Hey there! Welcome to the blog! I’m quite excited for what we have coming up in Pressing Concerns this week, as it’s the one where I finally get around to covering a bunch of albums that I’ve been meaning to cover for a while now. With that in mind, the Monday post offers up two albums that came out last month (LPs from TJ Douglas and The Drin) and two albums from May (from Percy and Big Fat Head).
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.
TJ Douglas – Dying
Release date: June 14th Record label: Team Love Genre: Indie folk, singer-songwriter Formats: Vinyl, cassette, digital Pull Track: It Means What It Means
New York folk singer-songwriter TJ Douglas has been steadily making music for nearly a decade now–their debut (Joey) came out in 2015, the album that caught my attention (Our Lady Star of the Sea, Help and Protect Us) arrived a couple years later, they self-released an hourlong digital album during the pandemic (Lo) that got an abbreviated cassette reissue in 2022 (Lo 2.0). There’s a good deal of familiarity to be found on Dying, their latest album–Douglas’ distinct punctual but laid-back vocals are still accompanied by little more than an acoustic guitar, they’re once again working with Team Love Records (which put out Our Lady Star of the Sea…), the album was once again recorded by Douglas and longtime collaborator Kyle Morgan, and, like a lot of Douglas’ writing, Dying deals with theology and spirituality in some roundabout way. Previous Douglas records have approached this topic from different angles in their life–Our Lady Star of the Sea… as a Master’s student pursuing a divinity degree, Lo while attending seminary to become a hospital chaplain–and Dying continues this thread, featuring writing largely drawn from Douglas’ experiences as a palliative care chaplain.
The title of Dying is as blunt as it is accurate–it’s music from somebody whose job quite literally requires them to navigate death with others every day. The brushes with religion and theology in the record are the necessary result of staring down mortality, much of which is presented in the form of conversations between Douglas and those in their care. “You say if your soul chose this life / Then your soul made a fucking mistake,” they sing in “Life on Earth”, an early, crushing highlight that lays bare just how impossible the task before them (and, eventually, all of us) can be at times. Other songs clearly drawn from these experiences aren’t quite as rough, but the foggy suddenness of “Nothing Like Everything (Bathroom Mat)” and the more ambivalent “The Light on the Sidewalk” are still affecting. There’s a lot of Douglas themself in these songs, as well–the lines get blurred on songs like “It Means What It Means”, where they’re overwhelmed and trying to make sense of it all (“I walk home through the doorway / Saying ‘babe, I had a realization today’ / … / ‘You say that everyday’ you say”), or the determination of “I Can Be Anything”. Dying ends with a short benediction called “Help Me Die”–it’s a simple conclusion, and its relatively few lyrics (“Be with me in all my grief / My aching relief”, “When it comes time, I don’t want to fight / So please don’t even try”) land heavily. Douglas isn’t the first person to express such sentiments, but in their case, it’s a powerful instance of practicing what they preach. (Bandcamp link)
The Drin – Elude the Torch
Release date: June 28th Record label: Feel It Genre: Post-punk, garage rock, art punk, psych rock Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull Track: Elude the Torch
In some ways the beating heart of Cincinnati’s impressive, expansive underground garage rock/post-punk scene, The Drin have steadily put out a full-length each year this decade thus far, in the process growing from a Dylan McCartney solo project to a six-piece group and moving from Future Shock to recent Cincinnati transplants Feel It Records. Much of The Drin’s evolution came to a head last year via Today My Friend You Drunk the Venom (their Feel It debut and first clearly full-band effort) and the wild live album “37 Buried at Helltown”. The 2024 offering from The Drin is called Elude the Torch, made once again with what appears to be a stable sextet lineup (McCartney, Eric Dietrich, Ryan Sennett, Luke Cornett, Cole Gilfilen, and Dakota Carlyle, half of which also play in Corker) and once again released via Feel It. To my ears, Elude the Torch is a pretty clear departure from Today My Friend.., which was a charmingly disjointed album that delighted in stacking fiery, out-of-control garage rock right up against experimental, almost post-rock recordings. Elude the Torch is a much more singular experience, a more cautious trek through a world of dark, rhythmic rock music that finds power in steadiness rather than building up and releasing tension.
Opening track “Bascinet” has a bit of that echoing, busy, almost dubbed-over feel of the last Drin album, but these aspects all dance on the periphery of a laser-focused rhythmic garage rock march. Elude the Torch isn’t a one-trick album, as the title track brings live-wire guitar leads into the picture, and “Tomorrow’s Just Laughin’” lets an acoustic guitar evoke folk and blues music right in the middle of it. It all just fits together so naturally, though, that The Drin are able to pull out of the lo-fi basement pop of “Comb the Wreckage” into the noisy post-punk of “Tigers Cage” and then flit from the garage rock confidence of “Lease on Life” into the dub-influenced “Persistence” easily. Perhaps even more so than their previous records, Elude the Torch feels like one entire statement, with the offbeat breathers like “Persistence” and “Canyon” sounding just as necessary to the tapestry as the more outward rockers. Elude the Torch wraps itself up with a ten-minute closing track called “No One Knows for Sure / Prato Della Valle”–the first four minutes are the uplifting rhythms of the first part, before trailing off into its six minute ambient piano finale. It’s the first moment on Elude the Torch where The Drin truly veer away from their center of gravity, having accomplished everything they needed in forty-some minutes already. (Bandcamp link)
Percy – New Phase
Release date: May 15th Record label: Tenfoot Genre: Post-punk, noise rock Formats: CD, digital Pull Track: Last Train to Selby
York post-punk group Percy have been around since 1996, when guitarist/vocalist/lyricist Colin Howard and bassist Andy Wiles formed the band–and, not long after, their own label (Tenfoot Records) to put out their music. Other members of the band have come and gone, but in 2018 they added keyboardist Paula Duck and drummer Jason Wilson and experienced a “Dr. Who-like regeneration” (according to Wiles)–they’ve put out four full-length albums since that point, including their latest, New Phase. On New Phase, Percy sound like a classic British noisy post-punk group–somewhere between the bombast of Mclusky and the unflappable trudging of The Fall, one gets the impression that Percy were a perfectly nice 90s indie band that have gotten more callous and cantankerous with age. Percy are open about aging being an influence on the content of New Phase, but the group head towards middle age kicking and screaming–from the injection of new blood in the synths and percussion to Howard’s inspired vocal performances, there’s plenty of energy to be found in these ten songs.
The absolute cacophony of “Sink Estate Satanic Rites” introduces New Phase with an instrumental that matches an unhinged opening statement from Howard–the “images to haunt the rest of my years” he mentions among the clang of the song is a theme that pops up again in the dark corners of the record, from the unsettling train ride described in the barreling post-punk of “Last Train to Selby” to the frantic self-destruction of “I Can Hear Orgies”, the (sorry) climax of the record. Howard explores personality disorders (“Do You Think I’m on the Spectrum?”), avarice (“Greedy People”), and hypochondria (“You Never Know”) with a droll British attitude–singing about these more worldly concerns, it becomes clear that, while the frequently sarcastic and hyperbolic Howard narrations aren’t precisely autobiographical, there’s something clearly close to home about these caricatures. New Phase is a thrilling listen because the rest of Percy match the gripping, rollercoaster-ride journey of its frontperson, with breakneck garage-post-punk like “Do You Think I’m on the Spectrum?” sitting alongside violin-aided Mekons-y/The Ex-y punk (“Thinking of Jacking It in Again”) and the atmospheric, restrained six-minute closing track, “Afterlife”. After a couple of songs that either end in or swim in death before it, “Afterlife” is an appropriate way to send the record off, but Percy hardly sound dead as they flesh out their ode to the next life. Call it a New Phase. (Bandcamp link)
Big Fat Head – Bobo Rising
Release date: May 31st Record label: Clean Demon Genre: Post-punk, noise pop, 90s indie rock, experimental rock Formats: Cassette, digital Pull Track: Ricochet
Big Fat Head are a new-ish band that seem to rep Columbus and Ohio in general a good deal, which I appreciate. Started by vocalist/guitarist Nate Wilder in Athens, the project eventually moved to Columbus and became a sturdy five-piece band (featuring vocalist/bassist Olivia Stefanoff, guitarist Jordan “Flat-pack” Latas, synth player Felicity Gunn, and percussionist Stanic Russ). After some Wilder solo releases, 2022’s Villain Pop EP was the first quintet release, and now Big Fat Head have their first full-band album in Bobo Rising. As if the full-band expansion wasn’t enough, the band have also allowed plenty of other Buckeye fingerprints on their most recent record–it was recorded with John Hoffman of Cincinnati’s Vacation, features contribution from members of Columbus bands Tetnis, Confusions, and Golomb, and the title of the album even refers to Columbus’ Cafe Bourbon Street. Bobo Rising is, subsequently, a fairly all-over-the-place rock record–neither the sparkling jangle pop of The Laughing Chimes nor the bedroom folk-indebted sound of Villagerrr, Big Fat Head have a kitchen sink sound featuring bits of fuzzed-out garage rock, post-punk, lo-fi pop, and even a bit of shoegaze on Bobo Rising.
Bobo Rising feels almost deliberately hard to get a handle on as it kicks off with three fairly different-sounding tracks: album opener “Sneak” is a piece of messed-up, fuzzed-out country-tinged garage punk, “Pit-a-pat” veers into suave, smooth, and relatively minimal bass-led post-punk, and “Spiderweb” lets the synths and drum machines sit up front in service of a completely different experience than either of the songs preceding it. If Bobo Rising ever approaches a “rhythm”, it’s probably around the center of the album, where the 90s indie rock buzz of “Ricochet”, the shoegaze/Bailter Space-y noise pop of “Kahiki”, and the slacker mess of “Pendulum” all feel at the very least in the same galaxy. Still, plenty of Big Fat Head is unlocked in this stretch–for instance, when they go full wall-of-sound in “Kahiki”, an impressive mode that Bobo Rising only leans on one other time (towards the end of the hypnotic “Who Shot the Messenger?”). Taking left turns up until its end, Bobo Rising plays us out with the bizarre grooves of “Let It Go” and “Keep It Up”, the latter of which begins as a skeletal Guided by Voices-esque lo-fi pop rocker but closes with surging, distorted rock and roll–how else could a central Ohio indie rock record end? (Bandcamp link)
Hey, it’s the Fourth of July! I don’t think I’ve ever done a post on the fourth (that’s the United States’ Independence Day, for people blissfully unaware) before, but I had four albums coming out this week I wanted to write about, and so we’re celebrating America with four LPs from American bands and artists: Bacchae, The Dreaded Laramie, Wild Powwers, and Mark Sims. For those with a long weekend, we also had a Monday Pressing Concerns (featuring Growing Stone, Lame Drivers, Polkadot, and Abel) and the June 2024 playlist on Tuesday, which has plenty of music to get you through the holidays.
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.
Bacchae – Next Time
Release date: July 5th Record label: Get Better Genre: Punk rock, post-punk Formats: Digital Pull Track: Evening Drive
One of my favorite albums from 2020 was Pleasure Vision by Bacchae, the Washington, D.C.-based quartet’s sophomore record. Recorded with J. Robbins, it was a potent D.C. rock record that lobbed bits of furious punk rock, spiky post-punk, and polished pop rock out in equal measure. I’ve been anticipating the next Bacchae (pronounced “Bock-eye”, per their Bandcamp page) album for a while now, and so I’m thrilled that Next Time has finally arrived four years later. Once again recorded with Robbins, the band (vocalist/keyboardist Katie McD, bassist Rena Hagins, drummer Eileen O’Grady, and guitarist Andrew Breiner) pick up where they left off on Next Time–up to a point, at least. On their latest album, Bacchae incorporate their sides a bit more seamlessly–its ten tracks aren’t as easy to sort into “punk song”, “post-punk song”, “pop song”, et cetera. Although the disjointedness of Pleasure Vision was part of its charm for me, this level of evolution feels like a good move for Bacchae. At the very least, it works very well for Next Time, a record that’s nervous, fiery, and spirited–the band use a steady but forceful hand to guide us through these songs in a unified way.
“Everything’s busy, it’s overwhelming / Everything’s big and loud,” mumbles McD in the verses of opening track “Try”, a dour-sounding sludge-punk song that introduces the darkness (in how it captures futility and even despair) and lightness (the way McD jumps out of the gutter in the chorus to remind us how strong of a vocalist we have on hand here) of Bacchae. McD’s writing in the twitching title track (a speedy, agitated garage punk song) and “Drop Dead Gorgeous” (Bacchae at their pop punk brattiest) responds to the overloading assaults of information firehoses and unattainable idealized lifestyles with a steam-letting, while the corporate world/“work culture”-based songs on Next Time treat the subject the way it deserves–pure rage (“Cooler Talk”) and detached contempt (“Dead Man”). Some of my favorite moments on Next Time are the less bombastic ones–specifically, album tracks like “New Jersey”, “Feeling the Same”, and “Evening Drive” showcase just how strong Bacchae is operating at the moment. With “New Jersey”, the band nail a complicated but cathartic break-up anthem like it’s no big deal, while “Feeling the Same” reaches back to early, barebones post-punk to capture the scariness of something a lot less certain than an ending–a beginning. “Evening Drive” is Bacchae’s version of a car song–a propulsive beat and exciting guitar soloing, yes, but McD is still throwing out harrowing descriptions of sharks in the water and other isolation-evoking images. “Hey, maybe / We’ll wait and see / Delay the end / We’ll bide our time,” sings McD in the chorus. Combined with the backing music, the whole ordeal feels great–but then again, so does hitting the slots one more time. (Bandcamp link)
The Dreaded Laramie – Princess Feedback
Release date: July 5th Record label: Smartpunk Genre: Pop punk, power pop, alt-rock Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull Track: Life Is Funny
In the first lyrics you hear on Princess Feedback, the debut album from Nashville’s The Dreaded Laramie, lead singer M.C. Cunningham prays for the painful death of an ex–and in the very next line, Cunningham sings “I don’t need you to tell me I’m pathetic / I understand what I’m doing”. The title of this song is “Mess”–taking all of this together, one can start to get a sense of just what The Dreaded Laramie have in store for us with their first full-length. After releasing The Dreaded LaramiE.P. in 2019 and Everything a Girl Could Ask in 2022, the quartet (Cunningham on vocals and guitar, guitarist Zach Anderson, drummer, Andrew Mankin, and bassist Drew Swisher) have chosen to put together a first album that’s as huge and polished-sounding as its inner contents are messy and uncomfortable. Musically, The Dreaded Laramie are power pop/pop punk mercenaries, zeroing in on the mainstream side of 90s alt-rock revival and blowing it up to eleven. Bands like Guppy-era Charly Bliss, PONY, and Smol Data come to mind, although the group are more devoted to unabashed classic rock/Weezer-y guitar solos than those ones (former collaborator Adam Meisterhans co-wrote a song on this record, and his main band, Rozwell Kid, is one of the relatively few modern acts that match The Dreaded Laramie in this department).
With the grandiosity of The Dreaded Laramie established in their instruments, it’s time for Cunningham to deliver gut-spiller after gut-spiller in her lyrics. Princess Feedback isn’t entirely a break-up album, but that’s certainly one of the topics floating throughout the record, from the aforementioned “Mess” (I didn’t even mention the part about being blackout drunk in that one) to the bouncy depressive anthem “Breakup Songs” (“I should call and ask you whether / We could write breakup songs together,” is the line that gets to the heart of the matter here) to the hesitant skipping of “I Should Go” (“…unless there’s anything else you wanna share”) to the downer ending of “Where’s My Crystal Ball?” Even the songs on Princess Feedback that don’t seem to be about a break-up are still quite personal–as fun as “Life Is Funny” is to listen to, it’s a wildly unhealthy quasi-relationship described therein, and there’s also a song containing the lyric “I wanna take you like communion” in its chorus. The Dreaded Laramie are hardly the first band to discover that bombastic music combined with intimate lyrics can be a potent combination–but, of course, the reason it’s been established as such is because of the wonders writers like Cunningham and the rest of her band can do with it. A nice, big giant explosion obliterates everything in its vicinity, so why not toss your least favorite parts of yourself right in its epicenter? (Bandcamp link)
Wild Powwers – Pop Hits & Total Bummers Vol. 5
Release date: July 2nd Record label: Nadine/Den Tapes Genre: Alt-rock, dream pop, fuzz rock Formats: Vinyl, cassette, digital Pull Track: Gossamer
Seattle trio Wild Powwers have been around for a bit–their debut album came out back in 2014, and, as the title of Pop Hits & Total Bummers Vol. 5 implies, it is indeed the group’s fifth full-length. Their earlier releases might’ve been a little rougher around the edges, but vocalist/guitarist Lara Hilgemann, bassist Jordan Gomes, and drummer Lupe Flores have maintained a pretty consistent sound across their first decade of existence. Pop Hits & Total Bummers Vol. 5 has two tentpoles–heavy, garage-y psychedelic rock is one of them, and a lighter, more polished, almost dream pop sound is the other one. Both ends of Wild Powwers show up in pretty much all of Pop Hits & Total Bummers Vol. 5’s nine songs, the louder peaks tempered by moments of shimmery, reverb-y guitars and Hilgemann’s clear vocals, while the quieter ones occasionally rear up into distorted, tangled instrumentals. Hilgemann is a strong a guitarist as she is a vocalist, with her trailblazing playing forging a path for her singing to construct powerful, gripping rock music in its aftermath, and the rhythm section (and occasional backing vocals from Flores) moves in lockstep with her as well.
Pop Hits & Total Bummers Vol. 5 opens with a flex–the first song on the record, “Looper”, begins with simmering, droning guitar playing for nearly ninety seconds before the rest of the band kick in and Hilgemann launches her opening diatribe. The guitar never relents in its pounding and drilling–it’s up to the steady march of Flores and Gomes and Hilgemann’s just-as-even-attitude on the mic to turn “Looper” into an unlikely anthem. The reverb-y dream pop guitar intro to “Wild Reprise” eventually gives way into a song that’s just as huge in its own way, with the jangly six-string chorus tempering an incredibly strong vocal performance from Hilgemann. The smoldering “Spider Legs” and the retro-tinged “Far Wave” both lean on the rhythm section more than what came before them, but “Sam’s Song” (a clear-eyed, polished ballad) and “Gossamer” (led by a slicing guitar riff and soaring vocals) are distinct from one another as well. There’s hardly a breath to be had in Pop Hits & Total Bummers Vol. 5 until the gut-check that is the first minute of “Guided”–but, as it turns out, it’s necessary for the wrecking ball that the song eventually becomes. It’s a trick that Wild Powwers pull again in the record’s final track, “Baby Teeth”–it floats around for two minutes, and then steadily begins building up for the incinerating finale. At this point, I wouldn’t expect any less from Wild Powwers. (Bandcamp link)
Mark Sims – Take Me Faster
Release date: July 5th Record label: Carousel Horse Genre: Folk, folk rock, country-folk Formats: Digital Pull Track: Take Me Faster
Mark Sims is a bricklayer and folk singer from Columbus, Ohio (currently based out of Sylvania, a suburb of Toledo) who’s played in countless Buckeye State bands over the years (The Tough and Lovely, The Southern Diplomats, The Wells, and Miller Kelton, among others). His solo work of late has come out via his own Carousel Horse Records, part of the Old 3C Label Group run by Paul Nini of Closet Mix and Great Plains–Sims released an album called The Luddite in 2022 via Carousel House, and its follow-up, Take Me Faster, also arrives via the imprint. A fingerstyle guitar player, Sims cites blues artists like Mississippi John Hurt as influences on his playing, although this is more “honest about where the kind of folk music he performs originated” than Take Me Faster is a “blues album”. Traditional folk, country, and blues certainly shade Sims’ writing and playing, true (it’s hard to get songs like the dour “It Never Ends” and the pastoral “Hold on to Me” otherwise), but despite his previous work, he’s not exactly a Luddite, either, as it’s not far off from the worlds of indie folk and rock in parts as well.
Even though it offers up a fairly traditional-sounding title, opening track “Small Town Blues” punches up its acoustic skeleton with electric guitar accents, sounding closer to Jeff Tweedy than Merle Travis. Of course, one does need to have a certain tolerance of unadorned “acoustic guitar music” in order to really appreciate Take Me Faster–the aforementioned “It Never Ends” and “Hold on to Me” follow not longer after, yes, and it’s not like the songs succeeding them (“Sometimes I Feel”, a suspended-feeling nature-folk ballad, and the dark fingerpicking of “Oh That I Could”) are much less sparse. It all lends Take Me Faster an “active listening” quality, although Sims does offer up some folk songs with recognizable pop moments later on in the form of “The Blue Dube” and “Sitting on the Porch” (which does indeed sound like it’d sound great in its titular location). Penultimate track “I’m Always By Your Side” finds Sims pushing himself as a vocalist more than previously, a simply effective piece of balladry that’d be a strong closing statement–but instead, we’re played out with the psychedelic country haze of the title track. The steady drumbeat and electric echoes are unlike anything else on Take Me Faster, but Mark Sims sounds just as home here as he does with the acoustic in his lap. (Bandcamp link)
Now we’re at the real halfway mark of the year (not just the mid-June “music blog mid-year list season” mark of the year), it’s time to wrap up all the good music I heard in June of this year. This month’s playlist has a bunch of stuff I’ve written about already in some form, as well as some brand-new faces and a few welcome returns. It’s a good one!
Nobody has more than one song on this playlist. Forty different songs, forty different artists.
Here is where you can listen to the playlist on various streaming services: Spotify, Tidal (missing a song), 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.
“Forward March”, Laybrum From Hungry for the Other Thing (2024, Pleasure Tapes)
The debut album from Philadelphia’s Andrew Santora (aka Laybrum) is an impressively disparate collection of songs, and it saves one of its best tricks for last. Hungry for the Other Thing closes with “Forward March”, which stretches to six minutes, but–like its title suggests–it’s rolling full steam ahead for the majority of its length. Santora and crew pound out a massive, fuzzed-out hookfest from the starting gate and largely keep the song’s structure intact as they progress–a swarm of synths eventually surfaces at its big finish, but only after Laybrum have gotten everything they needed out of it. Read more about Hungry for the Other Thing here.
“Every Time I Hear”, Sharp Pins From Radio DDR (2024, Hallogallo)
The second Sharp Pins album, Radio DDR, was initially released only on Bandcamp in May to benefit the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund, but now that the record (one of my favorites of 2024 so far, by the way) is streaming, it’s time to throw “Every Time I Hear”, its brilliant opening song, onto a playlist. Chicago’s Kai Slater had already established himself as an emergent power pop talent with last year’s Turtle Rock, and he begins Radio DDR with a song that feels like a huge step forward. Triumphant electric guitars blast forward a path that traverses jangly college rock and the wistful melodies of early Guided by Voices with a sound that’s bigger than anything Sharp Pins has offered up before now.
“Hallelujah”, Bad Moves From Wearing Out the Refrain (2024, Don Giovanni)
We don’t need to overcomplicate this: every Bad Moves album thus far has been an exhilarating, massive rock and roll success, and we’re receiving every indication that the D.C. power-pop-punk quartet’s third record is going to keep the streak alive. No shade to the bummer pop anthem “New Year’s Reprieve”, but “Hallelujah” is my favorite piece of Wearing Out the Refrain (due in September) thus far. One of my favorite strengths of Bad Moves has been their ability to power through some high-concept writing while remaining fun, boisterous, and danceable, and “Hallelujah” follows in the grand tradition of Bad Moves classics like “Spirit FM” and “Party With the Kids Who Wanna Party With You”. It’s Bad Moves’ world, and we’re just trying to keep up with it.
“Vital Signs”, Grr Ant From Once Upon a Time in Battersea (2024, Crafting Room)
Once Upon a Time in Battersea is an overstuffed, eager album of guitar pop anthems. London’s Grant Gillingham has made no secret of his love of 80s underground music–post-punk, C86 indie pop, college rock–and his debut solo album pulls together all of these influences ambitiously and successfully (if you like bright, clanging guitar leads, solid post-punk basslines, galloping drumbeats, and low-key but melodic vocals–they’re all here!). “Vital Signs” kicks off the record with a gigantic statement, sounding trebly and warbly and yet absolutely huge at the same time, with synthesizers braying over the tuneful wall of sound and Gillingham’s steady vocal performance. Read more about Once Upon a Time in Battersea here.
“Texting & Driving”, GUPPY From Something Is Happening… (2024, Lauren)
I’d like to thank GUPPY for writing the song of my intrusive thoughts’ summer. In just about every aspect, “Texting & Driving” sounds like a cartoon come to life–the music, which sounds bouncy and colorful and gooey, the fairly impressive yet concerning vocal performance from frontperson J Lebow, and the lyrics, which do indeed concern the titular activity but also contain detours into catching Kony and Osama Bin Laden and “texting God in my head / (also known as praying)”. I’ll probably never be free of “Texting & Driving”–the question is whether or not the last thing I hear on my deathbed will be “Why would they let a bitch like me operate heavy machinery?” or “Mission accomplished, because America’s awesome”.
“Bruised”, Laughing From Because It’s True (2024, Meritorio/Celluloid Lunch)
A power pop star has been born on Because It’s True, the debut album from Montreal’s Laughing. It’s a collision of ragged pop music, an album that fires up a seemingly-endless bag of tricks to hook the listener immediately and keep the engines running long past the initial burst. The classic power pop balance between electric bluster and practiced shyness is struck in single and obvious “hit” “Bruised”, which is absolutely brimming with winning melodies and professional losers. Read more about Because It’s True here.
“Enredados (Misty’s Mix)”, Las Nubes From Tormentas Malsanas (2024, Spinda/Godless America/Sweat)
Tormentas Malsanas is loud and crunchy rock and roll music at its loudest and crunchiest. Miami’s Las Nubes deal in the more massive end of the 90s alt-rock spectrum, incorporating shoegaze and dream pop atmospherics with even a bit of punk energy–Breeders comparisons aren’t inaccurate, but, there’s a grunge-y heaviness to their sound and it packs a punch as strong as good psych-rock does, too. Right in the middle of the record is Las Nubes’ most “accessible” moment in the form of “Enredados (Misty’s Mix)”, finding the band dealing in “digestible” punky alt-rock that’s nonetheless sturdy enough to stand up against some of the more towering compositions found on Tormentas Malsanas. Read more about Tormentas Malsanas here.
“She’s Leaving You”, MJ Lenderman From Manning Fireworks (2024, Anti-)
You’re supposed to start sucking after you blow up and jump to a bigger label, I think, but MJ Lenderman clearly hasn’t gotten the memo yet. “She’s Leaving You” accompanied the announcement of September’s upcoming Manning Fireworks (which will also feature last year’s superb “Rudolph”), and it’s done nothing to dampen my enthusiasm for the record. As Lenderman gets more and more of a leash to make his solo music, he’s inching closer to the grandiosity of his north star, the Drive-By Truckers–and that’s perfectly fine by me, especially when he brings the energy like he does in “She’s Leaving You”. “It falls apart, we all got work to do,” is far from the most instantly memorable Lenderman refrain, but it plays along with the rest of the song nicely, a deceptively astute combination that bodes well for Lenderman’s fire in the long haul.
“Left in the Sun”, Local Drags From City in a Room (2024, Stardumb)
This song rules. Power pop wizards Local Drags first showed up on my radar last year via the excellent Mess of Everything, one of my favorite albums of 2023, and they’ve solidified their status as the best thing to come out of Springfield, Illinois since that guy with the tall hat by putting out another solid collection of exquisite Midwestern guitar pop a year later in City in a Room. Like Mess of Everything, it’s short and sweet, but my favorite song on the album, “Left in the Sun”, really only needs a few seconds to get its hooks in you. With a chorus as strong as the one this song has, it’s impressive that Local Drags wait a whole thirty seconds before launching into it, but thankfully the New Miserable Experience-level opening guitar lead and the effortless melodies in the verses both hold up their parts, too.
“Midcoast Kids”, Hayes Noble From As It Was, As We Were (2024, 2-2-1 Press)
Hayes Noble recently relocated from the small northwestern Illinois town in which he grew up to Spokane, but the teenage fuzz rock devotee couldn’t help but lay down one more massive Midwestern rock and roll statement before leaving the Driftless Area. Noble’s second full-length, As It Was, As We Were, sounds like a freight train counterbalanced by the earnest writing at the center of the storm. The most cathartic moment on As It Was, As We Were is “Midcoast Kids”, a song that deals with everything by turning the guitars up loud and driving around all over town “till curfew”. Noble situates us along the Mississippi, but between the guitars and attitude, it’s timeless and universal. Read more about As It Was, As We Were here.
“Simply the Best”, Swiftumz From Simply the Best (2024, Empty Cellar)
Simply the Best is the first record from Swiftumz’s Christopher McVicker since 2015, but the “songwriter’s songwriter” has remained beloved in his Bay Area home in the intervening years. The LP provides ten shining examples of McVicker’s ability to come up with and execute a sublime pop song–sometimes fuzzy and distorted, other times sweet and jangly, Simply the Best is precisely-focused on hooks while also retaining the earnest intimacy of bedroom pop. The mid-tempo, electric power pop strut of the opening title track is an instant ‘hit’, and even though there’s a lot else to like on Simply the Best, I think this song is still my favorite. Read more about Simply the Best here.
“High on the Job”, Workers Comp From Workers Comp (2024, Ever/Never)
Between 2022 and 2023, Workers Comp released three different four-song cassette EPs and a 7” single, all of which displayed a strong grasp of distorted, blustery lo-fi garage rock. Their first long-player is a compilation of this previously-released material, put out through Ever/Never Records, and Workers Comp is an excellent addition to the world of blown-out, ragged Americana and rock and roll. Workers Comp emerged fully formed on their debut EP, One Horse Pony, which includes the simple rock and roll throwback “High on the Job”, my favorite song on the whole compilation. The verses chug with an incredibly potent, dry patience, and the chorus (little more than the song’s title) sends us home (even if we’re all at our respective workplaces). Read more about Workers Comp here.
“Golden Sedan”, Grocer From Bless Me (2024, Grind Select)
Grocer have been an intriguing band to me for a while now–a Philadelphia trio seemingly splitting vocal duties evenly among themselves and playing with Exploding in Sound-extended-universe groups like Kal Marks, Pile, and Speedy Ortiz. Their third album, Bless Me, is a solid collection of indie rock that’s both “art” and “pop”, and the deceptive slacker vibes contained in “Golden Sedan” have powered the song towards being one of my favorite new discoveries in recent memory. Sort of sounding like if Pile was a pop band, “Golden Sedan” is a restrained, neatly-organized rock and roll track that is polished and well-executed right up to the controlled demolition at the song’s close.
“Write It in the Sky”, The Umbrellas From Write It in the Sky (2022, Slumberland)
I had the extremely good fortune of seeing The Umbrellas live last month, and while I already knew that their most recent album, Fairweather Friend, ruled, witnessing the San Francisco jangle pop quartet live gave me a renewed appreciation for “Write It in the Sky”, their 2022 non-album single that bridged the gap between their first two LPs. In hindsight, it’s easy to see how “Write It in the Sky” broke things open for the group–there’s a barreling-forward, exhilarating energy to The Umbrellas’ performance of the song that indicated where they were going to go after the relatively-restrained guitar pop of their (still quite good) 2021 self-titled debut. Both live and in the studio, The Umbrellas have only uncovered more gold by following down the path “Write It in the Sky” set.
“In My Japanese Compact”, Planet 81 From Escape!! to…Planet 81 (2024)
The debut album from Justin Cohn’s Planet 81, Escape!!, embraces the music from the year implied by the project name (namely prog-pop, sophisti-pop, funk, R&B, disco, and power pop/new wave) incredibly enthusiastically. Escape!! has plenty of irons in its aural fire, merely one of which is a desire to make vintage 80s pop in a way that sounds huge and current. The Prince-wave “In My Japanese Compact”, a zippy, cool-as-hell 80s “car song” if I’ve ever heard one, is definitely in the running for the biggest pop success on Escape!!–look, it has plenty of competition, but this is one of those songs that really knows how to drill its way into your head. Read more about Escape!! here.
“Western Leisure”, Oh Boland From Western Leisure (2024, Meritorio/Safe Suburban Home)
It’s been an incredible year for Meritorio Records between Dancer, Rural France, and Laughing, but don’t sleep on the latest record from Irish garage-punks Oh Boland, either. Their third full-length, Western Leisure, is a genuinely weird record that looks beyond the signature sound of the band (which is now effectively a Niall Murphy solo project) and does, indeed, snag a bit from the worlds of country and western music. The album’s title track is a particularly memorable diversion, a tipsy barroom rocker that has ringing piano and pedal steel in its arsenal, but they’re (particularly with the latter) deployed smartly and enthusiastically rather than merely as a gimmick.
“Live Without”, Program From It’s a Sign (2024, Anti Fade)
It’s a Sign, the long-anticipated (by me, at least) second album from Melbourne guitar pop group Program is fresh off of an appearance in Rosy Overdrive’s Top 40 Albums of 2024, So Far, so let’s hear a song from it, why don’t we? You can’t really go wrong on It’s a Sign, a collection of timeless laid-back pop songs with a Flying Nun influence, but “Live Without” in particular is an instantly-catchy success. Laying aside some of their more droning and post-punk impulses, “Live Without” is pure sugar, recalling the moments when bands like The Clean and Tall Dwarfs similarly followed their pop muses in the midst of more expansive records.
“Purple Hearts Hardly Bruise”, Friends of Cesar Romero From Last Summer a Year from Now (2024, Doomed Babe)
Another month, another great mini-release of strong power pop/garage rock from J. Waylon Porcupine. After March’s excellent “More Like Norman Fucking Mailer” single, the latest dispatch from the South Dakotan’s Friends of Cesar Romero project is Last Summer a Year from Now, a lightning-round, five-songs-in-under-ten-minutes EP. After leaning a bit into his punk/garage side in opening track “Kinetic Threat”, “Purple Hearts Hardly Bruise” is the no-strings-attached “hit” of the EP. The verse melody immediately establishes “Purple Hearts Hardly Bruise” as a surefire success–all Friends of Cesar Romero have to do is ride the momentum to nail another classic 90-second power pop song.
“I’m All Fucked Up”, This Is Lorelei From Box for Buddy, Box for Star (2024, Double Double Whammy)
I truly do love This Is Lorelei. I listened to one of the countless EPs from Nate Amos’ solo project back in 2020, and I’ve been hooked ever since. Box for Buddy, Box for Star is the first This Is Lorelei album since his main band, Water from Your Eyes, has really blown up, and is subsequently the first This Is Lorelei album a lot of people have heard. Accordingly, Amos has cleaned up the frequently messy, anarchic pop instincts of the project into something resembling “respectful folk-tinged indie pop”, but this is still This Is Lorelei we’re talking about. You’ll never be able to chase stuff like “I’m All Fucked Up” out of him. Impossibly wordy, impossibly catchy, just plain weird–it’s everything I’ve come to love about This Is Lorelei, and there’s something disorienting about how little the shined-up acoustic guitars and the clarity in the various-toned Amoses (singing with himself) change the vibe.
“Fictional Environment Dream”, Guided by Voices From Strut of Kings (2024, GBV, Inc.)
Strut of Kings, the so-called “only Guided by Voices album of 2024”, sounds pretty good to me so far! I’m not sure if it tops their trio of 2023 records as a whole, but the highlights feel very high this time around–in particular, lead single “Serene King”, excitable closing track “Bicycle Garden”, and “Fictional Environment Dream”, the one I’ve gone with for the playlist. It’s a mid-tempo rocker that has the wistfulness of Robert Pollard’s more “sensitive” writing but delivered with full-band backing–this describes a lot of recent Guided by Voices material, I know, but for whatever reason everything works together to let “Fictional Environment Dream” soar particularly high for four minutes.
“Closure”, Daniel Brouns From Stock Music for the Cosmos (2024, Anxiety Blanket)
Most of the songs on Stock Music for the Cosmos, the debut solo album from Daniel Brouns, have acoustic, folk-ish skeletons, but Brouns isn’t afraid of using synths and rock instrumentation to tease them out. Combined with Brouns’ deep voice and his personal lyric-writing, the record reminds me a lot of Pedro the Lion’s David Bazan. Stock Music for the Cosmos is made up discrete moments from Brouns’ life presented chronologically–as Stock Music for the Cosmos advances, lines get blurred and the songs begin to bleed into each other. “Closure” is an beautiful-sounding song about something ugly and painful, namely a relationship that implodes so palpably that it permanently alters several friendships in both of the central players’ lives. Read more about Stock Music for the Cosmos here.
“If There’s Nothing Left to Say”, Polkadot From …to Be Crushed (2024, Count Your Lucky Stars)
I’m not sure exactly what I would’ve expected a Bay Area indie rock group signed to a legendary emo imprint to sound like, but …to Be Crushed is a pretty good approximation of the midpoint between the indie pop scene around Polkadot and the emo-tinged 90s indie rock side of their label, Count Your Lucky Stars. …to Be Crushed suggests that the distance between twee and emo isn’t as great as it might seem, and the best song on the album is “If There’s Nothing Left to Say”, one of the band’s clearest embraces of indie pop. “I don’t wanna be stuck in this place anymore / Or maybe I do, I guess, now I’m not so sure,” vocalist Daney Espiritu sings in the song’s chorus–other Bay Area bands might use a dream pop haze to portray confusion, but for Polkadot, it’s crystal clear. Read more about …to Be Crushed here.
“Line of Demarcation”, Blame Shifters From Everyone Must Go (2024)
I’ll tell you what–I’ll always appreciate an obscure rock and roll band that’s performing like every eye in the world is upon them. Blame Shifters are a trio from Boston who draw equally from post-hardcore and guitar pop (it sounds a little bit like the classic “garage rock/post-punk” combo) on Everyone Must Go, and in recent years they’ve weathered the death of guitarist and songwriter Chris Simmons to continue making fiery, socially-conscious, globally-concerned rock music. “Line of Demarcation” is a Minutemen-style rant about redlining, inequality, and stark differences in affluence that can be found in their home city and its surrounding suburbs. One doesn’t need to know anything about the racist urban history of Boston to get the gist of Blame Shifters’ message here.
“Be Someone Else”, Extra Arms From RADAR (2024, Setterwind)
Ryan Allen is a power pop/pop punk ringer from Detroit who’s been really churning out records lately, both under his own name and via his band Extra Arms. Extra Arms’ latest album is RADAR, a ten-song, twenty-minute storm of pop hooks that’s probably my favorite thing I’ve heard from the musician yet. Out of a few different options, I’ve gone with the massive opening track “Be Someone Else”, a smooth, retro-tinged power pop anthem in which Allen cajoles the subject of the song to give up their attempts to do what its title suggests. Extra Arms certainly borrow from the past to make “Be Someone Else” hit as strongly as it does, but it’s so enthusiastic and natural-feeling that they’re clearly only following their own advice.
“Something Looming”, Marcel Wave From Something Looming (2024, Feel It/Upset the Rhythm)
Marcel Wave are a quintet from London who have been around since at least 2019 but have only just now offered up their first full-length, Something Looming. With it, the band have turned in a confident, polished, and accessible first statement following in the grand tradition of British “post-punk”/“indie pop” records, offbeat and keyboard-damaged but quite accessible. Something Looming is “catchy” in some form for pretty much its entire length, but sometimes it’s more traditionally so than others–the garage-pop bounce of the title track is one of the most immediate ones, hooking the listener early on in the runtime. Read more about Something Looming here.
“Bystander Apathy”, Silicone Values From How to Survive When People Don’t Like You and You Don’t Like Them (2024, SDZ)
Whoa, a lo-fi garage rock album with a comically long title by a band that has “Silicone” in their name? I gotta check this out. Apparently, Silicone Values are a “collective” from Bristol that have been reliably churning out singles of this stuff since 2020, and How to Survive When People Don’t Like You and You Don’t Like Them collects the fifteen songs they’d put out thus far on vinyl via French label SDZ. “Bystander Apathy” is probably the “hit” of the album, taking the ornerier garage-punk elements of the band and concentrating it to the tune of a three-minute British guitar pop tune (it’s still got a post-punk bite, don’t worry, but those early punk rockers would’ve really enjoyed a really catchy chorus that proclaimed “Bystander apathy / what a total failure”).
“Country Song”, Growing Stone From Death of a Momma’s Boy (2024, Near Mint)
Skylar Sarkis first became known to me as the frontperson of 90s indie rock/punk revivalists Taking Meds, but Death of a Mama’s Boy, the second album from his Growing Stone solo project, showcases a different side of Sarkis entirely. It’s acoustic guitar-based, featuring transparent, conversational lyricism, and darkly ornate in its arrangements. On Death of a Mama’s Boy, Sarkis tries on a few different aliases–orchestral pop singer, gothic folk troubadour, and, on one of my favorite songs on the record, a country balladeer. The slow-moving meditation of “Country Song” is shockingly straightforward (even on a record with plenty of such moments), and Sarkis’ lyrics are evocative enough that the song’s title isn’t a misleading advertisement. Read more about Death of a Mama’s Boy here.
“How the Ivy Crawls”, Perennial From Art History (2024, Safe Suburban Home/Totally Real/Ernest Jenning Record Co.)
Their third album, Art History, finds dance punk/post-hardcore revivalists Perennial doing exactly what they do best–making excellent rock music and pushing just a bit forward. This time around, the 60s pop rock influence feels less “implied” than ever and more and more central to their sound, and the experimentation continues to erode into the pop music. “How the Ivy Crawls” is an excellent example of how the band, which can feel like a club bashing a piñata over and over again at times, can also weaponize dynamics when the moment calls for them–the first refrain of the song pulls back, creating a weird, spooky, feedback-laden blank space, and then explodes next time around. Read more about Art History here.
“Awake and Miserable”, Tigerblind From It’s All Gonna Happen to You (2024)
It’s All Gonna Happen to You is self-released and self-recorded, like everything else put out by Dallas’ Cameron McCrary as Tigerblind. I like a lot of this music, but I was particularly struck by the album’s lo-fi pop whimsy delivered in a fluffy and somewhat sensitive package, reminding me of bands like Sparklehorse, early Grandaddy, and The Gerbils. It’s All Gonna Happen to You is a little bit punk, a little bit “confessional”, a little experimental, and late-record highlight “Awake and Miserable” has a lot of what makes the record work as well as it does. Tigerblind takes an uncertain but firm step forward with a steady bass guitar part and the track eventually blossoms into a mid-tempo, earnest, sweeping indie pop anthem. Of course, the song’s called “Awake and Miserable”, so don’t go into it expecting life-affirming lyrics. Read more about It’s All Gonna Happen to You here.
“Your Man”, Membrains From Membrains (2024)
There are days where I find myself listening to a ton of music and not really taking anything from any of it. On those days, I need a jolt to get my head back in the game and start really engaging with it again. Thankfully, bands like Philly garage rock five-piece Membrains are still roaming the streets with their aural defibrillators. Their self-titled debut will almost certainly do the trick, and if you aren’t entirely convinced, I suggest you skip to the sixth (out of eight) song on the record, “Your Man”. This is the kind of lit fuse, punk-fluent garage rock and roll that the revivalists were attempting (and frequently failing, though not always) to reach in the 2000s. This is power pop at the “power” end of the spectrum, a helicopter of hooks passing just a bit too low over the City of Brotherly Love.
“The Drummer”, Alexei Shishkin From Open Door Policy (2024, Candlepin)
Open Door Policy, the second Alexei Shishkin album of 2024, finds the Queens singer-songwriter cleaning and polishing up his sound. This time around Shishkin used both a proper studio (Bradford Krieger’s Big Nice Studio) and a bunch of collaborators, ending up with a record that sounds like the more refined, pop-friendly sides of Shishkin’s 90s indie rock influences. The first half of Open Door Policy in particular feels like a lost underground “best of” compilation, with the laid-back pop of opening track “The Drummer” kicking off the festivities expertly. Read more about Open Door Policy here.
“Acting Tough”, Shit Present From Acting Tough (2024, Specialist Subject)
You know I’m always down for some emo-tinged British indie-pop-punk–and the latest release from Exeter’s Shit Present is a potent dose of it. The six-song Acting Tough EP follows last year’s What Still Gets Me LP, and for whatever reason it gripped me in a way that the group’s previous releases hadn’t. The EP’s opening title track comes out of the gate roaring–it’s incredibly catchy and polished, true, but the refrain (“It’s such a shame to have to see you acting tough / Did somebody make you feel like you aren’t good enough”) finds Shit Present hardly holding back less-pleasant emotions and realizations.
“Sorry Signal”, Tamara Qaddoumi From Sorry Signal (2024)
Tamara Qaddoumi is a Lebanese/Kuwaiti indie pop singer-songwriter who’s been steadily releasing EPs since the late 2010s. Sorry Signal is her third EP, and the four-song record is an intriguing collection of icy post-punk and synthpop. My favorite song on Sorry Signal is the title track, which closes the record with a skittering post-punk rhythm section combined with the brighter hues of Qaddoumi’s vocals. Eventually, “Sorry Signal” blossoms into a synth-driven darkwave-influenced track, although it’s a natural progression from its more plainly-adorned beginning.
“1000000th Song”, Night Court From Shit Split Part Duh (2024, Hovercraft/Green Noise)
Earlier this year, Vancouver’s Night Court teamed up with like-minded punk-pop merchants The Dumpies to cram nine songs onto a split 7”. Of the two sides, Night Court’s is probably the less “punk” one, as the Canadians use their allotted time to run through a couple of brief but laser-focused power pop anthems. “1000000th Song” is a particularly potent display of the group’s power–it’s a punk-pop anthem that makes its mark in under a minute, with the flagging, spirited pessimism at its core giving it another dimension regardless. Read more about Shit Split Part Duh here.
“Saturnia”, Max Blansjaar From False Comforts (2024, Beanie Tapes)
The first LP from Oxford’s Max Blansjaar is a successful and personable pop album, spit-shined to enhance the emerging talent at the center of it all. Blansjaar is a quietly confident vocalist, and as a lyricist his aptitude is apparent from the beginning of False Comforts. His writing is reminiscent of more rambling corners of folk and rock music, but False Comforts turns the free-flowing narratives on their heads by corralling them with tight instrumentals and a stoic delivery from Blansjaar himself. The confident, arm-swinging studio pop of “Saturnia” has a few weird touches but is still a wildly engrossing start to the record (probably because of its few moments of chaos stitched alongside the zen found elsewhere in the track). Read more about False Comforts here.
“Beat Happened”, Blair Gun From There Are No Rival Clones Here (2024, sonaBLAST!/Enabler No. 6)
First of all, great song title on this one. Blair Gun are a new (to me, at least) band from San Diego that’s got a bit of garage rock, post-punk, and classic 90s indie rock in the sound of their second album, There Are No Rival Clones Here. “Beat Happened” is the best of all worlds–there’s a smooth post-punk rhythm section, garage rock bluster rearing up every now and again, a catchy, Malkmusian deranged pop performance from the lead vocalist, and even a few moments of overdriven, fiery garage-post-hardcore that are the most “San Diego” moments here. It’s just an exciting pop song (of the “Rosy Overdrive-fluent” variety) and I’m interested to hear more from Blair Gun.
“Shoes for Runners”, The Co Founder From Never Miss a Good Opportunity to Shut the Fuck Up (2024, Acrobat Unstable)
Out via stalwart emo label Acrobat Unstable, the latest album from Oakland’s The Co Founder is a striking record that combines dark but catchy alt-rock, anthemic pop punk, “heartland rock”, and, yes, a bit of emo in there, too. My favorite song from Never Miss a Good Opportunity to Shut the Fuck Up is “Shoes for Runners”, which contains a huge, brutal chorus “I buy shoes for runners / Knowing you don’t even walk home / I buy shoes for runners / Hypocrite”) that has stuck with me effectively since I first heard it. This band’s been around for nearly a decade now, so I suppose I’m somewhat late to the party, but it certainly bodes well that they’re still able to get it together to make something as potent as “Shoes for Runners”.
“Shed”, Sub*T From Spring Skin (2024, If This Then)
On their latest EP, Brooklyn’s Sub*T plow through five songs that fully embrace the “90s-alt rock revival”–if you had heard that the group (Grace Bennett and Jade Alcantara) had previously recorded an EP with Bully’s Alicia Bognanno, chances are you could’ve made a fairly accurate guess as to what Spring Skin would sound like. That being said, just because Sub*T is in well-trod territory doesn’t lessen the impact of songs like “Shed”, the barreling, slicing semi-title track that’s my favorite one on the EP. The song chugs through a seamless alt-rock foundation, and the vocals are clear and polished but not overly showy. Bennett and Alcantara just hit on something with this one, simple is that.
“Figure Me Out”, Twikipedia From For the Rest of Your Life (2024)
Back at the beginning of the year, I heard Still-Life, a charming lo-fi bedroom pop EP from Rio de Janeiro’s Twikipedia. As it turns out, the “20 year old experimental artist and producer” behind Twikipedia had an entire 50-minute full-length album coming merely months later in the form of For the Rest of Your Life, a record that takes a big step forward in the form of massive, fuzzed-out nü-shoegaze (but while still holding onto “pop” more than a lot of bigger bands in the genre do). “Figure Me Out” is the “pop hit” of the record to my ears, a distorted power pop tune with a studio pop streak and some stealthily charming synth hooks baked into its 2.5 minute humble-party vibes.
“Windshield Spider”, Riggings From Egg (2024, Horse Complex)
It’s still fair to call Alex Riggs a folk artist on Egg, her debut full-length as Riggings, although that doesn’t exactly capture the blown-open sound that she’s lassoed into place here. The prolific North Carolina singer-songwriter has been pretty open about Chicago experimental folk and post-rock being influences on her sound, and Egg cracks that side of her music wide open with whirring space positioned alongside the songs’ acoustic foundations. After a pretty heavy-duty opening to the record, “Windshield Spider” is Riggings’ version of warm, welcoming folk rock, pulling back the curtain and letting the sun’s rays hit the cobwebs–just admiring it all for a minute before Egg gets back to it. Read more about Egg here.
Hello, and welcome to July! The first Pressing Concerns of the week and the month pulls together three solid albums that came out last week (from Growing Stone, Lame Drivers, and Abel) as well as an LP from Polkadot that came out a month ago. Some nice variety here!
If you’re looking for more new music, you can visit the site directory to see what else we’ve written about lately. If you’d like to support Rosy Overdrive, you can share this (or another) post, or donate here.
Growing Stone – Death of a Mama’s Boy
Release date: June 28th Record label: Near Mint Genre: Indie folk, alt-country, orchestral folk, singer-songwriter, gothic folk Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull Track: Country Song
One of my favorite albums of last year was Dial M for Meds by Taking Meds, a 90s indie rock/punk revivalist record that shot for massive and polished hooks and choruses with a straightforwardness rarely seen in that kind of music. When I heard that Taking Meds frontperson Skylar Sarkis had a side project called Growing Stone which had a new album coming out, I thought “Oh boy, I hope it sounds like Taking Meds!” It does not sound like Taking Meds. Death of a Mama’s Boy is the second Growing Stone album, and it showcases a different side of Sarkis entirely–acoustic guitar-based, transparent, conversational lyricism, and darkly ornate in its arrangements. Death of a Momma’s Boy was recorded by emo-musician-turned-orchestral popper Jimmy Montague, and instrumental duties are largely shared between Sarkis and Montague with a couple of guest appearances (Chet Wasted’s Jacob McCabe on trumpet, former Taking Meds drummer Matt Battle on “Spring in New York”). Sometimes Sarkis sounds like a punk vocalist singing more delicate music (like a bit of Greg Barnett of even Craig Finn’s solo work), other times like somebody who’s a natural gothic folk troubadour.
Growing Stone try on a few different versions of their core sound on Death of a Mama’s Boy–for one, there’s Skylar Sarkis the introspective folk-tronica-pop singer, displayed on the first two songs on the record, the gliding “Apple Church Rd” and the sleepy drum machine-led “The Keep”. Then there’s Sarkis the balladeer, appearing on two of the best songs on the record, “Country Song” (a slow-moving meditation that’s evocative enough that I’ll allow the title) and “No Substitute” (in which Sarkis gets away with singing “You’d be worth rebuilding Germany”), as well as a vaguely haunted version of Warren Zevon’s “Play It All Night Long”. And then there are the act’s rambling tendencies, most clearly visible in “The Gym”, a treadmill-spurred intense train-of-thought monologue from Sarkis (if you’re still unclear on the difference between Taking Meds and Growing Stone, he actually explains it in a lyrical aside here). “Spring in New York” has a bit of this to it as well, even as its dark undertones eventually overtake it to where it becomes the most “rock” song on the record. Death of a Momma’s Boy bridges the gaps between these aforementioned tentpoles frequently–the poppiest song on the album, “The Keep”, opens with some frank lyrics about sobriety, while the sparseness and rawness of “The Ballad of Growing Stone” is aided by a simple but potent melody. At no point does Death of a Momma’s Boy sound like Taking Meds, no–Growing Stone wins us over via entirely different tools. (Bandcamp link)
Lame Drivers – Become an Island
Release date: June 28th Record label: Jigsaw/Bleeding Gold Genre: Power pop, psych pop, college rock Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital Pull Track: Professional Volunteer
What’s that, you say? There’s a new album from a college rock/power pop revival band that’s been toiling in relative obscurity for over a decade now? And it was recorded by Guided by Voices producer/“sixth member” Travis Harrison? Well, now I’m interested. (Re)introducing New York’s Lame Drivers, a trio made up of guitarist Jason Sigal (who also played in Home Blitz), bassist Joe Posner, and drummer Jeff Wood, who released a fair amount of music in the late 2000s and early 2010s before going radio silent after 2015’s Chosen Era. Become an Island is their triumphant return, a great big “power trio” indie rock album that does indeed contain plenty of the aforementioned college rock and power pop, but doesn’t just stop there–I also hear a fair bit of rubbery post-punk, hazy psychedelia, and earnest, maximalist 2000s-style indie rock (albeit delivered with an economical lineup) throughout the record’s ten (on the LP) to fourteen (on the CD) tracks. The pop hooks are all there, although they’re often delivered surprisingly or unsuspectingly, suddenly locking together after the trio have snaked through several decades’ worth of indie rock history to get there.
The opening title track is one of the best examples of Lame Drivers as patience-rewarding pop stars–the song is great from the get-go, but the refrain hits harder after the band hold back on it for the first half of the four-minute tune. “Professional Volunteer” and “Change Agent” are the songs on Become an Island that make the most open use of Lame Drivers’ power pop knowledge–they both find time to meander a bit, sure, and neither of their choruses are particularly intuitive, but they all flow seamlessly as part of a greater whole (particularly the early punk-recalling proclamation of the latter track). The murky, dark punk of “My Problem”, the dreamy psych pop of “Temple”, and the post-punk-garage-rock “Sealed” all find Lame Drivers pushing the edges of their foundation, and why bring a latter-day Guided by Voices collaborator on board if you aren’t going to attempt something like that band’s multi-part, arena-prog-pop (check out “Runnin’ Scared”)? For an album that zigs and zags a fair bit, it’s strange to say that the CD-exclusive tracks don’t quite fit in with the “record” proper, but they work as an interesting postscript, with two of them (“Winners Game”, a quick-look retro power pop song in which Lame Drivers give into some of the urges they’d resisted previously, and big-finish closing track “Fade”) ending up highlights of the whole thing. Quite literally overflowing with great ideas, there’s no dust to be shaken off with Become an Island. (Bandcamp link)
Polkadot – …to Be Crushed
Release date: May 29th Record label: Count Your Lucky Stars Genre: Emo-y indie rock, indie pop, alt-rock Formats: Cassette, digital Pull Track: If There’s Nothing Left to Say
Daney Espiritu is a Bay Area-based singer-songwriter who put out a cassette on Lavasocks Records as Polkadot back in 2020, with help from Anton Benedicto on drums and Jordan Jones on bass. As of late, Polkadot has congealed into a quartet, with Matthew Estolano joining on guitar to round out the band, who’ve signed on with Count Your Lucky Stars to put out their latest album, …to Be Crushed. I’m not sure exactly what I would’ve expected a Bay Area indie rock group signed to a legendary emo imprint to sound like, but …to Be Crushed is a pretty good approximation of the midpoint between the indie pop scene around Polkadot and the emo-tinged 90s indie rock side of their label. …to Be Crushed suggests that the distance between twee and emo (or between lo-fi bedroom pop and blown-out, noisy alt-rock) isn’t as great as it might seem, as the band bang out ten songs that have heft both in their full-band instrumentation and in Espiritu’s performance as a frontperson. Instead of turning insular like labelmates Be Safe or breaking out post-hardcore bombast like En Garde, though, Polkadot make these songs go down easy like a good Bay Area indie pop record should.
Opening track “Left Behind” feels a little bit indebted to 60s pop (or, at least, 60s pop as interpreted by 90s twee and power pop groups) with its harmonies and simple melody, with the “emo” coming in via Espiritu’s upfront, confessional-sounding lyrics and vocal performance. The mid-tempo alt-pop-rock of “New Friends” really blows …to Be Crushed open and reminds me a bit of Katie and Allison Crutchfield’s various projects (not that they’ve ever really been called “emo”, but they’ve both long been great at emotional songwriting with shades of both lo-fi pop and punk-y indie rock). There’s a healthy amount of quick, zippy punk-pop tunes on …to Be Crushed between “Pulling Threads”, “Baby Buzzkill”, and “Still Around”, although unlike a lot of these kinds of records, the “stopgaps” in between them might actually be my favorite moments. I like when Polkadot attempt to make their slower songs just as loud as the faster ones in “Unstuck” and “P.S.”, and the best song on the album is “If There’s Nothing Left to Say”, one of the band’s clearest embraces of indie pop. “I don’t wanna be stuck in this place anymore / Or maybe I do, I guess, now I’m not so sure,” Espiritu sings in that song’s chorus–other Bay Area bands might use a dream pop haze to portray confusion, but for Polkadot, it’s presented crystal clear. (Bandcamp link)
Abel – Dizzy Spell
Release date: June 27th Record label: Candlepin/Julia’s War Genre: Shoegaze, experimental rock, fuzz rock Formats: Cassette, digital Pull Track: Rut
2024 has been one of the best years for music out of Columbus, Ohio that I can recall–there have been good folk, country punk, and pop punk records to come out of the city this year so far, but the majority of the albums that have caught my attention have been lo-fi, distorted indie rock. This has historically been a strong suit of Buckeye State music, but between Villagerrr, Winston Hightower, and Big Fat Head, it’s as obvious as ever that the epicenter of new, exciting Ohio bands is in the state’s capital. Two of the finest modern purveyors of this kind of music, Candlepin and Julia’s War Records, have taken note, as they’ve come together to jointly release Dizzy Spell, the latest album from nü-shoegaze quintet Abel. Abel actually made their Candlepin debut last year with the Leave You Hanging EP, and while some of their records (like last year’s Rat Race ∞) are the solo work of vocalist/guitarist Isaac Kauffman, Dizzy Spell features a full-band, three-guitar sound, aided by John Martino and Brynna Hilman on the six-strings and Noah Fisher (bass) and Ethan Donaldon (drums) rounding out the group.
Dizzy Spell is definitely a record worthy of a Julia’s War release–Mark Scott of Villagerrr guests on “Placebo”, but there are few traces of that band’s bedroom folk tendencies here. Opening track “Dust II” announces the arrival of Abel with loud and overwhelming guitars, rolling everything into a sucker punch of noisy rock music. If you’re not into that, chances are Dizzy Spell isn’t the album for you, but Abel also aren’t just interested in erecting walls of sound. “Rut” features vocals shouted out over the guitar squall, creating a massive pop tune, and the initial fuzz-jolt of “We All Go to Heaven” gives way to a restrained, laid-back indie pop core. Later in the record, the 90-second Martino-penned “Placebo” is the one song that relents and turns in acoustic indie folk–not wasting an opportunity to use Scott’s guitar playing and vocals. Still, Abel’s bread and butter are in-the-red shoegaze songs with pop music intermittently visible within them, and songs like “Hexed”, “Occupied”, and “Mantra” (which has a healthy amount of noise punk attitude to it) all excel in the band’s home turf. All roads lead to closing track “Wanna”, which starts off as a distant-sounding, windswept lo-fi rock tune before climbing a mountain of guitars to its pummeling finish. You’re probably not all that afraid of heights if you’ve gotten this far. (Bandcamp link)
Regular readers know the drill by now, but for new ones: today is the Thursday Pressing Concerns, looking at three albums that come out tomorrow, June 28th (new LPs from Laughing, Alexei Shishkin, and bcc:) plus one that came out earlier this week (the latest album from Kass Richards). Also, a couple of other posts went up at the beginning of the week, so if you missed the Monday post (featuring Nature’s Neighbor, Hayes Noble, Bug Seance, and Workers Comp) or the Tuesday one (featuring Tigerblind, Marcel Wave, Laybrum, and Swan Wash), 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.
Laughing – Because It’s True
Release date: June 28th Record label: Meritorio/Celluloid Lunch Genre: Power pop, jangle pop, college rock Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull Track: Bruised
Rosy Overdrive is a huge booster of all things “jangle pop”. I’ve written about countless such bands and albums, and though I haven’t decided which records will share this entry with Laughing’s Because It’s True, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if at least one other album here could be described in this way. I have to imagine at this point that this blog is on the radar of everybody who is looking to have their jangle pop album, or a jangle pop album on their record label, or one they’re doing PR for, written about (believe me, I’m not trying to say this as a “flex” or “brag”). This is all to say, I’m here to talk about another guitar pop band that could conceivably be compared to Teenage Fanclub. Montreal’s Laughing are a new group, but at the very least, guitarist/vocalist/bassist Josh Salter isn’t new to the game, putting time in with bands like Quivers, Nap Eyes, and Monomyth before linking up with Cole Woods, André Charles Thériault (both guitar/bass/vocals), and Laura Jeffery (drums/vocals) to form a new quartet. Because It’s True, their first album, is a collision of ragged power pop music, an album that fires up a seemingly-endless bag of tricks to hook the listener immediately and keep the engines running long past the initial burst.
“Want to say sorry, but I’m not even sure what for,” humbly begins opening track “Easier Said”, but only after a triumphant instrumental opening salvo of pounding drums and lightning-bolt guitars–a sure a sign as any that a power pop star has been born. The balance between electric bluster and practiced shyness is once again struck in “Bruised”, which is absolutely brimming with winning melodies and professional losers. I promised “jangle” in the introduction of this review, and anyone who gets activated by that descriptor is going to have a field day with early highlight “Pebble”, every bit as strong as the two aforementioned tracks that buffer it even though its guitars are more discreetly deployed. After pulling out all the stops to begin Because It’s True, Laughing reveal their ability to cover all their bases in short, sweet, simple guitar pop packages (“Will She Ever Be a Friend of Mine”, “Don’t Care”) and their ability to let the pop music unfold into lengthy, wandering, introspective numbers (“Glue”, “Secret”), and they continue to pepper in power pop ‘hits’ that could’ve served just fine as introductory tracks (“Sour Note”, “You and I”). Maybe you’ve been burnt out on this kind of music, and you find yourself wondering why, out of all the jangly indie pop albums to go through Rosy Overdrive’s virtual doors, we’re singling out this one as a shining, expertly-delivered highlight in a crowded microgenre. Well…Because It’s True. (Bandcamp link)
Alexei Shishkin – Open Door Policy
Release date: June 28th Record label: Candlepin Genre: Lo-fi indie rock, 90s indie rock, indie pop Formats: Cassette, digital Pull Track: The Drummer
I was introduced to the sprawling world of Queens singer-songwriter Alexei Shishkin earlier this year with Dagger, his first album of 2024. Out via Rue Defense (more or less his home label since a similarly prolific stint with Forged Artifacts last decade), I called Dagger an “enjoyable hazy collection of lo-fi bedroom rock” and appreciated how it’d deliver both no-strings-attached pop music and more bizarre, experimental fare. As I alluded to, Shishkin is generally operating at a “more than one record a year” clip (both in terms of full-lengths and castoff EPs, including Built to Spill and New Pornographers cover collections), so it’s not too surprising that I’m back about four months later to talk about another solid Shishkin album, Open Door Policy. For this record, Shishkin has hooked up with Rosy Overdrive favorite Candlepin Records, and while that label has recently been putting out a good deal of messy, experimental shoegaze, Open Door Policy actually finds Shishkin cleaning and polishing up his sound. While Dagger was entirely home-recorded, this time around Shishkin used both a proper studio (Bradford Krieger’s Big Nice Studio) and a bunch of collaborators (Krieger, Rue Defense’s Graham W. Bell, bassist Dave Kahn, drummer Ian Dwy, guitarist/keyboardist Bill Waters, saxophonist Ivan Rodriguez, and clarinet/sax from Eyal Sela).
Subsequently, Open Door Policy ends up sounding like the more refined, pop-friendly sides of Shishkin’s 90s indie rock influences (Malkmus, Berman, Linkous, Martsch, and Lytle all come to mind), and there’s also a rootsy streak to the songs that wasn’t nearly as pronounced on his last record. The first half of Open Door Policy in particular feels like a lost underground “best of” compilation, with the laid-back pop of opening track “The Drummer”, the smooth-sailing jangle pop of “Autobahn”, and ever-so-slightly country tinge of “Ruby” being just a few of the A-side’s highlights. Open Door Policy eventually cracks the front entrance a little and lets more “rocking” and “experimental” touches in, but it’s still a pop album–“Animal Control” and “Chowder Powder” are two shining examples of the former, cranking things up a bit more than Shishkin and his collaborators had done previously but keeping in the album’s catchy tradition (and the pure absurdity of the former is worth a confused “thumbs up” gesture). Saving some of its best material for last, Open Door Policy hides “Idk!!!” in the penultimate slot, a surprisingly-strong Neil Young-influenced track from an album that hadn’t really gestured in that direction at all before that point. In a roundabout way, Shishkin goes about creating a “classic indie rock sound” with Open Door Policy–like it organically comes to the same conclusions as some of the greats of the genre. (Bandcamp link)
bcc: – Praise Low
Release date: June 28th Record label: Self-released Genre: 90s indie rock, indie pop, power pop Formats: Digital Pull Track: Magpie in the Commissary
New York musician Bobby Cardos spent the 2010s in the underappreciated indie rock group Doubting Thomas Cruise Control (their last album came out in 2019, although they’ve played live more recently than that), and this year he debuted a new project called Slake/Thirst with Kaitlyn Flanagan and Ian Donohue with the excellent Hunting Dust EP. Since 2020, Cardos has also had a quasi-solo project called bcc:, putting out a cassette in February of that year and following it up with a digital compilation of “songs/snippets” in 2022. The latest from bcc: is an eight-song “mini-album” called Praise Low, recorded in Cardos’ basement with help from Dan Murphy, Pat Murphy, and Johnny Skwirut. Both Doubting Thomas Cruise Control and Slake/Thirst are bands that wear their “90s indie rock” influences on their sleeves, training unadorned, plainspoken vocals and economical arrangements towards low-key pop gems. Praise Low doesn’t disappoint on this front–in fact, it seems that Cardos, left to his own devices, is more prone than ever to writing wobbly, almost-opaque-but-not-quite earnest guitar pop music.
There are some Malkmusian headscratchers of lyrics on Praise Low (the catchiest song on the record starts with “There’s a magpie in the commissary / Pecking at the actuary”), but opening track “Unoriginal” is almost shockingly direct. Like the opening track from Hunting Dust, “Ditty”, it’s under a minute long, and like the self-conscious jamboree of that song, “Unoriginal” is clearly a mission statement (“Try to settle down / Most of us are unoriginal / Don’t let it get you down / Do your work…” is certainly a memorable way to start your basement-made indie rock record in 2024). After that, Cardos and crew launch into the everyman lo-fi pop of “Chamomile”, crank things up for the electric power pop-tinged “Magpie in the Commissary”, and then take a step back for the guitar balladry of “Shadow”. There are no bells and whistles on Praise Low–that we’re transported out of the practice space in the way that we are is a testament to Cardos’ writing. It’s an incredibly well-rounded album–the chugging, baggage-jettisoning “Out of Order” towards the end of the record is one of its most rewarding moments–and even powers through the bold choice of making its two quietest songs the final two. They’re both great, but closing track “HIMYM” has to be singled out. “Wasn’t much/ Some conversation, staring at the dog / Just enough / To keep it going, try to make a start,” Cardos recalls of a first date with, as he says in the notes for this record, the person who would eventually become his wife. It’s not as cleanly a declaration of perseverance as “Unoriginal”, but it’s perhaps an even more effective one. (Bandcamp link)
Kass Richards – New Love Meditation
Release date: June 24th Record label: Good Cry Genre: Folk rock, singer-songwriter Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull Track: Dream
Boston musician Kassie Richardson is perhaps most widely-heard as a “frequent collaborator” with art pop group U.S. Girls–she’s a member of their live band and contributed in some form or another to the act’s three most recent records. However, on her own (as Kass Richards), she makes music with a more folk rock bent, although with perhaps a stronger grasp on pop music than a lot of folk/indie rock singer-songwriters these days. The first Kass Richards album, The Language Shadow, came out back in 2020 via Feeding Tube and Good Cry, and though the next few years brought a handful of one-off singles, 2024 is shaping up to be her biggest year yet. Back in February, Good Cry put out When We Were Wolves, an album billed to “Aidan Coughlan and Kass Richards” (Coughlan wrote the songs and instrumentals, both sang and produced), and June sees the release of Richardson’s second proper solo album, New Love Meditation. The record was recorded with a team of Canadian ringers and U.S. Girls collaborators–Geordie Gordon (Islands), Ed Squires (Badge Époque Ensemble), and Simone TB (Fiver)–and it balances Richardson’s clear love of traditional folk music with the rock and pop of the world around her.
New Love Meditation opens with TB pounding incessantly on the drums, an odd but fitting beginning for the breathless folk-pop-rock that comprises the first half of “Dreams”–only for the second part of the song to shift seamlessly into hazy ambient pop. Richardson is a remarkable pop songwriter, and New Love Meditation is set up to show this off to a degree–in particular, the middle three tracks of the record, “Picture”, the title track, and “Blue”, are a bunch of knockouts where the band play smartly to emphasize the core of the songs. However, Richardson’s folk instincts are reflected in that fact that two out of the eight full songs on New Love Meditation are covers of traditional folk music. “Love Is Teasing” and “Blackwater Side” both stand out on the record, but not necessarily due to their historical backgrounds–rather, these arrangements (credited to the entire band and co-producer Maximilian Turnbull) feel even more collaborative and inventive than the majority of the originals. The prominent percussion and droning, almost psychedelic guitar work on both tracks balances the straight nature of Richardson’s singing–these recordings don’t feel like “updates” of old songs so much as the latest turn in a long, twisting musical history. Much like the rest of New Love Meditation, in fact. (Bandcamp link)
The second Pressing Concerns of the week rounds up a few great records from recent weeks for your perusal below: we’ve got new albums from Tigerblind, Marcel Wave, Laybrum, and Swan Wash on deck. If you missed yesterday’s post, featuring Nature’s Neighbor, Hayes Noble, Bug Seance, and Workers Comp, 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.
Tigerblind – It’s All Gonna Happen to You
Release date: May 7th Record label: Self-released Genre: Lo-fi power pop, lo-fi indie rock Formats: Digital Pull Track: Awake and Miserable
What’s that? There’s another musician making lo-fi, home-recorded guitar pop music that I haven’t heard of yet? Well, let’s take a look at who we’ve got now. Cameron McCrary is from Dallas, Texas, and, well, is Tigerblind–since 2020, recordings have intermittently showed up on Bandcamp, typically in the form of singles and EPs, but there are a few collections (2020’s We Love You, Tigerblind, last year’s Self-Inflicted Love Letters) that seem long enough to be considered albums (if that’s even a distinction that matters to McCrary). The most recent Tigerblind release, the ten-song It’s All Gonna Happen to You, is one such collection, self-released and self-recorded like everything else Tigerblind. I was predisposed to like It’s All Gonna Happen to You, sure, but even controlling for that I found myself impressed with McCrary’s songwriting, which is lo-fi pop whimsy delivered in a fluffy and somewhat sensitive package, reminding me of bands like Sparklehorse, early Grandaddy, and The Gerbils (of course, Guided by Voices and Sebadoh are here too). It’s All Gonna Happen to You is a little bit punk, a little bit “confessional”, a little experimental–McCrary is focused on pop above all else, though.
“Crashed Ur Car” opens It’s All Gonna Happen to You with a jolt of muddy lo-fi basement punk, although not so muddy that McCrary isn’t able to practically dance through some excellent vocal hooks. “Take the Money” is a vintage indie rock tune that’s fully teased-out but still low-key sounding, a jaunty greyscale song that’s on the “busier” side of Tigerblind’s spectrum. McCrary is able to get a lot of mileage out of keeping things relatively simple on the record, as the acoustic-based pop songs all breeze by amiably (“Fall for No Reason”, “Every Word Around Me Just Unravels”, “Make It Long”) and the drum-machine jangle pop of “Hold You Tight” is one of the record’s strongest moments, too. The jumbled mess of “Taken Your Good Advice” suggests that McCrary has some stranger instincts, and Tigerblind keep the album interesting by adding a few extra touches to their pop side in late record highlights “You’d Cry” and “Awake and Miserable”. The former has a giant chorus that (both musically and lyrically) borders on melodrama (“I’ll leave unscathed today and whine / It’s really nothing in the end,” is one of several lyrics that makes me wonder if I should be taking McCrary at face value here), and the latter takes an uncertain but firm step forward with a steady bass guitar part and eventually blossoms into a mid-tempo, earnest, sweeping indie pop anthem. Of course, the song’s called “Awake and Miserable”, which is a good summation of Tigerblind’s mental preoccupations throughout the record. Well, you’re already up, might as well throw on It’s All Gonna Happen to You–it can’t make you feel worse. (Bandcamp link)
Marcel Wave – Something Looming
Release date: June 14th Record label: Feel It/Upset the Rhythm Genre: Post-punk, indie pop, garage rock Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull Track: Something Looming
Marcel Wave are a quintet from London who have a pretty solid British indie rock pedigree–guitarist Oliver Fisher and drummer Patrick Fisher both previously played in Cold Pumas, bassist Christopher Murphy played in Sauna Youth and Monotony, and keyboardist Lindsay Corstorphine played in all three of those bands (plus Primitive Parts, Violin, The Steal…). Vocalist Maike Hale-Jones doesn’t seem to have been in any other bands–her background is as a writer, specifically as an essayist, screenwriter, and poet. Something Looming, the debut Marcel Wave LP, has presumably been in the works for a while–the group put out a demo EP in 2019–and with it, the band have turned in a confident, polished, and accessible first statement. Something Looming follows in the grand tradition of British “post-punk”/“indie pop” records, art practiced by modern groups like Dancer and Nightshift, among others. Corstorphine’s keyboard adds another dimension to the sound, teasing it out but never crowding it in a way reminiscent of Stereolab (or, to continue referencing newer bands, En Attendant Ana). Hale-Jones, meanwhile, is a classic post-punk frontperson, one with a “non-traditional” musical background whose delivery is of the “speak-singing” variety more often than not.
Something Looming is a pop album, and while the instrumentals are the primary driver of this side of Marcel Wave, Hale-Jones’ sense of rhythm and force of personality are a great fit for it nonetheless. Something Looming is “catchy” in some form for pretty much its entire length, but sometimes it’s more traditionally so than others–the triumphant indie pop of opening track “Bent Out of Shape” and the garage-pop bounce of the title track both function to hook the listener early on in the runtime. The drama and foreboding undergirding “Barrow Boys” and “Mudlarks” are perhaps more representative of the album as a whole, though, but thankfully, the guitars still arrive in memorable bursts, the keys are early-XTC-buzzy, and Hale-Jones is always on top of things. Her most memorable writing comes in the second half of the album via the vivid reports from “the outskirts of Enfield” in “Discount Centre” and the feverish fast food nightmares of “Great British High St.”–although it’s worth tuning into her lyrics throughout Something Looming, as there’s always something intriguing going on in them. Something Looming keeps rolling into its final stretch with the tightly-arranged diorama guitar pop of “Elsie”, the runaway garage rock of “Idles of March”, and the airy closing track “Linoleum Floor”–Marcel Wave are consistent but hardly content up until the end, cementing Something Looming as one of the top debuts of the year thus far. (Bandcamp link)
Laybrum – Hungry for the Other Thing
Release date: June 20th Record label: Pleasure Tapes Genre: Lo-fi indie rock, noise pop Formats: Cassette, digital Pull Track: Forward March
Andrew Santora is an engineer, producer, and musician who grew up on the Jersey Shore and is currently based in Philadelphia. Santora makes music under the name Laybrum, which has thus far included an assortment of self-released Bandcamp recordings and some film soundtrack/scoring work. I first learned of Laybrum due to Santora’s association with former Philadelphia resident Noah Roth, and I hear a bit of similarity to Roth’s solo work in the latest Laybrum release, Hungry for the Other Thing. Both Roth and Santora combine lo-fi pop cores with a layered, “studio rat” production style, but Laybrum distinguishes itself by being even more nomadic in its presentations. Roth generally keeps at least one foot in the world of folk rock in their music, but Santora flits between lo-fi indie pop, fluttering synthpop, dreamy psychedelia, and even a bit of murky Spirit of the Beehive-esque experimental pop. Hungry for the Other Thing (self-described by Santora as “maximalist”) layers drum machines over top of live drums, lets synths run wild, and expands itself with string instruments (played by Mike Frazier collaborator Jenn Fantaccione and arranged by Mt. Worry/Hell Trash’s Rowan Roth)–the consistent thread is a commitment to pop music through the noise.
Opening track “Empty-Handed” is a proof of concept of sorts, kicking off Hungry for the Other Thing with some relatively “normal” sounding basement rock at first before slowly but surely adding in Santora’s odder touches in the song’s second half. After sticking the landing in “Empty-Handed”, Laybrum are ready to test the limits a bit further via “Haunt Me How You Will” (a song that marries a swinging drumbeat to explosive, twinkling synths quite memorably) and the soundscape-pop of “Skyspaces” (and its noirish intro track, “Centrifuge”), although the low-key slacker pop of “Handle with Care” in between the two of them keeps the peace. As enjoyable as these more experimental moments are, the album’s biggest successes might come in the second half–Laybrum focuses their maximalism more strategically, creating the breathtaking, marathoning orchestral folk rock of “Rolling Dice” and single “Twirl”, which has a singalong pop rock core that’s impossible to dampen. Hungry for the Other Thing closes with another highlight–“Forward March” stretches to six minutes, but–like its title suggests–it’s rolling full steam ahead for the majority of its length. Santora and crew pound out a massive, fuzzed-out hookfest from the starting gate and largely keep the song’s structure intact as they progress–a swarm of synths eventually surfaces at its big finish, but only after Laybrum have gotten everything they needed out of it. (Bandcamp link)
Swan Wash – Shadow Shadow
Release date: May 24th Record label: Sister Cylinder Genre: Post-punk, goth, garage rock Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital Pull Track: Almost Gone
Bloomington, Indiana trio Swan Wash supposedly sprouted from a Siouxsie and the Banshees tribute act, and they certainly sound like it. The band (originally vocalist/bassist Scott Ferguson, guitarist Steve Garcia, and drummer Matt Leetz, with the latter two eventually replaced by Jack Andrews and Wyatt Worcel, respectively) debuted with a seven-song self-titled EP in 2019, introducing their version of post-punk–darkwave/goth-indebted, ferocious, but rooted entirely in a stripped down, guitar-forward power trio sound. Some of the songs that make up their debut album, Shadow Shadow, have been kicking around, showing up in live or demo form on various tapes and EPs, but the final record was recorded live in the band’s rehearsal space, with vocals and some overdubs recorded by Jerry Westerkamp (VACATION, Motorbike, Good Looking Son) in Cincinnati. Appropriately, Shadow Shadow sounds like a more streamlined version of the Midwestern basement post-punk practiced by Cincy bands on Feel It/Future Shock records like The Drin, Crime of Passing, and Corker, in addition to more disparate goth-tinged punk acts like Home Front and Schedule 1 and college rock revivalists The Laughing Chimes. Certainly informed by the gothic drama of Siouxsie, The Cure, and even The Teardrop Explodes, Shadow Shadow is too economical and laser-focused to get fully bogged down in Bauhaus-y doom-worship–it’s got too much ground to traverse.
There’s a bit of a tug-of-war to Swan Wash’s sound on Shadow Shadow–the band seem to alternate between foot-on-gas, dark garage rock rippers and mid-tempo, barebones-but-ornate basement goth rock. Opening track “Tunnel” trends toward the latter, with stomping percussion and plodding bass guitar serving up a muck for Ferguson’s vocals to wade into impressively. After that, Swan Wash burn through the fiery riffs and frantic pace of “23 Years”, and “Almost Gone” injects a beefy alt-rock backbone into their sound with minimal shock. The whiplash continues throughout Shadow Shadow (see the fiery “The Upstairs Museum” flowing into the tension and buildup of “Up the Stairs”), but Swan Wash start to fuse their extremes within the same songs by the record’s second half, as evidenced by late-album epics “Tavel’s Gavel” and “Ownership”. The former pulls off seven-minute psychedelic death rock with the same basic ingredients of the rest of the record, while the latter finishes off Shadow Shadow with a classic circling-the-drain post-punk slow-build of an instrumental. “Ownership” never quite lets loose as it crawls to its finish, but it’s too fierce to be mistaken for a retreat, either. (Bandcamp link)
Good morning, Rosy Overdrive music blog nation! We’re wrapping up the month of June this week, and the first Pressing Concerns of the week is evenly split between records that came out last week (LPs from Nature’s Neighbor and Hayes Noble) and last month (an EP from Bug Seance and a compilation LP from Workers Comp). It’s a good 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.
Nature’s Neighbor – Projection
Release date: June 22nd Record label: Pigeon Infirmary Genre: Folk rock, soft rock, singer-songwriter, art rock Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull Track: Learning to Sail (弓削島)
When we last heard from Nature’s Neighbor, it was 2022, and bandleader Mike Walker had recently moved from his longtime home of Chicago to Kyoto to become an English teacher. Before he departed, however, he recorded The Glass Album in Humboldt Park with longtime collaborators Terrill Mast and Seth Engel (Options, Mister Goblin). At the time, the future of Nature’s Neighbor was somewhat uncertain, and the period between The Glass Album and its follow-up has been one of tumult for Walker on a personal level. His writing on the latest Nature’s Neighbor album, Projection, reflects on the dissolution of his marriage, a temporary stay in Japan turning into an indefinite one, attempts to move forward romantically, meeting new friends and musical collaborators in his new home country, and being reunited with old ones (Mast, who visited Walker in Kyoto in late 2022). Like previous Nature’s Neighbor releases, Projection primarily moves in the world of breezy folk rock, and while there are some louder, more electric moments, it feels more insular and reflective than The Glass Album did, perhaps appropriately for a record built from clearly personal writing on behalf of its principal songwriter.
Projection starts at a low point in multiple senses of the word–“The Truth Is Not” is a subdued acoustic-based song that feels like the capturing of the tail end of a dissolving relationship. “Plastic Bag Love Song” continues this theme, although Walker and his collaborators are able to conjure up something more rousing both instrumentally (which adds a bit of his experimental pop influences, and the strumming is more upbeat) and lyrically (in which Walker looks ahead to a better future, concluding that the breakup was all for the best in the end). The musical subtlety continues across the first half of the record via the mandolin-heavy “美山 (Miyama)”, the floating “Not Pining for Anything”, and the hazy “Indecipherable Dreams” (in which Engel’s drums are arguably the most prominent instrument). There’s some shifting going on underneath the surface of these songs, but Projection really takes a turn when “Bumble Date With You” kicks off the record’s second half with electric alt-rock, a roaring, nervous song in which confusion turns into (still apprehensive) understanding.
After “Bumble Date With You”, “Learning to Sail (弓削島)” balances the personal concerns of the rest of the album with a chorus that zooms out and seems to take some comfort in it, the middle part of a rousing trio capped off by the icy indie rock of “Lizard Blood Man”. Projection wraps up with yet another turn towards the acoustic and quiet, with “Instant Friends”, the last proper song on the record, being a really heartfelt-sounding tribute to the new faces on the record’s “credit” list (Taro Inoue, Shintaro Nagahara, Asagi Tsuchiya), and while the unlisted closing track deals with some more complex feelings, it’s no less affecting. Walker views Projection as the final Nature’s Neighbor album, a sad designation if so–but should he choose to continue to make music in some form, he has as many hands to help him do so as at any point in Nature’s Neighbor’s run. (Bandcamp link)
Hayes Noble – As It Was, As We Were
Release date: June 21st Record label: 2-2-1 Press Genre: Fuzz rock, garage rock, punk, 90s indie rock Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital Pull Track: Midcoast Kids
Galena, Illinois is a small town off the Mississippi River tucked into the northwest corner of the state, about a half an hour from Dubuque, Iowa. It’s what you might call a “‘Kerosene’ by Big Black town”. For Hayes Noble, I suppose there was nothing better to do than start making loud fuzzed-out indie rock inspired by the melodic side of 90s punk-y indie rock–and that’s exactly what he did (to illustrate just how devoted Noble is to this era of guitar music, he even enlisted Mike Scheer–the artist who made all of Treepeople’s album covers as well as You in Reverse by Built to Spill–to make the artwork for his latest album). Noble’s debut album, Head Cleaner, came out last year, when he was still in high school–his brother Everett plays bass on the record, his father Brett drums, and this family band also functioned as Noble’s touring lineup. The second Hayes Noble album, As It Was, As We Were, follows a year and change later, recorded last summer in Iowa with Luke Tweedy before the recently-graduated singer-songwriter relocated to Spokane (where he’s currently based). Noble can’t help but lay down one more massive Midwestern rock and roll statement before leaving the Driftless Area, a record that sounds like a freight train counterbalanced by the earnest writing at the center of the storm.
As It Was, As We Were begins as an album frantically beamed from nowhere to nothing–how else can one describe a record that shoots out of the gate like a dog slipping out of its leash with a Superchunk-indie-punk anthem called “Escape”, continues into a heavy, six-minute Hum-like alt-rock anthem called “In Search Of”, and then a punchy fuzz breakdown called “Comets” where Noble asks “What to do, stuck here alone? / Am I really on my own?” Noble rounds out the first half of As It Was, As We Were by confronting isolation and loneliness head on in “Blue to Grey” and the instrumental “On Montrose”. The second half of the record retains the 90s indie rock/punk energy of the rest of the record–a little Jawbreaker/Samiam in “Nothing Else”, some emo in “Pushin On”, and a massive J. Mascis fuzz riff in “Midcoast Kids”, but the isolation in the lyrics is a more interpersonal one, from the uncertain nostalgia in the former of those three tracks to the song-length apology in the middle one, or the fiery apocalyptic moods of late-record Tony Molina-esque scorcher “The End”. The most cathartic moment on As It Was, As We Were is “Midcoast Kids”, a song that deals with everything by turning the guitars up loud and driving around all over town “till curfew”. Noble situates us along the Mississippi, but between the guitars and attitude, it’s timeless and universal. (Bandcamp link)
Bug Seance – I’m Right Here
Release date: May 17th Record label: Mind Goblin Genre: Emo, shoegaze, emo-gaze, shoemo, emo with shoegaze in it, shoega– Formats: Cassette, digital Pull Track: These Days
Bug Seance are a five-piece fuzzy indie rock band from Portland, Oregon who’ve been kicking around since the beginning of this decade–they put out their debut EP, Erasing, back in 2020, and the three-track Retracing (featuring new recordings of the band’s first songs) followed in 2022. The band’s third EP, I’m Right Here, has been in the making for several years now–the quintet (bassist Javier Vasquez, synth player Maria Dehart, guitarists Pete Benson and Sean Cooper, and drummer Xochitl Vilorio) released the first single from it, “Wavering”, back in 2021, and songs continued to steadily trickle out before its cassette release in May. I’m Right Here is Bug Seance’s most substantial release yet–in a half-dozen songs and twenty-five minutes, the band deliver a polished, confident version of emo-y shoegaze (or shoegaze-y emo) that’d be right at home on labels like Topshelf, Count Your Lucky Stars, or fellow Portlanders Really Rad. I’m Right Here stands out due to Bug Seance’s cohesion, with the band’s five members (who all share vocal duty) being able to pull off both moments of wall-of-sound noisiness and an earnest, West Coast emotional fuzz-pop side with equal believability.
Arguably the EP’s punchiest track, “Wavering” kicks off I’m Right Here with pop hooks, punk energy, and a wistful emo-y lead vocal–all of which are only enhanced by the song’s huge gang-vocal-bait big finish. “I Can Always Count on You” cranks the amps up a bit, dipping into grunge-gaze just so, but Bug Seance keep the vocals front and center and keep the record’s pop momentum rolling. The twin five-minute tracks in the middle of the cassette are the reason why I’m Right Here feels as grand as it does–“November” wanders in a labyrinth of distorted guitars and fuzzed-out dreaminess, the furthest thing from “punk” and “pop” the band have offered up yet, and while “The Raddest Day” eventually reaches a fiery conclusion, it gets there by passing through chilly indie rock and a quiet, slow-building midsection. Having proven their “grower” bona fides, Bug Seance rewards us with a piece of bubblegum in the incredibly breezy “These Days” and then close with “Aardvark”, a song that is so sublimely “emo-gaze” that it makes perfect sense that it ends with post-hardcore screaming that’s doing its best to make itself heard over an in-the-red guitar attack. The primary push-and-pull of I’m Right Here isn’t between genres so much as between fragile beauty and sonic might. (Bandcamp link)
Workers Comp – Workers Comp
Release date: May 31st Record label: Ever/Never Genre: Garage rock, fuzz rock, alt-country, lo-fi rock Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull Track: High on the Job
The three members of garage rockers Workers Comp all have notable backgrounds in similar such bands–singer/guitarist Joshua Gillis played in Detroit group Deadbeat Beat, drummer Ryan McKeever leads the Omaha-originating, D.C.-based Staffers, and bassist Luke Reddick has done time in Posmic, Saturday Night, and Divorce Horse. Between 2022 and 2023, three different four-song cassette EPs and a 7” single from Workers Comp surfaced on the Baltimore-based Gillis’ own label, Glad Fact, all of which displayed a strong grasp of distorted, blustery lo-fi garage rock. Their first long-player is a compilation of this previously-released material, put out through Ever/Never Records (Ryan Davis & The Roadhouse Band, Obnox, Dan Melchior), with the addition of one new song (“Basic Values”). McKeever’s Omaha roots are felt on the Workers Comp LP, both in the presence of guest vocalist Anna McClellan on “Never Have I Ever” and on the sound of the album as a whole, evoking a specifically blown-out, ragged version of Americana and rock and roll practiced by the likes of David Nance.
Workers Comp emerged fully formed on their debut EP, One Horse Pony, which comprises the first four tracks of this compilation. The delicate, woozy country rock of “When I’m Here” and the chugging garage burner of “Pick and Choose” set up some of Workers Comp’s greatest strengths, and the simple rock and roll throwback of “High on the Job” is an incredibly potent performance that might be the strongest song on the whole record. McClellan’s turn on the lilting “Never Have I Ever” is the biggest departure on the second EP, When in Room, which otherwise picks up where Workers Comp left off on their first record (for a more subtle change, one might closely inspect “Peel Away”, a piece of fuzz-fried Devo-core that widens the Workers Comp sound just so slightly). 2023’s Crazy with Sweat is the most polished Workers Comp release yet–not “hi-fi” exactly, but with a cleaner sound that emphasizes the retro-pop aspects of the trio’s sound. The lead guitar on “Good Luck” (courtesy of Brendan Reichhardt, also of Posmic) is the cherry on top, but the compilation ends with a more ramshackle take on garage rock in the form of “Basic Values”–an affirmation that, wherever Workers Comp go from here, their core mission seems likely to stay intact. (Bandcamp link)
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.
Riggings – Egg
Release date: June 21st Record label: Horse Complex Genre: Folk rock, experimental rock Formats: CD, digital Pull Track: Knife Necklace
Alex Riggs is a folk singer from Durham, North Carolina who’s been at it since the beginning of the 2010s, putting out a ton of records under her old name until coming out as trans around 2022 and switching gears to Riggings. The first proper Riggings album, Egg, has been in development pretty much since then–I suppose that’s only a couple of years, but for someone who’s spent a good deal of her career releasing multiple albums in the same year, the longer incubation time certainly seems remarkable. Not that Riggs stopped being prolific, mind you–you can find Riggings singles and EPs strewn across the Bandcamp page of her label, Horse Complex Records–but it’s clear that Egg was always supposed to be the first full-length Riggings statement. It’s still fair to call Riggs a folk artist on Egg, I think, although that doesn’t exactly capture the blown-open sound that she’s lassoed into place here–she’s been pretty open about Chicago experimental folk (like vintage Drag City artists and Ryley Walker, who’s put out some of her music on his Husky Pants label) being an influence, and I also associate her with fellow Durham act the Mountain Goats, another artist who has grown from fairly simple folk rock to something more laborious and ornate over time.
The record’s first track, “A New Opening”, is exactly that–an instrumental combining orchestral folk and lightly corrupted electronica that soundtracks us as we all file in and settle down to view the Egg show. “The Birds Knew First”, from the traditionalist nature-invocation of its title to the no-nonsense opening couplet to its basically turning the album title into a triple-entendre, is a damn strong scene setter, the sterile, frozen instrumentation eventually opening up into the warm folk rock of “Windshield Spider”. “The Birds Knew First” is as clear as day in how trans it is, as are “The High and Lonesome Racket” and “Old Bones”, albeit in different ways. These two songs are tough as nails because they have to be, written with the lucidity of a transgender woman living in the American South. Riggs will hit you with a blunt lyric from time to time but she’s not really a punk lyricist, as songs like “Knife Necklace”, “Sophie’s Moon”, and “Song for Pregnant Astronaut” are stronger for asking the listener to tease out how everything relates to each other (and I’ll also say that Riggs excels at the occasional John Darnielle-ian high-economical phrase, from “My new body’s a temple / Breaking out of the tomb” in “The Birds Knew First” to the fascinating “Invest in casts, invest in crutches / Learn how to wince good if anyone touches” in “Rhinoceros”). Egg ends with its title track, in which Riggs harangues us over and over to “pay attention” because she’s “got something to say”. Her message is: she’s not done “fucking up”, not done growing, not finished learning. With all due respect, Alex, I could’ve told you that already. (Bandcamp link)
Max Blansjaar – False Comforts
Release date: June 21st Record label: Beanie Tapes Genre: Indie pop, singer-songwriter Formats: Vinyl, cassette, digital Pull Track: Saturnia
Although Max Blansjaar still can’t legally buy a drink in the United States, the debut album from the 20-year-old Oxford-based musician has actually been a long time coming. Blansjaar’s first releases, the Spit It Out! and Life’s Too Easy EPs, came out back in 2018 and 2019 respectively on local imprint Beanie Tapes, and he began working on his debut full-length not long afterwards. Blansjaar eventually hooked up with his “dream” producer, Katie von Schleicher, who ended up co-producing False Comforts with frequent collaborator Nate Mendelsohn at her Shitty Hits Recording Co. studio. Blansjaar’s first LP is a successful and personable pop album, a team effort (keyboardist Ben Walker, drummer Sean Mullins, and bassist Brian Betancourt being the other players) that spit-shines and enhances the emerging talent at the center of it all. Blansjaar is a quietly confident vocalist, and as a lyricist his aptitude is apparent from the beginning. His writing is reminiscent of more rambling corners of folk and rock music, but False Comforts turns the free-flowing narratives on their heads by corralling them with tight instrumentals and a stoic delivery from Blansjaar himself.
False Comforts feels classically-sequenced–hits up front, some interesting detours afterward. The record’s first four tracks all could’ve been the “lead single”–the confident, arm-swinging studio pop of “Saturnia” has a few weird touches but is still a wildly engrossing start to the record, the breezy “Burning in Our Name” follows a long, storied tradition of British guitar pop, “Anna Madonna” (which actually was the lead single) is finely honed, economical indie pop, and “Like a Bad Dream” takes the strengths of what came before it and applies them to blissful, slightly fuzzy indie rock. Even as Blansjaar favors a few simple motifs in the construction of these songs, the writing comes off as neither as fluffy as the instrumentals suggest it could be nor as a pure sardonic refutation of them–realistically, it goes wherever Blansjaar sees an opening. The middle of False Comforts tests the deep end with the crunchy distorted pop of “Song Against Love” and the six-minute chill of “Red Tiger”, and those who stick it out to the end of the record are rewarded with a gorgeous pin-drop quiet ballad (“On Beyond Eden”, a risky choice that nonetheless ends up being one of my favorite songs on the album) and the lo-fi folk clanging of closing track “I Will Not Be Forgiven”, an equally bold final statement. From a certain vantage point, Blansjaar singing “I will not go to heaven / It’s clean and pure and lifeless,” over sloppy open guitar chords is almost a refutation of what came before it on the record. Remember, though–you’re listening to a record called False Comforts. (Bandcamp link)
Eighteen Hundred and Froze to Death – Thirds
Release date: June 21st Record label: Resident Recordings Genre: Noise rock, post-punk, punk Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital Pull Track: Signal Burns
Ithaca’s Eighteen Hundred and Froze to Death are something of an upstate New York supergroup in reverse. The quartet of David Nutt (guitar/vocals), Joe Kepic (guitar), Brendan Kuntz (drums), and Tom Yagielski (bass) put out an album and EP in the early 2000s before going their separate ways and pursuing various projects–all of them but Nutt made a record together as The 1,000-Year Plan, Nutt started a solo project called why+the+wires, Kepic played in noise rock group Chimes of Bayonets, and Kuntz put out a bunch of great fuzz-country records as Grass Jaw. Always influenced by tough, post-punky 90s Dischord records, it made a lot of sense that, when Eighteen Hundred and Froze to Death reunited in the mid-2010s, they tapped J. Robbins to produce their second album, 2019’s appropriately-titled Some Years. Eighteen Hundred and Froze to Death fans only had to wait five years for a follow-up this time, with Thirds (yet again, an appropriate name) coming out this month (produced by Christopher Ploss this time, but Robbins returns to mix the record and sing backing vocals on “Minutewomen”).
There’s a lot of underground rock history contained in Thirds, but to be a bit reductive, it’s effectively the clean, workmanlike precision of Electrical Audio-recorded Chicago noise rock crossed with a palpable sense of Washington, D.C. punk rock agitation. If you liked the most recent Chimes of Bayonets album, it’s in the same universe, but that record’s blunt instrumentation is replaced by a more sharply-honed weapon on these nine songs. As is proper, Eighteen Hundred and Froze to Death’s rhythm section is incredibly key to their sound–Yagielski’s high-flying bass is the heartbeat of the record, and Kuntz’s powerhouse drumming the bolded exclamation mark. I have no idea how the band decided to sequence this album, as there are so many songs on here that feel either like an assault of an opening statement or a barnburning closing track (the record’s first four songs in particular are like one punch in the face after another, with the post-punk snaking of “Wreck the Decks” the first thing that even hints at subtlety). I suppose “Minutewomen” gets the nod as the album closer by virtue of it being the longest song on the album, a six-minute Touch & Go-type tune that spends half its length ramping up to an explosive, almost classic rock finale. Eventually, Eighteen Hundred and Froze to Death remember that they’re just a bunch of guys in a medium-sized college town and bring “Minutewomen” in for a conclusion that kind of tapers off. Still, I wouldn’t want to have to follow that one–but Eighteen Hundred and Froze to Death probably could’ve picked off where they left off if they wanted to. (Bandcamp link)
Wild Yaks – Monumental Deeds
Release date: June 21st Record label: Ernest Jenning Record Co. Genre: Garage rock, psych rock, art punk Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull Track: See the Light
Wild Yaks are a Rockaway, Queens-based band who debuted back in 2009 with an album called 10 Ships (Don’t Die Yet); depending on whether or not you count 2021’s Live at Rippers, they’re now on either their fifth or sixth full-length. The lineup’s shifted a bit over the years–vocalist/guitarist Robert Bryn and drummer Martin Cartegena have been there since the beginning, bassist Jose Aybar showed up a couple years later, and they added keyboardist Giovanni Kincaide sometime in the late 2010s. Their latest album, Monumental Deeds, introduces Jairo Barsallo Rubio on lead guitar, and this quintet (plus saxophone contributions from frequent collaborator Jeff Tobias) comprise the Wild Yaks this time around. Out via their longtime home of Ernest Jenning Record Co. (which seems to be the premier destination for long-running, unclassifiable rock bands in the greater New York area), Monumental Deeds is a loose but sharp collection of deeply felt rock and roll. It’s “garage rock” in a big-tent sense of the term–I hear a bit of the freaky, psych-tinged explosiveness of labelmate King Khan in it, particularly in the retro sound brought by the keys and the prominent rhythm section, but Wild Yaks are a group that primarily just sound like themselves at this point.
Something of an accidental record, Monumental Deeds began as “a 7” or an EP”, but Wild Yaks just kept rolling until they had a full album. There’s an off-the-cuff charm to the album that shows up from the get-go, with the opening garage-pop rager of “Crazy People” and the euphoric “See the Light” both sounding incredibly fun. Wild Yaks take that attitude with them through detours into bass-led, saxophone-shaded dance-punk (“Lover/Liar”) and tipsy country western singalongs (“Desperado”), and the rambling spoken word soliloquy of “Jose’s Struggle” is even more gripping with the smooth playing of the band around its orator. The raging bull energy of the Yaks spills into the back half of Monumental Deeds, even as “See That Girl” (a two-point-five minute shapeshifting garage rocker) and “MOMD” (a five-minute post-psychedelic journey of a track) are genuinely weird songs. Just as impressively, Wild Yaks save what’s straight-up one of the best and most fully-realized moments on the album for last, with “Take the Bell” finding the band honing in on the kind of retro, 60s-touched rock music that they’d been dancing around up until that point and playing it straight. In a way, the rest of Monumental Deeds could be Wild Yaks working their way up to this final exclamation mark–but, thankfully, they’re a band that’s equally compelling in “hammering things out” mode. (Bandcamp link)
Hello there, folks! Both Monday and Tuesday of this week were dedicated to unveiling Rosy Overdrive’s Top 40 Albums of 2024 So Far, so the first Pressing Concerns of the week is a rare Wednesday edition. It’s a grab-bag of weird underground rock and roll, offbeat pop, and unique songwriting this time around: new albums from Goosewind, Eyecandy, and Daniel Brouns, and an EP from Iffin, appear in this edition.
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.
Goosewind – The Miracle of Tape
Release date: April 19th Record label: Shrimper Genre: Lo-fi indie rock, experimental rock Formats: CD, digital Pull Track: The Miracle of Tape
Goosewind is a long-running lo-fi indie rock project led by Rick Bunce, a Shrimper Records O.G. Like Shrimper’s most notable bands (The Mountain Goats, Refrigerator, Nothing Painted Blue), Bunce came up in southern California’s Inland Empire region, and the first few Goosewind cassettes in the early 90s were some of Shrimper’s first releases, even if they don’t exactly have the cult following today that some of the other acts on that label’s roster do (even the Internet’s preeminent Shrimper fansite has little to say on them). Although they moved on from Shrimper after a few releases, Goosewind never stopped putting out music, and the two reunited for 2022’s Grateful 4 the Times We Share cassette. Goosewind are back just two years later, and Bunce and his collaborators (this time, Melody Kriesel, Maddelleine Grae, Ruben Marquez, Gerry Hernandez, Rich Jones, and Jen Preciado) have cooked up a forty-five minute CD called The Miracle of Tape. My formal introduction to Goosewind may have come thirty years later, but I almost immediately understood them as true adherents to an important, inventive, and less-remembered strain of indie rock right out of the 1990s.
Other than the obvious Shrimper bands, Goosewind’s underground is the same underground as Thinking Fellers Union Local 282, the Strapping Fieldhands, Souled American, Trumans Water, Skin Graft Records…music that’s compelling and “difficult”–not merely due to recording style, but due to something positively ornery at its core. Half a dozen songs into The Miracle of Tape, every track genuinely sounds like it was written and performed by a different band. To a certain kind of person, it might feel like Goosewind are playing a trick on you–but in reality, they’re not only serious, but just about as honest as they come, too. There’s no easily-digestible, polished package to be found here: just music, beautiful, weird, and impossible to ignore. The six-minute title track opens the record with Shrimper’s version of goth and punk rock, a mid-tempo power chord chugger that’s sure to satisfy neither goth nor punk purists. On the other hand, it’s hard to imagine someone who wouldn’t be charmed by the soaring, glossy, AutoTuned synthpop of “Broken Hearts Club” one song later.
“Rest Stop Tree” and “Fever Pitch” land somewhere between the first two songs on the record–decidedly not for everyone, but if you’re open to either’s terrain (slide guitar-shaded folk music for the former, fuzzed-out glam-punk for the latter), they’re heavenly. These are the “hits” on The Miracle of Tape, but hardly the full story–one that also includes lengthy instrumentals (“It’s Always 1145”, “Rich Metal”), annoying “pirate radio” skits from Kriesel and Bunce (“Murphy’s Law”, “Transylvania Airlines”), and stuff that–there’s no way around it–is just plain weird (“Tourette’s of the Feet”, “Caddy Smells Like Trees”). Even the hits, though, are transmissions from a different world–as tempting as it would be to describe “Rest Stop Tree” as “Neutral Milk Hotel-esque”, it’s probably closer to Charlie McAlister, and while “Fever Pitch” could’ve been a 70s punk classic, it’s actually a cover of a song by Halo, a Los Angeles 90s band also associated with Shrimper. I’ve written about bands that sound like Lungfish before, but this might be the closest music has gotten to the miraculous feeling of going to the aquarium and seeing an actual lungfish. It’s out on CD, but The Miracle of Tape is the right name for it. (Midheaven link)
Eyecandy – You Can See Me from the Mountain
Release date: May 24th Record label: Gore Club Genre: Noise rock, experimental rock, post-hardcore, prog-punk Formats: CD, cassette, digital Pull Track: Changeling
Oxnard, California noise rock quartet Eyecandy first showed up in 2021 in the form of an EP (Supernova) and a full-length (The Promontory), which I heard through a tape released by Knife Hits and The Ghost Is Clear Records that compiled both into a single release. Eyecandy’s discography up to that point was a fine collection of loud, noisy rock music–clearly punk-informed, but still very heavy–but truthfully the band (Manuel Chavez, Cameron Esmaili, Robert Segura, and Julian Martinez) had kind of slipped my mind until their sophomore album, You Can See Me from the Mountain, showed up in my inbox. I ended up being quite surprised with how much of a leap Eyecandy have taken in the past few years–it’s not that they’ve abandoned their noise rock sound, they’re just…more now. The band careen through loopy, Beefheartian prog-punk, bone-quaking heavy rock, and bright and even a bit orchestral indie rock (among other genres) across You Can See Me from the Mountain–it’s a record clearly in line with weirdo underground rock of the 80s and 90s (from Touch & Go, Amphetamine Reptile, Alternative Tentacles, etc.), but it (like the best of this kind of music) hardly sounds like a reverent tribute.
You Can See Me from the Mountain greets the listener with an instrumental opener that moves into “The Grand Cannon”, which goes from jaunty, swinging saloon rock to pummeling noise rock on a dime, and “Skeleton Key”, a writhing, tortured-sounding post-harcore-metal thing that’s the heaviest song on the album. Funnily enough, this opening stretch is the least accessible part of the album–Eyecandy remain weird, but sometimes that means sticking a bright, jangly pop rock tune (“Changeling”, which still has just a bit of an edge) in the middle of the record, or channeling their huge sound into industrial post-punk throbbing (“The Entertainer”). The oddest single song on You Can See Me from the Mountain is probably “Polka”, which continues in the grand tradition of noise rock bands taking the piss out of other genres of music in a deliberately annoying and borderline-unlistenable way (I kind of hate it, but it’s also undeniably a work of art), although they continue to genre hop in the record’s second half from the maximalist, almost emo-indie-rock of “Pinky” to the straight-up punk of “Hole in My Head” to the huge, seven-minute prog-indebted closing track “The Mountain”. You Can See Me from the Mountain ends with everyone singing together, having reached the summit–we’d best enjoy it, as we’ve no idea where Eyecandy will go next. (Bandcamp link)
Daniel Brouns – Stock Music for the Cosmos
Release date: May 17th Record label: Anxiety Blanket Genre: Folk rock, singer-songwriter, slowcore Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull Track: Closure
Daniel Brouns grew up in Turlock, California (apparently it’s close to Modesto) before moving to Los Angeles to pursue music–engineering and mastering music, to be specific. He did that for a couple of years before deciding to make it himself, as well, releasing his debut solo EP Boy’s Normal in 2017. Anxiety Blanket Records eventually re-released his first record, and they’re also putting out Stock Music for the Cosmos, the first-ever Daniel Brouns LP. Brouns had been working on Stock Music for the Cosmos since before the pandemic with co-producer Kenny Becker–the two of them play most of what’s on the record, although they also enlist Emily Elkin (Angel Olsen’s band) to play cello and Chuck Moore (Cartalk) for backing vocals. Stock Music for the Cosmos is a “singer-songwriter” album, albeit one certainly informed by Brouns’ music engineering past, as it has a rich and impactful sound. Most of these songs have acoustic, folk-ish skeletons, but Brouns isn’t afraid of using synths and rock instrumentation to tease them out–combined with Brouns’ deep voice and his personal lyric-writing, the record reminds me a lot of Pedro the Lion’s David Bazan.
When I say Brouns’ writing on Stock Music for the Cosmos is “personal”, I mean that as literally as possible–the songs are about “nine of the most influential moments of his life”, three from each decade the thirty-year-old has been alive. Romantic and familial relationships, messy breakups, death–all of these color Brouns’ reminiscences throughout the record. The earliest songs all feel a bit more like discrete moments–the death of a classroom pet in “Lizard Killer”, the football game-turned-brawl in “The Legend of Duke Stone”, and “Porn: An Internet Experience”, a delicate folk song that fearlessly captures the gravity of something very powerful that we still don’t do a very good job of talking about. As Stock Music for the Cosmos advances, lines get blurred and the songs begin to bleed into each other. I view “Ash”, “Closure”, and “Watershed” as a trio of sorts–I don’t know if they’re all about the same romantic relationship, but they all capture the apprehension, pain, and peace (respectively) often found in one with a clear end date. Further reflecting real life, “700 Miles”–a song about the death of Brouns’ mother–interrupts this arc, a realistically inconvenient tragedy. It’s all handled with a polish that doesn’t cheapen anything Brouns sings about–Stock Music for the Cosmos receives a reading appropriate for a record a lifetime in the making. (Bandcamp link)
Iffin – Homage to Catatonia (Picaro Two)
Release date: May 1st Record label: Self-released Genre: College rock, folk rock, jangle pop, psych pop Formats: Digital Pull Track: Kinderkings
Last year, I wrote about a four-song EP called Picaro 1: As the Crow Fightsby the Seattle-based project Iffin. Iffin is the latest guise of longtime musician Mira Tsarina, and as recent releases such as Picaro 1 indicated, it’s been a vehicle for her to explore her own unique, skewed take on vintage guitar pop and college rock (I mentioned Robert Pollard, Graeme Downes, and Franklin Bruno in that review at the time–artists that are effectively impossible to carbon copy, meaning that Iffin has had no trouble developing a distinct “sound” by taking influence from these giants). A year later, Iffin has put out a sequel of sorts in Homage to Catatonia (Picaro Two), five more songs that fit right next to its prequel on the digital shelf quite nicely but not without taking a step forward, too. At alternative moments both catchier and stranger than Picaro 1, Homage to Catatonia is marked by a more palpable playfulness and adventurousness that flirts with blowing the entire world of Iffin right open.
The prominent mandolin strumming that opens first song “Document of Descent” is unlike anything else I’d heard from Iffin thus far, and Tsarina takes it a step further by grafting a melodic bass part to the track as well–it’s one part R.E.M. and The Waterboys, another part XTC, all of which had been a part of Iffin but never quite bubbling to the surface like this. On almost any such brief EP, “Document of Descent” would easily be the catchiest song, but Homage to Catatonia actually saves its biggest moment for the back end with penultimate track “Kinderkings”, a sparkling, absurdly jaunty piece of jangle pop that once again evokes Andy Partridge if he had a completely different personality. With a couple of towering songs on either end of Homage to Catatonia, Iffin now has the cover necessary to get a bit weird in the center of the EP, with the murky “Cost of Floss” taking a minute to break out of its stupor to embrace a sneaky post-punk/new wave hook and the record’s centerpiece, the five-minute atmospheric “Pointless Walk”, never entirely leaving its own hypnosis. Instead, it just hands everything over to the giddy guitar, bass, and melodic of “Kinderkings” after its wandered enough, allowing Homage to Catatonia to hit us with a reminder of just how fun-sounding this kind of music can be in the right hands. (Bandcamp link)
If you’re only just now joining us: this is part two of my list of my favorite forty albums of 2024 thus far, presented in alphabetical order. Thanks for reading!
Here are links to stream a playlist of these selections via Spotify and Tidal (Bandcamp links are provided below for all records).
Rain Recordings – Terns in Idle
Release date: April 12th Record label: Trash Tape Genre: Emo-y indie rock, 90s indie rock, folk rock Formats: CD, cassette, digital
Carrboro-based Evren Centeno and Stockholm, Sweden’s Josef Löfvendahl have been collaborating remotely for a few years as Rain Recordings, but Terns inIdle is the first album that the duo recorded in person in the same studio. Ceneno and Löfvendahl sound like they’ve spent a good deal of time with essential 90s indie rock groups like Modest Mouse and Built to Spill, but Terns in Idle isn’t entirely devoted to this bygone ornery era of guitar music–there’s also some Neutral Milk Hotel-ish folk ambition, the earnest, wide-eyed 2000s version of indie rock, and even a bit of emo mixed in, as the duo take advantage of the studio setting to expand their sound. (Read more)
Tucker Riggleman & the Cheap Dates – Restless Spirit
Release date: February 17th Record label: WarHen Genre: Alt-country, country rock Formats: Vinyl, digital
If 2021’s Alive and Dying Fast was the sound of Tucker Riggleman & The Cheap Dates slowing down and displaying enough confidence in Riggleman’s writing to let it take the unquestioned center stage, Restless Spirit is where the West Virginia-based band show that they can maintain the captivating quality of that record’s songs while also injecting just a bit more rock and roll into things. No one’s going to mistake Restless Spirit for a garage punk record, but it is very clearly an album where Riggleman’s formative alt-country and power pop influences peak through with regularity, and this suits his writing–always with chaos and darkness hovering around, but determined to keep it in check rather than overwhelming everything. (Read more)
J. Robbins – Basilisk
Release date: February 2nd Record label: Dischord Genre: Post-punk, post-hardcore, 90s indie rock, alt-rock, art punk Formats: Vinyl, digital
We’re probably lucky that we got a sophomore J. Robbins album at all–the D.C.-based musician is a prolific and in-demand engineer these days, and his influential 90s Dischord group Jawbox have reunited and even released new material in recent years. Basilisk sounds familiar in a most welcome way, with Robbins evoking his golden era in a way few 90s indie rockers are still doing today. That being said, Basilisk doesn’t exactly sound ripped from the world of Jawbox circa 1993–it picks up about where 2019’s Un-Becoming left off, with Robbins writing art-punk anthems with both “maturity” and “edge” and a fearless awareness of the present. (Read more)
Daniel Romano’s Outfit – Too Hot to Sleep
Release date: March 1st Record label: You’ve Changed Genre: Power pop, punk rock, garage rock Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
Although the proper records from Daniel Romano’s Outfit generally hew more towards “studio rats” than “garage punks”, those who’ve followed the prolific Canadian troubadour know about his band’s energy and ferocity in their live shows. I’ve been waiting for something like Too Hot to Sleep from The Outfit for a while now–a genuine live-in-studio sounding garage rock scorcher of a record. Romano and his crew really honed in on something potent with this ten-song, twenty-seven minute collection, which is looser-sounding than typical Outfit fare but still led by a smooth operator of a pop songwriter. Even if you think you know Daniel Romano’s deal by now, I’d recommend Too Hot to Sleep to any power pop and/or garage rock fan–it’s one of his strongest albums yet. (Read more)
Greg Saunier – We Sang, Therefore We Were
Release date: April 26th Record label: Joyful Noise Genre: Art rock, noise pop, post-punk, math rock, garage rock Formats: Vinyl, digital
Considering just how much great music he’s been involved with over the past quarter-century, it’s perhaps not surprising that Deerhoof’s Greg Saunier can carry an album all on his own, but still, I was surprised by just how much I enjoyed We Sang, Therefore We Were, somehow his first-ever solo record. As it turns out, he’s a killer, unique pop songwriter when left to his own devices; the album’s dozen tracks certainly are recognizably “Deerhoof-esque”, but the one-man Saunier band (he wrote, played, recorded, mixed, and mastered everything here) is truncated and streamlined, throwing jagged, catchy guitar riffs and shapeshifting, form-fitting vocals over top of everything in a keen manner. (Read more)
SAVAK – Flavors of Paradise
Release date: March 1st Record label: Peculiar Works/Ernest Jenning Record Co. Genre: Post-punk, garage rock, college rock, 90s indie rock Formats: Vinyl, digital
Coming a little under two years after their last record, Human Error / Human Delight, Flavors of Paradise adds to the language SAVAK have been developing since their debut in 2016, contracting it in some places and expanding it in others. The Brooklyn trio recorded the album at Electrical Audio last year, and while they’ve always been a “no nonsense” group, Flavors of Paradise finds the band plowing through twelve songs triangulating garage rock, post-punk, and college rock with a fresh, live sound. It’s easy to take for granted just how well SAVAK click together, but Flavors of Paradise is the work of several indie rock lifers determined to harness their experience into something accessible but still doing justice to the trailblazing nature of their influences. (Read more)
Micah Schnabel – The Clown Watches the Clock
Release date: May 15th Record label: Self-released Genre: Country punk, alt-country, Americana, cowpunk Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
Columbus country-punk institution Micah Schnabel has always come off as somebody with a lot to say in his lyrics, both as the primary frontperson of his cult alt-country group Two Cow Garage, and in his just-as-worthwhile solo career (and even, more recently, as a novelist). His latest album, The Clown Watches the Clock,balances Schnabel’s long-winded tendencies with his punk rock instincts admirably–he wanders a fair bit in the songs’ verses, but there’s a conscious effort to return to clear, catchy, and concise refrains again and again on the album. The Clown Watches the Clock is a record about the ambient sights and sounds of middle America: guns, Jesus, and debilitating, humiliating, irritating poverty, delivered with none of the treacly, pandering romanticism in which lesser writers love to indulge (but, rather than cynicism, our narrator emerges out the other side with something much more potent). (Read more)
Sharp Pins – Radio DDR
Release date: May 19th Record label: Hallogallo Genre: Lo-fi indie rock, power pop, jangle pop Formats: Digital
Last year’s Turtle Rock was one of the breakout debuts of 2023, an exuberant and well-crafted collection of lo-fi pop that put Sharp Pins square in the center of Chicago’s “Hallogallo” scene. How does Kai Slater (Lifeguard, Dwaal Troupe), one of the most exciting talents in indie rock, follow it up? With a Bandcamp-only digital album benefiting the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund, of course. As great as Turtle Rock was, Radio DDR is a huge step forward for Sharp Pins–Slater doesn’t lose the humble charms of his first record under the name, but the writing is refined and polished, finding the Pins inching closer and closer to power pop perfection. Two great and distinct records in as many years–pay attention to Sharp Pins.
Shellac – To All Trains
Release date: May 17th Record label: Touch & Go Genre: Noise rock, math rock, post-hardcore Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
It’s as good as I’d hoped it’d be. I can enjoy Big Black in a certain mood and obviously “appreciate” it, but Steve Albini’s work with Todd Trainer and Bob Weston has always been my favorite from him as a musician. To All Trains is ten more songs and twenty-eight more minutes of possibly the greatest-sounding rock and roll band of all-time doing their thing, re-announcing their dominance by honing their metallic, razorblade-sharp sound into levels of concision and prickliness previously thought impossible to reach by mankind. It fucking sucks that this is the last Shellac album. It fucking rules–this, the last Shellac album.
Silo’s Choice – Languid Swords
Release date: March 29th Record label: Self-released Genre: Folk rock,prog-folk, art folk, new age Formats: Digital
Built largely around meandering acoustic guitar playing and upright bass, the seven-song, 40-minute Languid Swords backs up the John Fahey influence that Chicago’s Jon Massey cited when he emailed me about Languid Swords. The latest LP from his long-running Silo’s Choice project takes its time and isn’t overly concerned with offering up pop hooks immediately–not that it doesn’t indulge in “pop music”, but it’s always on Massey’s own terms. It’s a bit more challenging than the experimental yet accessible take on Chicago indie folk rock of his other band, Coventry, but Languid Swords is gripping and spirited in its own steadily smoldering way. (Read more)
Sonny Falls – Sonny Falls
Release date: March 1st Record label: Earth Libraries Genre: Fuzz rock, garage rock, alt-country Formats: Vinyl, digital
Since 2018, Chicago’s Ryan Ensley aka Hoagie Wesley aka Sonny Falls has been putting out fiery, unique records that are loose-feeling but incredibly deep underneath their garage rock/fuzz-country exteriors. The fourth Sonny Falls album is a self-titled one that feels like an attempt to pack all the ambition strewn across the project in ten tracks and thirty-five minutes. The songs on Sonny Falls don’t sound like anything but Sonny Falls songs, but every track on the album feels stretched and teased out in a new way, Ensley spending a bit more time composing and arranging his sprawling writing instead of fully leaning into his street-raving side. At this point, Ensley has a very strong baseline as a songwriter, but it’s quite exciting to watch him figure out how to add to it. (Read more)
Sun Kin – Sunset World
Release date: April 19th Record label: Self-released Genre: Art pop, indie pop, synthpop, singer-songwriter Formats: Digital
Sun Kin is the project of Bombay-originating, Los Angeles-based Kabir Kumar, who’s been making music under the name for a dozen years in addition to playing in the band GUPPY and collaborating with Rosy Overdrive favorite Pacing. Sunset World, Sun Kin’s latest, is an ambitious pop album in which Kumar corrals a ton of his musical collaborators and acquaintances in service of an eleven-song, thirty-minute record with boundless energy. Sunset World is a record about destruction (“apocalyptic LA pop”, they call it), but it’s bright and sunny and never loses sight of the positives involved in ruins and decay–it’s just clearing more space for what really matters. (Read more)
The Sylvia Platters – Vivian Elixir
Release date: April 26th Record label: Grey Lodge Genre: Jangle pop, power pop, indie pop Formats: Cassette, digital
At eight songs and 24 minutes, Vivian Elixir is on the shorter side, but The Sylvia Platters consider it more than just another EP–it’s their first “album” since 2015’s Make Glad the Day, even as the Vancouver-based power/jangle pop quartet have remained fairly active in the interstitial decade. And when you’ve got a bunch of songs that are as strong as these are, you can call it just about whatever you want. The Sylvia Platters continue to assert themselves as one of the best guitar pop bands going with Vivian Elixir, offering up power pop songs of varying stripes but consistent in quality and catchiness–about half of the cassette is “gigantic tune that could’ve been the lead single”, and the other half gives Vivian Elixir some extra character and helps it feel more like a proper album. (Read more)
Ther – Godzilla
Release date: April 5th Record label: Julia’s War Genre: Art rock, folk rock, post-post rock, alt-rock, slowcore Formats: Cassette, digital
On every record thus far from Philadelphia’s Ther, the band (led by So Big Auditory’s Heather Jones) has reinvented their sound in some form, so it’s no surprise that Godzilla sounds like none of their previous records once again. Godzilla asserts itself in Ther’s discography by embracing electric guitars and loud, dramatic indie rock to a previously unseen degree. Jones has worked with experimental shoegazers They Are Gutting a Body of Water frequently, and while that doesn’t really describe what Godzilla sounds like, Jones has perhaps taken inspiration from that side of indie rock to create what can at times feel almost like a photo negative the skeletal folk of their last album, in which her vocals alternatingly fight against or become entirely swallowed up by swirling, all-encompassing rock instrumentals. (Read more)
Mary Timony – Untame the Tiger
Release date: February 23rd Record label: Merge Genre: Folk rock, progressive rock, power pop Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
The amount of definitive rock music that Mary Timony has made in several different bands over the years is staggering–and it’s continued in recent years to the degree that I can’t be the only one to not realize it’s been fifteen years since a proper Timony solo album. Any indie rock musician who’s taken influence from Autoclave, Helium, or Ex Hex should get out their pen and paper for Untame the Tiger, a record that shows that Timony is still better than most at creating something intricate, immediate, and shockingly deep. Untame the Tiger is a surprising album, basking in the sun in plain sight but sneaking up on you at the same time–its leader sounds free, untamed, absolutely thrilled to be still pressing ahead in the form of inventive, unique rock music. (Read more)
True Green – My Lost Decade
Release date: February 1st Record label: Spacecase Genre: Lo-fi indie rock, lo-fi pop, psych pop, singer-songwriter Formats: Cassette, digital
Minneapolis’ Dan Hornsby is a novelist–perhaps unsurprisingly, his knack for storytelling and flawed, deeply-felt character studies is pervasive in My Lost Decade, the debut from his project True Green. What does surprise me is that the singer-songwriter chooses lo-fi, reverb-y psychedelic guitar pop to deliver it all. There are acoustic guitars, but Hornsby isn’t a folk troubadour, rather making music that’s generally thought of as the domain of Beatlesesque bashers like The Cleaners from Venus and Guided by Voices. My Lost Decade is a pleasingly varied-sounding record, but Hornsby and multi-instrumentalist Tailer Ransom develop a distinct musical style, a busy, kitchen-sink pop attitude that reflects True Green’s confidence that Hornsby’s striking songwriting will shine even if they whip up an instrumental storm around it. And it does. (Read more)
Rosie Tucker – UTOPIA NOW!
Release date: March 22nd Record label: Sentimental Genre: Art rock, power pop, pop punk, alt-rock Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital
The snippets of Rosie Tucker’s discography I’d heard before now definitely did not prepare me for the adventurous, overstuffed, and punchy rock record that is UTOPIA NOW!, an album seemingly engineered to appeal specifically to me. As a songwriter, Tucker is lethally sharp, pulling out massive power pop/pop punk hooks out of nowhere, oftentimes completely at odds with where the track had been leading up to beforehand, but never in a way that feels overly shoehorned. UTOPIA NOW!’s sound is just as commendable–like the majority of Tucker’s output, it was produced by themself and their longtime collaborator Wolfy, and they gleefully veer between chilly bedroom pop/folk/rock, slick alt-rock, and limber, jerky art rock/new wave across the record’s thirteen tracks. (Read more)
Vacation – Rare Earth
Release date: May 3rd Record label: Feel It Genre: Power pop, punk rock, garage rock Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital
Vacation are a quartet out of Cincinnati that have been making their blend of garage rock, power pop, and punk rock for a decade and a half now. Rare Earth, their debut for Feel It Records, displays a belief that pop music should be played loud and fast, but it also reaches over to nearby Dayton to snag a mid-period Guided by Voices “meaty but hooky” attitude and, last but not least, throws in a dash of Midwestern, blue-collar pop punk. All in all, Rare Earth is one of the most inspired-sounding rock records I’ve heard in quite a bit–huge-sounding, catchy, with the edges anything but sanded off. (Read more)
Yea-Ming and the Rumours – I Can’t Have It All
Release date: May 24th Record label: Dandy Boy Genre: Indie pop, jangle pop, folk rock Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
The latest record from Oakland’s Yea-Ming Chen and her band, The Rumours, doesn’t reinvent their sound–Chen is still a sharp, 60s pop-inspired songwriter and a striking vocalist, and the band give these songs a polished but utilitarian, classic college rock reading. What makes I Can’t Have It All feel so full-sounding and like a career highlight is the well-earned, quiet but palpable confidence Yea-Ming and the Rumors display throughout the entire record. Every song on the first half is a “hit” in its own way, and once you get on their level, you can appreciate how The Rumours skip through twee-pop-rock, folk-country, dream pop, and slowed-down girl-group-influenced pop with a steady helping of zeal. (Read more)
Zero Point Energy – Tilted Planet
Release date: May 17th Record label: Danger Collective Genre: Post-punk, art punk, college rock Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital
Genesis Edenfield and Ben Jackson played together in mid-2010s Atlanta, Georgia art punk group Warehouse–now based in Brooklyn, the duo have reunited as Zero Point Energy. Their debut album, Tilted Planet, is a collaborative reintroduction to Edenfield and Jackson–both of them play guitar, both sing, and both wrote material for the twelve-song, forty-two minute record. Tilted Planet reinvents Edenfield and Jackson’s sound into something more polished and restrained, but still quite unique. American post-punk and garage rock still abound, but Zero Point Energy also adopt a mellow pop rock attitude that puts them towards the jammier end of classic college rock. Edenfield and Jackson meld together excellently here, creating a beautiful, obstinate, simple, complex melting pot of a debut album. (Read more)
Rosy Overdrive 