Pressing Concerns: Earwig, Sting Pain Index, Dietz, Addicus

December or not, there’s still plenty of new music to cover in Pressing Concerns. Today, we’ve got new albums from Dietz and Addicus, as well as new EPs from Earwig and Sting Pain Index. Check them out below! We did have a Pressing Concerns go up on Thanksgiving (featuring Mint Mile, Tulpa, The Melancholy Kings, and Split Apex); if you were busy with family matters or other holiday business and missed it, check it out here.

Also: The Rosy Overdrive 2025 Reader’s Poll is now open for voting! Head over here to learn more about it and submit a ballot by December 26th.

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.

Earwig – Secret Studio Sessions

Release date: October 19th
Record label: Self-released
Genre: Power pop, heartland rock, 90s indie rock
Formats: Digital
Pull Track: Late September Song

The Columbus, Ohio quartet Earwig has been around since the early 1990s, and the only consistent member throughout has been guitarist and vocalist Lizard McGee (who himself is something of a Columbus indie rock institution). It’s been almost a decade since the last Earwig album (2016’s Pause For The Jets), but the group are still active: the current lineup is McGee, Costa Hondroulis on bass, Jeremy Skeen on drums, and McGee’s daughter, James McGee-Moore, on lead vocals. The four of them are working on a new album called Rattle OK, and in the meantime they’ve released Secret Studio Sessions, featuring live-in-studio versions of four songs slated to be on their new LP. I didn’t know it was a “live” EP when I first listened to it; it just sounds like four good indie rock songs done power trio (plus power trio’s guitarist’s daughter) style.

I would dare call the “Late September Song”, the opening track, “anthemic”; this doesn’t sound like a band still stuck in the 90s underground, but one that’s let itself grow into something different with time. “Late September Song” is the “hit”, but that doesn’t mean the rest of Secret Studio Sessions is a letdown–the slightly jangly power pop bounce of “Coyote Cry” and the mid-tempo power ballad “Fucked Up & Perfect” are a fine middle section, and “The World Is Coming 2 an End” (featuring vocal trade-offs between McGee and McGee-Moore) is nearly the mirror image of the EP’s opening. Looking forward to hearing that Rattle OK album now, certainly. (Bandcamp link)

Sting Pain Index – The Revolution Somewhere Else

Release date: September 29th
Record label: Self-released
Genre: Post-punk, noise rock, post-hardcore, garage punk, new wave, art rock
Formats: Digital
Pull Track: John Brown’s Knife

I don’t know much about Sting Pain Index. They call themselves a “punk rock supergroup”. They put out an album in 2022 called Songs About Fracking. They are likely spread out across the United States, and appear to have connections to Texas, Tennessee, and Maryland; their first album was recorded by Ross Ingram (EEP) in El Paso, and their new EP The Revolution Somewhere Else was recorded in Knoxville and co-produced by Ingram and Scotty Loewen (THEMM!). So what does this four-song EP sound like? Well, like punk rock, I suppose, albeit of a noisy, abrasive, and “post-” variety. The first half of The Revolution Somewhere Else is the more aggressive one, with the furious shouting at the beginning of opening track “Flight Risk” kicking off a garage-y noise punk introduction and the prowling post-punk “John Brown’s Knife” living up to the high expectations set by the title.

Things get a bit…stranger on the digital B-side, as we then take a trip to a seven-minute 80s-style power ballad called “I Could Have Been Queen”. And then, of course, The Revolution Somewhere Else ends with a shockingly faithful cover of Tears for Fears’ “Break It Down Again” (if the title of the EP sounded familiar but unplaceable to you–it’s a paraphrased lyric from this one). Sting Pain Index clearly saw something in this also-ran pop song that speaks to their agitated underground Americana, and The Revolution Somewhere Else is, ironically, successful at building this connection up. (Bandcamp link)

Dietz – Watch Your Step Slick

Release date: October 24th
Record label: One Frog
Genre: Folk rock, slowcore, lo-fi indie rock, singer-songwriter
Formats: CD, digital
Pull Track: Grass

John Dietz hails from Richmond, Virginia, and they’ve been making music under their last name since at least the late 2010s. The “Dietz” project, while always led by its namesake, typically includes other contributors, and the latest Dietz record, Watch Your Step Slick, features Soph Asenso and Nick Gada on drums and Abby Mendez and Logan Wolf on additional vocals. Dietz listed a bizarre set of influences when they sent me this album: R.E.M., John Darnielle, George Clanton, and Greg Freeman. I’m not sure what an even split of those acts would even sound like, but Watch Your Step Slick succeeds in being an unhurried, wandering, “southern gothic”-style folk rock record. Dietz calls the album “psychedelic”, and while I don’t know if I would’ve called it that on my own, I don’t disagree with that–there’s a disorienting aspect to both slow-burners like “Genesee” and rockers like “Grass”. Some stuff like “Dog & Kit” feels genuinely folk-adjacent, but a lot of these songs (like, say, “Tennis”) are just really odd singer-songwriter material that happens to be acoustic. By the time we get to the nine-minute penultimate track, “Tropical Storm Ophelia We Will Rebuild”, we’ve been fully baptized in the intense, offbeat way of Dietz. (Bandcamp link)

Addicus – A Story About…

Release date: September 24th
Record label: Acid Punk
Genre: Pop punk, power pop
Formats: Digital
Pull Track: Mario Party Crashout!

The Marquette, Michigan power pop band Addicus first came to my attention last summer, when they released their self-titled debut album. Over ten scrappy indie-pop-punk songs, vocalist/guitarist Alexis Armstrong, drummer/guitarist/synth player Joshua Copeman, and bassist Eric Gladwell made their case as a notable name in the Upper Peninsula music scene (which is surprisingly strong thanks to Liquid Mike, Deep-Fried Butterfly, and Kitschy Spirit Records). The trio didn’t wait long to return, as we’ve been given a sophomore Addicus album, A Story About…, a year and change later. It’s a shorter record than Addicus, but it’s their strongest one yet; they come out the gate swinging with a couple of Remember Sports/Chumped-esque punk-pop classics in “Self Satisfaction” and “Stupid Luck”, and the momentum carries through for a clean twenty-one minutes. The synthetic touches on “Call Me (When It’s Over)” are a new and interesting development for Addicus, but their bread and butter is still three-to-four-chord wreckers of pop songs (see “Mario Party Crashout!”, a shining example of the form). I already thought Addicus were a good band, but it’s even more promising to hear A Story About… make it clear that they’re on the upswing. (Bandcamp link)

Also notable:

VOTE! In the Rosy Overdrive 2025 Reader’s Poll

It’s the third annual Rosy Overdrive readership poll! The results have been truly great two years in a row now: no pressure, but I’m especially excited to see what your favorite music of 2025 is.

The first question on the poll is simply: What are your ten favorite albums from 2025? 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 song(s), EP(s), and record label of 2025 in the rest of the poll, too.

If you need help remembering what came out in 2025, 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 and even encouraged 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 26th, and the results will be revealed the following week.

Click here to participate in the reader’s poll!

Pressing Concerns: Mint Mile, Tulpa, The Melancholy Kings, Split Apex

Happy Thanksgiving! We have a Thursday Pressing Concerns today, featuring new albums from Mint Mile, Tulpa, The Melancholy Kings, and Split Apex. If you missed either of this week’s earlier blog posts (Monday was a Pressing Concerns featuring Bliss?, Ali Murray, Rose of the World, and Second Story Man), and Tuesday was the 2025 Rosy Overdrive Label Watch), 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.

Mint Mile – andwhichstray

Release date: November 28th
Record label: Comedy Minus One
Genre: Alt-country-folk-rock, 90s indie rock, Crazy Horse
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Yamaha

Mint Mile recorded their third album, andwhichstray, a couple of months after last year’s Roughrider came out. It was a chance kind of thing–Steve Albini, longtime friend and engineer of Mint Mile bandleader Tim Midyett, was participating in a recording seminar at France’s Studios de la Fabrique, and the band he had initially intended to record had to drop. Mint Mile, with an album’s worth of songs ready to go, went over to Europe, recorded them with Albini from April 28 to May 1, and headed home. A lot has happened over the past year and a half–the sudden death of Albini less than a week later, which led to Midyett’s old band (and my favorite band) Silkworm to reconvene for his memorial and eventually playing an entire reunion tour (which I did get to see). I would say that the circumstances surrounding andwhichstray threaten to overshadow the album, except that it’s an album made for said circumstances.

andwhichstray is the best that Mint Mile have ever sounded. The Crazy Horse solidification of Roughrider is sharpened further here, the band even more roaring. There’s a rocker called “Little Chicken” that gets an insane amount of mileage out of basically one chord, and there’s a moody, percussion-heavy piece called “Black Road” that doesn’t sound like anything this band has ever done before. There’s “Yamaha”, a song I’d previously heard Midyett play solo on an acoustic guitar but appears here as a fuzzed-out, ear-splitting country rocker (it’s a bit of parallel thinking with the likes of Wednesday and MJ Lenderman, I dare say). Midyett’s “Don’t wanna live a life about money,” in “Yamaha” and “I’m your friend, it just feels right,” in single “This ‘n’ That” cut to the quick, centering a clear-eyed directness that’s the “thread” on andwhichstray, from Midyett’s words to (of course) Albini’s engineering.

Then there is “Can’t Be the First One”. It was written by Jason Molina “for the surviving members of Silkworm, the day after [their drummer] Michael Dahlquist was killed in 2005”. As far as I know, this song has never been released or heard by the public before now, but here is Tim Midyett singing it twenty years later, and damned if it doesn’t sound like Tim from Silkworm singing a Jason Molina song (Mint Mile drummer Jeff Panall’s previous life as Molina’s drummer surely helped). The immediacy with which Molina originally wrote “Can’t Be the First One”, preserved admirably here by Mint Mile, is what allows it to make sense on andwhichstray. andwhichstray is “about” the death of Albini in the way that “Can’t Be the First One” is “about” Molina, who also died much too young. It makes strange sense to me, a bunch of departed musicians somehow paying tribute to each other in a non-linear fashion, arranged by Mint Mile over the course of decades and in a few short days in France. On andwhichstray’s final song, “Summer’s Mostly Wasted”, original Silkworm member Joel R.L. Phelps plays alto saxophone alongside Midyett’s voice. Thankfully the both of them are still around to do the channeling. (Bandcamp link)

Tulpa – Monster of the Week

Release date: November 28th
Record label: Skep Wax
Genre: Indie pop, krautpop, post-punk, noise pop
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
Pull Track: Pyro

Josie Kirk (vocals, bass), Daniel Hyndman (guitar), Myles Kirk (guitar), and Mike Ainsley (drums) are Tulpa, an new indie pop band from Leeds who’ve recently partnered with the British indie pop label, Skep Wax, for their debut album. I first heard of this band last year thanks to a very good EP called Dismantler, which, unfortunately, doesn’t appear to be available online anywhere now–they’ve had some lineup changes, and perhaps they’ve decided it doesn’t fit where they’ve ended up, but I still hope it resurfaces again someday. Regardless, their first full-length album, Monster of the Week, is every bit as strong a debut LP as I would’ve hoped from Tulpa, and it has a smoothness and confidence particularly impressive from a new band.

This is undoubtedly “British indie pop” at its finest; Tulpa love Yo La Tengo and Sonic Youth-style noisy guitars, but these bouncy, twee, sugary songs would never be mistaken for either of those bands. There’s a simplicity and breeziness to early hits “Transfixed Gaze”, “Psyops”, and “Pyro”, in which Tulpa make it sound much easier than it must be. The quasi-theme song “Let’s Make a Tulpa!” is another dizzying high, as is the similarly quick power pop “You’re Living in a Reverie” in Monster of the Week’s second half. You want curveballs? Well, Tulpa switch lead vocalists in the title track, they lumber through a five-minute fuzz-rumbler in “Stick Figure Boy”, and then there’s a couple black sheep towards the end of the album in the subdued, moody “Amateur Hour” and the choppy post-punk of “Raw Nerve”. That’s the sound of us getting one more great pop album in before 2025 is up. (Bandcamp link)

The Melancholy Kings – Her Favorite Disguise

Release date: November 28th
Record label: Magic Door
Genre: Power pop, garage rock, college rock
Formats: Digital
Pull Track: Steady As She Goes

The members of New Jersey quartet The Melancholy Kings have histories in Garden State and New York indie rock dating back to the 1980s: vocalist/guitarist Mike Potenza, bassist Scott Selig, guitarist/vocalist Peter Horvath, and drummer Paul Andrew have played in The Anderson Council, The Make Three, Phantom Tollbooth, Fluffer, The Deni Bonet Band, and more between them. Her Favorite Disguise is the second Melancholy Kings album, following a self-titled one in 2019, and I admit I’m quite impressed with what these veterans have to offer in 2025. It’s one thing to “end up” making power pop after years of working in edgier underground indie rock, but The Melancholy Kings attack these songs like they’re just as cool as the New York post-punk of their youths.

The two biggest hits on Her Favorite Disguise, “Victoria” and “Steady As She Goes”, pull out all the stops–“whoa oh oh”s, “radio”/“stereo”, jangly guitar hooks, winking lyrics. Rolling mid-tempo Lemonheads-y pop rock like “Astor Place” and “Bitcoin Elegy” gives a little more space for narratives without dropping the catchiness, and there’s also opening track “Six Feet Down”, perhaps the best The Who pastiche I’ve heard this decade. Speaking of Who pastiche, The Melancholy Kings make the inspired decision to cover a late period Guided by Voices song– “Alex Bell” from 2022’s Tremblers and Goggles by Rank, which any hardcore Robert Pollard fan knows contains some of the best melodies you’ll hear in this current run of GBV albums. It’s arguably a better recording than the original–The Melancholy Kings keep the helicopter arena-rock guitars in the front, and Horvath (who sings lead vocals on this cover, the only non-Potenza-led one) injects a gigantic desperation into the song’s massive first half. Her Favorite Disguise takes this kind of music very seriously, but it’s not self-serious–mainly, though, it rocks. (Bandcamp link)

Split Apex – Thoughts in 3D

Release date: November 28th
Record label: Ever/Never
Genre: Post-rock, experimental, sound collage, industrial, spoken word
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Peninsula

Peter Blundell is a longtime experimental musician, known for his work in acts like Mosquitoes, Komare, and Temperatures. Finnish-originating artist Jussi Palmusaari has previously played in Preesens, a progressive rock group from his home country. Together, they are Split Apex, a London-based duo who formed in late 2024 and released a self-titled cassette EP not long afterwards. They’ve linked up with Ever/Never Records for their first full-length album, a strange and eerie five-song collection called Thoughts in 3D. The only actual musical reference that WFMU’s Erick Bradshaw makes in the bio for this record is to cult British experimental act The Shadow Ring, but it’s the non-musical ones–to the “oceanic abyss” and “unchartered waters”–that explain what it’s like to listen to Thoughts in 3D. Palmusaari handles “guitar, electronics, percussion”, and Blundell (on voice and bass) interjects with occasional spoken-word snippets. On “Peninsula”, the propulsive opening track, Split Apex are able to turn all of this into a facsimile of industrial post-punk, but the rest of Thoughts in 3D declines even this meager relief. “Crux Machine” and the title track are vast, desolate wastelands, occasional stabs of guitars or bass walking appearing and disappearing like specters. It’s all unsettlingly quiet and simple, making the remote vistas conjured up by Split Apex here all the more impressive. (Bandcamp link)

Also notable:

Rosy Overdrive Label Watch 2025

Welcome to the fourth annual Rosy Overdrive Label Watch! It’s time to check in on what a dozen (give or take) of Rosy Overdrive’s favorite modern labels have been up to for the past few months, and pull a couple of highlights from each one. For the second straight year, I’m doing this during (American) Thanksgiving week, because the blog is, indeed, thankful for the work these labels do year after year.

As I always reiterate, this is not a “best record labels of 2025” 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 you can always check the blog’s “browse by label” section which lists every record label whose releases I’ve covered at least three times in Pressing Concerns.

This year we must, unfortunately, say goodbye to Trouble in Mind Records, who announced that they were folding up shop in September. Thankfully, they did release two albums this year before shutting, so we do get to include them in the Label Watch one last time. On a positive note, I’ve added Repeating Cloud Records to the list this year!

Dear Life

RO Pick: Fust, Big Ugly

Aaron Dowdy’s Fust continue their strong case for “the best band making country-influenced indie rock in North Carolina” on Big Ugly, the group’s best album yet. Big Ugly is an album-length journey to Dowdy’s roots in southern West Virginia, drawing its name and much of its imagery from the shadow of the Guyandotte River; I’ve loved everything they’ve done, but Fust found another gear in Lincoln County.

Honorable Mention: Weirs, Diamond Grove

A bunch of regulars in the Dear Life Records/greater North Carolina music scene came together as “an experimental/traditional music collective” to make Weirs’ sophomore album, Diamond Grove, expanding on the sound that Oliver Child-Lanning and Justin Morris pursued as a duo on their 2020 debut. Traditional English folk ballads and hymns are stretched and tweaked into long, droning, ambient-filled passages, and the spaces in between give us all the time in the world to reflect on the centuries and lifetimes from then to now.

(Also reviewed on Rosy Overdrive: Joseph Decosimo, Fiery Gizzard / Thomas Dollbaum, Drive All Night / Florry, Sounds Like… / Hour, Subminiature / Little Mazarn, Mustang Island)

Meritorio

RO Pick: Dancer, More or Less

More or Less is Dancer’s first album with new drummer Luke Moran, but despite the lineup change, their sophomore LP has the Glasgow quartet sounding more fluid and locked-in as a band than ever before. The jerky post-punk/offbeat indie pop structures are still part and parcel of More or Less, yes, but they’ve been more effectively ironed into a wider tapestry of expansive, exploratory art rock and (for Dancer, at least) more laid-back pursuits of pop music. (Read more)

Honorable Mention: Exploding Flowers, Watermelon/Peacock

Hailing from ground zero of the 1980s “Paisley Underground” movement, Los Angeles’ Exploding Flowers do evoke the loose, psychedelic side of this strain of American jangly college rock. Sometimes hazy, sometimes bright and vibrant, Watermelon/Peacock is a compelling and generous Americana record arising from one of the country’s largest population centers. (Read more)

(Also reviewed on Rosy Overdrive: Creative Writing, Baby Did This / The High Water Marks, Consult the Oracle / Monnone Alone, Here Comes the Afternoon / Prism Shores, Out from Underneath / Strange Passage, A Folded Sky / Whitney’s Playland, Long Rehearsal)

Comedy Minus One

RO Pick: Silkworm, Developer

Every Silkworm album is a “cult favorite”, but the background on their 1997 album Developer makes it perhaps the über “cult” Silkworm album–it was their second and final album for Matador Records, the band’s final chance to parlay critical/indie rock underground buzz into larger platforms and sizeable followings. They made the insular and cold Developer instead. Now a two-LP set with a handful of bonus tracks thanks to Comedy Minus One twenty-five years later, Developer is still right there for you to figure out if you haven’t yet. (Read more)

Honorable Mention: Mint Mile, andwhichstray

I wanted to avoid doing an all-Silkworm/Silkworm-related edition for Comedy Minus One this year, but Tim Midyett is still at it and the upcoming third Mint Mile album is too damn good to pass up again. I’ll have more to say about it soon.

(Also reviewed on Rosy Overdrive: Kinski, Stumbledown Terrace)

Slumberland

RO Pick: The Telephone Numbers, Scarecrow II

The Telephone Numbers’ Thomas Rubenstein is remarkable in how he manages to carve out his own signature style while giving so much of himself over to the towering jangle pop, college rock, and power pop that’s shaped the entire scene around him. Scarecrow II is The Telephone Numbers’ coming-out party (their first as a solid quartet and first for Slumberland), and Rubenstein and company sound more than ready for their moment. (Read more)

Honorable Mention: Lunchbox, Evolver

This is the second straight year that Lunchbox has appeared in the “honorable mention” section, and this will continue until everyone bestows the proper respect on the long-running Oakland group. It’s a reissue this time: 2002’s Evolver was something of Lunchbox’s swan song, a difficult-to-replicate statement of 60s pop music and uninhibited experimental electronic music that stood as the band’s final one until they were ready to re-emerge years later. (Read more)

(Also reviewed on Rosy Overdrive: Allo Darlin’, Bright Nights / Autocamper, What Do You Do All Day? / The Cords, The Cords / Jeanines, How Long Can It Last / The Laughing Chimes, Whispers in the Speech Machine / Lightheaded, Thinking, Dreaming, Scheming! / Tony Molina, On This Day / The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, Perfect Right Now: A Slumberland Collection 2008-2010)

Trouble in Mind

RO Pick: The Tubs, Cotton Crown

London’s The Tubs have become one of the few jangly power pop bands that regularly get lauded outside of the genres’ bubbles, and it’s consistently deserved, too: Cotton Crown is the (already quite good) band’s best work yet. The personal nature of frontperson Owen Williams’ writing (about his late mother) results in the group’s sparkling, bright guitar pop collides with some tough, complex kinds of grief throughout Cotton Crown.

Honorable Mention: FACS, Wish Defense

Wish Defense was the last-ever album recorded by Steve Albini before his sudden passing last year, but its tragic circumstances do not obscure the fact that this LP is actually a rebirth and revitalization of FACS. The reintroduction of guitarist Jonathan Van Herik (who left the band in 2018) seems to have allowed the experimental rockers to find heretofore undiscovered life in the realms of (relatively) brief bursts of power trio post-punk and noise rock. (Read more)

Mt.St.Mtn.

RO Pick: Massage, Coaster

Massage fit right into the current West Coast jangle pop revival, but the Los Angeles quintet have gotten there by doing their own thing, one that pulls together pastoral folk rock, New Order-influenced melodicism, and plenty of “college rock”. Coaster is their third LP, and while it’s their first in four years, they’ve hardly missed a beat with this collection of impeccable guitar pop. (Read more)

Honorable Mention: The Pennys, The Pennys

The Bay Area indie pop team-up that we didn’t know we needed, The Pennys is co-led by Michael Ramos (who makes slow-moving, unmoored, dreamy indie pop as Tony Jay) and Ray Seraphin (who embraces more full and grounded power pop/college rock as R.E. Seraphin). Busier than Tony Jay but more subdued than R.E. Seraphin, The Pennys hit the jangle pop sweet spot for six songs and sixteen minutes on their self-titled debut. (Read more)

Don Giovanni

RO Pick: Salem 66, SALT

Don Giovanni made 1980s/early 90s Boston group Salem 66’s entire discography available digitally earlier this year, as well as putting together a career-spanning compilation called SALT as an accessible entry point. Salem 66 are perhaps most easily defined as “college rock”–hardly “power pop”, “jangly” enough to fit in with early R.E.M., and their ilk, marked by a guitar-led psychedelic sound, fluent in the heavier strains of indie rock but, more than anything else, “doing their own thing”. (Read more)

Honorable Mention: Volcano, Volcano

An unlikely supergroup, Volcano was the result of the Meat Puppets’ Curt Kirkwood linking up with none other than two architects of Sublime (Bud Gaugh and Miguel Happoldt), plus bassist Jon Poutney. Their sole album, released in 2004 and reissued this year by Don Giovanni, is a surprisingly strong collection of laid-back Meat Puppets-esque psychedelic alt-rock; the reggae influence is used sparingly, but it’s there enough.

(Also reviewed on Rosy Overdrive: Mourning [A] BLKstar, Flowers for the Living / Rodeo Boys, Junior)

Lame-O

RO Pick: Lily Seabird, Trash Mountain

The explosive bursts of noisy country rock of last year’s Alas, are decentered for a quieter, more deliberate, and intimate record, but this pull-back (if anything) only makes Lily Seabird’s writing and singing even more immediate. Trash Mountain is a gorgeously ragged collection of folk rock that finds avenues of contentment rather than searching feverishly for moments of catharsis. (Read more)

Honorable Mention: Golden Apples, Shooting Star

Pieced together in a handful of different locales by bandleader Russell Edling with various contributors, Golden Apples’ Shooting Star pulls off the trick of sounding more like an insular folk-influenced record while at the same time retaining the bright, distorted, kaleidoscopic, psychedelic power pop of 2023’s Bananasugarfire. Between these last two LPs, there’s now a distinct “Golden Apples sound”–I think I like this new take on it the best so far. (Read more)

(Also reviewed on Rosy Overdrive: Dazy, Bad Penny / WPTR, Redness & Swelling at the Injection Site)

Sophomore Lounge

RO Pick: Ryan Davis & The Roadhouse Band, New Threats from the Soul

If you liked the expansive alt-country sagas of Ryan Davis & The Roadhouse Band’s 2023 breakout album Dancing on the Edge, I’ve got good news with regards to what you’ll hear on New Threats from the Soul. As always, the incomparable Davis rolls deceptively simple country rock along with his rambling observations and lets us sort the resultant rich texts out. The confusion by some at Davis’ whole deal upon his ascent has been amusing, but not as amusing as listening to New Threats from the Soul.

Honorable Mention: Grace Rogers, Mad Dogs

We can count on Sophomore Lounge for two things every year: reissuing bizarre underground rock records from around the globe and shining a light on unknown Louisville musicians. Grace Rogers’ Mad Dogs is decidedly in the latter camp; apparently this is the traditionalist folkie’s first “electric” record, gathering up a handful of ringers for a laid-back collection of songs reminiscing on family and immersing themselves in the Kentucky of it all.

(Also reviewed on Rosy Overdrive: Jerry David DeCicca, Cardiac Country)

Post Present Medium

RO Pick: Semi Trucks, Georgia Overdrive

Semi Trucks are new to me (apparently they put out an album on Meritorio in 2021), but the Los Angeles quartet’s latest LP is everything good about West Coast rock and roll music. Georgia Overdrive is ten songs of fuzzed-out, psychedelic guitar pop music, bits of dream pop and garage rock and Undergrounds both Paisley and Velvet all in tow. Multiple lead vocalists, stoned-out-of-your gourd atmospheres one moment, hard-charging fuzz-rock the next. All good.

Honorable Mention: Chronophage, Musical Attack: Communist + Anarchist Friendship

Austin group Chronophage are undersung pop merchants of the greater garage/punk/whatever underground, and it’s good to see them still going strong despite member Donna Allen’s fairly active solo career. Musical Attack: Communist + Anarchist Friendship is four songs of slapdash garage-y power pop, over too soon but not too soon for “We Must Be Evil” and “Anti-Miracle” (and the other two tracks, let’s be real) to sink their teeth in.

Candlepin

RO Pick: Lozenge, EP 1

Putting this together, I learned that there are apparently two different shoegaze bands named Lozenge who have put music out on Pleasure Tapes. Very confusing! This is about the Los Angeles-based one, who, after putting out a demo cassette on Pleasure Tapes last year, dropped their debut EP on Candlepin. EP1 is five songs of lo-fi melodies and fuzz, an impressively strong bid to enter the pantheon of modern “Guided by Voices-gaze” bands like Gaadge and Ex Pilots.

Honorable Mention: Host Family, Extended Play

Another new Los Angeles shoegaze-pop band on Candlepin! The debut EP from Host Family is another piece of evidence that southern California seems to be the place to be for modern shoegaze-influenced bands; it’s six pop songs (collecting four singles from last year and two new ones) that aren’t nearly as abrasive as Lozenge’s take on the genre but still feature a healthy amount of noisy rave-ups in the polish, too.

(Also reviewed on Rosy Overdrive: Abel, How to Get Away with Nothing / Smalltalk, As If)

Exploding in Sound

RO Pick: Jobber, Jobber to the Stars

Brooklyn’s Jobber burst onto the scene in 2022 with an exciting and inspired combination of 90s alt-rock fuzz, huge pop hooks, and professional wrestling-themed writing, all of which continue to be found on the band’s first album, Jobber to the Stars. They put their bigger stage to use on the LP, keeping the smart hooks intact but adding heavy lumbering alternative rock moments and zippy, jagged Exploding in Sound-style underground rock into their sound. (Read more)

Honorable Mention: Magic Fig, Valerian Tea

To be perfectly honest I’ve only listened to this one a little bit so far (it just came out last Friday), but my first impression is that the San Francisco psychedelic rock supergroup have put together a worthy follow-up to their 2024 self-titled debut. Featuring members of Whitney’s Playland, The Umbrellas, and Almond Joy (among others), Magic Fig’s second album continues to walk the line between high-concept psychedelia and the indie pop for which the Bay Area is currently more well-known.

(Also reviewed on Rosy Overdrive: Cusp, What I Want Doesn’t Want Me Back / Prewn, System)

12XU

RO Pick: Ed Kuepper & Jim White, After the Flood

After the Flood is an album of new recordings that pulls material from all across Australian punk/indie rock giant Ed Kuepper’s career–there’s one from his time with The Saints, three from his next band, The Laughing Clowns, and four are from his solo LPs. If I had to describe this album, I’d refer to it as “long, winding, electric desert folk rock”–Kuepper wanders both in his guitar playing and his vocals, letting the songs build and sprawl with Dirty Three’s Jim White on the drums as a grounding force. (Read more)

Honorable Mention: The Gotobeds, Masterclass

The Gotobeds have been garage rocking, noise rocking, and post-punking for over a decade now. Their first album in six years, Masterclass, is just that: the Pittsburgh quartet have retaken the reins for ten songs in a little over a half-hour, clanging noisy underground rock that’s like Sonic Youth with a newfound laser focus or a more furious version of their peers in Savak. (Read more)

(Also reviewed on Rosy Overdrive: Chris Brokaw, Ghost Ship)

Feel It

RO Pick: Kilynn Lunsford, Promiscuous Genes

Kilynn Lunsford’s Promiscuous Genes is on the more oddball side of the Feel It Records spectrum, choosing to roll with a rank mix of skronky no wave, primordial funk crawling, creepy spoken-word, unusual synth odysseys, rhythmic art punk, and, well, more. It’s hardly the kind of record that those looking for catchy, pop-fluent rock music would gravitate towards, but those willing to listen in on what Lunsford is attempting to communicate will find something striking nonetheless. (Read more)

Honorable Mention: Why Bother?, You Are Part of the Experiment

Mason City, Iowa’s premiere basement-garage-horror-punk-rockers have been on a hot streak lately, and their first record of 2025 (out of two) in particular is a high note. The five-song You Are Part of the Experiment EP is a dark, troubling trip into underground noise rock, art punk, and fuzzed-out rock and roll that seemingly allows Why Bother? to get even weirder and more unhinged than they do on their “proper” records. (Read more)

(Also reviewed on Rosy Overdrive: Artificial Go, Musical Chairs / Citric Dummies, Split With Turnstile / Gentle Leader XIV, Joke in the Shadow / Lung, The Swankeeper / MARAUDEUR, Flaschenträger / Motorbike, Kick It Over / Private Lives, Salt of the Earth / Why Bother?, Case Studies)

Repeating Cloud

RO Pick: Jeff Tobias, One Hundredfold Now in This Age

Musically speaking, One Hundredfold Now in This Age is more orchestral and jazz-indebted that 2022’s Recurring Dream was, but if you enjoyed that album’s smooth yet dense take on pop music, Brooklyn multi-talented artist Jeff Tobias does it again here, more or less. Tobias and a bunch of guest musicians turn this collection of strange songs into a single chaotic, vibrant, and seething beast, a sharp political collection that meets the moment in the most difficult and correct way. (Read more)

Honorable Mention: Gum Parker, The Brakes

Portland, Maine’s Gum Parker are 90s indie rock devotees, but they come off as much more interested in simply making loud pop music than trying to directly emulate their influences on their debut album. The Brakes is “power pop” without that genre’s defining reverence, “pop punk” without a trace of what that term traditionally evokes, and “slacker rock” made by people with the perpetual nervousness. (Read more)

(Also reviewed on Rosy Overdrive: Festiva, Everything in Moderation / Little Oso, How Lucky to Be Somebody / Lone Striker, Lone Striker / LP Gavin, Trials, Tribulations, Deliberations, Pratfalls, Repreievers, Etc. / Monnone Alone, Here Comes the Afternoon / Mythical Motors, Travelogues and Movie Stills / Outro, Broken Promise / Sweet Nobody, Driving Off to Nowhere / Teenage Tom Petties, Rally the Tropes)

Pressing Concerns: Bliss?, Ali Murray, Rose of the World, Second Story Man

It’s a Monday Pressing Concerns! It features a new EP from Bliss?, and new albums from Ali Murray, Rose of the World, and Second Story Man! Read on!

If you’re looking for more new music, you can visit the site directory to see what else we’ve written about lately. If you’d like to support Rosy Overdrive, you can share this (or another) post, or donate here.

Bliss? – Keep Your Joy to Yourself

Release date: November 21st
Record label: Psychic Spice
Genre: Garage rock, power pop, college rock, punk rock
Formats: Cassette, digital
Pull Track: Fear & Trembling

I’ve only just started putting Rosy Overdrive’s year-end lists together, so I’m not entirely sure if this is 100% accurate, but my gut tells me that Bliss?’s Pass Yr Pain Along is the best debut album of 2025 (and if it’s not, it’s very close). Three Baton Rouge punk musicians (guitarist/vocalist Josh Higdon, bassist Hunter Kiser, and drummer Robert DeMouy) converged to make a record of Elvis Costello-inspired college rock, power pop, and rough-around-the-edges mod-revival. Not long after Pass Yr Pain Along’s release, Hunter Kiser moved to Houston and subsequently left the band, but Higdon and DeMouy have forged ahead as a duo, splitting bass duties on the three-song Keep Your Joy to Yourself EP. As one might guess from the thematically similar title, Keep Your Joy to Yourself’s songs were written as the same time as Pass Yr Pain Along’s, but they “weren’t ready to be recorded” until now.

DeMouy, upon sending this EP to me, wrote that Bliss? had to “take a new approach to recording” due to their new configuration and notes that the duo spent more time on overdubs than they had as a power trio. Keep Your Joy to Yourself isn’t any kind of major departure in its final form, though–it certainly does sound like three songs that could’ve been on Pass Yr Pain Along. “Fear & Trembling”, the EP’s hit, is as catchy as anything on that debut album, an awesome firecracker Lemonheads/Replacements-style power-punk wrecking ball. Sandwiching “Fear & Trembling” are two weirder pop songs–the opening track, “Antpile”, is a wobbly, dubby post-punk pastiche (full-time bassist or not, Bliss? haven’t forgotten the importance of the low-end in this kind of stuff), and “Clemency Program” marries the Costello new waviness of the EP’s first song with a bit more garage/alt-rock heft. The circular ending to “Clemency Program” may be where those “overdubs” start to become most obvious, but it’s a steady slide into just a tiny bit of maximalism. I fully trust the pilots of Bliss? to navigate this terrain at this point. (Bandcamp link)

Ali Murray – Spiritual Drift

Release date: November 19th
Record label: Dead Forest
Genre: Folk, slowcore, dream pop
Formats: Digital
Pull Track: Where Is Time Going?

Isle of Lewis, Scotland singer-songwriter Ali Murray has released a lot of music, much of it in the realms of dreamy, slowcore- and dream pop-indebted folk. Many of these records have shown up in Pressing Concerns before, but (if the musician himself is to be believed), Spiritual Drift will be the last Ali Murray album to appear on this blog. Murray isn’t retiring from music, apparently, just from putting it out under his own name (likely to be followed by albums released via “some other moniker/guise at some future point”), but Spiritual Drift is clearly the end of something. It’s a subdued finale, to be sure–the electric, distorted moments of past Murray records here are largely absent, and he instead zeroes in on a mostly acoustic sound that veers towards folk music, quiet dream pop, and even ambient at points. The mid-tempo electric folk rock of “Where Is Time Going?” is a rousing song in the record’s first half, but look towards tracks like the hushed opening “Blue Tree” and the straight-up acoustic ballad “Abuser” to get a better sense of what to expect on Spiritual Drift as a whole. The instrumental “The Natural World” separates the first side of the record from an even quieter second one, a collection of acoustic picking and ambient folk only sort of broken up by the light electronic touches (and guest vocals from Lyndsie Alguire) on the title track. The windswept “I Held You at the End of Time” is as good of an ending as Ali Murray could’ve conjured up–it’s dramatic and dynamic, but quite subtly so. (Bandcamp link)

Rose of the World – Heaven Is a Broken Heart

Release date: November 12th
Record label: Sad Cactus
Genre: Post-hardcore, emo, art-rock, post-punk
Formats: Digital
Pull Track: Vitamin

The members of Brooklyn quartet Rose of the World aren’t household names, exactly, but they’ve spent over a decade doing time in underground indie rock bands in New York and Boston–between the four of them, they’ve played with Quarrels, S.C.A.B., Superteen, Twen, Off Drugs, and Aural Burrows, among others. Many of those acts have put out music on Poughkeepsie, New York label Sad Cactus Records, and that’s who’s releasing Heaven Is a Broken Heart, Rose of the World’s debut LP (following a self-released EP in 2020). The band (vocalist/guitarist Cory Best, drummer Jeff Crenshaw, guitarist Jackson Martel, and bassist Drew Hardgrove) aren’t so easy to categorize on Heaven Is a Broken Heart, which makes sense for a bunch of veterans of different strains of indie rock–part of it is indebted to that New England/Northeastern Exploding in Sound-like post-hardcore/art rock sound, but it’s also more directly emo-influenced than a lot of that music, and there’s a subtle, subdued, almost “atmospheric” quality to this album, too. Heaven Is a Broken Heart is explosive basement rock (“Sucker”), catchy post-punk (“Vitamin”), and driving noisy garage punk (“SYS”) whenever Rose of the World deem these diversions to be the most interesting direction to take these songs–between the restlessness of the band and a passionate but not overly showy frontperson performance from Best, Heaven Is a Broken Heart has all the makings of a “grower” debut album. (Bandcamp link)

Second Story Man – Calico

Release date: October 24th
Record label: Noise Pollution
Genre: 90s indie rock, fuzzy indie rock stuff
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Let It Out

Louisville, Kentucky has always punched above its weight a bit when it’s come to solid indie rock, and that goes beyond names like Slint, Bonnie “Prince” Billy, and Eleventh Dream Day that are famous (or at least recognizable) in certain corners of the indie music world. Noise Pollution Records has been cataloging Louisville acts since 1997, and their latest release is a new record from a similarly long-running band in Second Story Man. Second Story Man also emerged out of Louisville in the late 90s, and Calico is the fifth album by the quartet (guitarist/vocalists Evan Bailey and Carrie Neumayer, bassist Jeremy Irvin, and drummer Drew Osborn) and first since 2017. Calico is an enjoyably unclassifiable indie rock album–their bio mentions that Second Story Man has played shows with Versus, Sebadoh, and Rainer Maria, and that trio is a good start for what to expect. I’d also add Tsunami, Samuel S.C., and the aforementioned Eleventh Dream Day–parts of Calico are noisy, but it’s not “noise rock”, and parts of it are very poppy but it’s not really “indie pop”, either. This is a band that can crank out amplifier-drenched basement rock (the title track, “Let It Out”), retro pop-rock (“It’s in the Air”, “Big Seltzer”), and even a bit of emo (“Side of the Road”). It’s probably a “mature” record, but it’s a lively version of it. (Bandcamp link)

Also notable:

Pressing Concerns: Sharp Pins, The Brokedowns, S.C.A.B., The King Canutes

It’s Thursday! The Pressing Concerns for today contains four albums that are out tomorrow (November 21st): new ones from Sharp Pins, The Brokedowns, S.C.A.B., and The King Canutes. Read on, and if you missed either of this week’s earlier blog posts (Monday’s featured Dogwood Gap, Via, Gazed and Bemused, and Blue Zero, and Tuesday’s featured Ugly Stick, The Terminal Buildings, Pressure Wheel, and Pohgoh / Samuel S.C.), 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.

Sharp Pins – Balloon Balloon Balloon

Release date: November 21st
Record label: K/Perennial
Genre: Power pop, jangle pop, psychedelic pop
Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital
Pull Track: Fall in Love Again

What’s the end goal here? Making as many jangly guitar pop songs that sound right out of the late 1960s as possible? Aggressively drag Byrds worship into the next generation by performing a tribute so enthusiastic as to make it irresistible? Making a “Rosy Overdrive-core” album so great that it wins over the other music blog that is studiously unaware of such records 99 percent of the time? Whatever drives Sharp Pins’ Kai Slater, it’s a strong motivator, as we’ve now gotten a superb Sharp Pins LP three years in a row. Slater first became known to me in late 2021 thanks to a single from his noise rock group Lifeguard; the first Lifeguard album only came out earlier this year, and Slater’s recorded nearly fifty Sharp Pins songs in the interim (and, if you count last year’s Mod Mayday 23 covers album, even more than that). Slater partnered with K and Perennial records to release an expanded version of his second album, Radio DDR, earlier this year, and Balloon Balloon Balloon keeps the yearly Sharp Pins streak alive with Slater’s first album of new material for his new labels.

I’d hesitate to call Balloon Balloon Balloon the best Sharp Pins album yet, but it’s the most impressive one: twenty-one pitch-perfect mod revival tunes in under forty-five minutes, one after the other begging the question of “how is this not an unearthed garage-band wonder from sixty years ago?” (or, at least, “an unearthed early Guided by Voices recording from forty years ago?”). It’s actually quite hard to make great music while remaining this devoted to time-machine-level construction–even at the peak of his guitar pop prowess, Robert Pollard still had to build in some weird-detour escape hatches for himself (in Balloon Balloon Balloon’s case, it’s restricted virtually entirely to the three semi-title interludes), and the bands that prioritize aesthetics over anything else never really have the tunes to back it up (not for an entire album, at least). But here’s Balloon Balloon Balloon coming through with a real murderer’s row–those first five songs are relentless in advancing Sharp Pins’ sole pursuit, and it’s not like the rest of the LP fails to live up to the high bar (for the incredibly impatient, bookmark “Talking in Your Sleep”, “Fall in Love Again”, and “Takes So Long”). I expect to hear more excellent jangle pop material from Sharp Pins in the coming years, but Balloon Balloon Balloon also does feel like a perfect cap for this era of the project. What’s next? (Bandcamp link)

The Brokedowns – Let’s Tip the Landlord

Release date: November 21st
Record label: Red Scare Industries
Genre: Punk rock, pop punk, garage punk, post-hardcore
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Date Night in the Hague

The Brokedowns have been at this thing for more than twenty years now–the quartet (bassist Jon Balun, drummer Mustafa Daka, guitarists Eric Grossman and Kris Megyery) have this whole “Chicagoland punk rock thing” down pat, cranking out records on Windy City stalwart Red Scare Industries (Laura Jane Grace, The Menzingers, The Sidekicks) and, if their latest LP is any indication, specializing in loud, catchy, and unfashionable punk music. Let’s Tip the Landlord was recorded with Meat Wave’s Joe Gac, and like that band, The Brokedowns have a mean Hot Snakes streak in them. However, the dead-eyed intensity of the best Meat Wave material is nowhere to be found in these Midwestern pranksters: if the album title wasn’t enough of an indication (“He’s already postponed his fifth vacation,” they plead in the title track), songs like “Date Night in the Hague”, “Sirhan Lohan”, and “Live Laugh Love Death Cult” reveal a band who revels in the profane. Of course, it helps that the band’s tongue-in-cheek tributes to the Qanon moms, passive income leeches, and delusional war criminals among us are catchy and energetic–the aforementioned “Date Night in the Hague” has no business being such a pop-punk rug-cutter, and we can all jump around to the euphoria of “The Power of Love” (it’s a love song to a gun, of course). I wouldn’t recommend wading into this kind of filth for just any band looking for inspiration, but The Brokedowns’ mix of blunt-force caveman hammer-swinging and unflagging energy is how you have to do it if you do. (Bandcamp link)

S.C.A.B. – Somebody in New York Loves You!

Release date: November 21st
Record label: Grind Select
Genre: Indie pop, art rock, dream pop, post-punk, alt-rock
Formats: Digital
Pull Track: Never Comes Around

Queens, New York quartet S.C.A.B. has been around for a few years now; they put out an album called Beauty & Balance on Spirit Goth in 2020, and I first heard them thanks to their 2022 self-titled album. S.C.A.B. was an interesting listen, suggesting an archetypal New York post-punk revival group that nonetheless had designs beyond that, and last year’s Rose Colored Glasses EP kept exploring these asides. It all comes to a head on Somebody in New York Loves You!, the group’s best record yet. Bassist Alec Alabado’s low-end is still important to S.C.A.B.’s sound, but the rest of the band (guitarist/vocalist Sean Camargo, guitarist Cory Best, and drummer Evan Eubanks) reorient themselves towards different influences. Bits of jangly indie pop, shoegaze, and even glitzy Killers-ish “stadium rock” shade Somebody in New York Loves You!; it reminds me a bit of Enumclaw, another omnivorous new rock band who are probably too young to feel like they need to take a side in the “Britpop versus shoegaze” debate. The “alternative music” purist in me appreciates the jangly undercurrents to “I Hate Expectations”, “LOVE”, and “Never Comes Around”, but the “point” of these choices are consistently to serve Camargo’s emotionally volatile, oversharing performance as a frontperson. It’s a big and fairly risky swing of a record to make, but it’s also the one S.C.A.B. have been working towards. (Bandcamp link)

The King Canutes – Eastern Seaboard, Perfect Summer

Release date: November 21st
Record label: Magic Door
Genre: Folk rock, indie pop, college rock, soft rock
Formats: Digital
Pull Track: Eastern Seaboard

Eastern Seaboard, Perfect Summer is The King Canutes’ debut album, but they aren’t a new band. The act’s two members, Keir Woods and Richard Alwyn Fisher, formed the group in Brooklyn in the 2000s, and they released an EP called Last Callers and Losers in 2008. Why it took nearly twenty years for the next King Canutes release to appear I couldn’t say, but the duo are now split between New York and London, which probably contributes to that. Eastern Seaboard, Perfect Summer includes plenty of notable contributors–Guided by Voices’ Kevin March on drums, Gramercy Arms’ Dave Derby on bass, Elk City’s Renée LoBue on backing vocals–but the focus is the timeless guitar pop songwriting found in these nine songs. The contrast in the band’s co-leaders is perhaps Eastern Seaboard, Perfect Summer’s most intriguing wrinkle–Woods’ “sonorous true folk voice” is something right out of slowcore or soft rock (names like Mark Eitzel, Rapt, and 40 Watt Sun come to mind), while Fisher’s “scrappy Replacements-style Midwesterner” act is more suited for the intersection of punk and college rock. Eastern Seaboard, Perfect Summer meets somewhere in between, with catchy folk rock, jangle pop, and vintage indie pop that’s spirited but unhurried. Fisher’s easy-strumming “Eastern Seaboard” and Woods’ “Be My Baby”-built “Man from Hawaii” are equally patient, indicating that the right pair of singer-songwriters met up to take seventeen years to make an album. (Bandcamp link)

Also notable:

Pressing Concerns: Ugly Stick, The Terminal Buildings, Pressure Wheel, Pohgoh / Samuel S.C.

The Tuesday Pressing Concerns is a pretty chaotic one this week. We have an expanded reissue of an album from Ugly Stick, a new EP from Pressure Wheel, a split EP between Pohgoh and Samuel S.C., and four new records in one from The Terminal Buildings. There’s something for everyone here! If you missed yesterday’s blog post (featuring Dogwood Gap, Via, Gazed and Bemused, and Blue Zero), check that out here.

If you’re looking for more new music, you can visit the site directory to see what else we’ve written about lately. If you’d like to support Rosy Overdrive, you can share this (or another) post, or donate here.

Ugly Stick – Absinthe (Vinyl Release)

Release date: October 16th
Record label: Hovercraft
Genre: Cowpunk, alt-country, college rock, garage punk
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Wild Men of Borneo

Who were Ugly Stick? The four-piece “cowpunk” band rose out of Delaware, Ohio (that’s a little north of Columbus) in the late 1980s and released a few records before initially breaking up sometime in the 1990s. The group (drummer Jeff Clowdus, guitarists Al Huckabee and David Holm, and bassist Ed Mann) seem to have been sporadically active this century–they put out a new album in 2008, they play live shows on occasion, and they’ve reissued some of their earlier material, too. The latest of these reissues, through Hovercraft Records, is a double-vinyl release of Absinthe, an album that originally came out only on CD in 1993. It’s hard to find much info on Ugly Stick out there, but I believe Absinthe was their third album following a self-titled debut and a sophomore record called Shaved; the Bandcamp page for the original version of the album lists seventeen songs compared to the reissue’s twenty-three, which would suggest that the final six are the “bonus tracks” that the reissue proclaims to provide.

So, what does Absinthe sound like? It’s an undeniably weird mix of roots rock, punk rock, and “college rock” that doesn’t really fit with anyone I can think of–more countrified than Great Plains (the band I think of when I think of “central Ohio underground college rock”), wilder than the likes of Guadalcanal Diary and other college radio hitmakers, more punk than NRBQ, not as traditionalist as Uncle Tupelo, and not quite as psychedelic as the Meat Puppets. But those are the names we’ll have to start with, and it’s good enough to describe the strong opening stretch of Absinthe: the stoner-blues-psych-garage opening thing “Serpent Mound”, the careening garage punk “Move”, the surprising acoustic country “Crib Death Reel”, and the awesome college rock hook found in “Wild Men of Borneo”. Most of my favorite songs on Absinthe are found in the opening half, but digging through the C-side and the bonus tracks turns up plenty of intriguing curios, too. I’ve written about reissues of albums that have earned canonization or at least “sizeable cult following” status, and I’ve been happy to do so, but reissues like this one–the ones that encourage further digging–are the most important ones. (Bandcamp link)

The Terminal Buildings – A Binful of Bells / Belles of the Bucket / Further Transcriptions: A Binful of Bonus / The Room in Your Heart

Release date: August 8th / August 29th / September 1st / September 5th
Record label: Self-released
Genre: Lo-fi power pop, bedroom pop, indie pop, jangle pop, power pop
Formats: Digital
Pull Track: Time Travelin’ / A Beer and Play Guitar / Sorry Suzanne / Waiting at the Lights

The home-recorded project of a Scottish musician known only to me as Finlay, The Terminal Buildings arrived on my radar thanks to a digital compilation called Coming to Terms with the Terminal Buildings: Best Ones 2021-2023. Coming to Terms was not only an excellent collection of low-key indie pop/power pop/jangle pop etc., but it also ended up being the capstone for a prolific two-year period for the project. After a quiet 2024 (partially due to Finlay moving from Glasgow to Aberdeen, apparently), though, the next era of The Terminal Buildings starts now with a slew of new releases: two new LPs, an EP, and a collection of “covers and demos” released over the span of one month. Belle of the Bucket is maybe the “star” of these records, the closest thing to a power pop parade of the set thanks to “A Beer and Play Guitar”, “That Wheel”, and “Big Hat”, among others. There’s still a bit of bedroom folkiness to that one, though, and this is explored even more thoroughly in the dreamy, psychedelic-tinged indie pop of A Binful of Bells (there are plenty of hooks in this Martin Newell-esque wandering excursion too, of course). A Binful of Bonus may only be for the real Terminal Buildings heads out there, but more covers of The Bats are always welcome, and all three tracks on The Room in Your Heart are good enough to have been on the full albums (perhaps these are songs that were penned in between the previous records’ completions and release; quality-wise, there’s no reason to separate them).  Upon The Room in Your Heart’s release, Finlay wrote that the EP would be the last Terminal Buildings record for “a wee while at least”–oh, is that all, then? (Bandcamp link)

Pressure Wheel – Atomic Woe

Release date: October 17th
Record label: Alchemy Hours
Genre: Punk rock, garage rock, post-hardcore, power pop, noise rock
Formats: Digital
Pull Track: Heat Death

The Philadelphia supergroup Pressure Wheel don’t neatly slot into the “punk rock musicians’ power pop side project” archetype, but it feels like a spiritually similar endeavor. The quartet’s debut EP, Atomic Woe, is the result of members of Restorations (bassist Dan Zimmerman and drummer Jeff Meyers), Signals Midwest (guitarist/vocalist Maxwell Stern), and Timeshares (vocalist/guitarist Jon Hernandez) zeroing in on the catchier sides of punk rock, garage rock, emo-punk, and even post-hardcore. “A little less scalpel, a little more sledgehammer,” claims the band’s bio, and indeed, Atomic Woe eschews the more high-concept aspects of the members’ other bands to land a half-dozen blunt-force rock and roll blows. “Economy of Lies” is Dischord Records/Hot Snakes fodder with a Guided by Voices– (or top-tier Militarie Gun-, if you prefer) level hook, “Cut It” and “Don’t” are slick, emo-tinged fuzz rock/punk-pop hits, and my favorite track on the EP, “Heat Death”, marries the heart-on-sleeve earnestness of all three of the members’ other bands with precision guitar pop. There’s a tug-of-war between “just rocking out” and delving just a little deeper throughout Atomic Woe, and Stern and Hernandez’s contributions both play the game. All of Pressure Wheel seem on the same page as to what kind of band they want to be, and even if Atomic Woe doesn’t fully reveal what all that might entail, it’s a high-speed journey to wherever that may be. (Bandcamp link)

Pohgoh / Samuel S.C. – Split

Release date: October 8th
Record label: New Granada/Waterslide
Genre: Emo, punk rock, pop punk, 90s indie rock, twee-punk
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Evergreen

I’ve written about Samuel S.C. (previously just known as Samuel) before on this blog; the State College, Pennsylvania-originating emo band released three EPs and singles in the mid-90s, reunited in 2021, and put out an LP featuring new and “reimagined” old material in 2023. I’m less familiar with Tampa, Florida’s Pohgoh, but they have a similar story: they also made music combining Superchunk-esque indie-punk-rock with emo in the mid-1990s, and they also reunited over the past decade, putting out new albums in 2018 and 2022. A four-song split EP makes plenty of sense for the two bands, and both of them brought very good material to the table for this one. Pohgoh’s “I’m a Fan” is a lovely punk-pop song that should win anyone unfamiliar with them over, and despite being the EP’s only “slow” song, the appropriately-titled “The Interlude” is beautiful in a sparse way, too. The Samuel S.C. songs are nothing short of some of their best material yet: “Evergreen” is tough, fevered, and surging anthem-emo-rock with a scorching refrain, and “A Serious Sound” is similarly animated and finds another gear with its chorus, too. Bands hiding their best songs on stopgap between-album split singles? It feels like the mid-90s all over again. (Bandcamp link)

Also notable:

Pressing Concerns: Dogwood Gap, Via, Gazed and Bemused, Blue Zero

We roll into mid-November with a steady supply of new music; this Monday Pressing Concerns features a new album from Dogwood Gap, a new EP from Blue Zero, an archival EP from Via, and a compilation of Brisbane shoegaze from 4000 Records. Pretty neat!

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.

Dogwood Gap – Probably Not Enough

Release date: November 14th
Record label: Revelator
Genre: 90s indie rock, slowcore, folk rock, emo-y indie rock, alt-country
Formats: CD, digital
Pull Track: Something Here

Late last year, I wrote about House Sounds, the debut EP from a Brooklyn project called Dogwood Gap. At the time, Dogwood Gap was effectively the solo project of Massachusetts-originating singer-songwriter (and founder of Revelator Records) Patrick Murray, and House Sounds was a promising debut of Jason Molina-influenced folk rock and alt-country. Fast forward a year later, and Dogwood Gap are now a sturdy quartet, with Murray sharing lead vocal duties with Carlie Houser and the both of them backed by bassist Evan Tannenbaum and drummer Hayden Carr-Loize. Dogwood Gap’s debut album, Probably Not Enough, is also their first record as a full band, and it’s a reinvention of the project’s sound, too. Although the Songs: Ohia influence is still there, it’s a lot less alt-country or folk-inspired, with a quiet but electric 90s indie rock sound now presenting as the dominant strain. Dogwood Gap reference bands like Pile and Unwound as touchpoints, and while they’re not a post-hardcore group now, there’s an exploratory aspect to Murray’s guitar playing that fits well with this kind of electric, slowcore-evoking indie rock (it’s more Idaho and Bedhead, although those aren’t quite right either).

The most “folk” thing about Probably Not Enough is probably Houser’s vocals, which give a traditional slant to the otherwise fairly grungy basement rock of “Red Ribbon” (we’ve stumbled onto the “PJ Harvey combination” here, it seems), as well as the penultimate “Mother Has Closed Her Eyes”. If you’re wondering when the Unwound influence kicks in, I’d point you to the nice circular guitar riff and rumbling bass that co-lead “Changes”, and even the more delicate songs (like, say, “Something Here”, which comes right after it) have a post-punk edge at moments. Call it “slowcore”, “sadcore”, “post-rock”, or even “emo”–none of them fully fit, but I recognize the melancholic, empty-space-heavy sound of songs like “Owl Bridge” via plenty of bands who’ve tread in these waters before. It’s harder to boil Probably Not Enough down to one forebearer like House Sounds could’ve been with Molina–whether that’s attributable to a greater number of creative minds involved in Dogwood Gap or merely more instrumental freedom at Murray’s disposal as a bandleader, the leap that this project has taken in a year is palpable and bodes well for Dogwood Gap in the future. (Bandcamp link)

Via – Via

Release date: November 14th
Record label: Dromedary
Genre: Noise rock, art punk, proto-“indie rock”
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
Pull Track: Cell

Two live shows, six basement-recorded songs, and “one gig flyer”. This was all that the five-piece underground band Via amounted to during their late-1980s period of activity. The band’s two guitarists, Thalia Zedek and Jerry di Rienzo, went on to have pretty notable indie rock careers afterwards–the former with Come and Live Skull (as well as a bunch of solo records), and the latter with Cell. This alone would be enough to make Via a notable part of Boston music history, but Via is still held in as much regard as their members’ more well-known bands by the people who had been there at the right time to witness them (such as Chris Brokaw, who alerted Dromedary Records to these recordings’ existence in 2024). Finally given a proper release by Dromedary after nearly forty years in obscurity, the six-song Via EP is a still-sharp-sounding brief jolt of noisy underground 80s indie rock.

Via moved from Boston to New York during their brief lifespan, which makes the Sonic Youth comparisons too easy (Brokaw himself acknowledges them in the liner notes to Via). At the same time, a noisy rock band from Boston employing a “tape loops” provider (Phil Milstein of Uzi, who rounded out the band alongside bassist James Apt and drummer Adam Gaynor) also brings to mind Mission of Burma. You could call Via a synthesis of the two, but there’s also plenty of the intense, dark, blues-tinged rock music that Zedek would later go on to explore in Come as well. The shorter songs on Via (“JJ”, “1,000 MPH”, “The Other”) are all pummeling noise punk, and the longer ones are just as punishing in a more difficult-to-understand manner (the six-minute “Cell” is Milstein’s tape-loop showcase, and “Way You Say You Feel” closes the EP with a musical exorcism). It’s hard to believe that this almost stayed in the vault forever, but now’s a good a time as any for Via. (Bandcamp link)

Various – Gazed and Bemused: Hazy Sounds from the Meanjin Underground

Release date: October 23rd
Record label: 4000
Genre: Shoegaze, dream pop
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Broken Walls

Beginning in the late 2010s, the Brisbane (Meanjin), Australia label 4000 Records has been documenting its city’s underground music scenes–everything from jazz to electronic to post-rock has been featured on the imprint’s sixty-something releases. Their latest album is a various-artist compilation, Gazed and Bemused: Hazy Sounds from the Meanjin Underground, which zeroes in on Brisbane’s practitioners of “shoegaze, dreampop, post-punk, alt. rock and myriad sub-genres awash with heavy reverb, cymbal storms, and atmospheric vocals” (couldn’t have said it better myself, 4000!). I don’t write about them all that often, but there’s a certain romantic appeal to this kind of “time capsule”/scene documentation album; I’m thinking of historical ones like Chapter Music’s one for early Australia post-punk, or what Third Man’s Southeast of Saturn did for a different shoegaze scene (Michigan). Could Gazed and Bemused be held up in a few decades similarly? No idea, but we can imagine. Hearing a dozen (in some cases, starkly) different bands held together by a love of distortion getting one chance to make an impression with a song actually works pretty well for this kind of music–we get slow, percussionless dream pop (from Relay Tapes) and tight shoegaze-y alt-rock (from Wasted) back-to-back to start the album, and all of the most obvious standouts from that point on (DARLING.’s starry-eyed guitar pop, the dour goth-tinged contribution from The Double Happiness, the nervous static of Ultra Material) aren’t all that similar, either. It’s a fun journey, and now we’re all intimately familiar with modern southeastern Queensland shoegaze to boot. (Bandcamp link)

Blue Zero – Confusion

Release date: October 29th
Record label: Self-released
Genre: Fuzz rock, 90s indie rock, shoegaze, noise pop, post-punk
Formats: Cassette, digital
Pull Track: Confusion

Blue Zero’s debut record, Colder Shade Blue, came out about a year ago, and Oakland musician Chris Natividad played every instrument on the album. If there’s one thing about Natividad I know, though, it’s that he loves playing in bands–he leads Marbled Eye and Public Interest and drums in Aluminum and Tanukichan–so it’s not so surprising that Blue Zero are a solid quartet on their next record, the four-song Confusion EP. Lauren Melton (Sucker), who contributed some vocals to Colder Shade Blue, is now bassist and co-vocalist, with drummer Rick Altieri (Blue Ocean, Above Me) and guitarist Maddy Allard rounding out the lineup. This self-released cassette is a big step forward for Blue Zero, with the shoegaze-y fuzz pop of their debut exploding into an intense, focused, but still quite catchy brand of Sonic Youth-style indie rock. The opening title track is the biggest hit the band have put together yet, a wall-of-sound hurricane with Pixies-level pop instincts, and “Rotten Angel” (where Melton holds her own as co-leader) is nearly as exciting. The second half of Confusion is only “subdued” in comparison to the first half, and closing track “Don’t Be Long” in particular is a smooth, Ride-like marriage of timeless pop rock and strong guitars. A welcome check-in from a band on an upward trajectory. (Bandcamp link)

Also notable:

Pressing Concerns: Tony Molina, Chaepter, Star Card, MARAUDEUR

The Thursday Pressing Concerns is made up of four albums that are coming out tomorrow, November 14th. We’ve got new ones from Tony Molina, Chaepter, Star Card, and MARAUDEUR below, and if you missed either of this week’s earlier blog posts (Monday’s featured Swearing at Motorists, Night Court, A Fish in the River, and The Cindys, and Tuesday’s featured The Maple State, Ivy Boy, Hyperviolets, and Xay Cole), 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.

Tony Molina – On This Day

Release date: November 14th
Record label: Slumberland/Speakeasy Studios SF/Olde Fade
Genre: Folk rock, jangle pop, indie pop, lo-fi pop
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
Pull Track: Livin Wrong

The two Tony Molina-related albums I’ve written about in Pressing Concerns before are the self-titled album from his old band Ovens, which features a lot of “loud and fuzzy power pop/alt-rock…with…triumphant guitar heroics”, and In the Store by his project The Lost Days, which dealt in “homespun-sounding, lo-fi, acoustic-based pop”. The common denominator with those two records (and, indeed, Molina’s discography as a whole) is strong guitar pop music–if you know anything about Tony Molina’s music, it’s probably that this is his specialty, typically delivered in sub-ninety-second nuggets. And that’s precisely what we get when we join the San Francisco singer-songwriter on On This Day, Molina’s first solo album in three years (which is also a return to Slumberland Records, who put out a couple of his releases in the late 2010s). On This Day, twenty-one songs in twenty-three minutes, was recorded by Molina and collaborators (Alicia Vanden Heuvel of Speakeasy Studios SF and The Aislers Set on piano and organ, drummer Steve Kerwin, guitarist Stephen Oriolo, Rachel Orimo on vocals, and Gary Olson of The Ladybug Transistor on trumpet) at home in an “unhurried” manner.

On This Day is subsequently on the “acoustic” and “laid-back” ends of the Tony Molina spectrum, leaning into his 60s folk-pop influences (the biography mentions The Byrds, as well as Bill Fox, one of the few “indie” musicians who feels similar to where Molina is at here), and the more languid side of Elephant 6 feels apt too (Olson couldn’t have picked a better record to show up on the horn). Aside from the fifteen-second instrumental title track, On This Day spends virtually every moment building a perfect pop song (jangle-, folk-, indie-, psych-; whatever qualifier suits you best), and then flitting to the next one as soon as the foundation is sturdy enough to stand. The fuzzy guitars of “Have Your Way” herald the only real electric Tony Molina moment here; it’s one of the highlights, but it’s far from the sole one, and I’m more likely to point to something like the blissful jangle pop creation “Livin Wrong”, the slightly-polished mid-tempo pop rock “Lie to Kick It”, or even the tactfully giddy cover of Eric Andersen’s “Violets of Dawn” as the standout of standouts. It’s a Tony Molina album, so we’ve plenty of options. (Bandcamp link)

Chaepter – Companion Music

Release date: November 11th
Record label: Self-released
Genre: Art punk, post-punk, garage punk
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Lock the Door

Chicago-based art rock weirdo Chaepter Negro (aka Chaepter) has been on a tear lately. I first heard him thanks to last year’s Candlepin-released LP Naked Era, and he returned earlier this year with an EP called Empire Anthems. Companion Music is the third Chaepter record since the beginning of 2024, and it is “one of two records we have in the works”, according to the musician. All three records have honed in on a hard-to-describe sound that’s very “post-punk” while also keeping one foot in distorted, shoegaze-influenced indie rock. Companion Music is perhaps Chaepter’s clearest record yet, with a more tangible debt to garage rock, punk, and classic post-punk across its dozen tracks.

“Muses” may open Companion Music with a kind-of-dreamy chilliness, but Chaepter begins to get more confrontational and up-close with the Brainiac-ish skronk punk of “Lock the Door” and the dance-punk groove of “Dance Dance Die”. In the record’s midsection, “Cruisin’” and “Funny Living” combine prominent, sturdy rhythms with bursts of electric noise, but just when Companion Music seems to hesitantly embrace being an off-the-rails but boisterous rock and roll record, Chaepter veers into a different kind of strangeness in the record’s final third. The artist behind everything from “Melting Man” to “The Hope Collector” might as well have been a different one entirely, one inspired by dreamy, freaky basement folk more than tight indie/alternative rock. Companion Music hangs together because Chaepter stays front-and-center through the whole thing, guiding us from sharp guitars to disoriented strings and odd atmospherics. It’s enough to sell us on what seems to be a multi-record-spanning vision. (Bandcamp link)

Star Card – Trash World

Release date: November 14th
Record label: Already Dead
Genre: Art rock, noise pop, fuzz rock, 90s indie rock
Formats: Cassette, digital
Pull Track: Even the Sun Can Hurt You

The Queens group Star Card started as the solo project of Calley Nelson, and Nelson played almost everything on the debut Star Card release, 2023’s Freak World EP. Fast forward two years later, and Star Card is now a quartet also featuring drummer Brendan Landis (of Receive, in which Nelson also plays), bassist Jackson Tarricone (Voicemail) and guitarist Jake Whitener (Sunshine Convention). The first Star Card LP and first Full Band Star Card release, Trash World, is a big one–it’s forty-seven minutes of greyscale but animated indie rock and noisy pop music. Opening track “Flowers” is one of the weirdest things on the whole album, a confrontational beginning before the propulsive indie rock and roll of “Even the Sun Can Hurt You” puts them closer to the realms of 90s acts like Superchunk, Versus, and Scrawl. Star Card differentiate themselves from the average “modern indie rock band with a familiarity with Kim Deal’s entire discography” by Nelson’s boisterous, larger-than-life lead vocals–we just don’t get dynamic, unpredictable vocal performances like the ones we hear in “One Hit Wonder” and “Ambitious Guy” enough these days. Trash World hits as hard as it does because it’s a full band tearing into these songs with the zeal to match their frontperson, I think. Star Card are hitting on something good here; let’s hear them out. (Bandcamp link)

MARAUDEUR – Flaschenträger

Release date: November 14th
Record label: Feel It/Kakakids
Genre: Post-punk, art punk, no wave, garage punk
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Syncope

An art punk band from eastern Germany? Yes, sure, I’m interested. Leipzig sextet MARAUDEUR have actually been around for a while now–they put out an album on Bruit Direct Disques in 2017, and somehow I missed their Feel It Records debut, 2022’s Puissance 4. I’m well on board for their latest album, Flaschenträger, though. The group (Bob Siegrist, Charlotte Mermoud, Camille Barth, Morgane Adrien, Lise Sutter, and Isumi Grichting) have a strong grasp on this incredibly specific sound that feels ripped from an uncertain and chaotic time in underground music–phantom rhythms and synths playing tug of war with more recognizable post-punk, garage rock, and even pop music. Flaschenträger lurches into focus between stop-start opening material like “EC Blah.Blah”, “La Jaguar”, and “ah”, and though this marks pretty much the rest of the LP, too, MARAUDEUR have put together a fairly surprising collection of this kind of thing. The skittering melodic guitar line is what puts “Syncope” over the top, “Clever Sneaker” has an out-of-place noise rock riff thrown in there, and closing track “Hollow” is surprisingly delicate. It feels light without being slight, and it’s a fun listen without sounding like a conscious attempt to be so. (Bandcamp link)

Also notable:

Pressing Concerns: The Maple State, Ivy Boy, Hyperviolets, Xay Cole

For the Tuesday Pressing Concerns, we have four albums that have come out in the past month or so: new LPs from The Maple State, Ivy Boy, Hyperviolets, and Xay Cole. If you missed yesterday’s blog post (featuring Swearing at Motorists, Night Court, A Fish in the River, and The Cindys), check that out here.

If you’re looking for more new music, you can visit the site directory to see what else we’ve written about lately. If you’d like to support Rosy Overdrive, you can share this (or another) post, or donate here.

The Maple State – Don’t Take Forever

Release date: November 7th
Record label: Self-released
Genre: Power pop, pop punk, emo-y indie rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Willow

The Maple State are new to me, but the Manchester quartet have been around for a while–they put out a couple of records in the mid-2000s (2005’s At Least Until We’ve Settled In, 2007’s Say, Scientist EP) before breaking up in 2008. Some combination of members released an album called The Things I Heard at the Party under The Maple State name in 2018, but the “original lineup” of the group (bassist/vocalist Greg Counsell, keyboardist William Pearson, guitarist Christian Counsell, and drummer John Goodwin) never reunited until a single called “Zero Days Since Last Incident” last year. It turns out that “Zero Days Since Last Incident” was just the beginning, as The Maple State have put out an entire album entitled Don’t Take Forever.

The Maple State came up in the early 2000s’ “emo-punk” scene, but Don’t Take Forever thankfully doesn’t sound like a band trying to recreate 2005. I certainly believe that American emo was an influence on this band, although these are big, catchy, and (yes) emotional pop songs of the sort that British bands from Frightened Rabbit to ME REX have made in The Maple State’s absence. “Winner Part II” breaks from tasteful piano about a minute into its runtime to open Don’t Take Forever with (still relatively tasteful) pop punk, and there’s some more traces of their roots throughout the album (like the “whoa-oh”s in “No Time to Waste”, or the folk-punk (in a British sense) found in “Dead Beneath the Stars”). Still, plenty of the rockers (“Zero Days Since Last Incident”, “Settle Down”, “Vacancy”) don’t slot neatly into pop punk or emo, and one of the best songs on the album comes when The Maple State bust out the dreaded acoustic guitar (“Willow”). Maybe it’s been awhile since The Maple State have been a “band”, but Don’t Take Forever is a pretty impressive way to return. (Bandcamp link)

Ivy Boy – Ivy Boy

Release date: October 24th
Record label: Self-released
Genre: Folk-pop, indie pop, jangle pop, singer-songwriter
Formats: Digital
Pull Track: Poppyseed

After a six-year gap, Boston jangle pop group Beeef returned with their long-awaited third album, Somebody’s Favorite, last year–hopefully we don’t have to wait another half-dozen years for the next Beeef album, but in the meantime, we have Ivy Boy. It’s a new project from Beeef’s lead vocalist and songwriter Perry Eaton, and he recorded their self-titled debut album with a handful of non-Beeef musicians (guitarist/bassist Aaron Brown, drummer Ryan Katz, and pianist/synth player Elio DeLuca). As a pop songwriter and vocalist, Eaton remains recognizable as the “guy from Beeef” on Ivy Boy, which begs the question: what makes Ivy Boy different from Eaton’s more well-known band? There’s certainly overlap, but Ivy Boy is more laid-back than the relatively tight jangle-rock of Somebody’s Favorite. The hummable “Honeybee” and the bright “Poppyseed” are, unambiguously, “infectious indie pop”, although the former is more of the folk rock variety (to say nothing of another one of the album’s catchier songs, the acoustic folk-pop “The Littlest Birds”). The second half of Ivy Boy leans even harder into the well-developed, even slightly twangy folk rock of decades past (with the possible exception of “‘80s Babies”, which I could imagine Beeef playing if it was sped up a bit). Leading two similar indie pop bands is hardly a “problem”, but Eaton starts to separate Ivy Boy by the time its first record wraps up. (Bandcamp link)

Hyperviolets – Vanitas

Release date: October 31st
Record label: Born Losers/Good Soil
Genre: Lo-fi pop, indie pop, synthpop, folktronica, dream pop
Formats: Cassette, digital
Pull Track: Shadow Connected

I’ve written a few times about Frederick, Maryland musician Kenny Tompkins on this blog, via his indie pop/folk rock solo project Mr. Husband and as part of the power pop group The Trend, but Hyperviolets is a brand new collaboration from the prolific musician. For this project, Tompkins has partnered with Brendan Ekstrom, most famous for spending nearly twenty years as the lead guitarist for Philadelphia post-hardcore group Circa Survive–it may seem like an odd pairing, but western Maryland is a small place, and Ekstrom first started playing music in that area as a member of bands like Cumberland’s 200 North. Vanitas came about after Circa Survive went on indefinite hiatus in 2022, and, while you’d be disappointed if you expected the duo to make punk rock together, there’s a certain…weight to this strange, offbeat pop music. It’s a collision of disparate elements that nonetheless work together–drum machine beats, Tompkins’ always-melodic vocals, acoustic guitars, “spooky” synths, and more. At its brightest, Vanitas offers up sparkling synthpop songs like “Writing on the Wall” and “Shadow Connected”, while elsewhere, “Lost in the Fire” and “Prelude to Void” embrace hypnotic rhythms to shade their (still very apparent) pop cores. I’m not sure if either of these musicians have made anything quite like Vanitas before, but they’ve entered this new terrain deftly. (Bandcamp link)

Xay Cole – Lucy Birthday Black Hole

Release date: October 3rd
Record label: Cherub Dream/Dolphin Bomb
Genre: Experimental pop, noise, sound collage, lo-fi pop, electronic, outsider stuff
Formats: CD, cassette, digital
Pull Track: Brooklyn Hype (Not Me)

The San Jose-originating, San Francisco-based experimental musician Xay Cole has made a ton of music either as part of bands or under various aliases since the “early-mid 2010s”; see Discogs for a list of their two dozen apparent monikers. They joined Bay Area shoegaze label Cherub Dream for last year’s 21st Century Wrist, a partnership that has continued this year with an album called Lucy Birthday Black Hole. The fourteen-song, fifty-one minute album (released on CD and cassette) is an adventurous, abrasive, and wildly divergent listen–in addition to the lo-fi indie rock more typical of their record label and the bedroom pop that I’m prone to writing about on this blog, Lucy Birthday Black Hole features lengthy forays into experimental electronic, kitchen-sink industrial, noise, and post-rock. Some of the more pop moments (like opening track “Fight Night” and the genuine earworm “Brooklyn Hype (Not Me)”) kind of remind me of Mope Grooves’ posthumous magnum opus, though Xay Cole doesn’t seem like a musician who’s prone to thinking in terms of “pop music” all that often. With Lucy Birthday Black Hole, we’re faced with a “challenging” listen–sometimes we’re “rewarded” with softer moments, but just as often it’s the bumpy ride that’s the point. (Bandcamp link)

Also notable: