Howe narrating the later verses to Tucker singing the hook is very inspired). While First Rodeo don’t precisely attempt something like “Nothing” again, it feels like that song loosens up the rest of the record, as the hazy synths of “Dusk 2”, the almost industrial-country compaction of “Sunset Highway”, and the simple shuffle of “Familiar” all bear the marks of being a little more tinkered-with. “Pride in the Fall” closes out Rode Hard and Put Away Wet with another kind of peak–while “Nothing” showed the range of the duo, the final track on the album returns to the realm of alt-country with strange little synth parts and desert-warped atmospherics in tow. Either one of those two tracks could’ve been what “evolution” meant for First Rodeo–kudos for Tucker and Howe for just giving us both of them. (Bandcamp link)
Artificial Go – Musical Chairs
Release date: May 16th Record label: Feel It Genre: Post-punk, indie pop, art rock, jangle pop Formats: Vinyl, CD (with Hopscotch Fever), digital Pull Track: Circles
The “existential post-punk chamber pop” trio Artificial Go (made up of Angie Willcutt, Cole Gilfilen, and Micah Wu) released their debut album, Hopscotch Fever, last September. I missed it at the time (in my defense, Feel It Records puts out a lot of albums, many of which could be described in a similar manner as the previously-quoted phrase to some degree), but I’ve been given a second chance to get on board the Artificial Go train with their second album, Musical Chairs. Like I said, this is the first time I’ve listened to Artificial Go, and I’d initially just kind of assumed that they’re from somewhere in the middle of Europe based on how they sound–but nope, they’re a bunch of Midwesterners, right from Feel It Records Headquarters in Cincinnati (that would’ve been my second guess). Musical Chairs recalls plenty of offbeat, strange guitar pop artists of previous decades, from Flying Nun Records in New Zealand to The Raincoats in England to the general vibe of Athens, Georgia in the early 1980s. Willcutt, Artificial Go’s vocalist and lyricist, is pretty clearly one of a kind–not content to simply compliment the tuneful instrumentals that the trio whip up, her cutting remarks, non-sequiturs, and frequently…unique delivery are the defining features of Musical Chairs.
That isn’t to denigrate the rest of the band–as memorable as Willcutt is as a frontperson, her performance would be wasted without the talents of a group that can turn “Lasso” into a frantic cowpunk opener and “Circles” into fluffy, bounding jangly indie pop (the way Willcutt says various dog breeds is the first thing that stuck with me on the latter, but that chorus is the real gem of that song). “The World Is My Runway” is an oddly gripping ode to life as performance (“I wear my birthday suit to a fashion show in my kitchen”), but “Red Convertible” is a much more abstract offering from Willcutt. The second half of Musical Chairs features some of its best musical moments–single “Hallelujah” is an ornery jangle pop song, “Playing Puppet” is an overcast, hazy version of that same genre, “Late to the Party” is some spikey dance-punk, and “Sky Burial” closes the album with a bizarre, dub-influenced deconstructed post-punk head-scratcher. The more I listen to it, the more obvious it is that Musical Chairs is a great band album, and that’s how it works as well as it does–for instance, maybe “Tight Rope Walker” isn’t quite as clever as it thinks it is, but the lovely acoustic guitar-led folk-indie-pop instrumental is so well-done and complementary to the contemplations contained in the words that it’s still a success of a song. That’s a good a sign as any that Artificial Go have everything they need already. (Bandcamp link)
The High Water Marks – Consult the Oracle
Release date: May 16th Record label: Meritorio Genre: Fuzz pop, power pop, indie pop Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull Track: The Works
We’re living in the golden age of The High Water Marks. Of course, the band has always been a reliable source of guitar pop of the “power” and “psychedelic” varieties, but not even during The High Water Marks’ earliest days–beginning in the mid-2000s as a trans-Atlantic partnership between founding Elephant 6 member and longtime Apples in Stereo drummer Hilarie Sidney in Kentucky and Per Ole Bratset in Oslo–have the band released so many great records in such a relatively short amount of time. Now entirely based in Norway and rounded out by Logan Miller and Øystein Megård, Consult the Oracle is The High Water Marks’ fourth album since 2020, coming hot on the heels of 2023’s Your Next Wolf (quite possibly their best record ever) and a twenty-year anniversary reissue of their 2004 debut album, Songs About the Ocean (featuring a handful of new recordings of the group’s oldest songs by band members both current and former). Consult the Oracle is business as usual at this point–a dozen indie pop songs recalling both Sidney’s previous band and early High Water Marks completed in a little over half an hour, featuring cameos from notable names like Rebecca Cole (Wild Flag, Pavement, The Minders) and Jennifer Baron (The Ladybug Transistor, The Garment District), among others.
I don’t take Consult the Oracle for granted, though. After all, how could I do such a thing with an album that has highs as high as “The Works” (a masterclass in the usage of power pop guitar riffs and handclaps) and the title track (a lovely piece of fuzzy twee pop featuring Bratset and Sidney trading off lead vocals)? Perhaps it’s a tinge more laid-back than Your Next Wolf was, a chance for The High Water Marks to let their slightly jangly, slightly psychedelic pop music marinate a little more than usual. It’s a subtle distinction–The High Water Marks aren’t a chamber pop group all of a sudden, and their 60s garage rock influences are still felt throughout the record in the electric, nervous pop energy of opening track “Postcard”, the aforementioned rager “The Works”, and the stumbling, rumbling “Strange Things”. In between the louder moments are the songs that give Consult the Oracle its personality–the title track, “Don’t Hang Me Out to Dry” (a light retro-pop song aided by Baron’s keyboards), the lo-fi, cloudy psychedelic rock of “Your Stint in Art School”, the dreamy 60s folk-pop of “Secret Hideaway” (for which Megård gets a co-writing credit). Even if it wasn’t part of a larger renaissance, Consult the Oracle would be a strong and sturdy statement on its own–as it is, it’s another key piece in an ever-more-impressive career. (Bandcamp link)
The Gotobeds – Masterclass
Release date: May 16th Record label: 12XU Genre: Garage rock, post-punk, noise rock Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull Track: Goes Away
The Gotobeds have been garage rocking, noise rocking, and post-punking for over a decade now, and the Pittsburgh quartet have covered plenty of ground in a dozen years and five albums. Are they “your favorite band’s favorite band”? They probably wouldn’t describe themselves as such, but just looking at the credits for their fourth album, 2019’s Sub Pop-released Debt Begins at 30, suggests a certain respect–members of Silkworm, Pavement, Downtown Boys, Protomartyr, Outer World, and more guested on it. Masterclass is The Gotobeds’ first album in six years (although the band’s Eli Kasan has kept busy with The Sewerheads), and it finds them reuniting with 12XU Records, who put out their sophomore album (2014’s Poor People Are Revolting). Recorded by The Sewerheads’ Matthew “My War Matt” Schor, Masterclass is just that–a band that’s been on the periphery for a couple of years retaking the reins and laughing at all of us for not being prepared for everything contained herein (in fairness to us–how could we be?). It’s ten songs in a little over a half-hour, clanging noisy underground rock that’s like Sonic Youth with a newfound laser focus or a more furious version of their peers in Savak.
Tim Midyett of the aforementioned Silkworm describes Masterclass as a “ball of punk, surf, no-wave, Beat-adjacent literature…and bubblegum”, and I’m probably not going to be able to give a more concise single-line description than that (also, you should obviously be taking Mr. Midyett’s word for it if you know anything about this blog). The Gotobeds might be practicing concision themselves on Masterclass, but if so, it’s only because they’ve hammered and pounded these songs into something less giant than their true forms. That’s how I think of the opening track, “Starz”, although there’s nothing wrong with the almost-catchy punk rock of “Goes Away” in the second slot, either. The Gotobeds’ version of “post-punk” is either completely off the rails (“Fante”, which is kind of fun) or the closest thing that Masterclass has to a reprieve (“All Leaves Turn”, which–I already mentioned Sonic Youth, right?). The Gotobeds’ version of “rock music” is a feedback-laden steamroller (get out of the way of stuff like “Non-Fucking Fiction” and “Abasement”; you will lose a game of chicken to these). The Gotobeds’ version of “pop music” is…anything but intuitive, but the hooks are there, alluded to earlier in “Goes Away” and “Fante” and also quite present in “Hey John!”, a musty, bedraggled sock hop which serves as the penultimate track to Masterclass. There’s also a six-minute closing song called “Mirror Writing”, which does indulge in just a little bit of noise-jamming but on the whole keeps to the spirit of Masterclass–as difficult as it is to capture that spirit. (Bandcamp link)
In the second Pressing Concerns of the week, we bring forth new albums from The Rabies and stef.in and new EPs from Zero Bars and Strange Devotion. Some odds and ends, but these are the best kinds of posts anyway! If you missed yesterday’s blog post (featuring Festiva, Andhi & the O’Neills, C’mon Tigre, and Monnone Alone), check that out here.
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.
Zero Bars – Life and Hell
Release date: April 18th Record label: Self-released Genre: Garage punk, hardcore punk Formats: Cassette, digital Pull Track: Nervous Wire
Maybe my opinions on hardcore-infused garage punk (or garage-infused hardcore punk) don’t count for all that much, but if it means anything, I think that the band Zero Bars should be significantly bigger than they are. Of course, the Toronto trio of drummer Alex T., vocalist/guitarist Chris L., and bassist Josh E. haven’t really released all that much music yet–maybe once they add a full-length album to their discography they’ll start blowing up. For now, though, we have a four-song, five-minute demo cassette from 2023 (which I called a “stealthily lean and limber” version of punk and hardcore at the time) and Life and Hell, a brand-new six-song EP. Zero Bars mention No Trend and Wire as touchpoints for this new one, as well as “paranoia, dread, and misanthropy”, and that all sounds right to me. The guitars are in rare form on Life and Hell, a mix of fuzzed-out garage-ieness, hardcore muscle, and surf-infused early punk rock, and Chris L.’s vocals are an angsty, early hardcore-style sing-speaking ramble. At eleven minutes, it’s over twice as long as their debut release, and while most of the EP is a full-force punk assault, there’s just enough oddness and post-punk dalliances here (also hinted at by Demo 2023) to keep the Zero Bars party engaging.
The first half of Life and Hell is the no-holds-barred nonstop hardcore-garage-punk extravaganza side. “Nervous Wire”, “A.D.S.”, and “Pitch Black” all come in between a minute-fifty and two minutes in length, and all of them offer up similarly paranoid, blustery, and agitated takes on punk rock music. This alone would be enough to put Life and Hell on the level of their demo EP, but we’ve still got another side of Zero Bars music in store for us. “Prove It” is the shortest original song on the EP, and it opens the second side of the cassette with a garage-punk energy that nonetheless has a slightly noisy post-punk main riff that helps us transition into the most “difficult” song on the record, “House Arrest”. Sprawling to nearly three minutes and opening with a brief foray into harmonics, the longest Zero Bars song to date is a prowling, scowling post-punk seether about wanting to stay indoors (“Don’t want to go outside / Can’t whip up the desire”). Just to make sure that their hardcore bona fides don’t lapse in the time it takes them to get through “House Arrest”, Zero Bars close out Life and Hell with a minute-and-change Crucifucks cover–their version of “The Mountain Song” brings the spitted vocals and raging guitars back to the forefront for a moment, and then it’s all over. Again, you should be onto Zero Bars if this kind of music has any appeal to you at all. (Bandcamp link)
The Rabies – Dumb It Down
Release date: March 14th Record label: Presidential/Bolt Genre: Power pop, punk rock, new wave Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull Track: (My Girl’s a) Hologram
Who are The Rabies? Well, they’re a power pop/punk quartet from the New York City suburbs, originally formed by vocalist George Faulkner, drummer John Gramaglia, bassist Kevin Alter, and guitarist Torin Alter in the year 1981. They put out two records (1982’s “(My Girl’s a) Hologram” single and the following year’s Labor Day EP) and played a few shows around the American Northeast before splitting up, seemingly for good. That changed a few years ago, when the band noticed that their early singles were still receiving a fair amount of attention on Discogs and the like, leading to a brand-new single called “Adderall Girl” in 2020, a re-release of “(My Girl’s a) Hologram” in 2022, and, now, the first-ever Rabies full-length album, some forty years in the making. About half of the songs on Dumb It Down are from 1981 and the other half were written when the band reunited and decided to make an album (which they recorded in Brooklyn and Westchester with Bryce Goggin and Peter Denenberg, respectively). Those early Rabies recordings had a nervous, Reagan-era new wave tinge to them (music made in the shadows of Devo and Elvis Costello, certainly); Dumb It Down doesn’t try to recreate these exact conditions, but plenty of that era still shades these fourteen fresh-sounding power pop songs.
A new recording of “(My Girl’s a) Hologram” opens the album, and it’s easy to hear how this one kickstarted the modern Rabies revival–it’s awesome Ramones-y surf-punk that plenty of new bands still love to make, and thematically it remains wildly relevant today (perhaps even more so, weirdly enough). Not that I would expect a band called The Rabies to be a bunch of gentlemen, but Dumb It Down has a sneering dark streak to it between the seething Devo-core “I Should Know” and the downright nihilistic “Jimmy”, and the title track, as catchy as it is, is an anthem about not meeting a partner’s needs on an intellectual (or really any) level (“Neuro-this, psycho-that / I don’t know what she’s driving at”). Like a bunch of early punk rockers, The Rabies seem to revel in being shitheads a little bit on Dumb It Down, but there’s more to the album than fun destruction. “Down” is very nearly a foil to “Dumb It Down”, almost like The Rabies tried to write something from the opposite perspective, and while “You’re the Glue” and “Zero-Sum” may not be Earth-shatterers, there’s a thoughtfulness and even tenderness to their version of guitar pop here that feels built to endure. Dumb It Down is a very…interesting debut album to wait forty years to make, but it’s certainly one worth finally putting to tape. (Bandcamp link)
Strange Devotion – A Demonstration of Devotion
Release date: March 21st Record label: Fabulous Things Genre: Post-punk, indie pop, 90s indie rock, psychedelia Formats: Cassette, digital Pull Track: Grey to Green
I can’t get enough of these new, small bands revisiting classic underground indie rock and post-punk with a garage punk energy and excitement. Well, I probably can get enough of them eventually, but I’m certainly not getting off the train as it stops at Strange Devotion’s station. A new quintet out of London made up of musicians originally from northern England and Wales, Strange Devotion (bassist/vocalist Rhys, guitarists Jonny and Sean, drummer Charlie, and synth player/vocalist Lucy) first put out a two-song demo in 2023, and the four-song A Demonstration of Devotion EP is the band’s first physical release (a cassette via upstart Kent label Fabulous Things). The band (whose members also play in a bunch of other bands I’ve never heard of such as Fatberg, Moist Crevace, and Oyster) claim everything from “Wire and The Cure to Stereolab and The Stranglers” as influences, and while I can’t claim that their debut EP sounds like all of those bands, it’s certainly a well-informed and trickily-difficult-to-categorize record. There’s certainly a post-punk and even goth darkness hovering over these four songs (Lucy’s synths help see to that), but it’s still a guitar-led experience and the six-strings feel equally informed by jangle pop and C86-associated indie pop as by these greyer areas.
The plodding bass that opens the EP’s first track, “Dolls”, is like the tolling of a bell, and the guitars creep along like a spider. It’s a pretty good indication that A Demonstration of Devotion is going to have a bit of a dark and dramatic streak, even as Strange Devotion cling to signifiers of being your typical underground British punk group. The single most thrilling moment on the EP for me is the beginning of the second song, “Grey to Green”–out of nowhere, Strange Devotion begin to sound like a classic Flying Nun/Dunedin Sound guitar pop group, the guitars running in a melodic circle and the synths taking on a Clean-like organ quality. “Grey to Green” resolves back into synth-y post-punk eventually, but the jangly catchiness is still there, and it sticks around for a bit in “Mercy Is Real”, which balances the dour with the catchy in its confusing but entertaining version of melancholic, jangly pop. “Stage Clothes” is probably the furthest thing from “punk rock” on the EP, with Strange Devotion deciding to close their first record by setting the guitars and synths on a meandering, almost psychedelic journey to nowhere. Strange Devotion rise from their stupor to finish off “Stage Clothes” with an electric garage rock conclusion, but it’s too late–we already know that they’re much more than that. (Bandcamp link)
stef.in – Icterus II
Release date: April 4th Record label: Barnyard Genre: Jazz-rock, post-rock, art rock, math rock Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull Track: Three Wars
Stefan Hegerat seems to be a busy guy in the Toronto music scene. He’s a part of several local bands–prog-pop act Parade, folk rock group JJ and the Pillars, experimental project Triio–as well as being a drummer for hire (showing up on records like the most recent LP from Fortunato Durutti Marinetti) and working as a music educator. He’s a co-leader in some of those groups and a backing musician in others, but stef.in appears to be “his” band more than any of the other ones. His first name is (kind of) the name of the band, but stef.in is a quartet–Hegerat is the group’s drummer and composer, and they’re rounded out by guitarists Robyn Gray and Patrick O’Reilly and bassist Mark Godfrey. Together, they make kinetic, instrumental jazz-rock music–they’re using a simple rock band setup, but their music is clearly the work of artists clearly focused on expanding beyond what’s traditionally done with these instruments (“This project is very much a vessel for making music with my favourite artists,” enthuses Hegerat, explaining that his goal in composing these songs is giving his collaborators ample room to “blast off into outer space”).
stef.in’s first album, Icterus, appeared in 2018, a mere one year after the band formed. Icterus II, on the other hand, took seven years to materialize (the overall busyness of Hegerat that I discussed earlier likely has something to do with that), but the quartet don’t stray too much from their debut. All four members trade their roles throughout Icterus II–generally speaking, the guitars have the wildest parts on the album, Godfrey plays the classic jazz bassist role of balancing melody and rhythm, and Hegerat’s drums are kinetic but firm, but stef.in never stay in one place for too long. This type of music gets the “math rock” tag quite frequently, and there are plenty of moments on Icterus II that remind me of that, but it’s more accurate to simply refer to it as a “jazz-rock record”. Much of that has to do with Godfrey, but the guitarists know how to shape their instruments into surprisingly familiar “jazz” fashion as well. At its loudest, Icterus II is an undeniably chaotic listen, but stef.in aren’t absentmindedly filling space–in fact, there are several songs on the record (“Here’s to Circle”, “Dosage”, and “Our Circle”) where the four of them let silence play a key role in the compositions. That’s as good an example of the trust and instinct that go into Icterus II as any. (Bandcamp link)
Come on down to the first Pressing Concerns of the week! We’re practically giving away this blog post (literally, I suppose; it doesn’t cost you anything to read it, but you might want to earmark some money for purchasing these records). We’ve got new albums from Festiva, Andhi & the O’Neills, and Monnone Alone, as well as a reissue from C’mon Tigre, 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.
Festiva – Everything in Moderation
Release date: April 25th Record label: Repeating Cloud Genre: Garage rock, weird rock, post-punk Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull Track: Rat Man
I’ve written about a bunch of guitar pop albums from Repeating Cloud Records over the years, but the ones that come from the label’s home state of Maine always seem to be a little…ornerier. There’s the garage punk of Snake Lips and the post-punk of FonFon Ru, but their latest signee, Portland’s Festiva, reminds me of the careening, hooky, sloppy indie rock of Repeating Cloud tycoon Galen Richmond’s bands Lemon Pitch and Gum Parker. I figured that it was something peculiar to Richmond and his collaborators’ bands (Midwestern Medicine, Heaven’s Cameras), but as far as I know, there’s no overlap between them and Festiva. They’re led by guitarist/vocalist Carver Arena-Bruce, who’s played in Rory Strong’s band before, and bassist Simi Kunin is another Rory Strong band alum (Noah Grenier-Farwell of Amiright? rounds out the lineup). Festiva released albums in 2019 and 2020 effectively as an Arena-Bruce solo project–Everything in Moderation is their first as a full band, their first for Repeating Cloud, and first new record of any kind in five years. Everything in Moderation actually might be the missing link between the emo-punk-tinged songwriting of Rory Strong and the Repeating Cloud roster–Arena-Bruce is certainly an interesting writer, but the punchy garage rock instrumentals ensure that the vocals and lyrics don’t have to carry the entire record anyway.
Case in point, “Bird” begins Everything in Moderation with a nice hooky guitar riff, and Festiva proceed to build a strange, dramatic indie rock opera of sorts over top of it. “Ghosts and Lichens” finds the band taking a journey into the world of sloppy, gut-spilling punk rock, but the trio clean up their sound just enough on “Rat Man” to pull off something a little more dynamic and post-punk-influenced (there’s, like, fucked up Elvis Costello and surf rock in this one–it’s definitely a highlight). Things really get weird around the midpoint of Everything in Moderation, starting with the bizarre Biblical rant in the groovy garage rock of “The Shortest Gospel” (“St. Mark, he wrote the shortest of the Gospels / I guess his mind was elsewhere on that day”) and continuing into the lumbering heavy fuzz rock of “DMV (Organ Donor Song)” (first lines: “I wanted to be an organ donor / But they would not take my organs from me”). “The Dead of the Night” teeters on the brink, and the somewhat-heavy “In a Dream” falls straight into the gutter (the vocals on that one kind of remind me of Vundabar, so maybe this is a New England thing going on here). It’s a fairly intense final stretch, although Festiva close things out with a piano track called “Grimoire (Closing Credits)”. Even this “simple” finale gets dizzying with a bunch of overlaid vocals and references to previous tracks on the album, making it a fitting cap to Everything in Moderation. (Bandcamp link)
Andhi & the O’Neills – The Surprise Party
Release date: April 11th Record label: Mint 400 Genre: Folk rock, Americana, soft rock, blues rock, jazz rock Formats: CD, cassette, digital Pull Track: Peg
Andhi O’Neill spent the 2010s fronting the group Origami Sun, and after that band seemingly hung it up (their last album was in 2017), he put out an album and EP recorded entirely by himself earlier this decade. Now apparently ready to make music with others again, the Peekskill, New York-based artist has launched a project called Andhi & the O’Neills, which also features guitarist/keyboardist Austin Kopec, drummer Greg Hanson, and bassist Stefano Luigi Guida. The first record from Andi & the O’Neills is a debut LP called The Surprise Party, produced by Seth Applebaum of Ghost Funk Orchestra, mastered by Heather Jones of Ther, and released by Mint 400 Records. That’s a pretty random assortment of associations, so what does The Surprise Party sound like? Given that most of the songs are built around O’Neill leading the band with his acoustic guitar, it’s tempting to call it “folk rock”, although O’Neill’s songwriting sensibilities incorporate classic country and blues as much as the canonical folk troubadours. Perhaps O’Neill was writing for his band, perhaps the band brought it out of him, but either way The Surprise Party clearly benefits from a group performance, as The O’Neills give these songs enjoyable readings of everything from jazzy soft rock to 60s psychedelic/folk pop.
The songs on The Surprise Party aren’t jokes, but O’Neill borrows a clear cleverness from the country and folk singer-songwriters who’ve gone before him. The lilting yacht rock of “Blame It on the Weatherman”, the organ-led 60s excursion of “Caffeine” (in which the titular substance is–perhaps correctly–treated like a debilitating vice), and the country phrase-turning ballad “Sublet My Heart” all let O’Neill get a little creative in the lyrics, but they work because of the fun, excited vibes that the rest of the group bring to them–they sound like a bar band who’re still clinging to their love of the game after years on the circuit, and to be clear I mean that as a compliment. The Surprise Party gets a little bolder as it goes on–there’s less in terms of obvious gimmicks in the music and lyrics, but songs like the stuck-in-time “Town” and the breezy folk rock of “Peg” reward us for putting faith in Andhi & the O’Neills’ ability to be just as good without as many bells and whistles. The closing song of The Surprise Party is the title track, and it’s the right note on which to go out–in a way, all of this album is about strength in numbers, but “The Surprise Party” is the one where (using the titular activity as a jumping-off point) O’Neill just comes out and sings “I admit it’s nice to know / I’m not alone”. (Bandcamp link)
C’mon Tigre – TEN
Release date: April 11th Record label: Computer Students Genre: Experimental rock, jazz-rock, post-punk, post-rock Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull Track: Federation Tunisienne De Football
C’mon Tigre are a somewhat mysterious art rock duo who’ve been around for at least a decade now–they seem to have connections to both Italy and New York, and they’ve released five albums in their time together and collaborated with everyone from Arto Lindsay to Sean Kuti to Xenia Rubinos. C’mon Tigre’s “sound” appears to be fairly wide-ranging, but the essence of it was captured on their 2015 self-titled debut album–fluid, limber rock music that pulls from jazz, Afrobeats, funk, dub, and psychedelia in a natural-feeling manner. C’mon Tigre was initially released through Julien Fernandez’s Italian imprint Africantape (Big’n, The Conformists, Shipping News), and Fernandez’s current label Computer Students has now put together a reissue of the band’s first album called TEN (or “Tenth Edition Newness”). As it stands now, TEN sounds like a compelling and complete midpoint between “indie rock” and the more exploratory genres from which C’mon Tigre have taken inspiration–it’s a sprawling double LP whose thirteen songs add up to nearly an hour, for one, but its largess masks the fact that it’s still largely built from “rock” instruments. Don’t get me wrong, there are still plenty of moments featuring trumpet and saxophone (and, per the credits, stylophone, vibraphone, and “human beatbox”), but a lot of TEN gets by with little more than guitars and dynamic percussion.
C’mon Tigre introduce themselves slowly and beautifully–opening track “Rabat” is a three-minute, wordless jazz-guitar sigh, and while “Federation Tunisienne De Football” brings some noise, it’s a more streamlined post-punk/math rock-indebted clatter. C’mon Tigre’s true intentions are perhaps not entirely clear until we get to the fourth song on TEN, “A World of Wonder”–the duo still sound fairly jumbled and like an “indie rock band”, but the song stretches to eight minutes and the horns begin to wail fairly early on in its length. Where do C’mon Tigre go from there? Well, a bit of everywhere–they slow it down again with the minimal, jazz-flecked “December”, they come out swinging in the horn-led mid-tempo prowler “Commute” (and then collapse), they put together a sweaty funk rock four minutes with “Life As a Preened Tuxedo Jacket”, and they truly deconstruct and reconstruct themselves with the two-part “Building Society – The Great Collapse” and “Building Society – Renovation”. C’mon Tigre exit TEN much like the way they came in–after the floating end of “Building Society”, both “Welcome Back Monkeys” and “Malta (The Bird and the Bear)” emphasize the group’s jazz interests (albeit to differing ends). Unmoored from much (if any) timeframe, TEN is an easy record to return to after a decade–that is, if anything about C’mon Tigre can be described as “easy”. (Cmptr Stdnts link)
Monnone Alone – Here Comes the Afternoon
Release date: May 2nd Record label: Meritorio/Lost and Lonesome/Repeating Cloud/Safe Suburban Home Genre: Power pop, jangle pop, psychedelic pop Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull Track: Dry Doubt
A key figure in Australian indie pop, Mark Monnone spent the 1990s and 2000s playing bass in the great Lucksmiths, and since 1997 he’s been running the record label Lost and Lonesome, who’ve put out records from The Small Intestines, Sonny & The Sunsets, and The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, among others. Monnone started the Monnone Alone project in the early 2010s–at first it was more or less a Monnone solo project with various guest contributions, then it congealed into a quartet rounded out by drummer Gus Franklin, bassist Joe Foley, and guitarist/organist Louis Richter, only to revert to solo project again for 2021’s pandemic-era Stay Foggy. The band are back for Here Comes the Afternoon, the fourth Monnone Alone album and first in four years, and they effortlessly rejoin Monnone’s indie pop journey for these eleven tracks. Like typical Monnone Alone records (Stay Foggy excepted), plenty of outside musicians stop in as well–this LP features contributions from Gary Olson of The Ladybug Transistor, Isobel Knowles (who previously played with Franklin in Architecture in Helsinki), and Dick Diver’s Steph Hughes, among other Australian indie veterans. They’ll pop in and lend a voice or a guitar (or, in Olson’s case, “bongos and Tibetan singing bowl”), but Monnone keeps the focus on breezy, charming guitar pop of several stripes.
Monnone cites the Happy Mondays as an inspiration for Here Comes the Afternoon (alongside more obvious names like The Bats and The Apples in Stereo), and the oddly danceable backbeat to opening track “Dry Doubt” does back this up to a degree. The majority of the album adheres more to the classic Australian indie pop mix of jangle pop, power pop, and folk rock, but Monnone Alone’s take on it is a spirited one, familiar-sounding or not. The bright jangle of “Ways to Wear My Hair” and the melancholic “River of Sighs” take similar setups and make them feel wildly different, while “St Mary’s Pass” adds trumpet from Knowles that gives it a soft rock/sophisti-pop/Skep Wax-esque bent. At their perkiest, Monnone Alone offer up hooky indie pop-rock like “Mr Nobody”, the weirdly sleazy “Brain Stone”, and power pop behemoth “Loose Terrain”–but on the other side of things, “Tilted” is dreamy, hazy, and psychedelic in its interpretation of guitar pop, and the generously-applied organ gives the meandering “The Morning Won’t Last” a psychedelic streak of its own, too. Here Comes the Afternoon is a rewarding trip through Australian indie music with a uniquely qualified tour guide. (Bandcamp link)
Four new albums that are coming out tomorrow (May 9th)? In Pressing Concerns today? It’s more likely than you think! New LPs from With Patience, Unwed Sailor, and IE, plus a collaboration between The Catenary Wires and Brian Bilston, are featured below. Also, check out Monday’s Pressing Concerns (featuring Flower Show, Tiny Vipers, Deep-Fried Butterfly, and GBMystical) and the April 2025 playlist (which went up Tuesday) if you missed either of ’em.
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.
With Patience – Triptych
Release date: May 9th Record label: Self-released Genre: Noise rock, garage rock, post-hardcore, punk rock Formats: CD, digital Pull Track: Disco
Last year, I introduced the blog to With Patience, a Chicago trio made up of three longtime indie rock/punk/underground music veterans, by way of their three-song debut EP Three of Swords. Bassist/vocalist Lance Curran, drummer/vocalist Lee Diamond, and guitarist/vocalist Chris Wade have played in bands like Careful, Douglass Kings, Alkaloid, and hose.got.cable between the three of them, and their first EP displayed their love of noisy indie punk inspired by the likes of Dischord Records, Drive Like Jehu, and plenty of bands in their home city. They’ve now returned with their first full-length album, entitled Triptych (With Patience do love their threes, don’t they?), recorded in Diamond’s basement in Evanston and then handed off to the experts (J. Robbins, who mixed it, Bob Weston, who mastered it, and John Mohr of Deep Tunnel Project and Tar, who stars in a music video for one of the songs). Triptych expands on the brief promise of Three of Swords, staying in the realms of post-hardcore, punk, and noise rock but with some genuine surprises–there’s a sense of humor and funness to some of these songs that the EP didn’t really hint at, while, on the other hand, Diamond’s occasionally metal-influenced drumming takes With Patience to even heavier places.
There aren’t many chances to catch a breath in the opening section of Triptych between the high-flying garage-y punk rock of opening track “Let Bygones Bury the Hatchet”, the prowling hard rock of “Cobra”, and the art punk/post-punk combustion of “Flybuzz”.“Disco” is not a disco song (of course), but it does come out of the gate with a smooth bassline and brisk drumbeat that leads With Patience into previously-unexplored “toe-tapping” territory, and the cleverness of “False Memories” is in how it combines some of the most overt homages to their musical idols (in this case, MacKaye and Picciotto) with lyrics that explicitly reject and mock the allure of nostalgia (the titular “false memories”). Arguably the most catchy song on the album is called “It’s Time”, a bouncy little number whose lyrics are little more than the title line (“It’s time / We’re all / Gonna die”) and “Dip diddip, dip diddip / D-d-dystopia” (that’s actually how the band write that one out). While Diamond’s furious metal drumming punches up “It’s Time”, it really features prominently in “Temple”, a late-record explosion that might be the single heaviest moment on the album. It’s surrounded by a slow-crawling drama called “Heart Is a Pump” and the garage punk dynamite closing track “Exit As Instructed”, which are both “heavy” in their own ways, too. The latter song, the most “post-hardcore” track on Triptych, is about having a panic attack on the CTA and struggling to make it to one’s own stop. It sounds like With Patience just make it at the end of the record. (Bandcamp link)
Brian Bilston and The Catenary Wires – Sounds Made by Humans
Release date: May 9th Record label: Skep Wax Genre: Indie pop, spoken word, twee, post-punk, jangle pop Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital Pull Track: Every Song on the Radio Reminds Me of You
The Catenary Wires are, effectively, right at the center of four decades of British indie pop–the album’s co-leading duo of Amelia Fletcher and Rob Pursey famously played together in the legendary band Heavenly in the 1990s (as well as a host of other Heavenly-associated bands from Talulah Gosh to Marine Research to Tender Trap to Swansea Sound) and they also co-run Skep Wax Records, which releases new indie pop records from both veterans and new faces. Despite all of this, it’s been four years since the group (currently a trio rounded out by Swansea Sound and Papernut Cambridge’s Ian Button on drums) has put out an album, and their newest release is a bit of a departure from their first three LPs. Brian Bilston is a pseudonymous poet (and noted Heavenly fan); after reaching out to each other in mutual admiration, a plan was formed for The Catenary Wires to adapt thirteen of Bilston’s poems as “pop songs”. Although the cores of these songs are Bilston’s poems, frequently read by Bilston himself, the artists sought to make themselves “equal partners” on Sounds Made by Humans, Pursey (the primary musical composer) carefully weaving in his signature indie pop with the help of the rest of the band (as well as occasional Catenary Wires member Fay Hallam on keyboards).
Bilston’s poems are fairly short, witty, and direct–if you’re going to combine a poet with a British twee band, he’s probably one of the best options out there. “Alexa, What Is There to Know About Love?” kicks off Sounds Made by Humans by balancing two artists with distinct, large styles precariously–Bilston is as an effective speaker as he is a writer, and The Catenary Wires meet his nervous energy with a surprisingly deep post-punk/dream pop instrumental and Fletcher’s haunting vocals (a nice counterbalance to the stoic-on-the-surface but somewhat shaken Bilston). “The Interview” shows that The Catenary Wires can make their mark on a song that’s almost entirely full of Bilston’s rambling (the power pop instrumental is just able to keep up with him) and “Every Song on the Radio Reminds Me of You” injects a chorus sung by Fletcher and Pursley effortlessly. Bilston seems to like his lists, as “To Do List” and “31 Rules for Midlife Rebellion” take this format, and “Compilation Cassette”, while not written as such, is about a list of songs (labored over and most likely discarded by its recipient). The majority of Sounds Made by Humans is soundtracked by Pursey and Fletcher’s indie pop bread and butter, but The Catenary Wires are game to match Bilston’s energy in, say, the almost Zeppelin-esque punchy rock of “As I Grow Old I Will March Not Shuffle” (in which Bilston declares his intent to be an “octogenarian obstructionist”). Sounds Made by Humans works because the openness of all parties is palpable, even as they retain their original forms. (Bandcamp link)
Unwed Sailor – Cruel Entertainment
Release date: May 9th Record label: Current Taste Genre: Post-punk, post-rock, noise rock, dream pop Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital Pull Track: Rock Candy
Jonathan Ford got his musical start in Seattle in the 1990s playing in the cult Tooth & Nail math rock band Roadside Monument, and not long after that he joined Pedro the Lion on bass guitar for a few years. Ford has remained quite busy ever since (you can hear him on a few Damien Jurado albums, for instance), but his longest project is Unwed Sailor, the instrumental post-rock group of which he is the only permanent member. Ford has kept Unwed Sailor active through lineup and geographical changes, eventually ending up back in Tulsa, Oklahoma (the state in which Ford was born) with a trio setup including drummer Matthew Putman and guitarist David Swatzell. After stints on Burnt Toast and Spartan Records, Ford debuted his own new label Current Taste with last year’s Unwed Sailor album, Underwater Over There, and Cruel Entertainment (the tenth Unwed Sailor LP) follows it almost exactly one year later. I’m admittedly not the most familiar with Unwed Sailor’s back catalog, but the “post-rock” tag feels strange to put on this one, as it feels like swinging, electric rock music that just happens to not have a vocalist for the most part. There are perhaps some swelling Mogwai-ish moments, but for the most part Cruel Entertainment feels more in the realms of post-punk, noise rock, and even new wave.
Perhaps it’s not so surprising that a bassist bandleader would make music that sounds a little like New Order. Ford certainly offers up plenty of melodic bass-led moments on Cruel Entertainment, but Unwed Sailor are interested in something darker and louder and therefore less prone to get overly wrapped up in excessive Peter Hook worship. “Rock Candy” feels like a mission statement of some sort–it comes bursting out the gate with a huge, noise rock-esque low end, and the three-minute opening song is a prowling ball of post-punk and fuzzed-out indie rock. Unwed Sailor might step back a little bit after “Rock Candy”–“Slab City” veers into dream pop territory, “Monster Collecting” into bright new wave, “Soft Copy” somewhere in between the two–but we haven’t heard the last of noisy Unwed Sailor, as the almost classic rock guitar riffs of “BODYMOD” assure us. Unwed Sailor close out Cruel Entertainment with some songs that try to balance the darkness and light–penultimate track “Sad Help” and its mix of Dischord-y post-punk and swooning 80s rock is quite successful, and the basement 90s indie rock attitude of the closing title track collides entertainingly with the band’s maximalist ambitions. Unwed Sailor have wound through a substantial history to get to Cruel Entertainment, but they’re still weaving as this record draws to a close. (Bandcamp link)
IE – Reverse Earth
Release date: May 9th Record label: Quindi Genre: Post-rock, art rock,psychedelia, dream pop Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull Track: Reverse Earth
The latest signee to Italian art rock label Quindi (Dead Bandit, Monde UFO, Fortunato Durutti Marinetti) is a Minneapolis group simply called IE that seems to fit well on their roster. Since their debut in 2016 with AAOA, the band have dabbled in a bunch of different subsets of experimental music, releasing records imbibed with bits of drone, doom, ambient, electronic, and slowcore. It seems like IE was founded by the trio of keyboardist Michael Gallope, drummer Meredith Gill, and guitarist/keyboardist Travis Workman–in the years between AAOA and their latest full-length, Reverse Earth, they’ve added guitarist/bongo player Sam Molstad and bassist/vocalist/flautist Mariel Oliveira to grow to a quintet. Spanning five songs in thirty-five minutes, Reverse Earth is perhaps not what one typically imagines as a “pop album”, but between Oliveira’s vocals, the band’s sturdy and reliable rhythms, and well-behaved synths, it does feel like a turn for the accessible for IE. It’s psychedelic, but in a sprawling, droning way rather than a sensory overload one–it’s some of the best sophisticated post-rock pop music delivered via a refined jam band that you’ll hear this year.
We begin Reverse Earth with the seven-minute title track, a confident and sleek synth-rock journey that displays both the outer vastness that IE can create and the subtly intricate interiors found within their music. The next song, “Divination Bag”, is even longer and weirder–for a lot of the track, Oliveria’s flute shadowboxes with the synths, and you’d best believe that Molstad’s breaking the bongos out for this one. Despite this, it’s a strong showcase for Oliveria as a pop vocalist, and Reverse Earth becomes easier to get a handle on with her voice as a guide. Compared to what came before them, the relatively brief (under six minutes, I mean) dream pop of “Simplify” and “Dark Rome” are child’s play, but IE pull them off too, the cavernous western guitars in the latter and spacey, brassy psychedelic synths of the former ensuring that the band are still going down as many paths (albeit leisurely) as possible. The only other song on the album is “Babel”, the penultimate denouement that sits a little uneasily between the two shorter tracks. Oliveira’s vocals are more spoken-word here than elsewhere on the album, the rhythms are a bit more “jazzy” than the rest of Reverse Earth, and the synths come and go, dropping in and out of view. It’s all very smooth nonetheless, though–it’s nothing that IE haven’t spent the first half of Reverse Earth preparing us for in one way or another. (Bandcamp link)
To be perfectly honest with you, readers, right now, this moment, is the busiest that I (the person behind this blog) have been in a very long time (in terms of things outside of the world of Rosy Overdrive, I mean). So far I’ve been able to keep the blog posts coming at a normal pace, but for the first time in quite a while I’ve had to consider the fact that I might not be able to at some point in the near future. Hopefully this doesn’t happen! There’s still a ton of good new music on which I’d like to put a spotlight. The good news is that the April 2025 playlist is here, though, and it features a ton of this aforementioned good, new music. Check it out!
Gum Parker, Bliss?, Craig Finn, and Fluung all have two songs on this playlist.
Here is where you can listen to the playlist on various streaming services: Spotify, Tidal (missing a song), BNDCMPR. 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.
“Not Breaking Rocks”, Gum Parker From The Brakes (2025, Repeating Cloud)
If you’re familiar with Galen Richmond’s previous band Lemon Pitch, then that’s roughly what his current one, Gum Parker, sounds like, but if you aren’t then they’re sneakily difficult to define. Their debut album The Brakes is “power pop” without that genre’s defining reverence, “pop punk” without a trace of what that term traditionally evokes, “slacker rock” made by people with the perpetual nervousness. Oh, and Richmond, despite being the primary songwriter, only sings about half the songs–bassist Kate Sullivan-Jones sings lead on a few tracks, including what is probably my favorite song on The Brakes, the catty, eminently quotable guitar pop drama of “Not Breaking Rocks” (sample line: “Valedictorian from a class of one throws devil horns as camera shutters shut”). Read more about The Brakes here.
“Living Well”, Bliss? From Pass Yr Pain Along (2025, Psychic Spice)
A bunch of punk musicians making power pop? Well, that’s one way to get my attention. Bliss? are a brand new band from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and their debut album Pass Yr Pain Along is indeed a full exploration several strains of guitar pop formative to the band– Elvis Costello, post-Replacements pop rock and roll, and the Gin Blossoms all come to mind here. It’s not a “punk” record per se, but it absolutely benefits from a little roughness. “Living Well” is the “hit”, the classic short, punchy, giant-hook-featuring single in album tracklist slot number two. Read more about Pass Yr Pain Along here.
“Between GA”, Truth or Consequences New Mexico From This Time of Year (2025)
Following in the long-standing tradition of Chicago groups equally indebted to roots rock and alt-country as they are to indie rock and emo, Truth or Consequences New Mexico sound loud but crystal-clear on This Time of Year. The big, earnest-to-the-point-of-emo opening track “Between GA” is probably a good litmus test as to whether or not Truth or Consequences New Mexico are going to be up your alley. Co-bandleader Jack Parker is on vocals here, and the delivery is the “twangiest” thing on This Time of Year–they’re really straining their voice to live up to the surging country rock instrumental, and I will go ahead and say that they land it. Read more about This Time of Year here.
“Dub Vultures”, The Convenience From Like Cartoon Vampires (2025, Winspear)
Like Cartoon Vampires, the sophomore album from New Orleans’ The Convenience, is a headfirst dive into the world of “art rock”–snappy rhythms, splattered guitars, and strange psychedelic detours characterize the album. For a post-punk album, Like Cartoon Vampires is bright, shiny, and colorful, perhaps informed by the band’s core duo’s work in 80s-inspired synthpop band Video Age. The clattering, groovy art punk/garage rock of “Dub Vultures” reminds me of another great Southern post-punk band, Balkans–it sounds effortlessly cool, naturally alive, and secretly intricate. Read more about Like Cartoon Vampires here.
“Video Den”, The Blackburns (2025)
Oh, this is good. Who likes story songs? What about power pop story songs? That prominently incorporate synthesizers? Well, the latest single by the Philadelphia power pop quartet The Blackburns has all that, and more. Lead vocalist Joel Tannenbaum introduces us to a trio of characters connected by the titular video store, bound together by circumstance and boredom. The song takes a page out of those horror movies one might find in the back of a place called the “Video Den”, and abruptly ends on a cliffhanger. “It’s hard to explain how different things were back then / When you were working at the Video Den,” Tannenbaum sings at the end of the song, a platitude that rolls around in one’s head while trying to decipher what The Blackburns mean by all of this.
“Luke & Leanna”, Craig Finn From Always Been (2025, Tamarac/Thirty Tigers)
The music of Craig Finn (and his band, The Hold Steady) is already fairly…divisive for the fickle bunch known as indie rock fans, and even those who enjoy Finn’s most acclaimed works seem split on Always Been, his latest solo record. I, for one, am really into it–I’ve felt that Finn’s solo career has benefited from his attempts to grow his music palette (we already know he’s a great storyteller–what else you got?), and Always Been–produced by Adam Granduciel of The War on Drugs and leaning further into shined-up, 80s synth-rock than ever before–certainly qualifies. “Luke & Leanna” is the kind of Craig Finn song that would work no matter what was going on underneath him, though, I think–the story is a wrecking ball, and no amount of polished production will ever make it “easy listening”. But I still love Finn and Granduciel’s attempts to make it so.
“Starvin Heart”, Fluung From Fluung (2025, Den Tapes/Setterwind)
Seattle trio Fluung have been keeping Pacific Northwest indie rock loud, electric, and catchy since the mid-2010s. Fluung is pretty clearly the band’s best work yet–an ambitious rock record that nearly doubles their last one (2022’s The Vine) in length, the third Fluung album has enough time to spit out a handful of blissful, hook-laden lost 90s alt-rock classics and push further into feedback-heavy, exploratory, lumbering fuzz rock terrain, too. Fluung is a record that’s about the journey as much as anything else, and the band make sure to leave us with a memorable and complete one. “Starvin Heart” is certainly one of the peaks of this journey–it’s massive, fuzzed out pop rock in the vein of Dinosaur Jr., and done as well as anyone currently doing it. Read more about Fluung here.
“This Kind of Rain”, Blue Cactus From Believer (2025, Sleepy Cat)
North Carolina’s Blue Cactus reference classic folk-country singer-songwriters Gillian Welch and Emmylou Harris as inspiration for their music, and their latest album Believer does its best to balance the simple intimacy of the former with the polish of the latter. Plenty of experienced Nashville-associated hands touched this record, but Blue Cactus’ writing is sufficiently far removed from the bright lights of the city on Believer, a delicate but confident Americana record. The country rockers on Believer all hit immediately–opening track “This Kind of Rain” is an alt-country classic, laid-back but electric in a way that’s in the same universe as the best of Lilly Hiatt and recent Waxahatchee, among others. Read more about Believer here.
“I Got Your Number”, Why Bother? From You Are Part of the Experiment (2025, Feel It)
The You Are Part of the Experiment EP is a dark, troubling trip into underground noise rock, art punk, and fuzzed-out rock and roll that seemingly allows Why Bother? to get even weirder and unhinged than the mysterious Iowa band’s “proper” (if anything about them can be called that) records. The catchiest thing on You Are Part of the Experiment is also the record’s biggest outlier, an exuberant and surprisingly faithful cover of Cock Sparrer’s “I Got Your Number” that proves that Why Bother?’s basement scuzz translates very well into power pop and first-wave punk rock hooks. The rest of the EP is a real freak show, though. Read more about You Are Part of the Experiment here.
“Everyone I Love Is Depressed”, Infinity Knives & Brian Ennals feat. Randi Withani From A City Drowned in God’s Black Tears (2025, Phantom Limb)
Apparently the Baltimore rap duo Infinity Knives & Brian Ennals have gained a reputation for experimental and political rap over their first couple of records, and, while A City Drowned in God’s Black Tears isn’t going to disabuse anybody of these notions, the two of them spend time out of these boxes on every account on this album. For instance, there are several moments that sound genuinely fun and pop-friendly–like “Everyone I Love Is Depressed”, an awesome groove of a funk-hop track about, of course, suicide. It’s dark, yes, but it’s also a party, the duo seemingly doing the best they can to aid their proclamation of “Don’t kill yourself! We love you too much!” in the chorus (and they can’t resist tacking an absurd skit onto the end of this one, too). Read more about A City Drowned in God’s Black Tears here.
Who else is bummed by Sam Woodring retiring the Mister Goblin project? I suspect his solo material will be rewarding as well once we hear some more of it, but in the meantime I’d like to introduce you to a band from Nakano City, Japan that hits the same spot for me. Texas 3000 is Jojo from Curling’s other band, and it seems like a more chaotic version of the studio-pop of that band’s most recent album, as well as one that deals in the mix of math rock, emo, post-hardcore, and guitar pop that makes Mister Goblin so great. “Universe Drawer”, my favorite song from their most recent EP, Weird Dreams, has all of that and then some–the subtle opening eventually transforms into a cacophony, but a tuneful one.
“Tender and Laughing”, Miscellaneous Owl From The Cloud Chamber (2025)
The Cloud Chamber displays a more thoughtful and subdued side to the writing of Huan-Hua Chye (aka Miscellaneous Owl). Last year’s You Are the Light That Casts a Shadow ran out to greet us with early Magnetic Fields-worthy bright synthpop instrumentals, and while The Cloud Chamber has its moments, on the whole it’s more of an album that one is “welcome to join in progress” than one that’s going out of its way to invite us inside. The first track on The Cloud Chamber is one of these friendlier moments–it’s a quiet, beautiful, synth-friendly indie pop song called “Tender and Laughing”, and while it never stops being “tender”, the chorus is a genuinely chaotic sensory overload that’s kind of surprising to hear from Miscellaneous Owl. Read more about The Cloud Chamber here.
“Pyramids in the Sky”, Mike Frazier From April Days (2025, Geneva/Den Tapes)
There’s a refreshing directness to Mike Frazier’s latest record, April Days–recorded live, it’s a departure from the layered psychedelia of last year’s Secrets of Atlantis and a return to Frazier’s Appalachian folk-country roots even as he sets up shop in the Pacific Northwest as a recent Seattle transplant. April Days is about both Frazier’s new home and his health struggles–last year, he had brain surgery to repair the effects of a long-undiagnosed temporal lobe epilepsy. My favorite moment on April Days is “Pyramids in the Sky”, though, a raucous country rock tune about–what else?–aliens and their spaceships of choice. I could sit here and draw parallels between the extraterrestrial narrative of “Pyramids in the Sky” and the topographical, neurological, and pacifist themes of April Days all day, but it’s best to just take in the experience on your own. Read more about April Days here.
“No More Tears Pt. 2”, The Pennys From The Pennys (2025, Mt.St.Mtn.)
Ray Seraphin (R.E. Seraphin) and Michael Ramos (Tony Jay) are The Pennys, and the two Bay Area indie pop singer-songwriters’ distinct styles turn out to be a perfect match on their self-titled debut EP. “No More Tears Pt. 2”, the song that closes The Pennys, sums up everything about the duo both on their own and together–the chorus (“Every time I tell myself ‘no more tears’ / The clouds above begin to unleash all my fears”, accompanied by sparkling guitars) is probably the single most gorgeous moment on the entire EP, its perfect guitar pop containing both shades of Seraphin’s lost-in-time power pop and Ramos’ “prehistorical pop music slowed down and reverb-ed all up”. Read more about The Pennys here.
“Perennial ‘65”, Perennial From Perennial ‘65 (2025, Ernest Jenning)
Perennial ‘65 comes hot on the trail of last year’s Art History; this stopgap EP gives us one brand-new original Perennial rock and roll song, a cover of The Kinks’ “All Day and All of the Night”, two remixes from Cody Votolato and Chris Walla, and a track that continues the band’s exploration into experimental noise and electronic terrain. The opening title track is the “hit”–it’s as good as anything else the band have done, the now-classic combination of 60s garage rock/pop and furious post-hardcore dance punk hitting no less strongly than on their proper albums. Read more about Perennial ‘65 here.
“Forever”, The Tisburys From A Still Life Revisited (2025, Double Helix/SofaBurn)
On A Still Life Revisited, The Tisburys consciously sought to expand their sound beyond the power pop of their last album, name-dropping ambitious indie rock groups like Frightened Rabbit and The Hold Steady as their targets. This is a risky decision, but there was a Springsteenian largesse to 2022’s Exile on Main Street, and A Still Life Revisited subsequently comes off as more of a continuous journey down a familiar road for them. It helps that bandleader Tyler Asay and crew still know their way around a nice, big guitar pop hook too, of course. As scholars of classic rock and pop music, it’s not exactly surprising to me that The Tisburys identified the biggest “hits” to release as the album’s first two singles–the lethal power pop direct strike of “Forever” in particular is A Still Life Revisited’s most single effective pop moment. Read more about A Still Life Revisited here.
“Frozen Hearts”, Jerry David DeCicca From Cardiac Country (2025, Sophomore Lounge)
Jerry David DeCicca seems like somebody who’ll keep making music until his heart gives out–an outcome that he came frighteningly close to in 2023, when a leaky aortic valve led to the Texas songwriter receiving open heart surgery. Cardiac Country was (mostly) written and recorded before DeCicca’s diagnosis, but DeCicca clearly feels that his burgeoning heart problems influenced his writing, to the point of nodding to them in the album’s title. Cardiac Country is a much more streamlined and even traditional-sounding country record compared to his last solo album, which DeCicca and his collaborators utilize to rewarding ends–my favorite song on the album, the smartly saccharine “Frozen Hearts”, tries to recenter the more productive parts of human nature by brushing up against the organ that casts a shadow over this record. Read more about Cardiac Country here.
“Steamy Nights”, Mantarochen From Cut My Brainhair (2025, It’s Eleven)
Dark and gothic but minimal and catchy, Mantarcohen’s take on post-punk remains quite compelling throughout Cut My Brainhair. The bass is front-and-center, the guitar lines frantic but satisfying, the synths intermittent but always welcome, and the vocals understated but plenty capable for what the rest of the band are doing here. Mantarochen are skilled at tension and dread–they only rarely release the darkness they bottle up throughout Cut My Brainhair, but it’s fascinating no matter what they’re doing with it. “Steamy Nights” is just a little busier than the songs before it on the record, but it keeps the thickening tension coming nonetheless. Read more about Cut My Brainhair here.
“Bags for Life”, Flower Show From Painted Nails & Silver Bells (2025)
Painted Nails & Silver Bells is certainly a “British pop album”, although it’s a bit of a different sort than the kind of music I typically write about that fits this description. Craig Sinclair’s deep Bowie/Cocker/Nick Saloman-esque vocals are arguably the most foundational aspect of the album, and musically, Painted Nails & Silver Bells switches from 60s-style power pop and psychedelic, Paisley guitar pop to a murky, moody, post-Britpop haze. “Bags for Life” is probably the best song on Painted Nails & Silver Bells–this was Flower Show’s debut single, and it’s such a power move to start your career off with something this effortlessly catchy, clever in a naturally British way (sample lyric: “I need a place to rest my bones, anywhere will do / I’m a cunt and you’re a cunt and we’ve both had a few”), and sneakily quite dynamic. Read more about Painted Nails & Silver Bells here.
“Set Your Aim”, Miracleworker From Set Your Aim (2025)
New Jersey’s Miracleworker are always good for brief blasts of catchy basement pop punk/indie rock/power pop/“orgcore”; last year saw two quality three-song EPs in Arrowsand Upstate, and in 2025 the trio seem to have resolved to streamline things even further, with their first release of the new year being a two-song single. The A-side to the Set Your Aim single is my favorite of the two (B-side “Eyes” is also worth queuing up if this does it for you, though); heart firmly visible on sleeve and melodies bursting out of the hissing, slightly lo-fi recording, 90s punk rock and indie rock converge in this three-minute, Jawbreaker-reminiscent triumph.
“Carriers”, Ex Pilots From Carriers / Laundromat (2025)
Damn, I love Ex Pilots. It’s been a great few months for the Pittsburgh noise-pop/GBV-fi band, as they released the excellent Motel CableLP last August, dropped a version of Guided by Voices’ “Color of My Blade” at the beginning of this year, and celebrated the tenth anniversary of their debut album Findlay by re-recording two songs from it last month. I needed to conserve some space on this playlist so I have gone with the sub-two-minute “Carriers” rather than the five-plus “Laundromat”, but they both rule and are confirmations both of Ex Pilots’ long-term brilliance and their current hot streak. It’s just an absolute joy to listen to, an electric ball of squealing melodies, ace vocals from the incomparable Ethan Oliva, and superhero guitars.
“Deepend”, Gamma Ray From Gamma Ray (2025)
A Midwestern garage punk band called Gamma Ray, eh? This’ll probably be good. This self-described “snot rock” group has members based in both Columbus and Chicago, and their self-titled debut album is a twenty-four minute fuzzy and ramshackle indie rock record that pretty much always lands on a winning hook. Opening track “Deepend” is lo-fi fuzz rock party music–somewhere alongside the “power pop/slacker rock” axis, Gamma Ray’s first statement is that of a band who isn’t afraid to pull out all the stops underneath the distorted guitars. Read more about Gamma Ray here.
“Back in the Line”, B. Hamilton From B. Hamilton (2025)
A strange, meandering forty-eight minute experience, B. Hamilton is sometimes floating, unmoored post-rock, sometimes groovy, swinging classic rock–it’s something in between those two. Departure rock music? That’s perhaps an appropriate term for the latest album from the long-running Bay Area band, as it’s a record that bandleader Ryan Christopher Parks openly states is about grief. B. Hamilton is a “difficult” record–it’s too scattered to really be “stubborn”, but there’s a standoffishness to it. Very little of this is apparent from listening to “Back in the Line”, though–it’s a smooth 70s-style AOR rock and roller that comes completely out of nowhere, a jarring transition that becomes a theme throughout the rest of the record. Read more about B. Hamilton here.
“TV Dinner”, A Place for Owls From My Friends Were Here (2025, Refresh)
A Place for Owls and Birthday Dad are a pair of emo-y indie rock bands from west of the Mississippi (the former’s from Denver, the latter central California), and they recently released a split single together because that’s just what you do if you’re a small emo-y indie rock band. I’m only passingly familiar with both bands (my favorite thing related to either of them is the collaborative album that A Place for Owls vocalist Ben Sooy made with phoneswithchords in 2023), so while I do think it’s cool that they cover each other’s songs on the second half of this EP, “TV Dinner” would be new to me regardless. A Place for Owls give the Birthday Dad song a fairly unhinged reading–there’s a bit of that bookish Pedro the Lion version of emo-indie I’ve come to associate with them, yes, but they really let loose in an earnest emo-power-pop way across the track, too. Not bad!
“Semantics of Yet”, (T-T)b From Beautiful Extension Cord (2025, Disposable America)
Boston slacker rockers (T-T)b utilize chiptune and video game soundtrack instrumentationas an accent, the way one might use synths or horns. It seems impossible for this kind of thing to ever be “subtly” incorporated into one’s music, but if it can be, it probably sounds like their latest record, Beautiful Extension Cord–still quite visible, but integrated more seamlessly than ever into the group’s slacker rock, 90s alt-rock, and bedroom indie rock-evoking sound. Between the big old guitars, the chirping 8-bit sounds, and bandleader Nick Dussault’s plain but capable vocals, there’s somehow a cosmic element to (T-T)b’s indie rock, and “Semantics of Yet” is one of the biggest moments of this side of them. It starts very low but steadily rises to a huge alt-rock refrain, Speedy Oritz’s Sadie Dupuis joining Dussault to meditate on the wavering evoked by the adverb in the title. Read more about Beautiful Extension Cord here.
“Two Subarus”, Gum Parker From The Brakes (2025, Repeating Cloud)
Gum Parker bandleader Galen Richmond is a 90s indie rock devotee with (presumably) plenty of Archers of Loaf, Guided by Voices, and Silkworm albums in his record collection, but he comes off as much more interested in simply making loud pop music than trying to directly emulate his influences on his latest group’s debut LP. A speedy album, The Brakes zips through a few classic pop songs in its first half–the Archers-nodding, Superchunk-evoking opening anthem “Two Subarus” is a perfect first statement, with frantic power pop, punk, and indie rock coursing through its caffeinated veins. Read more about The Brakes here.
“Line of Best Fit”, Marshy From Light Business (2025, Marsh Slope)
There’s bits of power pop, dreamy/jangly indie pop, shoegaze-adjacent fuzz rock, and maybe just the smallest bit of emo on the debut EP from New York’s Marshy, Light Business–most importantly, though, it’s a collection of songs displaying that this group’s collaborative take on writing and playing just seems to work. “Line of Best Fit” opens the EP and is my favorite on the record by a fair amount–the other songs eventually grew on me enough to write about the whole record, though. Still, “Line of Best Fit” is clearly Light Business’ “hit”–ascending, triumphant power pop chords, sweeping, expertly-wielded distortion, and unbothered vocal melodies will all do that. Read more about Light Business here.
“Everybody’s Talking (Again)”, JPW & Dad Weed From Amassed Like a Rat King (2025, Fort Lowell)
Amassed Like a Rat King has a pretty metal title, but that couldn’t be further away from the music that Dad Weed (aka Zach Toporek) and JPW (aka Jason P. Woodbury) make together here–recalling power pop, jangle pop, and college rock of the 1960s through the 1980s and lightly baked by the southwestern sun, the Arizona duo’s first album together is a comfortable but undeniably hooky guitar pop LP. The no-bullshit, all-business jangle-power pop of my favorite song on the record, “Everybody’s Talking (Again)”, is a casual victory, crossing the economy of Dazy with the southwestern vibes of Dust Star and the most recent Young Guv album. Read more about Amassed Like a Rat King here.
“Pat’s Uninteresting Tours”, Pat’s Alternative Bus Tour From World to Rights (2025)
Scottish indie pop musician Andrew Paterson’s second act as Pat’s Alternative Bus Tour continues at a steady clip with World to Rights, his second album in as many years. Befitting the dramatic title, World to Rights sets its aim a bit higher–it’s a more conscious attempt to weave the interpersonal, political, and ecological together with breezy folk rock and C86-inspired pop music. The bright, memorable narratives of last year’s Virtual Virginsare still here, don’t get me wrong: there’s just more clear connecting threads. The titular tour company “operated in Sydney in the mid to late 1980s, offering tourists the chance to explore some of the more mundane attractions of the city”; Paterson only learned about them after naming his own project similarly, but he’s clearly found some kind of kinship with them, as this offbeat, belated tribute shows. Read more about World to Rights here.
“Arrow”, Lily Seabird From Trash Mountain (2025, Lame-O)
I found myself pretty surprised at where Vermont singer-songwriter Lily Seabird decided to go on her third LP, Trash Mountain. The explosive bursts of noisy country rock of last year’sAlas,are decentered for a quieter, more deliberate, and intimate record, but this pull-back (if anything) only makes Seabird’s writing and singing even more immediate. Trash Mountain is a gorgeously ragged collection of folk rock that finds avenues of contentment rather than searching feverishly for moments of catharsis. The probing electric alt-country rock of “Arrow” sits precariously right in the middle of the album, louder than most of the record but (like everything else on Trash Mountain) not in a jarring way. Read more about Trash Mountain here.
“Magic Glove”, GBMystical From Wannabe (2025, Bee Side Cassettes)
GBMystical has primarily been an outlet for Terrin Munawet’s experimental electronic beatmaking, but there have been hints at lo-fi indie folk and guitar pop sides in the past–sides that are fully explored on the latest GBMystical release, Wannabe. Munawet and their collaborators transform the project into a vehicle for folky, psychedelic indie pop/rock across a dozen brief tracks–it all comes in a casual but very well-crafted guitar pop package, delivering its version of psychedelia in brief, self-contained bursts.“Magic Glove” is a gorgeous ninety-second opener, sliding in some horns to introduce us to Wannabe in the form of lo-fi chamber pop and very nearly “jangle pop”. Read more about Wannabe here.
“Sve Yrself”, Impulsive Hearts From Sorry in the Summer (Remastered) (2025, Cavity Search)
The latest release from Chicago’s Impulsive Hearts is a remastered version of their 2016 debut album, Sorry in the Summer. Sorry in the Summer is certainly compelling enough in 2025–nine years later, it comes off as the missing link between the early 2010s buzzy, fuzzy indie-surf-pop wave and the earnest, “confessional/bedroom pop” era of indie rock that would dominate the latter half of the decade. Even more importantly, though, the songs are there–Impulsive Hearts don’t beat you over the head with them, but this is an excellent pop record upon a closer look. Sorry in the Summer has a sort of “guitar pop via controlled-intensity” attitude that reminds me of the Friko album from last year; “Sve Yrself” might start off with Beach Boys-esque “woo-ooh”ing, but it’s way too desperate to see the pastiche through without going off the deep end. Read more about Sorry in the Summer here.
“People of Substance”, Craig Finn From Always Been (2025, Tamarac/Thirty Tigers)
“Spent way too much time with people without any substance”–me too, Craig, me too. “People of Substance” is not quite as…musically intense as “Luke & Leanna” (discussed earlier) is, leaning into a nice, uplifting rootsy indie rock instrumental, but, of course, there’s an entire world contained herein. The double entendre of the title is just the tip of the iceberg for this one, a theatrical pop rock song where Craig Finn injects his delivery with enough dynamics to not sound totally out of place with the ringing pianos and the actual, real deal guitar solo found here, too.
“Raft Song”, Bliss? From Pass Yr Pain Along (2025, Psychic Spice)
Bliss? vocalist Josh Higdon isn’t at all shy about putting the vocals up front on Pass Yr Pain Along, and the band are loose but clear in a way that puts the spotlight on a collection of songs that really could’ve been shipped straight from Homestead Records to your local college radio station circa 1989. Everything is just right in the opening track, “Raft Song”, which captivates us with a tough rock and roll backbone cradling a basket of melodies–Higdon’s vocals are a delicate, earnest counterbalance to the punk-inspired instrumental. Oh, and that bass guitar is doing an insane amount of melodic heavy lifting, too. Really hyped about this album. Read more about Pass Yr Pain Along here.
“Too Vague”, Entrez Vous From Antenna Legs Hear Everything (2025)
North Carolina’s Entrez Vous debuted with a self-titled album in 2023, and the collaboration between Clark Blomquist and Kelly Reidy has remained fruitful, as they’re back a little under two years later with Antenna Legs Hear Everything. It’s fourteen tracks of garage rock-mussed-up power pop (or, if you prefer, garage rock with power pop hidden in the center) in twenty-seven minutes, putting garage rock, weird psych pop, and power pop in a blender to make something equally confusing and friendly (but always exciting). The kind-of-fuzzy opening track “Too Vague” is just a little psychedelic, just a little Southern, just a little Elephant 6, and much more than just a little compelling–all in under two minutes. Read more about Antenna Legs Hear Everything here.
“I’ve Been Looking Over My Shoulder for Too Long”, Sunny Intervals From Swept Away (2025)
The first Sunny Intervals record in eight years is friendly and familiar-sounding, a delicately beautiful LP of quiet indie folk, soft rock, chamber pop, and good old-fashioned indie pop. Bandleader Andy Hudson pulls a neat trick on Swept Away–these ten songs sound relaxed, unhurried, and content, but, at almost exactly half an hour in length, there’s not a wasted moment among the tasteful acoustic guitars and minimal but brisk percussion. The gorgeous 60s-style piano pop blossoming of “I’ve Been Looking Over My Shoulder for Too Long”, for instance, is about as forward as this kind of music can be. Read more about Swept Away here.
“The Whistleblower”, Fluung From Fluung (2025, Den Tapes/Setterwind)
“The Whistleblower” is the six-minute-long centerpiece of Fluung, but it’s also just as catchy as the shorter and punchier songs on the record in its own way. Dreams of dead animals and plane crashes populate the song, the trio reporting on the unreality with a grounded seriousness that rises and falls with the music. It’s a wild but inspired mix of Archers of Loaf-style noise pop, creepy Pacific Northwest psychedelia, and a bit of punk rock–it’s a masterpiece, clearly. Read more about Fluung here.
On this lovely morning in May (presumably it’s a lovely morning; I’m writing this ahead of time) we have four new records for you to peruse here in Pressing Concerns: new albums from Flower Show and GBMystical, a new EP from Deep-Fried Butterfly, and an archival release from Tiny Vipers.
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.
Flower Show – Painted Nails & Silver Bells
Release date: May 2nd Record label: Self-released Genre: Psychedelic pop, jangle pop, Britpop, indie pop Formats: Digital Pull Track: Bags for Life
It is time for us to meet Flower Show, a “queer six-piece indie band from Liverpool” who describe their music as “charity shop pop”. The sextet (led by Craig Sinclair and also featuring Simon Gabriel, Lloyd Gabriel, Dave Miller, Dom Price, and Terry Green) have just released their debut album, Painted Nails & Silver Bells, but some of the members previously played together in a band called Lovecraft over a decade ago. Painted Nails & Silver Bells, which also features arrangements from Jon Hering of Ex-Easter Island Head, is certainly a “British pop album”, although it’s a bit of a different sort than the kind of music I typically write about that fits this description. Sinclair’s deep vocals are arguably the most foundational aspect of this album–they certainly sound like somebody who learned to make and appreciate music through David Bowie and Jarvis Cocker, and I also hear a bit of The Bevis Frond’s Nick Saloman at times. Musically, Painted Nails & Silver Bells has two main “modes”–either Flower Show are bouncing through 60s-style power pop and psychedelic, Paisley guitar pop or they’re treading through a murky, moody, post-Britpop haze. The transitions ought to be jarring, but Flower Show are well-versed in drawing these connections in a way that makes sense as a record.
Opening track “Spitting at the Walls”, bile in the title aside, has enough joyous, exuberant power pop for the entirety of Painted Nails & Silver Bells. Flower Show deploy triumphant trumpets and insistent organ tones, which really place this flowery guitar pop tune right in the middle of the 1960s.It’s a good thing that Flower Show give us such a treat right at the beginning, because they trust us to follow them as they immediately meander into material like “The Macerator” (a strange psychedelic, key-heavy mood piece) and the vintage balladry of “I’ve Forgotten”. “Green Grows the Grass” has a nice jangly undercurrent, but the mid-section of Painted Nails & Silver Bells continues Flower Show’s “difficult” streak (check out the six-minute prog-folk-pop odyssey of “She Will Have Music”), and it’s not until the closing duo of songs that the pop side of the sextet starts to win out again. “Bags for Life” is probably the best song on Painted Nails & Silver Bells–this was Flower Show’s debut single, and it’s such a power move to start your career off with something this effortlessly catchy, clever in a naturally British way (sample lyric: “I need a place to rest my bones, anywhere will do / I’m a cunt and you’re a cunt and we’ve both had a few”), and sneakily quite dynamic. “Drink the House” starts off with our narrator falling down and hitting their head on the toilet in the midst of an eventful night out–there’s still darkness here, although Flower Show seem to find some kind of purpose in making their misery busy and dizzy. (Bandcamp link)
Tiny Vipers – Illusionz Vol. 1 (1997-2004)
Release date: May 2nd Record label: Self-released Genre: Lo-fi folk Formats: Vinyl, cassette, digital Pull Track: Billboards & Dumpsters
Jesy Fortino, aka Tiny Vipers, has been intermittently releasing experimental folk music in Seattle for over twenty years now. She’s perhaps most famous for a pair of folk albums released on Sub Pop in the late 2000s (2007’s Hands Across the Void and 2009’s Life on Earth) as well as a 2012 Kranky-released collaborative release with Liz Harris of Grouper (Foreign Body, under the name Mirrorring) which hinted at the more ambient but still folk-based sound Fortino’s later work would follow. Tiny Vipers releases have been fewer and far between in recent years, but they’re still coming–her most recent LP was 2017’s Laughter, she put out a three-song EP called American Prayer in 2022, and now we have the archival release Illusionz Vol. 1. Much more raw and direct than any of the other Tiny Vipers releases, Illusionz Vol. 1 collects nine songs that Fortino recorded on cassette recorders, ADAT decks, and boomboxes from 1997 to 2004, documenting an exciting, formative period for a developing songwriter. Lo-fi 90s indie folk acts like The Mountain Goats, Simon Joyner, and Cat Power come to mind (and there are moments that connect this compilation to the concurrent political indie/punk of the Pacific Northwest), although there’s already Tiny Vipers’ unique darkness in this music.
“Tired Horses” is an incredibly strong, transfixing opener–a loping, bleak, blues-informed folk song, it’s like a rougher version of early Nina Nastasia. The next song on Illusionz Vol. 1 is still dark and stark, but it’s of a different sort, marked by frantic acoustic strumming and a strained voice on the verge of breaking. There’s an agitated, spirited side to Fortino’s writing and playing here that might be surprising for those only familiar with her later work, particularly on highlight “Billboards & Dumpsters”. It’s a searing, seething indictment of some dipshit who thinks their politics compensates for their personal odiousness (“You say that there are more important things than me / Like spraypainting ‘Smash the state’ and ‘Anarchy’ / On the side of billboards and dumpsters and freight trains / Billboards and dumpsters and freight trains are more important”). “Something Wrong” is another folk song with this level of writhing liveliness, and it’s really not until the final two songs on Illusionz Vol. 1 that we get some real hints about where Tiny Vipers would end up going. But what strong indications “Watch My Body Die” and “Illusionz” are! The six-minute crawl of the former and the haunted eight-minute drone of the latter take Tiny Vipers to the next level suddenly and capably–but I’m still happy that we get to hear Fortino’s journey to get there on the rest of this album. (Bandcamp link)
Deep-Fried Butterfly – Salt of Saturn
Release date: March 31st Record label: Kitschy Spirit Genre: Fuzz rock, indie pop, dream pop Formats: Digital Pull Track: (Guess the) Age of the Aquarius
Deep-Fried Butterfly are a new quartet hailing from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan–specifically Schoolcraft Township (it’s on the Keweenaw Peninsula, near Houghton, I say as if this means anything to any of you). Their Bandcamp page gives the members all fun names–guitarist/vocalists Lio Coulter and Sean Stout are “Visor Stains” and “Bloomin Onion”, respectively, while bassist Chris Joutras and drummer Aidan Reilly are “Baron La Croix” and “Box of A.I.R.”. You’re probably thinking–“wait, the Upper Peninsula? That’s where Liquid Mike is, right? How are they involved in all this?” Well, Liquid Mike’s Mike Maple did indeed record the debut Deep-Fried Butterfly release, the four-song Salt of Saturn EP (and Joutras’ record label, Kitschy Spirit, has put out a few Liquid Mike records as well). I confess that I’m really not sure what to make of Salt of Saturn, but I do quite enjoy it–as one might expect from a Mike Maple-recorded EP, it’s nice and fuzzed-out, but otherwise it’s pretty far removed from punk-ish power pop. These four fairly disparate songs pull from dream pop, psychedelic pop, alt-rock, instrumental jazzy post-rock, and more–there are plenty of quality hooks in them, though, which is as good a unifying force as any.
“(Guess the) Age of the Aquarius” opens up Salt of Saturn with what I’d call the “hit” of the EP–that beginning guitar riff is probably the most “Liquid Mike” thing on the record, but the song that follows is more polished and refined version of indie pop ushered along by Reilly’s propulsive drumbeat and Coulter (I think?)’s stately vocals. “Super Fun Site” is also a journey into the realm of indie pop, although it’s an oddly disjointed one, its classic pop song core consistently distorted and reset by the band and the recording. “At the Drive In at the drive in” is easily the strangest thing on this EP–it’s an instrumental, and veers sideways into the realm of slightly chilled-out math rock and jazzy, guitar-led rock music (it’s surprising that something on this EP reminded me of The Royal Arctic Institute, but here we are). Salt of Saturn wraps up an eventful fourteen minutes with “It’s Just ‘Table’”, the most dramatic moment of their brief career yet. The low-key but somewhat dour guitar pop of the majority of the song floats in some kind of distorted ether, but the final minute and change of the track finds Deep-Fried Butterfly careening into a “big finish”, the vocals becoming increasingly yelled and frantic and the guitars launching into the sky. There goes the first record from a promising new band, fluttering away like some kind of winged insect. (Bandcamp link)
GBMystical – Wannabe
Release date: May 2nd Record label: Bee Side Cassettes Genre: Psychedelic pop, folk pop, jangle pop, lo-fi pop Formats: Cassette (forthcoming), digital Pull Track: Magic Glove
Terrin Munawet is a musician from upstate New York–they played in “math rock bands in high school”, drummed on an album from the then-Rochester-based Cusp, and started making beats solo as GBMystical before recently moving to Philadelphia. GBMystical has primarily been an outlet for Munawet’s experimental electronic beatmaking, but songs like “Little Dolphin” from 2020’s Planet GB hinted at lo-fi indie folk and guitar pop sides to Munawet–sides that are fully explored on the latest GBMystical release, Wannabe. Munawet and their new collaborators (including William Wilkinson on trombone and Soft Idiot’s Justin Roth on backing vocals) transform the project into a vehicle for folky, psychedelic indie pop/rock across a dozen brief tracks (it’s about twenty-five minutes long in total). Wannabe is being released through Albany label Bee Side Cassettes (with whom Munawet has collaborated before), and while GBMystical’s earlier material fit alongside the electronic side of that label, their newest record fits alongside the imprint’s guitar acts–there are bits of Another Michael, Bruiser & Bicycle, and Floral Print in here. It all comes in a casual but very well-crafted guitar pop package, delivering its version of psychedelia in brief, self-contained bursts.
“Magic Glove” is a gorgeous ninety-second opener, sliding in some horns to introduce us to Wannabe in the form of lo-fi chamber pop and very nearly “jangle pop”. The meandering, electric folk rock of “Remember” is a little bit more developed, but the laid-back charm of the opening track is hardly lost–the music reminds me a bit of the Meat Puppets, a touchpoint I hear again in the instrumental “Stirring Theme”. A lot of Wannabe is just good old-fashioned Philadelphia bedroom pop, somewhat dour but nonetheless beautiful music that recalls stuff like Ylayali, 22 Degree Halo, and the whole Sleeper Records discography (I’m thinking specifically of “Mist”, which goes from an intimate Greg Mendez-type thing to a soaring fuzzy rocker, but plenty more spots on the record apply, too). Wannabe leans into its brevity a bit–songs like the title track, “Starfish 2”, and “Stirring Theme” feel a bit like snippets, giving the record a collage-like tint that connects it with Munawet’s less pop-forward work. The only song on Wannabe that really sounds like those beat-centric records, however, is “Doesn’t Matter”, a synthpop collaboration with New York project Certain Self that places the busy drum machines front and center (but still has plenty of “pop”). “Doesn’t Matter” still fits naturally with the songs next to it (the dreamy pop of “Fairy Hour” and one last folk-pop heist in “GRIM”); it’s a nice addition to the strange and comforting quilt that is Wannabe. (Bandcamp link)
Rosy Overdrive 