Hello, everyone! The Thursday Pressing Concerns is here, and it’s got four great records coming out tomorrow, January 24th: new LPs from Charm School, Laundromat Chicks, Open Head, and Expose. It ended up being a pretty noise rock-heavy edition, so get ready for some low-end below. Also, if you missed Tuesday’s blog post (featuring The Gentle Spring, Little Oso, Teen Driver, and Prism Shores), check that out here.
If you’re looking for more new music, you can visit the site directory to see what else we’ve written about lately. If you’d like to support Rosy Overdrive, you can share this (or another) post, or donate here.
Charm School – Debt Forever
Release date: January 24th Record label: Surprise Mind Genre: Noise rock, post-punk, garage punk Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull Track: Youthquaker
Louisville noise rock quartet Charm School debuted about a year and a half ago with an EP called Finite Jest, although bandleader Andrew Sellers has a lengthy history playing in bands in his home state of Kentucky as well as in New York and Los Angeles. Charm School represents something of a left turn for Sellers, but Finite Jest proved that he and his collaborators (bassist Matt Filip, guitarist Drew English, and drummer Jason Bemis Lawrence) had a knack for noisy Touch & Go Records-influenced post-punk, garage rock, and post-rock (they remind me a bit of Flat Worms, which is a good thing). Now back with a debut album called Debt Forever, Charm School haven’t completely shaken up their sound, but they’re doing something a little different here. Compared to the tightly-controlled bursts of energy of Finite Jest, it’s somehow both looser and angrier; there’s still plenty of that modern Fall-influenced post-punk sound here, but there’s also some San Diego-style post-hardcore/garage rock and turn-of-the-century Washington, D.C. art punk in the mix, too. As the title hints at, Debt Forever spends a good deal of time focusing on financial anxiety and insecurity–whether the alternatively brooding and seething music drew this all-American fear out of Sellers or whether his preoccupations with such matters informed the music, there’s no denying the synergy here.
Debt Forever comes out swinging–on the record’s first four songs, Charm School are an Earth-shaking garage punk group in a way that Finite Jest didn’t really hint at. The gritted-teeth post-punk starts to creep back in as the record moves forward (I’d point to the back-to-back journey of “Breaking the Waves” and “I Wanna Feel It” as the turning point), but so does a surprisingly pensive, more melodic version of Charm School (found in “Without a Doubt” and “Figure 8”). All the while, the threat of an empty bank account stands right offscreen with a loaded gun–it’s there during the stage-setting title track, it’s apparent in the meltdowns of “Boycott Everything Everywhere” and “Crime Time”, and sculpts the prayer-like refrain of “Without a Doubt” (“Don’t let me run out of money”). It’s also baked into the DNA of two of the record’s most transcendent, impressive moments; for one, there’s “Youthquaker”, a song about the American working class (in a way) that somehow shifts Charm School’s sound into a dancefloor-friendly, impossibly-cool kind of punk rock (it kind of reminds me of Perennial, even if it doesn’t exactly sound like Perennial). And then there’s the eight-minute closing track, the eight-minute steady-krautrock finale of “Happiness Is a Warm Sun”. Eschewing bombast, Charm School flex their steady-building muscles on this one, and while Sellers’ final riff on the song’s title (“Happiness is a warm…trust fund”) might not hit with maximum impact out of context, it’s the right cap for Debt Forever. (Bandcamp link)
Laundromat Chicks – Sometimes Possessed
Release date: January 24th Record label: Siluh Genre: Jangle pop, indie pop, lo-fi pop, twee Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull Track: Secrets
Laundromat Chicks are a quartet from Vienna led by vocalist/guitarist Tobias Hammermüller and rounded out by a handful of local ringers–guitarist/vocalist Theresa Strohmer and bassist Lena Pöttinger play in the band Topsy Turvey, while drummer Felix Schnabl is also in Salamirecorder and Telebrains (I believe this is the first time I’ve covered an Austrian band in Pressing Concerns, but based off of that list of related bands, it seems like Vienna at least has a nice scene going on in it). Sometimes Possessed is the Laundromat Chicks’ third album in three years (they debuted in 2022 with Trouble, and Lightning Trails followed the year after) and, Vienna residency aside, it contains some of the best British indie pop I’ve heard this year. Laundromat Chicks have clearly learned a lot from classic C86 and Sarah Records artists, as the jangly electric guitars and pastoral acoustic ones give away pretty easily. Hammermüller and Strohmer’s occasionally intertwined vocals are another key indie pop ingredient, and there’s also a darkness hidden in these casual hooks that mirrors the depth found in the best of these sorts of records. Sometimes Laundromat Chicks are serious and wistful, other times a bit more whimsical, but both work together on Sometimes Possessed.
Laundromat Chicks make the inspired choice to open Sometimes Possessed with a cover–a hazy take on “This Strange Effect”, a 1965 song written by Ray Davies and first recorded by Dave Berry. It’s a disorienting version of psychedelic pop and folk, Hammermüller and Strohmer welcoming us to the album by inviting us to feel confused and unsure where we are. The two Hammermüller-penned songs that follow it, the title track and “Cameron”, are more pop-forward (particularly the almost-power-pop excitement of the latter), but the writing still recalls confusion and disorientation. Sometimes Possessed charms us nonetheless–with ten songs in under thirty minutes, Laundromat Chicks have to make every moment count, and they do. Between the breezy jangle pop anthem “Secrets”, the aching pop balladry of “Time Zones”, the simple 60s-inspired “Spiders Inside You”, and warm-fuzz-blanket closing track “Ruins”, there’s always pop brilliance within arm’s reach on this record. Strohmer contributes one track to Sometimes Possessed, and “How Do You Know” does stick out like a sore thumb in its own way–there are plenty of vocal duets on the record, but Hammermüller and Strohmer actually have a conversation in these lyrics, and it’s a little more brisk and less relaxed musically, too. However, “How Do You Know” still fits right on Sometimes Possessed–as Strohmer lashes out at Hammermüller, playing a therapist, it’s funny but not a joke, and it’s another tale of someone groping for some kind of control and coming up beautifully empty-handed. (Bandcamp link)
Open Head – What Is Success
Release date: January 24th Record label: Wharf Cat Genre: Noise rock, post-punk, art punk, no wave Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull Track: N.Y. Frills
Open Head aren’t your typical New York art punk band. Well, for one, they’re actually from a bit further up the Hudson in Kingston, and they still claim the mid-sized upstate New York town as home even after a few years of modest but real indie rock victories–putting out a debut LP in 2022 on I’m into Life, playing shows with bands like Dummy, Cola, and Water from Your Eyes, and signing to Wharf Cat Records for their sophomore album, What Is Success. Open Head–made up of founding members Jared Ashdown, Brandon Minervini (both on guitars and vocals), and Jon McCarthy (bass), with drummer Dan Schwartz joining after their debut–had grand ambitions for their second LP, naming hip hop and electronic music as equally influential on it as punk and art rock. Of course, any adventurous and forward-thinking band ought to be looking outside their own genre for ideas, and just because the resultant What Is Success is “merely” a rock album doesn’t mean that Open Head weren’t successful in making something that genuinely feels informed by things other than “merely” post-punk and noise rock.
Although, to be clear, I do hear a lot of good noise rock and post-punk bands in What Is Success’ sound, too–maybe upstate New York is the perfect place for this kind of music, situated in between the noisy no wave of New York City, the chaotic Exploding in Sound-associated post-hardcore of New England-originating bands like Pile and Kal Marks, and Rust Belt noise rock from acts like FACS (on the more experimental end) and Meat Wave (on the more “punk” side), not to mention The Jesus Lizard and U.S. Maple before them. There’s a heaviness to What Is Success, yes, although it manifests in odd and unexpected ways sometimes–we start with the purely deconstructed minimal art rock of “Success”, and while “Fiends Don’t Lose” is similarly scrambled, the fiery vocals are the record’s most aggressive moment up until that point. The first no-holds-barred rocker is the pounding “N.Y. Frills”, but as cathartic as it is, Open Head don’t lean too much on this kind of release throughout What Is Success. Whether they’re acting like a proper rock band or something else, the rhythm section is key to Open Head’s foundation, with McCarthy’s expressive, unflagging basslines being the secret hero of the album. I’m not sure if it’s properly “electronic rock”, but the prowling, seething synth foundation (courtesy of an Arturia Brute SE played by McCarthy) of “House” really pushes it into new territory, and the disintegrating “Bullseye” and the already-disintegrated “Julo” continue the late-record swoon. Whatever it takes to make a record like this sound inspired–chemistry? knowledge? anger? being societal outcasts?–Open Head have it here. (Bandcamp link)
Expose – ETC
Release date: January 24th Record label: Quindi Genre: Noise rock, art punk, post-rock, jazz-punk, post-hardcore, post-punk Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull Track: The Constant
The Los Angeles noise rock group Expose have been around since the late 2010s, although they’ve only recently become the sprawling collective you hear on ETC, the second Expose LP. The band began as the solo project of Trent Rivas, who played everything you’ll hear on their early demo EPs, the 2019 E full-length, and the 2022 Tour Tape Sept22 EP. Somewhere along the way, though, Expose added new blood, and their most recent album and debut for Quindi Records features seven regular contributors (Rivas on drums and vocals, Jeff Stephens and Duke Guisness on guitar, James Novick on synth, Jake Getz on bass, Coleman Sawyer on viola, and Brian Bartus on saxophone). The name “Expose” sounds very hardcore to me, and while ETC is a “punk” album, it’s not really that kind of punk rock. It’s “experimental” and incorporates jazz and post-rock like other Quindi-associated bands, but unlike the soft pop of Monde UFO (whose Ray Monde guests on the record) or the downcast slowcore of Bondo, ETC brings the noise to the forefront. Song structures and instrumental choices may be unusual more often than not, but a healthy helping of Rivas’ incessant drums, some dirty and aggressive guitars, and moodily muttered vocals are all strong reminders that there’s a bunch of punks behind this cacophony.
We’re thrown right into the middle of things with opening track “Dutch Field”–we’re hit with a blast of amplifier feedback and percussion before Expose launch into a hypnotic, aggressive post-hardcore guitar riff that gives way to a saxophone row in about ninety seconds. “Speed Dial” and its quick tempo and monotone vocals introduce a bit of post-punk action into the mix, and while “The Constant” isn’t precisely “pop music”, it’s a more peaceful version of Expose’s exploratory sound with the guitars allowed to delve into “melodic” territory. Not to worry, though; “Road Railing” is there one track later to rev up some noisy jazz-punk and get us back on course. Such it is with ETC; for every curveball like “Reverse 3” and “Sink”, there are more earnest indie rock expressions like “Self Terror” and “No Adrenaline” and mussed-up rock and roll explosions like “MBB” and “Description”. ETC is never boring, in large part due to its clearest and quietest moments–something like the sky-gazing expanse of “No Adrenaline” sounds even more majestic coming in the midst of sewer-circlers like “Sink” and “Glue”. Whatever methods Expose used in the lab to produce these tracks, these clinical trials are sounding very promising. (Bandcamp link)
Hello everyone! It’s a Monday Pressing Concerns on a Tuesday (yes, I took a day off for the U.S. holiday; it’s still January, after all). This post looks at four great records that came out last week: new albums from The Gentle Spring, Little Oso, and Prism Shores, and a new EP from Teen Driver. We’ll be bumping things up to three posts a week again soon, but for now enjoy this and I’ll be back on Thursday!
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 Gentle Spring – Looking Back at the World
Release date: January 17th Record label: Skep Wax/Too Good to Be True Genre: Indie pop, folk rock, singer-songwriter, twee, chamber pop Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital Pull Track: The Ashes
Michael Hiscock will always have a claim to indie pop fame as the co-founder and bassist of London twee group The Field Mice, who released two “mini-albums” and one LP for Sarah Records before splitting in the early 1990s. In the years and decades after The Field Mice broke up, Hiscock has popped up on various releases by that band’s other co-founder Bobby Wratten’s subsequent projects (Trembling Blue Stars, Lightning in a Twilight Hour), but seemingly only in supporting roles. As of late, however, Hiscock has been living in Paris, where he’s linked up with a “new musical partner” (vocalist/keyboardist Emilie Guillaumot) and begun a new project called The Gentle Spring (which also features guitarist Jérémie Orsel). After quietly debuting in 2023 with the “Dodge the Rain” single (which also appeared on last year’s Under the Bridge 2 compilation), The Gentle Spring have made a substantial statement at the beginning of this year with their first album, Looking Back at the World. On their debut LP, The Gentle Spring sound expansive but intimate and ornate but minimal; their languid version of indie pop, soft rock, and folk music is a simple mix of piano keys, acoustic guitar strums, sturdy basslines, and two intertwined vocalists that nonetheless captures something unique.
It’s a bit bold for a new band to call their first album “Looking Back at the World”, but it’s not like The Gentle Spring came out of thin air; as it turns out, Hiscock and Guillaumot have plenty on which to look back throughout this ten-song, forty-five minute journey. The Gentle Spring do indeed sound like indie pop veterans in their subtle, polished arrangements, but that doesn’t stop their writing from sounding as wistful and romantic as the classics of the genre. “Comments in the Streams”, “I Can’t Have You As a Friend”, “Severed Hearts”, and “The Reason Why You Lie” are all staggering examples of this, with tales and inter- (and intra-) personal dramas flowing freely out against the trio’s tasteful instrumentals. There’s even a lot to take apart in the tracks that aren’t as immediately flooring in their narratives–like the introductory “Sugartown”, which sketches out The Gentle Spring’s worldview in a more abstract way, or “Untouched”, a song that, like much of the album, is built around the passage of time and introspection, but one that does so in a more present and, oddly enough, defiant way. Sometimes Looking Back at the World involves fixating on a moment as simple as hearing a song from an old folk band on the radio (“He was listening to The Ashes on the radio / His eyes were closed, he wore a smile upon his face”, Guillaumot situates us at the beginning of “The Ashes”); The Gentle Spring only have an LP’s worth of time to look back on their collective years, but they do a pretty good job of getting the most out of it. (Bandcamp link)
Little Oso – How Lucky to Be Somebody
Release date: January 17th Record label: Repeating Cloud/Safe Suburban Home Genre: Jangle pop, dream pop, indie pop Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull Track: Metaphorical Ohio
Little Oso are not a new band, precisely–their first EP came out back in 2018–but there is a lot of “new” surrounding the Maine-based quartet as of late. The band’s founding duo of vocalist/guitarist Jeannette Berman and guitarist Ricky Lorenzo moved from Philadelphia and New Jersey to Portland last year (2023’s Happy Songs cassette EP was their first release in their new climes), they added a permanent rhythm section (bassist Dana Guth and drummer DJ Nelson), and they’ve linked up with local imprint Repeating Cloud Records, who’s putting out their first proper album, How Lucky to Be Somebody (co-released by Safe Suburban Home over in England). I called Happy Songs a “sturdy, subtly impressive collection of reverb-y, poppy indie rock tunes” after I first heard it about a year ago, and I’m happy to report that How Lucky to Be Somebody delivers on the promise that Little Oso flashed on that EP. The quartet’s guitar-driven dream pop sound is in full bloom here–every aspect of the record (from the chorused guitar chords to the floating leads to Berman’s confident and anchoring vocals to guest musician Eddie Holmes’ synth contributions to even the bass at various points) is shedding great melodies all over the place.
This is a band that called their last record “Happy Songs”, so it’s understandable that there’s a good deal of positivity and aural sunlight to be found on How Lucky to Be Somebody. It’s not a cheap version of this, though–when Berman sings “You may not be happy, but you won’t be afraid” in opening track “Good Things”, it sets the tone for writing that isn’t ignoring darkness so much as deliberately offering an alternative to it. Of course, it helps that Little Oso sound great as an entire band while doing this, and the record’s elaboration via fully-developed guitar pop anthems keeps things fresh. Single “Metaphorical Ohio” is just about perfect–I love when bands that aren’t from the Midwest mythologize Ohio, by the way, and it makes so much sense that this track features probably the most beautiful incorporation of the phrase “four-piece chicken” into a song’s lyrics ever put to tape. Another single, “Other People’s Lives”, finds Berman singing “We could build a good life in the end times”; while she finds something worthwhile in watching others in this track, her writing encompasses life beyond humanity in “Tendril Thoughts” (“If broccoli can make it through December, then so, so, so can we”) and “The Frogs Sing for No Reason” (“…and so do we”). It’s a key ingredient in How Lucky to Be Somebody (and the clearest link to the record’s title), but it’s hardly the only reason why the album works. (Bandcamp link)
Teen Driver – NO AC!
Release date: January 18th Record label: Automatic Transmission Genre: Art punk, post-punk, garage punk, synthpunk, noise rock Formats: Cassette, digital Pull Track: Moving Deck Chairs
I introduced the Rosy Overdrive world to western Massachusetts post-punk/art punk group Teen Driver back in July of 2023, when the quartet debuted with a five-song EP called Learner’s Permit. I used phrases like “krautrock”, “jittery”, “new wave”, and “the Minutemen” to describe Teen Driver’s first record, a whirlwind of an opening statement that got the Northampton group (co-led by guitarist/vocalist Mark Gurarie and synth player/vocalist Riley Hernandez) firmly on my radar. For their next release, the six-song NO AC! cassette, Teen Driver have broken in a new rhythm section (bassist Brendan Robinson and drummer Jugo), but they’ve hardly lost a step–this EP is Teen Driver’s wildest, most chaotic work yet. NO AC! is full of synth-bursting art-punk anti-anthems, haphazardly led by a band that sounds plenty furious but rarely overly serious. Teen Driver have drifted further away from “pop music” in a recognizable sense on this record, but it’s still there, baked into the DNA of these mutated new wave songs, raucous punk rock assaults, and the one song that’s still somehow kind of power pop (“Moving Deck Chairs”).
It’s hard to believe I’ve written three paragraphs about Teen Driver so far in my life without ever mentioning Pere Ubu, but NO AC!’s opening track, “Accumulation”, seems designed to break this streak. The vocalist (probably Gurarie, who’s credited as the lyricist) bellows like they learned all they knew from Dave Thomas, while the synth skitters and slinks along over top of the icy but dynamic punk guitars. It’s not hard to guess from where the fury at the heart of “Accumulation” arises (“Senseless slaughter / US bombs / Panopticon”), nor is it difficult to get the gist of the next song, “Rest in Pissinger” (you’ll never guess what they rhyme with the title), a prog-punk breakdown that does its best to lift up to its lofty name. Pretty much an entire decade catches a stray in “Hairspray”, a frantic mishmash of 1980s imagery and sonic choices that uses the tools of its victim to lash out at it (“Only Devo will be spared! / No new wave, new wave / … / Skinny tie can die, die”), and the aforementioned “Moving Deck Chairs” throws a big “la la”-soundtracked party before everyone involved goes down with the ship. If “Moving Deck Chairs” truly foretells our doom, than “Debate Me” is probably what hell sounds like–Teen Driver end the EP with a white-hot, sneering piece of ugliness that devolves into the ghoulish narrator lobbing taunts (“Are you mad? Did my facts hurt your feelings? You should go touch grass”) at us all. It’s only January, but it’s getting awfully hot in here. (Bandcamp link)
Prism Shores – Out from Underneath
Release date: January 17th Record label: Meritorio Genre: Jangle pop, dream pop, fuzz pop, C86 Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull Track: Overplayed My Hand
Prism Shores are a new-ish indie-jangle-dream-gaze-pop quartet from Montreal, a city I wouldn’t think of at first for the genre but which has stealthily been a good spot for indie rock incorporating these influences lately between Laughing, The Submissives, and Feeling Figures. Meritorio Records, meanwhile, has had a hand in releasing some of the best guitar pop music of the past few years (including the aforementioned Laughing record). This is all to say that I’m not too surprised at A) what Out from Underneath sounds like, more or less and B) that it’s quite good at what it does. Prism Shores put out an EP in 2019 and an album in 2022, but their Meritorio debut finds the quartet (guitarist/vocalist Jack MacKenzie, bassist/vocalist Ben Goss, appropriately-named drummer Luke Pound, and new guitarist Finn Dalbeth) marrying classic jangly guitar pop with British wistfulness and ample amounts of distortion and reverb like they belong right at the center of this specific revival. Although the C86-worthy hooks are certainly present, Out from Underneath isn’t as studious of a recreation of bygone college rock as, say, Laughing or Humdrum–Prism Shores are more inclined to let the fuzz overtake their writing at various points on the record.
If one doesn’t mind washes of feedback in their pop music on occasion, though, there’s virtually nothing to complain about on Out from Underneath, as these ten songs are all smartly-penned and enthusiastically-delivered. Even though there’s a pessimistic streak to Prism Shores’ lyrics, it hardly shows itself in the music of opening track “Overplayed My Hand”, an all-hands-on-deck, surging jangle pop beginning. The melancholic guitar pop of “Holding Pattern” reminds me of the more electric moments of The Reds, Pinks & Purples, and the amped-up Teenage Fanclub vibes of “Tourniquet” and the cloudy bouts of guitars that fight against the sunny melody of “Southpaw” continue an incredibly strong start. Side two of Out from Underneath does contain a few more jangle pop winners–see the wobbly but undeniable “Fault Line” or gorgeous penultimate track “Drawing Conclusions”, featuring violin from guest musician Owen Fairbairn–it also contains Prism Shores’ clearest (or, I suppose, least-clear-sounding) forays into distortion and straight-up shoegaze. Of course, the brisk scorcher “Weightless” and the five-minute galaxy-adrift closing track “Unravel” both have smart pop hooks in them, too. If there’s one thing that holds Out from Underneath together, it’s its stalwart devotion to zeroing in on the catchy and universal no matter what the band are doing around these songs’ cores. (Bandcamp link)
Hello! Hi! Welcome to the Thursday Pressing Concerns! It feels like the first “big” week for new music of 2025 is upon us, and today’s blog post looks at three records that come out tomorrow (January 17th) from Pigeon Pit, 20/20, and Flora Hibberd, as well as an album from Some Fear that comes out today. This is actually the third blog post to go up this week (to my surprise; I was planning on keeping it lean until the end of January), so if you missed Monday’s Pressing Concerns (which looked at records from Good Flying Birds, All My Friends Are Cats, Moscow Puzzles, and CuVa Bimö) or Tuesday’s post (which went long on the mini-album Songs by Pacing), 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.
Pigeon Pit – Crazy Arms
Release date: January 17th Record label: Ernest Jenning Record Co. Genre: Folk punk, folk rock Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital Pull Track: Bronco
It seems like every Pigeon Pit release gets me to reconsider something or contemplate making some kind of major life change. The first song of theirs I heard, “Milk Crates” from their 2022 breakout album Feather River Canyon Blues, forced me to reevaluate my conceptualization of “folk punk” as a movement that reached its conclusion in the 2010s (in hindsight, it’s obvious that it will, for better or worse, never die), and the simple power of Treehouse(an album from 2017 originally recorded when Pigeon Pit was a Lomes Oleander solo project, reissued in 2023 by their current label, Ernest Jenning Record Co.) made we want to get back into writing music (a desire that proved to be short-lived). Anyway, in the three years since Feather River Canyon Blues, Pigeon Pit has solidified into a six-piece “country/punk maximalist” group led by Oleander and featuring a bunch of Olympia-area ringers (including Joshua Hoey of Wavers and Fastener and Jim Rhian, also of Fastener). Crazy Arms is both a culmination of “Pigeon Pit the Band” and a statement of their current power; Oleander is still a “folk punk” frontperson, yes, but her vocals and writing have evolved to also encapsulate the kind of world-reverent folk-y indie rock practiced by heroes like the Mountain Goats, The Weakerthans, and certain eras of Against Me!–and, of course, the band is key in helping her realize a more expansive sound for these songs, too.
Pigeon Pit is always giving about 120 percent on Crazy Arms, even (perhaps especially) when Oleander is singing about being run-through and tired. The (for Pigeon Pit, at least) polished folk-rock-punk opening salvo of the first three songs (including a Pigeon Pit-ified cover of “Alone in the Basement” by Japanther, interestingly enough) rolls out the red carpet in a way that feels new but one that hardly abandons the “Pigeon Pit” sound; “Tide Pools” follows immediately after those with a just-Oleander-and-warped-sounding acoustic guitar recording, and it’s exactly the right choice for the “contemplative but also moving at a hundred miles an hour mentally” track. I said “expansive” in the past paragraph, and the 2025 Pigeon Pit umbrella is large enough to include everything from “Dear Johnny” (a party anthem that images Thin Lizzy if they came out of the queer Olympia basement show scene), “Maddy’s Song” (a piece of psychedelic Pacific Northwest folk written and sung by the band’s banjoist), and “Josephine County Blues” (in which Pigeon Pit lean on fiddle-aided folk-country more strongly than ever before). And if you’re looking for a transcendental anthem with the power of “Milk Crates”, there are a few contenders here–rambling, sneakily suave single “Bronco” is the first one that’s stuck out to me, and if you want a subtler take on it, “Hot Shower Winter Morning” gets to the same place with just a little bit more restraint. And then there’s lead single “Keys to the City”–the title comes from a clever name for a “pair of bolt cutters under [Oleander’s] back seat”, and the band are present but stand off to the side to let this track ring through on its own. It’s the kind of song that makes me want to move to a new city, one where I can walk around and let myself get absorbed into it. Memphis is nice. Maybe St. Louis. I can see myself there now. (Bandcamp link)
20/20 – Back to California
Release date: January 17th Record label: SpyderPop/Big Stir Genre: Power pop, jangle pop, roots rock, alt-country, college rock Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital Pull Track: Lucky Heart
Power pop legends 20/20 got their start in Tulsa, Oklahoma, but California is where the group made the bulk of their history. It’s where the group (co-founders Steve Allen and Ron Flynt, plus then-keyboardist Chris Silagyi and drummer Joel Turrisi) made their self-titled debut album in the late 1970s and became part of that initial wave of “power pop” alongside acts like fellow Oklahoma transplant Dwight Twilley. They put out three albums before breaking up in the early 1980s, and while Allen and Flynt brought 20/20 back for two more LPs in the 90s, there hadn’t been any new 20/20 material in over twenty-five years, and neither of them live in California any longer. Nonetheless, 2025 has surprisingly brought a brand new sixth 20/20 album, appropriately titled Back to California. This is 20/20’s first album as unquestioned long-term veterans, and it reflects both their Golden State past and their present homes of Nashville (Allen) and Austin (Flynt). Although there’s plenty of pop music to be found on Back to California, 20/20 aren’t trying to recreate 1979; they’ve followed the example of several long-time southern California rock veterans like Dave Alvin and Alejandro Escovedo and embraced a wisened rootsiness in their sound (of course, Nashville and Texas surely will help one arrive at this end point, too).
I don’t mean to oversell the “Americana” influence on Back to California; this is 20/20 we’re talking about, and you’ll find plenty of jangly guitar pop and “college rock” mixed into these songs, too. Maturity and patience mark these songs; take the opening title track, which does contain a nice, bright guitar lead that pops up here and there, but Allen and Flynt largely give the song a plain, unadorned rootsy rock reading, letting it speak for itself. This also gives “Why Do I Hurt Myself” another dimension; the despondency is arguably more potent coming from forty-year rock and roll veterans than from some melodramatic teenage punks. By the time we get to one of the biggest power pop moments on the album, “Lucky Heart”, Back to California is starting to feel like one of the best California-touched “heartland rock” record that wasn’t made by Tom Petty with or without The Heartbreakers–and that’s before the jangly, slightly psychedelic “Laurel Canyon” follows it up one track later. It’s comforting to hear 20/20 crank out excellent jangle pop tunes like that one and “Spark”, and they sit nicely alongside fare like the country-tinged, harmonica-aided “King of the Whole Wide World”. Back to California ends with a song called “Farewell”, and, given the long gap between 20/20 albums, it’s fair to wonder if it will end up being the band’s closing statement. The LP works not because 20/20 sound like they’re trying to neatly “tie up” their story or anything like that, though; it sounds like a pair of musicians realizing they can still make something remarkable together and taking advantage of that. (Bandcamp link)
Flora Hibberd – Swirl
Release date: January 17th Record label: 22TWENTY Genre: Psychedelic pop, folk rock, singer-songwriter Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull Track: Lucky You
I like to give a bit of background on artists before I talk about their music in Pressing Concerns, especially ones I haven’t written about before, so it’s not surprising that I’m starting out by noting that Flora Hibberd is a singer-songwriter from Britain who currently lives in Paris. As it turns out, though, this biographical detail is a little more significant this time–Hibberd works in translating art history texts from French to English, and, according to her, this experience greatly informs her writing in Swirl, her second studio album. After recording her debut album (2021’s Hold) in Paris, Hibberd made the interesting decision to record Swirl in America–specifically, she traveled to a mythical place known as Eau Claire, Wisconsin to record with prolific producer Shane Leonard at his studio The Bungaleau, and enlisted a bunch of ringers in the worlds of folk and indie rock (multi-instrumentalist Victor Claass, drummer JT Bates, bassist Pat Keen, pedal steel player Ben Lester) to play on her LP. The resultant album is a rich-sounding record of pop music from decades past, with bits of folk and psychedelia and Lou Reed lazily floating around in the ether.
The art of translation feels ingrained into the music of Swirl, as well–the vintage, sincere version of folk and pop music practiced here feels very French, even as it’s written by a British transplant and recorded in America by a bunch of Americans (although I guess any time one writes a song and entrusts somebody other than themselves to play it, that’s also a translation of some kind). And the musicians on Swirl truly add a lot to these tracks; every time it’s something different that stands out to me, from the noodly electric guitar leads on opening track “Auto Icon” to the snappy keys and synths stretched across “Code” and “Jesse” to the lilting pedal steel in “Remote Becoming Holy” to the smooth bass anchor in quiet closing track “Ticket”. The best pop moment on Swirl is probably “Lucky You”, which manages to sound casually off-the-cuff and purely giddy at the same time in a way that reminds me of a more folky version of Parisian guitar pop groups like En Attendant Ana (honestly, this specific combination might just be a “French” thing). On the other end of the spectrum is another highlight, “Baby”, stripped-down both musically and thematically. “Well keep your shame, I don’t want to wear it / It doesn’t feel good, it doesn’t feel right,” Hibberd sings over simple, effective guitar plucking. Hibberd doesn’t really say what “right” means, but Swirl sounds like a group of musicians reaching for the answer. (Bandcamp link)
Some Fear – Some Fear
Release date: January 16th Record label: Rite Field Genre: Lo-fi indie rock, slowcore, shoegaze, 90s indie rock Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull Track: Skin I Can’t Peel
Hey there, we’ve got another new shoegaze band for you today, right out of the shoegaze hotspot of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Well, maybe not “hotspot”, but there’s already Downward, so it’s not like Some Fear came out of nowhere (if we get a third Sooner State shoegaze band, Rosy Overdrive will fly a journalist down there to write a full-on scene report). Anyway, Some Fear began as the solo project of Branden “Bran” Palesano, who also plays in the bands Cursetheknife and Mad Honey (alright, now we have enough bands to write that cover story), with a few singles in the early 2020s leading to a partnership with new Houston imprint Rite Field Records, a full quartet lineup (co-writer Ray Morgan, plus Lennon Bramlett, and James Tunell), and a debut EP called Picture last April. Interestingly, Some Fear don’t seem to refer to themselves as “shoegaze”; their Bandcamp page and bio generally use terms like “lo-fi”/ “bedroom” rock and “slowcore” to describe their sound. It’s a refreshing approach in a world where every band with a bit of reverb gets tagged as “shoegaze”, even if I think Some Fear could get away with it on their self-titled debut album.
Some Fear isn’t as loud and pummeling as the grunge and hardcore-influenced shoegaze bands found on labels like New Morality Zine and Deathwish, Inc. (including a few of their OKC peers), but there are still moments of guitar noise rising to the top of this album. The record isn’t particularly wedded to any one particular version of this sound–it doesn’t commit to quietness, crawling tempos, and subtle beauty enough to be full on “slowcore”, the unvarnished shoegaze moments are present but, yes, intermittent, and there’s some excellent pop songs on here but between Palesano’s quiet, breathy vocals and a greyscale palette, Some Fear don’t go out of their way to service them. Opening track “Worm” pulls together a bit of everything–a downcast but still pretty catchy main riff, ample distortion, cold-sounding guitar tones–but it’s still a bit of a shock when “Skin I Can’t Peel” jumps towards straightforward lo-fi fuzzy pop rock. The rest of the album features songs that lean more in one direction than another (closing track “Faucet” is the slowcore winner, the jaunty “Let It Go” the indie pop tune, and the wall-of-sound “Game” will get you the shoegaze you’re looking for), but there are some surprises too, like the psychedelic, woozy, dreamy guitars of “The Road” and “Wake Up”. All in all, it’s just a strong collection of rock music from the Plains. (Bandcamp link)
Release date: January 7th Record label: Asian Man Genre: Anti-folk, indie pop, bedroom pop, singer-songwriter, indie folk, twee Formats: CD, digital
Those of you who were following this blog in 2023 may remember Pacing from their album Real poetry is always about plants and birds and trees and the animals and milk and honey breathing in the pink but real life is behind a screen, which came out in October of that year and ended up being one of my favorite LPs from 2023. That album’s gleeful mix of “anti-folk”, indie/bedroom pop, twee, and “not-anti” folk music, combined with an incredible songwriter in bandleader Katie McTigue, really blew me away, and I wasn’t the only one. 2024 was an active year for Pacing as well, featuring a couple of one-off singles in “Boyfriends” (with Career Woman’s Melody Caudill) and “Tortilla Chip Bag Song”, an oddly captivating covers EP called Pretty Filthy, and a vinyl release of Real poetry… courtesy of Pacing’s shiny new record label, Asian Man Records (“We’re his favorite band in a one mile radius,” says McTigue, who apparently lives just down the street from label founder Mike Park). Pacing have been working on a proper follow-up to Real poetry… for a while now, but that’s not what their first new music on Asian Man, Songs,is.
If you haven’t gathered based on Pacing’s frequent release schedule, McTigue is somebody who’s constantly creating and bringing something new to life, a side product of which might be getting burned out on working on one thing (say, Pacing LP2) intensely for a long time. So, as a distraction from those songs, she made nine “Songs”. Songs is twelve minutes long. It’s a “mini-album” if it has to be called anything, or maybe it’s just “songs”. Most of these (with a couple of exceptions) are written and played by McTigue herself. “Tortilla Chip Bag Song” (a song where McTigue sings the copy of a back of a bag of Las Fortunitas Tortilla Chips) from last year is on here, and it’s one of the longest things on the record. Only one of these songs is more than two minutes long. The naming conventions are aggressively low-key and casual (“Expired Yogurt Song”, “Haircut Song”, “Weird Hell Song”, et cetera). McTigue assures us that they are “uncomplicated” and “don’t tie back to some grand elaborate map of concepts” on the record’s Bandcamp page.
Pacing seems to be doing everything possible to minimize and temper expectations for Songs–maybe it’s because it’s bad, you might think, but because it’s not, I would guess the reason for this is because McTigue made a throwaway release that’s too good for that and this is some halfhearted attempt at damage control (there is allegedly a “real” Pacing album coming soon, after all, and McTigue and Mike Park will probably want me to write about that, too). If Songs is a hot dog-esque byproduct of the sessions for Pacing LP2, however, it functions very well as a teaser for its release. Like I said earlier, for the most part this is just McTigue on her own, and those moments only serve to confirm that she’s still one of the sharpest and most unique songwriters operating in the present, and the moments where collaborators pop up (like her band, bassist Ben Krock and drummer Joe Sherman, or Melody Caudill again, or noted Pacing associates Walk the Whale) feel like a peek at a widening range of the “Pacing sound” that I look forward to hearing in a more formal setting (and, actually, some of the McTigue solo material has this “just wait” quality to it, too).
The most obvious example of all of this on Songs is the second song and “hit” of the record, “Parking Ticket Song”. Songs hooks us with an excellent transition from the uncertain, acoustic anti-folk of opening track “Expired Milk Song” (which is also very good) to a high-flying song about never remembering to do anything about a parking ticket on one’s car “except for when I’m driving”. The first half of the track features the same ingredients as “Expired Milk Song”, but it has a zippiness to it that matches McTigue’s stream of consciousness lyrics (“I can’t really think except for when I’m doing something with my hands / To keep my mind occupied / Like 70%”). “Parking Ticket Song” to me is about the benefits and drawbacks of being somebody who lets their “instincts” take the reins, either as a coping mechanism for avoiding harder decisions or as a way to maintain some kind of artistic “purity”. It might lead you to sit in the car looking at your phone for a long time after arriving home even if you could go look at your phone in your house with just a bit of focused effort, or write a song with lyrics like “I’m staring at the parking ticket / I don’t remember getting it / So it’s not my fault”, or turning an anti-folk song into a pop punk track at the drop of a hat (which is what happens all of a sudden halfway through “Parking Ticket Song”, when Krock and Sherman spring into action to meet Asian Man Records’ contractual pop punk requirements).
Katie McTigue can make “rock music” on her own, too, apparently–it’s in the air right now in Pacing-land, I think. “Haircut Song” and “Weird Hell Song” are snippets from a darker and heavier (musically) Pacing universe, McTigue sounding compressed and crushed by the march and pile-up of expectations brought upon by time in the former track (that wordless refrain is doing a lot of the heavy lifting here), and the sub-sixty-second partial mental breakdown of the latter track isn’t any brighter (between the contradictory lyrics and the bizarre, incorrect version of “dance music” that crops up towards the end of the track, it kind of feels like a Pacing version of a song by Cheekface, with whom they’ll be touring later this year). “Parking Ticket…Song” (distinct from the earlier “Parking Ticket Song”) is also kind of rock music, but it’s the result of McTigue enlisting Walk the Whale’s Logan Castro to turn a recording of the phone robot representing “the City of Los Angeles’ Parking Violations Bureau” into an overwhelming, splashy technicolor pop rock masterpiece (the absurd repetition of “Press niiiiiiiiiiiine” will never leave my brain).
The more I think about it, everything on Songs has some kind of surprising twist or addition to it that I don’t think I would’ve predicted before giving it a spin. The song with Caudill, “New Song with Mel”, basically rejects the sweetness of their last song together, “Boyfriends”, in favor of a flat kind of dread, a song with a creeping tension that’s only broken by the two of them yelling/droning “aaaaaaaahhhhhhhh” together for a refrain. “No more songs!” is the familiar folk-pop Pacing, but, for one, it’s possibly the most meta track on the whole album (“I want crazy chords and times / Like ones that I read about,” goes the refrain), and it’s surprisingly polished both from a vocal perspective (I didn’t know McTigue could sing like that! Or, probably more accurately, I didn’t know that she wanted to!) and a musical one (I don’t know who Noah Sanchez de Tagle is, but those are some nice bass contributions). I know McTigue said there’s no overarching theme on Songs, and I’m not trying to call her a liar, but I do keep thinking about the last line of “Expired Milk Song” in the context of a record that eagerly jumps from idea to idea and tries out a ton of different modes of presentation. “Embarrassed to admit that / I’m not the best at these things,” McTigue murmurs at the end of a song where she calls both herself and her fans stupid. This captures a moment of shame at not being the “best” at any one of the jars of honey Pacing have their fingers in at any given moment on this record. This misses the forest for the trees, of course, as the rest of Songs remind us of something that’s as true now as it’s ever been–Pacing are the absolute best when it comes to making Pacing songs. Their record is unblemished. (Bandcamp link)
We’ve already reached the third week (and second full week) of January; 2025 is really starting to come into focus, at least in terms of music. This Monday Pressing Concerns brings us four records that have already come out this year: a compilation cassette from Good Flying Birds, new albums from Moscow Puzzles and CuVa Bimö, and a new EP from All My Friends Are Cats. Look for a normal Thursday Pressing Concerns later this week, as well as…something…on Tuesday, as the blog ramps back up to a “normal” schedule.
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.
Good Flying Birds – Talulah’s Tape
Release date: January 2nd Record label: Rotten Apple Genre: Lo-fi pop, jangle pop, psychedelic pop Formats: Cassette, digital Pull Track: I Care for You
A bunchoffriends of this blog have rung in 2025 by writing or talking about Indianapolis lo-fi indie-jangle-punk pop group Good Flying Birds, and I’m happy to join the committee in sharing Talulah’s Tape with you all. Is there something going on in Indianapolis that I need to know about? As of late, Wishy has started to really take off, the very underappreciated psychedelic guitar pop group Living Dream just announced a new EP, and now there’s the Good Flying Birds. As best as I can tell, all of this started with a YouTube channel called Talulah God uploading a few Good Flying Birds songs (there’s also an impressive Neocities page dedicated to the group) and attracting the attention of Martin Meyer (Rotten Apple and Inscrutable Records), who started the year by releasing two Good Flying Birds-related releases: Talulah’s Tape, which collects “16 tracks recorded at home between 2021-2024”, and Star Charms, a compilation featuring three new Good Flying Birds songs as well as new material from Soup Activists and Answering Machines. They’re both good (shout out Answering Machines’ “Rocks Hit My Window”, probably my favorite song of the year so far), but I’m going to put the spotlight on Talulah’s Tape as it’s just an undeniable collection of excitable, exuberant, weird pop music.
Loosely speaking, Good Flying Birds fit into a new jangle pop movement somewhere alongside acts like the psychedelic freakbeat of The Smashing Times, the lo-fi mod revival of Sharp Pins, and their dreamy, hazier now-labelmates Living Dream. However, Talulah’s Tape is more…frantic than any of those bands. Perhaps appropriately for a band whose name evokes a Guided by Voices song (intentionally or otherwise), there’s a slapdash basement feel to these tracks. The most obvious pop hits on the record (“Down on Me”, “ I Care for You”) sound like the band recorded them as quickly as possible before the jangly inspiration faded, while the more full-on rockers (“Wallace”, “Fall Away”) demonstrate their ability to step on the gas pedal (while still making pure “pop music”) when they want to. Even as there’s a staggeringly high “hit” rate here, Talulah’s Tape is an offbeat and chaotic listen nonetheless; there’s a goofiness that for the most part is kept to brief interlude tracks and between-song transitions (there’s some drum machine false starts and red herrings, some odd dialogue, Mario and Spongebob make appearances, et cetera), but there are a few moments (like the drum machine-heavy flat-psych of “Every Day Is Another”) where Good Flying Birds display an aptitude for incorporating it into their “songs”, too.
I don’t want to overstate any “difficulty”; excellent pop songs are never out of reach throughout Talulah’s Tape, whether it’s those opening jangle pop smashes, the back-of-one’s-hand automatic excellence that is “Eric’s Eyes”, or “Art Rock (Gidget)”, some sneaky brilliance hidden towards the end of the tape. “Art Rock” is one of three songs with the “(Gidget)” tag; I’m not sure who or what Gidget is, but these are definitely some of the strongest moments on the tape. This applies to Talulah’s Tape as a whole, but there’s particularly a freewheeling, carefree approach to guitar pop music that reminds me of early of Montreal (but, like, more jangly and electric) in the “Gidget” part of the cassette. The bright, shiny jangle-psych-pop of “Art Rock” touches Good Flying Birds’ spaceship down with remarkable ease, and the central line of the song (“We can make a video / Or song / And call it art”) lands because of everything else about this band and cassette. (Bandcamp link)
All My Friends Are Cats – Picking Up on the Pattern
Release date: January 7th Record label: Grey Cat Studios Genre: Power pop, pop punk, slacker rock Formats: Digital Pull Track: Every Summer
I wrote a little bit about All My Friends Are Cats back in 2023 with the advent of their debut album, The Way I Used to; I called them “vaguely feline-themed pop punk/power pop/slacker rock” and highlighted “Voices”, a song I still like very much. They were a trio at that point, but as of late it seems like bandleader Dave Maupin is going it alone, including on the latest All My Friends Are Cats release, a five-song EP called Picking Up on the Pattern. Even without Maupin’s old backing band, All My Friends Are Cats still sounds familiar–by which I mean that they still sound like they did on The Way I Used to, yes, but also that their sound has a comforting, well-worn feeling to it that reminds me of a more casual, mostly bygone era of slacker-y pop punk/power pop. The more “chill” side of laid-back Midwestern hook-churners like Brat Sounds, Total Downer, Jacky Boy, and Telethon come to mind, and there’s a bit of early Fountains of Wayne in these songs, too. All of it goes together to shade the strongest songwriting I’ve heard from Maupin yet–like the construction on the EP’s cover, Picking Up on the Pattern feels like a transitional work, its songs looking back at bad habits and bad situations, its narrator recognizing that they’re in the past but still lingering on them before moving on.
“I’m picking up on the pattern / That I’d rather be somewhere else at all times,” Maupin sings to open the record on “Somewhere Else”, the closest thing to an upbeat pop punk anthem on the EP. As catchy as “Somewhere Else” is, the mid-tempo pop rock targeted strike of “Every Summer” bests it–the chorus is an excellent loaded gun, but it’s the shit-eating-grin-delivered verses (“This place is just a ghost town, but the views they aren’t as vast / The buildings are much bigger and the tumbleweeds are trash”) that really make the track transcend. Picking Up on the Pattern only gets more insular as it goes on–“Wasted Space” is the emo-tinged track that’s explicitly about moving (“I’ve got these boxes full of shit that would be better off replaced / If they were gone it would hardly affect me”), and the parallels aren’t hard to draw (“Is it a bad thing that every couple years I think / That this is it, this is the new me?”), while “Not Normal” is a sugary, lo-fi guitar pop cry for help (“It’s not normal / To act this way at this age”; well, at least you’re aware, I guess). By the time Maupin proclaims “Oh well, it was just my scenic hell,” in “Double Down”, one hopes that Picking Up on the Pattern helped get something out of the singer-songwriter’s system once and for all. I mean that for Maupin’s own sake–from a listener standpoint, Picking Up on the Pattern is an incredibly rewarding place to be. (Bandcamp link)
Moscow Puzzles – Vast Space of the Interior
Release date: January 10th Record label: Placeholder Genre: Post-rock, math rock, 90s indie rock, post-hardcore, experimental rock Formats: CD, cassette, digital Pull Track: Highway Apathy
Cicadas Are Sensitive to Parallel Lines, the debut album from Iowa City post-rock duo Moscow Puzzles, was a sleeper hit of 2023 for me. That record was made up of five lengthy instrumental jams built from a barebones foundation (everything on it is played by drummer Tony Andrys and guitarist Tobin Hoover) that recalls basement-friendly post-rock and math rock that flowed from labels like Quarterstick, Touch & Go, and Thrill Jockey at the end of the 20th century. Almost exactly two years later, Andrys and Hoover are back with a brand-new Moscow Puzzles full-length, once again recorded by Luke Tweedy (American Cream Band, Wowza in Kalamazoo, Hayes Noble) at Flat Black Studios in Lone Tree, Iowa and self-released on CD and cassette by the band. In some ways, Vast Space of the Interior picks up right where Cicadas Are Sensitive to Parallel Lines left off, but it distinguishes itself enough to not feel like a full-on retread. Although both records lean entirely on the same guitar-and-drums ingredients, Vast Space of the Interior lives up to its name by sounding a little more ambitious and, indeed, vast. Moscow Puzzles sound ready to expand beyond Midwestern basements, even if they’re not entirely sure where that will lead them.
There’s nothing on Vast Space of the Interior that sounds as accessible (relatively speaking) as Cicadas Are Sensitive to Parallel Lines’ spiky, distorted Unwound tribute “Radix”, but there are moments that are…more succinct than others here. The first two songs on the album are probably the “hits”–the six-minute chug of opening track “Highway Apathy” is Moscow Puzzles at their most purposeful, marching intently and intensely down said freeway, and “Unknown Fixed Object” once again finds the band leaning on heavy, mathy guitar riffs and tough percussion to make a fiery post-rock statement. The rest of Vast Space of the Interior is for the real post-rock heads–about half of it is made up of the three-part “Monumentation”, which builds patiently for seven minutes (Part “I”) before demolishing itself in the two-minute crescendo of Part “II” and the four-minute coda of “III”. And if “Monumentation” is still too commercial for you, I’ve got good news about the final track, the fourteen-minute “Every Tongue Will Confess”. Andrys and Hoover probe and dig around in the noise for most of the track, steadily examining the walls of their sound, and while they do get louder, the song stubbornly veers into ambient nothingness to close the record out. Having done their best to tame it for thirty-some minutes, Moscow Puzzles leave us alone with the Vast Space of the Interior. (Bandcamp link)
CuVa Bimö – CB Radio
Release date: January 3rd Record label: Cuva Groove Genre: Garage rock, punk rock, noise rock, art punk, post-punk Formats: Digital Pull Track: Post/Wall
CuVa Bimö are a new “Oakland grunge rock” band who kicked off the new year by releasing their debut album, CB Radio. The quartet (started by guitarist/vocalist Pete Vadelnieks and drummer Ricky Cunliffe, quickly rounded out by guitarist/vocalist Sebastian Moeller and bassist Jake Bilich) recorded CB Radio with Kevin O’Connell (of The Strange Ones and Strange Sound), and they sound like a furious force on their first record together. Gruffer and rougher than the majority of bands I write about from the San Francisco area, CuVa Bimö are one part classic Bay Area garage punk, one part dark and distorted post-punk, and one part trashy noise rock (one of the vocalists, I’m not sure which one but I think it’s Vadelnieks, has a nice, deep AmRep/Touch & Go-style of talk-singing which helps a lot in this department). CuVa Bimö manage to pull off both “sloppy” and “tough” on CB Radio, making a strong and substantial first impression as a “punk band” even if their music doesn’t always fit neatly into that box.
The first proper track on CB Radio is “Wasting Time”, a crunchy and swirling alt-rocker that works quite well, even though it doesn’t fully hint at everything else CuVa Bimö have in store for us with the album. “Bad Jacket” one song later is our first taste of CuVa Bimö as a snotty, sneering garage punk group, and is a nice assurance that, even though the band can sound dead serious at times, not everything on CB Radio is so dire, as the band spend most of the song denigrating the titular article of clothing (“I know a few things that are true / That new jacket makes you look like a tool / … / If I’m wearing that, please kick my ass”). “Post/Wall” is yet another side of CuVa Bimö, a more limber, nervous-sounding post-punk version of their sound that also characterizes a lot of the other highlights of the record from the requisite raging at the state of the Bay Area in “Doom Loop” to the melodic punk-influenced “Workhorse”. Moeller is apparently a big Sonic Youth devotee, and the guitar work on CB Radio reflects this, but CuVa Bimö is interesting because it doesn’t feel like they’re trying to sound like Daydream Nation. In fact, there’s a kind of tension coming from the other genres towards which the rest of the members of CuVa Bimö seem to try to be dragging the music (like the aforementioned garage punk) and the guitar squalls. The four of them manage to keep the peace in a nice and explosive way. (Bandcamp link)
It’s the first Pressing Concerns of 2025! This Thursday post has a nice mix of records that have either come out since the beginning of the year or are slated to be released tomorrow (January 10th). We’ve got new albums from Rotundos and zzzahara, a vinyl release of the debut album from TDA (titsdickass), and a collection of demos from Cindy. The December 2024 playlist/round-up went up earlier this week, so check that one out if you didn’t catch it, 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.
Cindy – Saw It All Demos
Release date: January 1st Record label: Paisley Shirt Genre: Lo-fi pop, indie pop, bedroom pop Formats: Cassette, digital Pull Track: The Violins
I last wrote about Cindy in 2023 with the release of Why Not Now?, the project’s fourth full-length album, but the San Francisco guitar pop band and its leader, Karina Gill, have hovered over Rosy Overdrive in the year-and-a-half since then–Gill’s other band, Flowertown, released an album last year, and she’s also appeared on records from Tony Jay and Sad Eyed Beatniks in the interim. Cindy has been busy since I last checked in on them, too–last year they put out a six-song EP called Swan Lake on Tough Love that Pitchfork (suddenly paying attention to a vibrant San Francisco-based indie pop movement that they’d ignored up until then) called “the scene’s best statement yet”. I’d disagree with that, but that’s not a knock on Swan Lake so much as an acknowledgement of the steep competition, much of which has come from Cindy and Gill themselves. I include Why Not Now? in that, of course, but now I can also add Saw It All Demos–a collection of bedroom recordings from around the time of Swan Lake that I actually like more than the “proper” record featuring most of these songs–to the conversation as well.
Considering how molasses-slow and minimal most of Cindy’s music is, one might not think that “demos” of their songs would dramatically alter their sound, but there’s a distinctly different feel to this seven-song cassette tape. Five of these tracks are entirely recorded by Gill alone (and in one of the others, “Saw It All”, she’s only accompanied by Flowertown bandmate Mike Ramos on a “cardboard box”), and the lack of a proper band and the introduction of some warm background noise do transform these songs. The proper Cindy albums sound like classic 60s pop songs slowed to a crawl and stripped of excess; as it turns out, it takes some work to make their music sound so deliberate and streamlined. The Saw It All Demos are in comparison looser and more meandering, the guitar chords free to reveal themselves at whatever speed they’d like.
The version of “All Weekend” early on the tape is a little clearer than most of the rest of these recordings, but by the time we’ve reached the particularly foggy stretch comprised of “The Bell”, “Party at the Atelier”, and “Consolation’s Test”, the occasional ringing of a synthetic version of the titular object in the former of those three songs is about the only thing tethering Saw It All Demos to any kind of reference point. Four of these songs ended up on Swan Lake and two of them on a bonus 7” that came with certain pressings of Why Not Now?; the seventh and final track is the only one not to appear anywhere else, and it’s also the only one with a full band on the recording. “The Violins” features Staizsh Rodrigues of Children Maybe Later on drums and Will Smith and Oli Lipton of Now on bass and lead guitar, respectively, and the upbeat (for Cindy) pop rock of the track is certainly in a different realm than the rest of Saw It All Demos. That being said, the song (for which all four players are given a writing credit) wouldn’t really fit on Swan Lake or Why Not Now?, either. I do think the intimacy and immediacy of Saw It All Demos is its greatest overall strength, but I wouldn’t trade the bright tribute to collaboration that ends it for another bedroom demo, either. (Bandcamp link)
Rotundos – Rotundos
Release date: January 1st Record label: Self-released Genre: Post-hardcore, alt-rock, emo-grunge-gaze Formats: CD, cassette, digital Pull Track: It Feels Just Right
I’ve been writing a good deal about Chicago quartet Rotundos and their related projects as of late on this blog, but let it never be said that I punished any band for releasing too much good music. They first got my attention almost exactly a year ago with Fragments, an EP that managed to cover everything from art punk and garage rock to post-punk and post-hardcore in just four songs (sliding into my top 25 EPs of 2024 while doing so, too). The band’s vocalist, Jose Israel, put out a solo album last October that similarly felt like a grab-bag affair, even adding a bit of mid-tempo indie rock and jazz-pop into the mix. So of course Rotundos have started off 2025 with a brand new full-length album; the band (Israel, Harrison Campbell, Jacob Padilla-Caldero, and Henry Speer) have put out a lot of material over the past three years, but I believe Rotundos is their first proper album. Rotundos is by far the most cohesive and focused record yet I’ve heard from the band; zeroing in on some of their heavier influences, the quartet set to work hammering out a tight ten-song, twenty-eight minute record of chugging, dour-sounding alt-rock, moody post-hardcore, and emo-grunge-gaze.
Rotundos kicks off with the appropriately-titled “It Feels Just Right”, and the band embrace Hum-style guitar riffs, heavy atmospheres, and post-hardcore angst like it’s the only kind of music they’ve ever made. The emo-flavored alt-rock/pop punk of “My Advice” is just a little bit lighter, but the slicing guitars of “Out of the Way” and the art punk meltdown of “Photo Frame” continue to raise the stakes of the record. The second half of Rotundos kicks off with “Jake’s Song” (presumably this means it’s Padilla-Caldero’s turn up front), and the titular band member helms a vintage 90s emo-punk-sounding track that’s one of the clearest callbacks to previous Rotundos material on the album to my ears. Speaking of previous Rotundos material, there’s also a new version of “Bring Me Back to Life”, which was one of my favorite songs from Israel’s solo album; the jazz-y rock/speedy punk of that song is kind of an odd choice to bring back to life for this album, but it’s a strong track that holds its own against the more substantially-built songs buffering it (the emo-punk explosion “Weightless” and the grunge-gaze closing power ballad “What Ya Say”). I don’t know if Rotundos augers a clear shift towards a defined sound for this band or if we’ll see them continue to hop across various genres, but regardless, Rotundos nailed this specific kind of music on this one. (Bandcamp link)
TDA – Fuck (Vinyl Release)
Release date: January 9th Record label: Insecurity Hits/Dark Side Family Jams Genre: Noise punk, art punk, noise rock, no wave Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull Track: No Way
We’re starting 2025 with a band called titsdickass. Well, they’re also called TDA if you need a shorter and more workplace-appropriate name, but we’ll all know what those letters stand for. Anyway, TDA formed in New York in 2019, and the trio (vocalist/guitarist Julia Pierce, bassist Seth Sosebee, drummer Sick Nick) played a bunch of shows around the city before linking up with engineer Paul Millar and producer Nick Noto to record their debut album, Fuck, in May of 2023. Fuck came out digitally later that year via Noto’s Dark Side Family Jams label, and the six-song LP captures a chaotic, frenetic noise punk group doing exactly we would expect them to do. On Fuck, TDA haphazardly throw together snotty, garage-y New York punk rock, biting no wave, blistering, assaulting noise rock, and a lengthy free jazz/noise/psychedelic rock jam in under a half-hour. Listening to Fuck, I’m not at all surprised somebody wanted to get this thing to a wider audience, and Brooklyn’s Insecurity Hits (Frida Kill, Stem Cham, Jordan/Martin Hell) are the ones who’ve stepped up to put out Fuck on vinyl to ring in the new year.
The first half of Fuck is the “punk” half–the first three songs are under two minutes long, and the longest one (“Cross Me”) is still under three. “No Way” is classic punk rock, marrying dark, gruff Wipers-style verses with a surprisingly catchy, Ramones-like garage punk chorus. “Flames” and “God Awful Place” continue TDA’s noise-punk attack; Pierce’s ear-piercing guitar and furious, frequently sardonic vocals are key to Fuck’s songs, but the rhythm section make themselves heard, too–particularly, Sosebee’s bass takes “God Awful Place” to another level. The bass is also a big part of Side A’s biggest black sheep, “Cross Me”, which introduces some dark, almost-gothic post-punk into the mix–it’s the one moment on Fuck where the band let up just a little bit, with the noisiness reduced to tightly-controlled blasts. Of course, then we’re on to one last punk punch with “GF from Hell”, and then the final seventeen minutes of the album (and the entire second side of the LP) is taken up by the eighteen-minute title track. This behemoth is an improvised psychedelic/jazz/noise piece that’s mostly instrumental (the official lyrics are “fuck! 2x”, but there’s some wordless vocal stuff going on, too). There’s some pounding, there’s some hammering, there’s a bunch of feedback, there’s no shortage of noise. It’s a world away from where we started with “No Way”, but it’s very thrilling to hear TDA blow open the capability at which those initial short bursts hinted. (Bandcamp link 1) (Bandcamp link 2)
zzzahara – Spiral Your Way Out
Release date: January 10th Record label: Lex Genre: Pop rock, indie pop, dream pop, synthpop, singer-songwriter Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital Pull Track: Bluebird
zzzahara is Zahara Jaime, a Los Angeles musician who’s new to me but plays in a couple of bands that are pretty popular–they’re the guitarist in Eyedress and one half of The Simps. As zzzahara, Jaime has done pretty well for themself, too–they’ve put out three albums on Lex Records (also the home of their other projects) in the past three years, with this week’s Spiral Your Way Out following 2023’s Tender and 2022’s Liminal Spaces. It seems like the first couple of zzzahara releases were more low-key, pulling from the 2010s style of Captured Tracks-esque dreamy indie rock and adding some California sunniness to the music; Spiral Your Way Out is the big, shiny, polished coming-out, enlisting a bunch of notable Los Angeles indie rock/pop musicians (prolific producer Jorge Elbrecht, illuminati Hotties’ Sarah Tudzen, and Alex Craig of Big Troubles, among others) to bring the record to fruition. The jangly guitar pop of previous zzzahara releases is still present in Spiral Your Way Out, but there’s also…more, as Jaime and their collaborators hammer out an ambitious LP of huge-sounding but moody pop rock songs.
Oh, also Spiral Your Way Out is a break-up album, which may help explain that whole “moody” thing I mentioned earlier. Maybe song titles like “It Didn’t Mean Nothing, “If I Had to Go I Would Leave the Door Closed Halfway”, and “Pressure Makes a Diamond” might’ve clued you in anyway, maybe not. That doesn’t mean that the first two of those tracks aren’t excellent, inspired-sounding pop songs, though–the former sets the tone with a jaunty full-band synthpop-rock beat and the latter sports a gorgeous melody in the verses and soaring power pop guitars. The songs on Spiral Your Way Out that hew closest to good old-fashioned guitar pop (the swirling psych-post-punk “Head in a Wheel”, the return of the jangle in “Bluebird”) are probably my favorites, but there’s plenty of charm to stuff like the 90s alt-pop vibes of “Wish You Would Notice (Know This)”, too. There’s certainly no hiding the heartbreak at the heart of these songs, though, and Spiral Your Way Out isn’t able to fully dance and sparkle its way out of it; the moments where zzzahara’s guard drops (like, say, the distortion that adds some appropriate ugliness to “Bruised”, and when Jaime’s voice finds a bitterness not present anywhere else to spit out the Title Fight-referencing, ruse-dispelling bridge to “Ghosts”) are some of the strongest ones. A lot of hands went into realizing Spiral Your Way Out, but nobody’s covering the record up when it doesn’t need to be. (Bandcamp link)
We’re slowly easing our way into 2025 here on Rosy Overdrive. I finished off the lastcouple of Pressing Concerns for 2024 last week and revealed the results of the 2024 Reader’s Poll. We’re still in 2024 today (for the most part), as this Monday brings the December 2024 playlist/wrap-up. There are a few songs from upcoming 2025 albums on here (which will start appearing in Pressing Concerns very soon!), some 2024, and some miscellaneous material. It’s all quality, though.
Dazy, Fuzzy, and Attract Mode all have multiple songs on this playlist.
Here is where you can listen to the playlist on various streaming services: Spotify, Tidal (BNDCMPR has been acting up; I’ll try to make the playlist on there again in a day or so). Be sure to check out previous playlist posts if you’ve enjoyed this one, or visit the site directory. If you’d like to support Rosy Overdrive, you can share this (or another) post, or donate here.
“Dribble Dribble”, Amy O From Mirror, Reflect (2024, Winspear)
I put “Reveal” on a playlist when this album came out, but when I revisited Mirror, Reflect for year-end consideration (it made it, by the way), the one that blew me away was “Dribble Dribble”. It just sounds more brilliant every time I hear it. It’s a duet with Glenn Myers (who’s played with Diane Coffee and Mike Adams at His Honest Weight) and the two of them jump right into a slightly fuzzy, slightly twee mid-fi pop classic. All the verses are in the first half of the song, and the second half is just an endless refrain–first by Amy Oelsner on her own, then with Myers in tow. The drum machine and choppy guitar chords anchor the whole track, setting everything up for the perfect payoff: “Rumble rumble splat splat / Can’t make the earth flat / Wanna melt closer to the center of the collapse / And know that we’ll come back”.
“Easy”, Gold Connections From Fortune (2024, Well Kept Secret)
I’d been waiting for a new Gold Connections album for a while now. As it turns out, bandleader Will Marsh ended up relocating from Virginia (where he started Gold Connections in college with contributions from, among others, Car Seat Headrest’s Will Toledo) to New Orleans and putting music on the backburner for a few years before finally reemerging with a new backing band and the first new Gold Connections full-length in six years, Fortune. Some of these songs have been kicking around a while (the reason that “Stick Figures” isn’t on this playlist is because I highlighted it when Marsh self-released it on a cassette EP four years ago), but stuff like “Easy” still sounds incredibly fresh. “Easy” opens the record with an anthem that does Gold Connections’ Bandcamp bio (“arena rock for the underground”) proud; Gold Connections channel the grandiosity of classic Killers singles with little more than chugging power chords and light 80s piano touches.
“‘Sure’”, Attract Mode From The Art of Psychic Self-Defense (2024)
Chris McCrea is a Washington, D.C.-based musician who has a simple goal with his current project, Attract Mode: combine classic post-punk and darkwave of the 1980s with 60s pop rock/power pop hooks. From the insistent post-punk basslines to the punk-clip drumming to McCrea’s melancholic vocal melodies, everything about The Art of Psychic Self-Defense is whittled and sharpened down to exactly what they need to be maximally effective. Attract Mode is hardly the only modern indie rock band utilizing post-punk as a vehicle for pop music, but the juxtaposition between McCrea’s deep vocals and grey instrumentation with undeniable hooks is particularly stark. There are no down moments on The Art of Psychic Self-Defense, but the catchy, thrashing garage-post-punk of “‘Sure’” is worth singling out among the whirlwind. Read more about The Art of Psychic Self-Defense here.
“Friend of a Friend”, Cootie Catcher From Shy at First (2025, Cooked Raw)
This song’s been hanging out on a playlist of mine for a while, although I kind of forgot anything about where it came from until finalizing this blog post. Turns out that Cootie Catcher are a twee-pop quartet from Toronto who’ve been around since at least 2021, and their next album is coming out in March of 2025. “Friend of a Friend” will be on the upcoming Shy at First; like the rest of the album, it was engineered and mixed by Rob McLay of Squiggly Lines and Westelaken, but the warm, fluffy indie pop of this song doesn’t quite match either of McLay’s projects. The bubbling synths throughout the song (provided by Sophia Chavez) are a key part of “Friend of a Friend”, as are the frequent comings and goings of the song’s various vocalists (Chavez, Anita Fowl, and Nolan Jakupovski all have vocal credits). I’ll be keeping an eye on this one!
“Lift”, Hunger Anthem From Lift (2024, Cornelius Chapel)
My overall favorite moment on Lift, the latest from Athens power-pop-punk trio Hunger Anthem, is the title track–it doesn’t quite sound like anything else on the (still quite good) record, and the refrain is slowly pieced together rather than mercilessly flogged. “Lift” is a desperate-sounding track, with the guitar chords frantically bashed out; the bass does the melodic heavy lifting, which is the most “pop punk” thing about it. Or maybe it’s the two-person vocal trade-off that slowly takes shape over the course of the track, which only adds to the eventual catharsis. Most records like this don’t have something like “Lift” on them, but thankfully Hunger Anthem either don’t know that or don’t care. Read more about Lift here.
“The Year I Lived in Richmond”, Advance Base From Horrible Occurrences (2024, Run for Cover/Orindal)
On Horrible Occurrences, Advance Base’s Owen Ashworth builds a set of characters and their stories, which largely take place in a fictional town called Richmond. As the title of the record hints at, Horrible Occurrences is dark more often than not–murder, grievous injury, abandonment, and the supernatural are among these “occurrences”. “The Year I Lived in Richmond” opens the album, and it’s one of Horrible Occurrences’ most dramatic moments (telling the tale of a killer on the loose and the woman who put an end to his reign), but Ashworth keeps things hushed and quiet in a way that reflects the stark, endlessly-reverberating qualities of major events in a small town. Ashworth’s lo-fi, low-key minimal electronic pop–which he’s stuck to since his days as Casiotone for the Painfully Alone–is the perfect vessel. Read more about Horrible Occurrences here.
“Memories”, The Sewerheads From Despair Is a Heaven (2024, Tall Texan)
The Sewerheads are a new band made up of several Pittsburgh indie rock/post-punk/garage rock veterans, and their overwhelming first record is a mix of string-heavy electric garage rock tangles, prowling noir-rock, and burnt-out Rust Belt folk-punk (in a Poguesian sense). Despair Is a Heaven has many different modes and alleyways through which to pass, but if you’re looking for something (relatively) accessible, you can start with “Memories”. It’s the closest The Sewerheads get to straight-up “country punk”, with vocalists Shani Banerjee and Eli Kasan dueting over a spaghetti-Midwestern instrumental featuring a cacophony of horns and violins. Read more about Despair Is a Heaven here.
“I Am Ray’s Brain”, Sharna Pax From The Way We Live Now (2024, Zone 4 Media/Wrong Donkey)
I have no fucking clue what this song is about. There’s no shortage of really rich headscratchers on the latest album from Cincinnati college rock/power pop group Sharna Pax (see the mandolin-laden closing track “Infants in Arms” or the noir-rock of “What Makes the World Go Round”), but “I Am Ray’s Brain” really takes the proverbial cake. It’s lethally catchy–lead vocalist Hallie Menkhaus’ performance is really wild, to be sure–and the lyrical mess of anatomical, neurological, and attention-deficient (“Last year we went to Florida, I saw a manatee” / “There’s a sale on shirts at Sears”) is…well, I can’t make much sense of it, myself. It’s like if your local bar band had some sort of rich inner mythology that only they themselves really understand (if even they do). Good stuff.
“Bird Sanctuary”, 22° Halo From Lily of the Valley (2024, Tiny Library)
22° Halo is a band associated with a lot of artists I like–the bandleader, Will Kennedy, has played with 2nd Grade and Ylayali, and members of those projects have in turn contributed to 22° Halo’s records. Their most recent album, Lily of the Valley, landed pretty high on this year’s reader poll, so it seems like a good a time as any to finally check them out–and I’m glad I did, because now I have “Bird Sanctuary” in my life. Lily of the Valley’s opening track is my favorite (although “Cobwebs” and “Orioles at Dusk” are also very good)–it does remind me of the subtle-beauty bedroom pop of Ylayali, but it’s brighter, almost psychedelic in its technicolor glory. Kennedy’s wife Kate Schneider (whose cancer diagnosis and subsequent treatment inform much of the album’s subject matter) duets on this track, a key part of a two minute guitar pop song that feels like much more.
“Get Out My Mind”, Dazy From I GET LOST (When I Try to Get Found) (2024, Lame-O)
Hey, look, Dazy’s back! I wrote about the three-song IT’S ONLY A SECRET (If You Repeat It) EP a month and change ago, and it turns out that it was only the beginning, as another such EP called I GET LOST (When I Try to Get Found) showed up in early December. This one’s just as good as IT’S ONLY A SECRET (I included them as a single unit on my Top EPs of 2024 list, since they’re both so short); if anything, the second EP might be even bigger in its ambitions. “Get Out My Mind” is another instant Dazy classic to kick things off–we’ve got alt-dance undercurrents, fuzzed-out guitars, slicing basslines, and a huge chorus. All in about ninety seconds, too.
“Flash Light”, Fuzzy From Fuzzy (1994, Seed)
Fuzzy were a group of no-hit wonders who hailed from Boston and were part of a pop-forward alt-rock movement alongside more famous peers like The Lemonheads, Juliana Hatfield, Belly, and even Dinosaur Jr. Bandleader Hilken Mancini released a solid solo album a few months ago, which caused me to step thirty years back in time and give a proper listen to her most well-known band’s debut album. Fuzzy is great (ahem) fuzzy power pop music; just about every song has a strong hook, but nothing tops the swooping, triumphant opening track “Flash Light” in terms of pure, complete energy. Fun fact: according to Wikipedia, Rolling Stone named this song one of the “50 Best Songs of the Nineties”–so I clicked on the link, and it’s right there in the number 50 slot, behind The Offspring and a Britney Spears song that isn’t “…Baby One More Time”. Thank you, Rob Sheffield.
“Friend”, Comfy From Goated & Forboded (2024)
Another album I would’ve loved to have written about before the end of 2024 if I’d only had more time is Comfy’s Goated & Forboded. I kind of covered them, as half the band also play in Big Nobody, whose latest album I did write about, but clearly there’s something happening in the world of Rochester, New York power pop/pop punk, because Goated & Forboded is just as good as the latest LP from their sister band, if not better. We’ll have to settle for appreciating the firecracker of an opening track, “Friend”, in this playlist–it’s catchy enough in its slightly jangly, slightly slacker rock-y opening salvo, but when that huge power pop chorus arrives, “Friend” really lights up.
“Broke Bay”, Snow Caps From Notes (2024, Strange Mono)
The latest album from Philadelphia’s Andrew Keller and their longrunning Snow Caps project recalls offbeat pop rock from several decades past–The Beatles, XTC, The Cleaners from Venus, They Might Be Giants. There’s an Andy Partridge-like “pop music but falling off a melodic cliff” component to Keller’s writing throughout Notes, which is a somewhat mutated version of a lo-fi guitar pop album. The chorus of highlight “Broke Bay” has an “eerie carnival” vibe to it, wobbling and grinning uncertainly as Snow Caps stick the landing nonetheless. Keller’s layered vocals sounds like an entire choir singing modern new wave hymns, which is key to pulling this whole intricate, disconcerting circus thing off. Read more about Notes here.
“Palimpsest”, Schande From Once Around (2024, Daydream Library)
Jen Chochinov (aka Jen Schande) is a thirty-year indie rock veteran at this point; not only has she played in bands like Shove and Boyskout, but she also toured with the Thurston Moore Guitar Ensemble (and when it came time for the first album from her current band, Schande, in twenty years, Moore’s Daydream Library imprint was the one who put it out). Once Around does indeed sound like the work of a band with ties to Sonic Youth, although Schande mostly keep their guitar-forward, rumbling version of noisy indie rock to brief two-to-three-minute bursts. The most obvious example of this in the record’s first half is “Palimpsest”, an excellent version of droning, electric pop music from the get-go featuring sharp indie rock songwriting and just-as-sharp interplay between the band’s three members. Read more about Once Around here.
“Voyager (ad astra)”, Stubai From We Were Here (2024, Wombeyan)
Hey, don’t close the door on 2024 yet, I just heard another good Australian indie rock band for the first time! Coming in under the wire is Stubai, a Sydney-based act who just released their debut album, We Were Here, back in October. There’s a song from Swervedriver’s 99th Dream somewhere in this playlist, and that’s what my favorite song on We Were Here, “Voyager (ad astra)”, reminds me of. There’s certainly shoegaze influences in the sweeping, loud rock instrumental, but there’s a classic guitar pop bent to the track as well, with the wistfully melancholic lead vocals peaking out through the instruments quite prominently and cleanly.
“Runway”, Pulsars From Pulsars (1997/2024, Almo Sounds/Damaged Disco/Tiny Global Productions)
I put “Tunnel Song” on a playlist back when the reissued Pulsars album came out in September, but now that it’s streaming I might as well throw another highlight from the record on here–there’s no shortage of ‘em. I called the Pulsars a “technologically-minded new wave revival duo” in that review; they sing about robots, computers, and aliens in a way that somehow recalls both slacker and geek rock. “Runway” is about the latter of the three–in this one, the song’s extraterrestrial narrators deliver a memorable, spirited kiss-off to all of humanity in one of the record’s most propulsive tracks. “Our rocketship is fixed, so we’ll leave this ball of…” and Trumfio trails off; it’s just about the only punch that “Runway” pulls. Read more about Pulsars here.
“The Butterfly”, Loose Koozies From Passing Through You (2024, Tall Texan)
Passing Through You might’ve taken Loose Koozies four years to put together, but the rollicking Detroit country rock quintet’s follow-up statement is a solid and thorough one. These fourteen songs are impeccably written and presented, sounding polished but loose and automatic but thoughtful. There are a few surprises to be found across the forty-odd minute LP, but for the most part the five Koozies lock in and play their parts to their best abilities, turning in a very smooth journey. My favorite track on the record, “The Butterfly”, is effectively a microcosm of Passing Through You–its foundation is an incredibly solid roots rocker, but there’s also ample space given to some surprising synth accents. Read more about Passing Through You here.
“Villain”, Soft on Crime From Street Hardware (2024, Eats It)
Soft on Crime also sound looser and more streamlined on Street Hardware than they did on the madcap guitar pop extravaganza of last year’s New Suite. All in all, it’s a relatively low-key follow-up album, but the reduction in bells and whistles hasn’t weakened the power of Soft on Crime’s ability to crank out winning power pop; in fact, with some of the group’s more offbeat tendencies largely sidelined, this might be the trio’s smoothest ride yet. “Villain” comes in the second half of the brief record, and even though the stop-start mid-tempo pop song was one of the few tracks that wasn’t released as an advance single for Street Hardware, it might just be my favorite song on the album. Soft on Crime give the central guitar hook plenty of room, and it earns the space. Read more about Street Hardware here.
“Starduster”, Sleepyhead From Starduster (1994, Homestead)
There’s always a playlist-worthy song on every Sleepyhead album I listen to, whether it’s their 2022 return New Alchemy, 1996’s memorably-titled Communist Love Songs, or this one, the thirty-year-old 1994 album Starduster. As one might expect from a band who put out albums on both Slumberland and Homestead, Sleepyhead straddles the line between “indie pop” and “indie rock”, honing in on both sloppiness and poppiness. The title track from Starduster is my favorite track on the album, and it rules–it’s a positively infectious power pop tune, a transcendent song that leaves behind the trappings of “lo-fi indie rock” for two and a half triumphant minutes. Can you believe that there are all kinds of songs like this out there, lying in wait for me or you to (re)discover?
“Yellowhead’s Song”, Willie Dunn From Son of the Sun (2004/2024, Trikont/Light in the Attic)
Thanks to Light in the Attic for making Son of the Sun available digitally twenty years after its initial release (and over forty years after some of these tracks were originally recorded). Although it’s not quite as expansive as 2021’s Creation Never Sleeps, Creation Never Dies, the hour-long Son of the Sun is a good a primer as any for the vital discography of the Mi’kmaq-Canadian folk singer Wille Dunn. Part of the strength of Son of the Sun is that we get multiple sides of Dunn on it; some of these recordings are stark guitar-and-vocals folk songs, but others–like “Yellowhead’s Song”–are fully-developed folk-country rockers, with percussion and slide guitar. The extra-band contributions are welcome, but Dunn’s deep but high-flying vocals stand tall right in the middle of the song nonetheless.
“Shovel Song”, Dialup Ghost From May You Live Forever in Cowboy Heaven (2024)
This most recent album from Dialup Ghost is kind of a lot to take in–although I’m not sure what else I could have expect from an LP called May You Live Forever in Cowboy Heaven that dropped on Halloween and was made by a six-piece alt-country group from Nashville. There’s an absurdly long list of influences on the album’s Bandcamp page that includes Ween, Sparklehorse, The Dead Milkmen, Shel Silverstein, Jeffrey Lewis, Beck, and The Presidents of the United States of America, among others–alright, alright, we need to take a step back. Let’s listen to “Shovel Song”, one of the most immediate and accessible things on this record. It’s a breezy folk rock tune for the most part, but there’s also a garish, almost 8-bit-sounding keyboard part courtesy of Jack Holway. Some sharp writing from Russ Finn, too. Good one!
“Alone Tonight”, Skeet From Simple Reality (2024, Efficient Space)
Like 22 Beaches, another band on this playlist, Skeet were also a first-wave British post-punk group with a minimal sound who came and went without ever officially releasing any music. This year, though, Australian label Efficient Space put together the eight-song Simple Reality (one of Rosy Overdrive’s favorite reissues/compilations of 2024!), and it holds up quite well! Skeet were a bit more jammy, but the Young Marble Giants comparison that the collection’s bio makes is pretty accurate. Opening track “Alone Tonight” takes its time getting to the point–it rides its simple rhythm section and some guitar flareups for nearly two minutes before the vocals kick in. There’s no reason to hurry through “Alone Tonight”, though.
“Rocket”, Pet TV From Terrarium (2024, à La Carte)
Eventually I ran out of time to write about new albums from 2024, but Pet TV’s Terrarium is one that I would’ve gotten to if the year had an extra month or so in it. Sometimes a good fuzz-punk slacker-rock album is just a good fuzz-punk slacker-rock album–fans of the Rozwell Kid/Sleeping Bag side of things will find a lot to like on this all-too-brief 25-minute album. The punchy title track is really strong, but the climax to “Rocket” is so good that I had to choose this one for the playlist. It’s a song that really lives up to its name–it starts off fine, sure, but nothing really prepares us for the launching off the song does when it reaches the first refrain. And while we’re somewhat prepared for Pet TV to blow things all sky-high by the time the chorus comes around for the second time, it’s still a knockout.
“Dream”, Dogwood Tales From Sending (2024)
Harrisonburg, Virginia alt-country act Dogwood Tales put out a couple EPs on WarHen Records over the past couple of years; their latest, Sending, is an independent venture, but it’s about as good as 13 Summers and 13 Falls and Rodeo were, too. There’s plenty of low-key folk rock to be found on Sending; my favorite track is one of the quieter moments, a brief two-minute song called “Dream”. Built from little more than gentle but strong vocals and airy folk guitar, “Dream” is a world away from the opening country rock of “Driver’s Side Fantasy” or even the more substantial mid-tempo “Mt. Jackson”, but there’s something about this humble song about dreaming of death while still being very much alive that continues to stick with me.
“Aria”, Glyss From Eternal Return (2025, Candlepin/Pleasure Tapes)
2025 will bring the debut record from Glyss, a Los Angeles-based “slowgaze” band who’ve linked up with Rosy Overdrive favorite Candlepin Records and Pleasure Tapes (Floral Print, Laybrum, Storm Clouds) to put out Eternal Return in late January. As best as I can tell, Glyss is the solo project of Sol Rosenthal, who also makes electronic music as Iris Ipsum–of the two Glyss singles available thus far, “Aria” is my favorite. There are the “ethereal” vocals and the fuzzed-out guitars, sure, but what really makes “Aria” stand out to me is its tough, prominent, somewhat woozy-sounding drumbeat, which gives it a bit of a danceable feel. Maybe that’s Rosenthal’s electronic background coming in–either way, it’s a potent combination and I look forward to hearing more from Glyss.
“Not Moving to Portland”, The Long Winters From So Good at Waiting (Rarities 2000-2017) (2024, Barsuk)
“Not Moving to Portland” has been floating around for a while–I remember watching a video of Long Winters bandleader John Roderick playing the song on his own circa 2012 (with the still-unreleased fourth Long Winters album coming any day now, believe me). It never had a proper released of any kind until this year, when the So Good at Waiting rarities compilation showed up as part of a career-spanning Long Winters reissue series perpetrated by Barsuk. Now that it’s been a while, I can confidently say that “Not Moving to Portland” is one of Roderick/The Long Winters’ best songs–it needs little more than that wildly simple three-chord guitar progression and some nice piano accents to do what their proper records did with a headache-inducing amount of studio fuckery. Nobody wrote songs like this–you really need to be able to put yourself out there to pull off some of these lines which might read as “cringe” out of context.
“Spite As an Act of Affection”, Attract Mode From The Art of Psychic Self-Defense (2024)
Attract Mode’s ability to keep the foot on the gas for so long without sacrificing anything else in their songs is the real hook of their debut album, The Art of Psychic Self-Defense. The noisy but focused “Spite As an Act of Affection” is the second track of the record, and it picks up the thread that the brisk post-punk of opening track “Vanish/Doom” left off. Bandleader Chris McCrea marries agitated verses in the trenches with a soaring, sweeping refrain that keeps the dark party going. I could’ve chosen just about anything from this record, as it’s built on one tight two minute pop song after another, but “Spite As an Act of Affection” (wasn’t that the name of an IDLES album?) has just a little something extra. Read more about The Art of Psychic Self-Defense here.
“Streetlights”, Golden Tiles From The First EP (2024, Antiquated Future)
I’ve been fortunate enough to get acquainted with Portland’s Antiquated Future Records this year, who put out one of the best compilations of 2024 (a career-spanning retrospective from the great Rose Melberg) and one of the best collections of new music (the latest LP from Guidon Bear). Compared to those albums, a six-song debut cassette EP from a “basement indie-rock trio” might seem a little slight, but that’s no reason to dismiss an opening statement as strong as Golden Tiles’ The First EP. The band (led by singer/guitarist Oliver Stafford and featuring Antiquated Future labelhead Joshua James Amberson on bass) certainly sound like a “basement rock” group–the fairly lo-fi sound of the EP might be too much for people whose brains weren’t shaped by music of this kind, but the low-key pop music of highlights like “Streetlights” certainly shine through the distortion.
“Freakshow Train”, Circu5 From Clockwork Tulpa (2025)
We now enter the world of modern-day prog-pop. London’s Steve Tilling is one such practitioner, releasing an album under the name Circu5 back in 2017, but the past few years have found the musician playing a supporting role in a few XTC-related projects (Colin Moulding’s TC&I, Terry Chambers’ EXTC). “Freakshow Train” is the debut single from the long-in-the-making second Circu5 album, and “XTC” is a pretty good reference point for what this song sounds like. As I alluded to earlier, there’s more electric progressive rock to “Freakshow Train” than there is in XTC, but there’s a Partridge/Moulding-esque twisted pop melody sitting pretty right there in the center of the track (it seems notable that Moulding’s son, Lee, is on board as the band’s drummer for Clockwork Tulpa).
Oh, hey, Primordial Void released a compilation of the works of a forgotten college rock/power pop band from Athens, Georgia earlier this year. How come I didn’t hear about this earlier? Well, I’m hearing the first-ever officially-released music from Banned 37 (active between 1983 and 1986) now, and I’m quite into it. The Banned 37 compilation stands up nicely next to classic southern jangly guitar bands like The Windbreakers and The Primitons that have received a retrospective look in recent years, and the record’s bouncy, euphoric opening track “Guns & Cameras” would’ve fit nicely on that Strum & Thrum compilation from 2020 (I actually had to double check and make sure that Banned 37 weren’t on it).
“Dust”, 22 Beaches From Dust: Recordings 1980-1984 (2024, Seated)
22 Beaches were a Scottish post-punk band from Stirling; during their four-year run in the early 1980s, the only songs they ever released were a couple of contributions to some various-artist cassettes. Dust: Recordings 1980-1984 is 22 Beaches’ first-ever album all to themselves, and the eight-song compilation reveals a band who found a home on the more rhythmic, dance-friendly end of the post-punk spectrum. Bits of disco and dub permeate these songs, including the opening title track, my personal favorite song from the album. For over five minutes, 22 Beaches build a mesmerizing, minimal foundation with a sturdy rhythm section and accent the song with commanding vocals, spindly guitars, and occasional interjections of other voices and instruments.
“RJR Nabisco Takeover”, Yuasa-Exide From Information and Culture + Naturally Reoccurring (2024, Round Bale/Ape Sanctuary)
From March 2022 to August of this year, Twin Cities musician Douglas Busson has (by my count) released seventeen full-lengths under the name Yuasa-Exide–and thanks to Round Bale Recordings, you can now purchase the two most recent of these albums together as one cassette. Information and Culture + Naturally Reoccurring is an invigorating collection of lo-fi pop, fuzzy basement indie rock, and a few noisy experiments. Throughout the hour of clanging, distorted underground indie rock, there are plenty of strong pop moments; “RJR Nabisco Takeover” originally appeared on the former of the two albums, and its shining Flying Nun-esque guitar lead cuts through the lo-fi trappings. I wish Yuasa-Exide the best on their impending hostile takeover of Nabisco. Read more about Information and Culture + Naturally Reoccurring here.
“Sports”, Fuzzy From Fuzzy (1994, Seed)
Are the lyrics to “Sports” by Fuzzy kind of silly? Sure (“Something to find out, something to catch / If you can hit it then you’re on the list” / “It surrounds you like a little ball / But forget it, you can’t throw that far”, and many other ways of phrasing the song’s metaphor), but you know what else is kind of silly? Sports. And music, too. It’s all silly. And it doesn’t matter much what Hilken Mancini is singing about what the chorus of “Sports” hits, anyway. It must’ve taken a bunch of restraint for Fuzzy not to throw a bunch of even goofier backing vocals in the spaces in between the lead vocals in that chorus, but filling it with loud, catchy guitars works even better.
“These Times”, Swervedriver From 99th Dream (1998/2024, Zero Hour/Outer Battery)
I revisited the fourth Swervedriver album, 1998’s 99th Dream, since it was reissued at the beginning of 2024 and I figured I was going to want to put it on the best reissues of 2024 list (it made it). This album sounds great and imagines a future for the band beyond the pummeling shoegaze of their earlier albums (even if that future had to wait for a nearly two-decade hiatus after its release before the band returned). “These Times” is an excellent piece of classic British guitar pop (if only there was a more succinct term for such music…), slightly psychedelic and slightly distorted but not enough in either direction to derail the song’s smooth catchiness.
“Bring Me Back 2 Life”, Jose Israel From To Live in Brief Wonder (2024, 7 Songs)
Jose Israel is the lead singer in Chicago art rock/punk quartet Rotundos (who just put out a new album, incidentally), and his most recent solo album, To Live in Brief Wonder, reflects the adventurousness of his band. The record is a brief but electric collection of everything from polished-up indie rock to lo-fi garage punk to experimental, math-y guitar pop, among several other genres. To Live in Brief Wonder may traverse a lot of ground in a short amount of time, but Israel still takes pains to roll out the red carpet with the attention-grabbing, shined-up indie rock of “Bring Me Back 2 Life” at the start of the record (at least, the version I’ve been listening to–it seems like the streaming and Bandcamp versions of the album have different tracklists). Read more about To Live in Brief Wonder here.
“Roadkill”, Possum in My Room From POSSUMGHOST (2024, Sad Marsupial)
Rockaway, New Jersey’s Ted Orbach has recently expanded their solo project Possum in My Room into a full band, and their first album together is October’s POSSUMGHOST. The resultant album is a full-band exploration of a dark Americana, influenced by slowcore and alt-country but without fitting neatly into either of those boxes. Orbach sounds like a biting folk rock singer possessed on some tracks, and smoothly fits on top of polished instrumentals on others. Opening track “Roadkill” is one of the more electric tracks on POSSUMGHOST, but it’s hardly a welcoming opening, as Orbach bitterly unspools a scene of chemicals, carrion, and vices over top of the agitated country-rock dagger of an instrumental. Read more about POSSUMGHOST here.
“I Get Lost”, Dazy From I GET LOST (When I Try to Get Found) (2024, Lame-O)
I’m still not entirely sure what James Goodson meant with “IT’S ONLY A SECRET (If You Repeat It)”, but “I GET LOST (When I Try to Get Found)” resonated with me pretty much immediately. Have you ever tried to better yourself? Have you ever decided that you were going to do something good for once, god dammit, and you set out on a journey immediately met with labyrinthian bureaucracy, with “helpers” unable to do anything to live up to their names, with a machine that grinds your bones to dust to make a few bucks. Maybe that’s not what Goodson had in mind when he sang “Check some boxes, fill some squares / So obnoxious, no room for errors”, but it works for me. Some solid rave-power-pop either way.
“That’s Reanimation!”, The Chilling Alpine Adventure From The Chilling Alpine Adventure (2024, Golden Arrows)
It’s a long and winding path that’s led us to The Chilling Alpine Adventure, the self-titled debut from a band led by Portland singer-songwriter Jessy Ribordy. It started back in the early 2000s with the rap-rock and electronic-tinged Christian rock group Falling Up, which got further and further from its roots before breaking up in 2016. The Chilling Alpine Adventure, which dropped on the last Friday of 2024, is an intriguing art rock album that is more or less a continuation of where Falling Up eventually ended up from my understanding–“That’s Reanimation!” is the song that’s stuck with me, an undeniably catchy track that’s a little bit emo, a little bit synthpop, a bit “art rock”.
“Moving Song”, Comets Near Me From Atmospheric River (2024, 131)
I keep getting “Cootie Catcher” and “Comets Near Me” confused–but there’s room for more than one twee-folk band whose name starts with “C” on this playlist. Especially when they’ve got songs as good as “Moving Song”, which is Comets Near Me’s entry. It’s actually the B-side from the San Jose duo’s latest single, but I’m giving it the nod over the more traditionally folky A-side “Symptoms & Obligations” because–well, because I like it more! The band’s two members (who are named Kyle and Maria; I don’t have any more information than that) sing “Moving Song” together over a laid-back folk-pop-rock instrumental, leaning on breezy acoustic guitar and an unobtrusive rhythm section. It all just works–it’s honing in on that intangible pop quality of the best “twee” songs.
“Life in the Factory”, Drive-By Truckers From Southern Rock Opera (2001/2024, Soul Dump/Lost Highway/New West)
“Life in the Factory” isn’t my favorite song off Southern Rock Opera. I don’t even think it’d make the top five. But that’s the strength of a massive, career-defining double album; once I’ve worn out “Women Without Whiskey” or “Let There Be Rock” or “Zip City”, there’s always something else to rise from the towering three-guitar assault to sound like the most brilliant thing. “Life in the Factory” is Patterson Hood’s retelling of the Lynyrd Skynyrd story, the one that the Drive-By Truckers dip into and out of all throughout Southern Rock Opera. If they’d put it at the front of the record it’d be one of their most beloved songs, I’m sure, but it’s buried in the back half of the second disc, instead. In context, it becomes one last look back before the last three songs initiate the final comedown. I think people have written books on this record; it deserves it.
The second annual Rosy Overdrive Reader’s Poll has now been summed, tallied, and assembled! We asked you about your favorite albums, songs, EPs and label of the year, and we got fifty-seven different responses! These ballots included 377 different albums, 394 different songs, 87 different EPs, and 33 different record labels. Just like last year, this year’s results once again demonstrated the excellent taste of Rosy Overdrive readers; I’m looking forward to filling in my personal blind spots with the ones on here I haven’t yet checked out.
Your top choices are revealed below; for more detailed and complete results, here’s a spreadsheet with everything that got at least one vote on it. For albums, your top choice got ten points, second place got nine, et cetera (for songs, it was twelve points for first place); ties were broken via number of ballots something appeared on and number of first-place votes received.
Here’s a playlist of every song that either A) appeared on multiple ballots and/or B) got a first-place vote (Spotify, Tidal).
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. To anyone who participated in this poll, or even if you didn’t, if you shared the blog or even just regularly read it in 2024: thank you very much. On to 2025!
Your Top 50 Albums of the Year:
49. [TIE] This Is Lorelei – Box for Buddy, Box for Star (Double Double Whammy) / Why Bonnie – Wish on the Bone (Fire Talk) / Francis of Delirium – Lighthouse (Dalliance)
48. Jessica Pratt – Here in the Pitch (Mexican Summer/City Slang)
47. Nada Surf – Moon Mirror (New West)
46. Beachwood Sparks – Across the River of Stars (Curation/Sludge People)
Alright, here we are on New Year’s Eve, with the last Pressing Concerns of 2024. There literally can’t be another one; it’s the last day of the year! I have to stop! But before we ring in 2025, we’re looking at a pair of reissues that came out late this year from MOVIELAND and W-2, as well as new albums/tapes from Austin Leonard Jones and Unforced Levers. If you missed the other “under the wire” post this week, from yesterday (featuring Assistant, Boyracer, Attract Mode, and Shoplifter), check that one out, too. Stay tuned for the results of the Rosy Overdrive 2024 Reader’s Poll, which should go up later this week.
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.
MOVIELAND – Then & Now
Release date: December 13th Record label: 604 Decades Genre: Shoegaze, fuzz pop, psychedelia Formats: Digital Pull Track: San Francisco
Alan D. Boyd was an Edmonton-born garage rocker bouncing around Canada, eventually settling in Vancouver in 1991. Despite this exciting new genre called “grunge” happening just south in Seattle, Boyd instead was infatuated with the nascent British shoegaze movement, and formed a band with drummer Justin Leigh and bassist John Ounpuu (later replaced by Clancy Denehy and Cam Cunningham after the original rhythm section formed the band Pluto) to try his own hand at it. MOVIELAND put out a couple of well-received cassettes EPs in the early 1990s, but it turns out the ceiling for a Canadian shoegaze band at the time was fairly low and the project petered out with Boyd relocating to England. That should have been the end of the MOVIELAND story, but luckily for them, one of their relatively few fans was Jonathan Simkin, who would go on to be the co-founder and president of powerful Canadian label 604 Records. Recently, 604 has found time in between releasing Carly Rae Jepsen records and keeping post-grunge radio well-stocked with CanCon-approved records to start a reissue imprint, and the first release is a collection of early MOVIELAND recordings called Then & Now. The fifty-four minute compilation (featuring songs from both cassettes and some odds and ends) is a compelling look at a high-flying band who was influenced by My Bloody Valentine and Slowdive, yes, but played with the sturdy backbone of a North American indie rock group.
The first four songs on Then & Now come from MOVIELAND’s first EP, and clearly the band already had an idea of what kind of music they wanted to make from the get-go. That being said, there’s a good deal of variety here–“Hello” is the wistful, dreamy opening anthem, “Rant” introduces a Madchester-influenced danceable bassline and sneering, fuzzed out instrumentation (and vocals) to the mix, “San Francisco” is the full-on fuzz-pop sugar rush, and “Everything” is the nearly ten-minute epic vapor trail. They hadn’t settled on a single “sound” by their next release, but they did seem to get sharper at their various lanes–“I Relate” feels like a more natural incorporation of psychedelia and alt-dance into their sound, “Cake” is a more aggressive foray into fuzzed-out rock and roll, “(A Sort of) Icarus” shaves the nine minutes of “Everything” down into a clean seven and a half, and so on. The compilation closes with the two songs that Boyd recorded with MOVIELAND’s second and final lineup (including the massive-sounding “She’s a Mountain”, which might’ve been the band’s heaviest and firmest embrace of full-on shoegaze) and a “soft” version of “I Relate” that keeps the psychedelic dance vibes of the louder version and makes it feel a little sleazier and hazier. There are plenty of also-ran first-wave shoegaze groups out there to discover, yes, but I was presently surprised by how much I enjoyed Then & Now from front to back. Good work, 604! (Bandcamp link)
W-2 – Demo Tape (1980)
Release date: December 6th Record label: Vacant Stare Genre: Post-punk, art punk, no wave, garage punk Formats: Cassette, digital Pull Track: Dancing on the Head of a Pin
In the mid-1970s, Robin Hall was the vocalist for New York proto-punk/no wave group Jack Ruby. In the early 1980s, Russell Berke played bass for East Village post-punk band Certain General, appearing on the long-running band’s early releases before departing in 1983. In between these two bands, however, the two musicians met up and co-founded a group called W-2, which existed for less than a year and about a “half-dozen shows” between 1979 and 1980. W-2 (who never had a permanent drummer, but did have a bassist known only as Shelby) never made an album, but they did pass around a four-song demo tape to various New York club promoters. Jack Ruby received a reissue series last decade, but the members of W-2 believed their only recordings to be lost until one turned up via a donated archive from Jim Fouratt (the gay rights activist and co-founder of the Danceteria nightclub). With these recordings in hand, W-2 were finally able to release their demo tape via Rob I. Miller’s Vacant Stare Records; in addition to the four original songs, there’s also a rehearsal session recording of a song called “Goodbyes” and an interview between Hall and Miller (who is the former’s nephew, incidentally).
Historical intrigue aside, these recordings sound quite fresh and spirited in 2024. Of the four proper demo recordings (engineered by Steve Rutt at Rutt Video and featuring Bill Bacon on drums), half of them are upbeat art punk/proto punk tunes and the other half veer into the weirder corners of New York no wave. In the former category, “Dancing on the Head of a Pin” and “Soho What” are built on Berke’s messy but showy rock and roll guitarplay, while “Toxic Love” also leans heavily on the guitars but to swampier and (yes) more toxic ends. The final track on the original demo tape, “Sprezzatura”, is perhaps the most “New York” track on the record; it’s a squall of noisy guitar, a firm rhythm section, and muttering sing-spoken vocals from Hall, in a way that puts W-2 squarely on a timeline from The Velvet Underground to Sonic Youth. The seven-minute rehearsal recording of “Goodbyes” (featuring Dougie Bowne on drums) doesn’t sound like any other W-2 song; it’s a seven-minute “funeral march” (Hall credits Browne for adding this new dimension to their sound) recalling the more pensive moments of Lou Reed as the band pay tribute to Hall’s then-recently departed Jack Ruby bandmate George Scott III. The archivist in me is happy that Demo Tape (1980) is out there in the world in and of itself, while the present-day music fan in me is pleased that it sits well alongside the modern-day punk and art rock I write about here. (Bandcamp link)
Austin Leonard Jones – Famous Times
Release date: November 26th Record label: Perpetual Doom Genre: Folk, country, singer-songwriter Formats: Cassette, digital Pull Track: Bad Will
If an album gets a strong reaction out of you, that’s something worth interrogating, right? Well, I’ve certainly felt some things in my time with Austin Leonard Jones’ latest cassette release, Famous Times. I’ve felt skeeved out. I’ve felt highly uneasy. I’ve felt some lighter emotions, too, but varying shades of “unpleasant” are the vibes that emanate from the most recent release from the prolific alt-country troubadour. The last time I wrote about Jones, it was in the context of his 2022 album, Dead Calm, which used gentle pedal steel and gentler songwriting to evoke a confusing but warm neon-lit peacefulness; on the one hand, it’s hard to believe how different the general feel of Famous Times is, but on the other hand, Jones still sounds more or less the same here. It’s a pretty informal album–barely cracking twenty minutes in length, most of these songs are built off of little more than Jones’ voice and guitar (with occasional piano and percussion), and the majority of them are under two minutes in length, too. Jones recently collaborated with singer-songwriter Nick Flessa for his album The Politics of Personal Destruction, and you can hear more fleshed-out versions of a few of Famous Times’ tracks on that album, but I keep finding myself drawn toward this collection of skeletal sketches.
“It’s the porno, a police procedural / Snail-trailin’ all around the studio,” Jones sings in “Theme from the Dick Gibson Show”–this little acoustic country number might take the “unsettling imagery” sweepstakes, but there’s more to be found in the deceptively jaunty “Nightlife of a Southern Apologist” (“It’s five o’clock forever, my life won’t ever change,” Jones sings over rinky-dink piano) or the burnt-out folk carcass of “What They Did to Marcus Fiesel”. Interspersed between these moments of blackness are tracks that remind me just how strong of a traditional country songwriter Jones can be–specifically, the wavering “This One’s for the Watchers” and the one-long-metaphor “Any Given Sunday” find him tapping into something difficult to pull off successfully. “I’m Gonna Leave” is much in the same vein, saying more in about ninety seconds than most writers accomplish in a whole record, while the swaying “Bad Will” sounds like the clearest descendant of Dead Calm here, its balladry reduced to a quietly earnest vocal, guitar, and occasional piano. Maybe Jones intended to flesh these songs out some more before deciding to let them be, maybe the brevity is the point, but the result is a full album’s worth of ideas contained within songs stubbornly refusing to pad themselves out. (Bandcamp link)
Unforced Levers – Clear
Release date: November 10th Record label: Self-released Genre: Experimental, post-rock, drone, lo-fi, psychedelia, industrial Formats: Cassette, digital Pull Track: Second Sounds
I first wrote about Minneapolis musician Jason Allen Millard last year with the release of The Truth Is Always Changing, his latest solo album, which was an excellent collection of minimalist, lo-fi acoustic folk songs. Millard’s other solo releases and bands have ranged from experimental and deconstructed to punk and rock and roll, and his latest one is a far cry from the folky intimacy of The Truth Is Always Changing. Unforced Levers is a new duo made up of Millard and Rebekah Teague, who came together due to a shared love of experimental rock, jazz, and psychedelic acts (naming Can, Faust, Les Rallizes Denudes, and Milford Graves, among others) and whose debut album (a cassette called Clear) reflects these touchstones. Clear is an instrumental record, and the bandmembers are credited with playing eighteen different instruments (including “wooden flute”, “ocean drum”, and “Sansula thumb piano”) between the two of them. Although some of the acts claimed as inspirations build their music from solid rhythmic foundations, Clear is much more unmoored–these nine compositions drift and wander through the worlds of clamorous, beautiful post-rock and free jazz.
At the very least, Clear starts with a bang–that would be the ninety-second industrial clatter of “Lil Hit”, which sounds more or less like a trash compactor serenaded by mournful wood instruments somewhere underneath the noise. After the relatively tense, minimal-percussion-built “Second Sounds”, Unforced Levers find some “peace” in the middle of the tape between the ambient sounds, string hauntings, and more rhythmic ruckus found in “Third Rain”, “First Mood”, and “Second Mood”. By the end of “Second Mood”, Unforced Levers sound like they’re ready to make some more noise, but “Big Hit” doesn’t quite deliver on the threat of its title, and Clear is content to drift into the minimal, droning pieces “Beret 2” and “Careful Day 2” instead. Clear never sounds completely relaxed, but aside from its opening warning shot, it’s never quite outright hostile either–this experience continues all the way to the finale, “Second Rain”, which is the closest Unforced Levers get to “rock music” (meaning that they sort of sound like an instrumental rock group as the track finally fades away). I don’t write about this kind of music all that often, and I’m not really sure what Millard and Teague are doing, exactly, to make Clear stick with me more than most records of its kind have done, but I’m happy to keep listening to maybe find some clarity. (Bandcamp link)
It is (glances at calendar) New Year’s Eve’s Eve, and we’re still fitting in albums from 2024 in Pressing Concerns before the calendar flips (and we aren’t completely done with this year yet, so stay tuned). This time, we’ve got new albums from Assistant, Boyracer, and Attract Mode, plus the debut EP from Shoplifter. End your 2024 right with some indie pop, power pop, post-punk, and shoegaze!
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.
Assistant – Certain Memories
Release date: November 17th Record label: Laurie/Subjangle Genre: Indie pop, folk rock, jangle pop, singer-songwriter, dream pop Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital Pull Track: My Phone Began to Ring
Assistant are a Brighton-based indie pop trio (made up of guitarist/vocalists Jonathan Shipley and Peter Simmons, keyboardist/vocalist Anne Sophie Marsh) who formed in 2002 and have released four albums in the last two decades. This year, they’ve signed with Subjangle Records and have been reissuing their discography with the label, culminating in a brand-new fifth Assistant LP called Certain Memories. Assistant have an enjoyably subtle guitar pop sound on their latest album–of the bands they mention as influences, I think that Felt and the quieter end of Yo La Tengo are the most accurate, but if you like any band on the more tired-sounding end of the C86 indie pop spectrum, you’ll appreciate where Assistant are coming from on Certain Memories. Unlike a lot of their influences, though, the overarching theme of Certain Memories is integral to everything about the album–it’s dedicated to Shipley’s mother, Jil, and the album chronicles living with a deteriorating illness in one’s family (either directly via songs like “Song for Jil” and “Jil Is Fading” or slightly more obliquely via “My Phone Began to Ring” and “Before and After You”).
Certain Memories is bookended by a pair of difficult lyrics–the acoustic-led folky indie pop of “My Phone Began to Ring” begins with “They said you couldn’t treat it with anything / And that’s just life, that’s just death”, while the minimal synth/ambient pop finale “A Million Stars” ends the record with “I love you so much / But it feels like you’re a million miles away”. In between this seemingly inevitable journey are songs about despair and hope, songs about the present and songs reminiscing about the past. The trio wind through these tracks with their typical laid-back take on guitar-driven indie pop, taking in every moment with equal weight. Certain Memories is by nature a very revealing album, even as Assistant don’t play up the drama in moments like “Jil Is Fading” (“And the pain is appalling / No amount of warning / Can prepare”) and “Overwhelming” (“Wake up / Got to do it all again / … / Somehow”). The song I keep coming back to is called “Raking Leaves”, though, which contains little explicit signs of the illness at the heart of Certain Memories. The narrator is just raking leaves (“Raking leaves / goes on forever”); over top of a relaxed, slowed-down instrumental, they have time to list every kind of leaf being raked (apple, cherry, beech, lilac, et cetera). “I don’t know what I’m doing it for,” concludes the singer, realizing that they’re just acting out another endlessly repeating task. This is the main strength of Certain Memories to me; it’s a record that captures how the present-tense drudgery continues to go on despite whatever mountains of grief and pain rise in the background. (Bandcamp link)
Boyracer – Seaside Riot
Release date: October 31st Record label: Emotional Response Genre: Power pop, indie pop, twee, lo-fi pop, pop punk Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull Track: Stale Mate
When we last checked in on Stewart Anderson’s long-running indie pop project Boyracer, it was 2021, the British-originating musician (and head of Emotional Response Records) was in Arizona, and he’d recorded his fourteenth Boyracer album, Assuaged, with a lineup featuring guitarist/vocalist Christina Riley (of Artsick) and longtime multi-instrumentalist Matty Green. Fast forward to this year, and Anderson appears to have traded the desert for the seaside–Seaside, Oregon, to be specific, which is where Boyracer is currently based and is also presumably the namesake for the fifteenth Boyracer album, Seaside Riot. Riley is back for this one, and Anderson has also enlisted a couple different longtime Boyracer collaborators–Chuk Reutter, also of the Bright Lights, and Simon Guild, who first appeared on a Boyracer record in 1992–as well as Mario Hernandez of Kids on a Crime Spree. The quintet cobbled these songs together between their various homes (including, amusingly enough, the Monterey Bay town of Seaside, California), resulting in a joyfully sloppy fifteen-song collection of twee, indie punk, and power pop hits. If you’ve heard either of the two Under the Bridge compilations of ex-Sarah Records artists, you’ve already heard two of these songs, and, as “Larkin” and “Unknown Frequencies” demonstrated in 2022 and earlier this year, respectively, Boyracer’s well of ideas has hardly run dry.
Seaside Riot is perhaps a bit more wide-ranging than Assuaged was, but both records come from the “blow through as many ideas for pop songs as quickly and enthusiastically as possible” school of thought. At the very least, you can always count on Boyracer to put a bunch of hits right up front–between the handclap-laced opener “Salt on My Tongue”, the bouncy, Riley-sung “Stale Mate”, and the bundle of guitar hooks that is “Larkin”, Seaside Riot draws us in as well as any indie pop record could. Boyracer doesn’t “get experimental” in the middle of the record, per se, but we’re given some alternate models of Boyracer songs–“Boosey and Hawkes Childhood” and “Midweek Soulcrusher” are noisier and more cacophonous, “Roads” is a bit quieter, “You Don’t Love Me” features a bit more swagger. Of course, we’re still given perfect guitar pop songs like the agreeably-titled “Graeme Downes” and “Unknown Frequencies” (which I don’t mind hearing again at all, it’s still very good) in the meat of the record. And some of the best pop songs on Seaside Riot benefit from Boyracer mussing them up a bit, too–the lo-fi, slacker attitude they bring to late-record highlight “Sharp Edges” only allows it to shine brighter, while the shrill edges of “Rails” enhance its ample energy, too. The players and locales may change, the years pass by, but Boyracer is still doing Boyracer things. (Bandcamp link)
Attract Mode – The Art of Psychic Self-Defense
Release date: December 6th Record label: Self-released Genre: Post-punk, college rock, new wave, power pop, darkwave Formats: Cassette, digital Pull Track: “Sure”
Chris McCrea is a Washington, D.C.-based musician who has a simple goal with his current project, Attract Mode: combine classic post-punk and darkwave of the 1980s with 60s pop rock/power pop hooks. It’s a mission I can get behind, and regardless of how clean of a synthesis it is of those two tentpoles, The Art of Psychic Self-Defense is certainly a catchy collection of songs. McCrea used to play in the synthpop trio Motion Lines and put out an Attract Mode album (SYZYGY) in 2018, but this appears to be the musician’s first new music of any kind in six years. The Art of Psychic Self-Defense is a brief reintroduction (eight songs in under twenty minutes), but there’s no fluff here–from the insistent post-punk basslines to the punk-clip drumming to McCrea’s melancholic vocal melodies (often helped out by Cinema Hearts’ Caroline Weinroth), everything about this record is whittled and sharpened down to exactly what it needs to be maximally effective. Attract Mode is hardly the only modern indie rock band utilizing post-punk as a vehicle for pop music (see Humdrum’s romantic college rock in Chicago, or the propulsive jangle practiced by Motorists in Canada), but the juxtaposition between McCrea’s deep vocals and grey instrumentation with undeniable hooks is particularly stark.
The Art of Psychic Self-Defense certainly gets off on a “punchy” note–the in-one’s-face bassline of “Vanish/Doom” is the first thing we hear, and it gives way to a brisk post-punk energy jolt that gets the job done in about two minutes, and the noisy but focused “Spite As an Act of Affection” marries verses in the trenches with a soaring, sweeping refrain to keep the dark party going. Although the swooning new wave of “Fade” is just a little brighter and more overtly New Order-y than what preceded it, don’t mistake this for a tonal shift; The Art of Psychic Self-Defense gets right back to it with the swirling, hazy alt-rock-tinged “Absolute Monster”, the catchy, thrashing garage-post-punk of “’Sure’”, and the warped, compacted balladry of “Twitch” (featuring some of the best backing vocals on a record with plenty of solid ones). Just a blink or two and we’re at the eighth and final song on The Art of Psychic Self-Defense, the percussionless “Dreams”. It’s the only “breather” on the album, McCrea crooning over an electric guitar, Weinroth’s harmonies, and some suspended synths. Attract Mode sounds pretty good in “subdued” mode too, but their ability to keep the foot on the gas for so long without sacrificing anything else in these songs is the real hook of The Art of Psychic Self-Defense. (Bandcamp link)
Shoplifter – EP
Release date: November 15th Record label: Self-released Genre: Noise pop, shoegaze, post-punk, garage punk, lo-fi indie rock Formats: Cassette, digital Pull Track: Goof Ball
There seem to be a fair amount of bands called “Shoplifter” (or some variation on the word), but the one we’ll be fixing our attention upon today is a trio from Victoria, British Columbia, Canada who have just released their debut EP. The trio of Curtis Lockhart, Cam, and Matt E previously played together in another Victoria group called Numbing, which I only know about thanks to a Swim into the Sound article about a live show they played with Guitar and Pardoner earlier this year. When Lockhart reached out to me about this EP, he referred to Shoplifter as a “shoegaze band”, which is partially true; those two aforementioned bands who shared the bill with them back in May are helpful reference points, particularly the latter. Like Pardoner (and Guitar, to a lesser degree), Shoplifter make a weird, distorted, and oddly catchy kind of music that synthesizes basement 90s indie rock, arty post-punk, and, yes, wall-of-sound shoegaze. It’s a particularly subdued take on these genres, too; compared to the relatively wild attitude of Guitar towards their recordings and Pardoner’s bouts of high energy, the debut Shoplifter record really does sound like it was made by a band with their gaze fixed firmly on their footwear.
Not that EP doesn’t lean into the “rock” side of indie rock when Shoplifter feel like it; opening track “Goof Ball” is a nice ninety-second catchy fuzz-pop tune that sounds like the band wanted to do a Dinosaur Jr. thing but didn’t really commit to seeing it through (but isn’t a half-assed Dinosaur Jr. song a fitting tribute to J. Mascis?). The sturdy and relatively clean post-punk of “HW” is probably just about as “polished” as Shoplifter are going to get–after holding the line nicely for nearly five minutes, they reward themselves by letting “Weaver” lapse into some moments of fuzzed-out feedback in between the “song” parts. The most Pardoner-like moment on the EP is “Cohesive”, a clanging, metallic-sounding piece of garage-egg-punk with some relatively unhinged sing-speaking vocals. Aside from “Goof Ball”, every track on EP is four to five minutes long–one must imagine silent, stoic jam sessions mainly composed of distortion at band practices and gigs like the one I keep leaning on for reference. After showing just a bit of emotion in “Cohesive”, Shoplifter dial it back to close things out via the mid-gaze finality of “Softie”, which rides steady fuzzed-out guitars to the very end of the record. You do kind of have to speak Shoplifter’s language to get the most out of EP, but it’s a promising debut for the fluent. (Bandcamp link)
Rosy Overdrive 