Wrapping up the first full week of November, we’ve got four releases coming out tomorrow, November 8th, for the Thursday Pressing Concerns. It’s a reissue-heavy edition, as we look at an expanded version of The Ladybug Transistor‘s 1999 third album and an entire-discography-spanning box set from Tsunami. We’ve got new-new music covered, too, with new albums from Chimers and Tófa detailed below as well. Earlier this week, we looked at new records from The Triceratops, wilder Thing, EEP, and Tess Parks on Monday, and Tuesday brought the October 2024 playlist/round-up, so check those out too if you haven’t already.
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 Ladybug Transistor – The Albemarle Sound (25th Anniversary Expanded Edition)
Release date: November 8th Record label: HHBTM/Merge Genre: Psychedelic pop, chamber pop, orchestral pop, indie pop Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital Pull Track: Meadowport Arch
Trumpet player and singer Gary Olson founded The Ladybug Transistor in Brooklyn in 1995, and by the time their third album, The Albemarle Sound, came around in 1999, the band was made up of six people living together at Olson’s Flatbush home studio (known as “Marlborough Farms”)–The Essex Green’s Jeff Baron and Sasha Bell on guitar and keyboards/flute, respectively, Baron’s sister Jennifer on bass, San Fadyl on drums, and Julia Rydholm on violin. Both The Essex Green and The Ladybug Transistor are perhaps (unfairly) more well-known for their notable associations (Merge Records, who’ve put out the majority of both band’s outputs, and Elephant 6, who put out an Essex Green EP and whose Derek Almstead recently joined The Ladybug Transistor on tour) than their own music, but if there’s a canonical record between the two of them, it’s probably The Albemarle Sound. The heavily 1960s-inspired baroque pop music of The Ladybug Transistor fully blossoms on this LP–it’s easy to see why they got along with the Elephant 6 crew, but the group’s approach is notably different than their peers in Athens upon a closer look at the album. And it’s a good time to take a close look at The Albemarle Sound, as HHBTM Records (who also put out the most recent album by Jennifer Baron’s current band, The Garment District) has reissued it on vinyl and CD with a dozen bonus tracks of demos, B-sides, and rough takes (physically on the latter format, digitally on the former).
Like a bunch of those Elephant 6 albums, The Albemarle Sound bears the mark of an album made in a “live-in studio”, but while, say, The Olivia Tremor Control’s records sounded like the work of mad pop scientists tinkering away in their laboratory, The Ladybug Transistor’s version of layered, psychedelic pop music is much more relaxed and serene-sounding. Who knows whether or not it was actually the case, but The Albemarle Sound makes it feel like Marlborough Farms was some kind of lovingly-tended Eden-esque garden for music that sounds like Brian Wilson at his most stately, occupied by a group of like-minded and cheerful musicians. Most of these songs are built on the foundation of pianos and horns rather than guitar–it’s not precisely a “sleepy” album, but if it’s any kind of “rock” music, then it’s soft rock. The original dozen songs of The Albemarle Sound still stand as a polished and strong door-shutting of 21st century pop music, keenly and carefully excavating the past to make transportive psychedelic pop like “Six Times”. The particularly jaunty “Meadowport Arch” is still my favorite song, but its energy is hardly an outlier, and when the band do let the guitars sit a bit more prominently (like the Byrds-y folk-pop of “Like a Summer Rain”) it’s a welcome addition.
The crown jewel of the bonus material is “Massachusetts”, a cover of a Bee Gees song that was originally the B-side to the 1998 “Today Knows” single. It fits The Ladybug Transistor like a glove, with more straightforward (and more overall) lyrics being the only really noticeable difference between it and their original material. The various instrumentals and rough mixes are interesting additions, although the four 4-track demos tacked on at the end sound the best to me (particular the version of “Today Knows”, which has a molasses-slow indie pop feel to it that almost sounds like modern slow-pop groups like Cindy and April Magazine). Between the original, the “full length” version, and the demo version, there’s three different full takes of “Six Times” on here, but it’s hard to fault that because each version brings out something new in the song. What more could you want from an anniversary reissue of an already-great album? (Bandcamp link)
Tsunami – Loud Is As
Release date: November 8th Record label: Numero Group Genre: 90s indie rock, noise pop, fuzz rock Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull Track: Unbridled
The appeal of Tsunami is a bit more difficult to explain than a lot of their more renowned 1990s indie rock peers (unfortunately for me, though, I have an agreement with myself that “it’s too hard” is never a legitimate reason to pass on writing about a band). Jenny Toomey and Kristin Thomson formed the band at the beginning of the 90s, first with drummer John Pamer and bassist Andrew Webster and eventually adding Luther Gray, Amy Domingues, and Bob Massey and putting out three albums (and one compilation) before they ceased being a full-time band in 1998. Like some of their more comparable peers–Scrawl, Barbara Manning, Helium–they were undeniably a key fixture in the underground rock scene of their time without being defined by it sonically. They put out all their music on their own label, Simple Machines, they associated with indie pop from both coasts of the United States, and they made music that doesn’t fit neatly into categories like “punk”, “twee”, “riot grrrl”, “grunge”, et cetera. I first knew of Toomey through her collaborations with Franklin Bruno (who’s playing in the current iteration of Tsunami that reformed last year), who similarly spent the 1990s trying to make timeless pop music out of the “basement indie rock” stone. Tsunami went on their own journey of cleaning and teasing out their own sound, but it’s not super obvious from a glance–like everything about them, you have to actually pay attention.
So, maybe they’re a hard sell, is what I’m saying. They’re indie rock music for adults, is how I would put it personally. Either way, the Numero Group is giving you all the chance to give Tsunami a chance with Loud Is As, a five-LP, sixty-one-song collection of the band’s entire output from the 1991 Cow Arcade demos to their 1997 final record, A Brilliant Mistake. The compilation puts their three studio albums back to back to back, suggesting we chart the evolution of Tsunami through their biggest statements–and it really is a clean and strong story when presented thusly. 1993’s Deep End is the messy, noisy torrent of a rock record made by a band that nonetheless was hardly “punk” in the way people mean the word, 1994’s The Heart’s Tremolo is the transitional second album that really stretches towards something, and A Brilliant Mistake is the patient, labored-over realization of Toomey and Thomson’s furthest ambitions–a success that they took as a cue to close up shop. A Brilliant Mistake particularly sounds even stronger in this context, as we can hear how Tsunami kept their bright-burning core but stripped away just about everything else from their earlier music on those thirteen songs. Loud Is As is necessarily a lot to take in at once, especially given the grab-bag nature of the final two LPs (largely comprised of World Tour & Other Destinations, a B-sides/rarities compilation originally released in 1995)–but Tsunami make it tricky to dismiss the World Tour tracks, given that they’re comparable (if not stronger) than the two proper albums released contemporaneously with them. Start with A Brilliant Mistake and work backward if this is all intimidating to you, but if you’re open to it, you’ll get something more out of letting Loud Is As reveal itself as is. (Bandcamp link)
Chimers – Through Today
Release date: November 8th Record label: 12XU/Poison City Genre: Noise rock, post-punk, garage rock Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital Pull Track: Timber
Chimers are the husband-and-wife duo of Padraic Skehan and Binx based out of Wollongong, Australia (although Skehan is originally from Ireland). Between the two of them, they’ve both drummed for a bunch of local garage rock bands (The Pink Fits, The Drop Offs, Evol), but Chimers finds Skehan playing guitar and singing (and joined by Binx in the latter of the two activities). Chimers arose during the pandemic, with the two of them stuck at home together, and they put out a self-titled album in 2021. For their second LP, Through Today, Chimers wanted to capture the “energy and intensity” that they bring live on the album, enlisting Jono Boulet of Party Dozen to record the album and linking up with American underground rock stalwart 12XU (John Sharkey III, Lupo Citta, Mope Grooves) to release it outside of Australia and New Zealand (where Poison City are handling things). I’ve seen Chimers described as “garage rock”, but that doesn’t quite do justice to the pummeling and pounding you’ll hear on Through Today. It’s a record that does indeed sound like it was made by two musicians who are drummers by trade–the unflagging high-wire-act pulled off by the band rhythmically (led by Binx’s drums, of course, but Skehan’s guitar does it too) gives it a post-punk feel, while the duo and Boulet also give it the blunt edge of classic noise rock.
Through Today sounds exquisite–Binx’s drums and Skehan’s six-string feel like they’ve lost no potency from Boulet’s home studio to tape, rumbling and slicing merrily (well, stonily) along for virtually the entire album. Skehan’s vocals aren’t an afterthought, exactly, but they’re lower down in the mix, a ghost haunting Chimers’ mechanical, rusted-out rock and roll. Songs like “Timber”, “Everything’s Green”, and “Gossip” are Through Today’s bread and butter–Binx is cold water to the face behind the kit but also provides a firm anchor, giving plenty of cover for Skehan to slice and dice and drone. Still there are a few surprises on the album–guest saxophone player Kirsty Tickle (Party Dozen) shows up in “People Listen (To the Radio)”, the oddest of the record’s first few songs in no small part due to the squall that the brass instrument spearheads. Violinist Jordan Ireland shows up in “An Echo”, Through Today’s penultimate track and the one true black sheep on the LP. Binx quietly sing-speaks on this one, and the duo dial back their instruments to make something more reminiscent of 90s Quarterstick Records-style post-rock (again, the violin helps by swelling and dispersing along with the core duo). For us, it’s a bit of a rest before the band launches into one last rocker in “Common”, but it almost feels like it takes more effort for Chimers to pull back like they do in “An Echo” than to just follow the rhythm downstream. (Bandcamp link)
Tófa – Mauled
Release date: November 8th Record label: Damnably Genre: Post-punk, noise rock, punk rock, garage rock Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull Track: Hot Tears
Icelandic noise punk group Tófa dropped a couple of albums and a split EP in the mid-2010s, but the quartet had been quiet as of late up until this year. Now linked up with Damnably Records (Say Sue Me, Hazy Sour Cherry, o’summer vacation), the quartet (vocalist Allie Doersch, bassist Andri Freyr Þorgeirsson, baritone guitarist Árni Þór Árnason, and drummer Jóhannes Ólafsson) have finally returned to release a third album, christened Mauled. Despite hailing from a country most people in the West consider to be idyllic and peaceful, it turns out that Tófa can make angry, pummeling, low-end-heavy rock music as well as the bands from burned-out American cities. Doersch is an intense punk frontperson, dynamically swerving from a yell to a bitter sing-speaking tone (and even a couple of poetry readings), and the down-tuned, rumbling music accompanying her is cold and harsh. Like a lot of great noise rock, Mauled is about helplessness and evil, and feeling the former in the face of the latter (one imagines that in some ways this feeling is amplified, not dampened, by living in a remote country with little global power, even as one gets a front seat to climate catastrophe and Western genocide).
So Tófa have plenty to rage for, against, and about, and Mauled does so. Careening into focus, the album starts off with the noisy, driven post-punk of opening track “Hot Tears”, the sixty-second clamoring garage punk explosion of “Clogging”, and the heavy, chugging noise rock of “Revenge”. The album features two spoken-word passages, memorably titled “Fancy Poetry I” and “Fancy Poetry II”; the only one that I can understand, the former (I think the latter is in Icelandic), has to do with the mundane repetitiveness of world destruction no one can fully opt out of even as disaster hovers over all of our heads. The fire of Mauled only burns brighter as it inches forward–“Power” and “Letter Home” towards the end of the album are two of the angriest tracks on the album, Doersch practically spitting out her lyrics as the band spirals down and out. Tófa bring everything into focus on the album’s closing track, “It Happens Again”–like the “Fancy Poetry” recordings, Doersch is basically just speaking for the majority of the song, but rather than minimal ambient instrumentation, the rest of Tófa take the form of sturdy, tough post-punk. “What’s a black smear to the endless night?” Doersch actually sings in the chorus, painting a picture of endless, repeating insignificance. What did you expect, a fairytale ending? (Bandcamp link)
Come with us as we wrap up October! This monthly playlist has a bunch of great new music on it, featuring a bunch of bands that I’m probably going to be thinking about as I try to put together my favorite albums of 2024 in list form in the coming month. Plenty of good choices below, that’s for sure.
2nd Grade, Toby the Tiger, and Humdrum have multiple songs on this playlist (two apiece).
Here is where you can listen to the playlist on various streaming services: Spotify, Tidal, BNDCMPR (missing two songs). 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.
“Limbo Land”, Dancer From Split (2024, HHBTM)
Dancer and Whisper Hiss are both post-punk bands that know their way around a pop hook, but they’re fairly distinct to me–the former are the irreverent, offbeat Brits who mix new wave-y art punk with fluffy indie pop, and the latter are the heavier, more serious Americans who certainly have listened to their fair share of Dischord and Kill Rock Stars records. Both bands bring their A-game to their recent split LP on HHBTM Records, but it’s the Glasgowians (whose entire discography I’ve written about on this blog at this point) who win the day for me with “Limbo Land”. “Limbo Land” closes Dancer’s half of the album with some tightrope-walking power chords and eventually builds to a fuzzed-out power pop conclusion–it’s a bit heavier and blunter, almost like they’re trying to meet Whisper Hiss halfway. Read more about Split here.
“Big End”, Dazy From IT’S ONLY A SECRET (If You Repeat It) (2024, Lame-O)
Opening track “Big End” is the most obvious “hit” to me on IT’S ONLY A SECRET (If You Repeat It), the latest three-song EP from James Goodson’s one-man power pop project Dazy. It’s the one “vintage Dazy” classic song on the EP–it’s got a bit of alt-dance energy to it, but it’s primarily a power pop guitar assault that just happens to have a beat. Goodson’s unflagging, almost robotic high energy is so strong here that his performance alone is ample reassurance that Dazy’s still “got it”–“it” being the ability to write a scorching anthem for staring directly at the sun and sounding incredibly cool while doing it. Dazy’s release rate has slowed down over the past year or so, but Goodson’s been clear that he’s still working (and reworking) on new music all the time. Open the vault, James. It’s time. Read more about IT’S ONLY A SECRET (If You Repeat It) here.
“Out of the Hive”, 2nd Grade From Scheduled Explosions (2024, Double Double Whammy)
Like any power pop band with a penchant for shorter songs, 2nd Grade have been blessed or cursed with Guided by Voices comparisons pretty much since their inception as a Peter Gill solo project, but Scheduled Explosions is the first 2nd Grade album that actually sounds like Guided by Voices does to my ears. A lot of this record was recorded by Gill alone, stitched together with full band recordings to create an exciting patchwork. Even on the homespun recordings, though, 2nd Grade don’t abandon the “power” side of power pop–take early highlight “Out of the Hive”, for example, a blustering piece of GBV-esque revved-up, fuzzed-out guitar pop. Gill–on everything here–stumbles through the track, speeding up and slowing down as he does everything in his power to get this winner out of his mind and onto tape as soon as possible. Read more about Scheduled Explosions here.
“We Will Shatter”, The Triceratops From Charge! (2024, Learning Curve)
Brooklyn’s The Triceratops deliberately and intentionally walk the line between “pop” and “heavy” rock music on their debut album Charge!’s fifteen songs. It reminds me of, more than any other band, the Archers of Loaf–huge and catchy without being dogmatically “punk” or “noise rock”. Charge! is an urgent-sounding album–it does feel like the work of a couple of people who haven’t gotten to make a full-length statement of an LP in a while and maybe don’t know when or if they’re going to get to again, so they’ve put as much as they can into it. It’s no wonder that the most rousing moments on Charge! are the most destructive–single “We Will Shatter” is maybe the catchiest song I’ve heard this year, jumping from the slick verses to an exorcism of a refrain (that’s just the title line). Read more about Charge! here.
“Ballad of Two Stubborn Men”, The Dumpies From Gay Boredom (2024, Dirt Cult)
There’s this great song called “The Ballad of Two Stubborn Men” by the underrated Bay Area garage/punk group The Younger Lovers (Brontez Purnell’s band since the early 2000s, haven’t released much lately but hopefully still active). Like a lot of Purnell’s greatest songs, it could be described as “queer slacker guitar pop”, and it’s probably my personal favorite Younger Lovers track. There’s also this really fun band from Oregon called The Dumpies–seen earlier this year releasing a split 7” with Night Court and more recently putting out an entire album called Gay Boredom. Nineteen songs in nineteen minutes, Gay Boredom hops from lo-fi garage pop to hardcore punk, and their seventy-eight second version of “Ballad of Two Stubborn Men” is my favorite thing on it. The Dumpies speed the track up, finding a hair-pulling, foaming pop punk anthem in the original version somehow. It rules! It sounds like Green Day!
“Come and Get Me”, Humdrum From Every Heaven (2024, Slumberland)
Chicago’s Loren Vanderbilt has a keen grasp on a very specific time and place in the history of indie rock as Humdrum, carefully and devotedly pulling together jangle pop, new wave, college rock, and dream pop from the 1980s and early 90s to make Every Heaven’s warmly familiar sound. Although it does feature some guitar contributions from Vanderbilt’s former Star Tropics bandmate Scott Hibbitts, Every Heaven is largely the work of a singular pop-minded visionary, with everything from its prominent, pounding mechanical drumbeats to its New Order-y synth washes to sprinkled guitar arpeggios all working in tandem to service the melodies and hooks, all unfailingly upbeat but also unafraid to turn up the “wistful” dial. On late highlight “Come and Get Me”, the emotional cracks and visible wear and tear only enhance the great New Romantic performance given by Vanderbilt and guest vocalist Melissa Buckley. The titular plea sounds desperate and time-sensitive–but still hopeful!–in the hands of these two. Read more about Every Heaven here.
“New Years Day Blues”, The Great Dying From A Constant Goodbye (2024, Dial Back Sound)
Loosely speaking, A Constant Goodbye is a “country-punk” album, although The Great Dying frontperson and songwriter Will Griffith stamps his writing with a pronounced dour streak compared to peers like Drive-By Truckers (with whom they share a sometimes-member in Matt Patton) and Lee Bains III & The Glory Fires. The songs on A Constant Goodbye generally hew towards the darker end of the spectrum, but it’s a pleasingly varied-sounding album nonetheless, with outliers like “New Years Day Blues” almost being the norm rather than exceptions. “New Years Day Blues” closes A Constant Goodbye with a perfect starry-eyed ballad, a lost college rock anthem unlike anything else on the record. Except in the sense that it’s incredibly lonely-sounding–in that way, it’s right at home. Read more about A Constant Goodbye here.
“Apartment 3”, Naked Giants From Shine Away (2024, DevilDuck)
Naked Giants decide to start their third album, Shine Away, in media res: “As I was saying, it was 1964 / They put a color television on the second floor / Didn’t that change everything?” It’s an offbeat but welcoming introduction to the band’s familiar-sounding, well-worn, lived-in mixture of the poppier side of 90s indie rock a la Pavement/Archers of Loaf, garage rock, and power pop. There’s a bit of whiplash throughout Shine Away as Naked Giants dart from different ideas, but “Apartment 3”–a piece of slacker-pop ear candy that features the line “Put me in that television like I’m Tom Verlaine” immediately followed by a Marquee Moon guitar lick–is the band at their easiest to grasp and appreciate. Read more about Shine Away here.
“Brand New TV”, Porcine From Something’s Dawning (2024, ART TNEET)
Barnsley trio Porcine released a really solid self-titled record of indie pop earlier this year via Safe Suburban Home, and last month they quietly followed it up with a five-song EP called Something’s Dawning (the only reason I even know about is because Jim Quinn of Safe Suburban Home sent it to me, wanting to make sure I heard it even though he didn’t have space on his label to release it). Something’s Dawning is some more excellent jangly/dreamy guitar pop from the group, and “Brand New TV” (a song about buying a brand new TV) might be my favorite Porcine song yet. Giannis Kipreos’ vocals, the cheerily-strummed acoustic, the laser-precise lead guitar melodies–they’re all in the right place on this one.
“Never Been a Problem”, Podcasts From Supreme Auctions (2024, Omegn Plateproduksjon)
The latest release from Oslo indie pop quartet Podcasts is a “3.5 song” EP called Supreme Auctions. The “0.5” is the brief “Intro (For Supreme Auctions)”, which blends seamlessly into “Never Been a Problem”, not allowing us to take much of a breath before Supreme Auctions is already halfway over. “Never Been a Problem” is a polished, sugary piece of power pop that grinds to a complete halt halfway through, only to jam the keys back in the ignition and soar yet again (and then pull a slightly smaller version of the same trick one more time before the song ends)–there’s a bit of the tricky guitar pop that was found all over Podcasts’ 2023 self-titled debut album, but “Never Been a Problem” keeps the hooks even closer to the forefront than the band have ever done before. Read more about Supreme Auctions here.
“It Wasn’t Me”, Russel the Leaf From Thought to an End (2024, Records from Russ)
Thought to an End, the first Russel the Leaf album of 2024, is Evan Marré’s return to pop music after spending last year dabbling in the realms of experimental, jazz, and improvisational, and it’s a triumphant one. Spanning twenty-one songs and seventy-five minutes, we’re quite possibly dealing with Russel the Leaf’s magnum opus here; it has the feel of a classic double LP, with everything from streamlined, breezy pop rock to layered orchestral and psychedelic passages to heady art rock to, indeed, the experimental/jazz moments of the last couple of Russel the Leaf records featuring on the album. Coming about a third of the way through Thought to an End, the joyous-sounding tinker-pop of “It Wasn’t Me” might be the single greatest triumphant on the album, with Marré sounding locked in with a stop-start instrumental–but thankfully, there’s a lot of competition on this album. Read more about Thought to an End here.
“Detour”, La Sécurité (2024, Bella Union/Mothland)
Things are looking bright for Montreal art punk/post-punk group La Sécurité. They put out their debut album, Stay Safe!, last year on local label Mothland, and they’ve been picked up by Bella Union for their next album (as of yet unannounced). The first new music from the five-piece (six if you count Emmanuel Éthier, credited for “hand claps”) is the one-off “Detour” single, and it’s as good as La Sécurité have sounded yet. They keep hewing towards the “danceable” side of post-punk music, with everything from the rhythm section’s prominent groove to the blaring synths to the skipping and flashing guitars all working towards the beat. Not that I’d forgotten about La Sécurité, but “Detour” will keep the band squarely on my radar.
“Your Local Neighborhood Bar”, St. Lenox From Ten Modern American Work Songs (2024, Don Giovanni/Anyway)
Penultimate track “Your Local Neighborhood Bar” is one of the most upbeat, jubilant songs on St. Lenox’s Ten Modern American Work Songs, finding singer-songwriter Andrew Choi stepping back into the world of Joe Peppercorn’s open mic nights at Andyman’s Treehouse in Columbus, Ohio, where he lived before moving to New York for work (“Last week, down at your neighborhood bar / I heard that it was some kind of legendary / … / I gotta go there and sing you a song”). As the modern-day Choi sits on the subway and reminisces, however, he goes beyond the rose-tinted, Cheers-evoking glasses with which he begins (“Seven years ago stuck on the ivories / It reveals explicit themes / Seven years yeah, stuck in the brain”). All the while, Choi’s huge voice–the one that first got him noticed at by Anyway Records at those open mics a decade ago–is just as incredible as ever. Read more about Ten Modern American Work Songs here.
“Someone Else’s Enemies”, Stomatopod From DrizzleFizzle (2024, Pirate Alley)
Streamlined but expansive, unmistakably Midwestern, punk-y and garage-y, dark but “pop music”–this is rock and roll according to Chicago trio Stomatopod. DrizzleFizzle is their fourth album, and it’s a doozy, nearly twice as long as their last one and made up of ten enormous songs–the snapshot of brilliance that was their last album, Competing with Hindsight,is blown up onto the big screen here, and Stomatopod are ready for primetime. “Someone Else’s Enemies” was instantly my favorite song on the record; it’s a big, angry Andy Cohen-type beast that benefits from its players’ experience (Stomatopod know they’re onto something here, and they’ve got the clarity to embrace it seriously and without any self-consciousness). “You should never go to war with someone else’s enemies,” frontperson John Huston ominously thunders–a piece of obvious advice that nonetheless ends up unheeded all around us. Read more about DrizzleFizzle here.
“Bones”, Toby the Tiger From Demapper (2024, Peligroso es Mi Nombre Medio)
Brock Ross and his solo project, Toby the Tiger, are squarely in the realm of “emo-adjacent” indie rock; the Boise-based musician is adept at writing delicate pop melodies, but there’s an electric side to Demapper as well. The first Toby the Tiger album takes great pains to reveal itself in the sturdiest, most arresting fashion possible; “Bones” is one of the best album openers I’ve heard this year, starting off simple with just electric guitar and Ross’s vocals. However, given the literal Biblical torrent of emotion and violence he eventually gets around to depicting, it can hardly be described as a low-key or “soft” launch. Read more about Demapper here.
“If I Could Take It Back”, Cast of Thousands From Third House (2024)
On their first full-length, Austin’s Cast of Thousands pick up the thread they started with First Six Songs, although Third House continues to add dimensions to the group’s sound–in particular, new member Ali Ditto’s organ-toned keys add a The Clean-esque indie pop element to the band’s college rock, power pop, and jangle pop (delivered with just the right amount of Lone Star garage rock energy). Max Vandever remains a sneakily stellar rock and roll frontperson in his ability to sound believably conversational even when I have no idea what he’s talking about; “If I could, I’d buy you every star in the sky / Well, what are the stars worth / And what do they even do,” he rambles in the excellent “If I Could Take It Back”, which opens the LP. “If I Could Take It Back” is so catchy and enthusiastic it makes me want to grab the nearest tambourine and keep time myself. Read more about Third House here.
“Your Purse or Your Life”, Tony Vaz From Pretty Side of the Ugly Life (2024, Jubilee Gang)
The first Tony Vaz LP is a constantly surprising pop album–self-recorded in Vaz’s home studio, Pretty Side of the Ugly Life is rooted in mid-2010s “bedroom pop” and “lo-fi indie rock”, with regular detours into everything from orchestral pop to folk and alt-country to electronic music. Pretty Side of the Ugly Life starts in indie rock territory and gets more adventurous as it progresses, but there are inspired, intriguing choices right up front on the album, too. “Your Purse or Your Life” opens the record with some strong country-rock guitar-play merged with a greyscale 90s indie rock foundation, soaring violin from Camellia Hartman, and Alena Spanger’s backing vocals–it’s a somewhat confusing combination, but it works, and it opens up a bunch of possibilities that the rest of Pretty Side of the Ugly Life continues to probe. Read more about Pretty Side of the Ugly Life here.
“Got U (Reprise)”, Drinking.Bleach From Arrive Alive (2024, Pill Mill)
Drinking.Bleach are a “slacker-folk” trio from Portland, Oregon who’ve been kicking around since the mid-2010s, and the latest release from the group (guitarist/vocalist James VonUrchin, upright bassist Ross Fish, and percussionist Pepper Smithereenz) is a five-song EP called Arrive Alive. The trio mention being inspired by Beat Happening–the Violent Femmes are another obvious point of comparison, and I’d even list the lo-fi folk side of Beck, too. My favorite song on Arrive Alive is pretty easily “Got U (Reprise)”, a weird but incredibly catchy piece of hypnotic alt-folk. The upright bass and the “found” percussion (“things like sheet metal, crates and chains”) create a strong rhythm, and VonUrchin’s strong, droning vocals are striking in their own right.
“We Used to Build Things”, Office Culture From Enough (2024, Ruination)
For the fourth Office Culture album, Winston Cook-Wilson decided to try something different–he decided to make a CD. The seventy-three minute, sixteen-song Enough was deliberately inspired by “the CD era”, when artists blew their work up to previously-unmatched proportions without any heed as to how they were going to pare it down to some forty-odd minutes. Enough sees just how many directions Office Culture can stretch Cook-Wilson’s distinct sophisti-pop songwriting at once, with the help of twenty-something collaborators and a buffet of pop, jazz, and electronic ideas. The five-minute jazz-funk-groove of “We Used to Build Things” is much more showy than anything on Office Culture’s last record, the soft rock/jazz-pop Big Time Things, and it might just be the most satisfying thing on the entire album. Read more about Enough here.
“Sunday”, Cinéma Lumière From Wishing It Was Sunday (2024, Subjangle/Catshelf)
I haven’t gotten to write about it as much as I’d like, but there’s a burgeoning guitar pop scene going on in East Asia, and a lot of it is headquartered in none other than Manila, the capital of the Philippines. The five-piece dream/jangle pop group Cinéma Lumière put out their debut EP in 2020, and their first album, Wishing It Was Sunday, arrived earlier this year (initially given a digital release via Catshelf in August and picked up by international guitar pop label Subjangle for an “extended” CD release two months later). Cinéma Lumière’s two co-lead vocalists, Jon and Mary, duet on my personal favorite track on the record, “Sunday”, which is a classic twee-pop celebration of having no obligations other than lazing around and enjoying the world on the titular day.
“Foot in the Grave”, Blue Zero From Colder Shade Blue (2024, Lower Grand Tapes)
Oakland, California indie rock busybody Chris Natividad fronts two bands already–so why does he need Blue Zero, his latest quasi-solo project? Well, I’m not sure exactly, but Blue Zero’s debut LP Colder Shade Blue is pretty distinct from his other groups–while Public Interest and Marbled Eye both trade in the worlds of sharp, tough, and rhythmic post-punk and garage rock, Blue Zero is more at home in the world of shoegaze-adjacent, fuzzed-out pop. The album is somewhat torn between jangly guitar pop and basement-evoking noisy indie rock, and “Foot in the Grave” is the clearest example of the former on the record. Natividad’s opening guitar line packs enough “jangle” for the entirety of Colder Shade Blue, and while the following song has plenty of psychedelia and dreaminess baked into it, it never lets go of the sharp pop writing that’s apparent from the get-go. Read more about Colder Shade Blue here.
“Rattrapez-moi”, Coeur à l’Index From Adieu Minette (2024, La Vida Es un Mus)
Coeur à l’Index put out their first demo at the beginning of last year, and renowned European punk label La Vida Es Un Mus (Straw Man Army, The Chisel, Home Front) have scooped the Brussels/Marseille-based band up for Adieu Minette, their debut album. Adieu Minette is a lot more pop-friendly than a lot of La Vida Es Un Mus’ output–guitarist/vocalist Julia Stravato, bassist Charlotte Lobert, and drummer Pogy clearly have listened to their share of classic C86, power pop, and, as their bio says “French Chanson from the 60’s onwards”. Coeur à l’Index’s confident, high-flying energy helps them fit in with their louder, more aggressive peers, though–for example, take “Rattrapez-moi”, a bouncy, brilliant power pop anthem that opens Adieu Minette with a whirlwind of hooks.
“The Shimmering”, Jim Nothing From Grey Eyes, Grey Lynn (2024, Meritorio/Melted Ice Cream)
Grey Eyes, Grey Lynn continues to mine the rich veins of classic Flying Nun-inspired jangle pop, psychedelic pop, and noise pop that Jim Nothing so effectively explored on 2022’s In the Marigolds, but this one feels like a more wide-ranging take on this kind of music. Sometimes, the Jim Nothing of Grey Eyes, Grey Lynn feels like a sturdier, louder rock band than ever before, other times like the home-recorded solo project of bandleader Jim Sullivan. Sullivan’s songwriting is still sublime, though, and more than capable of weathering a more involved journey. “The Shimmering” is a classic late-album hidden gem–it’s absolutely brimming with melody in every aspect of the recording, the one track that truly rivals album opener “Hourglass” for the album’s immortal heavenly pop hit throne. It feels much greater than its relatively brief two-minute lifespan. Read more about Grey Eyes, Grey Lynn here.
“Based on the Comedy of Ray Romano”, Recalculating From Do You Like to Laugh? (2024, Band Dinner)
Recalculating make skittering, talk-singing punk rock and garage rock that can go from minimal to noisy at the drop of a hat in the vein of classic alt-rock groups like the Minutemen, Mission of Burma, and Nomeansno, and their songs will appeal to the contingent of post-punk revivalists that don’t take themselves too seriously. Do You Like to Laugh? opens with one hell of a mission statement in “Based on the Comedy of Ray Romano”, an absolutely wild punk rock exploration of comedy and fiction and the performance of life (“Ladies and gentlemen, be gentle with comedians / For while they are blessed with prodigious download metrics / They endure life defenseless / Unarmed with guitars!” roars whichever one of them is on the mic as the song comes to a head–it’s hard not to imagine the album’s engineer, Steve Albini, enjoying that part). Read more about Do You Like to Laugh? here.
“Bent”, Black Ends From Psychotic Spew (2024, Youth Riot)
Black Ends are a new trio from Seattle who refer to the music they make as “gunk pop”, and the core of their debut album Psychotic Spew’s sound is the stripped-down, heavy-duty punk rock that Black Ends hone across the record’s ten tracks. Bits of grunge, psych-rock, and even blues rock shade Psychotic Spew, as Black Ends grab onto any and every corner of rock and roll they can get their hands on to further their self-proclaimed gunk-pop mission. Sitting in the album’s second slot, “Bent” takes the spark that opening track “She Speaks of Love” provides and creates a garage-punk wildfire with it. Black Ends only need two minutes and change to charge through “Bent”, whose choppy, showy guitar playing never feels too distracting from the lockstep feeling that vocalist/guitarist Nicolle Swims, bassist Ben Swanson, and drummer Billie Jessica Paine evoke together. Read more about Psychotic Spew here.
“Ridley and Me After the Apocalypse”, The Armoires From Octoberland (2024, Big Stir)
Burbank, California’s The Armoires are the flagship act of Big Stir Records, and their fourth album, Octoberland, showcases the quintet’s penchant for vintage college rock, jangle pop and power pop–while Larysa Bulbenko’s string playingadds some psychedelia and perhaps even a bit of Eastern European folk traditionalism to the mix. Octoberland is an incredibly rich collection of music both from a lyrical and instrumental perspective, all of which is on display in my favorite song on the album, “Ridley and Me After the Apocalypse”. Musically, it’s a truly infectious piece of jangly power pop–The Armoires can basically do whatever they want after that opening guitar line and it’d still sound great. Band co-leaders Christina Bulbenko and Rex Broome choose a sprawling, high-concept post-apocalyptic story to sketch, imagining themselves as artists providing “Copium for trying times / Just to mitigate the rancid vibes” in this dystopian setting. Read more about Octoberland here.
“Alone”, Greg Mendez From First Time / Alone (2024, Dead Oceans)
Sometimes the world is just. Greg Mendez broke out in a major way with last year’s self-titled album, and now he’s a household name and playing stadiums (I think). Unlike most people that this kind of thing happens to, Mendez’s last album was very good, and his first widely-released new music since then is a very strong follow-up, too. Mendez quietly moves through four folk-pop ideas in seven minutes on First Time / Alone–the organ-led “First Time” is great, but I had to go with Mendez’s strongest six-string moment here with “Alone”. It sounds just about how one would expect a just-acoustic-guitar Greg Mendez song called “Alone” to sound, although it’s one of the singer-songwriter’s more spirited (speaking very relatively here!) moments. “I’m a lonely winter away from punishment,” he sings amidst the cold–he sounds alive enough to know something isn’t right.
“Co-Stars”, Anna McClellan From Electric Bouquet (2024, Father/Daughter)
For nearly a decade now, Anna McClellan has been a key part of the Omaha, Nebraska indie rock, folk, and alt-country scenes, both in her solo output and via her contributions to fellow Nebraskans’ records–most notably, the work of Ryan McKeever of Staffers and Workers Comp. McKeever, in turn, contributes heavily to McClellan’s latest album, Electric Bouquet, and even duets with her on “Co-Stars”, my favorite track on the record. “Co-Stars” is a bit more jaunty and (dare I say) twee than the rest of Electric Bouquet’s more standard folk rock, but it’s a lovely change of pace, with the organ (also provided by McKeever) turning the song into a lo-fi, off-the-cuff version of what feels like a timeless pop song (McClellan even sticks a “shoo bop shoo wah” in towards the end of the song, and it totally fits).
“Set My Sights”, Hilken Mancini Band From Hilken Mancini Band (2024, Girlsville)
In the mid-90s, Hilken Mancini co-led the Boston alt-rock/pop group Fuzzy, who toured with Buffalo Tom and Velocity Girl and released two albums for Atlantic before fizzling out before landing a “proper” radio hit at the end of the decade. I admittedly haven’t kept up with all of Mancini’s output since the dissolution of her most well-known band, but the self-titled debut album from the Hilken Mancini Band arrives with a bang, embracing sugary, hooky, fuzzy guitar pop music like 1994 never fully left us. The ten songs of Hilken Mancini Band practically helicopter in with their loud, unmistakable catchiness front and center. Album opener “Set My Sights” would already be a classic just based on the strength of the verses and instrumental alone, but Mancini somehow finds a classic 90s alt-pop-rock chorus that nobody’d thought to use yet to really push the song over the top. Read more about Hilken Mancini Band here.
“Airplane”, Color Temperature From Here for It (2024, Developer)
Based on who I’d seen extolling the virtues of Color Temperature and its mastermind, Brooklyn’s Ross Page, I’d assumed that the project fell somewhere on the “emo-punk” spectrum. Nothing wrong with that, but I was pleasantly surprised to listen to Here for It and hear something else entirely–it’s a low-key, vaguely dark mix of psychedelic pop and folk music, with some classic indie rock thrown in, too. My favorite song is called “Airplane”, which I would consider a “banger”–it’s an inspired concoction from Page, who merges a mid-period of Montreal-esque vocal with a vintage Spoon rhythm section/beat. Like a lot of Here for It, it manages to be toe-tapping and propulsive without sounding too “upbeat”–there’s something shady going on here, somehow, but that only enhances the experience.
“Bureau of Autumn Sorrows”, 2nd Grade From Scheduled Explosions (2024, Double Double Whammy)
Scheduled Explosions is such a good album that I didn’t even find the time to talk about one of my favorite songs on the record when I wrote about it. That would be “Bureau of Autumn Sorrows”, a weird electric-guitar-and-vocals-only composition buried in the middle of the second half of the record. Unlike “Out of the Hive”, it wasn’t recorded by Gill alone–it’s a studio track also featuring Jon Samuels (Gill’s bandmate in Friendship, and recently a part of MJ Lenderman & The Wind) on guitar, too. Gill delicately weaves his way through a tender guitar pop song, with Samuels interjecting some strange, arresting moments of guitar noise at the end of each refrain. I couldn’t really tell you what “Bureau of Autumn Sorrows” is about between its incredibly Robert Pollard-esque title and Gill’s simple and opaque lyrics (“All my friends are on the moon now / The news nearly killed me / But then I put on my ten-gallon hat / And I I got over it”). Great stuff, though. Read more about Scheduled Explosions here.
“Demande spéciale”, Bon Enfant From Demande spéciale (2024, Duprince)
Montreal’s Bon Enfant apparently simply refer to their sound as “Québécois rock”, which is a good a term as any to describe what I hear on their third album, Demande spéciale. It’s an incredibly fun-sounding rock album, with bits of psychedelic pop, power pop, post-punk, dream pop, and plenty more influences sparkling around the record’s dozen tracks. The group are pretty much always putting something hooky to tape, but Bon Enfant aren’t afraid to take different routes to get there–sometimes they’re groovy, suave, and rhythmic, other times they go all-in with the “big” guitars and vocals. Mélissa Fortin’s synths get their moment in the sun with the album’s new wave-y title track, but the guitars remain huge, too–this is probably what “French-Canadian power pop” is, and it’s an excellent argument in favor of Montreal getting a little more into Shoes (or at least Blondie). Read more about Demande spéciale here.
“Pump Fake”, Jake McKelvie From A New Kind of Hat (2024)
Ah, there’s some great folk rock songwriting on A New Kind of Hat, the latest album from longtime troubadour Jake McKelvie. Wish I had the space to do the full record, but I’ll settle for highlighting “Pump Fake”, my favorite track on the album. A New Kind of Hat is McKelvie’s first record in eight years, and the songs all sound impeccable, like they’ve been honed over the long gap between releases, and “Pump Fake” is no exception. McKelvie’s writing is more classic country than his music would suggest, a collection of quips and one-liners that add up to greater than the sum of its parts (“When there’s a fire that burns in your belly / It’s not like others can gather around it and feel the warmth” … “And if you’re learning the world’s smallest fiddle / You’ve gotta practice it in your spare time” … and so forth).
“T.B.W.T.P.N.”, The Boys With the Perpetual Nervousness From Dead Calm (2019, Pretty Olivia/Bobo Integral)
One simply must respect a band with a theme song. That’s what the first song on the debut album from Spanish/Scottish duo The Boys With the Perpetual Nervousness is–the initials of “T.B.W.T.P.N.” spell out the band’s admittedly wordy moniker, and song itself immediately gets to work in displaying Andrew Taylor and Gonzalo Marcos’s incredibly strong knack for achieving the platonic ideal of jangle pop. Dead Calm came out in 2019 on Pretty Olivia Records, and we have their current home of Bobo Integral to thank for reissuing it in “deluxe” format (featuring a bonus track and a bunch of demos). The Boys With the Perpetual Nervousness have a reputation as one of the most consistently great modern jangle pop bands, and a revisitation of Dead Calm does little to dispute this–especially when Taylor and Marcos need only the first few seconds of “T.B.W.T.P.N.” to deliver a killer hook.
“Colonial Lanes”, American Motors From Content (2024, Expert Work/The Ghost Is Clear)
Lancaster, Philadelphia noise rock group American Motors understand that the monster you can’t see is even scarier, and their debut album Content utilizes a huge amount of empty space to hover around the edges of its songs. Engineer J. Robbins helped the trio zero in on a Rust Belt-inspired post-punk/noise rock/post-rock sound, keenly sharpened and hammered out much more finely than a lot of bands in their shoes would dare to even attempt. Content’s opening track, “Colonial Lanes”, is a shapeless, formless post-noise rock soundscape, the narration getting overtaken by moments of atmospheric instrumentals and a few genuine “rock” sections. Read more about Content here.
“Wave Goodbye”, Humdrum From Every Heaven (2024, Slumberland)
I view Loren Vanderbilt’s Humdrum project as somewhere between a more melancholic version of bands like Chime School and Ducks Ltd. and a more peppy Lost Film or Old Moon–but Vanderbilt’s writing is fresh and features a unique feeling of yearning, so it doesn’t feel like a retread of other jangle pop hitmakers. Every Heaven is a steady stream of rock-solid, fully-teased-out jangly/dreamy guitar pop anthems, although some moments stand out as being especially immediate and sugary. “Wave Goodbye” is a modern jangle pop classic, with legitimate rushes of melodies and propulsion with hooks in every crevice. Read more about Every Heaven here.
“In a Dream”, Trace Mountains From Into the Burning Blue (2024, Lame-O)
There are days where I lament that Dave Benton left LVL UP, arguably the best band of the 2010s, to make Steve Hyden-core heartland indie rock as Trace Mountains. But god damn, Trace Mountains is very good Hyden-core heartland rock at its best. Who else but Benton could pull off something like “In a Dream”, the opening track from the latest Trace Mountains album Into the Burning Blue? The seven-minute mutant heartland-pop-folk-electronic-rock creation merges just a bit of the Americana/alt-country of the past couple of Trace Mountains records with the synthpop-curious nature of early Trace Mountains, and it doesn’t really sound like anything else going on right now. Into the Burning Blue isn’t my favorite Dave Benton record, but I’ll probably think it’s brilliant in a year or two. I still have plenty of faith in Trace Mountains. And at the very least, “In a Dream” is an instant classic.
“Letter to Screwtape”, Toby the Tiger From Demapper (2024, Peligroso es Mi Nombre Medio)
Brock Ross enlists his brother Mitch to play trumpet on “Letter to Screwtape”, and the orchestral-folk touches help make the acoustic guitar-led track a highlight of Demapper, Toby the Tiger’s debut album. “Letter to Screwtape” sits right in the middle of Toby the Tiger’s “emo/pop/folk” Venn diagram, sure to please fans of the likes of Death Cab for Cutie, Bright Eyes, and/or Pedro the Lion. It’s Biblical from the song’s C.S. Lewis-referencing title on down–between that, the song’s enthusiastic acoustic guitar flourishes, the horns, and Ross’ thoughtfully petulant delivery, it’s got just about everything one could want in this kind of music. Read more about Demapper here.
“Tired All the Time”, Mope Grooves From Box of Dark Roses (2024, 12XU/Night School)
I wrote a lot about Box of Dark Roses, the final album from Portland lo-fi pop project Mope Grooves, and I’m not going to try to rehash everything about it here. Suffice it to say there’s a lot of heaviness surrounding and permeating the 90-minute double LP–but there’s also a lot of beauty on Box of Dark Roses, probably more than anything else. Sometimes, the darkness of Box of Dark Roses is softened by the music; that’s the case with “Tired All the Time”, the record’s penultimate track. A couple of Mope Grooves contributors–Cap and Lee–sing lead vocals aided by Ray Aggs on violin and plenty of instrumental touches provided by the band’s ringleader stevie. The violins make the song seem like a folk lullaby, the duo singing “I’m tired all the time and I don’t know why / Someone take this memory from my mind,” coming at the end of a taxing album that answers this question for them. Read more about Box of Dark Roses here.
It’s November already, which is hard to believe. In fact, three of the albums in this Monday Pressing Concerns came out last Friday, the 1st of the month: new LPs from The Triceratops, wilder Thing, and EEP (plus an album from Tess Parks from late October). This is a nice and weird one!
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 Triceratops – Charge!
Release date: November 1st Record label: Learning Curve Genre: Punk rock, noise rock, power pop, alt-rock, fuzz rock, grunge Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull Track: We Will Shatter
The Triceratops are a new Brooklyn-based duo formed by two indie rockers who go way back together–vocalist/guitarist John Van Atta and drummer/vocalist Melvin Monroe met as stagehands working at CBGB in the 1990s, and after falling out of touch for a few years, reconnected at a recent Future of the Left show and decided to make music together. The first record called The Triceratops is called Charge!, and it feels like a special one to me. The Triceratops deliberately and intentionally walk the line between “pop” and “heavy” rock music on Charge!’s fifteen songs–it was recorded by a producer (Andrew Schneider) who’s worked with noise rock bands like Unsane and KEN Mode and was made by a band who has recently played noise/punk rock festival Caterwaul, but Van Atta also has history playing in a Beatles cover band and Charge! is a strong argument for more hooks in this confrontational indie rock subgenre. It reminds me of, more than any other band, the Archers of Loaf–this kind of music, which is huge and catchy without being dogmatically “punk” or “noise rock”, is kind of a lost art, largely the domain of Electrical Audio-core lifers like The Rutabega and These Estates, but the potency that The Triceratops are able to get out of it suggests that there’s a lot to dig into for those that find their way to it.
Charge! is an urgent-sounding album–it does feel like the work of a couple of people who haven’t gotten to make a full-length statement of an LP in a while and maybe don’t know when or if they’re going to get to again, so they’ve put as much as they can into it. Van Atta and Monroe sound gritty as they fly through these songs, which are intended to reflect “the struggles and joys of working-class life in 21st-century America”. The highs on Charge! are euphoric, led by the trio of lethally-catchy alt-rock songs that lead off the record between the pumped-up introduction of “Can’t Take You”, the mid-tempo ripper “The Saddest Story in Science”, and the soaring “I’ll Go If You Go”. “Efficiency Expert” introduces some New York City post-hardcore into the mix, fiery and heavy but still with a “rock and roll” sheen–it’s the acoustic “Neoliberal Bedtime Routine” (which is given an electric reprise later in the album) that really blows the record open, though. The one-minute gut check ends with “Sorry kid / I know how much you hate / That your family leaves you,” a brief but cutting reminder of the never-ending toll of what The Triceratops rage against. It’s no wonder that the most rousing moments on Charge! are the most destructive–single “We Will Shatter” is maybe the catchiest song I’ve heard this year, jumping from the slick verses to an exorcism of a refrain (that’s just the title line). And then there’s penultimate track “Something Done Right”, a primordial mess of caveman noise rock, mythology, evolution, and revolution. “So–monkeys ready on three, throw your wrench in the gears,” yells Van Atta at the song’s climax. A cornered creature will strike, especially if it’s got something like Charge! to hype it up for that moment. (Bandcamp link)
wilder Thing – I Have My Mother’s Eyes and I’m Not Giving Them Back
Release date: November 1st Record label: Repeating Cloud Genre: Lo-fi pop, experimental folk, psychedelic pop Formats: Cassette, digital Pull Track: I’m Done Falling Over You
Who likes when a punk musician has a weird lo-fi psychedelic side project? I sure do, and I suspect that Repeating Cloud Records does, as well. That’s who’s putting out I Have My Mother’s Eyes and I’m Not Giving Them Back, the latest from wilder Thing, aka Wes Sterrs. Sterrs is the drummer for Portland, Maine post-punk trio FonFon Ru, but before that band even formed, he self-released four records as wilder Thing from 2013 to 2015. I Have My Mother’s Eyes and I’m Not Giving Them Back is the first wilder Thing release in nearly a decade, and it’s also the most substantial one yet, spanning seventeen songs and forty minutes of fractured but melodic bedroom psychedelic pop. There’s folk music, hooks, dreaminess, and pure psych throughout I Have My Mother’s Eyes and I’m Not Giving Them Back, reminding me a bit of labelmates Log Across the Washer or a more ramshackle version of The Olivia Tremor Control and other song-forward Elephant 6 groups (Repeating Cloud’s Galen Richmond mentioned Chad VanGaalen in his email about this record, which I’m tacking on here because I think it’s pretty accurate, too). We’re left with something that balances intimacy with adventurousness, an album that invites you in to watch it go to work.
The catch is that you’ll have to do a bit of work yourself–for instance, are you willing to navigate the swirling, layered soundscapes of opening track “He Used to Be Beautiful” to get to its moments of eerie but potent beauty? Are you able to accept that Sterrs takes some of the best melodies on the entire record and sticks them in brief transitional songs like “Sorry I Missed You, Happy Birthday” and “It’s Too Cold for the Roof”? Are you down with a singing-saw-heavy instrumental track (skip “Luno” if not)? If you’ve made it this far, I’d imagine that the answer to all of these questions (whether you know it or not) is “yes”, and I Have My Mother’s Eyes and I’m Not Giving Them Back has plenty of gems for you to peruse. The gorgeous minimalist psych pop of “The Gardener” and “The Flower” break open the infinite possibility machine early on in the record, and if you decide to embark on the journey after that, you’re rewarded with a nearly-perfect fuzzy lo-fi pop song called “I’m Done Falling Over You”. wilder Thing invites you to handle them at their trippiest (“Technicolor Psychoscapes”) and noisiest (“Big Twitch”) as I Have My Mother’s Eyes and I’m Not Giving Them Back advances, but the pop never stops, both hidden in songs like those and slightly more out-in-the-open with tracks like (the still pretty psychedelic) “Horn of the Moon”. The presentation of I Have My Mother’s Eyes and I’m Not Giving Them Back might feel like it caps how many people it can reach, but it’s also a key part of its charm, I think; after all, I’m sure In the Aeroplane Over the Sea felt destined to be bound for obscurity at some point too. (Bandcamp link)
EEP – You Don’t Have to Be Prepared
Release date: November 1st Record label: Hogar Genre: Dream pop, art pop, synthpop, psych pop Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital Pull Track: Ghost
The beginning of this decade was a very fertile time for the El Paso, Texas group EEP and its members–they put out two full-lengths (2020’s Death of a Very Good Machine and 2021’s Winter Skin), while members Rosie Varela and Ross Ingram also released solo albums. The EEP albums used the band’s robust quintet lineup to create distorted, layered, shoegaze-influenced indie rock, while Ingram and Varela experimented with electronica, art pop, and psychedelic pop on their own records, although there was an understandable amount of overlap between the various projects. Things have been relatively quiet on the EEP front for the past couple of years–as it turns out, two-fifths of the band departed after Winter Skin, and Varela, Ingram, and Sebastian Estrada had to retool themselves as a trio. You Don’t Have to Be Prepared, the third EEP album, is a concept record–by chance, the band found a voicemail from about forty years ago taped via a “dictaphone, reel-to-reel tape recorder” in an organ at the band’s home studio, and the story of a woman moving across the country for a romantic partner hinted at by the recording served as the inspiration for the album. Intentionally or otherwise, this record themed around departure and major life changes is soundtracked by a band that’s reinvented themselves musically, debuting a new sound on their latest collection of music.
The differences are apparent with even just a cursory listen to You Don’t Have to Be Prepared–instead of being almost entirely led by Varela, she and Ingram are now effectively co-lead vocalists on these songs, and there’s almost none of the shoegaze influence that permeated EEP’s last album. It’s been replaced by a much more open, subtler, more electronic-tinged dream pop sound–creep from Ingram and Varela’s solo music, perhaps, but more like a band that’s playing to different strengths with a different lineup. The band no longer has a permanent drummer, and You Don’t Have to Be Prepared is given a certain freedom by this fact–sometimes, one of the trio will step behind the kit for the more “rock”-based songs that need a proper drumbeat (the lilting opening pop of “Ghost”, the jazz-influenced art rock of “Here’s What I Want You to Forget”), but songs like “14 Days” and “Clay Center” are free to explore new terrain for the band via floating, drum machine-paced synthpop tunes. “On Tenterhooks” is a post-rock/jazz-rock instrumental song that might be my favorite recording on the entire album, pushing the band into Thrill Jockey/Quarterstick territory effortlessly–it’s up there with “Always”, a driving piece of dreamy indie rock that’s maybe the closest thing to “classic-sounding” EEP on You Don’t Have to Be Prepared. Still, the song has a sparkly 80s synthpop/new wave sheen to it that’s not exactly in the same ballpark as Winter Skin–like the album’s main source of inspiration, it uses parts of the past as a way to focus on what’s as of yet unwritten. (Bandcamp link)
Tess Parks – Pomegranate
Release date: October 25th Record label: Fuzz Club/Hand Drawn Dracula Genre: Psychedelic pop, dream pop, psych rock, psych folk Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital Pull Track: Surround
Toronto psychedelic pop singer Tess Parks has had an interesting career. Her debut solo album, Blood Hot, came out back in 2013, but she became more well-known in the following years after releasing two collaborative albums with The Brian Jonestown Massacre’s Anton Newcombe in 2015 and 2018. Parks never stopped working on a proper follow-up to Blood Hot, although health problems and eventually a pandemic slowed progress before And Those Who Were Seen Dancing came out in 2022 on Fuzz Club (The Men, DAIISTAR, The Jesus and Mary Chain) and Hand Drawn Dracula. Thankfully, we didn’t have to wait another nine years for the third Tess Parks album, as Pomegranate follows just two years removed from her last one. Although it’s a “solo” LP in name, Pomegranate wouldn’t be what it is without Parks’ longtime collaborator Ruari Meehan, who produced the album and co-wrote every song. The psychedelic music that Parks and Meehan create on Pomegranate (with assistance from organist/bassist Francesco Perini, drummer Marco Ninni, and flutist Kira Krempova, among others) is subdued but adventurous, sounding like the work of collaborators who know how to get the most out of each other without abandoning the album’s singular groove.
Ninni’s hypnotic, almost trip-hop drumbeat, the grooving bass, and Krempova’s flute all ensure that “Bagpipe Blues” opens Pomegranate with a low-key but wild psychedelic experience, and Parks doesn’t slow things down as “California’s Dreaming” embraces more straightforward 60s pop and “Koalas” goes down the road of psychedelic folk. There’s some Paisley Underground psychedelia a la Mazzy Star–or even offbeat lo-fi folk musicians like Lisa Germano–in stuff like “Lemon Poppy” and “Sunnyside”, which gives Pomegranate a nice extra layer to go along with the more traditional psychedelic pop. At the album’s most exploratory, we get the six-minute “Charlie Potato” and “Running Home to Sing”, both of which aren’t afraid to try everything from spoken word passages to electronic touches. Pomegranate only have nine songs, so every one of them has to bring something substantial to the table for the album to work, and indeed the LP is a consistent listen; even as it stretches from one side of Parks’ sound to the other, everything’s working together to get the record across the finish line. The closing track is called “Surround”, and it almost feels like a victory lap–there’s a sunny groove to it that isn’t too prevalent elsewhere in the album, perhaps hinting at Newcombe’s influence. It sounds like Tess Parks, though, the same as the rest of Pomegranate. (Bandcamp link)
It is Thursday, and we’re here to look at some great new music that’s coming out tomorrow, November 1st. New LPs from The Declining Winter, Charlie Kaplan, The Smashing Times, and Market get the spotlight this time around. Check them out, and be sure to check out all of this week’s earlier blog posts (Monday’s featured 2nd Grade, THEMM!, Dazy, and Podcasts, Tuesday’s was Hell Trash, Recalculating, Testbild!, and Grapes of Grain, and Wednesday was on Mope Grooves’ Box of Dark Roses) if you haven’t yet.
If you’re looking for more new music, you can visit the site directory to see what else we’ve written about lately. If you’d like to support Rosy Overdrive, you can share this (or another) post, or donate here.
The Declining Winter – Last April
Release date: November 1st Record label: Second Language Music Genre: Folk, singer-songwriter, slowcore, orchestral folk Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital Pull Track: Last April
Richard Adams established himself in the realms of slowcore and post-rock by co-leading the cult Leeds group Hood throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, and he’s continued to follow this path via his long-running solo project The Declining Winter. Last year’s offering from The Declining Winter, Really Early, Really Late, was a breathtaking and ornate confirmation that Adams’ music has, if anything, benefited from the experience and age of its creator, and the months following its release have reassured us of the continuation of another key aspect of Adams–his prolific nature. Since Really Early, Really Late’s release last March, he’s put out an album as one half of Great Panoptique Winter (his electronic-ambient duo with Jason Sweeney) and a collection of recent castoff material called Buried Songs 2018-2021. This all brings us to Last April, which is I believe the ninth Declining Winter album, and one that immediately stands out in the midst of a vast body of work. The six (non-bonus) songs of Last April were written on the same night, in a period of “shock, grief and trauma” brought upon by the loss of Adams’ mother (Last April refers to the month of her passing). Musically, it’s a stark departure from the skillfully orchestrated Really Early, Really Late, as Adams’ voice is accompanied only by his acoustic guitar and Sarah Kemp’s violin, and Adams’ writing is unmistakably, entirely drawn from a place of mourning.
Discounting the two Bandcamp-only bonus tracks, Last April spans only a half-dozen songs and barely over a half-hour in length, but there’s no mistaking it for a minor entry in Adams’ oeuvre. Adams and his guitar step lightly through the opening track, “Eyes on Mine”–he almost sounds like he’s learning to walk, talk, and play music again as the minimal guitar playing gets a much-welcome boost from Kemp’s sweeping violin. About a minute into the song, Adams finally begins singing, and he steps into his mother’s shoes with a mixture of pain, reference, and disbelief. “All I want is to hear your voice,” Adams urgently whispers in the nearly eight-minute title track, which continues the bare, plodding pace of the record, the aural equivalent of an extraordinarily heavy walk alone through the chilly British autumn. Those familiar with The Declining Winter shouldn’t be surprised that Last April finds particular feelings and lingers on them at length, but the ones that Adams and Kemp find on this record are singularly stinging. “Mother’s Son” is a reworking of sorts of Purple Mountains’ “I Loved Being My Mother’s Son”; the music is pretty different, and so are some of the lyrics, but the inspiration is clearly there, and the solace is felt in the link to the former song, if not in this particular recording itself. The guitars and strings in “My Greatest Friend” feel just a little more hopeful, the relatively brief track reminding me a bit of a “slowcore-folk” version of Martin Phillipps’ writing, and the record leaves us with another song with just a bit of brightness peeking through, “August Blue”. The last words Adams sings on the song, however, are “You’re not here, and I’m to blame”; Last April absolutely sounds like an album that came tumbling out of its creator at once, but its recording–with even the bare minimum of accompaniment–adds another shade to that painful, fruitful evening. (Bandcamp link)
Charlie Kaplan – Eternal Repeater
Release date: November 1st Record label: Glamour Gowns Genre: Folk rock, psychedelic rock, art rock, singer-songwriter Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull Track: Everyone Calling Your Name
I actually wrote about Charlie Kaplan not that long ago, due to his work as the bassist in New York art pop/soft rock trio Office Culture, who released their fourth album mere weeks ago. As it turns out, Kaplan is also a solo artist who’s put out just as much music on his own–since 2020, there have been three Charlie Kaplan LPs and two EPs, all via the Glamour Gowns imprint. Although Office Culture bandleader Winston Cook-Wilson contributes piano to Eternal Repeater, Kaplan’s latest solo album is pretty distinct from his other band–it’s much more based in the realm of folk rock, ranging from the “ornate and beautiful” to the “swirling and psychedelic” ends of the genre. It’s the work of a well-seasoned group of collaborators who’ve all played on each other’s records–Kaplan, Cook-Wilson, lead guitarist Andrew Daly Frank, bassist Frank Meadows, drummer Ben Wagner, and producer Nico Hedley. Together, they give Eternal Repeater a joyfully comfortable feeling–on the record’s quieter moments, Kaplan’s subtly attention-commanding vocals help the group sound like a dead ringer for vintage Red House Painters (a comparison that, understandably, Andy Cush’s well-written essay accompanying the album leaves out) and the more busy moments collide psychedelia, indie rock, and folk like the best Wilco albums (a comparison Cush is more than happy to make, as he should).
The first proper song on Eternal Repeater is one of its best, the gorgeous “Everybody Calling Your Name”, which is more than content to leave empty space up until Daly Frank starts shredding as the song draws to a close. Things get a bit more cosmic with “Mescarole”, a rhythmic track in which Kaplan intones “Asshole / asshole / You spilled my drink, spilled my drink, yeah,” over top of the band’s smooth, smoky delivery (it’s a song about a bad experience at a concert, yes, although the Charlie Kaplan band doesn’t really do “bad vibes”). The middle of Eternal Repeater is where Kaplan and his collaborators sound the most “focused”–not that “Feelin Alright” doesn’t have a loose, jammy undercurrent to it, but the band commit just enough to seeing the song’s ragged country rock core through, and the euphoric “Edie Got Away” is the record’s version of breezy, rambling rock and roll. The momentum is strong enough to lead us into two seven-minute songs back to back in the record’s second half–one could get lost in “Idiot” and “Now That I’m Older” if they aren’t careful. Not that that would be a bad thing–the latter one in particular features Kaplan and the band really giving it their all. On the other side of the mountain is “In a Little Bit of Time”, an out-of-nowhere garage-fuzz-rock closing song. “In a little bit of time, I will be waiting at your door / In a little bit of time, you’ll see that justice has been served,” Kaplan sings quietly but confidently. Oh, shit. You know that folk band in the back of the bar that you thought were just playing merrily along and not paying attention? They’re looking right at you. (Bandcamp link)
The Smashing Times – Mrs Ladyships and the Cleanerhouse Boys
Release date: November 1st Record label: K/Perennial Genre: Jangle pop, psychedelic pop, psychedelic folk, twee Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull Track: Wednesday, on a Hummingbird’s Wing
Mrs Ladyships and the Cleanerhouse Boys is the fifth album from The Smashing Times, and it’s the fourth in as many years. The calendar flips, summer turns to fall, and Baltimore’s premier mod revival quintet return with another collection of gloriously fractured and free-ranging guitar pop. 2022’s Bloom got the group on my radar, vocalists Thee Jasmine Monk and Zelda-Anais trading off on scattershot, scrambled 60s melodies while bassist Britta Leijonflycht, drummer Paul Krolian, and guitarist Blake Douglas amble along gamely. Last year’s This Sporting Life took a step forward, congealing just enough into something a little more solid and song-focused, resulting in their best record yet. Mrs Ladyships and the Cleanerhouse Boys doesn’t reverse this step, per se–but it is a bit more offbeat than The Smashing Times’ last album. All the blissful psychedelic jangle-beat melodies are still here, yes, but (as one might gather from its title, which verges on self-parody) Mrs Ladyships and the Cleanerhouse Boys leans into the eccentricities of British pop of the past across its fourteen tracks. It’s more obvious in some places (the dry intro and outro of “I Paint the Pictures”, the children’s-show goofiness hijacking “Rupert Tingle”) than others, but the whole record is clearly indebted to the weirdest detours from some of the most classic rock albums.
I wouldn’t expect anything other than pop music on The Smashing Times’ terms with Mrs Ladyships and the Cleanerhouse Boys, but the band’s latest album really does introduce itself by emphasizing the unhurried, leisurely snaking version of their jangle-folk-rock. The opening title track and “Rabbit of June” right after it both qualify, although in different ways–the former by locking onto a classic pop song structure and giving it a classically shambling reading, the latter by waiting until the song is nearly done to get itself together and deliver a big finish. There are always moments on Smashing Times records that go a little “out there”, but between the backmasking “Can I Have Some Tea” and the ambient glow of “Moon Viewing Party” (both full-length songs), there seems to be more real estate given to these than in the rest of their recent output. On the other end of the spectrum, the aforementioned “Rupert Tingle” is The Smashing Times at their most pure pop, but it’s hardly the only winner in that department. I don’t know if “Wednesday, on a Hummingbird’s Wing” is The Smashing Times’ best song yet, but it’s certainly on the short list for the most straight-up gorgeous thing the band have put to tape–it’s five-and-a-half minutes of wobbly but perfect pastoral guitar pop. Plenty of other tracks rise to the occasion, but “Tarts and Vicars” is the one that comes the closest to “Wednesday…” for me personally. I enjoy the nicking from “You Won’t See Me” at the beginning of the lyrics, but I enjoy the bumpy but propulsive, familiar but original pop song that follows even more. (Bandcamp link)
Market – Well I Asked You a Question
Release date: November 1st Record label: Western Vinyl Genre: Soft rock, folk rock, chamber pop Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull Track: Sertraline
As a producer and multi-instrumentalist, Brooklyn musician Nate Mendelsohn has contributed to records from a bunch of notable indie rock acts, including Office Culture, Wendy Eisenberg, and Max Blansjaar, among others (he even mixed the Charlie Kaplan LP that appears earlier in this blog post!). All the while, he’s been making music as Market with a cast of frequent collaborators like Stephen Becker and Katie Von Schleicher, both of whom appear on the latest Market record, Well I Asked You a Question (and the former of which even plays in the “core” Market band alongside Natasha Bergman and Duncan Standish). In 2022 Mendelsohn linked up with Western Vinyl (Young Moon, Wilder Maker, Nat Baldwin) to put out The Consistent Brutal Bullshit Gong, and despite seemingly working with increasingly more high-profile acts in recent years (Frankie Cosmos, Yaeji, Sam Evian), Market is still going strong, back two years later with another full-length LP. Well I Asked You a Question is a relaxed but intricate art pop album, with Mendelsohn and his collaborators consistently meeting each other in just the right places to best serve these tracks. Mendelsohn is a low-key vocalist but never too small for Well I Asked You a Question, whose keys and strings ensure a rich but form-fitting tapestry over which the bandleader sings amiably.
Well I Asked You a Question never feels overloaded, but there’s a lot going on in it–the record’s baseline sound of soft rock and indie folk can feel like a gently-rocking lullaby, but Market slowly, steadily take the record to unexpected places before it’s all said and done. The chamber pop opening title track and the psychedelic, seam-bursting “Apple” have their own interesting charms, but the six-minute almost ambient-pop excursion of “Around” really turns Well I Asked You a Question into something more, and the dark, relatively zippy folk rock of “Sertraline” seizes on the opportunity to find even more surprises. There’s a liveliness to songs like “Rachel Getting Married” and “Bigger Problem” that keep the strong pop rock moments coming well into Well I Asked You a Question’s second half and even gives Mendelsohn some cover to pull the band into quieter corners with the spare folk of “On the Barn” and the slow-moving drone-pop of “Fantasy”. Market confidently, humbly roll all the way up to closing track “Reason to Shout”, whose foundational strings and drums are, again, just right in the mix. Like any good producer-by-trade-made record, Well I Asked You a Question bears the mark of its creator’s comfort in the studio but doesn’t forget to take this advantage and do something with it. (Bandcamp link)
Release date: October 25th Record label: 12XU/Night School Genre: Lo-fi pop, art pop, post-punk, experimental punk, twee Formats: Vinyl, digital
I don’t really want to talk about this record. There’s too much to say about it, and also nothing to say about it. Box of Dark Roses is the fifth and final album from Mope Grooves, a Portland, Oregon-based project led by Stevie Pohlman (or just stevie, “lowercase, no last name”, as she’s credited on this record) and realized with the help of a long list of collaborators and friends. The four albums that Mope Grooves released on stevie’s on label, See My Friends, from 2017 to 2019, garnered them a fair amount of attention with the project’s distinctly Pacific Northwestern mix of art-y post-punk and “indie pop”–the long-awaited Box of Dark Roses was put together over the first few years of the pandemic and is being co-released by 12XU and Night School posthumously, as stevie died earlier this year.
In her extensive liner notes for Box of Dark Roses (in which, among many other subjects, she discusses the physical toll that making enough money just to survive and finish this album took on her), stevie discusses the album as something that was created practically from its inception as a single unit–a twenty-seven-song, ninety-minute double LP conceived at once and built with this vision in mind. It’s ramshackle pop music, drawn from clanging keyboards and buzzing beats and vocals that regularly surprise. Stevie (who shares lead vocal duties with several others on this album) is a captivating writer–she’s a poet, yes, that’s part of it, but Box of Dark Roses is so easy to follow despite everything about it because its leader is unfailingly consistent in her worldview, and doesn’t shy away from following these core tenets to wherever they take her.
And Box of Dark Roses, it bears emphasizing, is right. Sure, there are some specifics we can hash out in some imaginary world where it matters, but every “slogan” and excerpt and point on this record is hard-earned, drawn from the reality of the life of a transgender woman and radical activist from the Pacific Northwest who isn’t naive or self-centered enough to believe she’s the first to be in her position. It’s a “difficult” piece of queer art, not because its message or themes are hard to tease out, but because they’re horrifically easy to. Box of Dark Roses is…I’m not sure if it’s right to call it an “angry” album, but it’s, at the very least, an album about anger. The revenge and militarism and intersectional class warfare that populate the album are bound to be alarming to anyone unfamiliar with or intentionally tuned-out to the structural violence that is perhaps even more baked into the creation of Box of Dark Roses (and, as stevie seeks to point out, one’s “queer identity” is not inherently a magic bullet that illuminates all these struggles). “They’ll tell you you’re a criminal for paying them back in kind / But in the dark, in the wild, in the heart of the night, it is right to fight,” is a key lyric in “Aileen”–those lines are about Aileen Wuornos, but I thought of something else when I heard them, and perhaps you will, too. In elucidating one of those all-important “themes”, Mope Grooves stare down the cognitive dissonance and open contradictions one is required to accept in order to be a “respectable” member of society, and rejects them.
So, there’s some rough stuff on Box of Dark Roses. Sometimes it’s softened by the music, like in “Isn’t It” (“Now that you know this is the game / Isn’t it hard to play? Isn’t it?”), but there’s also “Dora”, which, again, coldly dispatches with any of the false comforts the empire provides to us that we might be tempted to cling to rather than do the harder and more correct thing. But do not mistake any of this as a lack of beauty, because that’s what Box of Dark Roses has above anything else. There are so many incredible, inventive pop and “art rock” songs on this album that I’m grateful exist, and they’re all pretty distinct from each other, too–the shrill, droning “Forever Is a Long Time”, the folk-crumpled “Here Comes the Moon”, the meandering “Cap Hits the Button”, the violin-aided lullaby “Tired All the Time”, any of these could be the one to suck you into Box of Dark Roses’ world, inviting you to readjust yourself to keep meeting Mope Grooves’ ever-changing definition of pop music where it’s at.
So, there’s a lot more I could say about Box of Dark Roses. About the album itself, about the circumstances leading up to its creation and release, about how correct it is. I hope other writers eventually help me out on covering all that (really, I can’t imagine listening to this record and not wanting to find some way to do it justice). I do kind of fear that I’ve just ended up talking around the album, though, focusing on my own personal mini-soapboxes and hyper-specific interests because I can’t explain and interpret Box of Dark Roses better than it does of itself. These are the kinds of things I think about when I think about Box of Dark Roses. Maybe you’ll think about them, too. Maybe you’ll be angry, like I also am when I listen to this record sometimes. It is, as Mope Grooves emphasize, a decentralized, collective anger, not about one’s self except in the sense that one is a part of a whole–I hear, in stevie’s art, a real fury and fervor with regards to the unjust precariousness of the people around her, collaborators, friends, and comrades. It is, for many reasons, contagious. (Bandcamp link)
It’s Tuesday! It’s time for more new music! Today, we’re looking at new albums from Recalculating, Testbild!, and Grapes of Grain, plus a compilation of demos and early material from Hell Trash. If you missed yesterday’s blog post, featuring 2nd Grade, THEMM!, Dazy, and Podcasts, be sure to check that one out, too.
If you’re looking for more new music, you can visit the site directory to see what else we’ve written about lately. If you’d like to support Rosy Overdrive, you can share this (or another) post, or donate here.
Hell Trash – SMASH HITS! Early Tracks 2021-2024
Release date: October 4th Record label: Self-released Genre: Experimental rock, art pop, psych pop, folktronica, synthpop, lo-fi pop Formats: CD, digital Pull Track: Brand New Self Portrait (Chadwick Demo)
The rollout of Philadelphia-originating, Chicago-based group Hell Trash has been decidedly unorthodox. The first-ever release from the founding duo of Rowan Roth and Noah Roth was a live EP in June of last year, which painted them as a fairly stripped-down folk act, and the “Surprises / Gold Little Things” single that followed that August was an intriguing piece of jangly alt-country-rock. Both of these releases were quite good, but as it turns out, neither was an especially accurate reflection of the music Hell Trash were making together around this time, which we now learn via SMASH HITS! Early Tracks 2021-2024, the most complete picture of Hell Trash thus far. If you’re still waiting for a “formal” Hell Trash debut, then keep waiting, because SMASH HITS! is more of a release borne out of necessity (wanting to have a CD out for an impending tour) and a desire to clean house (having since added two new members, Nick and Sarah, the Roths have decided to close the door on the “duo era”). The Hell Trash found here contains bits of the folkiness of their previous releases, but this isn’t even the primary mode of SMASH HITS! (and similarly, the experimental folk-pop of Noah Roth’s solo career and the fuzz rock of their other band, Mt. Worry, aren’t really all that close to these songs, either). It reminds me of a more “folk”-based version of late 90s indie pop, incorporating electronic and psychedelic touches and even some trip hop-esque beats into Rowan’s songwriting.
SMASH HITS! doesn’t really ease us into these odder and more surprising corners of Hell Trash’s sound–the opening duo of “Brand New Self Portrait” and “Before There Was Life” really throws us to the wolves, so to speak. The former song is particularly confrontational in its stiff, serious alternative pop (Noah mentions the initial goal of the project being to sound between “Fiona Apple and 12 Rods”, and there’s definitely some of the former in this one), and the latter is a dirge sung by the duo in unison and ending with a transcendent guitar solo from Steph Davies, the one guest musician on this compilation. After this opening, there’s a bit of familiarity for us Hell Trash-heads–the aforementioned “Surprises” still sounds great here, and a demo of “Violence” (which appeared on the live EP) is just as skeletal and breathtaking in this form. In the context of SMASH HITS!, though, these are the odd songs out, as the duo get right back to it with the hazy, electronic pop odyssey of “Ghost Dogs (The Way of the Samurai)” and the six-minute, swirling “Encyclopedia Song”. The one cover is a version of Arthur Russell’s “I Couldn’t Say It to Your Face” (which is becoming an indie rock standard, it seems, as everyone from Ex-Vöid to La Bonte has done a version of it recently), while “Brush” (which also appeared on Live at Home) gets two different versions here. The “Spruce Demo” is a hypnotic “folktronica” recording in the vein of Flotation Toy Warning or Sparklehorse, while the “Exit Slip Demo” turns it into a polished indie folk rock duet. Eventually, Hell Trash will presumably be normal and put out a “debut album”, but it’s worth getting hip to their SMASH HITS! in the meantime. (Bandcamp link)
Recalculating – Do You Like to Laugh?
Release date: September 13th Record label: Band Dinner Genre: Punk rock, garage punk, noise rock, post-punk Formats: Digital Pull Track: Based on the Comedy of Ray Romano
What were you doing on New Years’ Eve last year? Apparently, New York trio Recalculating were putting the finishing touches on their latest album, Do You Like to Laugh?, which they recorded at Electrical Audio with Steve Albini from December 28th through 31st of 2023. Guitarist Scott Sendrow, drummer Michael Sendrow, and bassist Sean Wiederkehr appear to share vocal and writing duties, although it doesn’t feel like a three-headed monster as the band (made up of two brothers and one friend who “stays late for dinner when possible”) are clearly in-tune with one another. Not counting a demo album and a live record, Do You Like to Laugh? is Recalculating’s third LP, and it’s probably not a shock to learn that a trio that went halfway across the United States to record at Electrical Audio have a sound recalling underground punk, alternative, and indie rock bands of the pre-grunge era. Much more limber than the “blunt noise rock” side of those genres, Recalculating make a skittering, talk-singing punk rock and garage rock that can go from minimal to noisy at the drop of a hat in the vein of classic alt-rock groups like the Minutemen, Mission of Burma, and Nomeansno, and their songs will appeal to the contingent of post-punk revivalists that don’t take themselves too seriously.
Do You Like to Laugh? opens with one hell of a mission statement in “Based on the Comedy of Ray Romano”, an absolutely wild punk rock exploration of comedy and fiction and the performance of life (“Ladies and gentlemen, be gentle with comedians / For while they are blessed with prodigious download metrics / They endure life defenseless / Unarmed with guitars!” roars whichever one of them is on the mic as the song comes to a head–it’s hard not to imagine Albini enjoying that part). Not everything is so high-concept, although the yelping punk of “All the Rage”, the dark post-punk of “Bargain Bin”, and the electric PRF-core rock and roll of “Candide Says” have plenty to chew on nonetheless. “How Do You Get a Distressed Guitar?” is Recalculating’s version of a ballad, amusingly meditating on the titular concept and eventually rounding their way to a point (“Faded blue jeans, prepaid holes in the knees, facial stubble two millimeters wise”), although it’s not until the end of Do You Like to Laugh? that the band really get lost in the Recalculating of it all again. The stream-of-conscious “Sometimes the Chicken Wins at Tic Tac Toe” is a five-minute ramble that covers about everything, delivering plenty of good one-liners (“Which one of you dummies tried to rely on the wisdom of crowds?”) but always making its way back to the title line. Recalculating keep repeating that line over and over again, slightly changing the inflection each time–they’re a band that knows that delivery is essential for good comedy. (Bandcamp link)
Testbild! – Bed Stilt
Release date: September 27th Record label: Quindi Genre: Soft rock, indie pop, bossa nova, jazz pop, chamber pop Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull Track: And Her Eyes Are Red
Testbild! are new to me, but the Malmö, Sweden-based art pop project has been around since more or less the beginning of the twenty-first century. In fact, Bed Stilt is the group’s twelfth full-length album, following 2022’s Mörka stjärnan Jorden with their debut for upstart Italian imprint Quindi Records (Monde UFO, Fortunato Durutti Marinetti, Dead Bandit). Throughout Testbild!’s entire history it’s been led by Petter Herbertsson, although the supporting cast has come and gone–on Bed Stilt, Herbertsson gets help from a core of multi-instrumentalist Douglas Holmquist, vocalist Siri af Burén, and synth player Mattias Nihlén, as well as “guest” synth performances from Peter Jackson and Tomas Bodén. Interestingly enough, work on these songs began in 2005 and 2006–but it wasn’t until last year that Herbertsson revived them, added some overdubs, and turned it into a brief (twenty-three-minute) but fully-realized collection of airy, transfixing pop music. On Bed Stilt, Testbild! alreadysound at-home on their new label, as the bossa nova and jazz-pop of Monde UFO and the soft rock of Fortunato Durutti Marinetti both figure into the sound of these half-dozen tracks. Some of Bed Stilt is more grounded than others, but all of it is quite pop-forward, resulting in a strong (re)introduction for the longrunning project.
The soft, chiming keys and jazz influences built into “The First New Years Eve” ensure that Bed Stilt receives a smooth and relaxed introduction–which, as it turns out, is exactly the kind of opening that the record needs. Testbild! find a lot of ground to cover in this particular comfort zone–one song later, the lengthy instrumental passages of “Streams” find a pleasing middle ground between “soundscape” and “pop song”, while “And Her Eyes Are Red” is a more straightforward pop tune that’s the first thing on the record that could be called “energetic”. As it rounds the corner from its bated-breath introduction, “And Her Eyes Are Red” sounds like a cross between bossa nova-era Stereolab and the more fluttery side of Elephant 6 (not unlike a modern band they remind me of, Tomato Flower). The catchiest moments of “And Here Eyes Are Red” come in flashes, but the interstitial instrumental parts don’t diminish it–just like how the ambient outro to “Cardamom Song” doesn’t take anything away from the rhythmic sophisti-pop that comprises the track’s first three minutes, nor does the simple piano-and-banjo tapestry of “Soft Winged and Frail” prevent it from standing up against some of the record’s more layered compositions. As “Water on the Moon” fades into a delicate chamber pop conclusion, Bed Stilt comes to a rather abrupt conclusion–one gets the sense that Testbild! can (and have) create something more large-scale and complex than these songs, but training their full energy on making polished, streamlined pop music has led to some strong results. (Bandcamp link)
Grapes of Grain – Painted Windows
Release date: October 4th Record label: Drag Days Genre: Folk rock, jangle pop, college rock, soft rock Formats: CD, digital Pull Track: Fatal Flower
It’s commendable when a band begins a second act that eventually turns out to be more substantial than their original one. This certainly applies to Utrecht folk/college rock group Grapes of Grain, who initially released two EPs and an LP from 2006 to 2009 before seemingly fading into obscurity. However, ever since vocalist/guitarist Alexis Vos and multi-instrumentalist Berend Jan Ike returned at the beginning of last year, they’ve been on a tear, releasing two more EPs (last year’s Getaways and this year’s Serving Water) and their first full-length in a decade and a half (last November’s Unaware). With the third Grapes of Grain LP, Painted Windows, Vos and Jan have officially eclipsed the band’s pre-hiatus output in under two years–and they’ve done it with some of their strongest material yet. The twelve-song, thirty-six minute album certainly doesn’t feel like their fourth record in two years–it’s a patient-sounding, carefully-sculpted LP, with enjoyably teased-out instrumentation largely provided by the band’s core duo, but former full-time members Stefan Breuer and Arno Breuer also contribute, as well as guest musicians Harm van Sleen (pedal steel, dobro, violin), Niels van Heumen (trumpet, synthesizer), and David Decraene (saxophone).
Grapes of Grain have a distinct sound that falls in between the worlds of folk rock/alt-country and college rock/jangle pop–Vos and Jan have almost certainly spent a lot of time with, at the very least, Out of Time and Automatic for the People (if not the records before those, too). The expanse of Painted Windows lets the band find more ways to present their songs than ever before, adding up to their most wide-ranging record that I’ve heard yet. As we move through Painted Windows, we’re greeted with immediately-hitting glockenspiel-flavored indie pop (“Martin Luther”), sophisti-pop-like empty-space art pop (“Stranded”), an upbeat pop rock tribute to Jonathan Richman (“Hey There, Jonathan”), and a surprising detour into electric, kind of messy indie rock and roll (“Darker Days”). There are a handful of songs on here that easily slot into “could’ve-been college rock anthems” territory, from the uber-catchy handclap-pop of “Sensation” (featuring excellent guest vocals from Amber Sawyer) to “Fatal Flower” (which imagines a cross between Paul Westerberg and Fables of the Reconstruction-era R.E.M. with a prominent synth hook), but Grapes of Grain have always been a little more pensive than their peers that like to focus solely on the big choruses, and their songs in this vein (hymn-like closing track “Lifeline”, the minimal dreamlike memories of “Photograph Girl”) live up to their past material, too. Painted Windows reflects the strong work that Grapes of Grain have done recently, and adds just a bit more to their ever-expanding legacy, too. (Bandcamp link)
You know how last week was a great week on the blog? Well, guess what: this one is going to be just as good, if not better. We’re getting started with a mostly EPs edition (I didn’t plan it that way, it’s just how things shook out!): new ones from THEMM!, Dazy, and Podcasts, plus the hot new 2nd Grade full-length, are detailed below.
If you’re looking for more new music, you can visit the site directory to see what else we’ve written about lately. If you’d like to support Rosy Overdrive, you can share this (or another) post, or donate here.
2nd Grade – Scheduled Explosions
Release date: October 25th Record label: Double Double Whammy Genre: Power pop, lo-fi pop Formats: Cassette, digital Pull Track: Out of the Hive
Every indie rock band wants to be Guided by Voices. And why wouldn’t they? They’re critically acclaimed, they’re successful enough to make it their job, they’ve got a devout cult following, their live shows are renowned parties, they’ve put out a ton of music–and they’ve done it all while being fiercely independent. 2nd Grade are assuredly one of these bands–frontperson Peter Gill has even gone so far as to not play guitar live as inspired by Robert Pollard’s stage presence. Like any power pop band with a penchant for shorter songs, 2nd Grade have been blessed or cursed with Guided by Voices comparisons pretty much since their inception as a Gill solo project, even if I thought that their earlier work (which I did enjoy a fair deal, by the way) didn’t have much in common with classic Pollard fare aside from runtime. It’s actually way harder to sound like Guided by Voices than the RIYLers of the world make it seem. You can’t just slap tape hiss on a Romantics B-side and call it a day; there’s a mix of uninhibited rock and roll and self-conscious basement pop, a balance between wonderment and darker, sadder feelings. On Scheduled Explosions, the fourth and best album from the Philadelphia power pop group, Peter Gill and company, for the first time in 2nd Grade’s relatively brief but fruitful career, unambiguously shoot for and subsequently nail this balance.
Scheduled Explosions is actually a step back in terms of fidelity from their last album, 2022’s Easy Listening–the rest of the band (Remember Sports’ Catherine Dwyer on guitar, MJ Lenderman & The Wind/Friendship’s Jon Samuels also on guitar, Psychic Flowers/Big Heet’s David Settle on bass, and Ylayali’s Francis Lyons on drums) drift in and out of these twenty-three songs, never once appearing on the same track together. Gill is the only constant. It lends a patchwork–dare I say collage-like–quality to the record, correctly trusting Gill’s writing and vision to hold these songs together. At this point, Gill’s ability to produce a bucket of winning hooks is well-established, and this, of course, goes a long way towards making Scheduled Explosions the instant classic that it is, as does Gill’s inability to be anything other than a big pop music fan, as the references to everything from Dougie Poole to Otis Redding to “Wild Thing” to “I Want to Tell You” keep reminding us. Also key is 2nd Grade’s refusal to abandon the “power” side of power pop even as it’s not really a record made by five musicians playing a room together–from “Live from Missile Command” to “Out of the Hive” to “Fashion Disease” to “Like a Wild Thing” to “American Rhythm”, there’s always a moment of, ahem, explosive rock and roll lurking just around the corner of the record.
Now that I’ve referenced the title, we might as well nod to the reality that we’re talking about an album called Scheduled Explosions with songs with titles like “Live from Missile Command” and “Jingle Jangle Nuclear Meltdown” and featuring multiple references to the price of gas being too high to “take you for a ride”. If it were the kind of 1980s unearthed basement pop that those early GBV records are often romanticized as, we’d call it “Cold War-informed”; the fact that it came out in 2024 confronts us with facts about this current day and age that your average power pop fan would rather not face. One of the final songs on the album is “68 Comeback”, one of the record’s most overtly Guided by Voices-esque songs about the titular Elvis Presley video concert special that’s distorted and blown-out to all hell. Gill’s alone on this one, and the words spill out of his mouth: “Right here right now is a child / Skipping dreamstones / On the surface of the retroverse / In the midst of a nuclear meltdown / Crying for help in the Sunset Sound echo chamber”. There’s a fire here, too, just as white-hot as it’s ever been. (Bandcamp link)
THEMM! – El Pastor
Release date: September 13th Record label: Self-released Genre: Punk rock, garage rock, Texas rock and roll Formats: Digital Pull Track: Hot Death
For almost the entire twenty-first century, Austin, Texas quintet The Midgetmen roamed the Lone Star State, playing gigs and putting out albums (usually on their own) of their self-described “slop-punk”. A couple of years ago, The Midgetmen (bassist/vocalist Marc Perlman, guitarists Alex Victoria, Jon Loyens, and Scotty Loewen, and drummer Justin Petro) rechristened themselves as THEMM!, but as far as I can tell, the vibe has largely remained the same (one of their first releases as THEMM! was a three-song single called THEMM! Try Crack, if you’re worried about them becoming too buttoned-up). 2024 has been THEMM!’s formal launch year–February brought Mmm, an EP in which the quintet re-recorded some of their earliest songs released under their old band name, while September sees the launch of El Pastor, THEMM!’s first record of all-new, all-original material. Recorded on the Mexican border near El Paso at Sonic Ranch with Ross Ingram of EEP, the five-song EP is THEMM! doing what they do best–cranking out hooky, unbothered punk rock that flirts with massive anthem-slinging but never takes itself too seriously.
Somewhat surprisingly, THEMM! open El Pastor with a State of the Republic in “Live Laugh Love”, a dispatch from the crumbling empire of their home state that touches on abortion rights, transphobia, fascism, and name-checks Ken Paxton over a flag-waving punk anthem. Lest you worry about where THEMM! stand, they not only reject the dark cloud hanging over their state but the excuses for falling in line, too–“I’m from a small town, I won’t go back / Go it alone when you can’t trust the pack”. “Hot Death” is the other song on El Pastor that rivals “Live Laugh Love” in “mega-punk-anthem” status, the guitars flying high as the band melt into the sand in the midst of dusty trails, cacti, and cicadas.
There’s a messiness and even darkness that runs deeper than the sloppy, cathartic take on pop punk that THEMM! practice on El Pastor, particularly present in the garage rock venter “Red Fangers” (“I’m in the tent because your mom and dad fight”) and the southern punk of “Steaks and Snakes”, whose narrator works a “contract job in the panhandle” while watching their domestic life circle the drain. After juggling phone calls from lawyers, THEMM! finish “Steaks and Snakes” by looking to the one constant in their life–the music, dude (“Hope we get cash tonight or we sleep in the practice space / Who can think of an ex-wife when you’re opening for Lee Bains”). Those may be the final lyrics of El Pastor, but the actual final statement is the uncharacteristically long instrumental the band launch into right afterwards. It’s the sound of getting up off one’s ass and moving somewhere. Maybe Texas is too big to escape, but it’s large enough that there’s always a new corner. (Bandcamp link)
Dazy – IT’S ONLY A SECRET (If You Repeat It)
Release date: October 25th Record label: Lame-O Genre: Power pop, fuzz rock, fuzz pop, pop punk, alt-dance, Madchester Formats: Digital Pull Track: Big End
It’s short, and it’s very sweet. One of the first releases from James Goodson’s Dazy project that got any kind of attention was a three-song EP called Revolving Doorback in 2021, so why shouldn’t the one-man fuzzy-power-pop band return to the well a few years later? Of course, a lot has happened in the world of Dazy between Revolving Door and now–an all-timer of a compilation cassette called MAXIMUMBLASTSUPERLOUD, a blockbuster signing to Lame-O Records, a debut LP called OUTOFBODY and a companion EP called OTHERBODY. Dazy has been uncharacteristically quiet as of late, as it’s been a year since the last new music from Goodson, the one-off “Forced Perspective” single (not counting an appearance on a song from the dance group Bodysync). Nevertheless, IT’S ONLY A SECRET (If You Repeat It) picks up the thread right where Goodson left off, with his instantly recognizable huge hooks that are equal parts pop punk and Madchester losing no potency over time. The dance-pop and electronic elements from the Bodysync collaboration and “Forced Perspective” are very present in these three tracks too, but there’s also plenty of punk energy and huge guitars, too–Goodson even lists Deedee from wild art punk group MSPAINT on the title track.
“It’s Only a Secret” was the EP’s lead single, but opening track “Big End” is the most obvious “hit” on IT’S ONLY A SECRET (If You Repeat It) to my ears. It’s the one “vintage Dazy” classic song on the EP–it’s got a bit of alt-dance energy to it, but it’s primarily a power pop guitar assault that just happens to have a beat. Goodson’s unflagging, almost robotic high energy is so strong here that even if the rest of the EP was inessential, “Big End” alone would be ample reassurance that Dazy’s still “got it”–“it” being the ability to write a scorching anthem for staring directly at the sun and sounding incredibly cool while doing it. The rest of the EP isn’t inessential, by the way, just different. “Weigh Down on Me” is a nice sideroad for Goodson to go down–the sun-drenched psychedelic pop of this song never explodes like the track before it, but its tightly controlled alt-pop sheen ends up being the glue that hold the two kinetic tracks bordering it together. Which leads us to “It’s Only a Secret”, in which a classic Dazy refrain (the one that gives the EP its title) has to battle an insurgent hardcore-punk vocal from Deedee and Goodson’s own electronic impulses. As one might imagine based on that description, “It’s Only a Secret” is a fairly unique-sounding song–it risks being more “interesting” than good, but the hooks win out–when Goodson, Deedee, and an acoustic guitar lock into place before the song’s big finish, every chaotic flourish feels justified. (Bandcamp link)
Podcasts – Supreme Auctions
Release date: September 13th Record label: Omegn Plateproduksjon Genre: Jangle pop, post-punk, power pop Formats: Digital Pull Track: Never Been a Problem
The self-titled debut album from Oslo quartet Podcasts was one of the biggest “growers” for me in 2023. I thought it was interesting when I heard it, pretty good when I wrote about it, and firmly enough in its camp by the end of last year to put it on my year-end list. The band (Ellis Jones aka Trust Fund, Kyle Devine, Tore Størvold, and Emil Kraugerud) practiced guitar-based indie pop with a bit of trickiness on Podcasts, favoring unexpected twists and turns over making the obvious move time and time again. The first Podcasts release since their debut LP is a brief but welcome EP called Supreme Auctions, which zips through “3.5 songs” in about eight minutes. It’s Podcasts at their most laconic yet–nothing on this EP is longer than three minutes, and the first song (an instrumental introduction that I’ll assume is the “.5” track) comes in at under a minute. More than just the song lengths, though, Supreme Auctions contains some of the band’s most unvarnished pop songwriting yet–the odd detours in Podcasts’ jangly power pop haven’t vanished exactly, but with little time to spare, they’re kept more towards the margins, giving these tracks a bit more runway with which to take off.
The EP kicks off with “Intro (For Supreme Auctions)”, which blends seamlessly into “Never Been a Problem”, not allowing us to take much of a breath before Supreme Auctions is already halfway over. The sprinting instrumental of “Intro (For Supreme Auctions)” eventually coils into something that resembles “math rock”, but only for a couple of seconds–likewise, “Never Been a Problem” is a polished, sugary piece of power pop that grinds to a complete halt halfway through, only to jam the keys back in the ignition and soar yet again (and then pull a slightly smaller version of the same trick one more time before the song ends). “Down to Melbourne” is the most rhythm-forward track on the EP, and it’s also a masterclass in restraint–it feels like Podcasts are holding back just a little bit throughout the song, to the point where the final refrain becomes a climax without radically altering much of anything. By closing track “Holiday”, Podcasts have become a blissful, carefree mid-tempo guitar pop band, strumming and breezing their way through a song that resists any sort of mid-track lurch or really anything more than a brief between-verses instrumental. Podcasts have more than earned the day off that’s daydreamt in the final track. (Bandcamp link)
On this Thursday Pressing Concerns, a bunch of new albums out tomorrow (October 25th) await us below: new LPs from Hilken Mancini Band, Hit, Onsloow, and Miranda and the Beat. It’s been an eventful week on Rosy Overdrive, so if you missed any of this week’s earlier posts (Monday looked at records from Langkamer, Seafoam Walls, Humdrum, and Ironic Hill, Tuesday’s post featured American Motors, The Low Field, Jealous Yellow, and Puddled, and on Wednesday I went long on St. Lenox’s Ten Modern American Work Songs), check those out, too.
If you’re looking for more new music, you can visit the site directory to see what else we’ve written about lately. If you’d like to support Rosy Overdrive, you can share this (or another) post, or donate here.
Hilken Mancini Band – Hilken Mancini Band
Release date: October 25th Record label: Girlsville Genre: Power pop, pop punk, fuzz rock Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull Track: Set My Sights
It’s certainly not uncommon these days to hear a new indie rock band that sounds like Juliana Hatfield, Tanya Donelly, and that dog. The difference between your typical buzzy “bubblegrunge” group and the Hilken Mancini Band, however, is that the latter is fronted by someone who can count the aforementioned acts as peers rather than formative influences. In the mid-90s, Hilken Mancini co-led the Boston alt-rock/pop group Fuzzy, who toured with Buffalo Tom and Velocity Girl and released two albums for Atlantic before fizzling out before landing a “proper” radio hit at the end of the decade. Mancini never went away, though, playing in bands like Gramercy Arms, Shepherdess, and The Monsieurs, and most recently starting up a quasi-solo project backed by bassist Winston Braman (formerly of Fuzzy and a longtime Thalia Zedek Band member), drummer Luther Gray (Tsunami), and guitarist Melissa Gibbs (Heavy Stud). I admittedly haven’t kept up with all of Mancini’s output since the dissolution of her most well-known band, but the self-titled debut album from the Hilken Mancini Band arrives with a bang, embracing sugary, hooky, fuzzy guitar pop music like 1994 never fully left us. Although Boston indie rock veterans from J. Mascis to Chris Brokaw to Zedek to the majority of Buffalo Tom apparently guest on this record, Mancini is unambiguously the star of Hilken Mancini Band, and she excels in the role.
The ten songs of Hilken Mancini Band practically helicopter in with their loud, unmistakable catchiness front and center. Album opener “Set My Sights” would already be a classic just based on the strength of the verses and instrumental alone, but Mancini somehow finds a classic 90s alt-pop-rock chorus that nobody’d thought to use yet to really push the song over the top. “Set My Sights” is hard to top in terms of pure immediate energy, but that doesn’t mean the Hilken Mancini Band don’t try–punchy first half highlights “Up 2 11” and “Blackout” similarly violently beat their hooks into the listener with a club, and second half kickoff “Anniversary” leads with a riff that’s so huge-sounding that Mancini’s lyrical reference to You’re Living All Over Me is plenty justified (is that you squealing along, Mr. Mascis?). These are the most obvious head-turners on the record, but Hilken Mancini Band is just as catchy in the “album tracks”, too–right up until the album’s end, where the band surprisingly but welcomely try on a bit of acoustic-led post-Replacements, Lemonheads-y college rock/power pop for size with “Thru 2 U” and then bring it all together for a wobbly but full-throated conclusion in “Let U Go”. The latter song also has some fun and explosive guitar soloing, but whoever’s supplying the fireworks doesn’t interrupt the main show. (Bandcamp link)
Hit – Bestseller
Release date: October 25th Record label: One Weird Trick Genre: Experimental pop, noise pop, art rock, art punk, prog-pop, psych pop Formats: CD, digital Pull Track: Chumbox
Vocalist/guitarist Craig Heed and guitarist Justin Mayfield have spent the last ten years as one half of New York psychedelic/prog-pop quartet Miracle Sweepstakes, but earlier this decade, the duo joined with bassist Charles Mueller and drummer Cameron LeCrone to form a different quartet called Hit (not to be confused with Hits with an “s”, the Bay Area trio). Taking a page from Big Star, their debut album is called Bestseller, and it’s been in the works for a bit now–two songs from the album, “Vanderbilt” and “Great Conjunction”, came out back in 2022, and “Nu Jangle” showed up in February of this year. I enjoyed the layered, polished sound of Miracle Sweepstakes’ last record, Last Licks, but the chaotic pop rock of “Nu Jangle” and “Vanderbilt” felt fairly distinct from Hit’s sibling band, and it’s no less exciting to hear the group in a larger setting. The advance singles merged Brainiac-like noisy post-punk with snatches of heavenly guitar pop that worked well in short bursts–to translate this attitude to an LP, Hit have to get even more creative, pushing further into the depths of what their previous material had hinted at to turn Bestseller into something just as exhaustive and adventurous as Last Licks was in its own way.
“Arite” is a real, proper introductory track–four minutes long, but never quite letting go of its hesitant, tense “prelude” vibe, even when the refrain turns into a torrent as the song draws to a close. Bestseller provides plenty of release, of course–the three older singles all follow “Arite”, and get right to work at establishing Hit’s debut record as an ace pop album, and then some. In particular, “Nu Jangle”’s combination of a zany, bonkers prog-pop instrumental with some really sweet, arresting vocals from Heed is still one of the most thrilling things I’ve heard this year (is this what Ween sound like to people who like Ween?). The underwater-sounding “Chumbox” is an unlikely early Guided by Voices-esque psych-pop triumph, and “Inner Critic” marks the midpoint of Bestseller by going all-in on what I can only really describe as “jangle-prog”. Bestseller never really gets “predictable”, but Hit at least sound a bit more comfortable in the second half, settling in to make offbeat but excellently-crafted pop music in a way not unlike Miracle Sweepstakes or peers like Curling. “The Spot” and–in particular–the sugary guitar pop of penultimate track “I Hadn’t Noticed” ensure that Bestseller actually leaves more shined-up and sparkly than it arrived. I’m not sure if there’s a side of Hit that I “prefer” over the other, and that’s entirely due to how smooth the band make the journey feel. (Bandcamp link)
Onsloow – Full Speed Anywhere Else
Release date: October 25th Record label: Tiny Engines Genre: Power pop, emo, pop punk Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull Track: Taxi
Onsloow are an emo-tinged indie rock, power pop, and punk group from Scandinavia, the unofficial homeland for modern emo-tinged indie rock, power pop, and punk groups (more specifically, they’re from Trondheim, Norway). I was drawn in by Onsloow’s self-titled debut album that showed up at the beginning of 2022, and I wasn’t the only one, as the band caught the attention of Tiny Engines (the unofficial home label for modern emo-tinged indie rock, power pop, and punk groups from Scandinavia). Before putting together what would become their sophomore album, Full Speed Anywhere Else, though, Onsloow faced a problem–their lead singer, Johanne Rimul, was too busy pursuing a master’s degree and a “growing family” to continue to front the group. Guitarist Mathias Nylenna, drummer Morten Samdal, and bassist Lasse Berg recruited Helene Brunæs (of Lille Venn) to take her place–while Onsloow are admittedly far from a household name, Brunæs nonetheless had some large shoes to fill, as Rimul’s strong, confident pop vocals were a huge part of Onsloow’s appeal. Brunæs is close enough to her predecessor for Onsloow to pick up right where they left off on Full Speed Anywhere Else, but distinct enough that she doesn’t fall into the trap of just doing a less-impressive imitation of Rimul’s vocals, either.
There’s still a shift from S/T to Full Speed Anywhere Else–the songs have less of a serious, torrential emo-rock tinge and more of a power pop warmth to them. Whether that’s a change brought on by the new vocalist or from the songwriting level seems impossible to pinpoint–regardless, it’s a sheen that feels just as natural on the band as their previous record’s did. The mid-tempo, four-minute opening track “Riding on Lies” wrings just about every bit of catchiness it can from its ingredients, from Brunæs’s ascendent power pop vocals to the shimmering guitar leads to heavy-duty power chords. As the quartet wistfully bounce through the synth-colored “Taxi”, they feel closer to Dutch indie pop group Snow Coats or even a more electric version of Fuvk’s bedroom pop than their louder peers in Spielbergs. Although there are a few real-deal “rock” moments on Full Speed Anywhere Else, the emotional heart of the album to me feels more visible in the less breakneck, more thoughtful pop tunes like “Body Parts”, or the closing duo of “Muscle Memory” and “Now I Get It”. It’s been a couple of years since their first album, Onsloow have weathered a major lineup change, and landed with a label that potentially gives them a wider audience. Full Speed Anywhere Else isn’t a step down (or even a tonedown), but it does sound like a band that allows themselves a breath every once in a while. (Bandcamp link)
Miranda and the Beat – Can’t Take It
Release date: October 25th Record label: Ernest Jenning/Khannibalism Genre: Garage rock, punk rock Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull Track: Can’t Take It
After years of putting out standalone singles, New York/New Orleans quartet Miranda and the Beat finally dropped their self-titled debut album last year via Ernest Jenning and Khannibalism. Thanks to everything from frontperson Miranda Zipse’s vocals to Dylan Fernandez’s Farfisa organ to the group’s propensity for strong grooves, Miranda and the Beat was an impressive collection of Detroit-style soulful garage punk with bits of classic pop music and new wave in the mix, too. Since that album’s release in May of last year, Miranda and the Beat have toured it extensively, dropped down to a trio (Zipse on guitar and vocals, Fernandez on Farfisa and guitar, and Alvin Jackson on bass), and put an entire second album, Can’t Take It, to tape. Written and recorded in just a few days at King Khan’s Moon Studios Rock n Roll Vortex in Germany, Can’t Take It is the lean, immediate, punk rock counterpart to Miranda and the Beat’s more measured, restrained take on rock and roll. Not that there aren’t subtler moments on this album, but Miranda and the Beat are more laser-focused than ever on their garage-punk bread and butter and getting just about everything they can out of it over the record’s dozen songs.
The opening title track does an incredible job of setting the stage for what to expect on Can’t Take It–the guitars, Zipse’s voice, and the Farfisa are given roughly equal weight, all working together to create something satisfying yet slightly unnerving-sounding in its dead-serious rock and roll attitude. Don’t mistake “streamlined” for one-note, though–there’s plenty to differentiate songs like the ninety-second deranged garage-pop of “Earthquake Water” from the three-minute over-the-top breakdown of “Anxiety” and the Return of the Groove in “El Lobo Negro”. If there’s a “chill” section of Can’t Take It, it’s probably the middle–that’s where we get the record’s sole acoustic track, “The Last Time”, an inspired take on Dead Moon’s “I Tried” that introduces a bit of noir to the mid-tempo garage rock, and the relatively contemplative retro-pop of “In My Life”. The momentum of Can’t Take It is such that the trio can dip into these reserves and come out the other side in basically a single motion, picking up the garage rocking thread with “New York Video” and “Manipulate Me” like it’s no one’s business. The spectre of 1980s goth-infused rock and roll has always hovered over Miranda and the Beat’s music, but the trio make it as explicit as ever in the dramatic closing track “The Secrets”, writhing and skulking for four electric minutes before the record comes to a close. It’s a fitting wrap on a successful sophomore album, one that retains the signature of its group while doing something palpably different. (Bandcamp link)
Release date: October 25th Record label: Anyway/Don Giovanni Genre: Indie pop, singer-songwriter, synthpop Formats: Vinyl, digital
I believe that Andrew Choi’s previous album as St. Lenox, 2021’s Ten Songs of Worship and Praise for Our Tumultuous Times, still holds the record for “most words I’ve written about a single album for this blog” to this day. St. Lenox’s music brings that out of me (and, anecdotally, plenty of other writers)–Choi’s writing, ambitious, autobiographical, stream-of-consciousness-feeling but always circling its way back to whichever theme he’s zeroed in on for a given record, is particularly welcoming to dissection, discussion, and other “dis-” words. The first decade of Choi’s music career followed him from central Ohio to New York City and brought four rich records in this vein–2016’s Ten Hymns from My American Gothic, a meditation on Choi’s upbringing as a first-generation Korean-American in Missouri and Iowa, might be his “best” album, although following Choi’s writing across several subjects in records up to last year’s religion-inspired LP is a reward in itself. The fifth St. Lenox album, Ten Modern American Work Songs, looks at a key aspect of Choi’s life that has undoubtedly shaped the trajectory of St. Lenox even as it’s mostly been on the periphery of his writing thus far. Somewhat jokingly dedicated in honor of the “10-year Reunion of the NYU Law Class of 2014” (in lieu of the “financial gift” the university had suggested to mark the occasion instead), Ten Modern American Work Songs traces Choi’s journey from a graduate student and aspiring philosophy professor at Ohio State University to a JD program in Manhattan to his current status as a lawyer.
Listen, I’m no big-shot corporate lawyer in New York City (or whatever Andrew Choi is these days), and I’m guessing you aren’t either, but–and maybe you’re aware of this–it’s a pretty long road for anyone to get to that point, and there’s probably something that Choi experiences along the way that doesn’t quite seem as foreign to you. Maybe it’s the grinding in grueling, low-paying jobs with a distant goal on the horizon, maybe it’s the crushing student debt he takes on because received wisdom says it’s a good idea, maybe it’s the white collar job workaholic cultural death spiral, maybe it’s a career/life goal change that requires him to leave a place that truly felt like “home”. These are some of the clearest mile markers on Ten Modern American Work Songs, delivered in a way that will be eminently familiar to anyone who’s experienced St. Lenox’s previous work. Musically, Choi’s distinct style of indie pop is as bright as ever, corralling piano pop, synthpop, and occasional folk and violin touches into something that never threatens to distract from the lyrics but sharp enough to compliment them. Choi’s huge voice–the one that got him noticed at Joe Peppercorn’s open mic in Columbus over a decade ago, leading to a long partnership with Anyway Records–is just as incredible, and his pointed ramblings remain pointed and rambling (I mentioned John Darnielle, Craig Finn, and Michael Stipe last time–as well as comparing Choi to an “over-excited professor”, which I wrote before I even knew that was his original ambition).
Even for St. Lenox, Ten Songs of Worship and Praise for Our Tumultuous Times was sprawling and overflowing–graded on Andrew Choi’s curve, Ten Modern American Work Songs is a bit more “pop”, the songs a bit more upbeat and the instrumental hooks a little more prevalent. Combined with some moments where Choi’s voice sounds higher and even younger than he has of late in “Kalahari” and “Your Local Neighborhood Bar”, it feels like he’s tapping into the energy that colored his relatively “rough draft” first album, 2015’s Ten Songs About Memory and Hope–which indeed coincided with a lot of the events depicted in this record. “Courtesan”, the first proper song on the album, combines the giddy (the instrumentation, the “Victory! After seven years of agony!” declaration) with the sarcastic self-congratulation of the song’s title. “Lust for Life”, the musically-minimal follow-up track that feels more in line with Choi’s more recent work, is a more clear-eyed look at this moment, with its refusal to romanticize the previous track’s dizzying experience and pull up the ladder (“I hear the people are starting a union, Jesse / I hope if we work together, we can make this school a better place”) complimenting it satisfyingly.
Like “Courtesan”, the most triumphant-sounding, pop-forward moments on Ten Modern American Work Songs combine genuine elation with a three-dimensional attitude that deepens the foundation of the tracks, if not outright contradicting them. The most fun-sounding song on the record is arguably “Quasi-Nichomachean Ethics (Drunk Uncle Advice)”, the parenthetical qualifying the full-throated stream-of-consciousness pointers Choi gives to a nephew on his twenty-first birthday (“Don’t check your emails after 7pm, dear God / ‘cause ignorance is the the better part of valor,” Choi sings early in the song, and later says the subtext out loud with “That’s why I am telling you to learn from my mistakes in this life”). The penultimate song “Your Local Neighborhood Bar” rivals “Quasi-Nichomachean Ethics” in terms of pure jubilation, as Choi steps back into the world of Peppercorn’s open mic nights at Andyman’s Treehouse in Columbus (“Last week, down at your neighborhood bar / I heard that it was some kind of legendary / … / I gotta go there and sing you a song”). As modern-day Choi sits on the subway and reminisces, however, he goes beyond the rose-tinted, Cheers-evoking glasses with which he begins (“Seven years ago stuck on the ivories / It reveals explicit themes / Seven years yeah, stuck in the brain”).
The flip side of this is that Ten Modern American Work Songs’ subtler, less outwardly triumphant moments contain a hint of that “victory” in them, even as one might need to lean on greater context to see them. Choi’s letter to the titular character of “Rudy” might feel like a backhanded compliment (“Did you know that I’ve been inspired by you / To give up on my dreams and be a family man”), but both the rest of the song (“Sad sack institution salaryman / Overtime stuck on the dashboard”) and the album as a whole reveal the sincerity of the remark. Meanwhile, “The House I Left for Work in New York” is shot through with a very real sense of loss, the feeling like Choi is giving up the tangible manifestation of the American dream for something much less certain in the future–but the entire song sounds different after reading that the cover of Ten Modern American Work Songs depicts Choi’s current home, which he put a down payment on last year at the age of 43. And then there’s the final song on the record, “On Fulfillment”. Taking the form of a conversation at a wedding, Choi finishes the record by saying “Did you know ive been up at night, screaming curse words in the dark? / As if the whole of my career has been a big mistake”–that’s a hard note to end on no matter how you slice it. Salvation from this creeping feeling can only be won by taking a wider view of both Ten Modern American Work Songs and St. Lenox’s oeuvre as a whole, which makes the case that, even in this worst-case scenario, one’s work “career” is (or, at least, can be) just one piece of something larger. (Bandcamp link)
On this fine Tuesday, a brand new Pressing Concerns looks at new albums from the likes of American Motors, The Low Field, and Jealous Yellow, as well as the debut EP from Puddled. It’s a great and eclectic set, and if you missed what we looked at yesterday (Langkamer, Seafoam Walls, Humdrum, and Ironic Hill), check that post out, too.
If you’re looking for more new music, you can visit the site directory to see what else we’ve written about lately. If you’d like to support Rosy Overdrive, you can share this (or another) post, or donate here.
American Motors – Content
Release date: October 4th Record label: Expert Work/The Ghost Is Clear Genre: Noise rock, post-hardcore, post-rock, post-punk Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull Track: Colonial Lanes
Those of you who are here for the times when Pressing Concerns covers upbeat, catchy guitar pop records are permitted to skip this one. American Motors are from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, but that’s not important–they could be from anywhere in the United States that’s far away enough from bustling urban centers but close enough that the ruins of something once more lively hover around unavoidably. They’re a trio, led by the songwriting duo of Dustin Travis White (guitar) and Alex Steward (drums), with Brad Williams joining them on bass for their first album, Content. American Motors recorded the album with J. Robbins, who helped them zero in on a Rust Belt-inspired post-punk/noise rock/post-rock sound, keenly sharpened and honed much more finely than a lot of bands in their shoes would dare to even attempt. White and Steward apparently reworked the songs several times before finally going in to record them, referring to the process as “noise rock Steely Dan”–whatever they had to do to get there, though, it’s hard to argue with how immaculately Content works as a sum of its parts.
American Motors understand that the monster you can’t see is even scarier, and Content utilizes a huge amount of empty space to hover around the edges of these songs. Williams’ bass is essential for that notes that do get played, while the record’s characters always seem to be in real, palpable danger, running from something or provoking someone or something they shouldn’t have (and, if they’re not, they’re dispassionately watching the plights of those who are, not even bothering to muster up a “whew, glad that isn’t me”). Opening track “Colonial Lanes” is a shapeless, formless post-noise rock soundscape, the narration getting overtaken by moments of atmospheric instrumentals and a few genuine “rock” sections. If you’re looking for more pyrotechnics, American Motors eventually offer a few more up in “(A Billboard Reading) Dissolve Jefferson”, which eventually burns up over its six-minute length, and the bass-anchored “Three Crosses”, which is the American Motors’ minimal version of heavy alt-rock like Failure and Hum.
Not that Content is ever not dark, but the clearer its surroundings come into focus, the bleaker it feels. In the frantic “Tamarack”, the titular off-Interstate tourist trap becomes just another place for the song’s subject–doomed by an unseen, unknown force to a life on the run–to hide until it’s time to move on yet again. The closing sucker punch of “The Former Mall Anchor Store Call Center Blues”, which traces the lifespan of the mall-turned-call center-turned-“closed”, says all you need to know about that one, and in “There Is a Twin”, paranoia and confusion finally bubble up to the surface in the form of plowing-forward alt-rock riffs and some creepy, Pile-esque imagery and storytelling. The cavernous emptiness falls away on Content’s closing track, “Statues”, replaced by a wave of static and fuzz that accompanies the band’s hammering away at more noise rock/post-punk infrastructure. “We need more blood from the host,” American Motors ominously intone over and over again in “Statues”, expertly mimicking the forces of extraction that created the world around them. (Bandcamp link)
The Low Field – The Low Field
Release date: October 18th Record label: Self-released Genre: Emo, slowcore, post-rock Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull Track: Heaviness
The Low Field are a new band from Limerick, Ireland made up of musicians from the city’s other groups–one of the two vocalist/guitarists, Diarmuid O’Shea, plays in Casavettes, the other one, Danny O’Shea (I don’t know if they’re related or if it’s just a common Irish surname) plays in Deadbog, and both members of the rhythm section (drummer Brendan McInerney and bassist Mícheál Keating) are from Bleeding Heart Pigeons. The band first came together in 2021 “as a direct result of” a shared admiration for the album Ground Aswim by North Carolina emo project Sinai Vessel, and this reference point puts us at least somewhat close to what we hear on the group’s self-titled debut album (following the “Heaviness / Tachycardia” single last year, both sides of which ended up on the LP). “Limerick based quiet then loud then quiet” reads The Low Field’s Bandcamp description, an accurate summation of their record’s sweeping sound that incorporates a bit of chilly, emo-ish indie rock, but also a bit of slowcore and even orchestral post-rock (thanks to Keating’s violin). The guitars display a minimal, decorative touch, then roar into full force and then recede, all the while the O’Sheas guide the songs from understated to full-on emo-rock territory with their vocals.
Everyone loves a good pin-drop-quiet six-minute opening track, and The Low Field are more than happy to oblige with “Heaviness”. In terms of pure noise, it’s certainly not the “heaviest” moment on The Low Field, but its crushing, slow-crawl attitude for the majority of its runtime ensures that it does in fact live up to its title in its own way. “Heaviness” does build to a crescendo, but it steps back almost as soon as it reaches it, so it’s still a bit of a jolt when the mid-tempo electric guitars introduce “Stomach Ache” (even though the track largely still finds The Low Field in “meandering” mode, just with the volume raised a little bit). As the record progresses, we start to get a handle on The Low Field, a band that indeed loves to begin in a dingy basement of languid guitar leads only to charge into something louder and stormy by the end of the track (see “The Urgency” and “Gather”). The five-minute emo overload of “Tachycardia” injects just a bit of post-hardcore messiness into The Low Field’s refined sound, although this second-half highlight is soon tempered by a (equally strong) diversion into lengthy shimmering instrumentals with “Reuntied”. It’s a really solid first record on the whole–listening back to it, I think I find the “quiet” parts on The Low Field the most rewarding, but, the moments where the band snap into the “loud” portion of their sound are key to underscoring the true range of what The Low Field are pulling off here. (Bandcamp link)
Jealous Yellow – Czech Vampires
Release date: October 14th Record label: Erste Theke Tonträger/Sifter Grim Genre: Synthpunk, art punk, garage punk, post-hardcore, post-punk, noise rock Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull Track: Hypotenuse
Benjamin Rea has played in a bunch of bands in his native Seattle (Laminate, Diirt, Reverse Death, and Soda Gumball), the majority of which are associated with local labels Sifter Grim and Half Shell. The former of those two imprints also released the debut album from Rea’s solo project, Jealous Yellow–2021’s Sugarweeper, which was the result of Rea being stuck in his studio apartment during the early stages of COVID-19. The second Jealous Yellow LP, Czech Vampires, is the product of the pandemic too, in a way–while touring the first record in Europe, Rea caught the virus and subsequently had to quarantine in a hostel in Prague for two weeks, leading to the conception of most of these songs. Co-released by Sifter Grim and Erste Theke Tonträger (Public Interest, Dr Sure’s Unusual Practice, Supercrush), Czech Vampires is a classic freak punk LP–it’s synth-punk but with plenty of interesting guitarplay, equally likely to lapse into a tortured Brainiac-like post-hardcore flameout or a curious, arty no wave disintegration like a more irritated Pere Ubu. The fourteen-song, forty-two minute record is an exhaustive journey, continually chipping away at a punk rock mountain and dropping bizarre but potent nuggets right up until the noise collage that closes the album.
Not that Czech Vampires is going to be recognized as “pop music” by most people, but opening track “Hypotenuse” is a welcome mat for those open to the contradiction, offering up a propulsive piece of garage-y egg punk that’s about as pleasing-sounding as this kind of thing comes. “Pop Fiction!” does a similar thing but with minimal synthpunk, letting Rea go absolutely wild over top of a slick, minimal groove. Almost every moment on Czech Vampires feels like a reset of some kind–“Sweat Our Yr Good Clothes” lives up to its title by introducing the idea of slow-burning, steadily-building post-punk to the mix, “Baker’s Dozen” suggesting that Jealous Yellow can be just as potent by dropping the outward aggression and embracing their insular weirdness. The only rule of Czech Vampires is that there aren’t any rules, which starts to make stop-and-start warped journeys like “Sticky Plate/Tired of Being Good” and the title track as well as the no wave horns of “Perms for Pearl” make more sense. Of course, Jealous Yellow pretty much always approach Czech Vampires like it’s the most natural thing in the world, which goes a long way towards the coherence of the album (and, you know, throwing in cathartic punk rippers like “Dirty Hand” throughout the record helps, too). The aforementioned closing jumble of “Let’s Lay an Egg” is the final boss, layering discordant synths, manipulated vocals, and rhythmic excerpts together with a clear-eyed sense of purpose that Jealous Yellow have spent an entire album honing. (Bandcamp link)
Puddled – Puddled
Release date: September 26th Record label: Crafted Sounds Genre: Fuzz rock, noise pop, 90s indie rock, alt-rock, grunge-gaze Formats: CD, cassette, digital Pull Track: Bleed
Puddled are a new band out of Philadelphia formed by a couple of ex-Baltimore rockers–vocalist/guitarist Naomi Davidoff played in Spooled Up, and Kyle Balkin in Leisure Sport. For their self-titled debut EP, they’re a quartet joined by the rhythm section of Laura Banner (bass) and Jesse Hutchison (drums), while Samuel Acchione (of Alex G’s band), who they tapped to produce the record, also contributes keyboard and guitar. Puddled is out via stalwart shoegaze/noise pop label Crafted Sounds, and it’s a natural fit, although Puddled are not quite as interested in textured guitar layers as some of their peers. The seven-song introduction to the quartet is full-on fuzz pop at its most electric and catchy, feeling closer to bands like Superchunk, The Breeders, or even Screaming Females than your canonical shoegaze acts. Davidoff is a strong and attention-grabbing vocalist, holding her own among the rest of the band’s spirited blasts of noise. Though it’s only eighteen minutes long, Puddled finds space for both power-punk bullet trains and some more contemplative moments, too, providing examples of the full range of Davidoff’s songwriting in a fuzzed-out but easy-to-digest package.
Puddled kick off their on-record debut with their version of a slow burn in “This Time”. The song, which does seem to draw from the disintegration of a relationship, isn’t quite the band’s own “Like a Fool”, but it does take about a minute to properly kick in and let the cathartic fuzzed-out melodies flow. “Bleed” is the sound of the dam fully breaking, an all-in fuzz-pop-rocker that demonstrates that, while Puddled may love distorted guitars, they’re hardly gazing down at their feet when it comes to energy. A sturdy and consistent debut record, just about every song on Puddled is worth a mention–it’s hard not to root for a band that pulls together a stretch like the melodic tornado of “Bleed”, the dreamy, propulsive “Same”, and the fuzz-punk-in-a-blender “Between”. Puddled call themselves a “grunge and alternative rock band”, which is probably more accurate than shoegaze–even on the lighter songs on the EP, like the (initially) low-key “Tides”, there are both kinetic guitars and powerhouse drumming from Hutchinson to continue Puddled’s impressive streak. Our clearest glimpse at Puddled might come in the EP’s final track, “Space”, which leaves just enough of the absence implied by its title around Davidoff’s vocals to present a transparent picture. Of course, Puddled end the song (and subsequently the record) by launching into a huge, instrumental, melodic outro, so don’t worry about any deficiencies in that department, either. (Bandcamp link)
Rosy Overdrive 