New Playlist: May 2025

Hey folks! Below we have the May 2025 playlist here for you, featuring a bunch of great new music that’s either recently been featured on the blog or is appearing on the website for the first time. No matter what, everything here is quality and has that “Rosy Overdrive seal of approval”.

Labrador, Pacing, Friendship, The High Water Marks, and Now have two songs apiece 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.

“Dogs”, Cash Langdon
From Dogs (2025, Seasick/Well Kept Secret)

Some really solid stuff from Cash Langdon, Birmingham, Alabama’s finest purveyor of fuzzy alt-country rock with classic power pop sensibilities baked into the mix as well. “Dogs” is the title track to his latest album (which follows up 2022’s sublime Sinister Feeling), and what an introduction it is–nearly a minute of droning, clanging guitars and train horns, and another thirty seconds before Langdon’s voice jumps into the fray. In the wrong hands this could all be tedious, but there’s just enough of the ragged melodicism that marks the meat of “Dogs” to be found in this introduction to make it engaging and just the right amount of anticipatory.

“Changes”, Alien Boy
From You Wanna Fade? (2025, Get Better)

The people who love Alien Boy seem to really love Alien Boy. I can’t say that has ever described my relationship with the fuzzed-out Portland pop rock group, but their most recent album, You Wanna Fade?, is my favorite of theirs thus far, and songs like “Changes” certainly help me to understand their appeal. In some ways, “Changes” peaks right at the beginning–the reverb-y, dream poppy guitars and Sonia Weber’s earnest vocals kick things off before the full band kicks in to take us the rest of the way. Combine that with a few other admitted bangers (check out “Pictures of You”) and–well, while I’m not exactly on the Alien Boy train yet, I’m looking up routes and ticket prices.

“Dry Out in June”, Labrador
From My Version of Desire (2025, No Way of Knowing/Safe Suburban Home)

The latest album from Philadelphia alt-country concern Labrador, My Version of Desire, just casually has an all-time power pop song sitting pretty in the number two slot. Apparently  “Dry Out in June” has been kicking around for the better part of the decade, but Labrador finally fully realize it here–they turn frontperson Pat King’s frantic, fumbling reaches towards sobriety into maximum pop rock and roll gold with everybody on handclaps, Kris Hayes on squealing lead guitar, and Ther’s Heather Jones delivering a knockout massive keyboard hook (it’s, like, the midpoint between Jason Isbell and Perennial that I probably wouldn’t expect anyone other than Labrador to hit). Read more about My Version of Desire here.

“Nothing! (I Wanna Do)”, Pacing
From Pl*net F*tness (2025, Asian Man)

Another month, another great new Pacing single. “Nothing! (I Wanna Do)” was released (alongside another good one called “Uno!”) as part of the official announcement for the group’s Asian Man Records debut album, PL*NET F*TNESS, and it continues Katie McTigue and company’s ascent into a more polished and full-band-focused sound. It’s not as much of a blunt-force punch of the album’s first single and title track, but “Nothing! (I Wanna Do)” (a “classic upbeat depression banger” according to McTigue) might actually be the catchier one. That’s Pacing’s version of a surf rock riff at the start of the song, and the pounding, brisk drum machine keeps McTigue hurrying along in her vocals even as the song trudges through (or perhaps revels in) monotony. 

“Things I Do”, Pretty Rude
From Ripe (2025, SideOneDummy)

James Palko and Matt Cook are Pretty Rude, a new duo from New York who embrace power pop and catchy radio-ready alt-rock quite readily on their first album. 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. “Things I Do” comes cruising into the picture in the track number two slot, and its windows-down collapsing euphoria harbors what’s actually the sneakily best hook on Ripe (not that there isn’t quite a bit of competition). Read more about Ripe here.

“Nothing”, First Rodeo
From Rode Hard and Put Away Wet (2025, Bud Tapes)

Their new label Bud Tapes boasts that alt-country duo First Rodeo have “moved beyond genre constraints to explore collaborative songwriting and arranging” on their second album, Rode Hard and Put Away Wet–I’m not entirely sure what they mean by that, but there’s a song on this album where they’re basically rapping, so I can see from where they’re coming. “Nothing” is that song, coming out of nowhere with drum loops, “Steal My Sunshine”-esque guitars, and sung-spoken (very nearly rapped) vocals from Nathan Tucker and Tim Howe. 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). Read more about Rode Hard and Put Away Wet here.

“Left That Party”, Grant Pavol
From Left That Party (2025, Sonder House)

January’s College was a foray into stripped-down, quiet folk music featuring viola from Sloppy Jane’s Isabella Bustanoby, but Left That Party–Grant Pavol’s second EP out of four planned ones for 2025–switches gears towards power pop and the hooky side of guitar-driven indie rock. The title track is worth the price of admission alone–Pavol and his rhythm section announce their new sound with fuzzed-out guitars, surf-rock backing vocals, handclaps, and a tractor trailer truck of a melody and hook. Pavol’s tale of an unfortunate night out (with the song’s title referring to what he should’ve done, with you) is the one that really earns the Tony Molina and Weezer references in the record’s bio, and Pavol does the power pop balancing act as a frontperson who’s in shit-eating-grin, out-of-his-depth mode thematically but suavely in command of the tight pop song at the same time. Read more about Left That Party here.

“Similar”, Push Puppets
From Tethered Together (2025, Flowering Tree)

I really like this one, and I’m not entirely sure why. Push Puppets are a group from Chicago, and frontperson Erich Specht says that their latest album, Tethered Together, takes inspiration from “the artistic excesses of the 70s”. “Similar” certainly does that–it sounds huge, an expansive orchestral indie-power-pop type thing with a killer refrain that the band don’t overuse. I think that Specht’s unusual writing is what makes this one so memorable–it’s not that strange for a songwriter to write about “universal connections”, but to turn the phrase “We’re similar / But not the same” into a huge anthemic refrain? There’s something weirdly religious about “Similar”, and Specht is always gesturing at something that he’s sure we’ll understand but I’m not sure we do (at least, not in a literal sense). 

“Tree of Heaven”, Friendship
From Caveman Wakes Up (2025, Merge)

The more “anthemic”, immediately-gripping songs of 2022’s Love the Stranger are gone on Caveman Wakes Up, the latest album from Philadelphia supergroup Friendship–they’ve been replaced with ambient, vibes-based music, and the skills of Peter Gill, Jon Samuels, and Michael Cormier-O’Leary are put to a different kind of use. I’m not sure if Friendship ever quite “get it together” on Caveman Wakes Up, but there’s some livelier moments that do a little more damage on first glance–“Tree of Heaven” is one of those, relying on a pained, worried guitar riff and clipped lyrics from frontperson Dan Wriggins, daring to look backwards for seconds at a time before coming up for air (“You know you changed me, babe” sums it all up). The hardiness of the titular tree has made it both the bane of countless arborists and landscapers as well as inspiring A Tree Grows in Brooklyn; like the memories hovering in the song, it’s a blessing and a curse. Read more about Caveman Wakes Up here.

“Peonies”, Rodeo Boys
From Junior (2025, Don Giovanni)

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 Midwestern punks put to tape with him. Junior balances “polished” with “ragged”–frontperson Tiff 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. My favorite track on the album, “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–and the rest of the song lives up to that exciting beginning. Read more about Junior here.

“The Works”, The High Water Marks
From Consult the Oracle (2025, Meritorio)

Consult the Oracle is business as usual at this point–a dozen indie power pop songs recalling both co-leader Hilarie Sidney’s previous band (The Apples in Stereo) and early High Water Marks material 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”, which is an absolute masterclass in the usage of power pop guitar riffs and handclaps? Read more about Consult the Oracle here.

“Grey to Green”, Strange Devotion
From A Demonstration of Devotion (2025, Fabulous Things)

The debut EP from London’s Strange Devotion is a well-informed and trickily-difficult-to-categorize record; there’s certainly a post-punk and even goth darkness hovering over these four songs, 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 single most thrilling moment on A Demonstration of Devotion 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. Read more about A Demonstration of Devotion here.

“Stop Lion 2”, Mourning [A] BLKstar featuring Lee Bains III
From Flowers for the Living (2025, Don Giovanni)

Seven-piece Cleveland “Afrofuturist collective” Mourning [A] BLKstar are a little more sprawling and slow-moving on the forty-five minute Flowers for the Living than on their last LP. “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 southern rock 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 given his background. Read more about Flowers for the Living here.

“Circles”, Artificial Go
From Musical Chairs (2025, Feel It)

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. Angie 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–her performances would be wasted without the talents of a group that can turn “Circles” into fluffy, bounding jangly indie pop (the way Willcutt says various dog breeds in the verses is the first thing that stuck with me in this one, but that chorus is the real gem of the song). Read more about Musical Chairs here.

“Rat Man”, Festiva
From Everything in Moderation (2025, Repeating Cloud)

A few members of Portland, Maine’s Festiva have played in Rory Strong’s band, and the most recent Festiva album, Everything in Moderation, might be the missing link between the emo-punk-tinged songwriting of Rory Strong and the guitar pop that more frequently characterizes their label Repeating Cloud’s roster. Carter 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. The trio clean up their sound just enough on “Rat Man” to pull off something a little dynamic and post-punk-influenced–there’s, like, fucked up Elvis Costello and surf rock in this one. It’s definitely a highlight. Read more about Everything in Moderation here.

“The Ballad of Joy Bang”, Now
From Now Does the Trick (2025, K/Perennial)

The second album from the difficultly-named Bay Area trio Now and their debut for their new label is called Now Does the Trick, and it’s a different beast than their debut but no less strong of an LP. The psychedelic, kraut-y mud of 2023’s And Blue Space Is Burning Noon is turned down and the jangle pop guitars and hooks are turned up–Now sounds like they’re aiming for the little big-time here, hitting the same highs as their now-labelmates Sharp Pins and The Smashing Times. Plenty of these hits are right up front–the lurching acoustic guitar and pop rock charms of “The Ballad of Joy Bang” are quite exuberant, serving as the perfect opener for the next chapter of Now. Read more about Now Does the Trick here.

“It’s Been a Landline Kind of Winter”, Hamlet
From Light Under Repair (2025, Subjangle)

Hamlet’s Chris Wales emailed me his latest EP and mentioned that he found my blog through my writing about lo-fi power pop group Mythical Motors; judging from Light Under Repair, that seems about right. Wales leads a trio from Cincinnati (if you doubt their southern Ohio credentials, let me tell you that Kate Wakefield from Lung plays cello on a song on their new record and Wales plays in a Guided by Voices tribute band) with jangle pop and power pop coursing through its veins; my favorite song from Light Under Repair is “It’s Been a Landline Kind of Winter”, which lets the choppy power chords lead the way in the verses and brings bright “jangle pop” guitars in the refrain (sample lyric: “It’s been a four-track kind of winter / My drum machine lost one arm”).

“Disney Girls”, Kilynn Lunsford
From Promiscuous Genes (2025, Feel It)

Promiscuous Genes is 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 Kilynn Lunsford (with the help of longtime collaborator Donald Bruno) is attempting to communicate will find something striking nonetheless. I have chosen Lunsford’s version of “Disney Girls” by The Beach Boys for this playlist, and how could I not–the two of them turn the piano ballad into a nervous post-punk toe-tapper featuring prominent use of some kind of referee whistle. Read more about Promiscuous Genes here.

“Unpopular Parts of a Pig”, Mclusky
From The World Is Still Here and So Are We (2025, Ipecac)

Well, yeah, of course I love Mclusky Do Dallas (The Difference Between Me and You Is That I’m Not on Fire might actually be slightly better, but we’re not here to have this conversation today). I don’t subscribe to the train of thought that reunion albums are a serious threat to a “band’s legacy”, but I do find myself susceptible to the idea of unrealistic expectations and subsequent disappointment. This is all to say–I did my best to approach the first Mclusky album in over twenty years, The World Is Still Here and So Are We, on its own terms and not try to expect another Do Dallas. “Unpopular Parts of a Pig”, the opening track on the album, is a really great garage rock song that kind of sounds like Mclusky but doesn’t sound like a band trying too hard to retrace their steps. It’s still all kind of fucked, of course.

“Wilt”, Press Club
From To All the Ones That I Love (2025)

New to me, Press Club are a Melbourne-based quartet (vocalist Natalie Foster, guitarist Greg Rietwyk, bassist Iain Macrae, and drummer Frank Lees) who’ve toured their home country and Europe extensively and have just put out their fourth album, To All the Ones That I Love. I’ve seen Press Club referred to as a “punk band”, and maybe they were at first, but To All the Ones That I Love is something different–heart-on-sleeve, wide-open, power pop, heartland rock, Big Indie, “The Beths-core”, whatever you want to call it. “Wilt”, my favorite song on the album, just flat-out rules–it’s sparkling, soaring, ambitious guitar pop with a chorus that goes for it and lands it.

“1997, the End or the Beginning”, Thanks for Coming
From The IRS No Longer Has My Address, and Neither Do I (2025)

I don’t care anymore. I’m fully and loudly proclaiming that Thanks for Coming is my favorite Rachel Brown project. I’m aware that I might be alone in preferring them over indie darlings Water from Your Eyes (I don’t even think Brown themself would agree with me), but there’s just something to Brown’s less-frequent-these-days but always-welcome missives in the form of quick, earnest, and typically oddly catchy bedroom pop. A new EP entitled The IRS No Longer Has My Address, and Neither Do I was a nice surprise, and my favorite track on it, “1997, the End or the Beginning” needs little more than some frantically-strummed guitar, Brown backing themself on vocals, and some well-timed angst to work. 

“Super Dilla Cancer Killah”, Alex Orange Drink
From Victory Lap (#23) (2025, Million Stars)

Alex Zarou Levine didn’t choose to pigeonhole himself as the punk rock musician who writes about his experiences living with and battling various medical ailments; he’s just attempting to live his life, I think. 2021’s Everything Is Broken, Maybe That’s O.K. is about Levine’s long-term metabolic genetic disorder homocystinuria, and this year’s Victory Lap (#23) came about after the So So Glos frontperson was diagnosed with adenoid cystic carcinoma and subsequently went through intense chemotherapy and radiation treatments. As it happens, Levine’s stepmother was also being treated for cancer at the same time, and this leads to my favorite moment on the record, “Super Dilla Cancer Killah”. I didn’t quite understand this song until I did a bit more research; Levine writes that he was listening to 90s gangster rap while undergoing treatment and that “Super Dilla Cancer Killah” conveys the necessary defiant optimism in an “almost cartoon-like fashion”; his stepmother, Sadhis Rivas, sings the chorus with Levine and the outro in her native Spanish. 

“Mist (Surrounds Me)”, Living Dream
From Absolute Devotion (2025, Inscrutable)

Living Dream are keeping the dream of hazy, dreamy guitar pop alive in none other than Indianapolis, Indiana. While their peers in Good Flying Birds got a bit of attention at the beginning of this year, Living Dream seems determined to continue to fly under the radar with their psychedelic, murky take on jangle pop, as heard on their brand-new EP Absolute Devotion. And yet, “Mist (Surrounds Me)” is an undeniable pop song, and I think you all should hear it. The mysterious group honestly might even be a little more accessible here than on their 2023 self-titled debut album (which snuck onto my year-end list and has only risen in my esteem since), so now’s a great time to get on board the Living Dream train. 

“Resident Evil”, Friendship
From Caveman Wakes Up (2025, Merge)

Half of Caveman Wakes Up feels like it could be the “climax” of the album, and “Resident Evil” is one of the strongest contenders. It’s a raw one, and it takes a while to really boot up. Dan Wriggins is “on one” from the start, of course, but it’s not until the ninety-second mark when he exclaims “Some shithead in my room / Playing Resident Evil,” with all his strength that the song really makes it mark. Your mileage may vary on that line, I suppose–I think it’s brilliant in three or four different ways, and adds a bit of surrealism to the otherwise fairly brutal self-excoriation. Read more about Caveman Wakes Up here.

“Company’s Eyes”, Ryan Allen
From Livin’ on a Prayer on the Edge (2025, Setterwind)

Longtime Michigan indie rocker Ryan 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. Livin’ on a Prayer on the Edge is above all else 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. Livin’ on a Prayer on the Edge has its share of gorgeous jangle pop, and “Company’s Eyes” is perhaps the best example of it. The instrumental is soaring, and the awkward corporate preoccupations (the title is preceded by “fail in the” when it appears in the chorus) really remind me of the aforementioned Fountains of Wayne. Read more about Livin’ on a Prayer on the Edge here.

“Better Life”, My Raining Stars
From Momentum (2025, Shelflife/Too Good To Be True)

Another new record from a longtime indie pop musician, eh? Well, let’s see what My Raining Stars (the nearly three-decade-old solo project from Thierry Haliniak, formerly of Nothing to Be Done) has to offer on their latest album, Momentum. Haliniak claims by equally influenced by Creation Records and Sarah Records; my favorite song on it, “Better Life”, hews towards the former. It’s got a nice beat to it and a psychedelic streak; it’s not exactly full-on Madchester/“alternative dance”, but it’s certainly close enough for me. 

“Sunny <3”, Pacing
From Hatemail (2022)

I’m throwing an old Pacing song on this playlist, too, because 1) I didn’t know Pacing when Hatemail came out and so I didn’t write about it then and 2) I got to see Pacing live recently and it was great (they were opening for Cheekface, who were also great) and they played this one. “Sunny <3” is a Pacing classic and certainly holds its own against the really great records that have followed since Hatemail came out; the anxiety, jealous, “fomo”, and obsession that shade Katie McTigue’s writing are all well-worn subjects for Pacing songs by now, but the bursting, floating refrain is evidence that Pacing, from the beginning, had designs greater than the lo-fi bedroom anti-folk sound they’re often reduced to in descriptions.

“Follow You Where You’re Talking”, Coffin Prick
From Loose Enchantment (2025, Temporal Drift)

Receiving help from members of Tuxedomoon, Tortoise, and LA Takedown (among others), the latest release from Ryan Weinstein’s shapeshifting Coffin Prick project is a slinky, wobbly, dubby collection of Los Angeles art rock and post-punk. Often danceable but rarely forthright about it, Loose Enchantment is a record that believes that having fun should be complicated. From the brightly-colored guitars that start off the album, it’s hard to tell where, exactly, Coffin Prick are going with all of this, but the rest of “Follow You Where You’re Talking” resolves this noise into a minimal post-punk bass riff and welcomes us to the Loose Enchantment show with a propulsive, low-end-led dance-punk introduction. Read more about Loose Enchantment here.

“Burn Me”, Salt
From The Books Are Blue (2025, ERASED! Tapes)

A demo version of “Burn Me” by Salt was featured on the True Names Trans Youth Emergency Project compilation that I wrote about last month; I didn’t talk about it at the time (in fairness, there were a lot of good songs to talk about on that one), but the studio version is out now (as part of a whole new Salt album, in fact!) and so we are hearing “Burn Me” as it was meant to be heard. The now Queens-based Salt goes way back in the world of lo-fi Philadelphia indie rock (they put out music on Sleeper Records alongside early stuff from Friendship, 2nd Grade, and Joey Nebulous) and it’s nice to get a new release from them; “Burn Me” has that mid-2010s kind of greyscale bedroom pop sound, the charms subtle but still very there.

“Casual Cruelty”, SAVAK
From SQUAWK! (2025, Peculiar Works/Ernest Jenning)

A tight ten songs and thirty-five minutes, SQUAWK! finds the longtime indie rock veterans of SAVAK continuing to hammer out their by-now quite recognizable style of college rock, post-punk, and garage rock–tough but polished, familiar but surprising, catchy as ever. If SQUAWK! is on the whole a little bit trickier and thornier than their last couple of records, it’s not apparent from upbeat, rollicking highlights like “Casual Cruelty”, whose propulsive garage-y power pop might actually be the biggest “hit” on it. Read more about SQUAWK! here.

“Princess Road Surgery”, Alan Sparhawk & Trampled by Turtles
From Alan Sparhawk with Trampled by Turtles (2025, Sub Pop)

Alan Sparhawk with Trampled by Turtles is as tough of a listen as anyone familiar with the tragedy experienced by the former of the two artists would expect. An unlikely but ultimately very fitting team-up between two of Duluth’s most prominent acts, this album ends up synthesizing the glacial-paced, beautiful slowcore of the early work of Sparhawk’s Low and the more traditional folk music of Trampled by Turtles. “Princess Road Surgery” is, relatively speaking, one of the liveliest songs on the album–apparently it’s over a decade old, and Sparhawk had co-written it and played it in concert with his late wife and bandmate Mimi Parker in Low. It’s still heartbreaking, intentionally or otherwise (“So much for saving the world / I thought you’d make it for sure / Too much for one little girl”), and Trampled by Turtles’ unself-conscious folk dressings combined with Sparhawk’s strong voice helps it all kind of remind me of Richard Dawson, of all people.

“Pretty Eyes Lorraine”, Florry
From Sounds Like… (2025, Dear Life)

Florry bandleader Francie 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. 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. Even when the music of Sounds Like… veers away from showiness, it’s still key in its success–see highlight “Pretty Eyes Lorraine”, where the band dial up a 70s-style pop rock sound that really goes well with Medosch’s (more emphasized than on most of the rest of the record) vocals. Read more about Sounds Like… here.

“FUA”, The Mary Column
From Very Sparrow (2025, Errol’s Hot Wax)

A jangle pop song called “Fuck You All”, huh? That’s got my attention. Jack Mellin played in the Glasgow indie pop group Spinning Coin in the late 2010s, and while I’m not sure if that band is defunct now, Mellin has gone ahead with a project called The Mary Column (which I initially thought was a new band but appears to actually predate Spinning Coin). Three-fourths of Spinning Coin contribute to Very Sparrow, a record that explores guitar pop both simple and streamlined and noisy and busy. “FUA” probably sports the best hook of the entire album–it’s simple and triumphant, conjuring up early Flying Nun-era noise pop in its blasts of tuneful noise. “Fuck you all / You’re all creeps / And you make my skin crawl / … / What’s it called / When all the creeps / Control the whole world?”–Mellin could be talking about any number of things here, but the fire these creeps have lit under The Mary Column burns all the brighter for it.

“People Like You and Me”, Labrador
From My Version of Desire (2025, No Way of Knowing/Safe Suburban Home)

Labrador bandleader Pat King has always been a vocal supporter of music far beyond his alt-country pigeonhole, and while I can’t say that, for instance, his love of metal is reflected in My Version of Desire, plenty of other threads are–power pop and college rock, certainly, as well as classic rock and 60s pop and soul and Roy Orbison (and so on). You’ll find laid-back AOR and soulful guitar pop on My Version of Desire, but Labrador are still plenty capable of knocking out streamlined pop rock–see first-half highlight “People Like You And Me”, whose simplicity has its own breezy charms, too (the first lines: “People like you and me / Will never smash guitars on stage”). Read more about My Version of Desire here.

“(My Girl’s a) Hologram”, The Rabies
From Dumb It Down (2025, Presidential/Bolt)

Dumb It Down is the first-ever Rabies full-length album, some forty years in the making–their initial incarnation ended in the early 1980s with only a single and an EP to their name, but the New York power pop/punk quartet reformed at the beginning of this decade. A new recording of that debut single, “(My Girl’s a) Hologram”, opens the album, and it’s easy to hear how this one (via a re-pressing) 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). Read more about Dumb It Down here.

“Noise”, Forty Winks
From Love Is a Dog from Hell (2025, Crafted Sounds)

Based off of their debut EP, Love Is a Dog from Hell, I certainly can see why Crafted Sounds refers to their latest signee, Forty Winks, as “riff evangelists” and “zoomer rock”–they fall somewhere in between textured, shoegaze-originating experimentation and fuzzed-out rock and roll, eagerly mixing chaotic noise, roaring guitars, and pop hooks together in a brief but memorable package. “Noise”, an advance single and quite possibly the best pop song on the EP, is saved for last–it 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 on their debut EP, “Noise” is another reason to keep this band on our collective radar. Read more about Love Is a Dog from Hell here.

“I Just Want You (To Show Me How)”, Daphne’s Demise
From The Heart Is a Garden (2025, Orange Horse/Perpetual Doom)

The latest pickup from cult cosmic country record label Perpetual Doom is a low-key but quality addition to their roster. Zoë S-Bouffard has been making dreamy, folky indie rock from Sarnia, Ontario as Daphne’s Demise since the beginning of this decade, but their latest EP, The Heart Is a Garden, showcases how the project has grown into sporting “a rotating cast of collaborators and a full-band studio sound”. My favorite song on The Heart Is a Garden, “I Just Want You (To Show Me How)”, certainly doesn’t suffer from too many cooks or too much polish–somewhere between vintage, jangly dream pop and the laid-back side of Yo La Tengo, “I Just Want You (To Show Me How)” is gorgeous, plain and simple, and a stark display of S-Bouffard’s talents.

“1 Way to Go”, Now
From Now Does the Trick (2025, K/Perennial)

Now Does the Trick is a jangle/power pop album made by a bunch of weirdos, and the second half of the record in particular feels like it has its third eye on occasional lookout. That being said, Now are still good for no-strings-attached punchy power pop anthems even in the thick of their increasingly-recognizable “Now mire”; “1 Way to Go”, the penultimate song on the record, certainly does the trick. Vocalist and guitarist Will Smith really does continue to remind me of a young Scott Miller on songs like this, and the eager, sloppy, but always held-together instrumental of the song brings an unvarnished kind of excitement often missing from vintage-looking indie rock bands. Read more about Now Does the Trick here.

“Consult the Oracle”, The High Water Marks
From Consult the Oracle (2025, Meritorio)

In between the louder moments of Consult the Oracle are the songs that give the album its personality, the ones that make it a distinct entity from stuff like 2023’s fuzz-hook-fest Your Next Wolf. The title track certainly qualifies as one of these–it’s one of the catchiest songs on Consult the Oracle, yes, but instead of barreling right out of the gate, it builds a bit to its fuzz-pop refrain. The whole song is a lovely piece of twee pop featuring co-bandleaders Per Ole Bratset and Hilarie Sidney trading off lead vocals, an almost nursery-rhyme-like verse melody skipping lightly into the distorted guitars and nonetheless-still-saccharine melodies in the chorus. Read more about Consult the Oracle here.

“Multitap”, Captain Frederickson
From Introverts Unite (2025)

“I have a Multitap, but I don’t have multi-friends”–Jesus, that might be the saddest lyric I’ve heard this year. It’s been a while since we’ve checked in on the Buffalo-based noise rock/post-punk/drum-machine-hop duo Captain Frederickson (one of the first bands I ever wrote about on this blog), but they’re in rare form on Introverts Unite, pushing lo-fi, abrasive noise pop rock songs about topics including the Dyson Airblade, the mental health costs of driving a minivan, and extreme hoarding. I wouldn’t call Introverts Unite a concept album, but “Multitap” is perhaps the other side of the coin of the album’s introvert-call-to-arms title track; Captain Frederickson reach into their bag of tricks and pull out some mournful British jangly indie pop to maximize the emotional heft of “Multitap”, in which its narrator realizes that the titular contraption for playing video games with others will “sit and rust” on a shelf, unused forever. 

Pressing Concerns: John Galm, Now, Grant Pavol, The Lilas

It’s the first Pressing Concerns of the week! We’re kicking June off with new albums from John Galm and Now and new EPs from Grant Pavol and The Lilas. Check them out below and find something great!

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.

John Galm – River of Blood

Release date: May 16th
Record label: Count Your Lucky Stars
Genre: Folk rock, singer-songwriter
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Imlu

Philadelphia’s John Galm has had a one-of-a-kind music career over the past decade and a half or so. He cemented his place in emo revival history as the frontperson of the band Snowing, who were one-album-in-2010-and-done (aside from some miscellaneous recordings and not-infrequent reunion shows), but the music Galm’s been involved with since then has tilted away from this starting point. I’ve written about a good deal of it on this blog before, specifically the hazy, dreamy bedroom pop of his quasi-solo project Bad Heaven Ltd. and the loud, shoegaze-y fuzz rock of Mt. Worry (also featuring Noah and Rowan Roth of Hell Trash). Galm’s only solo album before now was 2014’s Sky of No Stars, released on the defunct Broken World Media imprint, so it’s kind of curious that he decided to revert back to releasing music under his own name for River of Blood. Inspired by a much-needed new sobriety, the departure of half of Mt. Worry to Chicago and the subsequent icing of the band, and Galm spending more time at his mother’s house in Lehigh Valley (where he grew up), River of Blood is a rich and heavy folk album that certainly earns the “John Galm album” designation, and then some.

River of Blood came together piece by piece–some was recorded at Galm’s mother’s house, some of it at his apartment in Philadelphia, and he eventually traveled to Chicago to add more parts by Noah and Rowan Roth to the recordings. These slow, stark indie folk songs remind me a bit of the quieter sides of Noah Roth’s solo work, as well as a lot of notable “indie folk” names from the past few decades (of the ones that Count Your Lucky Stars mentions, Mount Eerie is probably the most accurate, but I also hear Galm’s stated goal of incorporating moves from “higher-produced indie rock records” like Phoebe Bridgers’ work, which works in spite of–or perhaps because of–the economical recording setup). This is a record that is best experienced as a single piece, I think, and it’s hard for me to single out specific tracks–yes, the eight-minute opening title track and the six-minute “Into the Fire” are breathtaking folk-art-rock canvasses, but I don’t think they’re any more complete than the quieter tracks that bridge the space in between them. The warbly “Darktown” reminds me a little bit of Bad Heaven Ltd., but on the whole River of Blood is a much more direct and cleaner-sounding album. The album ends with a quiet, hushed cover of “Stand by Me”–somewhat amusingly, the biography for the album says that “some of [Galm’s] close confidants balked at the idea” of closing River of Blood with it (Noah? Was that you?), but the song is there for him, much like River of Blood itself is for John Galm (and, now, us). (Bandcamp link)

Now – Now Does the Trick

Release date: May 16th
Record label: K/Perennial
Genre: Jangle pop, psychedelic pop, lo-fi pop, power pop
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: 1 Way 2 Go

I remember when I first heard of San Francisco Bay Area guitar pop group Now–the end of 2023, when Andy Pastalaniec of Chime School (one of my favorite groups of the very large and incestuous Bay Area indie pop scene) listed their album And Blue Space Is Burning Noon as one of his favorites of that year. I loved And Blue Space Is Burning Noon immediately; I wrote that vocalist and guitarist Will Smith “sounds like a young Scott Miller” but that Now is “groovier, more psychedelic, and…more rubbery” than most of the vintage college rock bands they evoke. Smith (who has played in the band Cindy), drummer Oli Lipton (another Cindy contributor), and bassist Hannah Forrester (of Thunder Boys) got scooped up by Perennial and K Records not long after I found And Blue Space Is Burning Noon–the trio’s second album and debut for their new label is called Now Does the Trick, a different beast than their debut but no less strong of an LP. The psychedelic, kraut-y mud of And Blue Space Is Burning Noon is turned down and the jangle pop guitars and hooks are turned up–Now sound like they’re aiming for the little big-time here, hitting the same highs as their now-labelmates Sharp Pins and The Smashing Times. 

Now are still a bunch of weirdos, though–lo-fi, sparkling jangle can’t paper over all of that. Even though the dozen songs of Now Does the Trick total just a bit over a half-hour, it feels like they encompass so much more than that; Now eat their craft-sharpening cake and get to keep some skeletons in their collective closet, too. Plenty of the hits are right up front–the lurching acoustic guitar and pop rock charms of “The Ballad of Joy Bang” are quite exuberant, “Careening” is a jangle pop version of the titular action, and if “A Hat to Match” has just a bit of melancholy to it by comparison, the rays are still shining through the clouds. Around the middle of Now Does the Trick is something called “Art Forger” that shifts the feel a little bit into dream pop and unhurried exploration, and while plenty of punchy power pop tunes follow it (check out “What Happened to Johnny?” and the penultimate track, “1 Way to Go”), it does feel like the second half has its third eye on occasional lookout. Not everything is as curious as the molasses-pop “Morning Trains Like Mirrors”, but the jangle of songs like “Join Our Treasure Hunt” and “M. Mather” have a bit of that increasingly-recognizable “Now mire” on them. I was pretty quick to proclaim Now as some of the best of the Bay after hearing And Blue Space Is Burning Noon, and Now Does the Trick keeps them right on track. (Bandcamp link)

Grant Pavol – Left That Party

Release date: May 9th
Record label: Sonder House
Genre: Power pop, fuzz rock, indie pop
Formats: Digital
Pull Track: Left That Party

We’re back for round two of the Grant Pavol EP experience! The New York-based musician (perhaps most well-known for his time playing with indie pop musician Shamir) declared an intent to release four four-song solo EPs over the course of 2025, and he’s on track to hit his benchmarks with two of them out in sixth months. January’s College was a foray into stripped-down, quiet folk music featuring viola from Sloppy Jane’s Isabella Bustanoby, but Left That Party switches gears towards power pop and the hooky side of guitar-driven indie rock. Recorded with the rhythm section of Bustanoby on bass and Anya Good (George Clanton, Grumpy) on drums, Left That Party is much more “in the Rosy Overdrive wheelhouse” than College was, so it’s not exactly surprising that I really enjoy the direction Pavol’s taken his music with these songs. It’s easy enough to cite Tony Molina, Weezer, and Elliott Smith as influences (which Pavol, who is notably also a music publicist, does), but Pavol drops into the world of guitar pop with an eager studiousness that feels quite distinct from any kind of genre tourism–this kind of stuff feels just as dear to Pavol as the folk music of College came off.

“Left That Party” is worth the price of admission alone–Pavol and his rhythm section announce their new sound with fuzzed-out guitars, surf-rock backing vocals, handclaps, and a tractor trailer truck of a melody and hook. Pavol’s tale of an unfortunate night out (with the song’s title referring to what he should’ve done, with you) is the one that really earns those Molina and Weezer namedrops, and Pavol does the power pop balancing act as a frontperson who’s in shit-eating-grin, out-of-his-depth mode thematically but suavely in command of the tight pop song at the same time. Left That Party reminds me more than a bit of 2nd Grade (a band pulling from the same influences as Pavol is here), and the wilting, wistful jangle of “He Ain’t Right” is probably the moment that hews closest to Peter Gill’s power pop project. The second half of Left That Party is a bit less immediate, but the hooks are still there–“Don Juan”, the shortest song on the album, is ninety seconds of bummer pop brilliance that’s up there with other modern underappreciated humble pop groups like Buddie and Brian Mietz, and “The World at My Feet” jettisons the rhythm section entirely for an acoustic track with a little rootsiness that’s the clearest link between College and this record. I still think “The World at My Feet” belongs on Left That Party, though–for an eight minute EP, Pavol really is able to stretch out his definition of power pop to surprising lengths. (Bandcamp link)

The Lilas – Vaquero Tropical

Release date: April 25th
Record label: Epicentro
Genre: Surf rock, psychedelic pop, dream pop
Formats: Digital
Pull Track: Marina

Hey, they’ve got surf rock in Guatemala now, that’s pretty cool! I’m not familiar at all with the current state of Central American indie rock (unless I’m forgetting something, I’m pretty sure this is the first act from somewhere between Mexico and Ecuador I’ve written about in Pressing Concerns), but I did have the good fortunate to hear The Lilas, a one-man-band led by Sebastián Villatoro, so I can tell you about one good indie rock act currently active down there. Vaquero Tropical (that’s “tropical cowboy”) appears to be the second EP from The Lilas, following a debut in 2020 called Motel Couleur. Things had been a bit quiet on the Lilas front ever since Motel Ceouleur, but last year’s non-album single “El Dorado” signaled a return from Villatoro, who linked up with a musician named Bumont who helped produce, mix, and master five new Lilas songs released as Vaquero Tropical. The latest entry into The Lilas’ discography is a fifteen-minute exploration of slow, languid guitar pop that’s a bit dreamy, a bit surfy, and a bit psychedelic. This kind of music can fade into the background, but Villatoro’s take on it is resistant to this for several reasons–his deep, clipped-crooner voice is front-and-center, the guitars are crisp and clear, and there’s no percussion anywhere on the record, forcing us to listen to the six-string interplay around which The Lilas build these songs.

The opening title track to Vaquero Tropical is an instrumental, starting things off with a creeping, noirish bassline that slinks and eventually struts over two and a half minutes. “Marina” continues the relaxed crawl and eventually adds Villatoro’s voice into the fray, singing in a casual, loping way to match the song’s infinitely patient energy. The slightly gothic balladry of “La Mala Sangre” is the most surprising thing on Vaquero Tropical (up until that point, at least), and while “Culebra Coral” isn’t as shocking, the dark, rushing surf rock instrumental keeps the momentum going strong into the EP’s home stretch. If there’s a “hit” to Vaquero Tropical, it’s probably closing track “Ojos Tristes”–whereas the rest of the EP is direct and clean, it’s the one track where The Lilas indulge in just a little bit of trebly, time-warped haziness in the production. The lo-fi, minimalist jazz-pop track (“a confessional bolero”, the bio calls it) is the one song on Vaquero Tropical that might be able to sneak itself onto a coffeeshop playlist somewhere, although Villatoro’s talk-singing confessions might lead to one’s mind drifting away from composing emails and drinking a caffeinated beverage should it make it there. (Bandcamp link)

Also notable:

Pressing Concerns: Labrador, SAVAK, Foxwarren, Lung

The Thursday Pressing Concerns this week brings us four albums coming out tomorrow (May 30th), specifically new LPs from Labrador, SAVAK, Foxwarren, and Lung. Check them out below, and also catch up on this week’s early blog posts (a brief remembrance of Pere Ubu’s David Thomas on Monday, a Pressing Concerns featuring Friendship, COR1, Credit, and Jonathan Rundman on Tuesday) if you missed them, 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.

Labrador – My Version of Desire

Release date: May 30th
Record label: No Way of Knowing/Safe Suburban Home
Genre: Alt-country, power pop, college rock
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
Pull Track: Dry Out in June

Sometime in the chilly winter of early 2023, I wrote about Hold the Door for Strangers, an album from a Philadelphia alt-country group called Labrador. After years of being a New York-based solo project for singer-songwriter Pat King, the bandleader reinvented his project as a “lumbering, Neil Young-inspired” five-piece country rock group, and King began working on a follow-up album almost immediately afterwards. My Version of Desire, the latest Labrador album, features a retooled lineup–they’re down to a trio, with King joined by newcomers Will Hochgertel on bass and Steve Kurtz on drums (although former full-time member Kris Hayes does play guitar on the majority of these songs). Labrador and Hayes trekked over to So Big Auditory to have Heather Jones of Ther record these nine songs (Jones also plays keyboard on a few songs), and together they all help the Labrador project take a big, satisfying step forward. King has always been a vocal supporter of music far beyond his alt-country pigeonhole, and while I can’t say that, for instance, his love of metal is reflected in My Version of Desire, plenty of other threads are–power pop and college rock, certainly, as well as classic rock and 60s pop and soul and Roy Orbison (and so on).

Hold the Door for Strangers had an all-timer power pop song that stood out among the rest of the record in its opening track, “State Line to Eagleville”; My Version of Desire has one too in “Dry Out in June”, sitting pretty in the number two slot. Apparently this one’s been kicking around for the better part of the decade, but Labrador finally fully realize it here–they turn King’s frantic, fumbling reaches towards sobriety into maximum pop rock and roll gold with everybody on handclaps, Hayes on squealing lead guitar, and Jones delivering a knockout massive keyboard hook (it’s, like, the midpoint between Jason Isbell and Perennial that I probably wouldn’t expect anyone other than Labrador to hit). I don’t want to get hung up on one song, as great as it is–we’ve got a lot of other good moments on My Version of Desire’s lightning-quick thirty minutes to acknowledge. The driving, Westerberigan college rock of “Heavy Hearts” brightens up the record’s B-side in the one moment that rivals “Dry Out in June” in pure power pop excess, but the streamlined pop rock of “People Like You And Me” has its own breezy charms, too. Elsewhere on My Version of Desire, Labrador make turns (of varying subtlety) to laid-back AOR (opening track “Someday I’ll Pay”), the electric country rock of their previous album (“Every Day Is Something Different”), and lilting, soulful guitar pop (the title track). There’s a Labrador song for most moods and occasions here–and listening to the brief, incredibly tight record front beginning to end is both of those things in its own right. (Bandcamp link)

SAVAK – SQUAWK!

Release date: May 30th
Record label: Peculiar Works/Ernest Jenning
Genre: Garage rock, post-punk
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Casual Cruelty

Brooklyn’s SAVAK have been putting out records at a steady clip since their debut in 2016, and things have been no different as of late–2024’s Flavors of Paradise is barely a year old now, as is the split EP they released with France’s Contractions around the same time. It’s no surprise, then, that the trio (founding co-bandleaders Sohrab Habibion and Michael Jaworski, plus longtime drummer Matt Schulz) are back already with the seventh SAVAK album, SQUAWK!. Seemingly recorded piecemeal (some songs recorded by Habibion and Jaworski themselves, with Guided by Voices’ Travis Harrison, among others, credited on other tracks), SQUAWK! features a bunch of guest musicians–most notably bassist Matt Hunter and drummer Jeff Gensterblum, but also Maria Marzaioli of the much-missed Slum of Legs on violin for “Your Mother Is a Mirror”. I’m pleased to report, however, that SAVAK still sound exactly like themselves here. A tight ten songs and thirty-five minutes (plus the two Contractions split EP songs as digital bonus tracks), the longtime indie rock veterans continue to hammer out their by-now quite recognizable style of college rock, post-punk, and garage rock–tough but polished, familiar but surprising, catchy as ever.

“The Moon Over Marine Park” is a surging opening track that’s just as strong as “Up with the Sun” from last year, turning SAVAK’s garage-post-punk sound into something quite agreeable without losing its agitated center. If SQUAWK! is on the whole a little bit trickier and thornier than their last couple of records, it’s not apparent from the album’s opening stretch–“Child’s Pose” and “Talk to Some People” both bring vintage, somewhat jangly SAVAK-pop to the forefront, and Will Fitzpatrick of Good Grief and Witching Waves (and a former SAVAK bassist) calls “No Man’s Island” “a a Lou Reed/Velvets vibe” in the record’s bio (he’s onto something with that). The second half of SQUAWK! brings a couple of new SAVAK rippers in “Casual Cruelty” (propulsive garage-y power pop that might actually be the biggest “hit” here) and “Tomorrow and the Day After” (more mid-tempo, stuffed with melodic brilliance). First, though, SAVAK bridge the record’s two sides with a nearly ambient, hushed atmospheric piece called “American Vernacular” (it still sounds like a SAVAK song, but kind of inverted), and the group return to the “strange” for the record’s final two tracks. Marzaioli’s violin adds to the lost-in-time dream-like haze of “Your Mother Is a Mirror”, and “Empty Age” is SAVAK’s own entry into the New York electric noise rock collage tradition. If you’re already part of the SAVAK society, I doubt you’ll need more convincing that they’ve done it yet again–but there’s always room for more. (Bandcamp link)

Foxwarren – 2

Release date: May 30th
Record label: ANTI-/Arts & Crafts
Genre: Indie pop, psychedelic pop, folk rock, dream pop, soft rock
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
Pull Track: Listen2me

My familiarity with the increasingly-beloved Regina, Saskatchewan-based folk rock musician Andy Shauf is, admittedly, fairly limited. I heard his 2020 album The Skyline and absolutely loved the song “Try Again”, but the album as a whole didn’t stick with me all that much and I’d never dug further. Still, “Try Again” combined with co-signatures from plenty of people whose taste I respect made me willing to listen to an advance of the latest album from a band he’s also in, and I’m glad I did, because I quite enjoyed 2 by Foxwarren. Since I don’t know that much about Shauf, I didn’t realize that Foxwarren actually predate most of Shauf’s solo work–he formed the band with Dallas Bryson, Avery Kissick, and Darryl Kissick in the late 2000s, though they didn’t release a formal debut album until 2018’s self-titled one. Since then, Foxwarren has added Colin Nealis to their lineup, Shauf’s solo work has garnered more acclaim, and the five of them slowly but surely worked on what would become 2. Stepping away from the folk rock of Foxwarren, 2 is a work of “collage art” featuring sampled recordings of the quintet’s instruments, vocals, and outside audio clips shaped delicately but vibrantly into pop music.

Foxwarren make a big deal of the “classic hip-hop techniques and musique concrète” ideas that went into making 2, and they’re certainly there, but I don’t want to overstate the avant-garde-ness of the album–it’s still within the realm of Shauf’s folk-pop sound, with the songs congealing into familiar shapes built in a completely novel (for Foxwarren, at least) way. It’s “indie folk” with plenty of “dream pop” and “psychedelia” mixed in, not far from fellow Canadian folk auteur Jon McKiel, Flotation Toy Warning, or the more rustic sides of the Woodsist and Elephant 6 catalogs. The snippets of what sound like old movie dialogues (or, at least, audio that evokes old movie dialogues) are the most obvious departure from a “rock band” setup, although there are plenty more oddities that stick out like objects ready to be moved in Hanna-Barbera cartoons–pianos and strings are beamed in from another time zone, sampled bass notes shape themselves, against all odds, into the hearts of several tracks, and Shauf is his usual distinct, direct self on top of it all. The most exciting moments on 2–“Listen2me”, “Deadhead”, and “Round&round”–are that way because of the instrumental moments Foxwarren are able to find hidden within these ingredients, but, to Shauf’s credit, his skills as a frontperson aren’t lost in these translations either. In some way or another, all of Foxwarren are speaking the same language on 2. (Bandcamp link)

Lung – The Swankeeper

Release date: May 30th
Record label: Feel It
Genre: Art rock, garage rock, post-punk
Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital
Pull Track: The Mattress

Cincinnati, Ohio duo Lung have been an “if you know, you know” kind of band for several years now. The band (who call themselves “art rock” and “cello-core”) are led by classically trained opera singer and cellist Kate Wakefield, and the drumming of Daisy Caplan is the only other accompaniment that she apparently needs. They’ve been putting out records since at least 2016–their bio calls The Swankeeper their fourth studio album, but they’ve put out at least five LPs of some sort as well as a few split records. Their distorted, heavy cello-rock sound doesn’t really fit cleanly anywhere, but that hasn’t stopped Lung from touring heavily and associating with punk, noise rock, and garage rock crowds over the past eight years (and contributing a version of “Don’t Let It Bring You Down” to a Neil Young covers compilation that I singled out as a highlight when I wrote about it). Similarly, I wouldn’t have really expected Feel It Records to pick them up (shared hometown aside), but there’s no reason why The Swankeeper can’t sit alongside the prolific label’s typically more, uh, guitar-based garage punk fare. These thirteen songs are as good an introduction to Lung as any, another thirty-seven dramatic minutes of Wakefield and Caplan doing the thing they do so well.

And what do Lung do so well, exactly? Well, it’s a combination of Caplan’s loud, pounding, noise rock drumming, Wakefield’s intense and wide-ranging vocals (comparisons to the likes of PJ Harvey and Kate Bush are not unearned), and, of course, plenty of cello heroics. “Everlasting Nothingness” is an intense opening track that puts Wakefield’s opera skills (in her voice, yes, but also in how the song unfolds itself) in the forefront, while “The Money” and “The Mattress” showcase how Lung can adapt their sound to the worlds of post-punk and grunge, respectively. The Swankeeper has its fair share of heavy hitters–I mean, all of these songs are to some degree, but “Sunshine’s Over” and “Paved With Gold” in particular are “cello as noise rock”. The banging, almost dance-punk “Clown Car” spotlights a different side of Lung’s talents to equally great ends (both Wakefield and Caplan restrain themselves just a little bit compared to how mighty we know they can work themselves up to be), and the prowling “Lucky You” finds some surprising depths in Lung’s writing, too. It doesn’t exactly take the full length of The Swankeeper to grasp what Lung are onto here, but I’m still glad they’re riding out this sound as long as they can. (Bandcamp link)

Also notable:

Pressing Concerns: Friendship, COR1, Credit, Jonathan Rundman

The first Pressing Concerns of the week is on a Tuesday, and it’s a great one, featuring new albums from Friendship and Jonathan Rundman plus new EPs from COR1 and Credit. Check these out! There wasn’t a Pressing Concerns yesterday, but I did take the holiday to pay tribute to David Thomas of Pere Ubu in light of his recent passing.

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.

Friendship – Caveman Wakes Up

Release date: May 16th
Record label: Merge
Genre: Alt-country, ambient country
Formats: LP, CD, digital
Pull Track: Resident Evil

It seems that my mental health always disintegrates in the spring (it craters over the winter, which is a different thing). I was white-knuckling it over a rough couple-day stretch around the time that the latest Friendship album came out without realizing it, but Caveman Wakes Up set me straight. It was like Dan Wriggins and company sat me down and told me things weren’t right. Of course, it takes one to know one, and Caveman Wakes Up is a real “game recognize game” moment in that regard. I’ve believed in Friendship the alt-country heroes since I first heard “Skip to the Good Part” in 2017, and their last album, 2022’s Love the Stranger, felt like vindication. They’d successfully transformed into a tight four-piece indie rock band, linked up with the legendary Merge Records, gained a respectable following, and its members had all found success with endeavors outside of the band as well (some of which you can read about on this very blog). Caveman Wakes Up is the sound of what comes after that. 

The more anthemic, immediately-gripping songs of their last album are gone here, replaced with ambient, vibes-based music, and the skills of Peter Gill, Jon Samuels, and Michael Cormier-O’Leary are put to a different kind of use. I compared Love the Stranger to Lambchop, without properly appreciating the kind of range that “Lambchop-esque” would end up giving them. Perhaps the die was cast for how this album would be perceived when they released a song called “Free Association” as the lead single. If Wriggins’ lyrics occasionally do sound like “free association”, though, it might be on you for not listening to closely. The one-of-a-kind frontperson, who recently released his first book of poetry, is certainly more “poetic” on Caveman Wakes Up than he’s been in the past, but Wriggins is also quite direct in his own way. I didn’t need the press pack to infer that a breakup was involved in the composition of these songs, for instance.

“I got married on a cloudy day / And I figured the clouds would magically roll away,” Wriggins sings in the centerpiece of the album, “Hollow Skulls”, and a few lines before that “Radiator shuts off, it’s a whole new level / Of silence”. These are the twin pillars of “Hollow Skulls” and subsequently Caveman Wakes Up to me–the after and the before, the former realized before the latter and prompting the association (not a particularly “free” one, though). “Hollow Skulls” also defines Caveman Wakes Up sonically–delicate but insanely charged, on the brink of collapsing in some way much like Wriggins is himself. I’m not sure if Friendship ever quite “get it together” on Caveman Wakes Up, but there’s some livelier moments that do a little more damage on first glance–“Tree of Heaven” is one of those, relying on a pained, worried guitar riff and clipped lyrics from Wriggins, daring to look backwards for seconds at a time before coming up for air (“You know you changed me, babe” sums it all up). “Resident Evil” also took my breath away at first–it’s a raw one, and “Who’s that shithead in my living room / Playing Resident Evil?” is brilliant in three or four different ways. The last one I want to mention is “Love Vape”, the only real pop song on Caveman Wakes Up. “Too late to turn back now / If you don’t know how to end it, you can just fade out,” Wriggins quips in that one in a nod to the “Motown and ’70s ballads” that inspired some of the playing on this record. Friendship, of course, decline to take the easy out that Wriggins offers up as “Love Vape” draws to a surprisingly perfunctory close. (Bandcamp link)

COR1 – Take What You Need

Release date: March 7th
Record label: Antithesis of Everything
Genre: Pop punk, emo-punk
Formats: Digital
Pull Track: Country Browns

There seems to be some interesting things going on on the Pacific Island of Guam. I’d written about music from a few expats of the tiny U.S. overseas territory before (Star 99, Rosa Bordallo), but earlier this year I learned that Guam actually has an active power pop/pop punk/indie rock scene being chronicled by Pure Chance Records thanks to their most recent single (“Out Comes Crazy” by a band called In Bedrooms). And, just like that, I’ve heard even more music out of Guam–COR1 aren’t a Pure Chance band, and I’m not sure if they’re associated with them or In Bedrooms in any way (it’s a small place; I’d assume that they know each other), but their debut EP Take What You Need fits in with the other music I’ve heard coming out of the island so far. I don’t know much of anything about the band’s members (one of them is named Sam), but the credits on their Bandcamp page paint an interesting and mysterious picture of their hometown music scene–these five songs were recorded by Jeremy Muñoz and RJ Aguon II in places called “100dB Studios” and “Marca Museca” (at least one of those places is located in the village of Harmon).

Regardless of where Take What You Need originated, the emotional vocals and guitar riffs contained herein are geographical barrier-breakers. While In Bedrooms have a bit of a slacker power pop streak to them, COR1 reveal themselves to be more emotional, sloppy, and heavier emo and pop punk devotees on their first record. Most of the EP’s eighteen minutes is spent with the band fully pressing the gas pedal, from the math-y leads and power chords of exciting opening track “New Fursona (alt)”, the melodic punk firebomb of “Lost”, and the post-hardcore-tinged punk anthem-waving of “Blame” (there are at least two lead vocalists in COR1, and they’ve both giving it their all whenever they can). Post-hardcore screams, emo melancholy, and fiery guitars all collide in the EP’s climax (and the one that gives it its title) “Incognito”, and then the whole thing ends with the biggest outlier on the record, the four-minute comedown of “Country Browns”. Upon further reflection, “Country Browns” is my favorite song on Take What You Need–it incorporates a bit of acoustic power balladry, although the shout-along chorus is as strong as anything else on the record, and the “Take Me Home, Country Roads” nod is unexpected but works quite well (as a native West Virginian, I give Guam full permission to co-opt that song all they want). Now I’m eager to hear what other good punk rock is coming out of the northern Pacific. (Bandcamp link)

Credit – The Last Few Years

Release date: May 23rd
Record label: Self-released
Genre: Art rock, art punk, post-punk, noise rock, post-rock
Formats: Cassette, digital
Pull Track: Britt

An interesting email alone isn’t going to get your band on Rosy Overdrive, but I do always appreciate it. Recently, a Baltimore-based “experimental rock/punk collective” called Credit showed up on my radar claiming The Four Tops, Nico, and Madlib as influences and Nation of Ulysses, The Pillows, and “Minutemen (With Keys)” as “for fans of”. This type of thing seems par for the course for Credit, upon further research–they’re led by somebody who only refers to themself as “The Keyboard Player”, who co-founded the band with someone only referred to as “The Original Writing Partner” in the 2010s. I don’t think this initial incarnation of Credit released anything; The Keyboard Player resurrected this dormant material with guitarists Luke Mayhew and Sandy Wilbur, bassist Alex Dicken, and drummer Gabe Fricks-Starrat a few years ago. Some combination of those musicians recorded Notes on Naturalism in Performance and Tone: 4 More Songs Live, an EP that came out in 2023, and all five of them appear on the most recent Credit recording, another four-song EP called The Last Few Years. I’m pleased to say that The Last Few Years lives up to Credit’s own bizarre and somewhat nonsensical hype, featuring four compelling live recordings that range from “brief, noisy punk rock band” to “experimental, jammy post-rock-and-roll music”.

No two songs on The Last Few Years sound alike, but each of these four tracks presents a lively and exciting version of the band Credit. By some metrics, “Britt” is the most “easy listening” song on The Last Few Years, but by others it’s the strangest thing on the EP–the opening track (which, per the EP’s Bandcamp page, was initially written in 2009) is a hazy recollection of a classic rock band heard from a couple of rooms over, beginning with a clean electric guitar drone for around two minutes before the amorphous country rock blob initially settles into place. “Exercise #2” is perhaps more like what one would expect from Credit based on their self-comparison to the Minutemen (and Beefheart, and Cap’n Jazz)–a deranged, noisy jazz-punk torrent. The six-minute “Anywhere” is the longest track on The Last Few Years, and there’s a disciplined post-punk/no wave track hidden in here somewhere–it’s strong enough to keep marching forward while the Credit players chip away and whir around the song in a frantic buzz. The Last Few Years closes with a hardcore song, of course–or, at least, Credit’s version of hardcore punk. It’s ninety seconds of ragged punk vocals, furious instrumental speed, and that classic Credit noisiness. Maybe there is something tying these disparate recordings together after all. (Bandcamp link)

Jonathan Rundman – Waves

Release date: April 11th
Record label: Self-released
Genre: Roots rock, alt-country, college rock, folk rock
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
Pull Track: Living on the Lakeside

If you think that Jonathan Rundman’s first new album of original material in ten years, Waves, sounds like The Silos–well, there’s a good reason for that. For the past decade, Rundman has been a touring member of the aforementioned legendary alt-country band, and many of the other musicians who play on Waves have performed the same role backing Walter Salas-Humara as he keeps his long-running band alive. It should be noted, though, that Rundman has had a long and productive music career outside of The Silos–one that, spanning over three decades, is nearly as long as The Silos’ journey. Rundman was born in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, and while he’s been based in Minneapolis for twenty years, the title of Waves nods to the continued importance of the Great Lakes (and specifically Lake Superior, the sounds of which can be heard on this album) in his life. All of this adds up to a solid and inviting roots rock album where Rundman and his collaborators–including Ron Gomez, Eric Kassel, and Gerald Dowd, among others–paint plain-spoken character sketches and Midwestern slices of life with the help of twelve-string guitars, accordions, mandolins, and a host of other tools eagerly.

As character-driven as Rundman’s writing is, the first subject we meet on Waves appears to be the man himself–“Living on the Lakeside” feels as autobiographical as anything on the album, a mandolin-and-accordion tribute to Rundman’s obscure peninsula of origin that’s sure to please fans of Los Lobos and Peter Buck. Organs and locked-in bass grooves move us into the character-study section of the album–“Veronika Ann” and “Elizabeth, Don’t Waste Your Breath” are written from the outside looking in at the titular characters, sympathetic but hardly tearjerkers in their power pop-indebted beds. The latter of those two tracks was co-written by Salas-Humara, and The Silos’ bandleader also has fingerprints on “Diner by the Train”, the obvious centerpiece of Waves. If you’re looking for waterworks, “Diner by the Train” has ‘em, a piece of Americana that certainly gained some sharpness with the help of an all-timer in the field. It’s strong, but it doesn’t overshadow the rest of Waves, and I find myself actually enjoying the more laid-back touch that Rundman brings to second-half highlights like “Evidence” (just as affecting as “Diner by the Train” in its own way) and “Let’s Put on an Opera” more upon repeated listens. I’ve heard music from the shores of Lake Superior before, but I’m not sure that I’ve heard anything so tied to its banks as Waves. (Bandcamp link)

Also notable:

David Thomas, R.I.P.

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.

Pressing Concerns: Headphones, Florry, Forty Winks, Wipes

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.

Headphones – Headphones (Deluxe 20th Anniversary Edition)

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)

Also notable:

Pressing Concerns: Ryan Allen, Mourning [A] BLKstar, Son of Buzzi, Pretty Rude

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)

Also notable:

Pressing Concerns: True Names, Rodeo Boys, Beasts, Kilynn Lunsford

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)

Also notable:

Pressing Concerns: First Rodeo, Artificial Go, The High Water Marks, The Gotobeds

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 pair of 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)

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Pressing Concerns: Zero Bars, The Rabies, Strange Devotion, stef.in

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)

Also notable: