Rosy Overdrive

Rosy Overdrive’s Top 40 Albums of 2024 So Far (Part 1 of 2)

Hello there, and welcome to the midway mark of 2024 (as measured by the music blog Rosy Overdrive, at least). That means it’s time for the blog to select forty records we’ve loved more than anything else so far this year. It’s been the busiest year for the blog yet, which means there’s a bunch of good music I wasn’t able to fit on here (check the site directory for other records we’ve written about recently), but it’s hard to be disappointed with the incredibly strong selection we’ve ended up with below.

The list is unranked, ordered alphabetically by artist name (last year I did it reverse-alphabetically, and I alternate it every year).

Thanks for reading, and here are links to stream a playlist of these selections via Spotify and Tidal (Bandcamp links are provided for all records).

Click here for part two!

ADD/C – Ordinary Souls

Release date: March 29^thRecord label: Let’s Pretend
Genre: Punk rock, pop punk
Formats: Vinyl, digital

Ordinary Souls is ADD/C’s first new music in over a decade, and it’s a sweeping, wide-ranging punk rock record (seventeen songs in under forty minutes!) from a band with nothing to lose and no reason to keep “doing this”–other than the music itself, which is more than enough on its own. “Heartland rock” has come to mean something fairly polished and critic-friendly, but Ordinary Souls is perhaps a truer version of the term: catchy and decidedly rough-around-the-edges pop punk made by two-decade-plus rock and roll veterans strewn across tertiary-market cities in the South and Midwest with several lifetimes’ worth of fucked up shit to write about. (Read more)

Adeem the Artist – Anniversary

Release date: March 29^thRecord label: Four Quarters
Genre: Alt-country, country rock, folk rock
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital

Adeem the Artist put out an album called White Trash Revelry in 2022 that I really enjoyed–I wasn’t necessary expecting the Knoxville-based alt-country singer-songwriter to match it with their follow-up record, but I’m pleased to note that their latest full-length, Anniversary, is even better than the one that preceded it. For those of us already on board, Adeem takes several steps forward and outward in their writing, shooting for the stars by embracing polished, confident country rock and continuing to tackle the impossible task of writing about queer Southern experience in a powerful yet personable way (and if it were possible, it’d certainly sound pretty damn close to Anniversary).

Ahem – Avoider

Release date: May 17^thRecord label: Forged Artifacts
Genre: Power pop, pop punk, jangle pop
Formats: Vinyl, digital

You can call it power pop, pop punk, alt-rock, or college rock–whatever it is, the second album from Minneapolis power trio Ahem has more than enough in its ten songs to please fans of any of those genres. You’ll hear the band’s Twin Cities indie rock forbearers in Avoider, a massive collection of loud guitar-based pop music, and they expertly meld their Westerbergs, Harts, and Moulds with their off-the-cuff “indie punk” style and just a hint of high Midwestern folksiness/rootsiness, too. Whether it’s in service of roaring catharsis or lighter, breezier sunset-strummers, Ahem know what they’re doing and where they’re going–and it’s a treat to hear. (Read more)

Aluminum – Fully Beat

Release date: May 24^thRecord label: Felte
Genre: Shoegaze, noise pop, Madchester, fuzz rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital

Fully Beat is a huge leap forward for San Francisco shoegaze-pop group Aluminum, both sharpening and expanding their sound to create some of the most exciting, spirited, and downright fun rock music I’ve heard this year. The studied, carefully-constructed band on their debut EP, Windowpane, has been replaced with true believers in loud, bursting-at-the-seams indie rock throughout their debut LP. Fully Beat is the result of a band taking a big swing on their first full statement–it comes at you like a stampede in its loudest, most chaotic moments, but devotes plenty of time to filling in the gaps that they blast into their foundation, as well. (Read more)

American Culture – Hey Brother, It’s Been a While

Release date: May 3^rdRecord label: Convulse
Genre: Punk rock, Madchester, power pop, jangle pop, noise pop, college rock, psychedelic rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital

Denver quartet American Culture’s sound has a lot of familiar ingredients, but it’s a unique and captivating blend that’s found on Hey Brother, It’s Been a While–they’re “punk rock” in a loose sense, yes, although in the older underground version of the term, while also leaving room for indie rock and pop of several different stripes (mid-to-late Replacements jangly power pop, and even some psychedelic Madchester influences). Some of the variety of Hey Brother, It’s Been a While can be explained by the band having two main singer-songwriters, Chris Adolf and Michael Stein–without getting into it, the two distinct voices are key to the narrative of the album, which deals with a community-level traumatic event from two different perspectives. (Read more)

Ethan Beck & The Charlie Browns – Duck Hollow

Release date: May 31^stRecord label: Douglas Street
Genre: Power pop, college rock, jangle pop
Formats: Cassette, digital

Duck Hollow is the proper full length debut from Pittsburgh power poppers Ethan Beck & The Charlie Browns, and it pulls together giant hooks with electric alt-rock (at its most euphoric) and explores the terrain of delicate guitar pop music (at its most pensive). Duck Hollow is loosely a Pittsburgh-based concept album, with everything from the titular neighborhood to the one where Beck grew up (Squirrel Hill) to the Wabash Tunnel populating these songs. Recalling many great power pop records before it, Duck Hollow succeeds in placing us emotionally and geographically right next to its narrator as he traverses the Three Rivers. (Read more)

Climax Landers – Zenith No Effects

Release date: May 10^thRecord label: Gentle Reminder/Home Late/Intellectual Birds
Genre: Art rock, post-punk, indie pop, college rock, folk rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital

Although Will Moloney is clearly the ringleader/lead carnival barker of the Climax Landers, Zenith No Effects is just as palpably a record made with full collaboration welcomed. As a frontperson, Moloney frequently offers up his lyrics in a conversational talk-singing fashion–he’s got a little bit of the Minutemen-esque “post-punk as folk music” attitude towards things–but he’s hardly a one-note leader. Zenith No Effects is an offbeat but sincere guitar pop record at its core, with classic pop rock and college rock (aided by Paco Cathcart’s violin, Ani Ivry-Block’s accordion, and Charlie Dore-Young’s bass) shading the record–and Moloney ups his game to match the rest of the Climax Landers. (Read more)

Cloud Nothings – Final Summer

Release date: April 19^thRecord label: Pure Noise
Genre: Garage rock, punk, power pop
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital

In a world where Greg Sage and Robert Pollard are Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan, Cloud Nothings vocalist/guitarist Dylan Baldi would be a folk hero, churning out loud, pummeling, hooky rock music at a steady clip for a decade and a half now, aided deftly by longtime drummer Jayson Gerycz and bassist Chris Brown. One could cherry pick a few details from Final Summer–like the way that krautrock-y intro of the opening title track gives way to a big-sounding, saxophone-featuring “heartland rock”-ish version of the Cloud Nothings sound–and spin a “Cloud Nothings as you’ve never heard them before” narrative, but to me Final Summer sounds like the band at their most comfortable, like a group of ringers completely confident in their abilities. (Read more)

Crumbs – You’re Just Jealous

Release date: May 17^thRecord label: Skep Wax
Genre: Post-punk, punk, garage rock, indie pop, dance punk
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital

Coming in at a dozen tracks in under 30 minutes, every song on Crumbs’ sophomore album, You’re Just Jealous, goes on for exactly as long as it needs to and not a second further. The Leeds group cites bands like Gang of Four, Delta 5, and Chic as influences, and it’s apparent that You’re Just Jealous was made with the perspective that post-punk can and should be catchy and fun to listen to. The record combines the danceability of 80s post-punk, the hooks of classic indie pop, and the sharp edges of 90s Kill Rock Stars indie rock groups–it’s bullseye vocal melodies, Andy Gill guitar licks, and rumbling rhythms right up to the end. (Read more)

Dancer – 10 Songs I Hate About You

Release date: March 15^thRecord label: Meritorio
Genre: Post-punk, indie pop, art rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital

After two stellar EPs introduced the Glasgow band last year, 10 Songs I Hate About You is Dancer’s first full-length. It’s remarkably comforting just how stubbornly the quartet show up in the same clothes with the LP–the album was recorded live to tape at Green Door studio with Ronan Fay just like their EPs were, Gemma Fleet is still announcing every song’s title before it begins, Andrew Doig’s bass is all over the place and a treat to observe, and so on. Dancer had already covered quite a bit of ground on their first two EPs–all the ingredients for an excellent first album were lined up, and 10 Songs I Hate About You knocks it out of the park. (Read more)

Female Gaze – Tender Futures

Release date: May 17^thRecord label: Fort Lowell/Totally Real
Genre: Psychedelic rock, art rock, desert rock, post-rock, jazz rock
Formats: Vinyl, cassette, digital

After retiring the name of their old band, The Rifle, Tucson’s Nelene DeGuzman and Kevin Conklin formed Female Gaze with Nicky David Cobham-Morgese, and the former garage rockers undergo a remarkable transformation on Tender Futures, their debut album under the name. Stretching five songs across thirty-two minutes, Tender Futures is an expansive, vast record, with the band embodying the American southwest more than any of their projects ever have before. Inspired in part by DeGuzman’s chronic health issues that had left her in a “painful limbo”, Tender Futures explores the desert using empty space and towering nothingness as its language, intentionally evoking haziness and disorientation through psychedelia, post-rock, and even a bit of jazz-rock. (Read more)

Friko – Where We’ve Been, Where We Go From Here

Release date: February 16^thRecord label: ATO
Genre: Indie pop, college rock, fuzz rock, 90s indie rock
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital

Where We’ve Been, Where We Go From Here is the debut full-length from Chicago’s Friko, who’ve been associated with the Windy City’s “Hallogallo” scene since they arose around early 2020. Friko recall the playful guitar pop of several associated acts, albeit with a bit more “rock” in tow. Niko Kapetan is a compelling vocalist, sounding in command but close to breaking while delivering sharp melodies over top of instrumentals that veer into noisy indie rock freak-outs and then back to gorgeous chamber pop with ease. Where We’ve Been, Where We Go From Here swings drama and intensity around, but the projectiles are enjoyably well-crafted, going a long way towards defining Friko as standouts in a crowded and talented scene. (Read more)

Guitar – Casting Spells on Turtlehead

Release date: February 7^thRecord label: Spared Flesh/Julia’s War
Genre: Shoegaze, experimental rock, noise pop, fuzz rock, garage rock, lo-fi indie rock
Formats: Cassette, digital

Portland’s Saia Kuli brings a louder, noisier sound to his project Guitar’s latest release, and he also gets a little more help this time around compared to 2022’s mostly self-recorded lo-fi post-punk Guitar EP. Kuli linked up with experimental shoegaze label Julia’s War for Casting Spells on Turtlehead, and, as it turns out, a more fleshed-out Guitar sounds surprisingly like it fits right in with the current wave of omnivorous noise pop/shoegaze acts. Like an early Guided by Voices EP, Casting Spells on Turtlehead feels like a collection of disparate but connected moments–beautiful, melodic guitar riffs, basement-acoustic immediacy, lumbering but fun fuzz rock, trippy dream pop. Guitar have stepped things up a bit on their newest release, and hopefully some more people take notice accordingly. (Read more)

Late Bloomer – Another One Again

Release date: March 1^stRecord label: Self Aware/Dead Broke/Tor Johnson
Genre: Punk rock, 90s indie rock, fuzz rock, college rock
Formats: Vinyl, cassette, digital

As far back as 2013, Charlotte’s Late Bloomer were melding 90s indie rock, punk, and pop hooks together in a way that’s only gained popularity in the years since. Not only were the trio trailblazers in this specific revival, they’ve also been one of the best to do it–so it’s quite pleasing to hear Late Bloomer plug in their electric guitars and continue to tap into the sort of ragged-but-catchy Dinosaur Jr.-indebted indie rock they’ve done so well in the past on Another One Again, their first album in six years. At the same time, though, Another One Again thematically and thoughtfully reflects the passing of time in a way that makes it distinct from the rest of the band’s discography, entering their second decade as a band with a clear path forward. (Read more)

Liquid Mike – Paul Bunyan’s Slingshot

Release date: February 2^ndRecord label: Self-released
Genre: Power pop, pop punk, fuzz rock, alt-rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital

The breakout act of 2023 was a punk band from the upper peninsula of Michigan called Liquid Mike, whose eleven-song, 18-minute self-titled record got them a fair amount of buzz. Liquid Mike took eleven months to follow up S/T with Paul Bunyan’s Slingshot, and the group’s pop punk energy, power pop hooks, and 90s indie rock sense of driven listlessness are not only intact, but expanded here. Paul Bunyan’s Slingshot is the sound of a band completely rising to the occasion–they’ve turned around and made a record that feels like a huge step forward from the (quite good, mind you) music that got them the modicum of attention in the first place. (Read more)

Mint Mile – Roughrider

Release date: February 23^rdRecord label: Comedy Minus One
Genre: Alt-country, 90s indie rock, folk rock, Crazy Horse stuff
Formats: Vinyl, digital

Mint Mile’s Roughrider, their long-awaited second full-length, is their first to wrap its business up entirely on two sides of one vinyl record, finally adding the the “tight”, forty-minute single long-player album to their resumé. Roughrider has a “snapshot” and “wide-ranging” feel that–while not absent from their sprawling debut, Ambertron–becomes more pronounced here due to the shorter timespan. After years of being the “new” band of Silkworm/Bottomless Pit’s Tim Midyett, Mint Mile has traversed a ton of ground in its first decade of existence, and the band pull from several aspects of it (meandering country-rock, sunny pop rock, moments of surprising bareness) throughout their latest triumph. (Read more)

Miscellaneous Owl – You Are the Light That Casts a Shadow

Release date: March 1^stRecord label: Self-released
Genre: Indie folk, indie pop, bedroom pop, singer-songwriter
Formats: Digital

Huan-Hua Chye’s latest as Miscellaneous Owl is You Are the Light That Casts a Shadow, a dozen-song record she wrote, recorded, and played entirely on her own over the course of February (which is, apparently, “Album Writing Month”). Given its method of incubation, it’s not surprising that You Are the Light That Casts a Shadow could loosely be described as a “bedroom pop/folk” record, although that doesn’t quite do justice to the music contained herein, which covers jangly, almost twee indie pop, offbeat guitar-pop singer-songwriters of decades past, and beautiful straight-up indie folk. Chye’s writing is clearly the work of a major talent, and just about everything on You Are the Light That Casts a Shadow merits much thought and engagement. (Read more)

Mister Goblin – Frog Poems

Release date: April 26^thRecord label: Spartan
Genre: Singer-songwriter, alt-rock, folk rock, post-punk
Formats: Vinyl, digital

Frog Poems is notable in that it’s the first time Sam Goblin has released new music on a label other than Exploding in Sound Records (dating back to the first single from his old band, Two Inch Astronaut, in 2012)–and it feels like a new era by collecting and expanding on everything Mister Goblin had done up until that point. Frog Poems is a statement of active intent, a declaration that regardless of who’s around Sam Goblin (who’s moved states multiple times in the past few years) and what label he’s on, Mister Goblin will find a way to exist, with the “post-hardcore power trio” and “introspective folk rock” versions of the project both showing up here. (Read more)

Perennial – Art History

Release date: June 7^thRecord label: Ernest Jenning Record Co./Safe Suburban Home/Totally Real
Genre: Art punk, garage rock, post-hardcore, dance punk
Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital

Over the past few years, New England trio Perennial have been honing a unique sound that mixes Dischord Records post-hardcore, turn-of-the-century dance punk, and retro garage rock together with just a hint of frayed experimentation around the edges. Their third album, Art History, finds 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. I was already fully on board the Perennial train before this album, and I’m just as excited as ever to witness the band continue to build in real-time something entirely distinct, huge, and befitting of the title Art History. (Read more)

Program – It’s a Sign

Release date: June 7^thRecord label: Anti Fade
Genre: College rock, power pop, garage rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital

One of my favorite under-the-radar records of 2019 was Show Me, the debut album from Melbourne guitar pop group Program. Almost deliberately low-key but undeniably catchy, they’re the kind of in-their-own-universe band where it doesn’t surprise me that it took a while for them to put together a follow-up, but It’s a Sign is more than worth the wait. Co-leaders Rory Heane and Jonathan Ross-Brewin pick up where they left off, singing timeless laid-back pop songs with a Flying Nun influence but with enough ingredients–steady droning indie rock, power pop, garage rock, post-punk, all held down by rhythm section Charlotte Stewart and James Tyrrell–that the material found on It’s a Sign could’ve come from just about anywhere at any time.

Click here for part two!

Pressing Concerns: Swiftumz, Las Nubes, Cola, Russian Baths

Welcome to a Thursday Pressing Concerns! Today’s post is a real “who’s who” of “bands releasing new albums tomorrow, June 14th, 2024”. New albums from Swiftumz, Las Nubes, Cola, and Russian Baths are featured below. If you missed Monday’s post (featuring Maggie Gently, Apples with Moya, Modern Silent Cinema, and D. Sablu) or Tuesday’s (featuring Grr Ant, The Long Lost Somethins, Floral Print, and Dark Surfers), 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.

Swiftumz – Simply the Best

Release date: June 14^th
Record label: Empty Cellar
Genre: Power pop, jangle pop, lo-fi pop
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Simply the Best

I hadn’t heard of Swiftumz’s Christopher McVicker before the advent of his latest album, Simply the Best, and it’s fair to say the San Francisco-based power pop musician is a bit under the radar–he put albums out in 2011 and 2015, with only a two-song single in 2017 materializing between then and now. Still, I certainly noticed the excitement among the Bay Area underground pop masses when the third Swiftumz LP was announced, with plenty noting their love of McVicker’s music on social media and The Reds, Pinks & Purples’ Glenn Donaldson warmly referring to him as “a songwriter’s songwriter”. I’m happy to say that Simply the Best lives up to the hyper-specific hype, with the LP providing ten shining examples of McVicker’s ability to come up with and execute a sublime pop song. Simply the Best has the earnest intimacy of bedroom pop, but it’s not cleanly a lo-fi affair–Kelley Stoltz and members of The Aislers Set, among others, contribute to these songs (the album press release singles out lead guitarist Chris Guthridge’s additions to the record, and I’m passing it on because it’s certainly right to do so). Sometimes fuzzy and distorted, other times sweet and jangly, Simply the Best could pass for a 2010s “hypnagogic” pop record, but it’s more precisely-focused on hooks than that era, with humble lo-fi guitar pop music from the likes of early Grandaddy, Tony Molina, Lost Boy ?, and Brian Mietz being the closest brethren.

Swiftumz has no problem whatsoever with coming out of the gate strong, with the mid-tempo, electric power pop strut of the opening title track being an instant ‘hit’, and the chiming, jangly fuzz-sprint of “Unconditional” and the lighter-than-air indie pop feel of “Never Impress” continue to ensure that Simply the Best is rolling from the get-go. Interestingly enough, McVicker chose the closest thing to a true ballad (“Second Take”) to be the album’s lead single, but it’s hard to argue it’s not a success in its own way, recalling the most peaceful sections of Ty Segall and Alex G’s discographies. McVicker flirts with taking Simply the Best into the ditch with the six-minute bedroom pop Neil Young vibes of “Almost Through” and the deconstructed fuzz-rock of “For Bucher”, but Swiftumz come out the other side with a pair of excellent pop tracks in “Falling Down” and “Fall Apart” that have just as many hooks as the record’s opening salvo. Simply the Best has already done everything it needs to do by this point, but the sub-30 minute album adds a few more wrinkles by closing with the record’s weirdest track (the percussion-heavy fog of “Demoralized”) and its most traditional-sounding (the waltzing “Finally Through”, the record’s other moment of balladry). Simply the Best does its best to put a hidden gem out there in the open–it’s never been easier to be “in the know” about Swiftumz. (Bandcamp link)

Las Nubes – Tormentas Malsanas

Release date: June 14^th
Record label: Spinda/Godless America/Sweat
Genre: Alt-rock, fuzz rock, grunge, psych rock
Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital
Pull Track: Enredados

Miami rock band Las Nubes was formed in 2017 by guitarist/vocalist Ale Campos and drummer Emile Milgrim, eventually joined by guitarist Alumine Soto and bassist Cuci Amador. Their debut album, SMVT, came out in 2019, and since then they’ve put out a few one-off singles and gained some notable fans–the press email notes praise they’ve received from Iggy Pop and Calvin Johnson, and they put out a 7” on Thurston Moore’s Daydream Library label last year. Listening to their sophomore album, Tormentas Malsanas, it’s not hard to hear the appeal of the band (who sing in both Spanish and English)–this is loud and crunchy rock and roll music at its loudest and crunchiest. Las Nubes deal in the louder 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, and one could put them alongside recent “Exploding in Sound-core” 90s revivalists like Melkbelly, Screaming Females, and Rick Rude. Still, there’s a grunge-y heaviness to their sound that puts them closer to The Smashing Pumpkins or even Hum, and while they’re not exactly “psychedelic”, Tormentas Malsanas packs a punch as strong as good psych-rock does.

Tormentas Malsanas offers up an excellently representative opening track in “Would Be”, which balances heavy-duty guitars and just-as-heavy-duty pop hooks in equal measure. The fuzzed-out riffs continue with “Pesada”, which turns in an alt-rock death march that sounds surprisingly fun, and “Silhouetted Man”, which parts the clouds just a little bit to really get themselves into Deal Sisters mode. The atmospheric opening of “Caricia” might feel like a breather until one glances at the song’s length and realizes that we’re only in the first stages of what eventually becomes the record’s towering ten-minute centerpiece. Las Nubes follow every excessive urge to blow “Caricia” up, capturing lightning in a bottle in the midst of the storm before picking up the thread with more “digestible” punky alt-rock in the form of “Enredados” and the shoegaze-pop “Caminar Sola”. There are other brief moments of reprieve–like the first minute or so of “The Weeks That Followed” before the guitar torpedoes kick in–but Tormentas Malsanas spends an impressive amount of its 40 minutes just rocking out as much as possible. It makes sense that it ends with two sub-three-minute songs in “Canse” and “Drop in, Ya Freaks” that pound away until the feedback takes over in the final thirty seconds of the latter track–they’ll circle around their point occasionally, but that’s what Las Nubes is all about on Tormentas Malsanas. (Bandcamp link)

Cola – The Gloss

Release date: June 14^th
Record label: Fire Talk
Genre: Post-punk, art rock, 2000s indie rock
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
Pull Track: Tracing Hallmarks

I’ve been vaguely aware of the trajectory of Montreal-originating indie rock trio Cola, but admittedly haven’t been following them closely. They’re a successor band of sorts to beloved post-punk quartet Ought, who broke up in 2021 after putting out three LPs, and half of the band (vocalist/guitarist Tim Darcy and bassist Ben Stidworthy) immediately began the newer band with Evan Cartwright of The Weather Station and U.S. Girls on drums. Cola put out their first album, Deep in View, back in 2022, but I must confess that the only thing that the band members had done that had really stuck with me thus far is “Still Waking Up”, an excellent single from Darcy’s only solo album that, for my money, does Morrissey better than anything Morrissey himself ever did. So it was that I found myself increasingly drawn to the sound of The Gloss, the trio’s second album together. The band reference the “right” names as inspiration for this album–David Berman in the lyrics, Flying Nun Records, Television–and while they’re all in there a bit, the latter of the three is the one whose shadow looms the largest over Cola’s sophomore record.

The invocation of Television brings me to what kind of music I actually think The Gloss sounds the most like–2000s indie rock in the vein of The Strokes and Spoon. I would call it a post-post-punk album; Cola end up capturing the tipping point where tight rhythm sections stop being a backdrop for pure nervousness and instead provide the foundation for a smooth, suave, impossibly cool-sounding attitude instead. Obviously, the post-punk of Darcy and Stidworthy’s past is still a large component of The Gloss’ sound–nobody with any other kind of background would make the instrumental choices that end up giving songs like “Tracing Hallmarks” and “Pallor Tricks” a bit of tension. It’s just a bit, though, balancing with a hypnotic, meditative guitar pop sound in the former (yes, they’ve listened to The Clean as well, clearly) and the Marquee Moon-ish melodic window dressing of the latter. Cola meter everything out evenly and deliberately throughout The Gloss, with the post-punk excursion of “Down to Size” getting played out with the blissed-out march of “Keys Down If You Stay”, and they kick up the tempo in “Bell Wheel” after tinkering around for four minutes in “Nice Try”. Tight until the end, even the six-minute closing track “Bitter Melon” feels like a controlled exercise in “let’s stretch things out a bit”, flirting with stuff like Wand and mid-period Radiohead but never quite committing to the detour. Their eyes are still on the road ahead of them. (Bandcamp link)

Russian Baths – Mirror

Release date: June 14^th
Record label: Good Eye
Genre: Post-punk, art rock, dream pop
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Vision (Dexedrine)

Russian Baths a trio from New York that practically ooze Empire State grandiosity and seriousness. The group is co-led by guitarist/vocalists Luke Koz and Jess Rees (who also plays in the band Activity), and in the second half of the 2010s they progressed from releasing singles (2016’s Ambulance) to EPs (2018’s Penance) to finally putting out an LP (2019’s Deepfake). Their second album, Mirror, arrives a half-decade later, with the band now counting bassist Kyle Garvey (Frankie Rose) as a full member. It once again comes out via Good Eye Records, which seems to be establishing themselves as choice purveyors of ambitious underground New York post-punk records between this one and last year’s Vital Return by Big Bliss. There are certainly similarities between the two albums, but Vital Return’s muscular guitar-heavy sound isn’t as prominent on Mirror, which chooses a more balanced approach both musically (in creating their noisy/empty atmospheres, the guitar lines are often warped or used primarily as accents) and vocally (in the switching off between Koz and Rees). Even though it’s clearly rooted in 80s alt-rock and post-punk, Mirror ends up pulling at least a bit from art rock of all eras.

We start to see how Russian Baths sculpt their sound from a few angles early on in Mirror, from opening track “Vision (Dexedrine)”, which takes a traditional post-punk rhythmic skeleton and extrapolates a few different moments of cranked-up fuzzy rock music from there, to the next two tracks, “Split” and “Bind”, which zoom out just a bit to come at their icy rock music from a more cavernous, sweeping perspective (while still adhering to post-punk sensibilities). Russian Baths have a good thing going here, and they reach back into the bag on later tracks like “Chlorine” and “Secret Keys”, but I also appreciate that they augment their dark train-track-gliding rock music with a few sidesteps, like the echoing ballad of “Furnace”, the almost psychedelic rock riff that marks “Purgatory”, and B-side highlight “Pair”, a giant, chugging piece of obelisk-like alt-rock. Koz and Rees feel incredibly in tune with each other, and it’s easy to forget that Mirror is helmed by two different frontpeople at any given moment (even in songs like “Always Night”, where the two of them come together in chilly but beautiful harmony). Mirror ends with “Confess”, a drawn-out five minute song that goes from blaring, pounding rock music to pin-drop quiet–it’s a studious and polished record, but it doesn’t forget to be exciting, either. (Bandcamp link)

Also notable:

Pressing Concerns: Grr Ant, The Long Lost Somethins, Floral Print, Dark Surfers

We’re back with a Tuesday post! In this edition, we’ve got new albums from Grr Ant and Floral Print, plus new EPs from The Long Lost Somethins and Dark Surfers. Some real hidden gems here! If you missed yesterday’s post, featuring Maggie Gently, Apples with Moya, Modern Silent Cinema, and D. Sablu, check that out here.

Grr Ant – Once Upon a Time in Battersea

Release date: April 26^th
Record label: Crafting Room
Genre: Jangle pop, lo-fi pop, power pop, indie pop
Formats: Digital
Pull Track: Vital Signs

Grant Gillingham is a British musician with a somewhat scattered resumé–he’s played in the bands Baltimore at an Angle, Men in Action, and Rest of the World, lived in Bournemouth for a while but has been based in London for four years now, and has recently debuted a solo project, Grr Ant. Released via Crafting Room Recordings (a Brighton label I’d previously heard of due to their series of various-artist Pavement tribute albums), Once Upon a Time in Battersea is an overstuffed, eager album of guitar pop anthems. Gillingham has made no secret of his love of 80s underground music–post-punk, C86 indie pop, college rock–and Once Upon a Time in Battersea reflects this, pulling together all of these influences ambitiously and successfully. Gillingham also mentions that he’d been obsessed with country music while recording this album (both vintage and modern, referencing both Chris Stapleton and Gram Parsons in his email to me)–while I can’t say it sounds much like a country record to me, I’ll grant that it has a bit of wide-open Americana in its jangly indie rock–recalling a bit of the British-Invasion-via Midwestern basement rock of early Guided by Voices, or modern GBV-inspired bands like The Laughing Chimes and Patches.

The hallmarks of Once Upon a Time in Battersea make themselves known fairly on in the record–bright, clanging guitar leads, solid post-punk basslines, galloping drumbeats, low-key but melodic vocals. “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. “Titanic 20” has a lo-fi XTC feel to it, danceable but somewhat bashful, and if you want to say that there’s a country swing to the skipping tempos of “Lovestuck” and “Never Enough”, I won’t stop you. Post-punk is all over Once Upon a Time in Battersea in some form, but the dramatic, show-stopping “Carnation” is one of the few moments on the record where Gillingham lets it bubble to the surface. A forty-six minute, thirteen-song album that feels anything but tedious, Once Upon a Time in Battersea breaks new ground in its second half to the tune of rich melodic guitar explorations (“Dance the Night Away”), synth-y New Order worship (“Hope Is Not Lost”) and suspended-animation dream pop (“Space Ranger”). Gillingham closes the record with a song called “County Gates”, a no-nonsense piece of soaring college rock that hits all of Once Upon a Time in Battersea’s best pop beats and adds a palpable melancholic side to it as well. The end product is something like a British person’s conception of an American’s conception of British pop-rock music–if this is the sound of Grant Gillingham taking us full circle, it’s very enjoyable to listen to. (Bandcamp link)

The Long Lost Somethins – Farm

Release date: May 10^th
Record label: Exclaim
Genre: Alt-rock, folk rock, 90s indie rock, alt-country, emo-rock
Formats: Vinyl (with Barn), digital
Pull Track: Soak Up the Sun

Huntington, West Virginia singer-songwriter Jake Wheeler passed away last year at the age of 24, leaving behind an extensive catalog of music dating back to when he was a teenager, some released under his own name and some recorded with his band, The Long Lost Somethins. The Long Lost Somethins began as a Wheeler solo vehicle as well, but starting with 2022’s Barn, it became a full band featuring drummer Kris Adkins, bassist Josh Dyer, and guitarist Tyler Rice. Unfortunately, Barn also proved to be the last Long Lost Somethins record released within Wheeler’s lifetime, but the band had recorded four original songs and a cover before his death, and these comprise the quartet’s final release, Farm. Released as a standalone digital EP and as part of a vinyl collection with Barn, Farm displays a singer-songwriter and a backing band who’d found cathartic harmony in each other. Although The Long Lost Somethins aesthetically embraced their Appalachian home, their music wasn’t overtly traditional–the collage on Farm’s cover includes influences such as Jason Molina and Paul Westerberg, and the songs contained therein mix folk and roots rock with louder 90s alt-rock, indie rock, and even a bit of emo.

Wheeler starts Farm effectively on his own with the acoustic “Phantom Pain”, the one track on the EP that truly recalls his bedroom folk beginnings. It’s a beautiful but dark folk song–some of the lyrics are a bit hard to hear knowing Wheeler’s no longer with us. I don’t think Wheeler’s being entirely facetious when he sings “At least I got a swing in my hips”, but he still has to temper it one line later with “I’m the most unhappy hedonist”. The rest of The Long Lost Somethins amble into frame on “Some Dodging Crows”, an icy, Pacific Northwest-recalling emo-rocker, and while the ruminative “Count My Antlers” isn’t exactly “positive vibes”, its rootsy indie rock is a bit more upbeat and recalls fellow West Virginia rockers Tucker Riggleman & The Cheap Dates. The final two songs on Farm are the longest and biggest two and end up showcasing the full range of The Long Lost Somethins. “Count My Antlers” bleeds into the loudest, most spirited track on the EP, a cover of Sheryl Crow’s “Soak Up the Sun” that the band transforms into a blaring, fuzzed-out power-pop-punk rocker–Wheeler sings the shit out of the song, a performance that grabs ahold of the ideals of the original and rides them for all they’re worth. On the other hand, the six-minute “Green Thumb” closes the EP with Wheeler wandering in a slowed-down, chilly desert of an instrumental as he sings about falling apart and destruction (self- and otherwise). Lyrically, my observations about “Phantom Pain” hold here, too–but at least Wheeler was able to close The Long Lost Somethins with his friends playing alongside him. (Bandcamp link)

Floral Print – Floral Print’s Guide to Practical Living and Magical Thinking

Release date: May 17^th
Record label: Bee Side Cassettes/Rope Bridge/Pleasure Tapes
Genre: Art rock, math rock, noise pop, psych pop
Formats: Vinyl, cassette, digital
Pull Track: Dorsal

Atlanta trio Floral Print were a pre-hiatus Tiny Engines band, putting out an album (2017’s Mirror Stages) and an EP (2019’s Floral Print) before getting to work on their sophomore full-length, which took “almost exactly five years” to complete. The band is co-led by Nathan Springer and Clover Demerritt, and over the course of the making of Floral Print’s Guide to Practical Living and Magical Thinking, original bassist Josh Pittman left the band and was replaced by Paris Watel-Young–both ended up contributing to the fifteen-song, 45-minute album. Although I vaguely remember the self-titled Floral Print EP, Floral Print’s Guide to Practical Living and Magical Thinking is for all intents and purposes my first real look at this band, and it definitely sounds of a piece with a lot of the intriguing experimental pop/rock acts that came out of the underground in the late 2010s (The Spirit of the Beehive, Palm, Bruiser & Bicycle). Floral Print’s Guide to Practical Living and Magical Thinking is a lot to take in at once–it might make some sense to take it in as two different records, as the two sides of the record came about in different ways.

The first five songs of Floral Print’s Guide… are relatively lengthy (4-5 minutes per track), busy, ornate math-y pop rock songs that were part of the band’s live set for years before finally being set to tape. Despite how ballooned and stuffed these songs are, they’ve still got plenty of “pop”, and one senses that the different tacks the songs take (from the laid-back opener “Dorsal” to the noisy rave-ups of “Ecco/Flipper” and “Hover” to the post-punk groove of “Mumble Jumble”) were ironed out over time. Starting with the atmospheric “Am I Awake?”, however, Floral Print (somewhat paradoxically) get a lot looser, more concise, and more psychedelic. Two minute art-pop nuggets like “Thumbprint Roulette” and “Gracie and Zarkov” certainly stick out among the polite onslaught of interesting music that is the record’s B-side, although weird folk-y stuff like “Mappo” and “The Walls Still Move” and the jazz-influenced “Ada’s World” aren’t just filler (in fact, they provide a bridge to songs like “Keke’s Funeral” and “Playing Needles”, pop songs that incorporate bits and pieces of the odder fringes of Floral Print’s sound quite deftly). Floral Print’s Guide… is a record that keeps digging and tweaking until the basement-yacht rock harmonies of “Dolphins Over the Moon” close out the album–not every band needs to (or should) squeeze the absolutely maximum out of a forty-five minute LP, but it’s refreshing to hear Floral Print square up to the challenge. (Bandcamp link)

Dark Surfers – Songs from a Wednesday Night

Release date: March 30^th
Record label: Self-released
Genre: Folk rock, soft rock, indie pop, alt-country
Formats: Digital
Pull Track: Open Window

Back towards the end of the 2000s, Trenton, New Jersey singer-songwriter Christopher Yaple put out a couple of releases as Dark Surfers–there was an album, Dreamland, in 2009, and a split EP with fellow Trenton act Ba Babes the following year. Dark Surfers then went on a “13-14 year hiatus” before resurfacing in 2022 with an EP called Can Dreams Be Real?, featuring Yaple and some collaborators (guitarist/bassist Ian Everett, drummer George Miller, vocalist Rachel Razza, and saxophonist Mark Gallagher) who would go on to form the core of the following Dark Surfers releases, 2023’s Lariat EP and last March’s Songs from a Wednesday Night. Dark Surfers appear to have some connection with New Hampshire/New York folk rock group John Andrews & The Yawns–their 2010 split EP was billed as “Dark Surfers & The Yawns”, while Andrews himself plays piano on the band’s newest EP–and the vintage, polished soft pop rock of that band’s most recent output is a good starting point for the five songs of Songs from a Wednesday Night. The instrumental smoothness is counterbalanced by Yaple’s deep, deliberately-delivered vocals, reminiscent of The Magnetic Fields’ Stephin Merritt.

Just about everything great about Songs from a Wednesday Night is on display on the EP’s opening track, “Rain (When You’re Around)”. Everything is in the right place to evoke the jaunty melancholy of Yaple’s writing–Everett’s subtly deft bass, Gallagher’s not-so-subtle but just as deft saxophone, Andrews’ steady hands on the piano, and just a little bit of underlining from Razza. We’re in a bit more lush territory, but one can’t help recall Merritt’s penchant for singing lost, timeless-sounding pop songs, something that the finger-snapping, saxophone-led instrumental of “Your Shadow” does nothing to shake (nor should it). The jangly guitars of “Open Window” (in addition to the duetting between Yaple and Razza and some organ-y keyboard work from Andrews) make it the most “indie pop” moment on the EP–it’s an impressive but not seismic shift, yes, but Dark Surfers still have one last trick up their sleeves in the form of final track “Waiting for the One Called Love”. The two-minute closer snags a bit of a country twang with help from pedal steel player Hamilton Belk, skipping through a Western showtune with a studious breeziness–it’s the perfect cap for what Dark Surfers accomplish on Songs from a Wednesday Night. (Bandcamp link)

Also notable:

Pressing Concerns: Maggie Gently, Apples with Moya, Modern Silent Cinema, D. Sablu

Good morning, folks, and welcome to the first Pressing Concerns of the week! This time around, we’ve got four albums from the past month or so to look at: new LPs from Maggie Gently, Apples with Moya, Modern Silent Cinema, and D. Sablu. Read on!

Maggie Gently – Wherever You Want to Go

Release date: June 7^th
Record label: Slang Church
Genre: Pop rock, power pop, pop punk, indie pop, alt-country
Formats: CD, cassette, digital
Pull Track: Your Touch

A couple of years ago, I heard a song called “Hold My Hand” by a San Francisco-based librarian known as Maggie Gently. The song’s surprisingly rootsy alt-pop-rock stood out on Peppermint, her debut album, and was probably one of my favorite songs from that year. “Hold My Hand” captures the feeling of buzzing infatuation in the only way it can make sense–a sugary sweet, two-minute pop song. Maggie Gently’s second album, Wherever You Want to Go, doesn’t attempt to recreate that feeling–rather, it takes the opportunity to stretch out and let Gently unpack more complicated, less euphoric emotions across nine thoughtful indie rock songs. That isn’t to say that Wherever You Want to Go isn’t a pop album–sitting either at the “rock” end of indie pop or the “pop” end of indie rock, Gently cites similar-minded contemporaries like Remember Sports, The Beths, and Rosie Tucker as inspiration, and even enlists frequent Tucker collaborator Wolfy to co-produce the record. Wolfy and Brian Ishiba give Wherever You Want to Go a clear, polished sound, a contrast with Gently’s frequently insular writing at the core of the record that ensures it ends up being a big queer pop album nonetheless.

Thematically and musically, Maggie Gently does offer up a few songs that hover around the same territory as “Hold My Hand” in “Breakthrough” and “Your Touch”, two polished pop rock love songs that brighten the first half of Wherever You Want to Go. However, the songs’ refrains demonstrate how Gently isn’t just stuck on bubblegum, either trying to rationalize a perceived weakness in the former (“Just let me guess, I’m a lot to handle / But I’m worth it for the breakthrough”) or trying to rein in the “getting carried away” impulses in the latter (“When I want something, I want it too much”). These songs are nestled between a few thornier, more tangled tracks in “How This Feels” and “Redecorate”–there’s certainly love and pop in them, too, but also apprehension and messiness, as Gently reaches into the depths and pulls out poetry in the former and a fresh start in the latter. Between the moving-out of “Redecorate” and the seasonal depression of “Sad Songs”, I initially thought that Wherever You Want to Go was a breakup album–it’s not, but at least one song on the album (closing track “Fireworks”) handles an interpersonal separation of some kind deftly. “If I found you one more time, it’d be like fireworks / It’d be dark again before I know it,” Gently sings in the song’s chorus, almost rejecting the lightning-struck emotion of her earlier writing. That’s not what Wherever You Want to Go is entirely about, either, though. I already knew Maggie Gently could write about the moment the sky’s lit up; now she’s captured what comes afterward. (Bandcamp link)

Apples with Moya – A Heave of Lightness on the Ground

Release date: May 17^th
Record label: Den Tapes
Genre: 2000s indie rock, indie pop, folk rock
Formats: Cassette, digital
Pull Track: Lift

2019–now that was a great year for Seattle indie rock. That’s the year that cult Seattle “grunge-pop” quintet Great Grandpa released Four of Arrows, their sophomore record and, in a just world, the one that should’ve launched them into the stratosphere. However, that was also the year that Great Grandpa’s sibling band, Apples with Moya, released their debut album, Get Behind the Horses. Lesser known but just as worthwhile, the album was the work of two members of Great Grandpa (vocalist Cam LaFlam, Apples with Moya’s primary songwriter, and guitarist Dylan Hanwright) and a host of other musicians, including some guest vocals from Great Grandpa’s lead vocalist Al Menne. Great Grandpa and Apples with Moya seem to be running on the same schedule–the former appear to be gearing up to release new music, and the latter has nowcreturned with their sophomore album, A Heave of Lightness on the Ground. The band seems to have settled on a core quartet–LaFlam, Hanwright, Special Explosion’s Sebastien Deramat on guitar and bass, and drummer John Laws–although Menne once again sings on the album, along with other guests like Dogbreth’s Malia Seavey and Special Explosion’s Liz Costello.

Although not exactly “easy listening”, Apples with Moya have a more tranquil sound than Great Grandpa on A Heave of Lightness on the Ground, with the songwriting (shared more evenly between LaFlam and the rest of the band this time) lending itself well to polished studio-pop and folk rock. Most of the record’s most accessible moments are credited to the entire band, like the three fully-developed pop rock songs in the album’s first half–the toe-tapping guitar pop of “Lift”, the mid-tempo melodic goldmine of “Contact”, and the flying-down-the-highway power pop of “Quiet Like This”. LaFlam is the sole writer for a lot of A Heave of Lightness on the Ground’s sparser moments, like the low-key opening track “Mercy” and mid-record breather “Force of Love”–not that the lead vocalist doesn’t contribute more outwardly substantial moments as well, with the gorgeous Al Menne-duet “Three in the Fall” and the huge finish of “Another Winter” both making their marks. Interestingly, one of the most memorable songs on the record (the five-minute slacker pop sprawl of “Strange Presence”) is Hanwright’s first writing credit for the band. Get Behind the Horses felt like a good record from the extended universe of a band (Great Grandpa) making a lot of good music; I suspect the two bands will forever be tied together in my mind, but on A Heave of Lightness on the Ground, Apples with Moya look like a band capable of forging their own path. (Bandcamp link)

Modern Silent Cinema – The Cabinet of Modern Silent Cinema

Release date: May 3^rd
Record label: Bad Channels
Genre: Experimental rock, experimental folk, post-rock, lo-fi
Formats: CD, digital
Pull Track: Forest Warrior

Cullen Gallagher is a Brooklyn-based musician who’s been part of several bands (Hard Job, Demoted, Steve Carface) over the years, but his longest running endeavor seems to be his solo project, Modern Silent Cinema. Although the first few albums from the prolific “lo-fi experimental electro-acoustic instrumental” act came out in 2007, Gallagher actually began it in 2004–and he’s announced that he’s planning to put out six different Modern Silent Cinema albums in celebration of its 20th anniversary (three new, three archival). The first one that caught my attention is one of the archival ones–the appropriately-titled The Cabinet of Modern Silent Cinema, the twenty-seventh album from the project overall and third of 2024. These thirteen instrumental tracks are over a decade old–the first ten were recorded by Gallagher alone in 2009, and the final three with his brother Boru in 2010. These are primarily guitar-centric recordings, although Gallagher finds a lot of ground to cover here–some of these are loud, electric skeletons of rock songs, others are quieter (even treading into ambient territory), and folk and blues music shade his guitar playing throughout the record.

Although it’s not exactly a “hit”, there’s something about opening track “Assless Chaps Do Harm” that kept drawing me to The Cabinet of Modern Silent Cinema, with its weird and fascinating combination of dub sensibilities, whispering folky guitar, and ambient background noise. The blown out acoustic guitar of “Forest Warrior” is a different type of creature, but it’s similarly rewarding in a skewed way–and then “Blues for a Broken Blue Ceramic Mug” comes stumbling into frame with its upbeat, jaunty strumming of a classic blues progression. “Sitting on a Bus, Thinking About a Burrito Blues” revisits this side of Modern Silent Cinema–together, they’re a nice pair of spirited diversions from some of the headier material on The Cabinet of Modern Silent Cinema, such as the chugging instrumental rock of “Death Whistles the Clues” and the messy, fuzzed out funk of “Rotorelief”. The three songs with Boru are all guitar duets, and when the snaking, shaking electric power of “Dislocations” begins to take shape, it appears that we’re in for the loudest stretch on the record–but Gallagher and Boru dial it back on the meandering, contemplative “Blues for Colonel Brewster” , while “Siodmak” makes the brothers’ twelve-string conversation sound like it’s happening a couple of rooms away. While I may not have the context that someone who’s been following Cullen Gallagher’s music for a long time might have, I nevertheless enjoyed perusing The Cabinet of Modern Silent Cinema. (Bandcamp link)

D. Sablu – No True Silence

Release date: May 17^th
Record label: Yes We Cannibal
Genre: Garage punk, punk rock, hardcore punk, noise rock, post-hardcore
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: 69 Forever

D. Sablu is a punk rock band from New Orleans, originally started by vocalist and namesake David Sabludowsky when his previous band, Casual Burn, became a casualty of the pandemic. Eventually, D. Sablu became a full-on quartet featuring several longtime New Orleans DIY/underground veterans–bassist Shana Applewhite (of Keen Dreams, whose Eric Martinez also contributed to an early version of the band), guitarist Cole Jones (Coal, Fault), and drummer Evan Cvitanovic (Glish, Sexy Dex and the Fresh). Following the self-recorded Taken By Static in 2020 and a couple of tour/demo cassette tapes, the band considers No True Silence to be their first “proper” album, and as a first statement, it’s an undeniably potent one. Across eleven songs and twenty-nine minutes, the band whips up a pummeling frenzy of noisy, explosive, hardcore-tinged punk rock with hardly a moment of respite. Sabludowsky (who also plays guitar in Sick Thoughts) is a classic punk vocalist, able to dial up “sneering 70s belter” and “possessed, losing-his-mind hardcore frontperson” with equal ease. No True Silence is unhinged, nothing-to-lose garage-punk, a more southern version of what The Stools concocted in Detroit last year.

You can’t say that No True Silence doesn’t warn you what you’re in for from the very first track–“Bomber Stop” is a nasty opener, a white-hot piece of post-hardcore/noise rock that only burns up quicker as the song picks up steam. “Hypocrites in Cyberspace” shows off D. Sablu’s ability to lean into classic punk rock, as they ride an avalanche of angry guitars for nearly four minutes with ease. “Stuck in a Rut” and “Spiral Out” keep No True Silence’s ratio of straight-up ferocious garage punk numbers nice and tidy, but it’s the pounding rock and roll endurance test of “Smut Date” that really kicks things up a notch in the record’s second half. The B-side of No True Silence is impeccable, offering up the pent-up fury of “So Sorry” (capturing the spirit of early, still-congealing hardcore punk better than most traditionalists are able to do), the high-flying, club-swinging workout “Try Harder”, and the climax of the album, “69 Forever” (a shockingly spirited-sounding piece of punk rock and roll that somehow keeps finding another higher gear and really needs to be heard to be believed). It nicks some tricks from punk rock ground zero and still sounds untamed–short of actual, physical violence, I’m not sure what else you could want from No True Silence. (Bandcamp link)

Also notable:

Pressing Concerns: Perennial, Pedro the Lion, Kelley Stoltz, Blab School

Today, we’re wrapping up the fabled “big week” on the blog by looking at four records out this week: new LPs from Perennial, Pedro the Lion, Kelley Stoltz, and Blab School. Here’s where I run through everything else that went up this week and suggest you check it out if you haven’t: Monday we looked at new music from Planet 81, The Bird Calls, Gramercy Arms, and a Night Court/The Dumpies split, Tuesday was the May 2024 playlist, and Wednesday was an in-depth look at Deep Tunnel Project’s self-titled album (I also talk a bit about Shellac in that one).

Perennial – Art History

Release date: June 7^th
Record label: Ernest Jenning Record Co./Safe Suburban Home/Totally Real
Genre: Art punk, garage rock, post-hardcore, dance punk
Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital
Pull Track: How the Ivy Crawls

Perennial: always different, always the same. Anyone who follows the New England trio (electric organist Chelsey Hahn, guitarist Chad Jewett, and drummer Ceej Dioguardi) on social media is aware of their love of experimental music of all stripes (rock, jazz, pop, electronic…) and of their desire to incorporate it into their music, which has been coming out at a steady clip these past few years. Over the course of 2022’s In the Midnight Hour and last year’s The Leaves of Autumn Symmetry reworkings EP (both recorded by The World Is a Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid to Die’s Chris Teti), the band honed a unique sound that mixed Dischord Records post-hardore, turn-of-the-century dance punk, and retro garage rock together with just a hint of frayed experimentation around the edges–somehow, they’ve pulled off making genuinely unpredictable and inventive rock music while at the same time sounding kind of like a punk rock AC/DC, reliably churning out muscular, scorching rock and roll over and over again. After putting all of their music out independently for a half-decade, they’ve hooked up with three different great record labels (Ernest Jenning for vinyl, Totally Real for tapes, and Safe Suburban Home for U.K./E.U. distribution) for Art History, their third full-length and what (in a just world) should be their breakout album. Once again recorded by Teti, Art History finds Perennial doing exactly what they do best–making excellent rock music and pushing just a bit forward.

Like In the Midnight Hour, Art History sprints through a dozen songs in twenty-one minutes, with tornado-like guitars and danceable rhythms assaulting us just as strongly as do Jewett and Hahn’s vocals–expect to get yelled at about mouthfuls of bees, wolfmen at sock hops, and tiger techniques by the both of them, as well as plenty of “yeah, yeah!”s. If you’re looking for differences between Art History and their last LP, the experimentation continues to erode into the pop music–rather than just being confined to snippets in between songs, we get “A Is for Abstract” and “B Is for Brutalism”, which both let the ambient, electronic, and even dub sides of the band surface for entire song lengths. In other welcome news, the 60s pop rock influence feels less “implied” than ever, and more and more central to their sound. Hahn’s organ stabs have always been key to Perennial’s sound, but they’re bolder than ever on Art History, not afraid at all to lock into that sweet “Scooby-Doo chase scene music” sound on songs like “Action Painting” and “Up-tight”. Another wrinkle that shouldn’t be ignored is how deft Perennial and Teti have gotten at wielding dynamics in service of this kind of music, whether it’s the bubbling-to-the-surface pre-chorus detour of “Tiger Technique” or the spooky, feedback-laden first refrain of “How the Ivy Crawls” and its subsequent explosion. I was already fully on board the Perennial train before this album, and I’m just as excited as ever to witness the band continue to build in real-time something entirely distinct, huge, and befitting of the title Art History. (Bandcamp link)

Pedro the Lion – Santa Cruz

Release date: June 7^th
Record label: Polyvinyl/Big Scary Monsters
Genre: 90s indie rock, emo, singer-songwriter
Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital
Pull Track: Tall Pines

I’ll just get this out of the way now: these relatively short capsules are not the optimal form to talk about Pedro the Lion’s latest album. Even minor David Bazan releases deserve a deep examination, and Santa Cruz is anything but “minor”. When Bazan revived the Pedro the Lion moniker after wandering through the world of solo records and side projects like Overseas and Lo Tom, it signaled the beginning of a vital stretch of the longtime indie rocker’s career. The stripped-down alt-rock of 2019’s Phoenix was an instant highlight, and 2022’s Havasu took a few subtle but noticeable steps forward from that starting point. After covering his childhood in Arizona, Santa Cruz is the third record in Bazan’s “musical memoir” anthology-in-progress (he’s planning to make five total), covering his teenage years up until he turned 21. Not that writing about young childhood is easy, but revisiting these hectic years presents its own set of challenges, and Bazan is up for them. Bazan’s life is more transient than in previous entries, as he splits time between the titular city, Modesto, and Seattle, and his world is expanding exponentially–it makes sense, then, that Santa Cruz is the most musically adventurous record from this version of Pedro the Lion yet.

Between solo albums like Blanco and Care and his Headphones side project, Bazan is no stranger to synth-led indie rock, but his choice to begin Santa Cruz with a full embrace of it with “It’ll All Work Out” (and to continue to lean on it in songs like “Don’t Cry Now”) feels like a deliberate mile marker. When I talk about the sonic success of Santa Cruz, I’m talking about songs like this, but I’m also talking about how Bazan explicitly addresses his own musical evolution with the instrumentals as well as the lyrics–in “Little Help”, which details Bazan discovering the Beatles with just a bit of fluttering psychedelia, and in “Modesto”, containing the most exciting individual moment of the record in which Bazan hears a “beautiful, hilarious, tragic mess” of a cassette from a local Modesto band (which, as far as I can tell, he hasn’t confirmed is Grandaddy, but that would make perfect sense) and resolves to “move back to Seattle [and] be the drummer in a band”. Santa Cruz is marked with moments of discomfort from Bazan, muttering about having the “stupidest backpack” in the title track and moving yet again in the beautifully weary-sounding “Tall Pines” (when Bazan’s father announces that they’re relocating again, one wants to shout “No!” like the most annoying person in the movie theater). Obviously, this aforementioned bolt of inspiration in “Modesto” isn’t a clean transformation–just one song later, Bazan is too ashamed to tell his cousins that he’s pursuing music full-time at Christmas dinner–but I imagine it felt that way at the time, and that’s exactly how it sounds on Santa Cruz. (Bandcamp link)

Kelley Stoltz – La Fleur

Release date: June 7^th
Record label: Dandy Boy/Agitated
Genre: Indie pop, college rock, guitar pop, jangle pop, folk rock
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
Pull Track: Reni’s Car

At this point in his career, Kelley Stoltz is a quarter-century veteran of guitar pop music. He’s put out at least fifteen different solo albums since 1999, and has contributed in some way to music from his contemporaries (Sonny & The Sunsets, Thee Oh Sees), his influences (Robyn Hitchcock, Echo & The Bunnymen), and newer bands (The Staches, RAYS). Much like how Lunchbox was ahead of the Bay Area indie pop curve for several decades before the scene caught up to them, Stoltz has similarly been making this kind of music in his adopted hometown of San Francisco long enough to be absorbed into the current jangle/dream-y pop movement overtaking it. His latest solo album, La Fleur, comes out via Oakland’s Dandy Boy Records, who have been chronicling new indie pop coming out via bands like Yea-Ming and the Rumors, Seablite, and The 1981, and are thus a natural fit for Stoltz’s relaxed, timeless-sounding songwriting. La Fleur was largely recorded by Stoltz himself, with a couple of outside contributors in Fred Barnes and Jason Falkner (Jellyfish, The Grays) showing up on a handful of tracks.

The dozen songs of La Fleur certainly sound like a “mature” statement, a record made by a ringer who’s cracked the code of how to incorporate the music that made him (the showmanship of Hitchcock, the smooth, gliding post-punk of The Bunnymen) in a distinct way. Stoltz has clearly been influenced by guitar/power pop greats in his craft, but he’s long past the point of needing to prove his bona fides–instead, he’s more interested in opening his latest record with “Human Events” and “Victorian Box”, two somewhat dour, post-punk-shaded songs that emphasize rhythm and steadily growing tuneful noise over instant gratification. Of course, assuming that Stoltz can’t still knock out one hell of a sharp pop tune would be a mistake–for one, you’d be liable to get bowled over merely one song later with the triumphant college rock of “Hide in a Song”, and again towards the middle of the record with the back-to-back punches of “Switch on Switch Off” (bouncy 60s proto-power pop at its finest) and “Reni’s Car” (an impossible-to-dislike slice of jangle pop apparently inspired by a real situation Stoltz found himself in with The Stone Roses’ drummer). Stoltz is a subtle frontperson, preferring to let the instrumentals (like the drama of “Awake in a Dream”, the creeping bass-led “The Butterflies”, the campfire singalong vibes of “Make Believer”) set the stage for the mood of La Fleur, but he’s is no slacker either, able to adopt an insistent tone to sell the message of “The Butterflies” or the wonder in “Reni’s Car”. Guitar pop aficionados across several generations clearly don’t take Kelley Stoltz for granted; let’s not, either. (Bandcamp link)

Blab School – Blab School

Release date: June 6^th
Record label: Fort Lowell/Clearly
Genre: Punk rock, post-punk, noise rock, 90s indie rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Small Simple Ways

Blab School are a new band formed by four longtime North Carolina indie rockers in guitarist/vocalists Ryan Seagrist (Discount, The Kitchen) and Lizzie Killian (Glowing Stars, Teens in Trouble), drummer Dave Cantwell (Analogue, Cold Sides, In the Year of the Pig), and bassist Fikri Yucel (Veronique Diabolique). The band formed via a Craigslist ad in Durham, but Cantwell has since moved to Carolina Beach–however, rather than slowing things down, Blab School remain quite active, and their drummer’s relocation even led to their self-titled debut album coming out via Cantwell’s new neighbors, Wilmington’s Fort Lowell Records (Kicking Bird, Common Thread, James Sardone). Blab School’s members come from all sorts of musical backgrounds, but the eight-song Blab School (recorded in Yucel’s living room by Nick Petersen) has a meaty, tough, unified sound that straddles the line between “punk” and “post-punk”. Underground rock movements like Dischord-ish limber post-hardcore/post-punk and Albini-recorded noise rock/punk come to mind in places, while in others Blab School sounds straight out of the early 1980s.

Blab School kicks off in overdrive via the pounding, almost-emo punk rock of “Small Simple Ways” that reminds me a little bit of classic Jawbreaker, but the quartet then swerve into “Scrolls”, a dark, guitar-forward post-punk tune in the vein of Killing Joke or early Siouxsie & The Banshees. At twenty-two minutes, Blab School is a record with absolutely no room for excess or embellishment–the band sound driven and laser-focused for its entire length. Whether that’s the retro, almost garage-y punk of “Quit Yr Job”, the massive slab of alt-rock of “Never Enough”, or the Kill Rock Stars-y emotional spikiness of “Will I Ever?”, Blab School remains captivating into the middle of the record, and they even explore a bit of new territory towards the album’s end. The four-minute “Rhizome” and its hammering, wall-of-sound punk rock and final song “(Don’t Forget to) Give Up”, which incorporates a bit of Touch & Go noise-punk ugliness, are two of Blab School’s heaviest moments, both of which help the record start circling the drain as it begins to sign off. Judging by their opening statement, Blab School are the best kind of “new veteran band”–one that draws from the wealth of music its members have made in the past, but all in the service of a unified, coherent sound. (Bandcamp link)

Also notable:

Pressing Concerns: Deep Tunnel Project, ‘Deep Tunnel Project’

Release date: April 5^th
Record label: Comedy Minus One
Genre: 90s indie rock, punk, garage rock, noise rock
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital

I’ve been aware of Chicago indie rock supergroup Deep Tunnel Project since they quietly released their first two singles in 2022 due to the involvement of Tim Midyett (Silkworm, Bottomless Pit, Mint Mile), one of my absolute favorite musicians. As it turns out, Midyett (who plays bass on Deep Tunnel Project’s self-titled debut album) was actually the last member to join the quartet, which began in 2021 when two members of legendary Chicago noise rock group Tar (vocalist/guitarist John Mohr and drummer Michael Greenlees) met up with veteran Windy City guitarist Jeff Dean (Her Head’s on Fire, The Story So Far, The Bomb) and started working together. Despite Mohr having not written songs since Tar’s dissolution in 1995, the collaboration was fruitful, Midyett was brought into the fold, and in three years they’d put together Deep Tunnel Project with the help of a few other indie rock veterans (Eleventh Dream Day’s Rick Rizzo plays guitar on “Gold Standard”, longtime engineer and Mint Mile member Matthew Barnhart recorded it, J. Robbins mastered it, singer-songwriter Rachel Draw contributes vocals to two songs).

Those familiar with this kind of music (of which I’ve written about quite a bit on this blog before) won’t be surprised by the words and terms that come to mind while listening to Deep Tunnel Project. “Workmanlike”. “Crazy Horse-esque”. “PRF-core”. Rosy Overdrive is a huge booster of Mint Mile, and they’re in the same universe (it doesn’t hurt that Mohr and Midyett are similar vocalists), but Deep Tunnel Project are more garage-y and punk-influenced than Mint Mile’s sprawling alt-country rock. Deep Tunnel Project came out a month before Steve Albini died suddenly in May, but I’m writing this after the fact, and it’s hard to not link the departure of Albini, Deep Tunnel Project, and the final Shellac album, To All Trains, together in my mind. Both Tar and Silkworm recorded almost exclusively with Albini, and Albini even shouted out Greenlees’ former SIRS bandmate Rob Warmowski on To All Trains–the connections are extensive, and though he didn’t contribute directly to Deep Tunnel Project, it’s fair to say that the trajectory of everyone involved with the album would look significantly different otherwise.

Deep Tunnel Project and To All Trains also stand together due to their deep connections to Chicago. Both album titles directly refer to the city (the Tunnel and Reservoir Plan for the former, the sign in Union Station that graces the album cover for the latter), and while Albini pays tribute to his adopted home by sketching vignettes of the city’s extensive pirate-like roving scrappers and pro-labor history, Deep Tunnel Project ambitiously seek to map out the entirety of Chicago on their album’s eleven songs. Right down to the titles of songs like “Connector”, “South Branch”, “The Grid”, and “Dry Spell”, Deep Tunnel Project draw from the geography and infrastructure evoked by their namesake, linking Chicago to Calumet to Wilmette to Dekalb to all streets namechecked in “The Grid”.

Albini famously detested marketing and packaging (in a metaphorical sense, not so much a literal one) of his work with Shellac, and I imagine his instinctual resistance to attaching narratives to his writing was drawn from that (there’s a memorable moment in one of his final interviews, with Kreative Kontrol’s Vish Khanna, where the podcast host points out that there are multiple references to metal on the at-that-time unreleased final Shellac album. “Oh, god, I hadn’t thought about that, now I’m gonna have to think about that,” grouses Albini in reply). It’s up to us to take the time warp of “Days Are Dogs”, the “immortality” of the recently-deceased Warmowski proclaimed in “Scabby the Rat”, and the chillingly prescient closing track “I Don’t Fear Hell” together and declare that perhaps mortality influenced the art of a thirty-odd-year old band. Deep Tunnel Project don’t have that compunction–the bio for their album openly states “There’s less road ahead than there is behind us”, and, even more helpfully, follows it up with “…but there is still time left to create”.

In “Connector”, the opening track of Deep Tunnel Project, Mohr declares “What is never finished will never be done / Right now”, and he sings the first half of that proclamation again at the end of “Dry Spell”, the last original song on the record. These tracks get right at the twin themes of Deep Tunnel Project–connectivity and immortality. To work on a large work of infrastructure, one that creates, connects, or improves the lives of a large community, can be to accept that you may not personally live to see the final version of what you’re pouring your labor into. At the same time, though, it’s not like a hundred-year flipping of a light switch–every day of construction creates new connections and new avenues (literally in some cases). The members of Deep Tunnel Project were connected long before they came together as a quartet–by Chicago, by Steve Albini, by Tar, by indie rock, by boring old humanity. And yet here they are, still working together to make new music in new ways.

“While we won’t finish what we started, much like the Deep Tunnel Project itself, we will continue working,” the band say. Deep Tunnel Project ends with “Took a Hammering”, a cover of a Breaking Circus song that features Midyett on (co-) lead vocals and is possibly the most “punk” moment on the album. If they’d ended the album with “Dry Spell”, with Mohr repeating the opening line/thesis of the record one more time, it would’ve been “perfect”, but it also might’ve come off like they believed they were putting together a finished product, wrapped and packaged in a neat bow. Instead, Deep Tunnel Project sign off by dredging up the past to create something new, both for them and in general. That’s one more linkage created in a grid that extends (and will continue to extend) far beyond the four people of Deep Tunnel Project and their collaborators. (Bandcamp link)

New Playlist: May 2024

What a week! (and yes, I know it’s only Tuesday, Alec Baldwin). Yesterday, Pressing Concerns broke the 1,000-record barrier, and today we have the May 2024 playlist, two hours of absolutely stellar new music for you to peruse.

Ethan Beck & The Charlie Browns, Ahem, and Mopar Stars have multiple songs on this playlist.

Here is where you can listen to the playlist on various streaming services: Spotify, Tidal, BNDCMPR (missing one song). 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.

“Fear & Loathing in Gramercy”, Ethan Beck & The Charlie Browns
From Duck Hollow (2024, Douglas Street)

I’m not sure if I’ve heard a better start to a record this year than Pittsburgh group Ethan Beck & The Charlie Browns’ “Fear and Loathing in Gramercy”, which kicks off their debut album, Duck Hollow, with nothing less than the platonic ideal of a power pop song. “Fear and Loathing in Gramercy” balances a soaring, almost smirking confidence in its construction with the humble earnestness of Beck’s performance sitting in the middle of it all (and the chorus, which moves from a stumble to a steady strut, would guarantee this one sticking out even if the rest of the track was a clunker). Duck Hollow is able to live up to the promise that “Fear and Loathing in Gramercy” shows, even as The Charlie Browns start by raising the bar very high. Read more about Duck Hollow here.

“Waterlogged”, Ahem
From Avoider (2024, Forged Artifacts)

The latest album from Minneapolis trio Ahem, Avoider, is a massive collection of loud guitar-based pop music–you can call it power pop, pop punk, alt-rock, or college rock, but it’s got more than enough in its ten songs to please fans of any of those genres (the extended careers of The Replacements and Husker Du’s primary songwriters are a clear influence, among others). The band kick off Avoider with a pair of barnburners in frantic opener “Lapdog” and “Waterlogged”, a triumphant-sounding song that’s a pitch-perfect success from the blaring guitars that kick the song off to the roaring catharsis of the chorus (which is little more than the song’s title). Read more about Avoider here.

“Everything”, Aluminum
From Fully Beat (2024, Felte)

Fully Beat is a huge leap forward for San Francisco quartet Aluminum–on their debut full-length, they both sharpen and expand their sound from the promise of 2022’s Windowpane EP to create some of the most exciting, spirited, and downright fun music I’ve heard this year. The band display a commitment to loud, bursting-at-the-seams rock music throughout Fully Beat, including on album highlight “Everything”, which features a massive dream-pop-as-stadium-rock sound. The guitars are set to overdrive, surging forward with textured melodies above “Everything”’s fuzzed-out foundations, stealing the show from the song’s up-front, melodic vocals. Read more about Fully Beat here.

“No Dice”, Comprador
From Please Stay Off the Statue (2024)

An omnivorous record that nevertheless retains a strong personality, the latest record from Philadelphia’s Comprador sounds somewhat like Jon Brion fronting a post-grunge band, and Please Stay Off the Statue has moments that incorporate everything from pop punk to shoegaze. On the pop side of Please Stay Off the Statue, the record’s second song “No Dice” is a perfect power pop track that I really can’t get enough of. It actually took me awhile to get into the rest of the record because I just wanted to listen to its absurdly huge Brion-pop-punk-fuzz refrain over and over again. The rest of Please Stay Off the Statue is certainly worth a listen, but there’s nothing wrong with getting hung up on “No Dice” for a while first. Read more about Please Stay Off the Statue here.

“Burning Question”, Mopar Stars
From Burning Question (2024, Furo Bungy)

One of my favorite under-the-radar debut EPs of last year was Mopar Stars’ Shoot the Moon, an awesome record of fuzzed-out Philadelphia power pop helmed by Nao Demand (who also plays in Poison Ruïn and Zorn). Despite Demand’s other musical concerns, Mopar Stars (also featuring Bill Magger and Evan Campbell) is back a year later with Burning Question, a six-song EP every bit as catchy and smooth as their first one. My favorite song on Burning Question is probably the opening title track, which balances Demand’s earnest, steady vocals with a roaring rock and roll instrumental (the entire song is great, but when the band really goes for it in the chorus, it kicks everything up a notch entirely).

“2009”, Carb on Carb
From Take Time (2024, Salinas)

Mom, come pick me up, they’re getting nostalgic about 2009 and I’m scared. However, if beaming us all back to the early Obama administration (or whatever the New Zealand equivalent of that is) sounds as good as Carb on Carb make it, I can’t really protest too much. Salinas Records have found another winner in the Whanganui-based duo, whose Take Time appears to be their third album since 2015. “2009” opens the record with a devastating wistful power pop anthem–if its only innovation was the choppy power chord-led verses, it’d be a success, but between the “uh oh” giant chorus and the lyrics (comprised of a bit of self-aware nostalgia, among other vignettes) ensure that it’s even more.

“Canada Water”, ME REX
From Smilodon (2024)

The latest four-song dispatch from ME REX is the independently-released Smilodon EP. If it’s supposed to be a “lower-key” ME REX release, the songs didn’t get the memo–closing track “Canada Water” comes out of the gate roaring with its roller-rink synth hook and full-band lurch. The band keep the energy at this high opening level until the second half of the song, which slows down into an exercise of handclaps, restrained synths, and a call and response from lead singer Myles McCabe to the rest of the band (Phoebe Cross and Rich Mandell’s Greek chorus “We cannot wait!” response is a reminder that, even though ME REX began as a McCabe solo project, the tightness of the full band is their secret weapon). Read more about Smilodon here.

“To Art Bell”, Canyons and Locusts
From The Red Angel (2024)

“When the aliens send word to space rock clash / God save it to the grave it’s to Art Bell,” I gotta say I have no idea what Canyons and Locusts mean when they sing that, but it sounds great. The Red Angel is a punchy thirteen-minute EP from the Boston/Phoenix-based duo of Justin Keane (vocals/guitar) and Amy Young (drums), and it’s some concise, noisy punk rock music. Canyons and Locusts’ power is particularly felt in its opening transmission, “To Art Bell”–some of its lyrics might sound like garbled translations, but Keane and Young deliver the song with a precise, sober clarity. Around the world in two minutes and fourteen seconds.

“Decider”, Motorists
From Touched by the Stuff (2024, Bobo Integral/We Are Time)

When you’ve got a song like “Decider” in your pocket, that’s a no-brainer for Side A, track 1, and Toronto power pop quartet Motorists don’t miss the layup to kick Touched by the Stuff off. The song’s all-in power pop fervor is straight out of the 1970s, a slight 90s alt-rock kick to it being the only thing marking it as something more recent (and evidence of influence from one of the band’s likely biggest influences, Sloan). Motorists embrace being a straight-up, rollicking power pop group more than ever across Touched by the Stuff’s dozen tracks, incorporating their post-punk side a bit more seamlessly and subtly–and “Decider” is the perfect track to reintroduce the band. Read more about Touched by the Stuff here.

“PS1”, Magic Fig
From Magic Fig (2024, Silver Current)

Featuring an overwhelming blanket of all-in, overstuffed psychedelia, the self-titled debut from San Francisco group Magic Fig merges pop and excess in a way that skips the current wave of Bay Area indie pop and goes all the way back to 1960s San Francisco psych rock (the Canterbury scene and the busier end of classic Elephant 6 albums are other touchstones for Magic Fig, a self-described “progressive psychedelic pop” group). Album highlight “PS1” openly incorporates jangly indie pop while still keeping one foot in psychedelia, resulting in a careening, ballooning six-minute pop behemoth that never loses its foundation. Read more about Magic Fig here.

“All That You Want”, Zero Point Energy
From Tilted Planet (2024, Danger Collective)

Tilted Planet represents the reunion of Genesis Edenfield and Ben Jackson, two former members of Atlanta post-punk group Warehouse who now co-lead the band Zero Point Energy in Brooklyn. Warehouse’s 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. Tilted Planet is discernible as a well-crafted, sharply-honed indie rock record–it’s immediate and it’s not at the same time, inviting further listening to figure out just what Zero Point Energy are on about here. Edenfield sings the majority of the record’s songs, but Jackson makes the most of his turns up front–mid-record standout “All That You Want” is a wobbly but assured-sounding college rock hit that’s the best pop moment on the album. Read more about Tilted Planet here.

“So Triangular”, Birdfeeder
From Woodstock (2024, Soul Selects)

Miracle Legion: great band! The New Haven college rock legends were helmed by Mark Mulcahy, a national treasure, and while Mulcahy has never completely gone away, even casual Miracle Legion fans who haven’t kept abreast of his solo career would do well to check out his latest project, Birdfeeder (with Chris Harford of Three Colors and Dumptruck’s Kevin Salem). Supposedly written in the mid-90s but recorded years later, Woodstock feels like vintage Mulcahy (although he largely credits the other members for how it sounds). In any case, it’s great to hear his voice sing something like “So Triangular”, an opaquely beautiful piece of folk rock, sounding lost yet completely sure of itself.

“Get Rich Quick”, Micah Schnabel
From The Clown Watches the Clock (2024)

“I am rural American trash, and it’s not funny or cute like a country song,” Micah Schnabel sings in “Get Rich Quick”, an early highlight from the Two Cow Garage leader’s latest solo album, The Clown Watches the Clock. It’s a track that gets to the heart of Schnabel’s writing on the album (and, really, his career as a Midwestern country punk troubadour in general), which is about the ambient sights and sounds of middle America: guns, Jesus, and debilitating, humiliating, irritating poverty. It’s the first of several songs on the record that explicitly grapple with having hardly a dollar to one’s name–Schnabel’s narrator, a rebel without a dental plan, declares “I don’t wanna die a victim of my aw-shucks humility,” and makes a perfectly coherent argument for petty crime in doing so. Read more about The Clown Watches the Clock here.

“Everybody’s Finding Out”, Lane
From Receiver (2024, Illegally Blind)

Boston’s Lane consciously sought to make a streamlined, “interplay-heavy” version of math rock on Receiver, which can be felt in how happy it is to embrace a simple “power-trio” setup and how these songs feel balanced, without one aspect of them overpowering the other. “Everybody’s Finding Out” is a laid-back, XTC-evoking math-prog-pop tune that it’s an early highlight of the record, with all of its one-minute-and-thirteen-seconds feeling necessary–it reminds me of an even more streamlined version of this Exploding in Sound-adjacent sound practiced by bands like Pet Fox and Hammer No More the Fingers. Read more about Receiver here.

“All Along”, Jacob Freddy
From Songs from a Quiet Aliso Viejo Wasteland (2024)

Recorded “with the speakers of an old Mazda CX5” (hence the album’s cover painting), Songs from a Quiet Aliso Viejo Wasteland is a pleasingly lively and pop-forward take on the “lo-fi bedroom indie rock record” subgenre. Beneath the fuzz, distortion, and frequently mumbled vocals, there’s a singer-songwriter (Jacob Frericks, aka Jacob Freddy) with a knack for classic power pop, a Teenage Fanclub/Elliott Smith/Big Star devotee with the reverb turned up high. Frericks kicks the record off with “All Along”, a gorgeous Bandwagonesque-esque steady fuzz-power-pop song whose core melody only seems to be strengthened by its humble dressing. Read more about Songs from a Quiet Aliso Viejo Wasteland here.

“I Can’t Have It All”, Yea-Ming and the Rumours
From I Can’t Have It All (2024, Dandy Boy)

The latest record from 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 step forward is the well-earned, quiet but palpable confidence Yea-Ming and the Rumors display throughout the entire record. I Can’t Have It All’s title track is my favorite song on the record–its refrain has an especially gorgeous simplicity in its recalling of the softer end of Yo La Tengo, and its plainspoken verses are just as rewarding in their own way. Read more about I Can’t Have It All here.

“Survive”, American Culture
From Hey Brother, It’s Been a While (2024, Convulse)

Denver quartet American Culture’s sound has a lot of familiar ingredients, but it’s a unique and captivating blend that’s found on Hey Brother, It’s Been a While–they’re “punk rock” in a loose sense, yes, although in the older underground version of the term, while also leaving room for indie rock and pop of several different stripes (mid-to-late Replacements jangly power pop, and even some psychedelic Madchester influences). The band features two primary songwriters, Chris Adolf and Michael Stein, and it’s the latter’s “Survive” I’ve chosen here. It’s catchy punk-pop as hooky as anything else on the record, showcasing how in tune the songwriters are with each other (the refrain, “I still don’t wanna live forever, but I think I’d like to survive,” is a reference to the depths of a drug addiction that informed a lot of the record, and is Stein’s biggest mark on the track). Read more about Hey Brother, It’s Been a While here.

“Default Parody”, Drahla
From Angeltape (2024, Captured Tracks)

I get it–there’s too many damn U.K. post-punk bands to keep track of these days. Maybe I can sell you on Leeds’ Drahla, though, who to my ears are a step ahead of the majority of their peers. A little bit goth, a little bit no wave, a little bit garage-y, Angeltape just sounds so much more alive and fiery than a lot of this stuff, particularly on highlights like opening track “Under the Glass” and “Default Parody”, my personal favorite track on the record. Vocalist Luciel Brown nails the beginning of the track, pulling off the “robotic but dynamic” speak-singing style that is an incredibly strong hook in its own way, and–oh, did I mention that this band has a full time saxophone player (Chris Duffin)? Because you’re going to notice it in “Default Parody”.

“Reveal”, Amy O
From Mirror, Reflect (2024, Winspear)

I’ve always thought Amy Oelsner (aka Amy O) was underrated–particularly the Arkansas-originating, Bloomington, Indiana-based musician’s 2017 record Elastic, but her 2019 album Shell is really solid, too. I’ve only listened to her latest record, Mirror, Reflect, a bit so far, but there’s plenty to like on it–the low-key but bouncy indie pop of “Reveal” is an early favorite that caught my ear just about immediately. It’s a pretty barebones-sounding track, and it almost feels like it’s going to collapse in its first half before settling into a deft bedroom pop sweep that makes me feel like the best of the Frankie Cosmos/Gabby’s World era of indie rock does.

“Purgatory (Summer Swim)”, Nihiloceros
From Dark Ice Balloons (2024, Totally Real)

Dark Ice Balloons is a beast of a pop album about death–Nihiloceros stack their record with huge melodic punk/pop punk hooks strong enough to stay intact as the band crank up the loudness and drama. “Purgatory (Summer Swim)”, the last and best song on the record, sounds like a lost radio-ready punk single from the 90s, from the way the melody and electric guitar spill out at the beginning of the song to the basketball dribble beat to the esoteric fist-pump of the chorus. Nihiloceros try on natural disasters and weapon-fellating for size, but it’s the open-ended question in the song’s refrain that defines the primary subject matter of Dark Ice Balloons. Read more about Dark Ice Balloons here.

“Don’t Worry”, Poppy Patica
From Sea Wrack (2024, Cows at the Edge of the Earth)

Poppy Patica released one of my favorite albums of last year–Black Cat Back Stage, an overstuffed, artsy pop rock record inspired by frontperson Peter Hartmann’s hometown of Washington, D.C. Hartmann (now based in Oakland) apparently had an entire other Poppy Patica album up his sleeve–Sea Wrack is more stripped down and low-key-sounding, recorded in New York by a different lineup than Black Cat Back Stage (largely just Hartmann, Paco Cathcart of Climax Landers and The Cradle, and previous collaborator Owen Wuerker). It’s tempting to treat Sea Wrack as comparatively “minor”, but even though it’s only 22 minutes long, it still has one of the best pop songs I’ve heard this year in “Don’t Worry”. Pulled from the Elliott Smith/Jon Brion school of deceptively simple pop music, Hartmann rides a huge-sounding acoustic guitar and keyboard accents across a sublime, incredibly catchy playground.

“Monk Eric”, Ethan Beck & The Charlie Browns
From Duck Hollow (2024, Douglas Street)

The second half of an incredible one-two punch beginning with ”Fear and Loathing in Gramercy” continues on with “Monk Eric”, yet another excellent highlight from Ethan Beck & The Charlie Browns’ Duck Hollow. “Monk Eric” is a pure sugar rush, with The Charlie Browns skipping along to Beck’s sympathetic but unfailingly honest character sketch. Beck takes a step back in the chorus and looks at the titular Eric through a partner of some sort (“She waits up every night / She hopes he’ll come to her side / She waits for him but he won’t come back”), a break from the rollicking verses where Eric tries various lives on for size. Read more about Duck Hollow here.

“I Bet You Know Karate”, Aerial
From Activities of Daily Living (2024, Signalsongs/Flake Music)

Activities of Daily Living is the third album from Scottish group Aerial–who’ve been around since the late 90s–and it’s a collection of best-foot-forward, eager-to-please power pop, full of energy and eagerly-delivered hooks. A bit of Teenage Fanclub, some synth touches, Matthew Sweet moves–there’s a lot to love on this record, particularly on highlight “I Bet You Know Karate”, whose central metaphor doesn’t even have to be as weirdly memorable as it is given the amount of other great stuff going on in it (did you hear those handclaps?). Read more about Activities of Daily Living here.

“The Iron That Never Swung”, Neutrals
From New Town Dream (2024, Slumberand/Static Shock)

Glasgow native Allan McNaughton’s background is in post-punk, but his current band Neutrals has a more indie pop/C86 sound fits well on their current label (Slumberland) and the Bay Area scene (where McNaughton is now based). McNaughton’s plainspoken Scottish-accented vocals contrast with the jangly and melodic (although sometimes messy in a punk-pop way) instrumentals, and McNaughton’s writing is primarily inspired by the plight of postwar “New Towns” in the U.K. and those who lived in them. McNaughton’s thematic preoccupations explicitly shade “The Iron That Never Swung”, but they’re smoothly integrated into indie pop–its brisk but melancholic undertones make it one of the best songs on the album. Read more about New Town Dream here.

“Nightmare”, Adeem the Artist
From Anniversary (2024, Four Quarters)

Adeem the Artist: great musician! Great songwriter! One of the most exciting alt-country faces in recent memory! They put out an album called White Trash Revelry in 2022 that I really enjoyed, and–though I find a lot of these Americana phenoms kind of flame out after getting some buzz–their latest, Anniversary, is even better than that one. If the idea of “queer country” music is interesting at all to you, Anniversary is the album for you (and it doesn’t really matter if you’re not interested in that, because you are interested in good music), and for those of us already on board, Adeem the Artist takes several steps forward and outward in their writing. “Nightmare” isn’t exactly my favorite song lyrically on the album–not that its blunt metaphor isn’t effective in an earnest, pleading way, much like Tyler Childers’ “Long Violent History”. What vaults it ahead of everything else is Adeem’s embrace of polished, confident country rock here–if they’re shooting for the stars, it’s a good look on them.

“Lovin’ You Ain’t Easy”, The Foreign Correspondents
From Lovin’ You Ain’t Easy (2024, Outer Battery)

Imagine a supergroup featuring Ted Leo, Brendan Canty (Fugazi), Sohrab Habibion (Savak, Edsel), and Michael Hampton (The Faith, Fake Names). Sounds great, right? Now, imagine them covering Michel Pagliaro, an obscure (outside of Canada, at least) Quebecois singer-songwriter from the 1970s. If that still sounds great, then you’ve come to the right place, as The Foreign Correspondents’ debut 7” single features two versions of Pagliaro’s songs. I’m not familiar with the originals at all whatsoever, but I love their take on “Lovin’ You Ain’t Easy”–led by laid-back acoustic guitar strumming and sharpness from the rest of the instruments, it’s got a nice early power pop feel to it, and Leo’s incredibly smooth lead vocals (always welcome) seal the deal.

“Scabby the Rat”, Shellac
From To All Trains (2024, Touch & Go)

Plenty of people have said it better than I have, but To All Trains is more than a worthy final statement from arguably the single most important person with regards to the kind of music I write about on this blog. Now, Shellac was always an equilateral triangle, and Todd Trainer’s drums and Bob Weston’s bass are absolutely essential to their sound, but (even though I didn’t really intend it as such when I chose it for this playlist) “Scabby the Rat” is such a great sub-two-minute encapsulation of the best of Steve Albini, from the metallic snaking guitar playing to his unique sing-speaking to his humor (“Pow! You’re pregnant!”) to his commitment to ethics (of course there’s a Shellac song about the titular pro-labor mascot) to a matter-of-fact sentimentality (the shouting out of Rob Warmowski, a punk lifer and friend of Albini’s who ran the @ScabbytheRat Twitter account and passed away in 2019). There’s nothing that’s ever going to take the place of stuff like this.

“I’m Yours, You’re Mine”, Lunchbox
From Pop and Circumstance (2024, Slumberland)

The dozen pop songs on Pop and Circumstance were clearly authored by people devoted enough to the music of the 1960s and 70s to be able to pull several different stripes of it together. But while their influences might be worn a little more on their sleeves than those of their C86/twee/indie pop peers, Lunchbox avoid coming off as stiff genre reenactors by nailing pop hook after pop hook and using their knowledge to deliver them smartly. Early on in Pop and Circumstance, Lunchbox pull out all the stops with the sugary, horn-laden hit “I’m Yours, You’re Mine”–it’s quite charming from the get-go, and even more so when they break out the organ and handclaps. Read more about Pop and Circumstance here.

“My Love, Let’s Take the Stage Tonight”, Kiran Leonard
From Real Home (2024, Memorials of Distinction)

There are bands where I like all of their songs. There are bands where I don’t like any of their songs. And then there’s musicians like Kiran Leonard, a London-based singer-songwriter who’s been making experimental, orchestral pop music for over a decade now. I’ve heard bits and pieces of his music before, and I’ve listened to his latest album, Real Home, in its entirety, and I can fairly confidently say that “My Love, Let’s Take the Stage Tonight” is the one song of his that really stands out to me–but it really works for me. It’s such a confident and beautiful song, a string-laden romantic piece of college-folk rock that reminds me a bit of The Waterboys and Miracle Legion but doesn’t quite sound like anything but itself.

“Ratbike”, 2070
From Stay in the Ranch (2024, Free World Vessel)

Despite its similarities with more than a few “bedroom pop” projects, 2070’s Stay in the Ranch has plenty of moments where an honest-to-god rock band emerges from the static. The Los Angeles group plow through sixteen songs in 35 minutes, throwing out experimental shoegaze, fuzz rock, and noisy lo-fi pop like it’s nobody’s business. After an intro track, “Ratbike” kicks off Stay in the Ranch properly with a blown-out piece of tuneful, almost post-punk racket, absolutely brimming with melodic guitars and pleasant agitation. Read more about Stay in the Ranch here.

“Sanity’s Sake”, Vacation
From Rare Earth (2024, Feel It)

Vacation are a veteran Midwestern, blue-collar power pop/punk group whose latest album, Rare Earth, displays a mid-period Guided by Voices-ish “meaty but hooky” attitude that works really well–my favorite song on the album, the earnest, chugging “Sanity’s Sake”, captures Robert Pollard’s ability to imbue his lyrics and vocals with both triumph and melancholy. “Sanity’s Sake” is an obvious success as a pop song, and it’s no small feat that Vacation turn a song with lyrics like “Corrosion of a paradise / A patina that shines / Let your theories oxidize” into not only a hit, but a deeply felt one, too. Read more about Rare Earth here.

“Severed Head”, Mopar Stars
From Burning Question (2024, Furo Bungy)

We’re doing two songs from the Mopar Stars EP because this thing is great, let me tell you. I think I like “Burning Question” a little more than “Severed Head”, but it’s very close. The former song has a sheer desperation to it, while this one is the “cool” end of the power pop spectrum. You thought I could ever get tired of choppy power chords? No, the verses to this one absolutely need them. You thought I’d get tired of cranked-up rock-and-roll chord progressions as interpreted by basement indie rock groups? No–I mean, just listen to the chorus of “Severed Head”.

“Sway”, Cast of Thousands
(2024)

Mr. President, a seventh Cast of Thousands song has materialized on Bandcamp and other streaming services. The Austin-based quartet released a cassette last year entitled First Six Songs, which was a shining example of both truth in advertising and in superb garage-y power pop (frontperson Maxwell Vandever’s previous band, Flesh Lights, had already proven that he knew his way around this kind of music). Cast of Thousands’ first new music since then is the one-off “Sway”, and it’s familiar-sounding in the best way. It’s just a little muddy and distorted, in a way that’s able to still spotlight just about everything great about this band–the scene-stealing melodic bass, the slightly rootsy, wistful tone of Vandever’s vocals, and catchy but economical guitarplay.

“Impatient”, Kill Gosling
From Waster (2024, We’re Trying)

Columbus emo pop punk band Kill Gosling pack a bunch of stuff into less than ten minutes with Waster, their latest EP; the dramatic punk showtune “Impatient” is second-half-of-Worry.-worthy, showcasing some of Kill Gosling’s best writing. “What’s the point in learning something I know / Where’s the joy if you can never let go?” goes the chorus, and I enjoy how the refrain takes on a different meaning between the first time around (in euphoria at a show) and the next one (at home, crashing and expelling alcohol from one’s body involuntarily). Read more about Waster here.

“Better”, Ahem
From Avoider (2024, Forged Artifacts)

There’s just too many great pop songs on Avoider to choose from, but I’m happy with my selection of “Better” for this playlist. Compared to the blaring barnburners that open the record, “Better” shows off Ahem’s lighter and breezier side–up to a point, at least. It starts in that kind of territory, but the huge, starry-eyed power pop core of the song is impossible to restrain, with the “Yeah!”s in the cautious-but-giant refrain blooming among the traded-off vocals and melodic guitars. Read more about Avoider here.

“Pretty Blue 108”, Alice Kat
From Around the World & Back to You (2024, Subjangle)

“Pretty Blue 108”, the opening track to Alice Kat’s Around the World & Back to You, is a strong introduction to a side of Alice Katugampola that I didn’t really see in her work with indie pop duo fine.. Around the World & Back to You is a collection of relatively punchy, slick alt-rock, with a concept that roughly divides the record into huge-sounding power pop (“day time”) and chillier indie rock (“night time”). “Pretty Blue 108” does its job admirably, shooting for the stars and landing a giant hook that’s more than enough on which to hang a statement track. Read more about Around the World & Back to You here.

“Go Away”, The Wendy Darlings
From Lipstick Fire (2024, Lunadélia/Influenza)

The Wendy Darlings’ third LP, Lipstick Fire, is a portrait of a band devoted to both vintage indie pop and the genres from which it was initially derived. The French trio attack a classic bubblegum pop sound with the twee and punk-pop energy of a band absolutely thrilled to be making music together. My favorite song on the record, “Go Away”, is an early, smooth highlight that saunters up to its cathartic, shout-along chorus with just enough confidence to pull it off. Read more about Lipstick Fire here.

“You’re Just Jealous”, Crumbs
From You’re Just Jealous (2024, Skep Wax)

You’re Just Jealous equally combines the danceability of 80s post-punk, the hooks of classic indie pop, and the sharp edges of 90s Kill Rock Stars indie rock groups. The sophomore record from the Leeds quartet took six years to come about, but Crumbs sound incredibly fresh throughout their Skep Wax Records debut. You’re Just Jealous has a “locked-in” sound from the get-go, with the punchy rhythms of the opening title track providing the runway for vocalist Ruth Gilmore’s vocals to put on a show. “You’re Just Jealous” is essential in sketching out Crumbs’ philosophy–that post-punk can and should be catchy and fun to listen to. Read more about You’re Just Jealous here.

“Key to the Universe”, The Lousy Hitchhikers
From Key to the Universe (2024)

Multiple punk songs about aliens on this playlist, I don’t know. This one comes courtesy of The Lousy Hitchhikers, a Winston-Salem-based band (quite possibly the first time I’ve covered something from there before) led by Mike Koivisto and assisted by Scotty Sandwich and Alex Kirkpatrick. The four-song, seven-minute Keys to the City EP is the group’s first record made in a proper studio after years of home recording, but they certainly don’t have any “over-production” problems here, especially on the opening title track. “Key to the Universe” (an “extremely ridiculous song”, per its Bandcamp page) is a two-minute cannonball of power-pop-punk about how it’s not only humans that can’t get enough of The Lousy Hitchhikers’ music, but also those “crazy gray dudes” from outer space. Sure, why not?

“Found and Lost”, Sylvia
(2024)

Sylvia is a new-ish quartet from Melbourne made up of people from Australian bands I haven’t heard of (Earache, No Sister, Red Hell, Hygiene–maybe if you’re from Down Under you know them?) and who put out a self-titled debut EP in 2022. “Found and Lost” is apparently the first single from their upcoming second EP, and it sounds pretty good to me! Sylvia cite modern shoegaze and fuzz rock acts as influences, but “Found and Lost” is an indie pop song at its core–the end result is something that sounds like a Slumberland/Sarah Records band with the distortion cranked up and the drums played as forcefully as one can for this kind of music.

“Play It Cool”, Climax Landers
From Zenith No Effects (2024, Gentle Reminder/Home Late/Intellectual Birds)

Zenith No Effects is an offbeat but sincere guitar pop album at its core, with classic pop rock and college rock (aided by Paco Cathcart’s violin and Ani Ivry-Block’s accordion) shading the record, and Climax Landers’ ringleader, vocalist Will Moloney, ups his game to match. One of Zenith No Effects‘ biggest and most immediate moments is “Play It Cool”, a swooning pop song whose looseness and stream-of-consciousness feeling reminds me of the effortless-sounding pop music of Nate Amos’ This Is Lorelei and My Idea. Moloney seems to ramble on about the idea of “coolness”, namechecking music that, depending on one’s level of irony, is either the epitome of it or of the lack thereof (Staind, Styx, Rob Thomas and Santana, 311). Read more about Zenith No Effects here.

“Severance”, Female Gaze
From Tender Futures (2024, Fort Lowell/Totally Real)

The latest album from Tucson trio Female Gaze, Tender Futures, intentionally evokes haziness and disorientation and, according to the band, can be started from any song and played “on a loop”. Stretching five songs across thirty-two minutes, Tender Futures is an expansive, vast record that embodies the American southwest. By the end of the album, the disorientation is at a high, as we’re feeling lost out in no-man’s land somewhere–but the last song on Tender Futures is its clearest olive branch. “Severance” is not a departure from the rest of the album, but it’s where everything snaps into focus, as the trio set their sights on fluttering guitar pop for six minutes. Read more about Tender Futures here.

Pressing Concerns: Planet 81, The Bird Calls, Gramercy Arms, Night Court / The Dumpies

It’s going to be a big week here on Rosy Overdrive, bigger than normal even! We’re kicking off the week with a Pressing Concerns that’s an odds-and-ends one of sorts, covering several solid records that have come out in the last month or so: new albums from Planet 81, The Bird Calls, and Gramercy Arms, plus a split EP between Night Court and The Dumpies.

Oh, and by the way: after three-plus years of consistently writing about new records via this blog, we’ve reached a fairly notable milestone. We’ve now covered over 1,000 albums/EPs in Pressing Concerns! If we’re being technical, this edition contains numbers 999 through 1,002, with The Bird Calls getting the prestigious designation. So, congrats to Sam Sodomsky and company–I wish I had a prize or something to give you.

Planet 81 – Escape!! to…Planet 81

Release date: April 29^th
Record label: Self-released
Genre: Synthpop, sophisti-pop, new wave, power pop, synth-funk
Formats: Digital
Pull Track: In My Japanese Compact

Justin Cohn is a California musician who’s released a few albums as co-leader of Oakland’s Telegenic and more recently has been playing in the live band for Kabir Kumar’s Sun Kin. Currently based in Los Angeles, Cohn now has a brand-new solo project to their name called Planet 81, and has kicked off this new era with a bang entitled Escape!! to…Planet 81. Escape!! indeed sounds like the work of somebody associated with Sun Kin–and given that their Sunset World is one of the best albums of the year so far, that’s a good place to be. Like Sun Kin, Cohn is interested in the different feel that pop music of a few decades ago had–the “81” in the project’s title refers to the year Cohn is hoping to evoke, and Escape!! as a whole embraces that era’s prog-pop, sophisti-pop, funk, R&B, disco, and power pop/new wave even more enthusiastically than Sunset World did. XTC, Rundgren, and Scritti Politti are influences, of course, but for my money that most accurate comparison is a more recent band that Cohn mentioned in their email to me–Phoenix. Escape!! captures the same energy that marks the best of the 2000s French pop group–balancing a “rock band” feel with all-in pop music, making music with a backbone that one can still dance to.

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 chart-toppers in the world of Planet 81 would have to include “Roses at My Feet”, a gorgeous synthpop mission statement that throws down the gauntlet to open the record, as well as the Prince-wave of “In My Japanese Compact”, a zippy, cool-as-hell 80s “car song” if I’ve ever heard one, “Silver Bullet” and its sophisti-pop sheen that gives way to a massive chorus, and “Space Invader!”, a peppy curiosity that opens the record’s second half with the moment where it feels like there’s a distinct “Planet 81 sound” developing from the influences perched on Cohn’s sleeve. Throw a dart at any of these aforementioned pop hits, they’ll hook you–but stick around for everything else that Escape!! has to offer, from the glitzy funk-tinged “Moneymaker”, so-earnest-it-hurts mid-record ballad “Let Love Be the Guide”, and the groove that Planet 81 lock into towards the end of the record in the disco-y “Heaven”, steady synthpop “Royal Counsel”, and “Hesitater”, which lets the big guitars and buzzing synths duke it out. Justin Cohn didn’t need to dig deep one last time to pull out one last polished power pop anthem in “Ever After…” to close the record, but to Escape!! to…Planet 81, doing anything less than the absolute maximum at any given moment is just plain unthinkable. (Bandcamp link)

The Bird Calls – Old Faithful

Release date: May 31^st
Record label: Ruination
Genre: Folk, singer-songwriter
Formats: CD, digital
Pull Track: Footprints

I’ve been familiar with Sam Sodomsky as a writer for a long time now, and there’s a good chance that you are to some degree, as well–he’s written about music in a bunch of different places, most notably as being one of the most consistently readable reviewers for Pitchfork for several years. At the same time, the New York-based Sodomsky’s been making music of his own as The Bird Calls–prolifically and independently up until 2021, when he linked up with Ruination Record Co. (Carmen Quill, Frank Meadows, Blue Ranger) and “slowed” his output to a mere one album a year. I’d heard bits and pieces of The Bird Calls’ recent records, but Old Faithful is the first one I’ve really dove into, and I’m glad I did. It’s a compelling listen, one that lets its humbly charismatic frontperson stand front and center but also doesn’t mistake “vocal/lyric-first presentation” with “instrumentals as afterthoughts”. Apparently, Old Faithful is Sodomsky’s first album recorded with a drummer (Jason Burger of Big Thief, Scree, and Twain), who joins his gang of fellow music writer/musicians (keyboardist Winston Cook-Wilson of Office Culture and bassist Andy Cush of Garcia Peoples) and other ringers (vocalist Shaughnessy Jones and guitarist Katie Battistoni).

Almost aggressively lackadaisical at its outset, Old Faithful opens with a pair of deliberately-paced acoustic songs in the title track and “Old Folks” that places Sodomsky somewhere between the early recordings of Dan Bejar and the later ones of Bill Callahan. The drums kick in with the rambling country-folk of “I Haven’t Been This Happy in a Long Time” (“I was scanning the bookshelf, looking for a spine / She said she lost her will to live and so I kindly lent her mine” is the couplet that opens the song, assuring us that it still fits with the rest of the record), although the pensive “Going Insane” uses percussion more subtly (which is the tack that the rest of the album takes). In the second half of Old Faithful, “Footprints” and “I Wish That We Could Fall in Love Again” are the outwardly emotional highs and some of my instant favorites, although Sodomsky’s writing–dispatches and snippets of routines and trains of thought–wanders even more than the music does. The relatively frequent references to God and faith caught my attention upon repeated listening, although songs like “Pleasing Myself” and “Faith People” are less grand cosmic statements and more jumping-off points to just-as-deeply-felt ruminations on those of us down here on Earth. “If I ever lied to you, it’s not something I tried to do / I mean, it’s not like something I rehearsed,” sings Sodomsky memorably on the breezy “Worst Trip”, and later, “these delicate emotions are the messiest ones”. They’re nice moments, but neither the acoustic guitar nor Sodomsky’s parade of lyrical images lingers too long on them. (Bandcamp link)

Gramercy Arms – The Making of the Making of

Release date: April 26^th
Record label: Magic Door
Genre: College rock, folk rock, indie pop, singer-songwriter
Formats: Digital
Pull Track: Pilot Light

Gramercy Arms are a New York-based band led by singer-songwriter Dave Derby, who in a different life was the bassist and vocalist in 1990s Boston alt-rock group The Dambuilders. Derby started Gramercy Arms in the mid-2000s, releasing a couple of records before disappearing for a bit, only to return with last year’s Deleted Scenes. A far cry from where he began, the album featured Derby along with a wide cast of guests making smartly-written guitar pop music with shades of college rock, folk rock, and vintage indie pop. Thankfully, we didn’t have to wait another decade for a follow-up to Deleted Scenes, as the fourth Gramercy Arms full-length, The Making of the Making of, has arrived just slightly over a year later. Like on the previous record, Derby gets plenty of help here, with Kevin March and Doug Gillard of Guided by Voices, John Leon of The Royal Arctic Institute, and Ray Ketchem of Elk City (who also produced the record) contributing music to the album, among others.

Featuring a cover song as well as an alternate version of a song on Deleted Scenes, The Making of the Making of might have more of an “odds-and-ends” feel than the previous Gramercy Arms album–but what’s here is more than enough to ensure that this record stands on its own. The first two songs on the album, “After the After Party” and “Pilot Light”, are Gramercy Arms at their post-college rock best, barreling through two catchy pieces of Gin Blossoms-y/Buffalo Tom-esque “polite alt-rock” that have just enough energy to them. The leisurely title track and the mid-tempo acoustic stomp of “Alaska” are a bit less immediate, but they both keep the momentum strong in the record’s first half. And I mentioned a cover earlier–it’s a version of “Don’t Respond, She Can Tell” by The Loud Family, a great song from one of the greatest and least appreciated albums of all time, Interbabe Concern. Derby makes the decision to play the song fairly straight–given how strong and not worn out the original is, that’s a valid choice–with the one major change (bringing in Jules Verdone and singing it as a duet) being a creative way to acknowledge the complexity Scott Miller breathed into the original. As breezy and laid-back as The Making of the Making of sounds at times, the way the Gramercy Arms rise to tackle something as thorny as that cover is a good reminder as any of the intent and strength behind the sunny exterior. (Bandcamp link)

Night Court / The Dumpies – Shit Split Part Duh

Release date: May 3^rd
Record label: Hovercraft/Green Noise
Genre: Punk rock, power pop, lo-fi indie rock, garage rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: 1000000th Song

Night Court are a Vancouver-based trio who first came to my attention at the end of last year, when I saw their 2023 album HUMANS! on a year-end list, thought the description sounded interesting, and ended up quite enjoying the band’s combination of garage rock, power pop, and melodic punk, delivered in bite-sized (sixteen songs in twenty-six minutes) packages. With a handful of releases since their inception, the band (Jiffy Marx, Dave-O, and Emilor) have effectively presented themselves as Guided by Voices for people who know who J Church are. The latest Night Court release is a split 7” with Oregon’s The Dumpies–who I hadn’t heard of before, but appear to be like-minded punk-poppers–released on the latter band’s longtime home of Hovercraft Records. The two bands cram nine songs onto the record (four on the Night Court side, five on the Dumpies’), and as it turns out, they’re built for constraints like this–plenty of hooks mark the sub-ten-minute release, and there’s even enough time for the two groups to differentiate themselves from each other a bit.

Of the two sides, the Night Court 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. First song “Not an Act(or)” even pulls out a bizarre egg punk introduction before zooming directly into the fuzzed-out catchiness that marks the entire 90-second track. “1000000th Song” actually does the opening track one better–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. The Dumpies’ half is a bit more chaotic–they choose to introduce themselves with the frantic, foot-on-the-gas garage punk of “Big”, and the hardcore-indebted “HATS” doesn’t have any equivalent on the other side of the record. That being said, “Bisexual Hedge Fund Manager” and “Gobbler’s Knob” show that The Dumpies can aim their noisiness in the direction of “pop music” just as effectively as Night Court when they want to, and their side of the record also has the jangly college rock of “Egg Timer”, the most subtle song on the entire split (not that there’s much competition). The wobbly punk balladeering of “Egg Timer” is the most noticeable one, but there’s plenty more to entertain on Shit Split Part Duh once the initial jolt of energy wears off. (Bandcamp link – Night Court) (Bandcamp link – The Dumpies)

Also notable:

Pressing Concerns: Ethan Beck & The Charlie Browns, Babe Report, Neutrals, Winston Hightower

I probably say this most weeks by now, but that doesn’t make it any less true: this Thursday Pressing Concerns is one for the books. New albums from Ethan Beck & The Charlie Browns, Babe Report, and Neutrals, plus a vinyl compilation from Winston Hightower–all great, all out tomorrow (May 31st), all to be found below. For more fun, check out Monday’s blog post (featuring The Noisy, Alice Kat, Drug Country, and Dog Park) and/or Tuesday’s post (Comprador, From Far It All Seems Small, Jacob Freddy, Animal, Surrender!).

Ethan Beck & The Charlie Browns – Duck Hollow

Release date: May 31^st
Record label: Douglas Street
Genre: Power pop, college rock, jangle pop
Formats: Cassette, digital
Pull Track: Fear and Loathing in Gramercy

Ethan Beck is a musician from Pittsburgh, and when he’s not attending college in Brooklyn or writing about music for Paste and Bandcamp Daily, he’s leading a new power pop group called Ethan Beck & The Charlie Browns. After soft-launching the project with a live EP last year, Duck Hollow is the proper full length debut from the Pittsburgh group (also featuring bassist/vocalist Esperanza Siegert Wilkinson, guitarist/vocalist Atticus Crowley, and drummer/percussionist Mike Stolarz), and it’s an instantly-enjoyable collection of immediate, compelling guitar pop. Beck references Material Issue as an inspiration (among others) for the Charlie Browns’ sound, and Duck Hollow certainly backs it up in places, pulling together giant hooks with electric alt-rock, although the album also contains more delicate pop songs that are more reminiscent of Fountains of Wayne, The Tisburys, Hurry, and Matthew Milia. Beck has a natural-sounding gift for melody in his vocals–typically front and center in the mix–and as a writer, he pulls from his upbringing and the city around him. Duck Hollow is loosely a Pittsburgh-based concept album, with everything from the titular neighborhood to the one where Beck grew up (Squirrel Hill) to the Wabash Tunnel populating these songs.

I’m not sure if I’ve heard a better start to a record this year than “Fear and Loathing in Gramercy” and “Monk Eric”, which launch Duck Hollow with nothing less than two perfect power pop songs. The former track is effectively the platonic ideal of a power pop song, balancing a soaring, almost smirking confidence in its construction with the humble earnestness of Beck’s performance sitting in the middle of it all (and the chorus, which moves from a stumble to a steady strut, would guarantee this one sticking out even if the rest of the track was a clunker). “Monk Eric” is a pure sugar rush, with The Charlie Browns skipping along to Beck’s sympathetic but unfailingly honest character sketch. Songs like “And And And” and “Does This Bus Stop at Douglas?” could only ever be considered “subtle” in comparison to what comes before them, but they’re just as catchy in a slightly-more-laid-back way (and “Fear and Loathing in Squirrel Hill” shoots the energy level back up to “high” one song later, anyway).

The Charlie Browns have some tricks up their sleeves in the second half, too– “Matthew’s Song”, which shifts from a mid-tempo crooner to a waterfalling power pop anthem, and the all-too-brief, restrained-sounding, percussion-led “Brenda and Eddie” are both highlights. The band locks in for the home stretch, with “Pair of Twos” and “Wabash Tunnel” being two of their strongest moments as rockers. The latter of the two features another classic chorus, with Beck bundling up everything about the less-than-ideal relationship at the center of the song and declaring “Go ahead without me / It’s alright if you leave”. Duck Hollow, recalling many great power pop records before it, succeeds in placing us emotionally and geographically right next to Ethan Beck as he traverses the Monongahela River. (Bandcamp link)

Babe Report – Did You Get Better

Release date: May 31^st
Record label: Exploding in Sound
Genre: 90s indie rock, noise rock, post-punk, garage rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Kathleen

Chicago’s Ben Grigg played in early Exploding in Sound band Geronimo!, but keeping track of his various projects since that band’s dissolution in 2015 gets pretty tricky. There’s his solo project, Whelpwisher, then there’s FKCR JR, which features guitarist Emily Bernstein among others, and Big Big Bison, which reunited Grigg with his old Geronimo! bandmates. And then we have Babe Report, which began as a “lockdown-inspired” project from Grigg and Bernstein, but by the time their debut EP, 2022’s The Future of Teeth, had rolled around, they’d added a rhythm section in bassist Mech and drummer Peter Reale (formerly of Yeesh). This lineup (with Grigg and Bernstein handling guitar and vocal duties) is the one that they take into their debut album, Did You Get Better, which is also (I believe) Grigg’s first release with Exploding in Sound since his Geronmino! days. Grigg’s recent work has covered everything from lo-fi pop to cacophonous noise rock, and I’m pleased to hear Babe Report incorporate a bit of everything–thorny, electric, and punk rock, but not without some pop smarts peeking through everything now and then.

Did You Get Better is an energy jolt of an album–at ten songs in 26 minutes, Babe Report make a racket for about two minutes and move on just as quickly. “Turtle of Reaper” crashes into focus with some assaulting Chicago noise rock in the verses before surging into an amped-up punk rock chorus, while “Universal” (which was originally recorded by Grigg by himself as Whelpwisher) incorporates a stop-start, rhythmic post-punk layer to Babe Report’s sound while still dealing with noisy garage-y rock and roll. After a couple of other noise-punk ragers, the middle of the record mixes things up a bit–“Voidreader” eventually descends into fuzz-rock but it starts off with a solid Grigg vocal hook, while Babe Report flex their experimental side on “Allergy 2000” with its slow-tempo, showy guitar leads, and murky vocals. A lot of Did You Get Better sounds like it was made by a much less patient Sonic Youth, and nowhere is this more obvious than late-record highlight “Kathleen”, a soaring rock song that captures the controlled-runway noisiness and rhythms that marked SY’s later records. “Kathleen” and “Allergy 2000” suggest a stranger, more esoteric path for Babe Report to wander down in future releases, but “Jane” is yet another interesting alternate route–towering, smoky guitar riffs mark the song, even as Grigg’s vocals are clear and poppy amongst the heavier alt-rock instrumental. Between the album’s extremely high base level of energy and everything else found underneath that sheen, you can’t accuse Babe Report of not making the most out of their first full-length statement. (Bandcamp link)

Neutrals – New Town Dream

Release date: May 31^st
Record label: Slumberland/Static Shock
Genre: Jangle pop, indie pop, post-punk, power pop
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
Pull Track: The Iron That Never Swung

After playing around in various Bay Area bands like Giant Haystacks and Airfix Kits for the majority of the 2000s and the early 2010s, Glasgow native Allan McNaughton started up the trio Neutrals in 2016 with Phil Benson of Terry Malts on bass and his former Airfix Kits bandmate Phil Lantz (also of Sob Stories) on drums. Even though there’d only been one proper Neutrals album up until now (2019’s Kebab Disco), the trio have still been quite active in putting music out, from the pair of demo tapes that kicked off their career to EPs like 2020’s Rent/Your House and 2022’s Bus Stop Nights. Somewhere along the way, Seablite’s Lauren Matsui took the place of Benson, and it’s this lineup that put together New Town Dream, the sophomore Neutrals LP and first for Slumberland. McNaughton’s background is in post-punk, but Neutrals’ more indie pop/C86 sound fits well on their current label and the current Bay Area scene, with McNaughton’s plainspoken Scottish-accented vocals contrasting with the jangly and melodic (although sometimes messy in a punk-pop way) instrumentals.

New Town Dream is a continuation of the themes explored on Bus Stop Nights (the title track is even a reworking of a song that originally appeared on the EP)–one might think that a Bay Area band singing about urbanization and development would be drawing from what’s recently happened around them, but McNaughton’s primary inspiration is the plight of postwar “New Towns” in the U.K. and those who lived in them (he even cites Not for Rent, a book co-written by Grrrt, longtime sound engineer for The Ex, for its writing about the Pollok Free State in Glasgow). Reading list aside, Neutrals are a sharp pop band throughout the entirety of New Town Dream, and pretty much any guitar pop fan will be able to enjoy the bouncy “That’s Him on the Daft Stuff Again” and the ramshackle power pop of “Wish You Were Here”. McNaughton’s thematic preoccupations explicitly shade songs like “Stop the Bypass” and “The Iron That Never Swung”, but they’re just as smoothly integrated into indie pop as the rest of the record–the brisk but melancholic undertones of the latter in particular make it one of the best songs on the album. For all of two minutes, New Town Dream does get pretty out there in the form of the experimental synth piece “How Did I Get Here”, but then the band are back to post-punk-pop character studies (“Substitute Teacher”) and chugging, jangly pop anthems (“Phantom Arcade”)–the dream isn’t always rosy, but it’s certainly vibrant and colorful regardless. (Bandcamp link)

Winston Hightower – Winston Hytwr

Release date: May 31^st
Record label: K/Perennial
Genre: Lo-fi indie rock, experimental rock, post-punk
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Hipswayer

I hadn’t heard of Winston Hightower before this release, but it feels like I should’ve, given his background. The Columbus, Ohio-based multi-instrumentalist (and pro skater) has been making lo-fi indie rock since the mid-2010s, sometimes just via uploading songs to his Bandcamp and other times via cassettes and CDRs on small labels like Superdreamer, Let’s Pretend, and his own FAH-Q Catalog. Hightower has never released a vinyl record, and is still fairly unknown outside of his local region–two problems that K and Perennial Records are seeking to fix with Winston Hytwr, a vinyl compilation of a dozen Winston Hightower songs selected from across his career thus far. Hightower clearly deserves to be considered as an essential part of Columbus’ lo-fi pop scene alongside acts like Times New Viking, Connections, Smug Brothers, and Healing & Peace (some of which Hightower has played with before), but Winston Hytwr paints a picture of a musician who isn’t constrained to power pop and 90s-style indie rock. Plenty of that is there, of course, but Hightower (who, according to the album’s press release, has earned the nickname “the Black R Stevie Moore”, which is too good not to repeat here) also incorporates more experimental usage of synths and a bit of offbeat jazz sensibilities, among other influences.

Winston Hytwr kicks off perfectly with “Hipswayer”, an understated but immediately enjoyable piece of indie rock built around minimal percussion, spiderwebbing guitars, and a steady bassline. After establishing just how well he can do straight-up lo-fi pop, the rest of the A-side of the record expands on this a little bit–the post-punk-y chant of “Insubordination Rules”, the rhythmic strut of “Deadbeat at Dawn”, the dizzy shuffle of “Wainbow”, and the lo-fi psychedelic rap of “Blind Pig” are all key wrinkles in developing a full image of everything that Winston Hightower encompasses. After the loudest song on the record, the roaring alt-punk-noise of “O N O”, Winston Hytwr comes the closest it ever does to “settling into a groove”–the screech-y synths and reverb-y vocals of “A Moment Like This” might be a little jarring, but Hightower incorporates them seamlessly into lo-fi pop in “Glitter Affair” and “TF” not long afterwards. Late in the runtime of Winston Hytwr, the musician once again delves into experimental, hazy lo-fi noise with “Hue Noise” and bright, almost-garish synth-led-hip-hop in “Apart of It”–by this point, the entirety of the record before these songs has already primed us to expect just about anything from Winston Hightower. (Bandcamp link)

Also notable:

Pressing Concerns: Comprador, From Far It All Seems Small, Jacob Freddy, Animal, Surrender!

In the second Pressing Concerns of the week, we’re looking at some more great new music that you might’ve missed: new albums from Comprador, Jacob Freddy, and Animal, Surrender!, as well as From Far It All Seems Small: A Compilation from Seattle’s Underground, organized by Supercrush. We actually did have a post go up on Memorial Day (featuring The Noisy, Alice Kat, Drug Country, and Dog Park), so if you missed it in the holiday weekend festivities, be sure to check it out here.

Comprador – Please Stay Off the Statue

Release date: May 16^th
Record label: Self-released
Genre: Power pop, alt-rock, art rock
Formats: Digital
Pull Track: No Dice

I was somewhat aware of the band Comprador due to Twitter, but I hadn’t heard their music or even knew anything about them, really, before their latest album, Please Stay Off the Statue, was brought to my attention via an email from bandleader Charlie D’Ardenne. I didn’t know that Comprador has existed in some form for over a decade–first in Arizona, then in Cincinnati, and, for the past five years now, in Philadelphia. I didn’t know that Please Stay Off the Statue was their sixth album (in addition to a bunch of odds and ends on their Bandcamp page). I certainly didn’t know what they sounded like–in their email to me, D’Ardenne mentioned playing shows with Nihiloceros and Kill Gosling, so “somewhere between punk and emo” would’ve been my guess. As it turns out, Please Stay Off the Statue is both a unique record and one entirely up my alley. D’Ardenne’s writing is touched by classic power pop and even Beach Boys-esque pop rock, while they give the songs a heavier alt-rock punch (with even a bit of prog-pop in there) and a glam rock performance. An omnivorous record that nevertheless retains a strong personality, Comprador sounds somewhat like Jon Brion fronting a post-grunge band, and Please Stay Off the Statue has moments that incorporate everything from pop punk to shoegaze.

One of the first indications that Please Stay Off the Statue is going to be hard to get a handle on is its opening track, “One by Metallica by I Hate Sex by Thorn Tire by Prim”. There’s a lot of brilliant pop music on this album, but Comprador’s opening statement is all Greg Dulli-esque thorniness and tension. Speaking of brilliant pop music, the atmosphere is then punctured by “No Dice”, a perfect song that I really can’t get enough of (to the point where it took me awhile to get into the rest of the record because I just wanted to listen to its absurdly huge Brion-pop-punk-fuzz refrain over and over again). The majority of Please Stay Off the Statue demands to be played loud, from the crunchy drama of “Good Vibrations” to the Pixies-ish “Death Becomes U” to “Better Luck Next Time (Taylor’s Version)”, a gorgeous pop song run through a trash compactor. Gina LC of Lo-Priestess shows up “Ripcord”, a straight-up noise rock song that’s the record’s wildest single moment. D’Ardenne is orchestrating everything, packing all these walls of sound with memorable moments, a trait that also helps tease out stretched-out slow burners like “O M G” and the closing title track. Please Stay Off the Statue is a really consistent and well-developed record, but it’s hardly sterile–something like “Not the Strong Silent Type” is exactly the kind of mid-tempo, mid-record track that’d be a dud on a lesser album, but D’Ardenne practically wills it to be one of the best songs on the entire album. As polished as Please Stay Off the Statue is, it’s something less tangible than any of its individual brushstrokes that make it stand out as a piece of art. (Bandcamp link)

Various Artists – From Far It All Seems Small: A Compilation from Seattle’s Underground

Release date: May 24^th
Record label: KR
Genre: Fuzz rock, shoegaze, power pop, punk rock
Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital
Pull Track: The Legend

Wait, you’re telling me that Seattle has a thriving underground rock scene? Who would have guessed? In all seriousness, there’s been a lot of talk about San Francisco, Philadelphia, even Cincinnati as of late, but a new compilation presents a strong argument that “Seattle, the major hub for indie and alternative rock” isn’t something that should be relegated to Sub Pop retrospectives. That’s how Mark Palm of Emerald City power pop group Supercrush saw it, and he followed through on his convictions by compiling From Far It All Seems Small, a collection of fourteen new songs from fourteen Seattle-hailing bands. Released on Palm’s KR record label, From Far It All Seems Small is an impressively cohesive listen that pulls from a few different strains of modern indie rock. There’s a bit of the Bay Area’s foggy indie pop to this new “Seattle sound”, but it’s louder, more distorted, and blown-out in classic Washington state fashion. Supercrush’s power pop anthem “Lost My Head” might be one of the more accessible songs on the compilation, but it’s far from the only one with big pop hooks–they’re delivered in everything from shoegaze to fuzzy garage punk to 90s-style indie rock (even the one hardcore-indebted song, Shook Ones’ “July One”, has a melodic punk undercurrent that surprisingly helps it fit right in).

Regular readers will spot five different bands who’ve appeared in Pressing Concerns on From Far It All Seems Small, and, unsurprisingly, all of their contributions are highlights. Supercrush’s loud Copper Blue pop is as sharp as ever on “Lost My Head”, while Spiral XP and TV Star (who released a collaborative EP earlier this year) offer up rainy, fuzzed-out dream-rock and distorted bubblegum pop, respectively. Lo-fi garage pop stars Star Party sprint through “Old As the Sun”, while 90s indie/alt-rock revivalists Fluung offer up one of the most spirited moments on the entire record in “The Legend”. Of course, one of the best things about compilations like this is discovering great new-to-me bands, and From Far It All Seems Small has given me plenty to keep on my radar. There are several good first impressions here, but the two I’ll single out are Hell Baby’s chugging power-pop-punk “Jewelry” and “Sunlight” by Kennero, which injects a bit of emo-adjacent wistfulness into its classic indie rock sound (and while I was already familiar with Shine and Versing, both bands’ distinct versions of wall-of-sound indie rock–Madchester and psychedelic for the former, gray and cloudy for the latter–are both welcome here). Although there are plenty of Seattle bands I like (Telehealth, Megadose, Medejin) not represented here, it’s hard to argue with the selection, especially when it’s sequenced in such a cohesive, hard-charging subterranean pop package. (Bandcamp link)

Jacob Freddy – Songs from a Quiet Aliso Viejo Wasteland

Release date: April 5^th
Record label: Fml
Genre: Lo-fi indie rock, power pop, fuzz rock
Formats: CD, digital
Pull Track: All Along

Here’s a new singer-songwriter to watch for you: Jacob Frericks. Frericks is a nineteen-year-old Orange County, California native who recently moved to New York for school–back in California, he’s part of the band Bloom, but my first exposure to his music is through his solo project, Jacob Freddy. Songs from a Quiet Aliso Viejo Wasteland is Frerick’s first record on his own, a nine-song, twenty-five minute collection that he cobbled together between New York and California, mostly on his own (Jonas Moore drums on two songs, Ethan Imler sings backing vocals on one). Recorded “with the speakers of an old Mazda CX5” (hence the album’s cover painting), Songs from a Quiet Aliso Viejo Wasteland is certainly not beating the “lo-fi bedroom indie rock record” allegations–but it’s a pleasingly lively and pop-forward take on the subgenre. Beneath the fuzz, distortion, and frequently mumbled vocals, there’s a singer-songwriter with a knack for classic power pop, a Teenage Fanclub/Elliott Smith/Big Star devotee with the reverb turned up high.

Songs from a Quiet Aliso Viejo Wasteland is a quick, economical listen, not unlike Coming to Terms with The Terminal Buildings, another excellent bedroom power pop record that zips through tons of hooks in under a half-hour. Frericks kicks the record off with “All Along”, a gorgeous Bandwagonesque-esque steady fuzz-power-pop song whose core melody only seems to strengthen in its humble dressing. It’s probably the most immediate moment on the record, but when Frericks leans into his “rocker” instincts elsewhere, similarly strong moments happen–the Big Star swagger of “Somebody New” is probably the one track that gives “All Along” a run for its money, and while “Sorry in Advance” and “Eighties Car” both take a little more time to get going, they’re both soaring by the time they’re through as well. Interspersed with Songs from a Quiet Aliso Viejo Wasteland’s high water marks are quieter, more acoustic pop songs–but that doesn’t stop the bouncy strumming and Elliott Smith-like melodies of “When I Say Bye” and the Mazzy Star-like hazy dream pop of “Memory Lane” from being as strong as anything else on the album. For a low-profile, self-released indie rock CD, Songs from a Quiet Aliso Viejo Wasteland has a highly noticeable discipline and fixation on nailing pop songs again and again. Frericks does this on every track on the record, including closing track “Holy Ghost”–which flirts with ending the album with a noisy guitar squall, only to circle back to that slick refrain one last time. (Bandcamp link)

Animal, Surrender! – Animal, Surrender!

Release date: May 17^th
Record label: Ernest Jenning Record Co.
Genre: Post-rock, jazz rock, art rock, slowcore, folk rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: After

Animal, Surrender! is a new project from two prolific musicians. Multi-instrumentalist Peter Kerlin is a member of Trouble in Mind experimental jazz-punker group Sunwatchers and has played with everyone from John Dwyer to Ted Leo to Writhing Squares, while drummer Rob Smith’s credits include The Pigeons, Rhyton, and Animal Piss It’s Everywhere. Given everything the duo have been involved with, the self-titled debut Animal, Surrender! album could sound like just about anything, but it’s clear from just a single listen that Kerlin (who wrote the majority of these songs) and Smith had a singular, cohesive idea in mind while putting together this record. Animal, Surrender! does contain traces of jazz music like Sunwatchers–but that’s where the similarities end. These seven songs embrace the sparse and quiet end of jazz-rock–it’s reminiscent of 90s guitar-driven post-rock, as well as the more experimental and subdued side of the Dischord Records discography. Lengthy instrumental passages and intertwining rhythms abound, but there are some surprising moments of pop music hidden in the vastness of Animal, Surrender!.

The opening title track of Animal, Surrender! is a soft launch, with guitar and bass hesitantly approaching each other before the percussion begins and the song commences with an increasingly less uneasy push forward. Kerlin and Smith then throw us to the wolves in the form of “King Panic”, a seven-minute piece featuring trippy, wobbling drumwork, spindly guitars, and surprisingly busy-sounding bass. After that is the first of the two covers on Animal, Surrender!, a song originally released a couple of years ago by Mike Wexler called “Again”. With “Again”, Animal, Surrender! shift into “accessible” mode and turn in a quiet and sprawling but still clearly-defined folk song (sounding like the sparser end of another band that Animal, Surrender! evokes, Yo La Tengo). The other cover on Animal, Surrender! is Nick Drake’s “One of These Things First”–the duo once again assume the form of a stretched-out folk rock group, although there’s an uneasiness to Kerlin’s vocals here, with the despair of the original still peaking through Animal, Surrender!’s less transparent aims. Kerlin’s “Sacred and Profane Love” closes the album with its sparest moment, with little more than intermittent guitar and basslines plodding along for three minutes. It feels funereal, but, at the same time, it’s part of a record that shows that there’s plenty of life in Animal, Surrender!. (Bandcamp link)

Also notable: