Rosy Overdrive

Rosy Overdrive’s Top 100 Albums of 2024 (25-1)

Here we are! Rosy Overdrive’s 25 favorite albums of 2024, revealed today along with albums 50 through 26, and coming a day after albums 51 through 100. I believe I wrote about over four hundred albums on the blog this year, which means that whittling it down to these twenty-five was no easy task. This is the best of the best! Once again, thank you for reading, vote in the Rosy Overdrive Reader’s Poll, and stay tuned for upcoming EP and compilation lists as well as a few more Pressing Concerns.

See also:
Part One (100-76)
Part Two (75-51)
Part Three (50-26)
Playlist links (Spotify) (Tidal)

25. Perennial – Art History

Release date: June 7^thRecord label: Ernest Jenning Record Co./Safe Suburban Home/Totally Real
Genre: Art punk, garage rock, post-hardcore, dance punk
Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital

Over the past few years, New England trio Perennial have been honing a unique sound that mixes Dischord Records post-hardcore, turn-of-the-century dance punk, and retro garage rock together with just a hint of frayed experimentation around the edges. Their third album, Art History, finds Perennial doing exactly what they do best–making excellent rock music and pushing just a bit forward. This time around, the 60s pop rock influence feels less “implied” than ever and more and more central to their sound, and the experimentation continues to erode into the pop music. I was already fully on board the Perennial train before this album, and I’m just as excited as ever to witness the band continue to build in real-time something entirely distinct, huge, and befitting of the title Art History. (Read more)

24. Guidon Bear – Internal Systems

Release date: July 31^stRecord label: Antiquated Future/YoYo
Genre: Indie pop, synthpop, folk
Formats: CD, cassette, digital

At the end of last decade, two indie rock veterans, Mary Water and Pat Maley, reunited as Guidon Bear, making guitar-based indie folk and guitar-based pop with increasingly prominent synth/electronic elements–which leads us to Internal Systems. The buzzing and chiming synths added by Maley to these songs fit perfectly alongside the duo’s guitar-based indie rock sound–it doesn’t reduce Guidon Bear’s “old” style so much as add to it, and it’s no less devoted to enhancing Water’s incredible songwriting. Internal Systems is a winding, rich listen–it’s a dozen tracks and nearly fifty minutes long, and Water’s lyrics are just as engrossing and vivid as the music they accompany, if not more so. (Read more)

23. Zero Point Energy – Tilted Planet

Release date: May 17^thRecord label: Danger Collective
Genre: Post-punk, art punk, college rock
Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital

Genesis Edenfield and Ben Jackson played together in mid-2010s Atlanta, Georgia art punk group Warehouse–now based in Brooklyn, the duo have reunited as Zero Point Energy. Their debut album, Tilted Planet, is a collaborative reintroduction to Edenfield and Jackson–both of them play guitar, both sing, and both wrote material for the twelve-song, forty-two minute record. Tilted Planet reinvents Edenfield and Jackson’s sound into something more polished and restrained, but still quite unique. American post-punk and garage rock still abound, but Zero Point Energy also adopt a mellow pop rock attitude that puts them towards the jammier end of classic college rock. Edenfield and Jackson meld together excellently here, creating a beautiful, obstinate, simple, complex melting pot of a debut album. (Read more)

22. Jr. Juggernaut – Another Big Explosion

Release date: August 9^thRecord label: Mindpower/Nickel Eye
Genre: Alt-rock, power pop, grunge pop, fuzz rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital

On Another Big Explosion, their fourth LP and first in eight years, Los Angeles alt-rock/power-punk trio Jr. Juggernaut deliver an eighteen-wheeler of a love letter to Sugar’s Copper Blue. Jr. Juggernaut embrace a loud, dramatic sound pulled from the moment “underground rock” bubbled to the surface–there’s nothing on Another Big Explosion that could be described as “slacker” or halfhearted. There’s a Bob Mouldian “pop music as endurance test” element to Another Big Explosion–the ten songs are almost all in the four-to-five minute range, and they’re roaring at full blast pretty much the entire time. It’s a key ingredient in making the album feel like a towering mountain, but Jr. Juggernaut summit it nonetheless. (Read more)

21. Aluminum – Fully Beat

Release date: May 24^thRecord label: Felte
Genre: Shoegaze, noise pop, Madchester, fuzz rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital

Fully Beat is a huge leap forward for San Francisco shoegaze-pop group Aluminum, both sharpening and expanding their sound to create some of the most exciting, spirited, and downright fun rock music I’ve heard this year. The studied, carefully-constructed band on their debut EP, Windowpane, has been replaced with true believers in loud, bursting-at-the-seams indie rock throughout their debut LP. Fully Beat is the result of a band taking a big swing on their first full statement–it comes at you like a stampede in its loudest, most chaotic moments, but devotes plenty of time to filling in the gaps that they blast into their foundation, as well. (Read more)

20. Teenage Tom Petties – Teenage Tom Petties

Release date: August 2^ndRecord label: Safe Suburban Home/Repeating Cloud
Genre: Lo-fi power pop
Formats: Cassette, digital

Three years, three Teenage Tom Petties albums–and oddly enough, two self-titled ones. The lo-fi power pop group ballooned to a three-guitar, five-piece rock and roll band for last year’s Hotbox Daydreams, but the latest record under the name finds Bath, England’s Tom Brown back in his bedroom, recording (mostly) alone yet again, just like the 2022 Teenage Tom Petties album. Hotbox Daydreams was a real leveling-up moment for Brown–maybe the band brought it out of him at first, but Teenage Tom Petties II is a worthy sequel not just to its homonymous predecessor but to the group’s sophomore record too, bedroom or no. (Read more)

19. Best Bets – The Hollow Husk of Feeling

Release date: September 27^thRecord label: Meritorio/Melted Ice Cream
Genre: Power pop, garage rock, pop punk
Formats: Vinyl, digital

On the New Zealand band’s sophomore album, Best Bets put together a grounded, unsubtle collection of power pop, garage rock, and even glam rock that eschews the hazier and subtler sides of their home country’s guitar pop scene. The Hollow Husk of Feeling is the first Best Bets album where bassist Joe Sampson steps up for songwriting duty alongside Olly Crawford Ellis and James Harding, and this record feels full to the brim of smart pop craft and energy. The album as a whole is a cathartic listen–there’s an edge to Best Bets’ jangly, fuzzed-out tunes, and its vocalists are more likely to sound pensive or even aggravated than clearly blissful. The “feeling” may be a hollowed-out husk at this point, but Best Bets are going to squeeze every last spark out of it before their latest album is all said and done. (Read more)

18. American Motors – Content

Release date: October 4^thRecord label: Expert Work/The Ghost Is Clear
Genre: Noise rock, post-hardcore, post-rock, post-punk
Formats: Vinyl, digital

American Motors are based out of Lancaster, Pennsylvania and have roots in West Virginia, but they could be from anywhere in the United States that’s far away enough from bustling urban centers but close enough that the ruins of something once more lively hover around unavoidably. The trio recorded their debut album, Content, with J. Robbins, who helped them zero in on a Rust Belt-inspired post-punk/noise rock/post-rock sound, keenly sharpened and honed much more finely than a lot of bands in their shoes would dare to even attempt. American Motors understand that the monster you can’t see is even scarier, and Content utilizes a huge amount of empty space to hover around the edges of these songs, while glimpses of something we probably shouldn’t see drift in and out of focus. (Read more)

17. Late Bloomer – Another One Again

Release date: March 1^stRecord label: Self Aware/Dead Broke/Tor Johnson
Genre: Punk rock, 90s indie rock, fuzz rock, college rock
Formats: Vinyl, cassette, digital

As far back as 2013, Charlotte’s Late Bloomer were melding 90s indie rock, punk, and pop hooks together in a way that’s only gained popularity in the years since. Not only were the trio trailblazers in this specific revival, they’ve also been one of the best to do it–so it’s quite pleasing to hear Late Bloomer plug in their electric guitars and continue to tap into the sort of ragged-but-catchy Dinosaur Jr.-indebted indie rock they’ve done so well in the past on Another One Again, their first album in six years. At the same time, though, Another One Again thematically and thoughtfully reflects the passing of time in a way that makes it distinct from the rest of the band’s discography, entering their second decade as a band with a clear path forward. (Read more)

16. Upstairs – Be Seeing You

Release date: September 27^thRecord label: Obscure Pharaoh
Genre: Art rock, post-punk, experimental rock, indie pop
Formats: Digital

Upstairs features Rosy Overdrive regular Jon Massey, and their second album, Be Seeing You, does indeed contain shades of his projects Coventry and Silo’s Choice. The Cincinnati/Chicago quintet are a bit more varied, though–Be Seeing You alternatively embraces electronics, strings, and “rock” instrumentation across its dozen tracks, veering into several ditches but also using “pop music” as a jumpscare tactic (in the form of swooning, swelling indie folk rock or relatively humble piano-pop). Be Seeing You sounds like a mess sometimes, but its most beautiful moments are far from mutually exclusive with this side of Upstairs. Like most incredible art rock LPs, calling it an “incredible art rock LP” hardly does it justice. (Read more)

15. Downhaul – How to Begin

Release date: September 20^thRecord label: Self Aware/Landland Colportage
Genre: Alt-country, emo-indie rock, power pop, roots rock, folk rock
Formats: Vinyl, cassette, digital

On How to Begin, Richmond quartet Downhaul ditch the massive-sounding, post-rock-indebted emo-alt-rock of their last album (2021’s PROOF) for something laconic, polished-up, and alt-country/power pop-infused. How to Begin is an album made by a band who consciously decided to go into the studio with the attitude of honing songs into sharp points rather than “adding onto” them–it’s a pop album, even if it’s not a “traditional” one. Songs end almost at the exact moment when they feel they’ve made their point, Gordon Phillips’ lyrics are just as thorny and gripping as ever, and Downhaul as a whole still feel like a band that exists in their own little world. That is to say, it’s still a Downhaul album, even as the band have shifted around their angles of attack in executing it. (Read more)

14. True Green – My Lost Decade

Release date: February 1^stRecord label: Spacecase
Genre: Lo-fi indie rock, lo-fi pop, psych pop, singer-songwriter
Formats: Cassette, digital

Minneapolis’ Dan Hornsby is a novelist–perhaps unsurprisingly, his knack for storytelling and flawed, deeply-felt character studies is pervasive in My Lost Decade, the debut from his project True Green. What does surprise me is that the singer-songwriter chooses lo-fi, reverb-y psychedelic guitar pop to deliver it all. There are acoustic guitars, but Hornsby isn’t a folk troubadour, rather making music that’s generally thought of as the domain of Beatlesesque bashers like The Cleaners from Venus. My Lost Decade is a pleasingly varied-sounding record, but Hornsby and multi-instrumentalist Tailer Ransom develop a distinct musical style, a busy, kitchen-sink pop attitude that reflects True Green’s confidence that Hornsby’s striking songwriting will shine even if they whip up an instrumental storm around it. And it does. (Read more)

13. 2nd Grade – Scheduled Explosions

Release date: October 25^thRecord label: Double Double Whammy
Genre: Power pop, lo-fi pop
Formats: Cassette, digital

Like any power pop band with a penchant for shorter songs, 2nd Grade have been blessed or cursed with Guided by Voices comparisons pretty much since their inception as a Peter Gill solo project–even if Gill’s early writing is fairly distinct from the balance between wonderment and darkness, between lo-fi bashfulness and rock and roll might marking Robert Pollard’s writing. On Scheduled Explosions, the fourth and best album from the Philadelphia power pop group, Gill and company unambiguously shoot for and subsequently nail this aforementioned balance for the first time in 2nd Grade’s brief but fruitful career. A patchwork record, Scheduled Explosions doesn’t abandon the “power” side of power pop even as it’s rarely the sound of five musicians playing together in a room. (Read more)

12. Sun Kin – Sunset World

Release date: April 19^thRecord label: Self-released
Genre: Art pop, indie pop, synthpop, singer-songwriter
Formats: Digital

Sun Kin is the project of Bombay-originating, Los Angeles-based Kabir Kumar, who’s been making music under the name for a dozen years in addition to playing in the band GUPPY and collaborating with Rosy Overdrive favorite Pacing. Sunset World, Sun Kin’s latest, is an ambitious pop album in which Kumar corrals a ton of their musical collaborators and acquaintances in service of an eleven-song, thirty-minute record with boundless energy. Sunset World is a record about destruction (“apocalyptic LA pop”, they call it), but it’s bright and sunny and never loses sight of the positives involved in ruins and decay–it’s just clearing more space for what really matters. (Read more)

11. Liquid Mike – Paul Bunyan’s Slingshot

Release date: February 2^ndRecord label: Self-released
Genre: Power pop, pop punk, fuzz rock, alt-rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital

The breakout act of 2023 was a punk band from the upper peninsula of Michigan called Liquid Mike, whose eleven-song, 18-minute self-titled record got them a fair amount of buzz. Liquid Mike took eleven months to follow up S/T with Paul Bunyan’s Slingshot, and the group’s pop punk energy, power pop hooks, and 90s indie rock sense of driven listlessness are not only intact, but expanded here. Paul Bunyan’s Slingshot is the sound of a band completely rising to the occasion–they’ve turned around and made a record that feels like a huge step forward from the (quite good, mind you) music that got them the modicum of attention in the first place. (Read more)

10. Toby the Tiger – Demapper

Release date: October 10^thRecord label: Peligroso es Mi Nombre Medio
Genre: Emo-y indie rock, singer-songwriter, folk rock, bedroom pop
Formats: Digital

Demapper is the first album from Brock Ross and his Toby the Tiger project. Whatever led to this Boise father of two to arrive at recording and releasing original music out into the world, I’m grateful for it, as Demapper is a transcendent indie rock record that walks the line between emo and delicate indie pop recalling Pedro the Lion, Death Cab for Cutie, and Kevin Devine. Ross is adept at unearthing pop melodies, but there’s an electric side to Demapper, too, with Ross using as wide a spectrum as he can to capture what he’s composed for the record. Ross’ writing weaves tangled, religious-inspired webs across its nine songs–Toby the Tiger really do need to use everything from orchestral folk to post-hardcore-tinged emo to do it justice. (Read more)

9. Hell Beach – BEACHWORLD

Release date: August 9^thRecord label: Uncle Style/Bad Time
Genre: Pop punk, power pop, punk
Formats: Vinyl, digital

Hell Beach seem to be Manchester, New Hampshire’s premiere snotty, hooky, golden-age pop punk group with an odd “beach” titling motif between the band and album name. Well, whatever’s behind the magic of their debut record, BEACHWORLD, is fine by me, as this is some of the straight-up catchiest and most energetic power-pop-punk music I’ve heard in quite some time. I can’t listen to this without getting worked up in some way! BEACHWORLD is an album where I could throw a dart and hit a hook most bands won’t match in their entire career–even though Hell Beach keep things a lean twenty-nine minutes and eleven tracks long, it still feels positively greedy of them.

8. Sonny Falls – Sonny Falls

Release date: March 1^stRecord label: Earth Libraries
Genre: Fuzz rock, garage rock, alt-country
Formats: Vinyl, digital

Since 2018, Chicago’s Ryan Ensley aka Hoagie Wesley aka Sonny Falls has been putting out fiery, unique records that are loose-feeling but incredibly deep underneath their garage rock/fuzz-country exteriors. The fourth Sonny Falls album is a self-titled one that feels like an attempt to pack all the ambition strewn across the project in ten tracks and thirty-five minutes. The songs on Sonny Falls don’t sound like anything but Sonny Falls songs, but every track on the album feels stretched and teased out in a new way, Ensley spending a bit more time composing and arranging his sprawling writing instead of fully leaning into his street-raving side. At this point, Ensley has a very strong baseline as a songwriter, but it’s quite exciting to watch him figure out how to add to it. (Read more)

7. Ther – Godzilla

Release date: April 5^thRecord label: Julia’s War
Genre: Art rock, folk rock, post-post rock, alt-rock, slowcore
Formats: Cassette, digital

On every record thus far from Philadelphia’s Ther, the band (led by So Big Auditory’s Heather Jones) has reinvented their sound in some form, so it’s no surprise that Godzilla sounds like none of their previous records once again. Godzilla asserts itself in Ther’s discography by embracing electric guitars and loud, dramatic indie rock to a previously unseen degree. Jones has worked with experimental shoegazers They Are Gutting a Body of Water frequently, and while that doesn’t really describe what Godzilla sounds like, Jones has perhaps taken inspiration from that side of indie rock to create what can at times feel almost like a photo negative the skeletal folk of Ther’s last album, in which her vocals alternatingly fight against or become entirely swallowed up by swirling, all-encompassing rock instrumentals. (Read more)

6. Ahem – Avoider

Release date: May 17^thRecord label: Forged Artifacts
Genre: Power pop, pop punk, jangle pop
Formats: Vinyl, digital

You can call it power pop, pop punk, alt-rock, or college rock–whatever it is, the second album from Minneapolis power trio Ahem has more than enough in its ten songs to please fans of any of those genres. You’ll hear the band’s Twin Cities indie rock forbearers in Avoider, a massive collection of loud guitar-based pop music, and they expertly meld their Westerbergs, Harts, and Moulds with their off-the-cuff “indie punk” style and just a hint of high Midwestern folksiness/rootsiness, too. Whether it’s in service of roaring catharsis or lighter, breezier sunset-strummers, Ahem know what they’re doing and where they’re going–and it’s a treat to hear. (Read more)

5. The Triceratops – Charge!

Release date: November 1^stRecord label: Learning Curve
Genre: Punk rock, noise rock, power pop, alt-rock, fuzz rock, grunge
Formats: Vinyl, digital

The Triceratops are a new Brooklyn-based duo formed by two indie rockers who go way back together; their first record is called Charge!, and it feels like a special one to me. It’s an urgent-sounding album–it does feel like the work of a couple of people who haven’t gotten to make a full-length statement of an LP in a while and maybe don’t know when or if they’re going to get to again, so they’ve put as much as they can into it. The Triceratops deliberately and intentionally walk the line between “pop” and “heavy” rock music on Charge!’s fifteen songs. It reminds me of, more than any other band, the Archers of Loaf–huge and catchy without being dogmatically “punk” or “noise rock”. It’s just The Triceratops. (Read more)

4. Miscellaneous Owl – You Are the Light That Casts a Shadow

Release date: March 1^stRecord label: Self-released
Genre: Indie folk, indie pop, bedroom pop, singer-songwriter
Formats: Digital

Huan-Hua Chye’s latest as Miscellaneous Owl is You Are the Light That Casts a Shadow, a dozen-song record she wrote, recorded, and played entirely on her own over the course of February (which is, apparently, “Album Writing Month”). Given its method of incubation, it’s not surprising that You Are the Light That Casts a Shadow could loosely be described as a “bedroom pop/folk” record, although that doesn’t do justice to the music contained herein, which covers jangly, almost twee indie pop, offbeat guitar-pop singer-songwriters of decades past, and beautiful straight-up indie folk. Chye’s writing is clearly the work of a major talent, and just about everything on You Are the Light That Casts a Shadow merits much thought and engagement. (Read more)

3. Bad Moves – Wearing Out the Refrain

Release date: September 13^thRecord label: Don Giovanni
Genre: Power pop, pop punk
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital

At their best, D.C. power-pop-punk quartet Bad Moves are a walking, talking, harmonizing example of how pop music can be jam-packed with meaning and intent without losing any other part of itself in the process–and Wearing Out the Refrain is Bad Moves at their best. The band have always smashed heady, whip-smart political and cultural observations and firecracker, all-in, hook-laden power pop together like it’s no one’s business, but this one ups the ante even further. Wearing Out the Refrain lives up to its name; it’s the sound of some of the best hook merchants in broadly-speaking punk music leaning fully in and capturing the moment the rollercoaster starts gaining downhill momentum. (Read more)

2. Mister Goblin – Frog Poems

Release date: April 26^thRecord label: Spartan
Genre: Singer-songwriter, alt-rock, folk rock, post-punk
Formats: Vinyl, digital

Frog Poems is notable in that it’s the first time Sam Goblin has released new music on a label other than Exploding in Sound Records (dating back to the first single from his old band, Two Inch Astronaut, in 2012)–and it feels like a new era by collecting and expanding on everything Mister Goblin has done up until this point. Frog Poems is a statement of active intent, a declaration that regardless of who’s around Sam Goblin (who’s moved states multiple times in the past few years) and what label he’s on, Mister Goblin will find a way to exist, with the “post-hardcore power trio” and “introspective folk rock” versions of the project both showing up here. (Read more)

1. Rosie Tucker – UTOPIA NOW!

Release date: March 22^ndRecord label: Sentimental
Genre: Art rock, power pop, pop punk, alt-rock
Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital

The snippets of Rosie Tucker’s discography I’d heard before now definitely did not prepare me for the adventurous, overstuffed, and punchy rock record that is UTOPIA NOW!, an album seemingly engineered to appeal specifically to me. As a songwriter, Tucker is lethally sharp, pulling out massive power pop/pop punk hooks out of nowhere, oftentimes completely at odds with where the track had been leading up to beforehand, but never in a way that feels overly shoehorned. UTOPIA NOW!’s sound is just as commendable–like the majority of Tucker’s output, it was produced by themself and their longtime collaborator Wolfy, and they gleefully veer between chilly bedroom pop/folk/rock, slick alt-rock, and limber, jerky art rock/new wave across the record’s thirteen tracks. Nothing else makes me feel the way I do when listening to UTOPIA NOW!. I did my due diligence (not that Rosie Tucker is a household name, but they’re the most high-profile artist to nab the top slot so far, so I really thought about it), but in hindsight this was always going to be at the top of this list. (Read more)

Honorable mentions:

Click here for:
Part One (100-76)
Part Two (75-51)
Part Three (50-26)

Rosy Overdrive’s Top 100 Albums of 2024 (50-26)

Hello! Welcome back (or just welcome) to Rosy Overdrive’s Top 100 Albums of 2024! Today reveals the top 50 albums on the list. Yesterday unveiled numbers 100 through 51, so be sure to check those out as well if you haven’t yet.

See also:
Part One (100-76)
Part Two (75-51)
Part Four (25-1)
Playlist with all albums (Spotify link) (Tidal link)

50. Shredded Sun – Wilding

Release date: September 6^thRecord label: Self-released
Genre: Garage rock, power pop, psych pop
Formats: Digital

In 2023, Chicago power trio Shredded Sun dropped a pair of releases depicting a group of underground rock and roll veterans (who’ve been playing together since the mid-2000s) honing in on a winning combination of fuzz rock, garage-punk, psych pop, and power pop and hitting a creative stride. Even so, I wasn’t expecting another Shredded Sun album in 2024, but Wilding blessed this year with thirteen more songs and nearly fifty minutes of brand new Shredded Sun material. If you enjoyed Each Dot and Each Line and Translucent Eyes, the trio pick up right where they left off, but (perhaps ironically given the quick turnaround) some of the tossed-off psych-garage energy of their last two records gives way to something just a little more deliberate and measured. (Read more)

49. Daniel Romano’s Outfit – Too Hot to Sleep

Release date: March 1^stRecord label: You’ve Changed
Genre: Power pop, punk rock, garage rock
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital

Although the proper records from Daniel Romano’s Outfit generally hew more towards “studio rats” than “garage punks”, those who’ve followed the prolific Canadian troubadour know about his band’s energy and ferocity in their live shows. I’ve been waiting for something like Too Hot to Sleep from The Outfit for a while now–a genuine live-in-studio sounding garage rock scorcher of a record. Romano and his crew really honed in on something potent with this ten-song, twenty-seven minute collection, which is looser-sounding than typical Outfit fare but still led by a smooth operator of a pop songwriter. Even if you think you know Daniel Romano’s deal by now, I’d recommend Too Hot to Sleep to any power pop and/or garage rock fan–it’s one of his strongest albums yet. (Read more)

48. Quivers – Oyster Cuts

Release date: August 9^thRecord label: Merge
Genre: Indie pop, power pop, college rock, jangle pop
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital

On their third album of original material and first for Merge Records, Melbourne quartet Quivers are dogged pursuers of perfect guitar pop–their mix of college rock, C86, power pop, and new wave is as shined up and sparkly in its presentation as Sam Nicholson and Bella Quinlan’s vocals are intimate and distinct. For all its ambition, Oyster Cuts stubbornly declines to embrace anonymity–it doesn’t hide the fact that it was made by Australian indie rock lifers who love The Chills and Pavement, nor does it stop at that surface-level descriptor. Oyster Cuts is something of a proof-of-concept for “indie pop” as something as potent as “real” pop–Quivers are just as precise and hard-hitting as the giants in these songs. (Read more)

47. Oceanator – Everything Is Love and Death

Release date: August 30^thRecord label: Polyvinyl
Genre: Alt-rock, punk rock, fuzz rock, emo, power pop
Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital

In a move that makes too much sense, Oceanator’s Elise Okusami linked up with renowned Philadelphia producer Will Yip for her band’s third album, Everything Is Love and Death. Yip (who also plays drums and keys on the record) helps Okusami accentuate the anthemic, immediate aspects of Oceanator’s sound–hard to categorize, but containing a distinct mix of emo, power pop, and even grunge-y 90s alt-rock. Despite the apparently months-long gestation time, Everything Is Love and Death is very streamlined, paring down much of the moodiness of Oceanator’s last record and the lengthy rock journeys of their debut. It’s Oceanator at their most outwardly friendly (without losing Okusami’s distinct voice); there’s never been a better time to get on board. (Read more)

46. Dummy – Free Energy

Release date: September 6^thRecord label: Trouble in Mind
Genre: Psychedelic pop, art rock, noise pop, trip hop
Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital

Los Angeles noise pop group Dummy approached their sophomore album, Free Energy, with the clear intention of making something different than their 2021 sensory overload debut Mandatory Enjoyment, and the band indeed have grown into something new. The shift on Free Energy is palpable but subtle and harder to pin down to one distinct subgenre, as one would expect from an always-omnivorous band like Dummy. The resultant album is something that’s sleek, slick, and smooth–rather than come at you at full force, Dummy dart around us and leap over top of us, marrying fuzzy, distorted shoegaze-pop with alternative-dance elements in a way that’s frequently surprising but always coherent. (Read more)

45. Jim Nothing – Grey Eyes, Grey Lynn

Release date: October 18^thRecord label: Meritorio/Melted Ice Cream
Genre: Jangle pop, Dunedin sound, fuzz rock, lo-fi indie rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital

Grey Eyes, Grey Lynn continues to mine the rich veins of classic Flying Nun-inspired jangle pop, psychedelic pop, and noise pop that New Zealand’s Jim Nothing so effectively explored on 2022’s In the Marigolds, but this one feels like a more wide-ranging take on this kind of music. Christchurch-originating, Auckland-based James Sullivan recorded half of Grey Eyes, Grey Lynn in a studio and the other half in a garage, which makes sense–sometimes, the Jim Nothing of Grey Eyes, Grey Lynn feels like a sturdier, louder rock band than ever before, other times feeling like a home-recorded Sullivan solo project. Sullivan’s songwriting is still sublime, though, and more than capable of weathering a more involved journey. (Read more)

44. Ethan Beck & The Charlie Browns – Duck Hollow

Release date: May 31^stRecord label: Douglas Street
Genre: Power pop, college rock, jangle pop
Formats: Cassette, digital

Duck Hollow is the proper full length debut from Pittsburgh power poppers Ethan Beck & The Charlie Browns, and it pulls together giant hooks with electric alt-rock (at its most euphoric) and explores the terrain of delicate guitar pop music (at its most pensive). Duck Hollow is loosely a Pittsburgh-based concept album, with everything from the titular neighborhood to the one where Beck grew up (Squirrel Hill) to the Wabash Tunnel populating these songs. Recalling many great power pop records before it, Duck Hollow succeeds in placing us emotionally and geographically right next to its narrator as he traverses the Three Rivers. (Read more)

43. Mount Eerie – Night Palace

Release date: November 1^stRecord label: P.W. Elverum & Sun
Genre: Folk, experimental folk, lo-fi indie rock, post-rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital

I’m not sure what there is to say about Night Palace, the latest triumph from Phil Elverum’s Mount Eerie. Every music website that still exists has already extolled its virtues, and they’re right to do so; if you’re someone who appreciates Elverum’s canonical works like The Glow Pt. 2 but have fallen off in recent years, or if you can appreciate A Crow Looked at Me and Now Only but find those records difficult to listen to on a regular basis, Night Palace (in all its sprawling, eighty-minute glory) is something that can pull you right back into that world of fuzzed-out lo-fi rock, folk music as wide as the Pacific Ocean, and a songwriter who’s just as imposing at his best and (at the very least) unparalleled at all times.

42. SAVAK – Flavors of Paradise

Release date: March 1^stRecord label: Peculiar Works/Ernest Jenning Record Co.
Genre: Post-punk, garage rock, college rock, 90s indie rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital

Coming a little under two years after their last record, Human Error / Human Delight, Flavors of Paradise adds to the language SAVAK have been developing since their debut in 2016, contracting it in some places and expanding it in others. The Brooklyn trio recorded the album at Electrical Audio last year, and while they’ve always been a “no nonsense” group, Flavors of Paradise finds the band plowing through twelve songs triangulating garage rock, post-punk, and college rock with a fresh, live sound. It’s easy to take for granted just how well SAVAK click together, but Flavors of Paradise is the work of several indie rock lifers determined to harness their experience into something accessible but still doing justice to the trailblazing nature of their influences. (Read more)

41. Greg Saunier – We Sang, Therefore We Were

Release date: April 26^thRecord label: Joyful Noise
Genre: Art rock, noise pop, post-punk, math rock, garage rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital

Considering just how much great music he’s been involved with over the past quarter-century, it’s perhaps not surprising that Deerhoof’s Greg Saunier can carry an album all on his own, but still, I was surprised by just how much I enjoyed We Sang, Therefore We Were, somehow his first-ever solo record. As it turns out, he’s a killer, unique pop songwriter when left to his own devices; the album’s dozen tracks certainly are recognizably “Deerhoof-esque”, but the one-man Saunier band (he wrote, played, recorded, mixed, and mastered everything here) is truncated and streamlined, throwing jagged, catchy guitar riffs and shapeshifting, form-fitting vocals over top of everything in a keen manner. (Read more)

40. Adeem the Artist – Anniversary

Release date: March 29^thRecord label: Four Quarters
Genre: Alt-country, country rock, folk rock
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital

Adeem the Artist put out an album called White Trash Revelry in 2022 that I really enjoyed–I wasn’t necessary expecting the Knoxville-based alt-country singer-songwriter to match it with their follow-up record, but I’m pleased to note that their latest full-length, Anniversary, is even better than the one that preceded it. For those of us already on board, Adeem takes several steps forward and outward in their writing, shooting for the stars by embracing polished, confident country rock and continuing to tackle the impossible task of writing about queer Southern experience in a powerful yet personable way (and if it were possible, it’d certainly sound pretty damn close to Anniversary).

39. ADD/C – Ordinary Souls

Release date: March 29^thRecord label: Let’s Pretend
Genre: Punk rock, pop punk
Formats: Vinyl, digital

Ordinary Souls is ADD/C’s first new music in over a decade, and it’s a sweeping, wide-ranging punk rock record (seventeen songs in under forty minutes!) from a band with nothing to lose and no reason to keep “doing this”–other than the music itself, which is more than enough on its own. “Heartland rock” has come to mean something fairly polished and critic-friendly, but Ordinary Souls is perhaps a truer version of the term: catchy and decidedly rough-around-the-edges pop punk made by two-decade-plus rock and roll veterans strewn across tertiary-market cities in the South and Midwest with several lifetimes’ worth of fucked up shit to write about. (Read more)

38. Mope Grooves – Box of Dark Roses

Release date: October 25^thRecord label: 12XU/Night School
Genre: Lo-fi pop, art pop, post-punk, experimental punk, twee
Formats: Vinyl, digital

Box of Dark Roses is Mope Grooves’ posthumously-released final album, and it’s a double LP full of ramshackle pop music drawn from clanging keyboards and buzzing beats and vocals that regularly surprise. Box of Dark Roses is so easy to follow despite everything about it because its leader, the late Stevie Pohlman (stylized simply as “stevie”), is unfailingly consistent in her worldview as a writer and doesn’t shy away from following these core tenets to wherever they take her. I hear, in stevie’s art, a real fury and fervor with regards to the unjust precariousness of the people around her–collaborators, friends, and comrades. Box of Dark Roses stares down the cognitive dissonance and open contradictions one is required to accept in order to be a “respectable” member of society, and rejects them. (Read more)

37. Mary Timony – Untame the Tiger

Release date: February 23^rdRecord label: Merge
Genre: Folk rock, progressive rock, power pop
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital

The amount of definitive rock music that Mary Timony has made in several different bands over the years is staggering–and it’s continued in recent years to the degree that I can’t be the only one to not realize it’s been fifteen years since a proper Timony solo album. Any indie rock musician who’s taken influence from Autoclave, Helium, or Ex Hex should get out their pen and paper for Untame the Tiger, a record that shows that Timony is still better than most at creating something intricate, immediate, and shockingly deep. Untame the Tiger is a surprising album, basking in the sun in plain sight but sneaking up on you at the same time–its leader sounds free, untamed, and absolutely thrilled to be still pressing ahead in the form of inventive, unique rock music. (Read more)

36. St. Lenox – Ten Modern American Work Songs

Release date: October 25^thRecord label: Anyway/Don Giovanni
Genre: Indie pop, singer-songwriter, synthpop
Formats: Vinyl, digital

The fifth St. Lenox album, Ten Modern American Work Songs, traces Andrew Choi’s journey from a graduate student and aspiring philosophy professor at Ohio State University to a JD program in Manhattan to his current status as a lawyer. Musically, Choi’s distinct style of indie pop is as bright as ever, corralling piano pop, synthpop, and occasional folk and violin touches into something that never threatens to distract from the lyrics but sharp enough to compliment them. Choi’s huge voice is just as incredible, and his pointed ramblings remain pointed and rambling as he tackles a subject that has shaped (and continues to shape) his life and music head-on. (Read more)

35. J. Robbins – Basilisk

Release date: February 2^ndRecord label: Dischord
Genre: Post-punk, post-hardcore, 90s indie rock, alt-rock, art punk
Formats: Vinyl, digital

We’re probably lucky that we got a sophomore J. Robbins album at all–the D.C.-based musician is a prolific and in-demand engineer these days, and his influential 90s Dischord group Jawbox have reunited and even released new material in recent years. Basilisk sounds familiar in a most welcome way, with Robbins evoking his golden era in a way few 90s indie rockers are still doing today. That being said, Basilisk doesn’t exactly sound ripped from the world of Jawbox circa 1993–it picks up about where 2019’s Un-Becoming left off, with Robbins writing art-punk anthems with both “maturity” and “edge” and a fearless awareness of the present. (Read more)

34. Norm Archer – Verb

Release date: August 23^rdRecord label: Panda Koala
Genre: Power pop, garage rock, prog-punk, college rock
Formats: Digital

Will Pearce started up Norm Archer a mere two years ago, wanting to explore home-recorded power pop–and Pearce has proven quite adept at college rock/guitar pop hook-spinning. Verb, the project’s third long-player since 2022, features everything great about Norm Archer thus far: huge, arena-ready power pop anthems, relaxed, 60s-esque jangly guitar pop, and multi-part prog-pop workouts all abound. Pearce takes Verb to some new and wild places, too, particularly in the twin epics that close out the hourlong record. Whether you wanted Norm Archer to stay the course, flex their rock opera muscles, or lapse into smoky basement explorations on their third album, Verb decides to just do it all. (Read more)

33. Dancer – 10 Songs I Hate About You

Release date: March 15^thRecord label: Meritorio
Genre: Post-punk, indie pop, art rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital

After two stellar EPs introduced the Glasgow band last year, 10 Songs I Hate About You is Dancer’s first full-length. It’s remarkably comforting just how stubbornly the quartet show up in the same clothes with the LP–the album was recorded live to tape at Green Door studio with Ronan Fay just like their EPs were, Gemma Fleet is still announcing every song’s title before it begins, Andrew Doig’s bass is all over the place and a treat to observe, and so on. Dancer had already covered quite a bit of ground on their first two EPs–all the ingredients for an excellent first album were lined up, and 10 Songs I Hate About You knocks it out of the park. (Read more)

32. Humdrum – Every Heaven

Release date: October 18^thRecord label: Slumberland
Genre: Jangle pop, power pop, new wave, post-punk, dream pop
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital

Chicago guitar pop veteran Loren Vanderbilt has a keen grasp on a very specific time and place in the history of indie rock on the debut record from his new solo project, Humdrum–specifically, vintage jangle pop, new wave, college rock, and dream pop. Every Heaven is largely the work of a singular pop-minded visionary, with everything from its prominent, pounding mechanical drumbeats to its New Order-y synth washes to sprinkled guitar arpeggios all working in tandem to service the melodies and hooks. Unfailingly upbeat but also unafraid to incorporate the more wistful side of Vanderbilt’s influences, Every Heaven is crystalline, both in how it reflects a bygone era of “indie music” and how it freezes its leader in his own moment in time. (Read more)

31. Mint Mile – Roughrider

Release date: February 23^rdRecord label: Comedy Minus One
Genre: Alt-country, 90s indie rock, folk rock, Crazy Horse stuff
Formats: Vinyl, digital

Mint Mile’s Roughrider, their long-awaited second full-length, is their first to wrap its business up entirely on two sides of one vinyl record, finally adding the “tight”, forty-minute single long-player album to their resumé. Roughrider has a “snapshot” and “wide-ranging” feel that–while not absent from their sprawling debut, Ambertron–becomes more pronounced here due to the shorter timespan. After years of being the “new” band of Silkworm/Bottomless Pit’s Tim Midyett, Mint Mile has traversed a ton of ground in its first decade of existence, and the band pull from several aspects of it (meandering country-rock, sunny pop rock, moments of surprising bareness) throughout their latest triumph. (Read more)

30. Christina’s Trip – Forever After

Release date: July 5^thRecord label: Cherub Dream
Genre: Indie pop, dream pop, noise pop, twee, 90s indie rock
Formats: Vinyl, cassette, digital

Despite the nods to noisemakers Sonic Youth and Eric’s Trip in the band and album names, Forever After by Christina’s Trip is the most pop-forward record I’ve heard from Bay Area shoegaze label Cherub Dream Records yet. Led by namesake Christina Busler’s clear vocals, the record’s eight songs float pop melodies towards the listener wistfully but confidently. The guitars are loud but not overly distorted or blanketing, recalling undersung 90s indie rock groups like The Spinanes and Velocity Girl and even early guitar-based dream pop, while the band’s lo-fi, off-the-cuff attitude evokes prime K Records. Consistency is key in just how strong a debut Forever After is, and I’m excited to hear more from Christina’s Trip. (Read more)

29. Adam Finchler – The Room

Release date: July 12^thRecord label: Window Sill
Genre: Indie pop, soft rock, anti-anti-folk
Formats: Vinyl, digital

Adam Finchler’s debut solo LP has been a long time in the making, and The Room is a world away from the sound of the former anti-folker’s previous music. These ten songs are given polished pop readings, clear but streamlined, placing Finchler’s songwriting front and center. As a writer, Finchler is vaguely in line with what one might expect from an anti-folker–irreverent, wide-ranging, and fairly unpredictable. The short stories, snapshots, and character sketches of The Room can be genuinely funny and just-as-strongly gripping–combined with the serious, straightforward guitar pop dressing that Finchler and co-producer Danji Buck-Moore pursue, it ends up being one of the most striking and unique-sounding albums I’ve heard this year. (Read more)

28. Shellac – To All Trains

Release date: May 17^thRecord label: Touch & Go
Genre: Noise rock, math rock, post-hardcore
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital

It’s as good as I’d hoped it’d be. I can enjoy Big Black in a certain mood and obviously “appreciate” it, but Steve Albini’s work with Todd Trainer and Bob Weston has always been my favorite from him as a musician. To All Trains is ten more songs and twenty-eight more minutes of possibly the greatest-sounding rock and roll band of all-time doing their thing, re-announcing their dominance by honing their metallic, razorblade-sharp sound into levels of concision and prickliness previously thought impossible to reach by mankind. It fucking sucks that this is the last Shellac album. It fucking rules–this, the last Shellac album.

27. Stomatopod – DrizzleFizzle

Release date: October 4^thRecord label: Pirate Alley
Genre: Garage rock, punk rock, 90s indie rock
Formats: CD, digital

As one might guess of a Chicago-based, Electrical Audio-patronising power trio, Stomatopod could be reasonably described as “noise rock”, but it’s their own version of it–streamlined but expansive, unmistakably Midwestern, punk-y and garage-y, dark but “pop music”. DrizzleFizzle is their fourth album, and it’s a doozy, nearly twice as long as their last one and made up of ten enormous songs. The snapshot of brilliance that was 2022’s Competing with Hindsight is blown up onto the big screen here; it’s a dizzyingly complete, uncomfortably-up-close version of three rock and roll veterans hammering out songs because they must be hammered out. (Read more)

26. Ex Pilots – Motel Cable

Release date: August 23^rdRecord label: Smoking Room
Genre: Noise pop, alt-rock, shoegaze, power pop
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital

On what will likely be an introduction to Ex Pilots for a lot of people, the Pittsburgh sextet do what they do best–kick out fifteen songs and thirty-seven minutes of hook-laden, shoegaze-informed indie rock shot through with a sense of Robert Pollard-esque propulsive melancholy that’s equally present on the loud, punk-y rave-ups and Motel Cable’s more pensive moments. Similarities with their sibling band, Gaadge, abound, but Ethan Oliva (more or less Ex Pilots’ ringleader, while Ex Pilots bassist Mitch Delong largely helms Gaadge) seizes the opportunity to delve more full-heartedly into huge Guided by Voices-indebted rock anthems with distortion on tap. (Read more)

Click here for:
Part One (100-76)
Part Two (75-51)
Part Four (25-1)

Rosy Overdrive’s Top 100 Albums of 2024 (75-51)

Welcome to part two (of four) of Rosy Overdrive’s Top 100 Albums of 2024! This post covers albums 75 through 51. For any and all background info, see part one.

See also:
Part One (100-76)
Part Three (50-26)
Part Four (25-1)
Playlist links (Spotify) (Tidal)

75. Friko – Where We’ve Been, Where We Go From Here

Release date: February 16^thRecord label: ATO
Genre: Indie pop, college rock, fuzz rock, 90s indie rock
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital

Where We’ve Been, Where We Go From Here is the debut full-length from Chicago’s Friko, who’ve been associated with the Windy City’s “Hallogallo” scene since they arose around early 2020. Friko recall the playful guitar pop of several associated acts, albeit with a bit more “rock” in tow. Niko Kapetan is a compelling vocalist, sounding in command but close to breaking while delivering sharp melodies over top of instrumentals that veer into noisy indie rock freak-outs and then back to gorgeous chamber pop with ease. Where We’ve Been, Where We Go From Here swings drama and intensity around, but the projectiles are enjoyably well-crafted, going a long way towards defining Friko as standouts in a crowded and talented scene. (Read more)

74. Crumbs – You’re Just Jealous

Release date: May 17^thRecord label: Skep Wax
Genre: Post-punk, punk, garage rock, indie pop, dance punk
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital

Coming in at a dozen tracks in under 30 minutes, every song on Crumbs’ sophomore album, You’re Just Jealous, goes on for exactly as long as it needs to and not a second more. The Leeds group cites bands like Gang of Four, Delta 5, and Chic as influences, and it’s apparent that You’re Just Jealous was made with the perspective that post-punk can and should be catchy and fun to listen to. The record combines the danceability of 80s post-punk, the hooks of classic indie pop, and the sharp edges of 90s Kill Rock Stars indie rock groups–it’s bullseye vocal melodies, Andy Gill guitar licks, and rumbling rhythms right up to the end. (Read more)

73. Spirit Night – Time Won’t Tell

Release date: October 4^thRecord label: Self-released
Genre: Jangle pop, indie pop, synthpop, post-punk, dream pop
Formats: Vinyl, digital

Last year, Dylan Balliett released the long-awaited fourth album from his project Spirit Night, Bury the Dead, and it felt like the culmination of the emo-shaded indie rock present throughout his musical career. Rather than trying to top it, Balliett decided to try something different with Time Won’t Tell, the second Sprit Night LP in as many years. Time Won’t Tell embraces a less-seen side of Balliett’s songwriting, exploring jangly Flying Nun-esque guitar pop, synthpop, and even a bit of post-punk and new wave. Time Won’t Tell is neither a logical extension from previous Spirit Night records nor is it a clean break from the past, both in terms of the music and Balliett’s writing (evoking Bury the Dead at times but unmoored from its vivid desperation). (Read more)

72. Vista House – They’ll See Light

Release date: November 22^ndRecord label: Anything Bagel
Genre: Country rock, alt-country
Formats: Cassette, digital

Last year’s offering from Tim Howe’s Vista House, Oregon III, was an excellent and adventurous take on alt-country, Americana, indie rock, and power pop, and I’m certainly happy to see the Portland-based musician back with a follow-up LP in short order. They’ll See Light is far from a departure for Vista House–once again, Howe leads the band through loud, rambling country rockers and softer, still-rambling folk-indebted music, but the cobbled-together feel of their last album is replaced with something more focused and streamlined. They’ll See Light sounds like the work of a well-oiled rock band who’s decided to record a bunch of great songs in one go because they know that they’re on a roll–and they’re right. (Read more)

71. Guitar – Casting Spells on Turtlehead

Release date: February 7^thRecord label: Spared Flesh/Julia’s War
Genre: Shoegaze, experimental rock, noise pop, fuzz rock, garage rock, lo-fi indie rock
Formats: Cassette, digital

Portland’s Saia Kuli brings a louder, noisier sound to his project Guitar’s latest release, and he also gets a little more help this time around compared to 2022’s mostly self-recorded lo-fi post-punk Guitar EP. Kuli linked up with experimental shoegaze label Julia’s War for Casting Spells on Turtlehead, and, as it turns out, a more fleshed-out Guitar sounds surprisingly like it fits right in with the current wave of omnivorous noise pop/shoegaze acts. Like an early Guided by Voices EP, Casting Spells on Turtlehead feels like a collection of disparate but connected moments–beautiful, melodic guitar riffs, basement-acoustic immediacy, lumbering but fun fuzz rock, trippy dream pop. Guitar have stepped things up a bit on their newest release, and we should all take notice accordingly. (Read more)

70. Chime School – The Boy Who Ran the Paisley Hotel

Release date: August 23^rdRecord label: Slumberland
Genre: Jangle pop, power pop
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital

I’d been waiting for a follow-up to Andy Pastalaniec’s 2021 self-titled debut as Chime School for some time, and The Boy Who Ran the Paisley Hotel is a worthy sequel to that special record from the Bay Area jangle popper. It’s once again self-recorded and largely piece together by Pastalaniec himself, but there’s plenty of development from the singer-songwriter rather than trying to carbon-copy what made Chime School work. Nonetheless, there is plenty of twelve-string jangle and quick tempos, and even though there are a few moments of musical subtlety in the midst of its jangling barrage, The Boy Who Ran the Paisley Hotel is only really “mellow” compared to the last Chime School album. (Read more)

69. Vacation – Rare Earth

Release date: May 3^rdRecord label: Feel It
Genre: Power pop, punk rock, garage rock
Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital

Vacation are a quartet out of Cincinnati that have been making their blend of garage rock, power pop, and punk rock for a decade and a half now. Rare Earth, their debut for Feel It Records, displays a belief that pop music should be played loud and fast, but it also reaches over to nearby Dayton to snag a mid-period Guided by Voices “meaty but hooky” attitude and, last but not least, throws in a dash of Midwestern, blue-collar pop punk. All in all, Rare Earth is one of the most inspired-sounding rock records I’ve heard in quite a bit–huge-sounding, catchy, with the edges anything but sanded off. (Read more)

68. The Smashing Times – Mrs Ladyships and the Cleanerhouse Boys

Release date: November 1^stRecord label: K/Perennial
Genre: Jangle pop, psychedelic pop, psychedelic folk, twee
Formats: Vinyl, digital

Baltimore’s premier mod revival quintet have returned with yet another collection of gloriously fractured and free-ranging guitar pop. This time around, The Smashing Times have come up with a record called Mrs Ladyships and the Cleanerhouse Boys that’s clearly indebted to the weirdest detours on some of the most classic rock albums. All the blissful psychedelic jangle-beat melodies that marked the band’s last album are still here, yes, but (as one might gather from its title) Mrs Ladyships and the Cleanerhouse Boys leans into the eccentricities of British pop of the past across its fourteen tracks. I wouldn’t expect anything other than pop music on their own terms from The Smashing Times, but Mrs Ladyships and the Cleanerhouse Boys is a strong reminder of why it’s so fruitful to accept those terms. (Read more)

67. MJ Lenderman – Manning Fireworks

Release date: September 6^thRecord label: Anti-/Dear Life
Genre: Country rock, alt-country
Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital

Manning Fireworks is the first album made with any kind of expectations for Asheville singer-songwriter and Wednesday member MJ Lenderman, and it feels like a transitional one for me. The follow-up to Lenderman’s breakthrough 2022 album Boat Songs contains a few different paths that Lenderman could potentially wander down–sometimes, Manning Fireworks nods towards the delicate and traditional, other times it sounds like Lenderman is hellbent on following his heroes the Drive-By Truckers into the world of blustering, loud country rock and roll. There’s always something interesting going on in Manning Fireworks–and it’s frequently something other than the qualities that helped his music leap out of the weirdo alt-country world from which it came.

66. Amy O – Mirror, Reflect

Release date: May 20^thRecord label: Winspear
Genre: Lo-fi pop, bedroom pop, singer-songwriter
Formats: Cassette, digital

Last time I wrote about Amy Oelsner (aka Amy O) on this blog, I called her underrated, and I nearly went and proved my own point by leaving Mirror, Reflect off this list until I revisited it. The more I listen to Mirror, Reflect, the more favorite moments I find; this album, pieced together “at [her] home and friends’ homes” over two years, is a gorgeous mid-fi guitar pop album which loses no potency whatsoever via the casual way Oelsner approaches it. In fact, the patchwork nature of Mirror, Reflect is essential to its charm–even as it sounds complete in its own right, it also hints at a larger, vibrant world that this album only captures for thirty-odd minutes. I’m not sure I’ve ever heard so much contained within the lines “dribble dribble drop drop” and “rumble rumble splat splat”.

65. Frontier Ruckus – On the Northline

Release date: February 16^thRecord label: Sitcom Universe/Loose Music
Genre: Folk rock, singer-songwriter
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital

I first came to the work of Michigan singer-songwriter Matthew Milia via his excellent 2021 solo album Keego Harbor, but he’s probably most well-known for fronting the long-running folk rock band Frontier Ruckus. On the Northline is the first Frontier Ruckus full-length I’ve heard, but I can tell you that it’s great–it sounds like Milia’s solo work, but folkier! Frontier Ruckus’ peers still feel like indie rock and guitar pop groups to me–I hear Grandaddy, Fountains of Wayne, and even some Elephant 6 in On the Northline, but the mandolins, banjos, and acoustic guitars that populate these tracks are always the exact right accompaniments for Milia’s songwriting. On the Northline invites us to get lost in a vaguely familiar Midwestern world across its forty-seven minute journey.

64. Rain Recordings – Terns in Idle

Release date: April 12^thRecord label: Trash Tape
Genre: Emo-y indie rock, 90s indie rock, folk rock
Formats: CD, cassette, digital

Carrboro-based Evren Centeno and Stockholm, Sweden’s Josef Löfvendahl have been collaborating remotely for a few years as Rain Recordings, but Terns in Idle is the first album that the duo recorded in person in the same studio. Ceneno and Löfvendahl sound like they’ve spent a good deal of time with essential 90s indie rock groups like Modest Mouse and Built to Spill, but Terns in Idle isn’t entirely devoted to this bygone ornery era of guitar music–there’s also some Neutral Milk Hotel-ish folk ambition, the earnest, wide-eyed 2000s version of indie rock, and even a bit of emo mixed in, as the duo take advantage of the studio setting to expand their sound. (Read more)

63. American Culture – Hey Brother, It’s Been a While

Release date: May 3^rdRecord label: Convulse
Genre: Punk rock, Madchester, power pop, jangle pop, noise pop, college rock, psychedelic rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital

Denver quartet American Culture’s sound has a lot of familiar ingredients, but it’s a unique and captivating blend that’s found on Hey Brother, It’s Been a While–they’re “punk rock” in a loose sense, yes, although in the older underground version of the term, while also leaving room for indie rock and pop of several different stripes (mid-to-late Replacements jangly power pop, and even some psychedelic Madchester influences). Some of the variety of Hey Brother, It’s Been a While can be explained by the band having two main singer-songwriters, Chris Adolf and Michael Stein–without getting too into it, the two distinct voices are key to the narrative of the album, which deals with a community-level traumatic event from two different perspectives. (Read more)

62. Sharp Pins – Radio DDR

Release date: May 19^thRecord label: Hallogallo
Genre: Lo-fi indie rock, power pop, jangle pop
Formats: Digital

Last year’s Turtle Rock was one of the breakout debuts of 2023, an exuberant and well-crafted collection of lo-fi pop that put Sharp Pins square in the center of Chicago’s “Hallogallo” scene. How does Kai Slater (Lifeguard, Dwaal Troupe), one of the most exciting talents in indie rock, follow it up? With a brand new sophomore album called Radio DDR coming scarcely a year later. As great as Turtle Rock was, Radio DDR advances the journey of Sharp Pins without losing the humble charms of his first record under the name. Radio DDR is refined and polished in both its writing and recording, finding the Pins inching closer and closer to power pop perfection. Two great and distinct records in as many years–pay attention to Sharp Pins.

61. The Softies – The Bed I Made

Release date: August 23^rdRecord label: Father/Daughter/Lost Sound Tapes
Genre: Twee, indie pop, indie folk
Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital

Two decades removed from their last album together, The Bed I Made is a reminder of why The Softies specifically have endured, even as their music is deliberately less immediate than most of Rose Melberg and Jen Sbragia’s other projects in the realms of indie pop and twee. When the duo sing together and play their guitars together, they don’t need any additional accompaniment–these songs don’t seek the spotlight, but neither do they shrink from the light shone upon them. When the duo reach a particularly resonant moment in one of their songs, the words just hang there, Melberg and Sbragia taking no measures to shield themselves from their impact. There’s nowhere to hide on The Bed I Made, even if The Softies wanted to do so. (Read more)

60. Micah Schnabel – The Clown Watches the Clock

Release date: May 15^thRecord label: Self-released
Genre: Country punk, alt-country, Americana, cowpunk
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital

Columbus country-punk institution Micah Schnabel has always come off as somebody with a lot to say in his lyrics, both as the primary frontperson of his cult alt-country group Two Cow Garage and in his just-as-worthwhile solo career (and even, more recently, as a novelist). His latest album, The Clown Watches the Clock, balances Schnabel’s long-winded tendencies with his punk rock instincts admirably–he wanders a fair bit in the songs’ verses, but there’s a conscious effort to return to clear, catchy, and concise refrains again and again on the album. The Clown Watches the Clock is a record about the ambient sights and sounds of middle America: guns, Jesus, and debilitating, humiliating, irritating poverty, delivered with none of the treacly, pandering romanticism in which lesser writers love to indulge (but, rather than cynicism, our narrator emerges out the other side with something much more potent). (Read more)

59. Silo’s Choice – Languid Swords

Release date: March 29^thRecord label: Self-released
Genre: Folk rock, prog-folk, art folk, new age
Formats: Digital

Built largely around meandering acoustic guitar playing and upright bass, the seven-song, 40-minute Languid Swords backs up the John Fahey influence that Chicago’s Jon Massey cited when he emailed me about Languid Swords. The latest LP from his long-running Silo’s Choice project takes its time and isn’t overly concerned with offering up pop hooks immediately–not that it doesn’t indulge in “pop music”, but it’s always on Massey’s own terms. It’s a bit more challenging than the experimental yet accessible take on Chicago indie folk rock of his other band, Coventry, but Languid Swords is gripping and spirited in its own steadily smoldering way. (Read more)

58. Office Culture – Enough

Release date: October 18^thRecord label: Ruination
Genre: Art pop, jazz-pop, art rock, experimental rock
Formats: CD, digital

For the fourth album from his jazz-pop/soft rock project Office Culture, bandleader Winston Cook-Wilson decided to try something different–he decided to make a CD. The seventy-three minute, sixteen-song Enough was deliberately inspired by “the CD era”, embracing the ability to blow everything up to new proportions. Guest vocalists, experimental electronic instrumentation, and songs that cross the five-minute barrier without breaking a sweat all abound on Enough, an album that finds Office Culture and their twenty-something collaborators finding out just how many directions they can stretch Cook-Wilson’s distinct sophisti-pop songwriting at once. (Read more)

57. Cloud Nothings – Final Summer

Release date: April 19^thRecord label: Pure Noise
Genre: Garage rock, punk, power pop
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital

In a world where Greg Sage and Robert Pollard are Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan, Cloud Nothings vocalist/guitarist Dylan Baldi would be a folk hero, churning out loud, pummeling, hooky rock music at a steady clip for a decade and a half now, aided deftly by longtime drummer Jayson Gerycz and bassist Chris Brown. One could cherry pick a few details from Final Summer–like the way that krautrock-y intro of the opening title track gives way to a big-sounding, saxophone-featuring “heartland rock”-ish version of the Cloud Nothings sound–and spin a “Cloud Nothings as you’ve never heard them before” narrative, but to me Final Summer sounds like the band at their most comfortable, like a group of ringers completely confident in their abilities. (Read more)

56. Russel the Leaf – Thought to an End

Release date: September 1^stRecord label: Records from Russ
Genre: Art pop, indie pop, experimental pop, psychedelic pop
Formats: CD, digital

Thought to an End is Troy-based producer and musician Evan M. Marré’s return to pop music after a few more experimental and improvisational records with his Russel the Leaf project–and it’s a triumphant one. Spanning twenty-one songs and seventy-five minutes, Thought to an End is quite possibly Russel the Leaf’s magnus opus. Thought to an End has the feel of a classic double LP–it’s got room for everything, from streamlined, breezy 60s-influenced pop rock to layered orchestral and psychedelic passages to heady art rock to, indeed, the experimental/jazz moments of the last couple of Russel the Leaf records. (Read more)

55. Spring Silver – Don’t You Think It’s Strange?

Release date: August 23^rdRecord label: Self-released
Genre: Fuzz rock, experimental rock, noise pop, art punk
Formats: Digital

Maryland’s K Nkanza has been making D.C.-ish post-hardcore/art rock crossed with both shined-up power pop and electronics and synths as Spring Silver for a few records now, but Don’t You Think It’s Strange? still surprised me. Even though it was recorded entirely by Nkanza alone, the album actually sound like the most “rock-band-focused” version of Spring Silver yet, even as Nkanza approaches this from a unique vantage point. Still recognizably themself, Nkanza takes on the difficult task of making lengthy, rumbling, but still pop-focused rock songs on Don’t You Think It’s Strange?; it’s a singular listen, and it’s impressive how accessible it is in spite of all this. (Read more)

54. Tucker Riggleman & the Cheap Dates – Restless Spirit

Release date: February 17^thRecord label: WarHen
Genre: Alt-country, country rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital

If 2021’s Alive and Dying Fast was the sound of Tucker Riggleman & The Cheap Dates slowing down and displaying enough confidence in Riggleman’s writing to let it take the unquestioned center stage, Restless Spirit is where the West Virginia-based band show that they can maintain the captivating quality of that record’s songs while also injecting just a bit more rock and roll into things. No one’s going to mistake Restless Spirit for a garage punk record, but it is very clearly an album where Riggleman’s formative alt-country and power pop influences peak through with regularity, and this suits his writing–always with chaos and darkness hovering around, but determined to keep it in check rather than overwhelming everything. (Read more)

53. Female Gaze – Tender Futures

Release date: May 17^thRecord label: Fort Lowell/Totally Real
Genre: Psychedelic rock, art rock, desert rock, post-rock, jazz rock
Formats: Vinyl, cassette, digital

After retiring the name of their old band, The Rifle, Tucson’s Nelene DeGuzman and Kevin Conklin formed Female Gaze with Nicky David Cobham-Morgese, and the former garage rockers undergo a remarkable transformation on Tender Futures, their debut album under the new name. Stretching five songs across thirty-two minutes, Tender Futures is an expansive, vast record, with the band embodying the American southwest more than any of their projects ever have before. Inspired in part by DeGuzman’s chronic health issues that had left her in a “painful limbo”, Tender Futures explores the desert using empty space and towering nothingness as its language, intentionally evoking haziness and disorientation through psychedelia, post-rock, and even a bit of jazz-rock. (Read more)

52. Beeef – Somebody’s Favorite

Release date: September 6^thRecord label: Self-released
Genre: Power pop, indie pop, jangle pop
Formats: Vinyl, digital

Boston’s Beeef put out a pair of excellent jangly college rock records in the late 2010s before going quiet for a few years, but thankfully the quartet is not only alive but quite well. The third Beeef LP, Somebody’s Favorite, is just about everything one could want in a New England guitar pop record–immediately catchy, smart, and friendly, with plenty of depth below the sparkle and shine that feels like it will age incredibly well. Beeef can be one of the greatest modern pop bands whenever they feel like being one, and they’re in a great mood on this one. Somebody’s Favorite even existing at all feels like a victory, but it’s an even greater treat to hear that Beeef sound, more than ever, quite sturdy and built to last. (Read more)

51. Climax Landers – Zenith No Effects

Release date: May 10^thRecord label: Gentle Reminder/Home Late/Intellectual Birds
Genre: Art rock, post-punk, indie pop, college rock, folk rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital

Although Will Moloney is clearly the ringleader/lead carnival barker of the Climax Landers, Zenith No Effects is just as palpably a record made with full collaboration welcomed. As a frontperson, Moloney frequently offers up his lyrics in a conversational talk-singing fashion–he’s got a little bit of the Minutemen-esque “post-punk as folk music” attitude towards things–but he’s hardly a one-note leader. Zenith No Effects is an offbeat but sincere guitar pop record at its core, with classic pop rock and college rock (aided by Paco Cathcart’s violin, Ani Ivry-Block’s accordion, and Charlie Dore-Young’s bass) shading the record–and Moloney ups his game to match the rest of the Climax Landers. (Read more)

Click here for:
Part One (100-76)
Part Three (50-26)
Part Four (25-1)

Rosy Overdrive’s Top 100 Albums of 2024 (100-76)

Hello, one and all! Welcome to the fifth annual edition of Rosy Overdrive’s Top 100 Albums of the Year. Today, albums 51 through 100 are being posted, and tomorrow (Tuesday, December 10th), the top 50 will be revealed.

Once again, thank you to anyone reading this list, anyone who has shared Rosy Overdrive with others, or anyone who even just makes it a part of their music life in some way. I am grateful, and it’s been a pleasure to share new music with everyone all year long. I put a lot of work into this blog in 2024, because I believe in the music that you’ll read about below and think somebody ought to be writing about it. I want something like Rosy Overdrive to exist, so I’ve done my best to make it real. I fully intend to keep Rosy Overdrive going strong into 2025!

Here is a playlist featuring all of the records from this list that are available on streaming services: on Spotify, on Tidal. As with last year, separate lists for EPs and compilations/reissues will go up over the next couple of weeks. To read about more music beyond what’s on this list, check out the site directory, and if you’d like to support Rosy Overdrive, you can share this (or another) post, or donate here. And you can also be part of the blog’s year-end rundown by voting in the Rosy Overdrive Reader’s Poll! Anyway, without further ado, let’s get to the list.

See also:
Part Two (75-51)
Part Three (50-26)
Part Four (25-1)
Playlist links (Spotify) (Tidal)

100. Grr Ant – Once Upon a Time in Battersea

Release date: April 26^thRecord label: Crafting Room
Genre: Jangle pop, lo-fi pop, power pop, indie pop
Formats: Digital

British musician Grant Gillingham has made no secret of his love of 80s underground indie music–post-punk, C86 indie pop, college rock–and Once Upon a Time in Battersea reflects this, pulling together all of these influences ambitiously and successfully. One key wrinkle to the first record from his solo project Grr Ant is a bit of wide-open Americana in its jangly indie rock–recalling a bit of the British-Invasion-via Midwestern basement rock of early Guided by Voices, or modern GBV-inspired bands. The end product is something like a British person’s conception of an American’s conception of British pop-rock music–if this is the sound of Grant Gillingham taking us full circle, it’s very enjoyable to listen to. (Read more)

99. Bacchae – Next Time

Release date: July 5^thRecord label: Get Better
Genre: Punk rock, post-punk
Formats: Digital

Washington, D.C.’s Bacchae unfortunately broke up this year, but not before delivering one last full-length statement. On Next Time, Bacchae incorporate their different sides a bit more seamlessly–rather than doling out furious punk rockers, spiky post-punk tracks, and polished pop songs one at a time, the band triangulate everything at once. Although the disjointedness of their last album, 2020’s Pleasure Vision, was part of its charm for me, this level of evolution works very well for Next Time, a record that’s nervous, fiery, and spirited as the band’s steady but forceful hand guides us across a unified LP. Bacchae will be missed, but Next Time cements them as a key D.C. punk act for the duration of their existence. (Read more)

98. Motorists – Touched by the Stuff

Release date: May 24^thRecord label: Bobo Integral/We Are Time
Genre: Power pop, jangle pop, college rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital

Toronto trio Motorists introduced themselves as punchy understudies in a vibrant Toronto power pop scene with their debut album, Surrounded, back in 2021, which was an impressive collection of college rock and jangle pop-inspired music with a surprisingly tough post-punk backbone frequently rearing its head, too. For their sophomore album, Touched by the Stuff, the group display a subtle but palpable sonic evolution as well: the post-punk edge is less pronounced and more seamlessly baked into the sound, as Motorists embrace being a straight-up, rollicking power pop group more than ever across Touched by the Stuff’s dozen tracks. (Read more)

97. Weak Signal – Fine

Release date: September 20^thRecord label: 12XU
Genre: Psychedelic rock, garage rock, 90s indie rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital

New York’s Weak Signal have rode a distinct mix of chugging psychedelic rock, precise, fuzzed-out garage-y indie rock, and post-punk rhythmic excellence through four albums now. The ten songs on the trio’s latest album, Fine, continue Tran Huynh, Sasha Vine, and Mike Bones’ ability to feel streamlined but unhurried, forming an effortless-sounding mix of seediness and transcendence that’s musical comfort food to a certain subset of indie rock sickos. Even the moments on Fine that don’t adhere to Weak Signal’s signature propulsive, electric rock and roll feel perfunctory, like well-curated detours before hopping back on the highway. (Read more)

96. Biz Turkey – Biz Turkey

Release date: May 31^stRecord label: Third Uncle
Genre: 90s indie rock, lo-fi indie rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital

If you like the less jammy side of Built to Spill and the more guitar-based music of Grandaddy, I’ve got great news for you with regards to what the self-titled debut from Maine group Biz Turkey sounds like. Biz Turkey may be a new band, but the quintet is made up of several longtime collaborators, and their first album establishes them as having a clear handle on their specific style of pessimistic-feeling, pop-friendly electric indie rock. Biz Turkey captures the moment where the basement indie rock of the 90s started transforming into something larger and more aware of the concept of “the outdoors”. Vocalist Graham Wood sounds lost but still alert in the midst of these wandering instrumentals; sometimes Biz Turkey sounds quite driven, but Biz Turkey sound great when they’re groping about in the darkness too. (Read more)

95. The Dreaded Laramie – Princess Feedback

Release date: July 5^thRecord label: Smartpunk
Genre: Pop punk, power pop, alt-rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital

In the first lyrics you hear on Princess Feedback, the debut album from Nashville’s The Dreaded Laramie, lead singer M.C. Cunningham prays for the painful death of an ex–and in the very next line, Cunningham sings “I don’t need you to tell me I’m pathetic / I understand what I’m doing”. Musically, The Dreaded Laramie are power pop/pop punk mercenaries, zeroing in on the mainstream side of 90s alt-rock revival and blowing it up with unabashed classic rock/Weezer-y guitar solos–Prince Feedback is as huge and polished-sounding as its inner contents are messy and uncomfortable. A nice, big giant explosion obliterates everything in its vicinity, so why not toss your least favorite parts of yourself right in its epicenter? (Read more)

94. Hill View #73 – Night Time Is the Grace Period

Release date: March 15^thRecord label: Trash Tape/9733
Genre: Lo-fi indie rock, experimental rock, fuzz rock, noise pop
Formats: Cassette, digital

Night Time Is the Grace Period is the debut album from Hill View #73, which is the project of Atlanta, Georgia’s Awsaf Halim. Halim gets plenty of help on their first LP (including from members of Dwaal Troupe, Deerest Friend, and Post Office Winter), but Hill View #73 is pretty clearly Halim’s project–they wrote all ten of these songs and play most of what you’ll hear on the record. Night Time Is the Grace Period has a familiar yet distinct sound, with Halim proving quite capable of switching between noisy fuzz rock, Alex G/Jeff Mangum-ish bedroom folk, and bright, vibrant synth-colored pop–sometimes within the same song. Halim pulls together noise and pop music together with the skill of much more well-known and well-established indie rock acts throughout Night Time Is the Grace Period, establishing the singer-songwriter as one to watch. (Read more)

93. The Reds, Pinks & Purples – The World Doesn’t Need Another Band

Release date: September 5^thRecord label: Burundi Cloud
Genre: Jangle pop, folk rock, singer-songwriter, indie pop
Formats: Digital

Last year, Glenn Donaldson’s The Reds, Pinks & Purples was the only project to appear on Rosy Overdrive’s favorite LPs, favorite EPs, and favorite compilations/reissues lists. The prolific Donaldson generously added to the Reds, Pinks & Purples oeuvre again this year–including the Slumberland-released “proper” album Unwishing Well, the outtakes/covers collection This Is Adult Art School (and the similarly-themed Restless When You Sleep EP), an expanded vinyl edition of 2022’s Still Clouds at Noon. My favorite one is a self-released digital-only album called The World Doesn’t Need Another Band. It’s a bit more “rock”-focused than Unwishing Well, and feels kind of like a more informal companion to last year’s The Town That Cursed Your Name to me. Soaring anthems like “Park Statues”, “My Toxic Friend”, and “Unloveable Losers” are as good guitar pop songs as any that Donaldson’s penned, and there’s at least one show-stopping piano ballad in “New Market Space”.

92. Dominic Angelella – God Loves a Scammer

Release date: August 30^thRecord label: Dumb Solitaire
Genre: Folk rock, power pop, alt-country, country rock, singer-songwriter
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital

God Loves a Scammer, the fifth LP from Philadelphia fixture Dominic Angelella, is a refreshingly timeless-sounding record, one that balances a predilection for offbeat, attention-grabbing songwriting from its frontperson with a casual, laid-back vibe from its players (who’ve played with everyone from Boygenius to Illuminati Hotties). Angelella is an indie rock songwriter who takes cues from the likes of David Berman and John Darnielle, but who is wise enough to understand that the lessons to be taken from them are primarily attitudinal. The music from the Angelella backing band is anything but an afterthought, accompanying their leader’s clear-in-the-mix vocals through rambling alt-country slingers, unrestrained rockers, and quiet and tasteful numbers. (Read more)

91. Lunchbox – Pop and Circumstance

Release date: May 10^thRecord label: Slumberland
Genre: Indie pop, power pop, twee
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital

At this point, Lunchbox’s Donna McKean and Tim Brown could be considered Bay Area indie pop godparents–it took the rest of the region a couple of decades to catch up to the 90s-originating group, but when their moment came, Lunchbox was ready. The dozen pop songs on Pop and Circumstance (the group’s second album thus far to come out of their 2020s resurgence) come from people who live and breathe vintage pop rock of the 1960s and 70s–bubblegum pop, mod, psychedelic pop, and soul, delivered with ample experience and honed knowledge. Pop and Circumstance sound fresh and free because of McKean and Brown’s decades of practice at the craft, not in spite of it. (Read more)

90. Dancer / Whisper Hiss – Split

Release date: October 4^thRecord label: HHBTM
Genre: Post-punk, indie pop, dance-punk, punk rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital

Both groups on HHBTM Records’ latest split full-length album are post-punk bands that know their way around a pop hook, but they’re fairly distinct to me–Glasgow’s Dancer are the irreverent, offbeat Brits who mix new wave-y art punk with fluffy indie pop, and Portland, Oregon’s Whisper Hiss are the heavier, more serious Americans who certainly have listened to their fair share of Dischord and Kill Rock Stars records. Both of them get six songs on this album to make the case for their version of indie rock, and both bring strong material to the table. Dancer even brings a bit of power chords and fuzzed-out indie rock into the mix, and Whisper Hiss mixes indie pop into their death-rock and punk, meeting each other halfway. (Read more)

89. Hit – Bestseller

Release date: October 25^thRecord label: One Weird Trick
Genre: Experimental pop, noise pop, art rock, art punk, prog-pop, psych pop
Formats: CD, digital

New York quartet Hit is something of a sibling band to Miracle Sweepstakes (it features half of their lineup), but up until Bestseller, we’d only heard the group in brief, chaotic single bursts. In order to translate those early Hit songs (which merged Brainiac-like noisy post-punk with snatches of heavenly guitar pop) to a larger setting, the band were going to have to get even more creative. And Bestseller is creative, alright–adventurous and exhaustive, too, I’d say. Hit careen through zany, bonkers prog-pop, underwater-sounding psychedelic pop, and something that I can only really describe as “jangle-prog” across the album’s length–if you’re looking for an unpredictable pop album, here’s Hit. (Read more)

88. Fred Thomas – Window in the Rhythm

Release date: October 4^thRecord label: Polyvinyl
Genre: Folk rock, experimental rock, ambient rock, singer-songwriter
Formats: Vinyl, digital

Spanning seven songs in sixty minutes, Michigan singer-songwriter Fred Thomas’ first solo record since 2018 is a spacious double album. Thomas and his guitar build a spindly but firm foundation for Window in the Rhythm, which sounds like nothing else Thomas has released before. As the tracks unspool, some of them get louder and more ornate, but Window in the Rhythm uses vastness and absence as a weapon for a good chunk of the hour it takes. It’s a very natural-sounding record, and it still sounds like a Fred Thomas album–his voice and writing guide us through the double LP, still recognizably the ace sing-speaking pop musician even as we enter a world of ten-minute songs with no choruses. (Read more)

87. Ylayali – Birdhouse in Conduit

Release date: October 16^thRecord label: Circle Change
Genre: Fuzz rock, experimental, lo-fi indie rock, lo-fi pop
Formats: Vinyl, digital

Philadelphia musician (and 2nd Grade drummer) Francis Lyons pieced the latest album from his Ylayali solo project together from 2022 to 2024 at home, and the resultant Birdhouse in Conduit is Ylayali at their most exploratory (especially compared to the last album from Lyons’ solo project, 2022’s relatively accessible Separation). There’s still pop music to be found in Birdhouse in Conduit, but it sits alongside ambient and droning fuzz passages, experimental electronic instrumentation, and blasts of noise. None of this gets in the way of the “core” sound of Birdhouse in Conduit, and is in fact a key part of it–distortion and static have always been important to Ylayali, and this record is no different in shaping these elements into something just as emotional-sounding as the indie and folk rock hidden intermittently between them. (Read more)

86. Uranium Club – Infants Under the Bulb

Release date: March 1^stRecord label: Static Shock/Anti Fade
Genre: Garage rock, post-punk, egg punk, garage punk
Formats: Vinyl, digital

Infants Under the Bulb is a massive, thorny way to return after a half-decade absence. The Minneapolis Uranium Club was maybe the most emblematic group of the late 2010s “egg punk”/“Devo-core” phenomena that swept the Midwest, and while entire bands have risen and fallen in the five years since 2019’s The Cosmo Cleaners, the garage punks’ long-awaited third LP reaffirms their position as a cornerstone act in a particularly dingy subsection of rock and roll. Dread, anger, seriousness, goofiness, and curiosity all collide in a pile-up of surf-rock guitars, squealing horns, and vocals that’ll restore one’s faith in “speak-singing”.

85. Deep Tunnel Project – Deep Tunnel Project

Release date: April 5^thRecord label: Comedy Minus One
Genre: 90s indie rock, punk, garage rock, noise rock
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital

Deep Tunnel Project is the debut album from a band with plenty of indie rock experience between them; the Windy City indie rock supergroup features John Mohr and Michael Greenlees (both of Tar) as well as Tim Midyett (Silkworm, Mint Mile) and Jeff Dean (Her Head’s on Fire, The Story So Far, The Bomb). Deep Tunnel Project is all Chicago, from the geographically-informed lyrics to the band and album name to the music, which is a garage and punk-influenced take on workmanlike Second City underground rock music. Deep Tunnel Project is part of a grand and ever-expanding tapestry being woven by its creators and many others like them–but it sounds pretty damn good in its own right, too. (Read more)

84. Styrofoam Winos – Real Time

Release date: September 27^thRecord label: Sophomore Lounge
Genre: Folk rock, alt-country, singer-songwriter, country rock
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital

It’s quite satisfying to listen to Real Time and be able to hear the growth that Nashville supergroup Styrofoam Winos has made together almost immediately. The group’s self-titled debut was the work of a band with three distinct songwriters adding their own touch to the songs, but Real Time is a different story; Joe Kenkel, Lou Turner, and Trevor Nikrant meld together here more than ever before, creating a cohesive album that sounds relaxed and comfortable as a whole. It’s not like “laid-back country rock” is new territory for Styrofoam Winos, but the way that they do it here–effortlessly passing the torch between the three of them, creating a singular vibe across these ten songs–is a palpable leap. (Read more)

83. Marcel Wave – Something Looming

Release date: June 14^thRecord label: Feel It/Upset the Rhythm
Genre: Post-punk, indie pop, garage rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital

London’s Marcel Wave put out a demo EP back in 2019, so their debut album Something Looming has presumably been in the works for a while. It’s a confident, polished, and accessible first statement that follows in the grand tradition of British “post-punk”/“indie pop” records, balanced on both sides of the spectrum by vocalist Maike Hale-Jones’s delivery and a well-seasoned cast of instrumentalists. Something Looming is “catchy” in some form for pretty much its entire length, but sometimes it’s more traditionally so than others; in all cases, Hale-Jones’ sense of rhythm and force of personality are a great fit for Marcel Wave’s musical playfulness. (Read more)

82. The Ekphrastics – Make Your Own Snowboard

Release date: August 3^rdRecord label: Harriet
Genre: Indie pop, 90s indie rock, singer-songwriter
Formats: CD, digital

Described as “a collection of short stories about doing one’s level best”, the eleven songs with words on Make Your Own Snowboard are all self-contained works that encourage close listening. Frank Boscoe led underground indie rock bands like Wimp Factor 14 and The Vehicle Flips in the nineties, but as of late he’s found a second (or third, or fourth, or fifth) life with The Ekphrastics. With only a passing familiarity with Boscoe’s previous work, I was immediately drawn in by his latest album, a fantastic exercise in storytelling with laid-back, folk-y indie pop as the fruitful vessel. There’s something very inspiring about Boscoe’s writing, the casualness with which he unpretentiously digs from history rather than lean on what we already know and understand to be common reference points. (Read more)

81. The Sylvia Platters – Vivian Elixir

Release date: April 26^thRecord label: Grey Lodge
Genre: Jangle pop, power pop, indie pop
Formats: Cassette, digital

At eight songs and 24 minutes, Vivian Elixir is on the shorter side, but The Sylvia Platters consider it more than just another EP–it’s their first “album” since 2015’s Make Glad the Day, even as the Vancouver-based power/jangle pop quartet have remained fairly active in the interstitial decade. And when you’ve got a bunch of songs that are as strong as these are, you can call it just about whatever you want. The Sylvia Platters continue to assert themselves as one of the best guitar pop bands going with Vivian Elixir, offering up power pop songs of varying stripes but consistent in quality and catchiness–about half of the cassette is “gigantic tune that could’ve been the lead single”, and the other half gives Vivian Elixir some extra character and helps it feel more like a proper album. (Read more)

80. Simon Joyner – Coyote Butterfly

Release date: November 22^ndRecord label: Grapefruit/BB*Island
Genre: Folk, singer-songwriter
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital

Simon Joyner is already one of the most rewarding, most decorated, and most secretly influential folk artists of the past three decades, so a great album from the Omaha fixture is hardly a surprise. Referring to Coyote Butterfly as merely a “late-career triumph” doesn’t capture the difficult impact of this album, though, which is a tribute to Joyner’s son Owen, who passed away in 2022. The most viscerally emotional experience I had this year was hearing “My Lament” for the first time, something I’m not sure how to describe. Simon Joyner the excellent folk songwriter is still present in Coyote Butterfly, with songs like “The Silver Birch” and “There Will Be a Time” reaching for the same winning tools he’s used in previous great songs. Be it Joyner’s writing or the departed figure at the center of the record, there’s a poignancy to every link to the past on Coyote Butterfly.

79. Ben Seretan – Allora

Release date: July 26^thRecord label: Tiny Engines
Genre: Art rock, psychedelic rock, noise pop
Formats: Vinyl, digital

Upstate New York musician Ben Seretan has released a lot of music, but Allora is the singer-songwriter’s first “rock” record in four years. Recorded in Italy over three days after the collapse of a European tour Seretan had booked, Allora is an energetic and forceful return–compared to 2020’s relatively delicate Youth Pastoral, Seretan and his band sound much more immediate here, with the rockers aiming louder and higher and the quieter moments displaying visible seams. Even though the embrace of electric rock music is the most immediately noticeable feature of Allora, it’s just as impressive that Seretan, Nico Hedley, and Dan Knishkowy still find ways to inject the singer-songwriter’s spacey, experimental side into their “power trio album”. (Read more)

78. Supermilk – High Precision Ghosts

Release date: August 9^thRecord label: Specialist Subject
Genre: Power pop, post-punk, indie punk
Formats: Vinyl, digital

Jake Popyura has been leading Supermilk for a while now, but it’s the London band’s third album, High Precision Ghosts, that finds the quartet truly gelling as a sharp indie rock group. Now far much more than a Popyura solo project, Em Foster, Charlie Jamison, and Jason Cavalier (as well as producer Rich Mandell of ME REX and Happy Accidents) help turn High Precision Ghosts into a polished, dynamic rock album that still works well as a Popyura songwriting vessel. Supermilk’s distinctly British mix of hooky post-punk revival with muscular power pop, alt-rock, and even punk takes High Precision Ghosts into some surprising directions, but the band never wander long enough to waste time on the lean, sub-thirty-minute LP.

77. EggS – Crafted Achievement

Release date: November 1^stRecord label: Prefect/Howlin Banana
Genre: Power pop, college rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital

Parsian collective EggS got my attention with 2022’s A Glitter Year, and their boisterous, party-friendly, saxophone-heavy version of vintage college rock is still very potent on their follow-up LP. Crafted Achievement doesn’t flag for a second–it’s only eight songs and twenty-three minutes long, but every moment of it is thrilling. Bandleader Charles Daneau’s vocals–in English and front-and-center throughout the album–reach melodic perfection through sheer force, shouting hooks among the tuneful maelstrom of the EggS band to complete the ingredients for a perfect hurricane of catchy indie rock. (Read more)

76. Yea-Ming and the Rumours – I Can’t Have It All

Release date: May 24^thRecord label: Dandy Boy
Genre: Indie pop, jangle pop, folk rock
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital

The latest record from Oakland’s Yea-Ming Chen and her band, The Rumours, doesn’t reinvent their sound–Chen is still a sharp, 60s pop-inspired songwriter and a striking vocalist, and the band give these songs a polished but utilitarian, classic college rock reading. What makes I Can’t Have It All feel so full-sounding and like a career highlight is the well-earned, quiet but palpable confidence Yea-Ming and the Rumors display throughout the entire record. Every song on the first half is a “hit” in its own way, and once you get on their level, you can appreciate how The Rumours skip through twee-pop-rock, folk-country, dream pop, and slowed-down girl-group-influenced pop with a steady helping of zeal. (Read more)

Click here for:
Part Two (75-51)
Part Three (50-26)
Part Four (25-1)

Pressing Concerns: Advance Base, Soft on Crime, Low Harness, Opinion

Hello, all! The first week of December has been a great one on Rosy Overdrive, and we’re wrapping it up with a Thursday Pressing Concerns featuring four albums coming out tomorrow, December 6th: new LPs from Advance Base, Soft on Crime, Low Harness, and Opinion. If you missed the Monday Pressing Concerns (featuring Mother of Earl, Big’n, Radio Free ABQ, and Miners) or the November 2024 playlist/round-up (which went up on Tuesday), 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. And last but not least: don’t forget to vote in the 2024 Rosy Overdrive Reader’s Poll!

Advance Base – Horrible Occurrences

Release date: December 6^th
Record label: Run for Cover/Orindal
Genre: Singer-songwriter, synthpop, folk
Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital
Pull Track: The Year I Lived in Richmond

It’s hard to believe that I’m only passingly familiar with the music of Owen Ashworth, given how many people whose taste I respect love it (musicians, writers, all around solid people). Of course, I’m a big fan of the releases he’s curated as the head of Orindal Records (Dear Nora, Tara Jane O’Neil, Young Moon), and was aware that Ashworth’s cult solo projects Casiotone for the Painfully Alone and Advance Base–lo-fi, low-key minimal electronic pop soundtracking the artist’s deep talk-singing vocals–are in the same realm of many of those records. Horrible Occurrences, the fifth Advance Base album of original material and the project’s first in six years, is subsequently my entry point into the world of Ashworth–and “world” is a more than appropriate descriptor for what the singer-songwriter creates in these eleven songs. On Horrible Occurrences, Ashworth builds a set of characters and their stories, largely taking place in a fictional town called Richmond (I picture it as somewhere in the Midwest, in part due to references to Wisconsin, Lake Michigan, and Columbus, but I don’t believe it’s specified). As the title of the record hints at, Horrible Occurrences is dark more often than not–murder, grievous injury, abandonment, and the supernatural are among these “occurrences”. In the world of deep-voiced, occasionally synth-curious indie pop storytellers, though, Ashworth is more David Bazan than Stephin Merritt; these are vivid, delicate figures and tales, real-feeling people too complex to simply feel doomed.

Ashworth recorded all of Horrible Occurrences on his own in his Oak Park, Illinois basement, accompanied by “pianos, synthesizers, samplers, and drum machines”. Most of these songs are only built out of Ashworth’s voice and a simple piano or synth part–both ingredients are slow-moving but follow pop progressions and vocal melodies, acknowledging an important part of the power of “folk music”. “The Year I Lived in Richmond” and “Big Chris Electric” both come early on in the album, and subject matter-wise they’re two of Horrible Occurrences’ most dramatic moments, but Ashworth keeps things hushed and quiet in a way that reflects the stark, endlessly-reverberating qualities of major events in a small town. It’s not until the second half of Horrible Occurrences that Ashworth dials up an instrumental with a bit of flair–it’s still in slow motion, but the prominent drum machine beat of “Brian’s Golden Hour” helps paint the picture of the song’s teenage character falling off his roof, shattering his spine and leaving him paralyzed and “lucky to be alive”. Ashworth uses the beats for a decidedly different end in “Little Sable Point Lighthouse”–in it, a character disappears forever as the synths simulate a haze and the drum machines the distant clang of buoys and small craft. The way that the story of “Little Sable Point Lighthouse” spills into “Andrew & Meagan” is chilling, but I suppose that it shouldn’t be so jarring–throughout Horrible Occurrences, it’s apparent time after time that Ashworth’s narrators and subjects are eternally connected to the town at the center of the album, regardless of where they find themselves geographically. It’s not a curse, it’s just life. (Bandcamp link)

Soft on Crime – Street Hardware

Release date: December 6^th
Record label: Eats It
Genre: Power pop, jangle pop, lo-fi pop
Formats: Cassette, digital
Pull Track: Villain

One of my favorite albums of last year was New Suite, the debut LP from Dublin trio Soft on Crime. New Suite was a guitar pop cornucopia, stuffed with hooks delivered to the tune of giddy college rock, jangle pop, power pop, psychedelic pop, and new wave. Not only did Dylan Philips, Padraig O’Reilly, and Lee Casey unleash New Suite on us last year, but they also took a rewarding victory lap with an entire second CD/cassette called Rarities Vol. 1 a few months later. Although songs on that compilation dated all the way back to 2018, there were some (very good) brand-new recordings on it, too, and Soft on Crime continue their hot streak into 2024 by getting their sophomore album out right under the wire here in December. New Suite was already on the shorter side, and Street Hardware does it one better in terms of brevity, zipping through eight songs in a mere twenty-two minutes. Soft on Crime also sound looser and more streamlined on their newest album–aside from brass played by J Sousa on “No Story”, the core trio is all you’ll hear on Street Hardware. It all amounts to a relatively low-key follow-up, but the reduction in bells and whistles hasn’t weakened the power of Soft on Crime; in fact, with some of the group’s more offbeat tendencies largely sidelined, this might be the trio’s smoothest ride yet.

Do you want to hear a garage band hammering out lost power pop classics, seeming aloof with regards to the gold upon which their sitting? Well, Street Hardware has plenty of that in its brief runtime, not the least of which is the bouncy opening track “Way Facing”. “Tonight” surely belongs in this category as well, as does “Crackdown”. “No Story” is the one time on the album where Soft on Crime allow themselves any kind of excess, and they use it well–there’s the aforementioned brass accents, as well as flamboyant usage of what sounds like a harpsichord and some sky-high melodic power pop guitar leads straight out of New Suite, too. With a limited palette, everything Soft on Crime does to give extra power to these songs is subtle brilliance–the stopping and starting in the mid-tempo pop of “Villain”, and jovially strummed acoustic guitar underneath “Bread & Roses”, and so on. I did mention that the “offbeat” side of the band is a bit reduced on Street Hardware; it’s largely concentrated in two tracks, the weirdo psychedelic rumble of “Repo Man” in the second slot and “Favourite Band”, the strange lo-fi rock opera that closes the album. Soft on Crime had already proven that they can dip into these detours without losing any pop appeal, and both of these songs feel like the trio reminding us (and themselves) of a key part of their music that’s a bit less prevalent on Street Hardware. I don’t know what aspects of their sound Soft on Crime will emphasize on their next record, but they’ve earned my trust in whatever they choose to do. (Bandcamp link)

Low Harness – Salvo

Release date: December 6^th
Record label: Krautpop!
Genre: Post-punk, art punk, 90s indie rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Redux

It’s a tale as old as time–a couple of British musicians bond over a shared love of arty European post-punk and underground American 90s indie rock/noise rock, polish up their influences together, and make a buzzy and inspired record together. In the case of Low Harness, it’s the story of four musicians from Falmouth who came together last year but have been playing locally in various bands for a while now, specifically vocalist/guitarist Hannah Gledhill (ex-H. Grimace), guitarist Martin Pease (ex-Hanterhir), drummer Ed Shellard (ex-Witching Waves), and bassist Alex Harmer. Frankly, the members of Low Harness have been at all of this for far too long to bother with demo cassettes and debut EPs–their first release together is a nice, full eleven-song long-player. Salvo is certainly an album made by a band who cut their teeth on Sonic Youth and Wire records, but it’s not that simple to get a handle on what this record sounds like. Aside from a couple of memorable moments, Low Harness eschew the more outwardly abrasive sides of their influences and pursue enlightenment through hypnotic, droning rhythmic rock music, non-intuitive pop songwriting, and a way of carrying themselves that does sound kind of “punk” from a certain viewpoint.

The opening salvo of Salvo, “Ready from the Start”, is a noisy indie rock masterpiece–sharp, pounding distortion and anthemic pop hooks sit side by side, delivered with equal weight. It’s a great introduction to Low Harness, even as it’s something of a red herring–the next few songs, from the sprawling “Exit Plan” to the foot-on-gas rocker “Too Long Together”, move between the extremes of the band’s sound much more subtly. A lot of Salvo’s strength comes from Low Harness continually setting up rock music in which it feels like anything can happen, even if it’s rarely outwardly shocking; they can sound like they’re willing to get their hair a little mussed up (on the title track), they’ll pull a stunningly beautiful pop melody out of absolutely nowhere (“Redux”), they can sound like they’re on edge for the entire track without falling off the tightrope (“Blood Play”). It’s a post-punk album that doesn’t scream “post-punk” in our faces, being content to reinvent this combination of fractured guitars, robust rhythms, and inspired atmospherics from scratch in their own way. I think this lends a hard-to-get-a-handle-on feeling to Salvo that drew me to it more than a lot of records that are similar to it on the surface–although the fact that it’s still a pretty powerful rock record certainly helped keep me around. (Bandcamp link)

Opinion – Troisième Opinion

Release date: December 6^th
Record label: Howlin’ Banana/Flippin’ Freaks/Les Disques Du Paradis/Nothing Is Mine
Genre: Fuzz pop, lo-fi indie rock, bedroom pop, shoegaze
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Microrange

Congratulations to Bordeaux, France’s Opinion for joining the “two LPs in Pressing Concerns in one year” club (the Casual Technicians, Alexei Shishkin, and Mythical Motors also did it this year, and Tony Jay and Dancer both had one and a half). Hugo Carmouze, who writes, plays, and records everything on Opinion’s records on his own, is a prolific practitioner of what I’d call “lo-fi indie rock” or “fuzz rock”; the latest Opinion record, Troisième Opinion, is the twelfth album under the project name. The previous Opinion LP, February’s Horrible, caught my attention with its confrontational take on bedroom rock–it was recorded over a single evening and sounds like Carmouze intentionally pushing the limits of noise and distortion in the presentation of his shoegaze/garage rock-inspired songwriting. Troisième Opinion, conversely, was recorded by Carmouze over several years, and while there’s certainly still plenty of abrasive and noisy moments on the album, it’s much less all-consuming than on the previous Opinion album; with the songs given a little more room to breathe, Troisième Opinion is more recognizable to us as a vintage lo-fi pop, bedroom pop, and even power pop-inspired record.

The forty-five minute Troisième Opinion LP has plenty of pop music on it, but Carmouze clearly enjoys burying these hooks so that we have to work a little bit to land on them. Sometimes that entails the multi-layered walls of sound that marked Horrible, but Carmouze goes about this in other ways, too–like, for example, starting off this album with the six-minute lo-fi rock odyssey of “Neige Florale” and the strange psychedelia-tinged “Un Petit Chat Dans Mes Bras” before we get to the first single, the triumphant gaze-pop of “19”. When Opinion let the clouds part, Carmouze is more than capable of pulling off the increased visibility–there’s a delicate bedroom pop appeal to stuff like “Microrange” and “For Real”, both of which start off relatively low-key before roaring to fuzzed-out conclusions. That being said, it’s still a surprise when the band sneaks a genuine power pop song into the record’s second half–that’s “Cimetière”, which uses fuzz in a much more “Teenage Fanclub” than “Loveless” way. The surging, dreamy noise-pop of “Smile” makes a little more sense, but it’s still an impressive left turn, especially after a couple of late-record confrontational numbers in “Waking Up” and “Gemini”. Carmouze may be prolific, but he’s certainly not spread thin–right up until the Elliott Smith-baiting acoustic closing track “Pour La Nuit, Par La Fenêtre.”, Troisième Opinion sounds like the work of a musician giving it their all. (Bandcamp link)

Also notable:

New Playlist: November 2024

Oh, man, it’s December! November’s over! I need to wrap this year up! But first, I have to wrap November up. So, here’s the Rosy Overdrive November 2024 playlist, featuring a bunch of brand new and exciting music, some of which has appeared in Pressing Concerns and some of which hasn’t. It’s another great one, if I do say so myself.

Plus, the Rosy Overdrive Reader’s Poll opened up yesterday–go vote!!!

Mount Eerie, Two Inch Astronaut, and Vista House are the artists with two songs on this playlist.

Here is where you can listen to the playlist on various streaming services: Spotify, Tidal (missing a song), BNDCMPR. Be sure to check out previous playlist posts if you’ve enjoyed this one, or visit the site directory. If you’d like to support Rosy Overdrive, you can share this (or another) post, or donate here.

“Part 2”, Smoker Dad
From Hotdog Highway (2024)

Like many classic second albums, Smoker Dad’s Hotdog Highway is greatly informed and shaped by the band touring their first album on the road. That’s all well and good, but it wouldn’t amount to much if Hotdog Highway didn’t rock–which it does, enthusiastically and expertly. This is hard-charging country rock-and-roll, road-tested and successfully captured by Garrett Reynolds at Seattle’s Electrokitty Sound Studio. If you aren’t charmed by the alt-country party anthem “Part 2” that kicks off Hotdog Highway, then there’s no way Smoker Dad are the band for you. There’s more Hotdog Highway for the rest of us, then. Read more about Hotdog Highway here.

“Check Please”, Two Inch Astronaut
From Check Please / Humorist (2024, Exploding in Sound)

Hey, wait a minute! Yes, beloved Maryland post-hardcore-pop trio Two Inch Astronaut are still seemingly on indefinite hiatus, but here we are in 2024 with two new songs from the group. These tracks were written in 2018 and went unrecorded before the hiatus, but thankfully Sam Goblin, Matt Gatwood, and Andy Chervenak decided to get together and record them with J. Robbins to commemorate the tenth anniversary of their 2014 album Foulbrood. “Check Please” sounds just like vintage Two Inch Astronaut–Sam Goblin’s distinct vocals have helped his solo project Mister Goblin feel like an extension of his old band, but hearing the three of them together careening through an explosive, catchy rock song like “Check Please” is a reminder of just what this band was capable of. Oh, and also Sam Goblin says the words “two inch astronaut” in the song, which is pretty cool.

“A Very Pretty Song for a Very Special Young Lady Part 2”, The Ergs
From dorkrockcorkrod (2004, Don Giovanni/Whoa Oh)

Good stuff. What else is there to say? I highlighted the 20th anniversary Steve Albini remix of The Ergs’ 2004 debut album, dorkrockcorkrod, in the 2024 Rosy Overdrive Label Watch; even as the original mixes sound perfectly fine to me and it’s not like this album was hard to hear before now, I’m happy to have any opportunity to revisit a pop punk album that hasn’t aged hardly a day in twenty years (an incredibly impressive feat!). I went with “A Very Pretty Song for a Very Special Young Lady Part 2” for the playlist, and this one distills the greatness of dorkrockcorkrod in an explosive, infectious, roughly two minute package; but then again, so does “Pray for Rain”, and “Vampire Party”, and “It’s Never Going to Be the Same Again”…

“Pontoon Boat”, Orillia
From Orillia (2024, Magic Mothswarm)

Orillia, the solo project from Chicago alt-country singer-songwriter Andrew Marczak, is significantly more stripped down than his bands The Roof Dogs and Toadvine. Nonetheless, Orillia is a noticeably varied debut; it’s apparent from the transition between pin-drop quiet opening track “My Rifle, My Pony, and Me” and “Pontoon Boat”, which is in another world entirely. We’re greeted by Trevor Joellenbeck’s bright mandolin playing and some excitedly-strummed acoustic guitar to launch us into what’s just an excellent folk song (I’m torn between “There’s a cave in Kentucky where the snakes all know my name” and “Gonna get a big-girl job at the hotel bar, it’s gonna make my life so easy” for my favorite part of the track). Read more about Orillia here.

“Floodlights”, Capsuna
From One Hit for Trainwreck (2024)

Belgium-based, Ohio-associated guitar pop group Capsuna put out a nice cassette at the beginning of this year, but they didn’t stop there–they put out a two-track single in September, and a four-song EP called One Hit for the Trainwreck at the end of October. “Floodlights” is from the latter, and it’s my favorite of this recent batch of Capsuna material–there’s more than a little bit of the American lo-fi pop music of guitarist David Enright’s home state (check out that wobbly descending guitar progression!), but vocalist Louise Crosby gives the track a polished feel despite some of the instrumental rickety-ness.

“Yearning and Pining”, Fightmilk
From No Souvenirs (2024, Fika)

Last time London’s Fightmilk appeared on this blog, it was 2021, and I was highlighting my favorite track from their Martha-esque indie-power-pop-punk record Contender. The quartet are back with a new one called No Souvenirs, and they don’t mess with what made Contender so strong in parts. There’s several choices for a highlight on this one, but “Yearning and Pining” gets right to the heart of the matter in two minutes and change–vocalist Lily Rae is yearning. She’s pining. She’s wishing you were hers, and–and so on. “Yearning and Pining” is living in the moment, preferring to roll around in the euphoria of the titular action rather than concern itself with a more concrete interpersonal world. It costs exactly zero dollars to yearn!

“Big Smile”, DAR
From Slightly Larger Head (2024, Sophomore Lounge)

I checked out Slightly Larger Head while putting together Rosy Overdrive’s 2024 Label Watch, and while it didn’t end up making the list (plenty of competition this year from Sophomore Lounge), I was decidedly charmed by DAR’s “Big Smile”, an excellent underground pop song if I’ve ever heard one. DAR is the project of Chicago’s Aaron Osbourne, but it’s Sophomore Lounge through and through with label mainstays Jim Marlowe, Jenny Rose, and Ryan Davis helping to realize the off-the-cuff country-rock sound of Slightly Larger Head. “Big Smile” is a triumph, a song that is more than happy to flog its simple chord progression for all it’s worth.

“Nothingland”, Casual Technicians
From Deeply Unworthy (2024, Repeating Cloud)

Noticeably less zany than their first album of 2024, Deeply Unworthy is a little sleepier and subdued, although upon closer inspection, the Casual Technicians’ bursting, buzzing, psychedelic pop music is no less complex here. The fervent, dramatic “Nothingland” might be the most affecting thing that the Casual Technicians have put to tape yet, as the power trio steer the song from its strong pop core straight into a bizarre psychedelic finale. Read more about Deeply Unworthy here.

“City Streets and Highways”, Megan from Work
From Girl Suit (2024)

Megan from Work is a brand new pop punk band from New England with high-energy hooky songs reminiscent of early Charly Bliss, Chumped, and All Dogs–their debut album Girl Suit is pure catnip for fans of those bands. Singer Megan Simon’s vocals are urgent, piercing and almost emo–they’ve got pop punk showmanship down on their first record, and the rest of Megan from Work chug along with the strength to counterbalance their ringleader. “City Streets and Highways” is my favorite track from the record; it’s a second half highlight that’s just as strong a power pop single as anything else on the record. Read more about Girl Suit here.

“A Lightning Bird Emerges”, Vista House
From They’ll See Light (2024, Anything Bagel)

Vista House’s latest album ups the “focused and streamlined rock and roll” part of their alt-country sound, but my favorite song on They’ll See Light is actually the acoustic folk tune that bridges the middle and home stretch of the LP. In “A Lightning Bird Emerges”, songwriter Tim Howe hides some of his best writing yet; the lyrics are surreal depictions of death, fire, folklore, sunlight, soil, animals eating other animals, and cycles thereof, but the simple refrain (which first appeared earlier on in the album in “Intro to Heaven”) is all Howe needs to tie everything together: “I keep on coming back again / Yeah, but it’s not like the first time”. Read more about They’ll See Light here.

“I Saw Another Bird”, Mount Eerie
From Night Palace (2024, P.W. Elverum & Sun)

Every music website that still exists has already extolled the virtues of Night Palace, the latest triumph from Phil Elverum’s Mount Eerie. I’m not going against the grain here–it’s very good, and drew me back into the world of an artist whose most beloved works I appreciate but haven’t been as devoted to in recent years. It’s a monster double album, but–like in Elverum’s other best albums–there are plenty of moments of clarity and even brightness to cling to in the midst. One such moment is “I Saw Another Bird”, which gets to Elverum’s roots as a Pacific Northwest singer-songwriter making fuzzy pop music, even as Elverum’s writing picks up the thread of his more recent (good but hard to listen to) material–still, he’s going somewhere now.

“Just Because”, Peaer
(2024)

New York indie rock group Peaer (made up of founding vocalist/guitarist/songwriter Peter Katz, joined by bassist Thom Lombardi and drummer Jeremy Kinney) are beloved by a certain subset of underground music fans; their spindly, mathy, not quite emo sound landed them on Tiny Engines in their heyday and they were a nice parallel to what was going on with Exploding in Sound at the time too. They kind of disappeared after their best album, 2019’s A Healthy Earth, but their first new song in five years, “Just Because”, picks up right where the group left off. It’s both immediate and slow-revealing–Katz’s guitar playing is quite gratifying to hear, but it takes a few listens to fully get a grip on everywhere that the six-string goes throughout the four-minute single. There’s a couple of Two Inch Astronaut songs on the playlist, and every time this song’s opening riff starts I think it’s going to be one of them, but the sweeping, overwhelming rock song that follows is all Peaer.

“Head in Flames”, EggS
From Crafted Achievement (2024, Howlin Banana/Prefect)

On their sophomore album, Crafted Achievement, Paris’ EggS maintain their boisterous, party-friendly, saxophone-heavy version of vintage 1980s college rock. Charles Daneau’s vocals reach melodic perfection through sheer force, shouting hooks among the tuneful maelstrom of the EggS band to complete the ingredients for a perfect hurricane of catchy indie rock. With a strong anchor provided by the band’s rhythm section, opening track “Head in Flames” is free to push for the stars for its entire three-minute runtime, providing a powerful launching pad for an album that simply doesn’t flag or wane across its brief but potent twenty-three minutes. Read more about Crafted Achievement here.

“Troll 3”, Sleeping Bag
From Beam Me Up (2024, Earth Libraries)

I love the chorus on this one. “I’ve been hiding underneath the bridge like a troll,” ah, me too, Sleeping Bag. Dave Segedy’s project (now based in Seattle after a long stint in Bloomington, Indiana) is always good for at least one huge fuzzed-out power pop classic per album, and I think “Troll 3” is the clearest winner from their latest LP, Beam Me Up. Beam Me Up is more polished-up than last year’s more informal collection Pets 4: Obedience School Dropout, but between Segedy’s stony vocals and the blown-out guitars, there will always be a “slacker rock” characteristic that is especially helpful in selling stuff like “Troll 3” (“Ruined my life, no big deal / Maybe after ten years it will start to heal”).

“Wait for Autumn”, Gentleman Speaker
From Hell and Somewhere Else (2024)

The third album from Minneapolis’ Gentleman Speaker is infused with stop-start alt-rock and post-punk catchiness, equal parts offbeat new wave and sprawling guitar-centric 90s indie rock in its sensibilities, but with a clear grasp on “pop” music, as well. Hard-working until the end, Gentleman Speaker close things out with a big finish in “Wait for Autumn”, a song featuring a go-for-broke, all-in refrain that only grows in size–it’s maybe the most memorable moment on Hell and Somewhere Else, though it certainly has competition. It’s not “too much”, but it is much. Read more about Hell and Somewhere Else here.

“Snow Window”, Thank You, I’m Sorry
From CYLS Split Series #5 (2024, Count Your Lucky Stars)

The four bands on CYLS Split Series #5 have all released great albums on Count Your Lucky Stars Records within the past two years and change, and the exclusive tracks they bring to this EP are all just-as-strong entries into these acts’ relative discographies. I’ve actually written about Thank You, I’m Sorry a little less than the other bands on the 7” (Expert Timing, Camp Trash, and Mt. Oriander), but the Minneapolis-originating, Portland-based emo-pop project ends up stealing the entire show with “Snow Window”, my favorite track on the EP. Between the most recent Thank You, I’m Sorry EP and their new project Mealworm, much of songwriter Lleen Dow’s best work has come in short bursts, and the quick two-minute wintry bummer pop of “Snow Window” holds up against their other highlights. Read more about CYLS Split Series #5 here.

“Tro på spöken”, Dalaplan
From Delad Vårdnad (2024, Beluga)

No idea what they’re saying, but it sounds great. Dalaplan are a long-running Malmö-based power pop/garage rock group, and their fifth album Delad Vårdnad (released on even-longer-running Swedish punk label Beluga) continues the band’s mission. “Tro på spöken” (which Google Translate tells me is Swedish for “too much to say”) comes at the end of a rousing, occasionally riotous album, and it’s a surprisingly polished and expertly-crafted pop rock finale. It’s nearly a power ballad, although Dalaplan take the restraint of the opening to more fully-developed places eventually. It almost makes me wish I knew what the band were saying, although I don’t need any help with the closing “Oh oh oh oh, oh oh oh oh” refrain.

“Dumb Stuff”, Bedtime Khal
From Eraser (2024, Devil Town Tapes)

Michigan singer-songwriter Khal Malik has been making bedroom pop for a few years now, but Eraser is the musician’s long-awaited debut LP. It shouldn’t be surprising but it’s still remarkable that Eraser sounds like nothing else Bedtime Khal has done before; there’s bits of fuzzed-out basement indie rock, slowcore, emo, and bright pop music throughout the album. Eraser isn’t “more of” any one thing so much as it’s just “more”. A tougher, more ambitious version of Bedtime Khal is out in full force with “Dumb Stuff”, which is a huge opening track with a roaring wall-of-fuzz chorus; it’s entirely Malik on the track, which is hard to believe. Read more about Eraser here.

“High Beams”, The Laughing Chimes
From Whispers in the Speech Machine (2025, Slumberland)

Who’s ready for 2025? Yeah, me neither. But, when we are, The Laughing Chimes will be there for us. The Athens, Ohio jangle pop quartet’s long-awaited second album (and first LP for Slumberland) is set to drop next January, and the record’s lead single is one of the band’s best tracks yet. “High Beams” cuts through the southeastern Ohio haze with a colorful mix of new wave-y keys and synths (provided by relative newcomer Ella Franks) and Evan Seurkamp’s lighthouse-like lead vocals. By the time the song’s over, The Laughing Chimes have taken everything up another gear, cementing it as yet another lost college rock anthem.

“Captain Caveperson”, Night Court
From $hit Machine (2024, Recess)

Earlier this year, I wrote about a split EP from West Coast power-pop-punk groups The Dumpies and Night Court; last month, The Dumpies put out a full-length and I highlighted a song from it in a playlist, so now it’s the other side of the 7”’s turn. $hit Machine is true to Night Court’s ethos–seventeen songs in twenty-six minutes, brief dispatches of pop music delivered with underdog punk rock as the vessel. “Captain Caveperson” barely crosses the sixty-second mark, but I think it’s my favorite track on $hit Machine. The Vancouver band assume the mantle of “slacker rock self-help writers” on “Captain Caveperson”, with the titular prehistoric figure resolving to “get something done” today (“invent the wheel, clean up the cave”).

“I’m Done Falling Over You”, wilder Thing
From I Have My Mother’s Eyes and I’m Not Giving Them Back (2024, Repeating Cloud)

I Have My Mother’s Eyes and I’m Not Giving Them Back spans seventeen songs and forty minutes of fractured but melodic bedroom psychedelic pop. There’s folk music, hooks, dreaminess, and pure psych throughout, and we’re left with something that balances intimacy with adventurousness, an album that invites you in to watch it go to work. Portland, Maine’s Wes Sterrs follows his muse down some incredibly odd corridors across I Have My Mother’s Eyes and I’m Not Giving Them Back, but there are plenty of pop rewards, and none are greater than “I’m Done Falling Over You”, a nearly-perfect fuzzy lo-fi pop song that recalls the more song-forward bands associated with the Elephant 6 Collective. Read more about I Have My Mother’s Eyes and I’m Not Giving Them Back here.

“Before It’s Gone”, Radio Free ABQ
From Destination (2024, Hamlet Street)

Indie rock veteran Dave Purcell recently moved to Albuquerque and started up Radio Free ABQ, and he fully embraces his new southwestern home’s desert-set roots rock/Americana. Travis Rourk’s horns and Ryan Goodhue’s accordion are welcome additions to “Before It’s Gone”, a five-minute parade of a track that’s Destination’s strongest moment as a catchy college rock record. In between the swinging choruses, though, Purcell adds a bit of strangeness and chilliness–“I’m not reminiscing about something that never happened like Norman Rockwell / When you carve it all in ones and zeroes, don’t forget my name,” he sings in the final stanza, balancing “traditional” with “exploratory” and “unsatisfied”. Read more about Destination here.

“Fair”, Dog Eyes
From Holy Friend (2024, Grand Jury)

This is nice. Oakland indie pop duo Dog Eyes recently hooked up with Grand Jury Music, a label I most associate with Hovvdy and their related projects, and Holy Friend, their latest album, is indeed a Hovvdy-reminiscent collection of sleepy lo-fi bedroom pop. “Fair” is my favorite track on the album; like a lot of Dog Eyes’ material, it’s a delicate folk-y pop song where Davis Leach and Haily Firstman balance low-key instrumentation and conversational talk-singing vocals with sneakily beautiful melodies and moments of real, deeply-hitting emotion. Seems like “bedroom pop” is in good hands with these two.

“Breath”, Orchestre Tout Puissant Marcel Duchamp
From Ventre Unique (2024, Les Disques Bongo Joe)

Abundant Living’s Zachary Lipez said that this album sounds like Dog Faced Hermans, which got my attention squarely fixed on Geneva-originating art rock collective Orchestre Tout Puissant Marcel Duchamp. Those of us who appreciate post-punk music with ample usage of horns will find a lot of music in this vein on Ventre Unique, and while Orchestre Tout Puissant Marcel Duchamp get pretty into-the-weeds with it all over the course of the record, my favorite moment is the relatively straightforward horn-pop of “Breath”. The two-minute track has a couple of moments where things get pretty heavy, but for the most part it’s more than happy to lean on horns, rhythms, and vocals to get the job done.

“33s”, Commemorative Cup
From For a Limited Time Only (2024)

Ben Husk and Kevin McGrath play together in Massachusetts emo-y indie pop group Sailor Down, and Husk also drums in post-punk/jangle pop band Lost Film. Their new duo together, Commemorative Cup, is I guess closer to the former of those two acts, but really it’s something different altogether–it’s their reverent love letter to 90s emo-punk groups like Samiam and Knapsack. For a Limited Time Only, their debut EP, is full of ambitious four-minute miles, but the first (non-intro) track on the record, “33s”, is the one that’s really stuck with me. Sensitive, catchy, noisy, giant-sounding–Commemorative Cup really have this kind of thing down pat already.

“Mariko”, p:ano
From ba ba ba (2024, C.O.Q.)

ba ba ba is the first album from Vancouver indie pop quartet p:ano in nineteen years, and the writing and instrumentation on ba ba ba is inspired by the members’ roots. The band specifically mention formative indie pop/rock bands like Yo La Tengo, Belle & Sebastian, and The Magnetic Fields that were key in bonding the group together twenty years ago, and much of Nicholas Krgovich’s writing is drawn from his experiences growing up in the Vancouver suburb of Coquitlam, where p:ano originally formed. ba ba ba is impressively coherent, but the fluttering, conversational indie pop of “Mariko” is an attention-grabber in particular. Read more about ba ba ba here.

“Wednesday, on a Hummingbird’s Wings”, The Smashing Times
From Mrs. Ladyships and the Cleanerhouse Boys (2024, K/Perennial)

All the blissful psychedelic jangle-beat melodies are still here, yes, but Mrs Ladyships and the Cleanerhouse Boys is a bit more offbeat than The Smashing Times’ last album, leaning into the eccentricities of British pop of the past across its fourteen tracks. There are some “out there” moments, but the pure pop songs of Mrs Ladyships and the Cleanerhouse Boys stand up with the Baltimore band’s best material. I don’t know if “Wednesday, on a Hummingbird’s Wing” is The Smashing Times’ best song yet, but it’s certainly on the short list for the most straight-up gorgeous thing the band have put to tape–it’s five-and-a-half minutes of wobbly but perfect pastoral guitar pop. Read more about Mrs Ladyships and the Cleanerhouse Boys here.

“Change the Framerate (Gloria)”, Vista House
From They’ll See Light (2024, Anything Bagel)

Vista House’s previous album, Oregon III, had the feeling of a record that had been cobbled together and tinkered with for a while, allowing for some surprising choices, but They’ll See Light sounds like the work of a well-oiled rock band recording a bunch of great songs in short order because they know that they’re on a roll. After a relatively subtle and casual opening duo, though, “Change the Framerate (Gloria)” is the record’s first no-holds-barred barnburner. It’s the moment where Vista House fully lean into dizzying, bouncy country-power pop, generating more than enough momentum to propel the band through the rest of They’ll See Light. Read more about They’ll See Light here.

“Birdhouse”, Ylayali
From Birdhouse in Conduit (2024, Circle Change)

Philadelphia musician Francis Lyons pieced Birdhouse in Conduit together from 2022 to 2024 at home, and it’s Ylayali at their most exploratory (especially compared to the last album from Lyons’ solo project, 2022’s relatively accessible Separation). There’s still pop music to be found in Birdhouse in Conduit, but it sits alongside ambient and droning fuzz passages, experimental electronic instrumentation, and blasts of noise. Almost-title track “Birdhouse” arrives fairly early on in the album, and after a couple of noise-filled songs, its relatively clean and hushed sound is jarring in its own right. If you’re in the right space to explore something like “Birdhouse”, though, it’s an incredibly beautiful and surprising five-minute lo-fi pop song. Read more about Birdhouse in Conduit here.

“I Fooled Me Too”, Colt Wave
From Cruel Moons (2024, Too Deluxe)

Colby Mancasola and Ken Lovgren’s lo-fi guitar pop project Colt Wave first appeared on my radar via On Call (which came out around this time last year), but the California-based duo had put out several albums in the years before it, and they’ve continued their prolific streak with this year’s Cruel Moons. Fans of On Call (and of low-key, jangly pop music in general) will be pleased to hear that Colt Wave still know their way around a hook on Cruel Moons; my favorite song on the new one is a ninety-second sparkling jangle pop song called “I Fooled Me Too”. The refrain (“Sorry I fooled you / I fooled me too”) is simple but effective, although it’s the excellent guitar lead immediately following it that’s the catchiest part of the track.

“The Other Side”, Black Thumb featuring Inna Showalter
(2024, Somber Sounds)

The most recent album from Black Thumb (the solo project of San Francisco musician and former Dusk member Colin Wilde) came out early last year, but we’ve still gotten some new music from Wilde this year in the form of a couple of singles. Back in September, Black Thumb put out a two-song single featuring lead vocals from Madeline Johnston of Midwife, and in November, Wilde linked up with Inna Showalter (Whitney’s Playland, Magic Fig) for the one-off “The Other Side”, which has particularly impressed me. It’s a really beautiful psychedelic folk rock tune that reaches toward Mazzy Star territory; the Paisley Underground appears to be alive and well in the Bay Area.

“Sunday Song”, Mt. Misery
From Love in Mind (2024, Prefect)

Jangle pop bands will never stop writing pretty songs about how lovely Sunday mornings and/or afternoons are with you, nor should they. Hartlepool’s Mt. Misery are something of Prefect Records’ flagship act (they’ve appeared on multiple compilations from the label, and released all their records on the imprint, too), and their platonic-ideal guitar pop is a strong mascot. Their latest album is called Love in Mind, and “Sunday Song” is a pretty good litmus test as to whether or not it’s for you–charmingly earnest, Teenage Fanclub-level tight construction, simple instrumentation but still with a surprising level of hooky electric guitars populating the track.

“Real Grandeza”, Oruã
From PASSE (2024, Transfusão Noise/Gezellig/Den Tapes)

Like (I imagine) a lot of stateside indie rock fans, Brazil’s Oruã first got onto my radar due to their association with Built to Spill–one of the band’s many late-period lineups (the one that recorded 2022’s When the Wind Forgets Your Name, in fact) contained half the Rio de Janeiro-based quartet. Oruã’s latest album, PASSE, has a wild psychedelic sound that’s pretty far removed from any 90s Pacific Northwest indie rock group, but it’s right at home next to bands like labelmates Gueersh. “Real Grandeza” kicks the LP off with a four-minute excursion featuring everything from fiery face-melting guitars to dubby experimental passages–okay, yes, I see why Doug Martsch liked these folks’ style.

“I Think I Need You Around”, Ryli
From I Think I Need You Around b/w When I Fall (2024, Dandy Boy)

We’re hopping on the Ryli train early, everyone! It’s not hard to do so when we see who’s in the new Bay Area band’s lineup: Yea-Ming Chen (of Yea-Ming and the Rumours) and Rob Good (of The Goods) are the quartet’s co-leaders, and the rest of the band (Luke Robbins of R.E. Seraphin on bass, Ian McBrayer, formerly of Sonny & the Sunsets, on drums) have a quality pedigree, too. Their two-song debut single wastes no time establishing Ryli as the latest jangle pop warriors to come from the Dandy Boy stable of stars–the A-side, “I Think I Need You Around”, is my favorite of the pair, with its toe-tapping beat and Chen’s subtly emotional vocals both doing a lot of heavy lifting.

“Eat Alone”, The Open Flames
(2024)

The Open Flames are an intriguing new trio from London with only two songs to their name thus far. Frontperson Dave Eastman previously played in the band Say Yes, Do Nothing, while Evan Sult was the longtime drummer in immortal Seattle group Harvey Danger (and also played in Sleepy Kitty with The Open Flames’ third member, Paige Brubeck). “Eat Alone”, the band’s second and best song so far, is an interesting piece of fuzzy college rock, falling somewhere between Robyn Hitchcock and The Dream Syndicate (with a bit of Giant Sand in there, too). Eastman’s lyrics are pretty clearly about watching someone’s hospital-bound final moments, but it’s hardly mawkishly sentimental about it–sure, Eastman slips “No one has enough time to say their goodbyes” in during the bridge, but the crux of the song is the rather opaque quip from which the title comes.

“Humorist”, Two Inch Astronaut
From Check Please / Humorist (2024, Exploding in Sound)

Yeah, I put both of the Two Inch Astronaut songs from the new single on here. So what? Maybe my coverage of “Humorist” will somehow set off a chain of events that leads to Two Inch Astronaut going viral on TikTok and exploding in popularity, forcing the erstwhile post-hardcore-math-EIS-core trio to fully reunite and start churning out new albums. A blog can dream. Either way, at least we get to enjoy “Humorist”, a song that’s a little weirder and slipperier than the relatively kinetic “Check Please” and thus presents itself as a classic “B-side that might be better than the A-side, but it’s not obvious about it”.

“Cutting Marble from a Mountain”, The Moment of Nightfall & Tony Jay
From Winter Dream (2024, KiliKiliVilla)

On tour in Japan earlier this summer, Bay Area guitar popper Michael Ramos (aka Tony Jay) linked up with Tokyo sextet The Moment of Nightfall and recorded a 10” vinyl record called Winter Dream together. Ramos brings his slow, dreamy indie pop instincts to Winter Dream, and The Moment of Nightfall are more than capable of playing to this familiar sound and even adding a more robust, grounded (but still delicate) dimension to Ramos’ music. “Cutting Marble from a Mountain”, the third track on the record, is a fully-realized, confident jangle pop success, deliberate and measured but nonetheless triumphant-sounding; it’s the first moment on Winter Dream where the possibilities of the two acts collaborating truly start to unlock themselves. Read more about Winter Dream here.

“November Rain”, Mount Eerie
From Night Palace (2024, P.W. Elverum & Sun)

I’m still not even entirely sure how much I like the new Mount Eerie album, but I’ve got two songs from Night Palace on here because the highs are really high. “November Rain” (an original song, not a Guns N’ Roses cover, if that isn’t obvious) is absolutely one of those highs–Phil Elverum spends most of the song speaking conversationally over a stumbling acoustic guitar strum, ruminating on the grotesque (and, as he observes, foolish) displays of wealth visible in his home of Anacortes, Washington, with some moments of fuzz ascension thrown in for good measure. That is to say, it’s a classic Phil Elverum song.

“Something Done Right”, The Triceratops
From Charge! (2024, Learning Curve)

I already put single “We Will Shatter” in last month’s playlist, but Charge! has been reverberating in my mind long after I wrote about it. A good deal of that has to do with the record’s penultimate track “Something Done Right”, a primordial mess of caveman noise rock, mythology, evolution, and revolution. “So–monkeys ready on three, throw your wrench in the gears,” yells The Triceratops’ frontperson, John Van Atta, at the song’s climax. It’s a cathartic moment for a record that spends the bulk of its runtime either explicitly or implicitly lamenting the seeming helplessness of us monkeys in the face of grinding exploitation. Charge! has a lot of fight in it, though. Read more about Charge! here.

“Our Time”, Yeah Yeah Yeahs
From Yeah Yeah Yeahs (2002, Touch & Go)

Hey, why not? I was revisiting the two early Yeah Yeah Yeahs EPs recently, and I really enjoyed this one, so it’s going on the playlist. Much has been written about the thing the Yeah Yeah Yeahs became a part of after these initial releases, and I’m not going to try to get into that–I just want to appreciate how cool “Our Time” still sounds in 2024. There’s not much out there that sounds like this as far as I’m concerned. It’s, like, midway between a Grifters song and a 2000s overly-earnest Big Indie anthem. Change was coming! I wish that it was a little more built around that fucked-up blues guitar and the excellent mission statement of “It’s the year to be hated,” but, nonetheless…

VOTE! In the Rosy Overdrive 2024 Reader’s Poll

That’s right, folks: it’s back. Last year was the first time I conducted a Rosy Overdrive readership poll, and the results were so excellent and exciting that it was never a question as to whether or not I’d do it again. So, it is once again time for you to tell us what your favorite music of 2024 is.

The first question on the poll is simply: What are your ten favorite albums from 2024? This is the only question that you’re required to answer in order to submit (please, choose at least five), but I do highly encourage you to list your favorite songs, EP, and record label of 2024 in the rest of the poll, too.

If you need help remembering what came out in 2024, here’s a list of everything that Rosy Overdrive wrote about in Pressing Concerns this year. Obviously, it’s a not comprehensive list of the year’s best (and you’re more than welcome to vote for albums I haven’t covered), but it’s a starting point!

The deadline to submit your choices will be at midnight (EST) on December 27th, and the results will be revealed the following week.

Click here to participate in the reader’s poll!

Pressing Concerns: Mother of Earl, Big’n, Radio Free ABQ, Miners

Hey there, everyone! Welcome to the final month of the year. Within the next few weeks, you’ll find out what Rosy Overdrive’s favorite records of 2024 are, but I plan to have plenty of new-new music up on the blog, too. It continues today, with a Pressing Concerns featuring new albums from Mother of Earl, Big’n, Radio Free ABQ, and Miners. Oh, and we did have a Pressing Concerns go up on Thanksgiving (featuring OCS, The Moment of Nightfall and Tony Jay, The Innocence Mission, and Hamburger); if you were busy with family matters or other holiday business and missed it, check it out here.

Oh, and one more thing: the Rosy Overdrive 2024 Reader’s Poll is now open for voting! Head over here to learn more about it and submit a ballot by December 27th.

Mother of Earl – Extinction Burst

Release date: November 15^th
Record label: Self-released
Genre: Indie pop, alt-country, folk rock, power pop
Formats: Digital
Pull Track: Departure Street

I first became familiar with the music of Ross Weidman last year via his homespun bedroom folk rock project Promiseland BBQ, which debuted with an inspired full-length called Murder in the Friendly City. Weidman lives in Pasadena but grew up in and until very recently lived in West Virginia–it’s where Murder in the Friendly City was recorded, and it was also where he co-founded the band Mother of Earl in 2019 with Alex Nanni. After putting out an EP and an LP in 2020 and 2021, respectively, Mother of Earl’s pace slowed–Weidman and Nanni, no longer students at West Virginia University, both moved out of state (Nanni is now in Pittsburgh). They continued to work on music together when they could, though, eventually resulting in the second Mother of Earl album, Extinction Burst. Mother of Earl is (understandably, given the full-band setup) more upbeat and full-sounding than Promiseland BBQ, but it’s not hard to see the similarities in the well-worn pop rock music the duo make together–with bits of 60s pop, roots rock, Americana, and college rock floating around in there–with Weidman’s solo material. Weidman handles the drums and Nanni sings and plays most of the guitars, but there’s a regular cast of contributors beyond them (bassists Kaleb Asmussen and Holly Foster, guitarists Tristan Miller, Liam McClelland, and John Kolar, percussionist Kris Sampson)–the revolving musical doors help Extinction Burst hold a casual feel, but the songwriting is strong enough to let us take the album seriously regardless of formality.

Extinction Burst draws plentifully from the well of “pretty pop music, depressing lyricism”–Nanni and Weidman are clearly fluent in it. The opening title track is a meandering, heartbroken lullaby of a first statement that reminds me of another great West Virginia-originating folk-pop-psych songsmith, Mr. Husband. After that, Mother of Earl give us “Life After Death”, a perky song about mortality that enthusiastically declares “Let’s live a lie!” and “Venomous Snake” (which I choose to believe is just a nice song about being a venomous snake with no metaphor attached). Mother of Earl seem to get bolder with their song construction as Extinction Burst advances–the final four tracks on the album all feel like “epics” in some sense of the word. The technicolor “I Saw Stars” finds Nanni doing a pretty solid Brandon Flowers impression for a sweeping, glockenspiel-aided piece of heartland pop, “Just When Things Were Looking Up” is Mother of Earl trying jammy, off-the-cuff retro-rock on for size, “Circus” is a precariously-stacked multi-part prog-pop denouement, and “Everything’s Gonna Turn Out Alright” is the final cooldown. “Ignore the sound above our heads / Just act like everything is fine,” Nanni sings in the verses of the final song, and the title line is qualified with an “I’m still pretty sure”. Their frontperson might sound a bit shaky in this particular moment, but Mother of Earl bring more than enough confidence to Extinction Burst. (Bandcamp link)

Big’n – End Comes Too Soon

Release date: November 15^th
Record label: Computer Students
Genre: Noise rock, post-hardcore, post-punk, math rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: South of Lonesome

The Joliet, Illinois-originating, Chicago-based band Big’n are a key part of Windy City noise rock history. During their initial run from 1990 to 1997, they put out a bunch of singles, splits, and EPs as well as two LPs, both recorded by Steve Albini–1994’s Cutthroat and 1996’s Discipline Through Sound (which came out on legendary underground label Skin Graft). The quartet (vocalist William Akins, guitarist Todd Johnson, bassist Michael Chartrand, and drummer Brian Wnukowski) quietly returned in 2011 with an EP called Spare the Horses, and they’ve been intermittently active since then–at some point, Fred Popolo replaced Chartrand on bass, and the group struck up a relationship with the label Computer Students, who put out their 2018 EP Knife of Sin and reissued Discipline Through Sound in 2022. It all has led up to the third Big’n album and first in twenty-eight years, End Comes Too Soon, recorded by Shane Hochstetler at Electrical Audio in two sessions in 2023 and 2024. Big’n’s return to the big screen is both “bombastic” and “lean” at the same time–the music is sharp and cutting, the most mechanically pulverizing rock music this side of Shellac, while Akins is an unhinged, prowling noise rock frontperson in the vein of David Yow or even Michael Gerald. Big’n (and Akins’ voice in particular) have aged like a fine wine or moldy cheese–they’ve grown into the unflappable, unhurried rock-blacksmiths this kind of music aspires to evoke.

Big’n plow through fifteen songs in thirty-five minutes like a combine harvester–efficiently and all-consumingly. Six of End Comes Too Soon’s tracks are under a minute long and don’t even have proper titles (labeled “XMSN-17”, “XMSN-24”, etc.), but the band put just as much effort and energy into them than the “real” songs–it’s actually kind of disconcerting that Big’n fit full-on noise rock song ideas in forty seconds and it doesn’t feel any less complete than their three-to-four minute tracks. Still, I’m glad we get Big’n in larger increments too, because it allows them to really show off how well they’ve got this whole “pounding, rhythmic” thing down. “South of Lonesome” and “Them Wolves” are immutable, unmoving anchors of rock songs, and Akins is the prowling Sisyphus trying to make something dynamic out of the stone and going insane in the process. You’re not going to get any big surprises after Big’n effectively define themselves by the first few tracks, but there’s enough–the spoken-word, metallic “XMSN-40” and “XMSN-44”, the fiery, drum-led “Arkansas Death Cult”, the eternal damnation of “Capsized”–to make it feel like Big’n are pushing at their edges rather than just going through the motions. And that must be hard for them, given how great they are at going through those motions. (Computer Students link)

Radio Free ABQ – Destination

Release date: November 1^st
Record label: Hamlet Street
Genre: Alt-country, folk rock, roots rock, college rock, psychedelic rock
Formats: CD, digital
Pull Track: Before It’s Gone

Dave Purcell is a thirty-some-year veteran of indie rock, playing in bands like Pike 27 and Ghost Man on Second in Cincinnati and Chicago before relocating to Albuquerque a few years ago and starting up his most recent project, Radio Free ABQ. On their debut record, Destination, Purcell and his new bandmates (bassist Scott Brewer, keyboardist Ryan Goodhue, and trombone player/guitarist Travis Rourk) fully embrace the bandleader’s new southwestern habitat, turning in a desert-set roots rock/Americana album that contains bits of regional legends like Calexico, Alejandro Escovedo, Giant Sand, and Dave Alvin. Just because Radio Free ABQ’s peers aren’t hard to point to doesn’t mean that Destination isn’t a unique record, though–apparently, Purcell had been making primarily instrumental music before returning to rock with this new band, and his latest project enthusiastically throws together mid-period R.E.M.-like college rock, Los Lobos-esque Chicano-inspired rock and roll, and, most surprisingly, synthesizer/space pop-influenced “noir pop” moments in the instrumentals, too. It all amounts to a forty-six minute statement that’s a strong reintroduction to a musician who’s been around for quite a bit but still has plenty of ideas and things to say.

One of the most striking moments on Destination is the opening track “Tito (Far Away, Not Lonely)”, which combines Escovedo-style Tex-Mex rock with swooning, spacey synths to create a New Mexico “Space Odyssey”. Rourk’s horns and Goodhue’s accordion are welcome additions to “Before It’s Gone”, a five-minute parade of a track that’s the record’s strongest moment as a catchy college rock group. In between the swinging choruses, though, Purcell adds a bit of strangeness and chilliness–“I’m not reminiscing about something that never happened like Norman Rockwell / When you carve it all in ones and zeroes, don’t forget my name,” he sings in the final stanza. This exploratory, unsatisfied guiding light takes us through the rest of the record’s more “traditional” first half (marked by a couple more should’ve-been-hits in “Figure It Out” and “Far Away from Everything”) and into a more experimental, spacey second half, populated by more instrumentals (three) than songs with vocals (two). The instrumentals aren’t mere interludes, and are key to the final journey of Destination–the wandering throughout the desert with a synthesizer in “Chapala, Quizas” gives way to “Run Past Temptation”, “End of the World” (the last song with words), and “Mojave Phone Booth”, which close the record by throwing bits of blues, jazz, funk, ska, dub, and even zydeco into Radio Free ABQ’s sound. Purcell and his crew are still picking up a strong signal out in the middle of the desert. (Bandcamp link)

Miners – A Healthy Future on Earth

Release date: October 18^th
Record label: Flesh & Bone/Kitty
Genre: Shoegaze, noise pop, fuzz pop
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Game Theory

Wollongong, Australia trio Miners have been flying under the radar since the mid-2010s, with a debut EP in 2015 followed by a split 7” with the similarly-named Wollongongers Chimers and a self-titled debut cassette LP in 2021. Guitarist/vocalist Blake Clee, bassist Nick Johnson (who also plays in Mope City), and drummer Wilson Harris have gotten some help from Chicago underground label Flesh & Bone (Greet Death, Doused, Gentle Heat) to get more ears on their sophomore album, A Healthy Future on Earth, and the trio’s fuzzed-out, echoing version of pop music is more than ready for primetime on their latest record. Miners do call themselves a “shoegaze” band, but they seem to be interested in the hallmarks of that particular genre as a way of beefing up their 90s-style indie rock sound (they mention Swervedriver as an influence, which I think helps explain from where the trio are coming here). Miners differ from their main sources of inspiration and a lot of their present-day noisy Australian counterparts due to their love of a good pop hook–if you (like me) find yourself drawn to the Guided by Voices-y, heavy-melodic version of shoegaze-pop practiced by American bands like Gaadge and Ex Pilots, Miners are the Aussie indie rock group for you.

A Healthy Future on Earth, like the best records in this vein, fervently believes that beauty and noise can and should go hand in hand, leading to a ton of truly remarkable moments in the album’s ten tracks. “Sapphire” doesn’t open the album with Miners’ most blatantly accessible side, but there’s still a lot of smart melodies baked into the adventurous multi-part indie rock journey. “Why Can’t I” is Miners’ burnt-out dream pop, taking a minute to get to the full-on fuzz roaring and keeping the delicate core of the track intact when they finally reach it. “Game Theory” is the kind of steady, droning underground pop song that one might pull together after listening to a lot of Sonic Youth and/or Bailter Space–plenty of bands hang their hat on this kind of music entirely, but on A Healthy Future on Earth it sits alongside noise-punk wall-of-sound excursions like “Dead Malls”, slacker rock bursts like “Fade”, and restrained, almost slowcore basement rock exercises like “Caution Horses”. A Healthy Future on Earth isn’t going to turn Miners into international stars (probably), but it’s the kind of album that suggests its creators could have a very long and fruitful partnership together making this kind of music. (Bandcamp link)

Also notable:

Pressing Concerns: OCS, The Moment of Nightfall & Tony Jay, The Innocence Mission, Hamburger

Happy Thanksgiving! Thank you for reading this blog on an American holiday (or if you’re reading it at a later date, I hope you had a nice holiday/normal week if you aren’t from the States). New music is still coming out this week, and there’s enough I wanted to cover to have a Thursday Pressing Concerns: today’s post looks at a live record from OCS, a collaborative LP between The Moment of Nightfall & Tony Jay, the newest album from The Innocence Mission, and a new EP from Hamburger. It’s been a busy week here: on Tuesday, we published the 2024 Rosy Overdrive Label Watch, featuring a drop-in on a dozen or so of the blog’s favorite record labels, and we had a Monday Pressing Concerns (featuring The Old Ceremony, Big Nobody, EggS, and a Count Your Lucky Stars Records split 7″), so there’s some more music and words about it for you to check out during this (potentially) long weekend.

OCS – Live at Permanent Records

Release date: November 29^th
Record label: Rock Is Hell
Genre: Folk, lo-fi pop
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: If I Had a Reason

I have a confession: a couple of years ago, I made the decision to try to listen to every album by John Dwyer’s Thee Oh Sees (aka Osees, aka The Ohsees, aka OCS) in order–but I bailed out long before I finished the project. I did nonetheless gain an appreciation for the group’s earliest works, much of which was released under the name “OCS” in the early-to-mid-2000s. In recent years, Dwyer has dusted off the “OCS” name for music that recalls the early, quiet lo-fi psychedelic folk songs of those particular records, and it also generally involves collaborations with early (but post-original-OCS) member Brigid Dawson. Dwyer and Dawson returned to this well in 2017 with Memory of a Cut Off Head, and they also reunited last year for a handful of acoustic “holiday” shows; these 2023 performances at the Lodge Room and Permanent Records Roadhouse in Los Angeles form the source material for the latest OCS album. Live at Permanent Records is being released by Rock Is Hell in a six-7” box set format (or a boring old double LP for people who hate constantly standing up), and the bulk of it is Dwyer and Dawson strumming and singing acoustic songs from across the OCS discography (“some new, some very old that I’ve never played live ever” per Dwyer).

I’m sure it’d be a shock for those who know Dwyer’s band as ferocious garage-punk warriors, but for those of us who know and appreciate this side of OCS, it’s a welcome revisitation. Live at Permanent Records sounds great–the stripped-down setup ensures that Dwyer’s guitar and the duo’s vocals shine through clearly (and, as Dwyer more or less alludes to in some of the banter, it sounds “better” than a lot of those early OCS records anyway). Dwyer is pretty chatty on the record, and plenty of between-song banter is left in the album–I’ve heard him speak before, so I was prepared, but it is a bit surprising how the guy who makes goblin-mode psychedelic garage-prog consistently sounds pretty approachable (albeit foul-mouthed, yes). A lot of Dwyer’s stories involve reminiscing about the various drugs he was taking during the making of those OCS albums and the questionable artistic decisions spurred on by them–and then it’s time for another excellent two-minute folk song from the duo.

There are some great folk-pop tunes here, like “Dreadful Heart”, “If I Had a Reason”, and “I Am Slow”, but OCS are also able to reach the fringes of folk and psychedelic music on Live at Permanent Records, too (according to the notes, there are at least seven different guitar tunings to be found here, which I’m sure contributes to that feeling). After the lengthy drone of “Highland Wife’s Lament”, OCS decide to play “one rock song”, which happens to be an eighteen-minute version of “Block of Ice” with Tom Dolas on piano and Nick Murray on drums. It sounds just like Thee Oh Sees–even though we literally hear the setup happen as the band rearranges instruments and calls up the extra players to the stage, it’s still quite hard to fathom how we got from the humble beginnings of the band to where they are now. I guess I need to listen to all of their records in order to figure it out. (Bandcamp link)

The Moment of Nightfall & Tony Jay – Winter Dream

Release date: November 29^th
Record label: KiliKiliVilla
Genre: Slowcore, dream pop, jangle pop
Formats: Vinyl, cassette, digital
Pull Track: Cutting Marble From a Mountain

Pretty much every time I write about Michael Ramos on this blog I have to acknowledge how prolific he is–every time I turn around, there’s a new record from his solo project Tony Jay, or his duo Flowertown is back, or he’s popping up on a compilation or on new music from another San Francisco Bay-area band. So when Ramos took Tony Jay on a tour of Japan this August, it shouldn’t be a surprise that he saw it as an opportunity to collaborate with musicians from across the Pacific Ocean. Specifically, he linked up with Tokyo sextet The Moment of Nightfall, and the seven of them (Ramos, Masato Saito, Yoko Satori, Yuji Usui, Tomomi Usui, Miki Hirose, and Masayuki Takahashi) recorded six songs over two days together, which are now being released as a 10” vinyl record called Winter Dream. As it turns out, the two acts are quite complimentary–Ramos brings his slow, dreamy indie pop instincts to Winter Dream, and The Moment of Nightfall are more than capable of playing to this familiar sound. Tony Jay’s solo material often sounds so ghostly and fragile that it’s on the brink of disappearing, but with The Moment of Nightfall at his side, there’s a more robust, grounded feeling to Winter Dream–but it’s still delicate in its construction.

Winter Dream may have been recorded in the middle of Japan’s “sweltering [August] heat”, but this twenty-one minute mini-album lives up to the snowy chilliness evoked by its title. The record’s opening track, “kori no mori (Ice Forest)” is classic Ramos, leaning on little more than a clean, plain electric guitar, occasional bass, and a beautiful duet between Ramos and one of The Moment of Nightfall’s members (a few of them have vocal credits here). “Angel” is similarly restrained, but “Cutting Marble From a Mountain” and “Tell Me Why” really start opening up the possibilities of this particular collaboration; the former is a fully-realized, confident jangle pop success, deliberate and measured but nonetheless triumphant-sounding, and the latter gets creative with backing vocals as a foundational song element, handclaps, and droning organ like a layer of white snow across the nearly five-minute creation. “She Came from a Colder Place” is, appropriately, the most “wintry” moment on Winter Dream, with the cavernous percussion echoing in the song’s cold, damp, expansive body, but all hands return on deck for closing track “Time Goes By”, organs and guitars and rhythms all moving in slow but orchestrated lockstep to end a brief but fruitful link-up whose results we’re fortunate to be able to hear. (Bandcamp lnk)

The Innocence Mission – Midwinter Swimmers

Release date: November 29^th
Record label: Thérèse/Bella Union/P-Vine
Genre: Folk-pop, chamber pop, folk rock, twee
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
Pull Track: Midwinter Swimmers

Lancaster, Pennsylvania’s The Innocence Mission and their distinct folk-pop sound have been a cult success since they formed in the mid-1980s–over the course of nearly forty years, the trio of lead vocalist/songwriter/guitarist Karen Peris, guitarist Don Peris, and bassist Mike Bitts have consistently soldiered on through a career comprised of a dozen albums, brushes with college rock success, and stints on both major labels and notable independent ones (the departure of founding drummer Steve Brown around the end of the 90s being the band’s only lineup change). Here The Innocence Mission are in 2024 with their thirteenth full-length album called Midwinter Swimmers, which gets us ready for the cold weather with a collection of 1960s-esque folk-pop music, chamber pop, and the indie pop that characterized what “alternative rock” was in the pre-grunge era from where the band initially rose. Midwinter Swimmers is both timeless and locationless–everything from Peris’ unique voice to her understandable but hard-to-categorize writing to the band’s paradoxically rich yet stripped-down sound makes this record sound particularly unmoored from any kind of geographical or temporal context.

Midwinter Swimmers is, at its core, a collection of great pop music. Like another longrunning indie pop band that returned this year, The Softies, The Innocence Mission haven’t lost their clear skill at turning skeletal acoustic folk songs into full-on indie pop. It’s not as stark as The Softies’ music is, at least not always–there are some relatively unadorned moments on the album, but the band layer pianos and strings (not to mention Bitts’ upright bass) to create subtle but unmistakably vivid chamber pop throughout the record. A good majority of the album clearly sounds like it was built over top of fully-formed acoustic skeletons–everything from the low-key opening duo of “This Thread Is a Green Street” and the title track to late-record highlights “Cloud to Cloud” and “A Hundred Flowers” all start in this iteration, with some (like “A Hundred Flowers”) being content to more or less stay there and others (“Cloud to Cloud”) ending up somewhere else entirely. It seems like the theme of this blog post is winter, and Midwinter Swimmers is an excellent exercise in conjuring it up in the form of an album–it’s hazy and somewhat easy to get lost in, but its psychedelia is a much starker, colder, and blanketing type than the overstuffed deliriousness of “summer” albums. We’ve got The Innocence Mission with us as we navigate the toughest season change of the year. (Bandcamp link)

Hamburger – Beat Back the Ghouls

Release date: November 29^th
Record label: Specialist Subject
Genre: Lo-fi indie rock, fuzz pop, power pop
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Toothless

Bristol, England’s Hamburger was co-founded by Fearghall Kilkenny and Tom Kelly in 2018, and while they’ve only put out one EP in the ensuing six years (2020’s Teenage Terrified), they’ve also grown into a six-piece band (also featuring Doug Hayman, Katie Stentiford, Liv Pilkington, and Mike Baker), played shows with Martha and Trust Fund, and linked up with Specialist Subject Records (Witching Waves, Supermilk, Long Neck). The Hamburger sextet is now ready to double their recorded output thus far with their second EP, a six-song collection called Beat Back the Ghouls. The twenty-two minute record has an intriguing sound; it’s not really the indie punk sound I associate with Specialist Subject and their ilk, opting for fuzzy, sometimes meandering bedroom rock instead. It’s perhaps a more delicate version of the inventive shoegaze-adjacent fuzz pop going on over in the States, adding a more overt British indie pop/twee sound to the distortion and post-bedroom pop “lo-fi indie rock”. Sometimes Hamburger sound like an anonymous project uploaded to Bandcamp circa 2014, other times like aspiring stadium rockers, but they wear both outfits well on Beat Back the Ghouls.

“Buffalo” introduces Beat Back the Ghouls at its own pace, offering up roaring Weezer-y alt-rock guitars and switched-off lead vocals–but delivered slowly and deliberately rather than rushing out to greet us. Nonetheless, “Buffalo” rises to the occasion with a purposeful attitude, and it’s the next song, “Toothless”, where Hamburger really start wandering. It’s catchy, too, with some inspired synths and jangly guitars delivered in the sound’s sonic gumbo–all of which dress up the simple central melody of the track, which is again unhurried. The majority of the second half of Beat Back the Ghouls is taken up by the longest song on the EP, the nearly six-minute “Frankenstein” (and that’s not even counting “Shelley”, which basically serves as an instrumental introduction to it). It’s a brilliant power ballad in its own way, a slow dance for the balls and galas of the warped world of Hamburger. It’s such a winner that it almost overshadows the sub-ninety-second closing track, “Rip”, but that one’s not to be missed either, as it quickly launches from hammered-out acoustic bedroom folk song to sweeping synth-aided power pop anthem at a moment’s notice and closes the EP out in grand fashion. If well-written, impeccably-orchestrated indie rock is a ghoul’s kryptonite, we can consider them beaten back. (Bandcamp link)

Also notable:

Rosy Overdrive Label Watch 2024

Welcome to the third annual Rosy Overdrive Label Watch! In what I guess is a yearly tradition now, I check in on what a dozen (give or take) of my favorite modern labels have been up to the past few months, and pull a couple of highlights from each one. Rosy Overdrive is fully in the corner of small record labels and, as a blog, sees a kinship with them as a fellow human-based, passion-driven resource for discovering new music. The past two years I did this in early November, but this year I didn’t get to it by then, and so I figure why not run it during the week of Thanksgiving? I sure am thankful for these labels and the music they release!

As I always reiterate, this is not a “best record labels of 2024” list (although there would, of course, be some overlap). These are the labels that I’ve grown to love over the past decade or so, some of which were quite active this year, while others were less so. Still, everyone on this list put out enough music for me to choose both a favorite record and a worthy “honorable mention” (which can be either my second favorite, something I thought didn’t get as much attention as it should’ve, or something I didn’t have time to review in Pressing Concerns but still merits a closer look).

There are a bunch of great record labels doing great work that I don’t have time to highlight here, but, since the last Label Watch, the blog now has a “browse by label” section which lists every record label whose releases I’ve covered at least three times on the blog. Pretty cool, huh?

Two-time veteran Mt. St. Mtn. drops off this list as they only put out one release this year (System Exclusive’s Click; it’s a good one); here’s hoping we hear more from them next year. And, last but not least: continuing my goal to add a new label every year, we now welcome Meritorio Records to the club!

Candlepin

RO Pick: Alexei Shishkin, Open Door Policy

The prolific Alexei Shishkin, upon linking up with Candlepin Records, actually cleans and polishes up his lo-fi bedroom rock sound on Open Door Policy. The studio-recorded album ends up sounding like the more refined, pop-friendly sides of Shishkin’s 90s indie rock influences (Malkmus, Berman, Linkous, Martsch, and Lytle) or like a lost underground “best of” compilation, and there’s also a newly-pronounced rootsy streak. (Read more)

Honorable Mention: Glaring Orchid, I Hope You’re Okay

Like pretty much everything co-released by Julia’s War and Candlepin, Glaring Orchid’s I Hope You’re Okay falls somewhere on the 90s-style lo-fi indie rock, shoegaze, and slowcore continuum. Bandleader Quinn Mulvihill is nonetheless a rising talent to keep tabs on in this crowded and noisy field, as there’s a ton of brilliance to be found in between their debut record’s walls of fuzz and requisite sonic left-turns.

(Also reviewed on Rosy Overdrive: Abel, Dizzy Spell / Chaepter, Naked Era / The Collect Pond, Lightbreaker / Saturnalias, Bugfest)

Exploding in Sound

RO Pick: Kal Marks, Wasteland Baby

Kal Marks describe their sixth LP, Wasteland Baby, as a “borderline-concept album”, and the Boston trio spend it wandering around a dystopian, post-apocalyptic world that looks pretty similar to our own. As much as or even more than the lyrics, it’s the band’s playing that turns the record into something like a story; there’s Kal Marks’ signature noise rock, yes, but the group use rhythms and sweeping art rock to embark on a journey removed from their dingy basements of origin. (Read more)

Honorable Mention: Mandy, Lawn Girl

Melkbelly’s Miranda Winters doesn’t abandon the Breeders/Veruca Salt-indebted 90s alt-rock sound of her main band on Lawn Girl, her first record as Mandy, but it does still sound like a “solo” album underneath its fuzzed-out guitars. Winters doesn’t have to shout over her band, as they shape their sound so that her voice can be quietly intense and still command full attention. It’s something of a patchwork record, but Lawn Girl’s disparate moments all hang together. (Read more)

(Also reviewed on Rosy Overdrive: Babe Report, Did You Get Better / Pile, Hot Air Balloon)

Feel It

RO Pick: VACATION, Rare Earth

Rare Earth is an Ohio rock and roll record made with the belief that pop music should be played loud and fast; the Cincinnati-based VACATION combine together Midwestern, blue-collar pop punk with meaty, mid-period Guided by Voices might. All in all, Rare Earth is one of the most inspired-sounding rock records I’ve heard in quite a bit–huge-sounding, catchy, with the edges anything but sanded off. (Read more)

Honorable Mention: Marcel Wave, Something Looming

(Also reviewed on Rosy Overdrive: The Ar-Kaics, See the World on Fire / The Drin, Elude the Torch / Why Bother?, Hey, At Least You’re Not Me)

12XU

RO Pick: Mope Grooves, Box of Dark Roses

Honorable Mention: Love Child, Peel Session

12XU has single-handedly spearheaded the Love Child revival this year, putting out a double LP compilation of work from the 80s/90s indie rock group as well as making their albums Witchcraft and Okay? available digitally. I’m going with their (unaired) 1992 Peel Session for this list though, as the four-song, fifteen minute release is a brief but excellent introduction into the New York group’s noisy power trio version of Big Apple indie rock.

(Also reviewed on Rosy Overdrive: Chimers, Through Today / Lupo Citta, Lupo Cittá / Weak Signal, Fine)

Slumberland

RO Pick: Humdrum, Every Heaven

Honorable Mention: Lunchbox, Pop and Circumstance

Lunchbox’s Donna McKean and Tim Brown are Bay Area indie pop godparents–it took the rest of the region a couple of decades to catch up to the 90s-originating group, but when their moment came, Lunchbox was ready. The dozen pop songs on Pop and Circumstance come from people who live and breathe vintage pop rock of the 1960s and 70s–bubblegum pop, mod, psychedelic pop, and soul, delivered with ample experience and honed knowledge. (Read more)

(Also reviewed on Rosy Overdrive: Birdie, Some Dusty / Chime School, The Boy Who Ran the Paisley Hotel / Lightheaded, Combustible Gems / Neutrals, New Town Dream / The Reds, Pinks & Purples, Unwishing Well / Tony Jay, Knife Is But a Dream / Torrey, Torrey / The Umbrellas, Fairweather Friend)

Post Present Medium

RO Pick: The Spatulas, Beehive Mind

The Spatulas will probably always be an under-the-radar band (even I kind of forgot about this album until it came time to put this list together), but it suits them just fine. Cambridge, Massachusetts singer-songwriter Miranda Soileau-Pratt is a sneakily beautiful pop writer on Beehive Mind, which has one foot in the worlds of Pacific Northwest/Bay Area indie pop and twee but with diversions into more Post Present Medium-esque experimental psych pop and even some New England folk touches.

Honorable Mention: Muscle Beach, Muscle Beach

Oh, boy! Do you like rock music that sounds like it’s been warped and stretched and deconstructed to all hell? Does Trout Mask Replica make sense to you? Do you hate hooks? If any of this describes you, you’d probably be into the self-titled debut album from Muscle Beach, a Los Angeles band about whom I know almost nothing. There’s two guitarists, a drummer, and Jane on “vocals/effects”–and you never know just where any of them are headed on Muscle Beach.

Dear Life

RO Pick: Fust, Songs of the Rail

Aaron Dowdy put out seven EPs in 2017 and 2018 as Fust, years before the North Carolina project became a full-fledged country rock band with a couple of excellent full-lengths. Dowdy’s intimate, lo-fi bedroom pop take on alt-country in these twenty-eight songs, compiled digitally by Dear Life as Songs of the Rail, paints a blurry homespun picture, with songs running into each other as Fust moves from one sleepy-sounding idea to the next. (Read more)

Honorable Mention: Lindsay Reamer, Natural Science

The debut album from Philadelphia alt-country/folk rock singer-songwriter Lindsay Reamer is an impressively-orchestrated, polished record that’s never not breezy and pop-forward. It’s one of the most “instant-gratification” records to come out of Dear Life in a while–but Reamer isn’t put into a box by that at all, gleefully hopping from upbeat country rock to dreamy, layered folk music throughout Natural Science. (Read more)

(Also reviewed on Rosy Overdrive: Hour, Ease the Work / Nina Ryser, Water Giants)

Don Giovanni

RO Pick: Bad Moves, Wearing Out the Refrain

At their best, D.C. power-pop-punk quartet Bad Moves are a walking, talking, harmonizing example of how pop music can be jam-packed with meaning and intent without losing any other part of itself in the process–and Wearing Out the Refrain is Bad Moves at their best. The group’s third full-length lives up to its name; the hits keep coming, and while Bad Moves have always been some of the best hook merchants in broadly-speaking punk music, Wearing Out the Refrain is the sound of them leaning fully in. (Read more)

Honorable Mention: The Ergs, dorkrockcorkrod (Steve Albini Remix)

This is pop punk! This is dorkrockcorkrod! For its twentieth birthday, the debut album from New Jersey power trio The Ergs–the one that propelled Mikey Erg to one of the most interesting careers in punk over the next two decades–was given a shined-up new remix by Steve Albini and a good old-fashioned repressing from Don Giovanni. Sixteen songs, thirty-two minutes, and no shortage of high-flying, wildly catchy writing that is even better than you remember it being (unless you’ve listened lately, in which case you know that it holds up).

(Also reviewed on Rosy Overdrive: Mourning [A] BLKstar, Ancient//Future / St. Lenox, Ten Modern American Work Songs)

Trouble in Mind

RO Pick: Dummy, Free Energy

Los Angeles noise pop group Dummy approached their sophomore album, Free Energy, with the clear intention of making something different than their 2021 sensory overload debut Mandatory Enjoyment, and the band indeed have grown into something new. The resultant album is something that’s sleek, slick, and smooth–rather than come at you at full force, Dummy dart around us and leap over top of us, marrying fuzzy, distorted shoegaze-pop with alternative-dance elements in a way that’s frequently surprising but always coherent. (Read more)

Honorable Mention: Nightshift, Homosapien

Glasgow’s Nightshift have experienced significant lineup changes since 2021’s Zöe, so it’s not surprising that their third album, Homosapien, brings some changes for the band. The quartet are hardly unrecognizable, but there’s a palpable shift from an emphasis on Young Marble Giants/Marine Girls-esque minimal rhythmic guitar pop to a clearer embrace of a fuller, busier, and electric (but still quite catchy) experimental/art rock sound. (Read more)

(Also reviewed on Rosy Overdrive: Writhing Squares, Mythology)

Lame-O

RO Pick: Lily Seabird, Alas,

Burlington, Vermont’s Lily Seabird throws down the gauntlet in the realm of “folk rock/alt-country-influenced indie rock” with Alas, her second album. It’s a bold statement by someone making a case to be thought of as one of the most exciting and intriguing voices currently doing it, to get mentioned in the same breath as Wednesday and Big Thief one of these days. Bud Tapes put this out on cassette at the beginning of the year, and Lame-O rightfully took notice, adding Seabird to their stable and issuing Alas, on vinyl this November. (Read more)

Honorable Mention: Dazy, IT’S ONLY A SECRET (If You Repeat It)

It’s short, and it’s very sweet. IT’S ONLY A SECRET (If You Repeat It) is Dazy’s first new music in a year, and the three-track EP picks up the thread right where James Goodson left off, with his instantly recognizable huge hooks that are equal parts pop punk and Madchester losing no potency over time. Dance-pop and electronica, punk energy and huge guitars–all in under ten minutes. (Read more)

Sophomore Lounge

RO Pick: Styrofoam Winos, Real Time

It’s not like “laid-back country rock” is new territory for Nashville supergroup Styrofoam Winos, but the way that they do it Real Time–effortlessly passing the torch between the band’s three co-leaders, creating a singular vibe across these ten songs–is a palpable leap. Joe Kenkel, Lou Turner, and Trevor Nikrant meld together here more than ever before, creating a cohesive album that sounds relaxed and comfortable as a whole. (Read more)

Honorable Mention: Animal Piss, It’s Everywhere, Grace

What a name, eh? Well, there’s nothing foul about the smooth, irreverent version of country music practiced by western Massachusetts’ Animal Piss, It’s Everywhere (featuring Animal, Surrender!‘s Rob Smith on drums, among others). On Grace, the Pissers sing about vacations, beaches, and cocktails, sometimes as though they’re in the midst of enjoying them and other times like they could really use ’em.

Comedy Minus One

RO Pick: Mint Mile, Roughrider

Roughrider, the long-awaited second album from Chicago’s Mint Mile, has a “snapshot” and “wide-ranging” feel that becomes more pronounced here due to it being significantly shorter than their double-LP debut, Ambertron. Silkworm/Bottomless Pit’s Tim Midyett guides Mint Mile through meandering country-rock, sunny pop rock, and moments of surprising bareness throughout their latest triumph. (Read more)

Honorable Mention: Deep Tunnel Project, Deep Tunnel Project

The debut album from a Windy City indie rock supergroup featuring the aforementioned Midyett as well as John Mohr and Michael Greenlees (both of Tar) and Jeff Dean (Her Head’s on Fire, The Story So Far, The Bomb). Deep Tunnel Project is all Chicago, from the lyrics to the band and album name to the music, which is a garage and punk-influenced take on workmanlike Second City underground rock music. (Read more)

Meritorio

RO Pick: Dancer, 10 Songs I Hate About You

After two stellar EPs introduced the Glasgow band last year, 10 Songs I Hate About You is Dancer’s first full-length, and their potent indie pop/post-punk sound hasn’t missed a step. Vocalist Gemma Fleet is still announcing every song’s title before it begins, Andrew Doig’s bass is all over the place and a treat to observe, and so on. All the ingredients for an excellent first album were lined up, and 10 Songs I Hate About You knocks it out of the park. (Read more)

Honorable Mention: Best Bets, The Hollow Husk of Feeling

The Hollow Husk of Feeling is a record full to the brim of smart pop craft and energy. On the New Zealand band’s sophomore album, Best Bets put together a grounded, unsubtle collection of power pop, garage rock, and even glam rock that eschews the hazier and subtler sides of their home country’s guitar pop scene. The Hollow Husk of Feeling is a cathartic listen, as there’s a palpable edge to Best Bets’ jangly, fuzzed-out tunes. (Read more)

(Also reviewed on Rosy Overdrive: Jim Nothing, Grey Eyes, Grey Lynn / The Maureens, Everyone Smiles / Rural France, Exactamondo! / Sad Eyed Beatniks, Ten Brocades)