Pressing Concerns: The Declining Winter, Charlie Kaplan, The Smashing Times, Market

It is Thursday, and we’re here to look at some great new music that’s coming out tomorrow, November 1st. New LPs from The Declining Winter, Charlie Kaplan, The Smashing Times, and Market get the spotlight this time around. Check them out, and be sure to check out all of this week’s earlier blog posts (Monday’s featured 2nd Grade, THEMM!, Dazy, and Podcasts, Tuesday’s was Hell Trash, Recalculating, Testbild!, and Grapes of Grain, and Wednesday was on Mope Grooves’ Box of Dark Roses) if you haven’t yet.

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

The Declining Winter – Last April

Release date: November 1st
Record label: Second Language Music
Genre: Folk, singer-songwriter, slowcore, orchestral folk
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
Pull Track: Last April

Richard Adams established himself in the realms of slowcore and post-rock by co-leading the cult Leeds group Hood throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, and he’s continued to follow this path via his long-running solo project The Declining Winter. Last year’s offering from The Declining Winter, Really Early, Really Late, was a breathtaking and ornate confirmation that Adams’ music has, if anything, benefited from the experience and age of its creator, and the months following its release have reassured us of the continuation of another key aspect of Adams–his prolific nature. Since Really Early, Really Late’s release last March, he’s put out an album as one half of Great Panoptique Winter (his electronic-ambient duo with Jason Sweeney) and a collection of recent castoff material called Buried Songs 2018-2021. This all brings us to Last April, which is I believe the ninth Declining Winter album, and one that immediately stands out in the midst of a vast body of work. The six (non-bonus) songs of Last April were written on the same night, in a period of “shock, grief and trauma” brought upon by the loss of Adams’ mother (Last April refers to the month of her passing). Musically, it’s a stark departure from the skillfully orchestrated Really Early, Really Late, as Adams’ voice is accompanied only by his acoustic guitar and Sarah Kemp’s violin, and Adams’ writing is unmistakably, entirely drawn from a place of mourning.

Discounting the two Bandcamp-only bonus tracks, Last April spans only a half-dozen songs and barely over a half-hour in length, but there’s no mistaking it for a minor entry in Adams’ oeuvre. Adams and his guitar step lightly through the opening track, “Eyes on Mine”–he almost sounds like he’s learning to walk, talk, and play music again as the minimal guitar playing gets a much-welcome boost from Kemp’s sweeping violin. About a minute into the song, Adams finally begins singing, and he steps into his mother’s shoes with a mixture of pain, reference, and disbelief. “All I want is to hear your voice,” Adams urgently whispers in the nearly eight-minute title track, which continues the bare, plodding pace of the record, the aural equivalent of an extraordinarily heavy walk alone through the chilly British autumn. Those familiar with The Declining Winter shouldn’t be surprised that Last April finds particular feelings and lingers on them at length, but the ones that Adams and Kemp find on this record are singularly stinging. “Mother’s Son” is a reworking of sorts of Purple Mountains’ “I Loved Being My Mother’s Son”; the music is pretty different, and so are some of the lyrics, but the inspiration is clearly there, and the solace is felt in the link to the former song, if not in this particular recording itself. The guitars and strings in “My Greatest Friend” feel just a little more hopeful, the relatively brief track reminding me a bit of a “slowcore-folk” version of Martin Phillipps’ writing, and the record leaves us with another song with just a bit of brightness peeking through, “August Blue”. The last words Adams sings on the song, however, are “You’re not here, and I’m to blame”; Last April absolutely sounds like an album that came tumbling out of its creator at once, but its recording–with even the bare minimum of accompaniment–adds another shade to that painful, fruitful evening. (Bandcamp link)

Charlie Kaplan – Eternal Repeater

Release date: November 1st
Record label: Glamour Gowns
Genre: Folk rock, psychedelic rock, art rock, singer-songwriter
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Everyone Calling Your Name

I actually wrote about Charlie Kaplan not that long ago, due to his work as the bassist in New York art pop/soft rock trio Office Culture, who released their fourth album mere weeks ago. As it turns out, Kaplan is also a solo artist who’s put out just as much music on his own–since 2020, there have been three Charlie Kaplan LPs and two EPs, all via the Glamour Gowns imprint. Although Office Culture bandleader Winston Cook-Wilson contributes piano to Eternal Repeater, Kaplan’s latest solo album is pretty distinct from his other band–it’s much more based in the realm of folk rock, ranging from the “ornate and beautiful” to the “swirling and psychedelic” ends of the genre. It’s the work of a well-seasoned group of collaborators who’ve all played on each other’s records–Kaplan, Cook-Wilson, lead guitarist Andrew Daly Frank, bassist Frank Meadows, drummer Ben Wagner, and producer Nico Hedley. Together, they give Eternal Repeater a joyfully comfortable feeling–on the record’s quieter moments, Kaplan’s subtly attention-commanding vocals help the group sound like a dead ringer for vintage Red House Painters (a comparison that, understandably, Andy Cush’s well-written essay accompanying the album leaves out) and the more busy moments collide psychedelia, indie rock, and folk like the best Wilco albums (a comparison Cush is more than happy to make, as he should).

The first proper song on Eternal Repeater is one of its best, the gorgeous “Everybody Calling Your Name”, which is more than content to leave empty space up until Daly Frank starts shredding as the song draws to a close. Things get a bit more cosmic with “Mescarole”, a rhythmic track in which Kaplan intones “Asshole / asshole / You spilled my drink, spilled my drink, yeah,” over top of the band’s smooth, smoky delivery (it’s a song about a bad experience at a concert, yes, although the Charlie Kaplan band doesn’t really do “bad vibes”). The middle of Eternal Repeater is where Kaplan and his collaborators sound the most “focused”–not that “Feelin Alright” doesn’t have a loose, jammy undercurrent to it, but the band commit just enough to seeing the song’s ragged country rock core through, and the euphoric “Edie Got Away” is the record’s version of breezy, rambling rock and roll. The momentum is strong enough to lead us into two seven-minute songs back to back in the record’s second half–one could get lost in “Idiot” and “Now That I’m Older” if they aren’t careful. Not that that would be a bad thing–the latter one in particular features Kaplan and the band really giving it their all. On the other side of the mountain is “In a Little Bit of Time”, an out-of-nowhere garage-fuzz-rock closing song. “In a little bit of time, I will be waiting at your door / In a little bit of time, you’ll see that justice has been served,” Kaplan sings quietly but confidently. Oh, shit. You know that folk band in the back of the bar that you thought were just playing merrily along and not paying attention? They’re looking right at you. (Bandcamp link)

The Smashing Times – Mrs Ladyships and the Cleanerhouse Boys

Release date: November 1st
Record label: K/Perennial
Genre: Jangle pop, psychedelic pop, psychedelic folk, twee
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Wednesday, on a Hummingbird’s Wing

Mrs Ladyships and the Cleanerhouse Boys is the fifth album from The Smashing Times, and it’s the fourth in as many years. The calendar flips, summer turns to fall, and Baltimore’s premier mod revival quintet return with another collection of gloriously fractured and free-ranging guitar pop. 2022’s Bloom got the group on my radar, vocalists Thee Jasmine Monk and Zelda-Anais trading off on scattershot, scrambled 60s melodies while bassist Britta Leijonflycht, drummer Paul Krolian, and guitarist Blake Douglas amble along gamely. Last year’s This Sporting Life took a step forward, congealing just enough into something a little more solid and song-focused, resulting in their best record yet. Mrs Ladyships and the Cleanerhouse Boys doesn’t reverse this step, per se–but it is a bit more offbeat than The Smashing Times’ last album. All the blissful psychedelic jangle-beat melodies are still here, yes, but (as one might gather from its title, which verges on self-parody) Mrs Ladyships and the Cleanerhouse Boys leans into the eccentricities of British pop of the past across its fourteen tracks. It’s more obvious in some places (the dry intro and outro of “I Paint the Pictures”, the children’s-show goofiness hijacking “Rupert Tingle”) than others, but the whole record is clearly indebted to the weirdest detours from some of the most classic rock albums.

I wouldn’t expect anything other than pop music on The Smashing Times’ terms with Mrs Ladyships and the Cleanerhouse Boys, but the band’s latest album really does introduce itself by emphasizing the unhurried, leisurely snaking version of their jangle-folk-rock. The opening title track and “Rabbit of June” right after it both qualify, although in different ways–the former by locking onto a classic pop song structure and giving it a classically shambling reading, the latter by waiting until the song is nearly done to get itself together and deliver a big finish. There are always moments on Smashing Times records that go a little “out there”, but between the backmasking “Can I Have Some Tea” and the ambient glow of “Moon Viewing Party” (both full-length songs), there seems to be more real estate given to these than in the rest of their recent output. On the other end of the spectrum, the aforementioned “Rupert Tingle” is The Smashing Times at their most pure pop, but it’s hardly the only winner in that department. 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. Plenty of other tracks rise to the occasion, but “Tarts and Vicars” is the one that comes the closest to “Wednesday…” for me personally. I enjoy the nicking from “You Won’t See Me” at the beginning of the lyrics, but I enjoy the bumpy but propulsive, familiar but original pop song that follows even more. (Bandcamp link)

Market – Well I Asked You a Question

Release date: November 1st
Record label: Western Vinyl
Genre: Soft rock, folk rock, chamber pop
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Sertraline

As a producer and multi-instrumentalist, Brooklyn musician Nate Mendelsohn has contributed to records from a bunch of notable indie rock acts, including Office Culture, Wendy Eisenberg, and Max Blansjaar, among others (he even mixed the Charlie Kaplan LP that appears earlier in this blog post!). All the while, he’s been making music as Market with a cast of frequent collaborators like Stephen Becker and Katie Von Schleicher, both of whom appear on the latest Market record, Well I Asked You a Question (and the former of which even plays in the “core” Market band alongside Natasha Bergman and Duncan Standish). In 2022 Mendelsohn linked up with Western Vinyl (Young Moon, Wilder Maker, Nat Baldwin) to put out The Consistent Brutal Bullshit Gong, and despite seemingly working with increasingly more high-profile acts in recent years (Frankie Cosmos, Yaeji, Sam Evian), Market is still going strong, back two years later with another full-length LP. Well I Asked You a Question is a relaxed but intricate art pop album, with Mendelsohn and his collaborators consistently meeting each other in just the right places to best serve these tracks. Mendelsohn is a low-key vocalist but never too small for Well I Asked You a Question, whose keys and strings ensure a rich but form-fitting tapestry over which the bandleader sings amiably. 

Well I Asked You a Question never feels overloaded, but there’s a lot going on in it–the record’s baseline sound of soft rock and indie folk can feel like a gently-rocking lullaby, but Market slowly, steadily take the record to unexpected places before it’s all said and done. The chamber pop opening title track and the psychedelic, seam-bursting “Apple” have their own interesting charms, but the six-minute almost ambient-pop excursion of “Around” really turns Well I Asked You a Question into something more, and the dark, relatively zippy folk rock of “Sertraline” seizes on the opportunity to find even more surprises. There’s a liveliness to songs like “Rachel Getting Married” and “Bigger Problem” that keep the strong pop rock moments coming well into Well I Asked You a Question’s second half and even gives Mendelsohn some cover to pull the band into quieter corners with the spare folk of “On the Barn” and the slow-moving drone-pop of “Fantasy”. Market confidently, humbly roll all the way up to closing track “Reason to Shout”, whose foundational strings and drums are, again, just right in the mix. Like any good producer-by-trade-made record, Well I Asked You a Question bears the mark of its creator’s comfort in the studio but doesn’t forget to take this advantage and do something with it. (Bandcamp link)

Also notable:

Pressing Concerns: Mope Grooves, ‘Box of Dark Roses’

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

I don’t really want to talk about this record. There’s too much to say about it, and also nothing to say about it. Box of Dark Roses is the fifth and final album from Mope Grooves, a Portland, Oregon-based project led by Stevie Pohlman (or just stevie, “lowercase, no last name”, as she’s credited on this record) and realized with the help of a long list of collaborators and friends. The four albums that Mope Grooves released on stevie’s on label, See My Friends, from 2017 to 2019, garnered them a fair amount of attention with the project’s distinctly Pacific Northwestern mix of art-y post-punk and “indie pop”–the long-awaited Box of Dark Roses was put together over the first few years of the pandemic and is being co-released by 12XU and Night School posthumously, as stevie died earlier this year.

In her extensive liner notes for Box of Dark Roses (in which, among many other subjects, she discusses the physical toll that making enough money just to survive and finish this album took on her), stevie discusses the album as something that was created practically from its inception as a single unit–a twenty-seven-song, ninety-minute double LP conceived at once and built with this vision in mind. It’s ramshackle pop music, drawn from clanging keyboards and buzzing beats and vocals that regularly surprise. Stevie (who shares lead vocal duties with several others on this album) is a captivating writer–she’s a poet, yes, that’s part of it, but Box of Dark Roses is so easy to follow despite everything about it because its leader is unfailingly consistent in her worldview, and doesn’t shy away from following these core tenets to wherever they take her.

And Box of Dark Roses, it bears emphasizing, is right. Sure, there are some specifics we can hash out in some imaginary world where it matters, but every “slogan” and excerpt and point on this record is hard-earned, drawn from the reality of the life of a transgender woman and radical activist from the Pacific Northwest who isn’t naive or self-centered enough to believe she’s the first to be in her position. It’s a “difficult” piece of queer art, not because its message or themes are hard to tease out, but because they’re horrifically easy to. Box of Dark Roses is…I’m not sure if it’s right to call it an “angry” album, but it’s, at the very least, an album about anger. The revenge and militarism and intersectional class warfare that populate the album are bound to be alarming to anyone unfamiliar with or intentionally tuned-out to the structural violence that is perhaps even more baked into the creation of Box of Dark Roses (and, as stevie seeks to point out, one’s “queer identity” is not inherently a magic bullet that illuminates all these struggles). “They’ll tell you you’re a criminal for paying them back in kind / But in the dark, in the wild, in the heart of the night, it is right to fight,” is a key lyric in “Aileen”–those lines are about Aileen Wuornos, but I thought of something else when I heard them, and perhaps you will, too. In elucidating one of those all-important “themes”, Mope Grooves stare down the cognitive dissonance and open contradictions one is required to accept in order to be a “respectable” member of society, and rejects them.

So, there’s some rough stuff on Box of Dark Roses. Sometimes it’s softened by the music, like in “Isn’t It” (“Now that you know this is the game / Isn’t it hard to play? Isn’t it?”), but there’s also “Dora”, which, again, coldly dispatches with any of the false comforts the empire provides to us that we might be tempted to cling to rather than do the harder and more correct thing. But do not mistake any of this as a lack of beauty, because that’s what Box of Dark Roses has above anything else. There are so many incredible, inventive pop and “art rock” songs on this album that I’m grateful exist, and they’re all pretty distinct from each other, too–the shrill, droning “Forever Is a Long Time”, the folk-crumpled “Here Comes the Moon”, the meandering “Cap Hits the Button”, the violin-aided lullaby “Tired All the Time”, any of these could be the one to suck you into Box of Dark Roses’ world, inviting you to readjust yourself to keep meeting Mope Grooves’ ever-changing definition of pop music where it’s at.

So, there’s a lot more I could say about Box of Dark Roses. About the album itself, about the circumstances leading up to its creation and release, about how correct it is. I hope other writers eventually help me out on covering all that (really, I can’t imagine listening to this record and not wanting to find some way to do it justice). I do kind of fear that I’ve just ended up talking around the album, though, focusing on my own personal mini-soapboxes and hyper-specific interests because I can’t explain and interpret Box of Dark Roses better than it does of itself. These are the kinds of things I think about when I think about Box of Dark Roses. Maybe you’ll think about them, too. Maybe you’ll be angry, like I also am when I listen to this record sometimes. It is, as Mope Grooves emphasize, a decentralized, collective anger, not about one’s self except in the sense that one is a part of a whole–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. It is, for many reasons, contagious. (Bandcamp link)

Pressing Concerns: Hell Trash, Recalculating, Testbild!, Grapes of Grain

It’s Tuesday! It’s time for more new music! Today, we’re looking at new albums from Recalculating, Testbild!, and Grapes of Grain, plus a compilation of demos and early material from Hell Trash. If you missed yesterday’s blog post, featuring 2nd Grade, THEMM!, Dazy, and Podcasts, be sure to check that one 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.

Hell Trash – SMASH HITS! Early Tracks 2021-2024

Release date: October 4th
Record label: Self-released
Genre: Experimental rock, art pop, psych pop, folktronica, synthpop, lo-fi pop
Formats: CD, digital
Pull Track: Brand New Self Portrait (Chadwick Demo)

The rollout of Philadelphia-originating, Chicago-based group Hell Trash has been decidedly unorthodox. The first-ever release from the founding duo of Rowan Roth and Noah Roth was a live EP in June of last year, which painted them as a fairly stripped-down folk act, and the “Surprises / Gold Little Things” single that followed that August was an intriguing piece of jangly alt-country-rock. Both of these releases were quite good, but as it turns out, neither was an especially accurate reflection of the music Hell Trash were making together around this time, which we now learn via SMASH HITS! Early Tracks 2021-2024, the most complete picture of Hell Trash thus far. If you’re still waiting for a “formal” Hell Trash debut, then keep waiting, because SMASH HITS! is more of a release borne out of necessity (wanting to have a CD out for an impending tour) and a desire to clean house (having since added two new members, Nick and Sarah, the Roths have decided to close the door on the “duo era”). The Hell Trash found here contains bits of the folkiness of their previous releases, but this isn’t even the primary mode of SMASH HITS! (and similarly, the experimental folk-pop of Noah Roth’s solo career and the fuzz rock of their other band, Mt. Worry, aren’t really all that close to these songs, either). It reminds me of a more “folk”-based version of late 90s indie pop, incorporating electronic and psychedelic touches and even some trip hop-esque beats into Rowan’s songwriting.

SMASH HITS! doesn’t really ease us into these odder and more surprising corners of Hell Trash’s sound–the opening duo of “Brand New Self Portrait” and “Before There Was Life” really throws us to the wolves, so to speak. The former song is particularly confrontational in its stiff, serious alternative pop (Noah mentions the initial goal of the project being to sound between “Fiona Apple and 12 Rods”, and there’s definitely some of the former in this one), and the latter is a dirge sung by the duo in unison and ending with a transcendent guitar solo from Steph Davies, the one guest musician on this compilation. After this opening, there’s a bit of familiarity for us Hell Trash-heads–the aforementioned “Surprises” still sounds great here, and a demo of “Violence” (which appeared on the live EP) is just as skeletal and breathtaking in this form. In the context of SMASH HITS!, though, these are the odd songs out, as the duo get right back to it with the hazy, electronic pop odyssey of “Ghost Dogs (The Way of the Samurai)” and the six-minute, swirling “Encyclopedia Song”. The one cover is a version of Arthur Russell’s “I Couldn’t Say It to Your Face” (which is becoming an indie rock standard, it seems, as everyone from Ex-Vöid to La Bonte has done a version of it recently), while “Brush” (which also appeared on Live at Home) gets two different versions here. The “Spruce Demo” is a hypnotic “folktronica” recording in the vein of Flotation Toy Warning or Sparklehorse, while the “Exit Slip Demo” turns it into a polished indie folk rock duet. Eventually, Hell Trash will presumably be normal and put out a “debut album”, but it’s worth getting hip to their SMASH HITS! in the meantime. (Bandcamp link)

Recalculating – Do You Like to Laugh?

Release date: September 13th
Record label: Band Dinner
Genre: Punk rock, garage punk, noise rock, post-punk
Formats: Digital
Pull Track: Based on the Comedy of Ray Romano

What were you doing on New Years’ Eve last year? Apparently, New York trio Recalculating were putting the finishing touches on their latest album, Do You Like to Laugh?, which they recorded at Electrical Audio with Steve Albini from December 28th through 31st of 2023. Guitarist Scott Sendrow, drummer Michael Sendrow, and bassist Sean Wiederkehr appear to share vocal and writing duties, although it doesn’t feel like a three-headed monster as the band (made up of two brothers and one friend who “stays late for dinner when possible”) are clearly in-tune with one another. Not counting a demo album and a live record, Do You Like to Laugh? is Recalculating’s third LP, and it’s probably not a shock to learn that a trio that went halfway across the United States to record at Electrical Audio have a sound recalling underground punk, alternative, and indie rock bands of the pre-grunge era. Much more limber than the “blunt noise rock” side of those genres, Recalculating make a skittering, talk-singing punk rock and garage rock that can go from minimal to noisy at the drop of a hat in the vein of classic alt-rock groups like the Minutemen, Mission of Burma, and Nomeansno, and their songs will appeal to the contingent of post-punk revivalists that don’t take themselves too seriously.

Do You Like to Laugh? opens with one hell of a mission statement in “Based on the Comedy of Ray Romano”, an absolutely wild punk rock exploration of comedy and fiction and the performance of life (“Ladies and gentlemen, be gentle with comedians / For while they are blessed with prodigious download metrics / They endure life defenseless / Unarmed with guitars!” roars whichever one of them is on the mic as the song comes to a head–it’s hard not to imagine Albini enjoying that part). Not everything is so high-concept, although the yelping punk of “All the Rage”, the dark post-punk of “Bargain Bin”, and the electric PRF-core rock and roll of “Candide Says” have plenty to chew on nonetheless. “How Do You Get a Distressed Guitar?” is Recalculating’s version of a ballad, amusingly meditating on the titular concept and eventually rounding their way to a point (“Faded blue jeans, prepaid holes in the knees, facial stubble two millimeters wise”), although it’s not until the end of Do You Like to Laugh? that the band really get lost in the Recalculating of it all again. The stream-of-conscious “Sometimes the Chicken Wins at Tic Tac Toe” is a five-minute ramble that covers about everything, delivering plenty of good one-liners (“Which one of you dummies tried to rely on the wisdom of crowds?”) but always making its way back to the title line. Recalculating keep repeating that line over and over again, slightly changing the inflection each time–they’re a band that knows that delivery is essential for good comedy. (Bandcamp link)

Testbild! – Bed Stilt

Release date: September 27th
Record label: Quindi
Genre: Soft rock, indie pop, bossa nova, jazz pop, chamber pop
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: And Her Eyes Are Red

Testbild! are new to me, but the Malmö, Sweden-based art pop project has been around since more or less the beginning of the twenty-first century. In fact, Bed Stilt is the group’s twelfth full-length album, following 2022’s M​ö​rka stj​ä​rnan Jorden with their debut for upstart Italian imprint Quindi Records (Monde UFO, Fortunato Durutti Marinetti, Dead Bandit). Throughout Testbild!’s entire history it’s been led by Petter Herbertsson, although the supporting cast has come and gone–on Bed Stilt, Herbertsson gets help from a core of multi-instrumentalist Douglas Holmquist, vocalist Siri af Burén, and synth player Mattias Nihlén, as well as “guest” synth performances from Peter Jackson and Tomas Bodén. Interestingly enough, work on these songs began in 2005 and 2006–but it wasn’t until last year that Herbertsson revived them, added some overdubs, and turned it into a brief (twenty-three-minute) but fully-realized collection of airy, transfixing pop music. On Bed Stilt, Testbild! already sound at-home on their new label, as the bossa nova and jazz-pop of Monde UFO and the soft rock of Fortunato Durutti Marinetti both figure into the sound of these half-dozen tracks. Some of Bed Stilt is more grounded than others, but all of it is quite pop-forward, resulting in a strong (re)introduction for the longrunning project.

The soft, chiming keys and jazz influences built into “The First New Years Eve” ensure that Bed Stilt receives a smooth and relaxed introduction–which, as it turns out, is exactly the kind of opening that the record needs. Testbild! find a lot of ground to cover in this particular comfort zone–one song later, the lengthy instrumental passages of “Streams” find a pleasing middle ground between “soundscape” and “pop song”, while “And Her Eyes Are Red” is a more straightforward pop tune that’s the first thing on the record that could be called “energetic”. As it rounds the corner from its bated-breath introduction, “And Her Eyes Are Red” sounds like a cross between bossa nova-era Stereolab and the more fluttery side of Elephant 6 (not unlike a modern band they remind me of, Tomato Flower). The catchiest moments of “And Here Eyes Are Red” come in flashes, but the interstitial instrumental parts don’t diminish it–just like how the ambient outro to “Cardamom Song” doesn’t take anything away from the rhythmic sophisti-pop that comprises the track’s first three minutes, nor does the simple piano-and-banjo tapestry of “Soft Winged and Frail” prevent it from standing up against some of the record’s more layered compositions. As “Water on the Moon” fades into a delicate chamber pop conclusion, Bed Stilt comes to a rather abrupt conclusion–one gets the sense that Testbild! can (and have) create something more large-scale and complex than these songs, but training their full energy on making polished, streamlined pop music has led to some strong results. (Bandcamp link)

Grapes of Grain – Painted Windows

Release date: October 4th
Record label: Drag Days
Genre: Folk rock, jangle pop, college rock, soft rock
Formats: CD, digital
Pull Track: Fatal Flower

It’s commendable when a band begins a second act that eventually turns out to be more substantial than their original one. This certainly applies to Utrecht folk/college rock group Grapes of Grain, who initially released two EPs and an LP from 2006 to 2009 before seemingly fading into obscurity. However, ever since vocalist/guitarist Alexis Vos and multi-instrumentalist Berend Jan Ike returned at the beginning of last year, they’ve been on a tear, releasing two more EPs (last year’s Getaways and this year’s Serving Water) and their first full-length in a decade and a half (last November’s Unaware). With the third Grapes of Grain LP, Painted Windows, Vos and Jan have officially eclipsed the band’s pre-hiatus output in under two years–and they’ve done it with some of their strongest material yet. The twelve-song, thirty-six minute album certainly doesn’t feel like their fourth record in two years–it’s a patient-sounding, carefully-sculpted LP, with enjoyably teased-out instrumentation largely provided by the band’s core duo, but former full-time members Stefan Breuer and Arno Breuer also contribute, as well as guest musicians Harm van Sleen (pedal steel, dobro, violin), Niels van Heumen (trumpet, synthesizer), and David Decraene (saxophone).

Grapes of Grain have a distinct sound that falls in between the worlds of folk rock/alt-country and college rock/jangle pop–Vos and Jan have almost certainly spent a lot of time with, at the very least, Out of Time and Automatic for the People (if not the records before those, too). The expanse of Painted Windows lets the band find more ways to present their songs than ever before, adding up to their most wide-ranging record that I’ve heard yet. As we move through Painted Windows, we’re greeted with immediately-hitting glockenspiel-flavored indie pop (“Martin Luther”), sophisti-pop-like empty-space art pop (“Stranded”), an upbeat pop rock tribute to Jonathan Richman (“Hey There, Jonathan”), and a surprising detour into electric, kind of messy indie rock and roll (“Darker Days”). There are a handful of songs on here that easily slot into “could’ve-been college rock anthems” territory, from the uber-catchy handclap-pop of “Sensation” (featuring excellent guest vocals from Amber Sawyer) to “Fatal Flower” (which imagines a cross between Paul Westerberg and Fables of the Reconstruction-era R.E.M. with a prominent synth hook), but Grapes of Grain have always been a little more pensive than their peers that like to focus solely on the big choruses, and their songs in this vein (hymn-like closing track “Lifeline”, the minimal dreamlike memories of “Photograph Girl”) live up to their past material, too. Painted Windows reflects the strong work that Grapes of Grain have done recently, and adds just a bit more to their ever-expanding legacy, too. (Bandcamp link)

Also notable:

Pressing Concerns: 2nd Grade, THEMM!, Dazy, Podcasts

You know how last week was a great week on the blog? Well, guess what: this one is going to be just as good, if not better. We’re getting started with a mostly EPs edition (I didn’t plan it that way, it’s just how things shook out!): new ones from THEMM!, Dazy, and Podcasts, plus the hot new 2nd Grade full-length, are detailed below.

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

2nd Grade – Scheduled Explosions

Release date: October 25th
Record label: Double Double Whammy
Genre: Power pop, lo-fi pop
Formats: Cassette, digital
Pull Track: Out of the Hive

Every indie rock band wants to be Guided by Voices. And why wouldn’t they? They’re critically acclaimed, they’re successful enough to make it their job, they’ve got a devout cult following, their live shows are renowned parties, they’ve put out a ton of music–and they’ve done it all while being fiercely independent. 2nd Grade are assuredly one of these bands–frontperson Peter Gill has even gone so far as to not play guitar live as inspired by Robert Pollard’s stage presence. 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 Gill solo project, even if I thought that their earlier work (which I did enjoy a fair deal, by the way) didn’t have much in common with classic Pollard fare aside from runtime. It’s actually way harder to sound like Guided by Voices than the RIYLers of the world make it seem. You can’t just slap tape hiss on a Romantics B-side and call it a day; there’s a mix of uninhibited rock and roll and self-conscious basement pop, a balance between wonderment and darker, sadder feelings. On Scheduled Explosions, the fourth and best album from the Philadelphia power pop group, Peter Gill and company, for the first time in 2nd Grade’s relatively brief but fruitful career, unambiguously shoot for and subsequently nail this balance.

Scheduled Explosions is actually a step back in terms of fidelity from their last album, 2022’s Easy Listening–the rest of the band (Remember Sports’ Catherine Dwyer on guitar, MJ Lenderman & The Wind/Friendship’s Jon Samuels also on guitar, Psychic Flowers/Big Heet’s David Settle on bass, and Ylayali’s Francis Lyons on drums) drift in and out of these twenty-three songs, never once appearing on the same track together. Gill is the only constant. It lends a patchwork–dare I say collage-like–quality to the record, correctly trusting Gill’s writing and vision to hold these songs together. At this point, Gill’s ability to produce a bucket of winning hooks is well-established, and this, of course, goes a long way towards making Scheduled Explosions the instant classic that it is, as does Gill’s inability to be anything other than a big pop music fan, as the references to everything from Dougie Poole to Otis Redding to “Wild Thing” to “I Want to Tell You” keep reminding us. Also key is 2nd Grade’s refusal to abandon the “power” side of power pop even as it’s not really a record made by five musicians playing a room together–from “Live from Missile Command” to “Out of the Hive” to “Fashion Disease” to “Like a Wild Thing” to “American Rhythm”, there’s always a moment of, ahem, explosive rock and roll lurking just around the corner of the record.

Now that I’ve referenced the title, we might as well nod to the reality that we’re talking about an album called Scheduled Explosions with songs with titles like “Live from Missile Command” and “Jingle Jangle Nuclear Meltdown” and featuring multiple references to the price of gas being too high to “take you for a ride”. If it were the kind of 1980s unearthed basement pop that those early GBV records are often romanticized as, we’d call it “Cold War-informed”; the fact that it came out in 2024 confronts us with facts about this current day and age that your average power pop fan would rather not face. One of the final songs on the album is “68 Comeback”, one of the record’s most overtly Guided by Voices-esque songs about the titular Elvis Presley video concert special that’s distorted and blown-out to all hell. Gill’s alone on this one, and the words spill out of his mouth: “Right here right now is a child / Skipping dreamstones / On the surface of the retroverse / In the midst of a nuclear meltdown / Crying for help in the Sunset Sound echo chamber”. There’s a fire here, too, just as white-hot as it’s ever been. (Bandcamp link)

THEMM! – El Pastor

Release date: September 13th
Record label: Self-released
Genre: Punk rock, garage rock, Texas rock and roll
Formats: Digital
Pull Track: Hot Death

For almost the entire twenty-first century, Austin, Texas quintet The Midgetmen roamed the Lone Star State, playing gigs and putting out albums (usually on their own) of their self-described “slop-punk”. A couple of years ago, The Midgetmen (bassist/vocalist Marc Perlman, guitarists Alex Victoria, Jon Loyens, and Scotty Loewen, and drummer Justin Petro) rechristened themselves as THEMM!, but as far as I can tell, the vibe has largely remained the same (one of their first releases as THEMM! was a three-song single called THEMM! Try Crack, if you’re worried about them becoming too buttoned-up). 2024 has been THEMM!’s formal launch year–February brought Mmm, an EP in which the quintet re-recorded some of their earliest songs released under their old band name, while September sees the launch of El Pastor, THEMM!’s first record of all-new, all-original material. Recorded on the Mexican border near El Paso at Sonic Ranch with Ross Ingram of EEP, the five-song EP is THEMM! doing what they do best–cranking out hooky, unbothered punk rock that flirts with massive anthem-slinging but never takes itself too seriously.

Somewhat surprisingly, THEMM! open El Pastor with a State of the Republic in “Live Laugh Love”, a dispatch from the crumbling empire of their home state that touches on abortion rights, transphobia, fascism, and name-checks Ken Paxton over a flag-waving punk anthem. Lest you worry about where THEMM! stand, they not only reject the dark cloud hanging over their state but the excuses for falling in line, too–“I’m from a small town, I won’t go back / Go it alone when you can’t trust the pack”. “Hot Death” is the other song on El Pastor that rivals “Live Laugh Love” in “mega-punk-anthem” status, the guitars flying high as the band melt into the sand in the midst of dusty trails, cacti, and cicadas. 

There’s a messiness and even darkness that runs deeper than the sloppy, cathartic take on pop punk that THEMM! practice on El Pastor, particularly present in the garage rock venter “Red Fangers” (“I’m in the tent because your mom and dad fight”) and the southern punk of “Steaks and Snakes”, whose narrator works a “contract job in the panhandle” while watching their domestic life circle the drain. After juggling phone calls from lawyers, THEMM! finish “Steaks and Snakes” by looking to the one constant in their life–the music, dude (“Hope we get cash tonight or we sleep in the practice space / Who can think of an ex-wife when you’re opening for Lee Bains”). Those may be the final lyrics of El Pastor, but the actual final statement is the uncharacteristically long instrumental the band launch into right afterwards. It’s the sound of getting up off one’s ass and moving somewhere. Maybe Texas is too big to escape, but it’s large enough that there’s always a new corner. (Bandcamp link)

Dazy – IT’S ONLY A SECRET (If You Repeat It)

Release date: October 25th
Record label: Lame-O
Genre: Power pop, fuzz rock, fuzz pop, pop punk, alt-dance, Madchester
Formats: Digital
Pull Track: Big End

It’s short, and it’s very sweet. One of the first releases from James Goodson’s Dazy project that got any kind of attention was a three-song EP called Revolving Door back in 2021, so why shouldn’t the one-man fuzzy-power-pop band return to the well a few years later? Of course, a lot has happened in the world of Dazy between Revolving Door and now–an all-timer of a compilation cassette called MAXIMUMBLASTSUPERLOUD, a blockbuster signing to Lame-O Records, a debut LP called OUTOFBODY and a companion EP called OTHERBODY. Dazy has been uncharacteristically quiet as of late, as it’s been a year since the last new music from Goodson, the one-off “Forced Perspective” single (not counting an appearance on a song from the dance group Bodysync). Nevertheless, IT’S ONLY A SECRET (If You Repeat It) picks up the thread right where Goodson left off, with his instantly recognizable huge hooks that are equal parts pop punk and Madchester losing no potency over time. The dance-pop and electronic elements from the Bodysync collaboration and “Forced Perspective” are very present in these three tracks too, but there’s also plenty of punk energy and huge guitars, too–Goodson even lists Deedee from wild art punk group MSPAINT on the title track.

“It’s Only a Secret” was the EP’s lead single, but opening track “Big End” is the most obvious “hit” on IT’S ONLY A SECRET (If You Repeat It) to my ears. It’s the one “vintage Dazy” classic song on the EP–it’s got a bit of alt-dance energy to it, but it’s primarily a power pop guitar assault that just happens to have a beat. Goodson’s unflagging, almost robotic high energy is so strong here that even if the rest of the EP was inessential, “Big End” alone would be ample reassurance that Dazy’s still “got it”–“it” being the ability to write a scorching anthem for staring directly at the sun and sounding incredibly cool while doing it. The rest of the EP isn’t inessential, by the way, just different. “Weigh Down on Me” is a nice sideroad for Goodson to go down–the sun-drenched psychedelic pop of this song never explodes like the track before it, but its tightly controlled alt-pop sheen ends up being the glue that hold the two kinetic tracks bordering it together. Which leads us to “It’s Only a Secret”, in which a classic Dazy refrain (the one that gives the EP its title) has to battle an insurgent hardcore-punk vocal from Deedee and Goodson’s own electronic impulses. As one might imagine based on that description, “It’s Only a Secret” is a fairly unique-sounding song–it risks being more “interesting” than good, but the hooks win out–when Goodson, Deedee, and an acoustic guitar lock into place before the song’s big finish, every chaotic flourish feels justified. (Bandcamp link)

Podcasts – Supreme Auctions

Release date: September 13th
Record label: Omegn Plateproduksjon
Genre: Jangle pop, post-punk, power pop
Formats: Digital
Pull Track: Never Been a Problem

The self-titled debut album from Oslo quartet Podcasts was one of the biggest “growers” for me in 2023. I thought it was interesting when I heard it, pretty good when I wrote about it, and firmly enough in its camp by the end of last year to put it on my year-end list. The band (Ellis Jones aka Trust Fund, Kyle Devine, Tore Størvold, and Emil Kraugerud) practiced guitar-based indie pop with a bit of trickiness on Podcasts, favoring unexpected twists and turns over making the obvious move time and time again. The first Podcasts release since their debut LP is a brief but welcome EP called Supreme Auctions, which zips through “3.5 songs” in about eight minutes. It’s Podcasts at their most laconic yet–nothing on this EP is longer than three minutes, and the first song (an instrumental introduction that I’ll assume is the “.5” track) comes in at under a minute. More than just the song lengths, though, Supreme Auctions contains some of the band’s most unvarnished pop songwriting yet–the odd detours in Podcasts’ jangly power pop haven’t vanished exactly, but with little time to spare, they’re kept more towards the margins, giving these tracks a bit more runway with which to take off.

The EP kicks off with “Intro (For Supreme Auctions)”, which blends seamlessly into “Never Been a Problem”, not allowing us to take much of a breath before Supreme Auctions is already halfway over. The sprinting instrumental of “Intro (For Supreme Auctions)” eventually coils into something that resembles “math rock”, but only for a couple of seconds–likewise, “Never Been a Problem” is a polished, sugary piece of power pop that grinds to a complete halt halfway through, only to jam the keys back in the ignition and soar yet again (and then pull a slightly smaller version of the same trick one more time before the song ends). “Down to Melbourne” is the most rhythm-forward track on the EP, and it’s also a masterclass in restraint–it feels like Podcasts are holding back just a little bit throughout the song, to the point where the final refrain becomes a climax without radically altering much of anything. By closing track “Holiday”, Podcasts have become a blissful, carefree mid-tempo guitar pop band, strumming and breezing their way through a song that resists any sort of mid-track lurch or really anything more than a brief between-verses instrumental. Podcasts have more than earned the day off that’s daydreamt in the final track. (Bandcamp link)

Also notable:

Pressing Concerns: Hilken Mancini Band, Hit, Onsloow, Miranda and the Beat

On this Thursday Pressing Concerns, a bunch of new albums out tomorrow (October 25th) await us below: new LPs from Hilken Mancini Band, Hit, Onsloow, and Miranda and the Beat. It’s been an eventful week on Rosy Overdrive, so if you missed any of this week’s earlier posts (Monday looked at records from Langkamer, Seafoam Walls, Humdrum, and Ironic Hill, Tuesday’s post featured American Motors, The Low Field, Jealous Yellow, and Puddled, and on Wednesday I went long on St. Lenox’s Ten Modern American Work Songs), 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.

Hilken Mancini Band – Hilken Mancini Band

Release date: October 25th
Record label: Girlsville
Genre: Power pop, pop punk, fuzz rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Set My Sights

It’s certainly not uncommon these days to hear a new indie rock band that sounds like Juliana Hatfield, Tanya Donelly, and that dog. The difference between your typical buzzy “bubblegrunge” group and the Hilken Mancini Band, however, is that the latter is fronted by someone who can count the aforementioned acts as peers rather than formative influences. In the mid-90s, Hilken Mancini co-led the Boston alt-rock/pop group Fuzzy, who toured with Buffalo Tom and Velocity Girl and released two albums for Atlantic before fizzling out before landing a “proper” radio hit at the end of the decade. Mancini never went away, though, playing in bands like Gramercy Arms, Shepherdess, and The Monsieurs, and most recently starting up a quasi-solo project backed by bassist Winston Braman (formerly of Fuzzy and a longtime Thalia Zedek Band member), drummer Luther Gray (Tsunami), and guitarist Melissa Gibbs (Heavy Stud). I admittedly haven’t kept up with all of Mancini’s output since the dissolution of her most well-known band, but the self-titled debut album from the Hilken Mancini Band arrives with a bang, embracing sugary, hooky, fuzzy guitar pop music like 1994 never fully left us. Although Boston indie rock veterans from J. Mascis to Chris Brokaw to Zedek to the majority of Buffalo Tom apparently guest on this record, Mancini is unambiguously the star of Hilken Mancini Band, and she excels in the role.

The ten songs of Hilken Mancini Band practically helicopter in with their loud, unmistakable catchiness front and center. Album opener “Set My Sights” would already be a classic just based on the strength of the verses and instrumental alone, but Mancini somehow finds a classic 90s alt-pop-rock chorus that nobody’d thought to use yet to really push the song over the top. “Set My Sights” is hard to top in terms of pure immediate energy, but that doesn’t mean the Hilken Mancini Band don’t try–punchy first half highlights “Up 2 11” and “Blackout” similarly violently beat their hooks into the listener with a club, and second half kickoff “Anniversary” leads with a riff that’s so huge-sounding that Mancini’s lyrical reference to You’re Living All Over Me is plenty justified (is that you squealing along, Mr. Mascis?). These are the most obvious head-turners on the record, but Hilken Mancini Band is just as catchy in the “album tracks”, too–right up until the album’s end, where the band surprisingly but welcomely try on a bit of acoustic-led post-Replacements, Lemonheads-y college rock/power pop for size with “Thru 2 U” and then bring it all together for a wobbly but full-throated conclusion in “Let U Go”. The latter song also has some fun and explosive guitar soloing, but whoever’s supplying the fireworks doesn’t interrupt the main show. (Bandcamp link)

Hit – Bestseller

Release date: October 25th
Record label: One Weird Trick
Genre: Experimental pop, noise pop, art rock, art punk, prog-pop, psych pop
Formats: CD, digital
Pull Track: Chumbox

Vocalist/guitarist Craig Heed and guitarist Justin Mayfield have spent the last ten years as one half of New York psychedelic/prog-pop quartet Miracle Sweepstakes, but earlier this decade, the duo joined with bassist Charles Mueller and drummer Cameron LeCrone to form a different quartet called Hit (not to be confused with Hits with an “s”, the Bay Area trio). Taking a page from Big Star, their debut album is called Bestseller, and it’s been in the works for a bit now–two songs from the album, “Vanderbilt” and “Great Conjunction”, came out back in 2022, and “Nu Jangle” showed up in February of this year. I enjoyed the layered, polished sound of Miracle Sweepstakes’ last record, Last Licks, but the chaotic pop rock of “Nu Jangle” and “Vanderbilt” felt fairly distinct from Hit’s sibling band, and it’s no less exciting to hear the group in a larger setting. The advance singles merged Brainiac-like noisy post-punk with snatches of heavenly guitar pop that worked well in short bursts–to translate this attitude to an LP, Hit have to get even more creative, pushing further into the depths of what their previous material had hinted at to turn Bestseller into something just as exhaustive and adventurous as Last Licks was in its own way.

“Arite” is a real, proper introductory track–four minutes long, but never quite letting go of its hesitant, tense “prelude” vibe, even when the refrain turns into a torrent as the song draws to a close. Bestseller provides plenty of release, of course–the three older singles all follow “Arite”, and get right to work at establishing Hit’s debut record as an ace pop album, and then some. In particular, “Nu Jangle”’s combination of a zany, bonkers prog-pop instrumental with some really sweet, arresting vocals from Heed is still one of the most thrilling things I’ve heard this year (is this what Ween sound like to people who like Ween?). The underwater-sounding “Chumbox” is an unlikely early Guided by Voices-esque psych-pop triumph, and “Inner Critic” marks the midpoint of Bestseller by going all-in on what I can only really describe as “jangle-prog”.  Bestseller never really gets “predictable”, but Hit at least sound a bit more comfortable in the second half, settling in to make offbeat but excellently-crafted pop music in a way not unlike Miracle Sweepstakes or peers like Curling. “The Spot” and–in particular–the sugary guitar pop of penultimate track “I Hadn’t Noticed” ensure that Bestseller actually leaves more shined-up and sparkly than it arrived. I’m not sure if there’s a side of Hit that I “prefer” over the other, and that’s entirely due to how smooth the band make the journey feel. (Bandcamp link)

Onsloow – Full Speed Anywhere Else

Release date: October 25th
Record label: Tiny Engines
Genre: Power pop, emo, pop punk
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Taxi

Onsloow are an emo-tinged indie rock, power pop, and punk group from Scandinavia, the unofficial homeland for modern emo-tinged indie rock, power pop, and punk groups (more specifically, they’re from Trondheim, Norway). I was drawn in by Onsloow’s self-titled debut album that showed up at the beginning of 2022, and I wasn’t the only one, as the band caught the attention of Tiny Engines (the unofficial home label for modern emo-tinged indie rock, power pop, and punk groups from Scandinavia). Before putting together what would become their sophomore album, Full Speed Anywhere Else, though, Onsloow faced a problem–their lead singer, Johanne Rimul, was too busy pursuing a master’s degree and a “growing family” to continue to front the group. Guitarist Mathias Nylenna, drummer Morten Samdal, and bassist Lasse Berg recruited Helene Brunæs (of Lille Venn) to take her place–while Onsloow are admittedly far from a household name, Brunæs nonetheless had some large shoes to fill, as Rimul’s strong, confident pop vocals were a huge part of Onsloow’s appeal. Brunæs is close enough to her predecessor for Onsloow to pick up right where they left off on Full Speed Anywhere Else, but distinct enough that she doesn’t fall into the trap of just doing a less-impressive imitation of Rimul’s vocals, either.

There’s still a shift from S/T to Full Speed Anywhere Else–the songs have less of a serious, torrential emo-rock tinge and more of a power pop warmth to them. Whether that’s a change brought on by the new vocalist or from the songwriting level seems impossible to pinpoint–regardless, it’s a sheen that feels just as natural on the band as their previous record’s did. The mid-tempo, four-minute opening track “Riding on Lies” wrings just about every bit of catchiness it can from its ingredients, from Brunæs’s ascendent power pop vocals to the shimmering guitar leads to heavy-duty power chords. As the quartet wistfully bounce through the synth-colored “Taxi”, they feel closer to Dutch indie pop group Snow Coats or even a more electric version of Fuvk’s bedroom pop than their louder peers in Spielbergs. Although there are a few real-deal “rock” moments on Full Speed Anywhere Else, the emotional heart of the album to me feels more visible in the less breakneck, more thoughtful pop tunes like “Body Parts”, or the closing duo of “Muscle Memory” and “Now I Get It”. It’s been a couple of years since their first album, Onsloow have weathered a major lineup change, and landed with a label that potentially gives them a wider audience. Full Speed Anywhere Else isn’t a step down (or even a tonedown), but it does sound like a band that allows themselves a breath every once in a while. (Bandcamp link)

Miranda and the Beat – Can’t Take It

Release date: October 25th
Record label: Ernest Jenning/Khannibalism
Genre: Garage rock, punk rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Can’t Take It

After years of putting out standalone singles, New York/New Orleans quartet Miranda and the Beat finally dropped their self-titled debut album last year via Ernest Jenning and Khannibalism. Thanks to everything from frontperson Miranda Zipse’s vocals to Dylan Fernandez’s Farfisa organ to the group’s propensity for strong grooves, Miranda and the Beat was an impressive collection of Detroit-style soulful garage punk with bits of classic pop music and new wave in the mix, too. Since that album’s release in May of last year, Miranda and the Beat have toured it extensively, dropped down to a trio (Zipse on guitar and vocals, Fernandez on Farfisa and guitar, and Alvin Jackson on bass), and put an entire second album, Can’t Take It, to tape. Written and recorded in just a few days at King Khan’s Moon Studios Rock n Roll Vortex in Germany, Can’t Take It is the lean, immediate, punk rock counterpart to Miranda and the Beat’s more measured, restrained take on rock and roll. Not that there aren’t subtler moments on this album, but Miranda and the Beat are more laser-focused than ever on their garage-punk bread and butter and getting just about everything they can out of it over the record’s dozen songs. 

The opening title track does an incredible job of setting the stage for what to expect on Can’t Take It–the guitars, Zipse’s voice, and the Farfisa are given roughly equal weight, all working together to create something satisfying yet slightly unnerving-sounding in its dead-serious rock and roll attitude. Don’t mistake “streamlined” for one-note, though–there’s plenty to differentiate songs like the ninety-second deranged garage-pop of “Earthquake Water” from the three-minute over-the-top breakdown of “Anxiety” and the Return of the Groove in “El Lobo Negro”. If there’s a “chill” section of Can’t Take It, it’s probably the middle–that’s where we get the record’s sole acoustic track, “The Last Time”, an inspired take on Dead Moon’s “I Tried” that introduces a bit of noir to the mid-tempo garage rock, and the relatively contemplative retro-pop of “In My Life”. The momentum of Can’t Take It is such that the trio can dip into these reserves and come out the other side in basically a single motion, picking up the garage rocking thread with “New York Video” and “Manipulate Me” like it’s no one’s business. The spectre of 1980s goth-infused rock and roll has always hovered over Miranda and the Beat’s music, but the trio make it as explicit as ever in the dramatic closing track “The Secrets”, writhing and skulking for four electric minutes before the record comes to a close. It’s a fitting wrap on a successful sophomore album, one that retains the signature of its group while doing something palpably different. (Bandcamp link)

Also notable:

Pressing Concerns: St. Lenox, ‘Ten Modern American Work Songs’

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

I believe that Andrew Choi’s previous album as St. Lenox, 2021’s Ten Songs of Worship and Praise for Our Tumultuous Times, still holds the record for “most words I’ve written about a single album for this blog” to this day. St. Lenox’s music brings that out of me (and, anecdotally, plenty of other writers)–Choi’s writing, ambitious, autobiographical, stream-of-consciousness-feeling but always circling its way back to whichever theme he’s zeroed in on for a given record, is particularly welcoming to dissection, discussion, and other “dis-” words. The first decade of Choi’s music career followed him from central Ohio to New York City and brought four rich records in this vein–2016’s Ten Hymns from My American Gothic, a meditation on Choi’s upbringing as a first-generation Korean-American in Missouri and Iowa, might be his “best” album, although following Choi’s writing across several subjects in records up to last year’s religion-inspired LP is a reward in itself. The fifth St. Lenox album, Ten Modern American Work Songs, looks at a key aspect of Choi’s life that has undoubtedly shaped the trajectory of St. Lenox even as it’s mostly been on the periphery of his writing thus far. Somewhat jokingly dedicated in honor of the “10-year Reunion of the NYU Law Class of 2014” (in lieu of the “financial gift” the university had suggested to mark the occasion instead), Ten Modern American Work Songs traces 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.

Listen, I’m no big-shot corporate lawyer in New York City (or whatever Andrew Choi is these days), and I’m guessing you aren’t either, but–and maybe you’re aware of this–it’s a pretty long road for anyone to get to that point, and there’s probably something that Choi experiences along the way that doesn’t quite seem as foreign to you. Maybe it’s the grinding in grueling, low-paying jobs with a distant goal on the horizon, maybe it’s the crushing student debt he takes on because received wisdom says it’s a good idea, maybe it’s the white collar job workaholic cultural death spiral, maybe it’s a career/life goal change that requires him to leave a place that truly felt like “home”.  These are some of the clearest mile markers on Ten Modern American Work Songs, delivered in a way that will be eminently familiar to anyone who’s experienced St. Lenox’s previous work. 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–the one that got him noticed at Joe Peppercorn’s open mic in Columbus over a decade ago, leading to a long partnership with Anyway Records–is just as incredible, and his pointed ramblings remain pointed and rambling (I mentioned John Darnielle, Craig Finn, and Michael Stipe last time–as well as comparing Choi to an “over-excited professor”, which I wrote before I even knew that was his original ambition).

Even for St. Lenox, Ten Songs of Worship and Praise for Our Tumultuous Times was sprawling and overflowing–graded on Andrew Choi’s curve, Ten Modern American Work Songs is a bit more “pop”, the songs a bit more upbeat and the instrumental hooks a little more prevalent. Combined with some moments where Choi’s voice sounds higher and even younger than he has of late in “Kalahari” and “Your Local Neighborhood Bar”, it feels like he’s tapping into the energy that colored his relatively “rough draft” first album, 2015’s Ten Songs About Memory and Hope–which indeed coincided with a lot of the events depicted in this record. “Courtesan”, the first proper song on the album, combines the giddy (the instrumentation, the “Victory! After seven years of agony!” declaration) with the sarcastic self-congratulation of the song’s title. “Lust for Life”, the musically-minimal follow-up track that feels more in line with Choi’s more recent work, is a more clear-eyed look at this moment, with its refusal to romanticize the previous track’s dizzying experience and pull up the ladder (“I hear the people are starting a union, Jesse / I hope if we work together, we can make this school a better place”) complimenting it satisfyingly. 

Like “Courtesan”, the most triumphant-sounding, pop-forward moments on Ten Modern American Work Songs combine genuine elation with a three-dimensional attitude that deepens the foundation of the tracks, if not outright contradicting them. The most fun-sounding song on the record is arguably “Quasi-Nichomachean Ethics (Drunk Uncle Advice)”, the parenthetical qualifying the full-throated stream-of-consciousness pointers Choi gives to a nephew on his twenty-first birthday (“Don’t check your emails after 7pm, dear God / ‘cause ignorance is the the better part of valor,” Choi sings early in the song, and later says the subtext out loud with “That’s why I am telling you to learn from my mistakes in this life”). The penultimate song “Your Local Neighborhood Bar” rivals “Quasi-Nichomachean Ethics” in terms of pure jubilation, as Choi steps back into the world of Peppercorn’s open mic nights at Andyman’s Treehouse in Columbus (“Last week, down at your neighborhood bar / I heard that it was some kind of legendary / … / I gotta go there and sing you a song”). As modern-day Choi sits on the subway and reminisces, however, he goes beyond the rose-tinted, Cheers-evoking glasses with which he begins (“Seven years ago stuck on the ivories / It reveals explicit themes / Seven years yeah, stuck in the brain”).

The flip side of this is that Ten Modern American Work Songs’ subtler, less outwardly triumphant moments contain a hint of that “victory” in them, even as one might need to lean on greater context to see them. Choi’s letter to the titular character of “Rudy” might feel like a backhanded compliment (“Did you know that I’ve been inspired by you / To give up on my dreams and be a family man”), but both the rest of the song (“Sad sack institution salaryman / Overtime stuck on the dashboard”) and the album as a whole reveal the sincerity of the remark. Meanwhile, “The House I Left for Work in New York” is shot through with a very real sense of loss, the feeling like Choi is giving up the tangible manifestation of the American dream for something much less certain in the future–but the entire song sounds different after reading that the cover of Ten Modern American Work Songs depicts Choi’s current home, which he put a down payment on last year at the age of 43. And then there’s the final song on the record, “On Fulfillment”. Taking the form of a conversation at a wedding, Choi finishes the record by saying “Did you know ive been up at night, screaming curse words in the dark? / As if the whole of my career has been a big mistake”–that’s a hard note to end on no matter how you slice it. Salvation from this creeping feeling can only be won by taking a wider view of both Ten Modern American Work Songs and St. Lenox’s oeuvre as a whole, which makes the case that, even in this worst-case scenario, one’s work “career” is (or, at least, can be) just one piece of something larger. (Bandcamp link)

Pressing Concerns: American Motors, The Low Field, Jealous Yellow, Puddled

On this fine Tuesday, a brand new Pressing Concerns looks at new albums from the likes of American Motors, The Low Field, and Jealous Yellow, as well as the debut EP from Puddled. It’s a great and eclectic set, and if you missed what we looked at yesterday (Langkamer, Seafoam Walls, Humdrum, and Ironic Hill), check that post 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.

American Motors – Content

Release date: October 4th
Record label: Expert Work/The Ghost Is Clear
Genre: Noise rock, post-hardcore, post-rock, post-punk
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Colonial Lanes

Those of you who are here for the times when Pressing Concerns covers upbeat, catchy guitar pop records are permitted to skip this one. American Motors are from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, but that’s not important–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. They’re a trio, led by the songwriting duo of Dustin Travis White (guitar) and Alex Steward (drums), with Brad Williams joining them on bass for their first album, Content. American Motors recorded the album 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. White and Steward apparently reworked the songs several times before finally going in to record them, referring to the process as “noise rock Steely Dan”–whatever they had to do to get there, though, it’s hard to argue with how immaculately Content works as a sum of its parts. 

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. Williams’ bass is essential for that notes that do get played, while the record’s characters always seem to be in real, palpable danger, running from something or provoking someone or something they shouldn’t have (and, if they’re not, they’re dispassionately watching the plights of those who are, not even bothering to muster up a “whew, glad that isn’t me”). Opening track “Colonial Lanes” is a shapeless, formless post-noise rock soundscape, the narration getting overtaken by moments of atmospheric instrumentals and a few genuine “rock” sections. If you’re looking for more pyrotechnics, American Motors eventually offer a few more up in “(A Billboard Reading) Dissolve Jefferson”, which eventually burns up over its six-minute length, and the bass-anchored “Three Crosses”, which is the American Motors’ minimal version of heavy alt-rock like Failure and Hum.

Not that Content is ever not dark, but the clearer its surroundings come into focus, the bleaker it feels. In the frantic “Tamarack”, the titular off-Interstate tourist trap becomes just another place for the song’s subject–doomed by an unseen, unknown force to a life on the run–to hide until it’s time to move on yet again. The closing sucker punch of “The Former Mall Anchor Store Call Center Blues”, which traces the lifespan of the mall-turned-call center-turned-“closed”, says all you need to know about that one, and in “There Is a Twin”, paranoia and confusion finally bubble up to the surface in the form of plowing-forward alt-rock riffs and some creepy, Pile-esque imagery and storytelling. The cavernous emptiness falls away on Content’s closing track, “Statues”, replaced by a wave of static and fuzz that accompanies the band’s hammering away at more noise rock/post-punk infrastructure. “We need more blood from the host,” American Motors ominously intone over and over again in “Statues”, expertly mimicking the forces of extraction that created the world around them. (Bandcamp link)

The Low Field – The Low Field

Release date: October 18th
Record label: Self-released
Genre: Emo, slowcore, post-rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Heaviness

The Low Field are a new band from Limerick, Ireland made up of musicians from the city’s other groups–one of the two vocalist/guitarists, Diarmuid O’Shea, plays in Casavettes, the other one, Danny O’Shea (I don’t know if they’re related or if it’s just a common Irish surname) plays in Deadbog, and both members of the rhythm section (drummer Brendan McInerney and bassist Mícheál Keating) are from Bleeding Heart Pigeons. The band first came together in 2021 “as a direct result of” a shared admiration for the album Ground Aswim by North Carolina emo project Sinai Vessel, and this reference point puts us at least somewhat close to what we hear on the group’s self-titled debut album (following the “Heaviness / Tachycardia” single last year, both sides of which ended up on the LP). “Limerick based quiet then loud then quiet” reads The Low Field’s Bandcamp description, an accurate summation of their record’s sweeping sound that incorporates a bit of chilly, emo-ish indie rock, but also a bit of slowcore and even orchestral post-rock (thanks to Keating’s violin). The guitars display a minimal, decorative touch, then roar into full force and then recede, all the while the O’Sheas guide the songs from understated to full-on emo-rock territory with their vocals.

Everyone loves a good pin-drop-quiet six-minute opening track, and The Low Field are more than happy to oblige with “Heaviness”. In terms of pure noise, it’s certainly not the “heaviest” moment on The Low Field, but its crushing, slow-crawl attitude for the majority of its runtime ensures that it does in fact live up to its title in its own way. “Heaviness” does build to a crescendo, but it steps back almost as soon as it reaches it, so it’s still a bit of a jolt when the mid-tempo electric guitars introduce “Stomach Ache” (even though the track largely still finds The Low Field in “meandering” mode, just with the volume raised a little bit). As the record progresses, we start to get a handle on The Low Field, a band that indeed loves to begin in a dingy basement of languid guitar leads only to charge into something louder and stormy by the end of the track (see “The Urgency” and “Gather”). The five-minute emo overload of “Tachycardia” injects just a bit of post-hardcore messiness into The Low Field’s refined sound, although this second-half highlight is soon tempered by a (equally strong) diversion into lengthy shimmering instrumentals with “Reuntied”. It’s a really solid first record on the whole–listening back to it, I think I find the “quiet” parts on The Low Field the most rewarding, but, the moments where the band snap into the “loud” portion of their sound are key to underscoring the true range of what The Low Field are pulling off here. (Bandcamp link)

Jealous Yellow – Czech Vampires

Release date: October 14th
Record label: Erste Theke Tonträger/Sifter Grim
Genre: Synthpunk, art punk, garage punk, post-hardcore, post-punk, noise rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Hypotenuse

Benjamin Rea has played in a bunch of bands in his native Seattle (Laminate, Diirt, Reverse Death, and Soda Gumball), the majority of which are associated with local labels Sifter Grim and Half Shell. The former of those two imprints also released the debut album from Rea’s solo project, Jealous Yellow–2021’s Sugarweeper, which was the result of Rea being stuck in his studio apartment during the early stages of COVID-19. The second Jealous Yellow LP, Czech Vampires, is the product of the pandemic too, in a way–while touring the first record in Europe, Rea caught the virus and subsequently had to quarantine in a hostel in Prague for two weeks, leading to the conception of most of these songs. Co-released by Sifter Grim and Erste Theke Tonträger (Public Interest, Dr Sure’s Unusual Practice, Supercrush), Czech Vampires is a classic freak punk LP–it’s synth-punk but with plenty of interesting guitarplay, equally likely to lapse into a tortured Brainiac-like post-hardcore flameout or a curious, arty no wave disintegration like a more irritated Pere Ubu. The fourteen-song, forty-two minute record is an exhaustive journey, continually chipping away at a punk rock mountain and dropping bizarre but potent nuggets right up until the noise collage that closes the album.

Not that Czech Vampires is going to be recognized as “pop music” by most people, but opening track “Hypotenuse” is a welcome mat for those open to the contradiction, offering up a propulsive piece of garage-y egg punk that’s about as pleasing-sounding as this kind of thing comes. “Pop Fiction!” does a similar thing but with minimal synthpunk, letting Rea go absolutely wild over top of a slick, minimal groove. Almost every moment on Czech Vampires feels like a reset of some kind–“Sweat Our Yr Good Clothes” lives up to its title by introducing the idea of slow-burning, steadily-building post-punk to the mix, “Baker’s Dozen” suggesting that Jealous Yellow can be just as potent by dropping the outward aggression and embracing their insular weirdness. The only rule of Czech Vampires is that there aren’t any rules, which starts to make stop-and-start warped journeys like “Sticky Plate/Tired of Being Good” and the title track as well as the no wave horns of “Perms for Pearl” make more sense. Of course, Jealous Yellow pretty much always approach Czech Vampires like it’s the most natural thing in the world, which goes a long way towards the coherence of the album (and, you know, throwing in cathartic punk rippers like “Dirty Hand” throughout the record helps, too). The aforementioned closing jumble of “Let’s Lay an Egg” is the final boss, layering discordant synths, manipulated vocals, and rhythmic excerpts together with a clear-eyed sense of purpose that Jealous Yellow have spent an entire album honing. (Bandcamp link)

Puddled – Puddled

Release date: September 26th
Record label: Crafted Sounds
Genre: Fuzz rock, noise pop, 90s indie rock, alt-rock, grunge-gaze
Formats: CD, cassette, digital
Pull Track: Bleed

Puddled are a new band out of Philadelphia formed by a couple of ex-Baltimore rockers–vocalist/guitarist Naomi Davidoff played in Spooled Up, and Kyle Balkin in Leisure Sport. For their self-titled debut EP, they’re a quartet joined by the rhythm section of Laura Banner (bass) and Jesse Hutchison (drums), while Samuel Acchione (of Alex G’s band), who they tapped to produce the record, also contributes keyboard and guitar. Puddled is out via stalwart shoegaze/noise pop label Crafted Sounds, and it’s a natural fit, although Puddled are not quite as interested in textured guitar layers as some of their peers. The seven-song introduction to the quartet is full-on fuzz pop at its most electric and catchy, feeling closer to bands like Superchunk, The Breeders, or even Screaming Females than your canonical shoegaze acts. Davidoff is a strong and attention-grabbing vocalist, holding her own among the rest of the band’s spirited blasts of noise. Though it’s only eighteen minutes long, Puddled finds space for both power-punk bullet trains and some more contemplative moments, too, providing examples of the full range of Davidoff’s songwriting in a fuzzed-out but easy-to-digest package.

Puddled kick off their on-record debut with their version of a slow burn in “This Time”. The song, which does seem to draw from the disintegration of a relationship, isn’t quite the band’s own “Like a Fool”, but it does take about a minute to properly kick in and let the cathartic fuzzed-out melodies flow. “Bleed” is the sound of the dam fully breaking, an all-in fuzz-pop-rocker that demonstrates that, while Puddled may love distorted guitars, they’re hardly gazing down at their feet when it comes to energy. A sturdy and consistent debut record, just about every song on Puddled is worth a mention–it’s hard not to root for a band that pulls together a stretch like the melodic tornado of “Bleed”, the dreamy, propulsive “Same”, and the fuzz-punk-in-a-blender “Between”.  Puddled call themselves a “grunge and alternative rock band”, which is probably more accurate than shoegaze–even on the lighter songs on the EP, like the (initially) low-key “Tides”, there are both kinetic guitars and powerhouse drumming from Hutchinson to continue Puddled’s impressive streak. Our clearest glimpse at Puddled might come in the EP’s final track, “Space”, which leaves just enough of the absence implied by its title around Davidoff’s vocals to present a transparent picture. Of course, Puddled end the song (and subsequently the record) by launching into a huge, instrumental, melodic outro, so don’t worry about any deficiencies in that department, either. (Bandcamp link)

Also notable:

Pressing Concerns: Langkamer, Seafoam Walls, Humdrum, Ironic Hill

You don’t even know it yet, but this week in late October is going to be a great one for Rosy Overdrive readers. We’re starting with the Monday Pressing Concerns, featuring new albums from Langkamer, Seafoam Walls, Humdrum, and Ironic Hill (three of which came out last week, and one of which is from back in August).

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.

Langkamer – Langzamer

Release date: October 16th
Record label: Breakfast
Genre: Indie pop, folk rock
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
Pull Track: Heart of Tin

I first came across Bristol quartet Langkamer when they released an EP called Red Thread Route in late 2022, and kept up with them as they put out The Noon and Midnight Manual, their sophomore album, the following year.  I enjoyed the sound that the four of them (drummer/vocalist Josh Jarman, guitarists Ed Soles and Dan Anthony, and bassist Tom Kelly) had hit on as a unit, bits of post-90s “slacker rock”, classic British guitar pop, folk rock, and even a bit of alt-country delivered in a breezy package. I’m not all that shocked that their third album, Langzamer, is a great LP–all the ingredients for Langkamer to pull it off were already visible. Langzamer itself, however, is a bit of a surprising turn for the band–it’s a more serious and darker record than the previous ones I’d heard from them, with Jarman’s lyrics dwelling heavily on death and loss and the music dampening down their past brightness a bit to follow suit (it’s worth noting that, rather than just being a nonsense take off of their band name, “langzamer” is actually Dutch for “slower”). The quartet went to Falmouth to record Langzmer with Ben Woods of The Golden Dregs, and while the group’s guitar pop instincts remain intact, the muted presentation clearly best suits these songs.

“Do you want the good news or the bad news first? / They’re both bad news, but the bad is worse,” is how Jarman starts “Heart of Tin”, Langzamer’s opening track and a really key mood-setter. Langkamer unsteadily march into a mid-tempo indie rock song that matches their lead singer’s uneasy and small-sounding vocals, but the guitars find a lot of melodic lines within the song’s nooks and crannies, and Jarman eventually manages a half-rousing refrain. The balance continues to be struck throughout Langzamer, indie pop delivered deliberately and thoughtfully–the sweeping instrumental of “Aberfan” can’t fully escape the melancholy at its core, while the bright folk-country “Movement” and the buzzing pop rock of “Richard E Grant” help the first half of the record give off some semblance of “upbeat”. The blunt, intent chorus of the former (“If you gotta do it / You can’t go through it / Go around / Go around”) is illustrative of how jarring Langzamer can be, something that also shades album centerpiece “Salvation XL” (a hallucinogenic ballad about religion at “a Burger King in Marrakesh” that is funny, but not a joke). The lightness is furthest away in the late-album quiet tracks, though, with “At the Lake” and “Bluff” really leaving nowhere for Jarman’s heavy voice to hide. The latter song in particular is a tough one–it’s the last song on the album, and it’s a real “sit in your car for a minute after it ends” kind of closer. I wasn’t really expecting Langkamer to make something like this, and I’m not sure the band themselves planned on it either. These songs are what they had, though, and Langzamer does exactly what it must. (Bandcamp link)

Seafoam Walls – Standing Too Close to the Elephant in the Room

Release date: October 18th
Record label: Dion Dia
Genre: Art rock, noise pop, electronic rock, shoegaze, dream pop, jazz-pop
Formats: Digital
Pull Track: Cabin Fever

Miami quartet Seafoam Walls came together in the late 2010s and got a bit of attention via their debut album, 2021’s XVI, which came out on Thurston Moore’s Daydream Library label. The band (guitarist/vocalist Jayan Bertrand, guitarist Dion Kerr, bassist Joshua Ewers, and electronic drummer/percussionist Josue Vargas) describes their music as “Caribbean jazzgaze”, and that’s admittedly a succinct summation of XVI, which does indeed combine elements from jazz, Caribbean music, indie rock, and electronica in an intriguing way. If you liked XVI (or are even just curious based on that description of it), you’ll be pleased to hear that Seafoam Walls are still building from the same ingredients on their sophomore album, Standing Too Close to the Elephant in the Room. Not that XVI was an extremely difficult listen, but the band’s follow-up seems to emphasize the “pop” side of Seafoam Walls’ experimental pop, retaining the offbeat jazz and electronic elements but, for the majority of Standing Too Close to the Elephant in the Room, introducing them as supporting elements to the record’s more structured, recognizable indie rock core. Though I still wouldn’t call Standing Too Close to the Elephant in the Room a straight-up shoegaze album (if for no other reason than to avoid the wrath of “pure” shoegaze fans), the psychedelic, layered haze over top of Seafoam Walls’ pop music is at the very least a clear link to the genre.

Bands like Seafoam Walls probably can’t ever be “streamlined”, but the eight-song, thirty-five minute structure of Standing Too Close to the Elephant in the Room feels just about as focused as this kind of music can get. The first two tracks on the record, “Humanitarian, Pt. I” and “Humanitarian, Pt. II” are Seafoam Walls as a dynamic, dreamy indie rock band, slowly and methodically building things up in the former and letting loose in the form of breezy indie pop in the latter. Seafoam Walls’ jazz-rock instincts creep in during the outro to the latter song, but this turns out to be a feint, with “Cabin Fever” actually upping both the volume and the experimentation in a way that puts them in line with the current Julia’s War/Candlepin wave of “new” shoegaze/noise pop. Those looking for the jazz attitude to return will be pleased to hear sprawling second half highlights like “Hurricane Humble” and “Sad Bop”–the latter of the two actually embraces the sparser, more thoughtful end of the jazz-pop spectrum, marrying Seafoam Walls’ restlessness with an audible peace. Of course, Standing Too Close to the Elephant in the Room still ends with “Ex Rey”, a dizzying seven-minute Jenga tower of noises and ideas–when every piece of that song is as satisfying and captivating on its own, though, it’s almost just as tranquil to watch the tower wobble. (Bandcamp link)

Humdrum – Every Heaven

Release date: October 18th
Record label: Slumberland
Genre: Jangle pop, power pop, new wave, post-punk, dream pop
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
Pull Track: Come and Get Me

Humdrum may be a brand-new project, but its leader, Loren Vanderbilt, is a veteran of guitar pop. The Chicago-based Vanderbilt spent most of the 2010s making indie pop as one-third of Windy City group Star Tropics, releasing a LP and a few singles together before breaking up at the end of last decade. Vanderbilt began work on Humdrum not long afterwards, eventually resulting in Every Heaven, the project’s ten-song debut album. Vanderbilt has a keen grasp on a very specific time and place in the history of indie rock as Humdrum, as he carefully and devotedly pulls together jangle pop, new wave, college rock, and dream pop from the 1980s and early 90s to make Every Heaven’s warmly familiar sound. Although it does feature some guitar contributions from Vanderbilt’s former Star Tropics bandmate Scott Hibbitts, 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, Humdrum is somewhere between a more melancholic version of bands like Chime School and Ducks Ltd. and a more peppy Lost Film or Old Moon.

Perhaps reflecting its nature as a solo project begun during the pandemic, the writing throughout Every Heaven feels very yearning. Salvation and bliss are glimpsable, but out of reach, coming an unspecified time “soon” or “one day”. Whatever was on Vanderbilt’s mind while putting together this record, it led to some powerful pop songs, with even the instrumental opening track giving off so much vibrancy that it’s easy to miss that it’s a wordless song before it ends abruptly before the two-minute mark. From that moment on, the rock-solid, fully-teased-out jangly, dreamy guitar pop anthems become a steady stream, although some moments stand out as being especially immediate and sugary. “Wave Goodbye” and “See Through You” are both modern jangle pop classics, legitimate rushes of melodies and propulsion with hooks in every crevice. Humdrum does this same trick one more time in “Come and Get Me”, the emotional cracks and visible wear and tear only enhancing the great New Romantic performance given by Vanderbilt and guest vocalist Melissa Buckley. Come for these explosive moments, yes, and stay for the rest of the record and the rest of its dimensions, from more labor-intensive pop music like the particularly New Order-esque charms of “Eternal Blue” and the relatively calm waters of “Test of Time” and “Ultraviolet”. 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. Oh, and because it’s very sparkly and shiny, too. (Bandcamp link)

Ironic Hill – Alone in a Field

Release date: August 28th
Record label: Self-released
Genre: Indie pop, folk rock, lo-fi pop, singer-songwriter
Formats: Cassette, digital
Pull Track: Partying

Last year I wrote about a self-titled cassette from Ironic Hill, an anonymous United Kingdom-based bedroom pop project that gathered up ten “humble, no-frills, but nevertheless quite compelling” pop songs in one place after steadily releasing them as singles over the course of 2023. There’s also been a steady stream of Ironic Hill music since the release of that cassette, most of it in the realms of field recordings, ambient guitar, and improvisational (in the form of the SAND, BREAK, and PROCESS EPs). Alone in a Field is the first song-based collection from the project since Ironic Hill, primarily recorded “on a solitary five day trip to Norfolk in July 2023”. The eleven-song, twenty-six minute record (once again self-released on cassette) features plenty of the stream-of-consciousness melancholic guitar pop that can be found on Ironic Hill, but also reflects how the project has grown in the months since. Instrumental tracks (both “full band” and solo piano in nature) bridge the “pop” songs, and the tracks with vocals feel more fully-developed, with more instruments and sections applied to the skeletal cores. Part of Ironic Hill’s appeal was its no-frills presentation, but Ironic Hill adds just a bit more oomph to these songs without losing anything in the process.

Alone in a Field begins with an unusual sound for Ironic Hill–the squealing of electric guitar feedback. The track it eventually launches into, “Dusk”, is an odd one for the project too, but its low-key, almost psychedelic instrumental doesn’t really turn out to be out of place on Alone in a Field at all. The electric guitars continue to flash just a bit in proper pop songs like “Partying” and “Funfair”, but the tracks themselves are vintage Ironic Hill–wearily, the project leader declares “When I was young, I had some fun / But now my partying days are fun,” in the former, and in the latter he sings “I wanna sing happy songs / I wanna dance all night long / Like I’ve never done before / I wanna believe in something,” like somebody who could really use a nice day at the fair. Only five songs on Alone in a Field have lyrics, but Ironic Hill make them count–there are plenty of memorable moments to be found in “Indoors” (“I’ve seen a lot of the world / But I don’t wanna see any more / I only want to see the same old things”) and “Dogshow” (containing the title line: “Do horses get depressed / Standing alone in a field?”). When Ironic Hill breaks their piano-led, meandering wordlessness to observe “The world is a dog show / And everything is no-go”, it’s clearly a meaningful feeling to them–enough to have me nodding along knowingly, somehow. (Bandcamp link)

Also notable:

Pressing Concerns: Office Culture, Jim Nothing, Why Bother?, Bon Enfant

It’s a Thursday, and we’ve got a great blog post for you below. This edition of Pressing Concerns looks at three albums coming out tomorrow, October 18th, from Office Culture, Jim Nothing, and Why Bother?, plus an LP from Bon Enfant that came out earlier this week. Speaking of earlier this week, if you missed Monday’s blog post (featuring Cast of Thousands, The Armoires, Black Ends, and Plastic Factory) or Tuesday’s (featuring Russel the Leaf, OOF, Khartomb, and Blue Zero), 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.

Office Culture – Enough

Release date: October 18th
Record label: Ruination
Genre: Art pop, jazz-pop, art rock, experimental rock
Formats: CD, digital
Pull Track: We Used to Build Things

Winston Cook-Wilson and his project Office Culture first appeared on this blog back in 2022, when I had the pleasure of writing about Big Time Things, the third Office Culture LP. The warm, sprawled-out soft rock and jazz-pop leanings of that album made it one of the best-sounding records of that year, Cook-Wilson and his collaborators allowing themselves to fully immerse themselves in the gentle grooves. For the fourth Office Culture album, though, 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”, when artists blew their work up to previously-unmatched proportions without any heed as to how they were going to pare it down to some forty-odd minutes. Says Enough: bring on the guest vocalists. Bring on a larger focus on experimental electronic instrumentation. Bring on songs that cross the five-minute barrier without breaking a sweat. And above all else, bring on the variety–for a band that spent their last record extending one vibe as far out as it could go, Enough sees just how many directions Office Culture can stretch Cook-Wilson’s distinct sophisti-pop songwriting at once. It’d be too much to list the twenty-something collaborators that show up Enough (peruse the album’s credits, you’ll see some names you’ll recognize if you read this blog regularly), but suffice it to say that Office Culture (the core of which here is Cook-Wilson, bassist Charlie Kaplan, and guitarist Ryan El-Solh) are incredibly serious about building something multifaceted.

Aiming for “experience”, Enough takes its time getting to some of Office Culture’s biggest departures. The low-key jazz, R&B, and pop rock that shade “Hat Guy” and “Counting Game” would imply that we’re in for yet another smooth ride from Cook-Wilson and company, and though “Imabeliever” does throw some prominent electronic touches into the mix, Nate Mendelsohn’s effects jut up against an otherwise pretty recognizable Office Culture creation. Cook-Wilson hands off lead vocal duties three times on the record–Alena Spanger takes on “Secluded”, a creation equally led by synthesizers and folk music that sounds like Office Culture attempting to make (or, maybe more accurately, accidentally stumbling into) a more zeitgeisty kind of indie pop. Armed with Sam Sodomsky of The Bird Calls’ folk storytelling voice, Office Culture pull off marrying it with dream pop fluttering in the title track, and Jackie West’s jazz-psych-pop closing “Everything” is a success, too. Cook-Wilson isn’t afraid to keep some of the more out-there moments on Enough for himself, though–the dizzying electronic rock of “Like I Was Different” stands out to me, and the five-minute jazz-funk-groove of “We Used to Build Things” (much more showy than any such material on Big Time Things) might just be the most satisfying thing on the entire album. There’s a certain amount of faith required to take a swing at making one’s own Enough–Cook-Wilson, a music writer himself, surely must be aware of the possibility of subtler moments of brilliance like “Was I Cruel” getting overlooked in this ocean. There’s the hope that listeners will stick with it for the long haul, long enough to let all these moments reveal themselves. Office Culture did the hard part–all we have to do is refrain from hitting the eject button. (Bandcamp link)

Jim Nothing – Grey Eyes, Grey Lynn

Release date: October 18th
Record label: Meritorio/Melted Ice Cream
Genre: Jangle pop, Dunedin sound, fuzz rock, lo-fi indie rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: The Shimmering

Christchurch-originating, Auckland-based Jim Nothing came to my attention via 2022’s In the Marigolds; there have been a lot of great records out of New Zealand the past few years, but that brief collection of breezy but substantial guitar pop might be my personal favorite in recent memory. When they made In the Marigolds, Jim Nothing were a trio, but the materials for Grey Eyes, Grey Lynn use the name as a pseudonym for James Sullivan (also of Salad Boys), vocalist and songwriter. Drummer Brian Feary (Wurld Series) from In the Marigolds is still in the fold (and in fact co-produced and co-recorded this LP), and newcomers Paul Brown (bass) and Frances Carter and Adele Andrews (guest vocals) also appear on the album. Grey Eyes, Grey Lynn continues to mine the rich veins of classic Flying Nun-inspired jangle pop, psychedelic pop, and noise pop that Jim Nothing so effectively explored on In the Marigolds, but this one feels like a more wide-ranging take on this kind of music. 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 (and, given that it was half studio-recorded and half garage-recorded, this makes sense). Sullivan’s songwriting is still sublime, though, and more than capable of weathering a more involved journey.

The blissful, note-perfect power pop/college rock of opening track “Hourglass” blew me away as a standalone single and it’s certainly up to the task of opening Grey Eyes, Grey Lynn. The momentum keeps flowing with the feisty (for Jim Nothing, at least) garage-pop of “First Bite” and “Wildflowers”, a jangly tune that’s still got an upbeat swing to it. The next section of Grey Eyes, Grey Lynn slows down a bit and opens up some more space–in particular, “Easter at the RSC” is full-band guitar pop at its simplest and most streamlined, while the minute-long “Can’t Find It Now” lets Sullivan’s acoustic guitar make up the bulk of the instrumentation. Grey Eyes, Grey Lynn doesn’t really peter off–both the more electric and more insular sides of Jim Nothing show up in its second half, resulting in some of the project’s best material yet. My favorite moment on the album might be the back-to-back punches of “The Shimmering” and “The Present” in the ninth and tenth slots–the former is absolutely brimming with melody in every aspect of the recording, the one track that truly rivals “Hourglass” for the album’s immortal heavenly pop hit throne, and “The Present” is Jim Nothing’s best “contemplative” moment. Accompanied by Andrews, Sullivan sings “You are the present / I’m the afternoon,” in the chorus–and only that. The core of “The Present” is greatly enhanced by the musicians keeping things simple–somehow, Jim Nothing always finds the right meeting spot on Grey Eyes, Grey Lynn. (Bandcamp link)

Why Bother? – Hey, At Least You’re Not Me

Release date: October 18th
Record label: Feel It
Genre: Garage punk, punk rock, horror punk, lo-fi punk
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Chasing the Skull

The last time I wrote about Mason City, Iowa’s Why Bother? on this blog was a little over two years ago, when I looked at their first “proper” full-length record Lacerated Nights. For plenty of bands, that’d be about the time between albums, but not for the somewhat-shadowy quartet of Terry (vocals/synths), Speck (guitar/vocals), Pamela (bass), and Paul (drums). They put out one more cassette in 2022, unleashed two LPs in 2023, and Serenading Unwanted Ballads arrived in March of this year. Why Bother? have put something out in October of every year since 2021, and this time the group have brought forth their second LP of 2024, Hey, At Least You’re Not Me. All of the Why Bother? experiences are worth checking out for those who like their garage/punk rock spooky, macabre, and/or horror-inspired; there’s something about this one, though, that stands as a particularly strong singular argument in favor of Why Bother?’s whole “thing”. It’s a dozen basement garage punk tunes in a little over a half-hour, catchy and barebones but still creepy-feeling even beyond the lyrical subject matter (Terry’s synths are, as always, a key contributor to the “haunted” aspect of the band’s sound).

Between “Down in the Vault” and “Chasing the Skull”, Why Bother? kick off Hey, At Least You’re Not Me with two strong contenders for their “signature song” (the second one in particular is just as lethal from a pop-song perspective as it is aesthetically). If you make it out of the catacombs, the bright (for Why Bother?, at least) synthpunk of “The Wayside” is your reward, but don’t let your eyes get accustomed to the daylight just yet. Many of the most vivid moments on Hey, At Least You’re Not Me, while not being explicitly Halloween-like in structure, retain the cobwebs and eeriness that always permeates Why Bother?, from the imbalance of “Out of Tune” to the snotty misanthropy of “(I’m Gonna) Pin It on You” to the frantic “Tag the Train” to the five-minute penultimate lumbering dirge “I Fall Down”. The semi-title track “At Least You’re Not Me” does bring some horror movie elements into the record’s second half, jumping into the skin of “test subject number three” (possibly the mouse on the album cover, but you can imagine that it’s who- or whatever you like, I suppose). “You say you’re tortured at your day job / You get so angry at your phone / You feel so cheated stuck in traffic / As I lay dying all alone,” growls Terry before reaching the chorus (something tells me that Why Bother? think Black Mirror sucks, if they even know about it). It’s old-fashioned, analog terror all the way down for Why Bother?. (Bandcamp link)

Bon Enfant – Demande sp​é​ciale

Release date: October 15th
Record label: Duprince
Genre: Art punk, post-punk, power pop, new wave, art pop, garage rock
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
Pull Track: Demande sp​é​ciale

I hadn’t heard of Bon Enfant before the advent of their brand-new third album, Demande spé​ciale, but the quintet seem to be doing fairly well for themselves in their home city of Montreal, as well as over in Europe, where they’re set to tour this new record. Bon Enfant apparently simply refer to their sound as “Québécois rock”, which is a good a term as any to describe what I hear on Demande sp​é​ciale. It’s an incredibly fun-sounding rock album, with bits of psychedelic pop, power pop, post-punk, dream pop, and plenty more influences sparkling around the record’s dozen tracks. The French-language group (made up of vocalist Daphné Brissette, guitarist Guillaume Chiasson, drummer Étienne Côté, keyboardist Mélissa Fortin, and bassist Alex Burger) will occasionally evoke the polished indie pop of fellow Montreal group Bibi Club or the catchy art rock of Parisians En Attendant Ana, but Bon Enfant’s version of pop and rock music is especially wide-ranging and vibrant. The group are pretty much always putting something hooky to tape, but Bon Enfant aren’t afraid to take different routes to get there–sometimes they’re groovy, suave, and rhythmic, other times they go all-in with the “big” guitars and vocals. It’s an album that feels grander than its forty minutes, but never in a tiring way.

Demande sp​é​ciale starts off in a relatively low-key manner with the streamlined post-punk of “Trompe-l’oeil”–at least it seems like it at first, but eventually a sharply-deployed refrain from Brissette and Chiasson matches the power of Côté and Burger’s rhythm section. Fortin’s synths get their moment in the sun with the new wave-y title track, but the guitars remain huge, too–this is probably what “French-Canadian power pop” is, and it’s an excellent argument in favor of Montreal getting a little more into Shoes (or at least Blondie). Even if these opening tracks are hard to beat, Demande sp​é​ciale remains a catchy and friendly listen, offering up excellent moments from the jangly guitars of “Oiseau rare” to the five-minute dream pop haze of “Minimum” to the art-punk-funk of “Passion rock”. It takes no small amount of skill to pull together the songs of Demande sp​é​ciale into a coherent record, but Bon Enfant are up to the task, molding the soft rock of “Enfant de l’air” to the melancholic indie pop of “Bouquet” and the swooning garage-pop of “Gardienne de nuit” with the two-minute psych-folk comedown of “Décollage”. The artists behind Bon Enfant throw a lot against the wall on Demande sp​é​ciale, but the results are much too harmonious and entire to be realistically called “experimental”. “Art pop” it is, then. (Bandcamp link)

Also notable:

Pressing Concerns: Russel the Leaf, OOF, Khartomb, Blue Zero

Humming along swimmingly, we’re back on a Tuesday with our second blog post in as many days. This time, we’ve got new albums from Russel the Leaf, OOF, and Blue Zero to look at, as well as a reissue of an EP from Khartomb. And if you missed yesterday’s blog post, featuring Cast of Thousands, The Armoires, Black Ends, and Plastic Factory, check that one out here.

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

Russel the Leaf – Thought to an End

Release date: September 1st
Record label: Records from Russ
Genre: Art pop, indie pop, experimental pop, psychedelic pop
Formats: CD, digital
Pull Track: It Wasn’t Me

I’ve written a fair deal about Troy, New York-based producer and musician Evan M. Marré and his Russel the Leaf project on this blog before. 2021’s Then You’re Gunna Wanna hooked me with its 60s-style Brian Wilson-indebted studio pop sound, and Marré’s twin LPs as Russel the Leaf the following year (My Street and You Blocked the Light for Me) cemented him as one of the best pop singer-songwriters currently operating. It’s been a bit since I’ve written about Russel the Leaf in Pressing Concerns, but they haven’t gone anywhere–last year, Marré released Midnight Studio and Expressionate, both of which took his project into the realms of experimental, jazz, and improvisational music. Thought to an End, the first Russel the Leaf album of 2024, is Marré’s return to pop music, and it’s a triumphant one–spanning twenty-one songs and seventy-five minutes, we’re quite possibly dealing with Marré’s magnum opus here. Even though Marré is putting it out on CD (through his own Records from Russ imprint), Thought to an End has the feel of a classic double LP–it’s got room for everything, from streamlined, breezy 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.

One indulgence Thought to an End sports that I appreciate is that it doesn’t just put the “hits” up front, instead layering them throughout the journey. Sure, opening track “I’m Calling the Artist” is one of the catchiest songs on the album (if you’ve got patience for six-minute progressive pop songs, which you should), but “Oh, the Plan” and “You Win Again” are Russel the Leaf at their most insular and “arty”, getting to the point but only when they’re satisfied with everything else about the song. “My Condition Is This!” is another early pop highlight, but it’s not until about a third of the way into Thought to an End that Russel the Leaf consistently sound like a pure pop band (not that “Accident Going Southbound”, “It’ Wasn’t Me”, and “Straight With Your Head” don’t have their quirks, too, but the pop cores of these tracks are so strong that they’d be undeniable even if Marré and his collaborators didn’t take steps to emphasize them). I’ve kind of been dragging my feet about writing this record up because I know I’m not going to do it justice–such is the nature of an incredibly long and rewarding record like Thought to an End. As I’m listening to it now, late-record low-key pop highlights “Sing Like You Talk” and “Is It Wrong to Be So Matter of Fact?” definitely seem worth pointing out, but I’d wager that if I was writing this on a different day, there’d be other tracks sticking out to me on a re-listen. Thought to an End is a record worth investing serious time into–if it seems insurmountable, throw on some of the songs that I’ve mentioned as the more pop-forward selections (oh, put closing track “Go!” in there too) and investigate further from there. (Bandcamp link)

OOF – Mirror Mirror

Release date: August 30th
Record label: 20/20
Genre: No wave, art punk, art rock, post-punk, noise rock
Formats: Cassette, digital
Pull Track: Even My Therapist Wants to Be an Artist

OOF are a New York-based “skronky post-punk no-wave” trio who have been inflicting their gruff, saxophone-based sound on the masses since the late 2010s. Founding members Anna Hochhalter (vocals/baritone saxophone) and Peter Joseph (vocals/guitar) were joined by drummer Linda Casey sometime earlier this decade–this is the lineup responsible for Mirror Mirror, the fifth album to bear the OOF name. Within a few seconds of the record’s opening track, “Even My Therapist Wants to Be an Artist”, one will already have a firm answer as to whether Mirror Mirror is “for them” or not–Casey’s drumset pounds, Hochhalter’s saxophone squeals, and Joseph begins rattling off a straightforward train-of-thought lyric about whether or not the creative aspirations of his psychiatrist should bother him with the gruff, growling attitude of a Michael Gerald with somewhat more pep. This more or less describes the bulk of Mirror Mirror–Hochhalter and Joseph do swap vocals sometimes, the former occasionally serving as a more polished counter to the latter and other times sounding just as wild in her own way, and Joseph even deigns to play some notes on his guitar every now and then, but the album’s bread and butter is abrasive but compelling storytelling delivered with the aid of brass and steady rhythms.

All of this sounds very “New York no wave”, yes, but the reason I tend to think of OOF as more in the realms of the weirder sides of early SST and Touch & Go Records is their sense of humor with regards to their art. And I do say art intentionally, because there’s plenty of purpose and sharp points to be found on Mirror Mirror–for all of its wandering detours into George W. Bush and Koko the Gorilla and “a sale on brushes at Blick”, “Even My Therapist Wants to Be an Artist” is ultimately a piece of self-reflection. One of their most compelling moments is “Fat Gold”, a classic noise rock/post-punk instrumental that’s smart and incisive, sounding more industrial than a lot of actual “industrial music”. Hochhalter’s voice is arguably Mirror Mirror’s secret weapon–while Joseph sounds like he’s winking very obviously more often than not, Hochhalter’s lead vocals go a long way towards turning songs like “I Caught a Mouse”, “Add to Cart”, and “My Mind Is Revolting” into the sound of pure, uncut anxiety. Like a good noise rock band, rot and failure are also undercurrents of Mirror Mirror, from the smug denial of “Running Out the Clock” to the dreams deferred of “Let the Dream Die” (“Never gonna murder a Midwestern family / And get away with it”) to the self-explanatory “Money Pit”. These subjects are all “real shit”–the things you (yes, you) will see in the mirror more often than you’d like to. OOF probably have the right idea to package it up all volatile-like. (Bandcamp link)

Khartomb – Swahili Lullaby/Teekon Warriors/Daisy High

Release date: July 20th
Record label: Before I Die
Genre: Post-punk, dub, experimental punk
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Swahili Lullaby

Sometime in the early 1980s, a group of young London musicians recorded a couple of songs that would come out on Television Personalities’ Whaam! Records in 1983 and constitute an interesting part of early post-punk history. Vocalist/lyricist/bassist Caroline Cakebread, vocalist Paula Crolla, guitarist Ian Christie, and drummer Ali Barnes were active as Khartomb from 1981 to 1986, recorded a Peel Session, were written about favorably by Melody Maker, and played shows with the Television Personalities and The Jesus and Mary Chain, among others. Despite this, Khartomb only released the one 7” single during their initial run–proud of their work, however, Christie and Cakebread kept the original Khartomb recordings available digitally via Bandcamp and even recorded some new material together in the 2010s. It was through this caretaking endeavor that Manchester’s Before I Die Records stumbled upon the original Swahili Lullaby/Teekon Warriors single, and set about reissuing it on vinyl for the first time in forty years alongside a previously unreleased song called “Daisy High” and two brand-new remixes on a single 12” record. As the reissue notes, Khartomb were contemporaries with The Slits and The Raincoats, and their incorporation of reggae and dub into their version of post-punk is key to the sound of this single.

“Swahili Lullaby” and “Teekon Warriors” sound incredibly fresh in 2024, standing as two shining examples of the fruits of one of the most exciting eras of rock music that many bands are still trying to recapture to this day. Both tracks are relatively minimal post-punk songs built on heavy rhythmic emphasis, with the in-control bass and flourishing drums in the former bouncing nicely off of Cakebread’s psychedelic pop vocals (which do most of the song’s “pop” work). “Teekon Warriors” is even more out-there in its hypnotic, marching drumbeat and sparingly-used but always expertly-deployed stabs of electric guitar (and flute!). The newly-unearthed “Daisy High” is a wild departure from the two previous songs, but still incredibly present-sounding–it effectively becomes proto-dream pop by mixing in minimal, fluttering dub-pop and post-punk in a much more laid-back way than “Swahili Lullaby” or “Teekon Warriors” does. If the three 1980s recordings didn’t make the case cleanly enough on their own, the two modern remixes of “Swahili Lullaby” underscore just how timeless Khartomb sound here–Synkro’s version is the total reinvention, turning it into an ambient electronic dub-informed construction, while Talking Drums keeps the original recording mostly intact and instead expands it, which the rhythms allow quite easily. As is the case with most now-canonized rock and roll movements, it’s always interesting and even important to hear less-remembered but vital takes on it, lest we simplify and reduce a vibrant scene down to its two or three most famous acts. (Bandcamp link)

Blue Zero – Colder Shade Blue

Release date: October 11th
Record label: Lower Grand Tapes
Genre: Alt-rock, shoegaze, noise pop, fuzz rock, psychedelia
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Foot in the Grave

Although I haven’t yet written about Oakland distortion-pop group Blue Zero yet on this blog, the project is linked to several bands from the Bay Area that have graced the digital pages of Pressing Concerns before. It began as the solo project of key local fixture Chris Natividad, who also leads the bands Marbled Eye and Public Interest and drums in Aluminum, and the project’s debut LP was recorded by Andrew Oswald (also of Public Interest and formerly of Marbled Eye) and features guest vocals from Lauren Melton (of Sucker). Natividad plays all the instruments on Colder Shade Blue, the first Blue Zero record, but the project already has a solid live trio lineup featuring Melton and Rick Altieri (who plays in Blue Ocean and on the most recent Ryann Gonsalves album). Natividad has already done the “solo project that turns into a full band” thing with Public Interest, so why does he need another one? Well, I’m not sure exactly, but Colder Shade Blue is pretty distinct from the other bands Nativdad helms–while Public Interest and Marbled Eye both trade in the worlds of sharp, tough, and rhythmic post-punk and garage rock, Blue Zero is more at home in the world of shoegaze-adjacent fuzzed-out guitar pop. They’re more in line with bands like Sucker, Nothing Natural, or a more subdued version of Aluminum.

Colder Shade Blue seems to be torn between wanting to tilt its sound towards jangly guitar pop and firmly staying in the basement and recalling many an insular, Sonic Youth-informed 90s indie rock group. Natividad has always been a fairly subtle vocalist–on Colder Shade Blue, he lets his guitar handle its fair share of the melodies, with soaring six-string forming the hooks in the sweeping opening track “Broken by a Glance” and (at least partially in) the more Aluminum-y drone-pop of “Lemon Year”. The fuzzed-out slacker pop of “Clownin’” is a grower, and Blue Zero actually reveal a more confident embrace of pop music as their debut LP goes on between mid-to-late-record highlights “Scar” (which starts off as Pavement-esque fractured indie pop/rock and congeals into something more solid), “Foot in the Grave” (which is where Blue Zero keep the bulk of their “jangle” sound), and “Gone Again” (which is “just” mid-tempo indie rock at its all-around smartest and most well-executed). There are shades of Natividad’s other bands in Colder Shade Blue, and there are shades of other Bay Area bands in Colder Shade Blue, but Blue Zero sounds fresh and distinct on their first album–it’s a good argument for letting its architect start up as many new quasi-solo projects as he wants. (Bandcamp link)

Also notable: