Hard to believe it, but we’re already at our first “Three Pressing Concerns in one week” moment of the year. This one looks at four albums that are coming out tomorrow, February 9th: new ones from Ducks Ltd., Worse Off, Itasca, and The Problem With Kids Today. If you missed Monday’s post (featuring J. Robbins, Memory Cell, The Maureens, Spiral XP, and TV Star) or Tuesday’s post (featuring Rick Rude, Anika Pyle, Skyjelly, and Lupo Citta), I recommend those as well.
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.
Ducks Ltd. – Harm’s Way
Release date: February 9th Record label: Carpark/Royal Mountain Genre: Jangle pop, power pop Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital Pull Track: The Main Thing
I’ve spent plenty of time on Rosy Overdrive talking about Toronto’s stealthily robust guitar pop scene, whether it’s mid-level standard-bearers like Kiwi Jr. and Young Guv or lesser-known gems like Dan Darrah and Motorists. One band I haven’t touched on before but who seem to be right in the middle of it all is Ducks Ltd., the duo of singer/guitarist Tom McGreevy and guitarist Evan Lewis who showed up in 2021 with two records’ worth of energetic and quite impressive jangle pop in the form of the Get Bleak EP and the Modern Fiction LP. Harm’s Way, the duo’s second full-length, was recorded in Chicago and features a wide cast of guests (members of Finom, Ratboys, and Dehd contribute to the instrumentals, and members of Dummy, Lawn, and Patio supply backing vocals). The Ducks Ltd. of Harm’s Way do seem to have expanded their palette a bit compared to previous releases, but it’s not a radical reinvention–the core of the band is still quick-darting jangle pop with excellent, almost nonstop melodic guitar leads from Lewis, ushered forward by a brisk rhythm section (now provided by their live lineup, drummer Jonathan Pappo and bassist Julia Wittman).
Like every other Ducks Ltd. release, Harm’s Way is a short one (nine songs, 27 minutes), but the band do so much in every track that they make it impossible to feel like you’re being shortchanged in any way. The record feels very much in line with the more “pure pop” end of classic Flying Nun bands, the ones like The Bats and The Chills that always seem to be chasing the perfect hook, although the band also has a caffeinated peppiness to them (both in the tempo and in the guitar leads) that sets them apart from those bands’ tendencies to ramble a bit (and reminds me of one of the best jangle pop albums of the decade thus far, Chime School’s self-titled debut record). Harm’s Way is at its most immediately enjoyable when Ducks Ltd. just put the foot fully on the gas–I’m not sure if I’ve heard songs more invigorating than “Train Full of Gasoline” and “On Our Way to the Rave” yet this year, and Lewis’ guitar playing sounds positively giddy throughout “The Main Thing”.
The chiming guitar riff that begins “Hollowed Out” is probably one of my favorite “opening statements” of the year, and I like how it leads into a song that feels lost and hopeless despite everything going on around it (enjoyably, it all comes to a head when McGreevy sings “I’m hollowed out from the inside” in the chorus). “Deleted Scenes” feels like a particularly reflective moment lyrically, but even in that one the band can’t resist deploying plenty of sparkling guitar moments over top of it. Only on closing track “Heavy Bag” do they pull their punches; “I keep on listening to ‘The Boys Are Back in Town’,” McGreevy sings over top Lewis’ subtle guitar picking. When the drums pick up again as the song wraps up, closing Harm’s Way with a string-clad, full-band instrumental, it doesn’t sound like Thin Lizzy, but it is the sound of a band who aren’t going to let their music fade off into the sunset without one last swing. (Bandcamp link)
Worse Off – Over, Thinking
Release date: February 9th Record label: All We Got! Genre: Pop punk, punk rock Formats: CD, cassette, digital Pull Track: Always-Life Crisis
New York punk duo Worse Off have been kicking around for a while (“established 2015 technically”, per their Bandcamp), but they made their on-record debut earlier this decade with their 2021 EP You Win Some, You Lose…a Lot. 2024 has brought the band’s first full length album, Over, Thinking, and it’s a sturdy and energetic collection of vintage, 90s-style pop punk. Over eleven songs and twenty-eight minutes, the band’s core duo of Jac Falk and Colin Jay range from catchy power pop to Worriers/Chumped-esque scrappy “indie punk” to speeding skate-punk, but the connecting threads are also Over, Thinking’s strongest assets–big hooks, melodic but punk-y vocals, and, uh, plenty of power chords. Aside from a couple of guest contributions (guitar on “Dislike, Unsubscribe” and “Fun Fact II” from Patrick Bradford, backing vocals on “Fun Fact II” by Jared Hart), Over, Thinking is all Falk and Jay, who trade off lead vocal duty, each matching the other and ensuring that the record doesn’t flag for a moment.
Opening track “Dislike, Unsubscribe” is melodic punk at its best, a high-flying rhythm section and triumphant guitars whipping up a sub-two minute storm and the vocals coming at you a mile a minute. “Grand Scam Home Run” and “Always-Life Crisis” don’t find Worse Off accelerating quite as hard, but they still keep Over, Thinking’s energy up, as they’re both excellent, catchy pieces of pop punk with massive choruses (and stealthily just as catchy verses, too, especially the excellent radio-ready alt-rock of the latter). The other two most “punk” moments on the record are “Fitting to the Hat”–an explicit rebuke of hatred and bigotry that balances catharsis and “being fun to listen to” deftly while not…overthinking it–and the rabble-rousing classic punk rock of “Fun Fact II”. The rest of Over, Thinking is just as alive-feeling–my favorite moment in the album is probably the back-to-back excellence of “Title, Track” (featuring some really ace vocal trading between Jay and Falk in the chorus) and “Apathy” (which rises from its acoustic beginning to a piece of anthemic power pop). The (perhaps ironically so, given the title) confident-sounding “Memorialize My Horribleness” proves Worse Off continue to excel at lean punk-pop, and closing track “Knot” ends Over, Thinking with an example of their ability to spread out. Between the hooks, the energy, and the performances of both frontpeople, Over, Thinking makes quite the first impression. (Bandcamp link)
Itasca – Imitation of War
Release date: February 9th Record label: Paradise of Bachelors Genre: Folk rock, psych folk Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital Pull Track: Milk
Imitation of War is the first album by Itasca that I’ve heard, but the project and its leader, Los Angeles’ Kayla Cohen, have been at it for a while now. The two most recent Itasca albums (2016’s Open to Chance and 2019’s Spring) came out via Paradise of Bachelors, who are also releasing Cohen’s first new record in five years, Imitation of War–at first glance, it’s full of the kind of sprawling folk rock that fits well alongside the other acts on her label (Hiss Golden Messenger, Nathan Bowles, Mega Bog). There is no shortage of “cosmic country” artists in this arena, musicians pulling together sunny psychedelia and Americana in their blissed-out records, but there’s something compelling about Itasca’s take on it that I keep coming back to. Imitation of War was co-produced by Robbie Cody of Wand, and while you aren’t going to mistake it for a Wand album, it makes ample use of psychedelic electric guitars in its own way.
The opening two tracks of Imitation of War go a long way towards defining and establishing Itasca’s version of psychedelic rock. Both songs are marked by spindly, rippling electric guitar lines that sound like they’re being played from up high on some nearby bluff or cliff–in the first song, “Milk”, the guitar is playing what sounds like a molasses-slow Meat Puppets riff, and it also recalls desert rockers The Gun Outfit (in which Cohen currently plays bass, and the band’s Daniel Swire drums on this record, as well). The title track takes what “Milk” hinted at and blows it up, lurching into a mid-tempo rocker that’s just as beautiful as the previous track despite (or perhaps because of) the clutter. Cohen’s more acoustic folk-based past shows up a bit more prominently with “Under Gates of Cobalt Blue” and “Dancing Woman”, but her eclectic guitar work still runs through Imitation of War, dressing the folk rock of “Tears on Sky Mountain” and “El Dorado” in another layer. It’s also, of course, an integral part of the most ambitious song on the album, the nine-minute “Easy Spirit”, which begins as a, well, spirited piece of shimmery psych rock, veering into pop balladry, and then fading away into something quieter but still alive. It’s no surprise that Itasca spend the final moments of Imitation of War coming down from that peak, but as the subtle but intricate guitar playing of “Moliere’s Reprise” and the acoustic “Olympia” show, the valleys are pretty awe-inspiring, too. (Bandcamp link)
The Problem With Kids Today – Born to Rock
Release date: February 9th Record label: The Problem With Records Today Genre: Garage rock, garage punk, punk rock, fuzz rock Formats: CD, digital Pull Track: What Else Can I Say
Now, let’s hope on over to New Haven for this next one. The Connecticut city has produced some real good music as of late from Perennial, Hellrazor, and Dagwood (and related bands)–The Problem With Kids Today are the latest group to make a bid to be considered among the Constitution State’s best with Born to Rock, their second album. The trio of “rock n roll delinquents” are still a relatively new band–they formed in 2020 and released their debut album Junk a year later–but from the sound of it, guitarist/vocalist Tate Brooks, bassist/vocalist Silas Lourenco Lang, and drummer Reena Yu were born to rock indeed. Born to Rock is garage rock at its excited best, fuzzed out and punk-y but with plenty of big, bad hooks to be found along the scorched-earth trail. It’s full steam ahead from the feedback that kicks off the record, with the trio bashing out eleven rock and roll anthems in under half an hour–any moment the band could be rocking, they certainly are rocking.
The Problem With Kids Today strut onto the scene with “Rock Show”, a piece of tricked-out, revved-up pop music, and “Johnny Rockets” contains more than its share of sharp moments too. Brooks’ vocals on “What Else Can I Say” are frantic, plain and simple, while playful lead guitar and handclaps dance around him in a way that invokes the “fun danger” feeling of first-wave punk rock. Born to Rock is certainly informed by power pop and vintage pop rock, but when the Kids want to bust out a pummeling garage punk tune like “Leather Jacket Blues” or “Slobberknocker”, they sound equally in their own wheelhouse. Retaining a bit of an edge while still effectively making loud pop music helps keep Born to Rock burning bright well into its second side–the hard rock of “Speed Freak” gets a ton of mileage out of its main riff, while “Good Grief” is dramatic garage punk of the shout-along variety. Brooks is both a compelling punk frontperson and rock guitarist, letting the two sides of himself alternatively throttle the listener throughout Born to Rock. The record as a whole is something of an aural DNA test–put on Born to Rock, and if it makes sense to you, then you probably were, too. (Bandcamp link)
Second Pressing Concerns of the week and it’s only Tuesday! I hope you’ve been keeping up, but even if you haven’t, this is the perfect opportunity to get into some brand-new music. Today we’re looking at new albums from Rick Rude and Lupo Citta, a new EP from Anika Pyle, and an expanded reissue of last year’s Skyjelly EP. If you missed yesterday’s blog post, featuring J. Robbins, Memory Cell, The Maureens, TV Star, and Spiral XP, check that out here.
If you’re looking for more new music, you can visit the site directory to see what else we’ve written about lately. If you’d like to support Rosy Overdrive, you can share this (or another) post, or donate here.
Rick Rude – Laverne
Release date: February 2nd Record label: Midnight Werewolf/Best Brother Genre: 90s indie rock, math rock, power pop, fuzz rock, noise pop Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull Track: Laverne
Although Rick Rude has never appeared in Pressing Concerns before, traces of the Maine-originating, New Hampshire-based quartet have turned up on Rosy Overdrive on several occasions.. They contributed an excellent version of “Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere” to one of the Neil Young cover compilations I wrote about, I highlighted band co-leader Jordan Holtz’s solo EP Not Close for Comfort last year, and Holtz has also contributed to alt-country group Footings. Not to mention, the labels that released the band’s first two albums–Sophomore Lounge for 2017’s Make Mine Tuesday and Exploding in Sound for 2018’s Verb for Dreaming–also show up quite regularly on the blog. I’ve enjoyed their previous work (particularly Make Mine Tuesday), and it’s comforting that, despite the six-year gap in releases, Rick Rude (Holtz on bass and vocals, Ben Troy on guitar and vocals, Chris Kennedy on guitar, and Ryan Harrison on drums) sound as great as ever on Laverne, their third full-length. The group are still balancing the poppy and noisy sides of 90s indie rock in a pleasingly Built to Spill-esque way–they’re approaching catchy power pop one minute and whipping up a barrage of guitars the next.
Laverne may be, on average, a little more accessible than Rick Rude’s previous two albums, but it’s not a huge departure, and the band haven’t lost any of their white-hot ability to turn into huge riff-wielders (or maybe Welders) at any given moment. Between Holtz and Troy, the band remains in possession of two compelling frontpeople whose vocals more than hold their own against the noise the band is still very capable of cranking out. As much as I enjoyed Holtz’s slowcore-y solo EP, it’s very satisfying to hear her perched atop of the heavy, smoking alt-rock of “Real TV”, the twisting guitar maze of “P2PU”, and the excited, hooky fuzz-pop of the title track. Not to be outdone, Troy is able to ground the math-rock-as-power pop opening track “Wooden Knife” with a stoic but arresting performance, and the stop-start lost 90s-hit-single vibes of “Winded Whale” might just be the strongest song on the entire record. After one last noisy pop song in “Swept Up Slept In”, Rick Rude bow out with the two oddest tracks on the record–the choppy but roaring instrumental of “Area Woman Yells at Junk Mail” and “The Ells”, a lo-fi piano ballad written and sung by former member Noah Lefebvre. I do like that Rick Rude close the album by nodding to their past–after all, they’ve more than proven to be a strong rock and roll band in the present tense with the rest of Laverne. (Bandcamp link)
Anika Pyle – Four Corners
Release date: February 2nd Record label: Self-released Genre: Folk rock, alt-country, singer-songwriter Formats: Digital Pull Track: Arizona
Last time we heard from Anika Pyle in Pressing Concerns, it was 2021, Rosy Overdrive was still in its infancy, and the former Chumped and Katie Ellen frontperson had just released Wild River, their first-ever solo album. Wild River was a pretty big departure from the indie pop punk of their previous bands–it’s an incredibly sparse album, built from minimal synths, quiet acoustic guitar, and Pyle’s vocals, which were spoken as often as sung. Pyle did release a live version of Wild River the following year, but they’d been pretty quiet since then. However, the Colorado-based artist has now returned with yet another left turn in the form of the four-song Four Corners EP. Hardly the minimalist indie music of their last record but not pop punk either, Four Corners finds the singer-songwriter embracing folk rock and alt-country enthusiastically. The EP is more upbeat than Wild River, so that aspect of it might appeal to Katie Ellen and Chumped fans, but it doesn’t abandon their last record’s personal, writing-first approach (even though it does expand up on it). I love a good geographic conceit, and the Four Corners EP (in which each song takes place in a different “four corners” state in the southwestern United States) delivers an enjoyable one. As it turns out, Pyle (who grew up in Colorado and moved back there from the East Coast circa Wild River) has plenty of regional material from which to draw.
Although Four Corners plants its flag out West, Pyle’s time in Philadelphia is felt in its impressive guestlist (Slaughter Beach, Dog’s Zack Robbins, Petal’s Kiley Lotz, All Away Lou’s Lou Hanman, Kayleigh Goldsworthy, and Mike Brenner, among others), which helps develop “Arizona” and “New Mexican Blues” into wide-eyed Americanca/country rock (for the former) and laid back, full-on country music (the latter). As impressive as they are musically, neither of the instrumentals take away from the experiences Pyle describes in the songs, and the quieter second half of the EP only further emphasizes Pyle’s writing. “Diné Utah Homecoming Queen” is a delicate piece of quiet but poppy folk–it’s the only song that’s not directly about Pyle, but their recounting of the story (of Mahala Sutherland, the “first Indigenous person to win homecoming royalty at Southern Utah University”) is delivered with no less care and thoughtfulness. The only completely stripped-down song on Four Corners is the closing track, “Colorado Sage”, in which Pyle sings about the farmhouse in which they grew up armed with only an acoustic guitar. It’s a chilly song, but the ending (“I felt rich, wild, and free / Running through the fields of Colorado sage”) reverberates beyond its modest instrumental and setting. (Bandcamp link)
Release date: January 26th Record label: I Heart Noise/Wormhole World/Mahorka Genre: Psychedelic rock, art rock, experimental rock, desert blues Formats: CD, digital Pull Track: What Have You Done
Skyjelly are a somewhat-mysterious trio from Fall River, Massachusetts (the names I have are Rick “Skyjelly Jones” Lescault, Scott Levesque, and Andrew Payne) who make “psychedelic, Middle-Eastern blues”–I’m not sure if I’ve seen a modern band cite Red Red Meat as an influence before, let alone live up to the comparison the way that their latest release does. Spirit Guide مرشد حقيقة was initially released in 2023 as a six-song EP and got a decent amount of buzz (at least, from the kind of places that would be open to something like this), and so we’ve been gifted an expanded, “deluxe” edition of the record to take with us into 2024. There are in fact three different new versions of Spirit Guide مرشد حقيقة: Boston label I Heart Noise, U.K. label Wormhole World, and Bulgaria’s Mahorka have all put out CDs featuring the initial six tracks of the EP and four songs from the same sessions, but all three of them offer different, exclusive bonus material aside from that. Since I Heart Noise is the one who initially contacted me about this release, their version is the one I’m most familiar with, but it does seem worth pointing out that Wormhole World’s CD includes two bonus tracks and the Mahorka version features an entire album’s worth of remixes from across Skyjelly’s discography.
The original six songs of Spirit Guide مرشد حقيقة are freewheeling psychedelic rock at its best, holding together quite well even as you’re never sure exactly where Skyjelly will take you next. “I Know” is a captivating opening statement, keeping one foot in rock and roll even as all sorts of inspired instrumental choices swirl around the band. “Killer B” is the one that really earns the Red Red Meat comparison, a piece of desert blues with prominent slide guitar that wanders aimlessly but impressively. The EP continues to be engrossing with the curious psych-ballad “Laisse Jeyedin Jeden”, the explosive rhythms of “What Have You Done”, and the fractured blues rock of “Yaslemle”. The “culled from the same sessions” bonus tracks are pretty enjoyable too, and add another layer to Spirit Guide مرشد حقيقة–there’s nothing quite like the swaggering glam rock of “B Sharafek” or the garage-y psych rock of “The Cops Came In” on the original EP, at least. I Heart Noise’s two bonus tracks certainly feel removed from the rest of the record, with the ambient post-rock “Providence (Episode One)” and the weird, thumping electronica of “Motorola Monkey” sounding like two completely different bands–but, of course, it’s all Skyjelly. (Bandcamp link)
Lupo Citta – Lupo Cittá
Release date: January 12th Record label: 12XU Genre: Garage rock, 90s indie rock, noise rock Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull Track: Rust Belt River
Lupo Citta are a new band out of Boston made up of three longtime indie rockers in Sarah Black (guitar/bass), Chris Brokaw (guitar/vocals), and Jenn Gori (drums/vocals). Brokaw has long been familiar with me due to his work with 90s indie rock groups Come and Codeine, and more recently as a solo artist and part of The Martha’s Vineyard Ferries. Black and Gori, meanwhile, go way back together–they used to live in Minneapolis and played in the bands Bleeding Hickeys, the Lie-Ons, Pointing Geenas and Brandy Thunders. Although I’ve not been familiar with Black and Gori’s previous bands, they seem well-matched with Brokaw; as Lupo Citta, they make ragged garage rock with plenty of impressively screeching guitars in a way that’s not too far off from Come or Brokaw’s solo work. Neither as dramatic as Come nor sprawling as Brokaw’s solo albums, however, Lupo Cittá’s rock and roll is more precise and punctual–it still has a Crazy Horse looseness to it, but it’s doled out in more measured portions.
Considering Lupo Citta’s background, they’ve more than earned the right to lead off their debut album with something as strange as “Onde”, which floats through atmospheric, spoken-word verses, kicks up a bit of dust in its chorus, and then goes back to impenetrability. We’re ready for just about anything after that, and that’s exactly what we get–the next three songs are all disparate but memorable, from the fuzzed-out garage-y punk of “White Bracelet” to the rhythmic, classic rock-feeling “Rust Belt River” to the cavernous, country-inspired “Gallup to El Paso”. Lupo Cittá develops a recognizable sound but never quite “settles into a groove”–after they bash out two different punk-y fuzz-rockers in “Shawano Pickup” and “Machine Operator”, the mid-tempo indie rock of “Sucker” cleans up their sound to just as effective ends. Brokaw and Gori find the same territory as lead vocalists, able to sound afraid or emotionless to fit the music, a key piece of harmony that goes a long way towards holding Lupo Cittá together–given how well the three of them gel as instrumentalists, however, it only makes sense that the rest would follow accordingly. (Bandcamp link)
Good morning, happy Monday, and welcome to the first Pressing Concerns of the week! This time around, we’ve got new albums from J. Robbins and The Maureens on the docket, as well as two EPs, one from Memory Cell and one made by TV Star and Spiral XP together.
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.
J. Robbins – Basilisk
Release date: February 2nd Record label: Dischord Genre: Post-punk, post-hardcore, 90s indie rock, alt-rock, art punk Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull Track: Gasoline Rainbows
Most of 2019 was a blur for me for personal reasons, but I do remember really enjoying Un-Becoming, the first ever solo album from longtime Washington, D.C. indie rocker and producer J. Robbins. Not that it’s surprising that I enjoyed Robbins’ solo work–I hear the influence of his bands Jawbox and Burning Airlines in countless modern artists I enjoy, from Mister Goblin and Two Inch Astronaut to Fox Japan to Hammer No More the Fingers, to say nothing of his prolific career in engineering and production work (for instance: that Arcwelder album I wrote about last month? He mixed it). To me, Jawbox–muscular, noisy post-punk/post-hardcore anchored by the dynamic but smooth vocals of Robbins–defines Dischord Records’ 90s sound (my favorite era of the label) better than any other band. Still, Un-Becoming was welcome proof that Robbins could helm a rock record and write new material with the zeal of his younger bands (not to mention his younger devotees).
It makes some sense that it took five years for Robbins to follow up Un-Becoming given his engineering work and the fact that Jawbox have reunited and even released new material–really, we’re lucky that we’re getting a sophomore J. Robbins album at all. This new album, Basilisk, sounds familiar in a most welcome way. It’s not an exaggeration to say that Robbins is a key architect of the indie rock music that’s proliferated in the decades since his most canonical works, so to hear him return to this same well and pull up something that sounds no less fresh than For Your Own Special Sweetheart does today is quite remarkable. It’s reminiscent of current-era Bob Mould–it’s a short list, the number of indie musicians evoking their golden era as rewardingly as Robbins does here. That being said, Basilisk doesn’t exactly sound ripped from the world of Jawbox circa 1993–it picks up about where Un-Becoming left off, with Robbins writing art-punk anthems with both “maturity” and “edge” and a fearless awareness of the present.
Robbins kicks off Basilisk with some hammering synths to begin “Automaticity”, but he does it in a way that makes it sound exactly like a vintage Robbins-led song, and when the band (Robbins, Jawbox bassist Brooks Harlan, and Kerosene 454/Channel drummer Darren Zentek) kick into gear, it’s a natural transition. The cold but kinetic drama of “Exquisite Corpse”, the post-punk “Last War”, and the huge guitars that introduce “Gasoline Rainbows” usher in Basilisk with an impressive amount of energy, and if “Not the End” slows things down a little bit, “A Ray of Sunlight” and “Deception Island” are there to pick the record right back up. Robbins has never been a completely opaque lyricist but he’s not exactly a punk sloganeer, either–when he sings “No such thing, life after history / There’s no sleepwalking security / It’s not Weimar 1933 / But it’s not far enough for me,” he sounds like he’s staring down the present without completely tying his writing to it. And I’m thankful for that–I get the feeling that I’m still going to be listening to Basilisk several years from now, and I suspect that it’s going to sound just as fresh then as it does in 2024. (Bandcamp link)
Memory Cell – Holding on to It
Release date: February 2nd Record label: Self-released Genre: Math rock, experimental rock Formats: Digital Pull Track: Portal
Between Wowza in Kalamazoo and Handturner, there’s a surprising amount of wild, experimental rock music coming out of Kalamazoo, Michigan these days, and recently I’ve heard another band to add to this list. Memory Cell are a quartet who are maybe a little less indebted to noise rock and krautrock than the previously-mentioned groups, but their indie rock is still very all over the place, dealing in math rock and even a bit of basement prog. They put out their debut album, Spatial Reasoning, in 2022, and followed it up last year with a three-song EP called Burden of a Body. They must’ve liked the three-song EP format, as they’re back with another one, Holding on to It, less than a year later, featuring tracks that the group (guitarist/vocalist Kayley Kerastas, guitarist Rory S., bassist Levi Hambright, and drummer Evan Asher) worked out last year while touring around the Midwest and playing shows with bands like Shady Bug, Negative Glow, Rust Ring, Cheer-Accident, The Fever Haze, Sorry Machine, The Ladybug Transistor, and Disco Doom (wow, they played with a lot of bands I’ve written about on the blog last year!).
It makes sense that Memory Cell have played with multiple Exploding in Sound bands, because I hear a good deal of vintage EIS thorny, mathy indie rock (bands like Shell of a Shell, Maneka, and Pet Fox) on Holding on to It. It’s a short EP–under ten minutes long–but the band still finds the time to cram a bunch of twists and turns into it. Opening track “Portal” starts off as a lost-sounding, jammy number before picking up the tempo into a jittery piece of math-pop in its second half (if you liked Palm, it’s reminiscent of what that band loved to do). “Shapes” also follows the two-sided format the previous song does, although this one comes out as a swirling rocker and kind of folds in on itself as it goes along. At nearly five minutes long, closing track “Shadows” is Holding on to It’s “big finish”, and it’s also the EP’s least structured moment, cycling through several different types of rock music in the first two minutes before crashing its way into a feedback-heavy noise outro. Holding on to It definitely feels like an EP whose songs were honed and sharpened live, and Memory Cell have ended up with something that translates amazingly to tape. (Bandcamp link)
The Maureens – Everyone Smiles
Release date: January 19th Record label: Meritorio Genre: Jangle pop, indie pop, folk rock, psych pop Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull Track: Fell in Love
I wrote about Belgian quintet Capsuna a couple weeks ago, and now we’re stopping in another one of the Low Countries thanks to the latest from Utrecht’s The Maureens. I have admittedly not covered a lot of indie pop from The Netherlands in Pressing Concerns–there’s been traces of it in the folk rock of Nagasaki Swim and Grapes of Grain, sure, but Everyone Smiles is pure guitar pop, through and through. Although Everyone Smiles is their first record for Meritorio Records, The Maureens aren’t exactly a new group–they’ve been around since 2013, and although the lineup has changed from its inception (the band currently features drummer Stefan Broos, bassist Wouter Zijlstra, and guitarist Ruud Oude Avenhuis), singer-songwriter Hendrik-Jan de Wolff has been the steady bandleader for four full-lengths now. Everyone Smiles does sound like the work of seasoned veterans–its thirteen songs are all smartly-penned guitar pop which pull from 60s psychedelic pop and folk music as well as jangle pop, power pop, and college rock.
Even within the field of jangly indie rock, Everyone Smiles is a subtle record–I’ve known that it’s good for a while now, but I had to really dig into this one to get at the nuances The Maureens give to these songs. Upon closer inspection, it’s hard not to come away even more impressed with songs like the opening track, “Stand Up!”, which stitches together propulsive, bass-led verses and a slowed-down, triumphant chorus in a way that feels like two different pop ideas welded together seamlessly. The Maureens are definitely a “jangle pop” band–if “Sunday Driver” and “Fell in Love” aren’t jangle pop, I’m not sure what is–but with so many of modern janglers burying their vocals under reverb-y, dreamy guitars, de Wolff’s up-front, full-sounding singing feels especially fresh. On songs like “Do You”, there’s a confident clarity to it that reminds me of pop rock studio wizard Jon Brion. The second half of Everyone Smiles is just as strong as the first, if a bit less immediate–I eventually keyed in on the breezy, acoustic-led “Warning Sign”, the mid-tempo power pop of “Only Child”, and the quietly brief but memorable “Morning Papers”. As the rest of Everyone Smiles comes clearer into focus, it becomes apparent that The Maureens never run out of material from their seemingly-endless bag of guitar pop tricks. (Bandcamp link)
TV Star & Spiral XP – TVXP
Release date: February 2nd Record label: Self-released Genre: Fuzz rock, psychedelic pop, shoegaze, dream pop Formats: Digital Pull Track: TVXP
TV Star and Spiral XP: the collaboration that none of us knew we needed until we got it. The two Seattle bands both initially came to my attention last year–the latter released a good EP of psychedelic, noisy shoegaze called It’s Been Awhile that I wrote about, and the former put out two EPs of fuzzy power pop that I didn’t write about (but were still good, particularly last February’s Hallucinate Me). With a co-headlining West Coast tour set for later this month, the two bands did what more indie rock bands worth their salt should think about doing–they all (ten band members between the them) filed into TV Star’s practice space last December and bashed out a four-song collaborative EP. The resulting TVXP EP (mixed by Cameron Heck and mastered by Justin Pizzoferato) doesn’t sound exactly like either band, but moments of both are certainly present–it’s as catchy as TV Star’s best songs, as noisy as Spiral XP, and with a surprising Madchester/alternative dance vibe that was sort of present on It’s Been Awhile but not to the degree that gets teased out here.
TVEXP starts off with what seems like its most musically simple song in “Winter Snow”, but that’s not a slight–with Max Keyes’ wistful, downcast vocals combined with the rainy-day, Paisley Underground-esque jangly instrumental, it’s perhaps the most “TV Star” song on the EP, despite the Spiral XP frontperson singing it and the psychedelia floating underneath the song’s surface. “Maida” then rolls into the noisiest moment the two bands kick up, but it’s not so noisy that the Madchester-style beat gets buried over top of its Pumpkins-y 90s alt-rock sheen. “Space Person” is yet another left turn for TV Star and Spiral XP–it keeps both the danceable vibes of the previous song and the noisiness, but funnels it into a song that’s not all that different from bizarre but catchy late-90s “alternative pop”. The closing title track feels like what the entire EP has been working up towards–a full-bloom piece of blissed-out, fuzzed-up psychedelic-dance-pop that feels right out of 1991 but also right at home for Spiral XP and TV Star. Featuring some of the best work either of these groups have done thus far, TVXP is a strong argument for bands attempting to learn and expand through collaboration. (Bandcamp link)
Welcome to the second Pressing Concerns of the week! In this issue, we look at four records that have come out or will come out this week: new albums from True Green, Liquid Mike, and Sea Dramas, and a new EP from Flight Mode. It’s been an eventful week for Rosy Overdrive; if you missed the January 2024 wrap-up/playlist post or Monday’s Pressing Concerns (featuring Heavenly, Cheekface, Girls Know, and Fantastic Purple Spots), 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.
True Green – My Lost Decade
Release date: February 1st Record label: Spacecase Genre: Lo-fi indie rock, lo-fi pop, psych pop, singer-songwriter Formats: Cassette, digital Pull Track: Polycarp
If I took every word of My Lost Decade at autobiographical face value, I’d have to conclude that True Green’s Dan Hornsby has lived a thousand lives. He’s danced every dance. He’s a ruthless self-made businessman. He’s “actually Elvis”, and his roommate is Jesus Christ. He owes you $3,000 and “eleven years of unconditional love”, but he’s good for it, he swears. I didn’t know it before I sat down to write this, but it doesn’t surprise me at all to learn that Hornsby is also a novelist. What does surprise me is how the Minneapolis singer-songwriter chooses to dress his storytelling–namely in lo-fi, reverb-y psychedelic guitar pop. There are acoustic guitars, but Hornsby isn’t a folk troubadour, rather making music that’s generally thought of as the domain of Beatlesesque bashers like The Cleaners from Venus and Guided by Voices. My Lost Decade is a pleasingly varied-sounding record, but Hornsby and multi-instrumentalist Tailer Ransom develop a distinct musical style, a busy, kitchen-sink pop attitude that reflects True Green’s confidence that Hornsby’s striking songwriting will shine even if they whip up an instrumental storm around it. And it does.
The first half of My Lost Decade is one “statement song” after another, different stories in different genres held together by Hornsby’s writing. The opening title track is lo-fi retro rock and roll, its attitude blunted by the narrator who’s spent the last ten years doing everything he shouldn’t have been doing and knows it. “Buzzerbeater” is gorgeous, trebly lo-fi guitar pop at its best, simple and warped in a way that is only enhanced by how simple Ransom and Hornsby make it sound. The next trio of tracks keep one-upping themselves–“My Peccadilloes” and “Midtown Matt” are both genuinely stunning in wildly different ways. The boisterous, cape-twirling pop rock of the former is a coming-in-hot tale of greed and throat-cutting that feels like a kid brother to Malkmus, Bejar, and Berman, while the mid-tempo, cold-air ballad of the latter sounds like if Alex G tried to write a Hold Steady song, its looseness married to some sharp observations worthy of fellow Twin Citean Craig Finn. In these moments, I see glimpses of Slaughter Beach, Dog’s Jake Ewald and (especially) Noah Roth–people who have taken “literate indie rock” as an influence and attempted to do something just as ambitious musically with it.
And similarly to Noah Roth and Slaughter Beach, Dog, True Green aren’t averse to a big pop hook–“My Peccadilloes” is an earworm of the most dangerous sort, and the middle of the record even has “Hopeless Diamond”, in which Hornsby and Ransom do their best to deliver a piece of all-in, straightforward power pop (if they’re not entirely successful, it’s because they ended up creating something even more interesting). And yet, my favorite song on My Lost Decade comes in the second half, and Hornsby doesn’t even sing it. Someone named Alice Bolin who I hadn’t heard of before sings a song called “Polycarp”, a beautiful piece of dream-y pop/folk rock, a song where every single lyric is deserving of an entire analysis of its own. After a record full of songs where Hornsby excels at situating us right in the middle of a certain character’s life (the Elvis-wannabe in “Comeback Special”, the Coors Light-light-bathed “Midtown Matt”), True Green just as effectively depict a complete unmooring (“You make me feel like a fishbowl in the ocean / I can’t tell the water from the glass”). I need all of the ambient-country closing track “Bugbomb” to decompress–although when I did finally focus on that one, there’s a lot floating in its ether to grab onto, too. Intermittent banjo picking closes out the record as Hornsby sings about dogs barking at ghosts and hearts the size of small cars. It feels like the sound of nowhere, but also arriving right where you’re supposed to be. (Bandcamp link)
Liquid Mike – Paul Bunyan’s Slingshot
Release date: February 2nd Record label: Self-released Genre: Power pop, pop punk, fuzz rock, alt-rock Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull Track: Mouse Trap
The breakout act of 2023 was a punk band from the upper peninsula of Michigan called Liquid Mike. The band has been putting out music at a steady clip for most of the 2020s, but it was their fourth full-length–last year’s self-titled album–that got them a fair amount of buzz. There’s so much to like on that eleven-song, 18-minute record–a pop punk energy, power pop hooks, a 90s indie rock sense of driven listlessness–and I was pleased to see it show up in the top ten of the Rosy Overdrive Reader’s Poll (by a fair amount, the smallest band to make the top ten). Liquid Mike took eleven months to follow up S/T with Paul Bunyan’s Slingshot, and I can’t help drawing a comparison with another forward-motion-themed fifth album from a band from a Midwestern state who released a few albums before getting much attention. When Guided by Voices released Propeller in 1992, it was to be the Ohio band’s final album, and they put everything they had into it–against all odds, it slingshotted them into the indie rock canon.
Obviously, this is not a perfect comparison, but one thing feels right on the money: with Paul Bunyan’s Slingshot, Liquid Mike are giving it all they’ve got. It’s 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. For one, it’s longer–sure, 25 minutes is still short for a full-length, but these thirteen songs are developed and lethally effective on their own and when grouped together. There are songs on here that power pop bands would kill to write that Liquid Mike didn’t even release as singles, and the songs that were singles sound even better in context (I’m particularly thinking about the 90s alt-rock wrecking ball “Mouse Trap”, a towering piece of guitar power that flexes even harder amongst poppier fare).
As good as the opening two songs are, “Town Ease”–with its buzzing synths, thump-thump rhythm, and aggressively delicate vocals from singer Mike Maple–is where I started to get the sense that this was a special album. Paul Bunyan’s Slingshot is basically a murderer’s row of guitar pop from that point forward–there’s the aforementioned “Mouse Trap”, whose dead-serious cartoon violence imagery and dramatic pauses take up so much real estate in my head these days, there’s the laser-precise, bouncy slacker pop rock of “Drug Dealer” and “Pacer”, a song that rides its jangly intro into a six-string-fireworks chorus. The two lo-fi snippet songs “AM” and “-” remind me of a certain lo-fi indie rock band I’ve already spent too much of this review talking about, and the latter is particularly welcome in the LP’s second half, where songs like the almost-contemplative “Small Giants” and the slow-burn “American Caveman” offer up stabs at what a more pensive Liquid Mike might sound like (it sounds pretty similar to normal Liquid Mike at this point, not that that’s a bad thing). Every second of Paul Bunyan’s Slingshot sounds exciting for several reasons, not the least of which is that it feels like it’s breaking something wide open, like it’s unlocking an exciting new Liquid Mike future. (Bandcamp link)
Flight Mode – Tøyen, ‘13
Release date: February 2nd Record label: Sound As Language/Tiny Engines Genre: Emo-y indie rock Formats: Vinyl (as part of The Three Times), cassette, digital Pull Track: Thirtysomething
Oslo’s Flight Mode first showed up on my radar in 2022, when I wrote about their Torshov, ‘05 EP. I enjoyed that record’s emo-adjacent indie rock sound, which was an apt vessel for bandleader Sjur Lyseid’s reminiscent, introspective songwriting. Torshov, ‘05 was a sequel to 2021’s TX, ’98, and, as it turns out, was also to be the middle of a trilogy which sees its conclusion with Flight Mode’s third EP, Tøyen, ‘13. The release of Tøyen, ‘13 also marks Flight Mode’s move from Sound As Language to its sister label, the recently-rebooted Tiny Engines (and a more fitting home for their sound, anyways); Tøyen, ‘13 is technically being released through Sound As Language, but Tiny Engines is putting out The Three Times, a vinyl compilation of all three EPs on one record. Lyseid continues to chronicle moments of his past–rather than his time as a teenager in Texas or a jaded young adult in Torshov, Tøyen, ‘13 finds the singer-songwriter losing his father and becoming a parent in the same year, certainly two defining adulthood moments.
Lyseid the subject has grown older, but the Flight Mode telling the story (guitarist Anders Blom, also of the similarly-minded Neighboring Sounds, drummer Eirik Kirkemyr, and bassist Rudi Simmons) sound as sharp as ever, their large-sounding, polished emotional indie rock ebbing and flowing as necessary to match. “For future reference, I’ve stopped counting the years,” Lyseid confesses in opening track “Thirtysomething”, a song that opens Tøyen, ‘13 with weighed-down, contemplative verses before launching into a cathartic chorus. The middle of the EP contains the two biggest rockers–single “Hyperventilate”, a living, heavy-breathing example of how age doesn’t always necessarily bring tranquility, and the big-picture uneasiness of “Surprised At All”. Lyseid closes Tøyen, ‘13 and this entire chapter of Flight Mode with “My Brothers & My Sister at the Funeral”, an explicit rumination on the death of his father–when he sings “I am not here, these are not my tears / Spaced out and sad as fuck, something got stuck,” one can either interpret it as an attempt at capturing real-time feelings or that of attempting to revisit them a decade later. What Tøyen, ‘13 and The Three Times as a whole seem to suggest, however, is that this isn’t such a clean dichotomy. (Bandcamp link)
Sea Dramas – Escape Scenes
Release date: February 2nd Record label: Royal Okie Genre: Folk rock, psychedelic pop, jangle pop, dream pop Formats: CD, cassette, digital Pull Track: Long Goodbye
San Francisco’s Sea Dramas are a new-to-me group, but they’ve been around for a while, releasing three full-length records in the 2010s as well as a few more recent, pandemic-era home recordings uploaded to their Bandcamp page. It appears that plenty of musicians have played with and/or in Sea Dramas over the years, but the band is led by singer-songwriter Scott Pettersen, and the majority of what you hear on the fourth Sea Dramas album was recorded by Peterson himself. On Escape Scenes, Sea Dramas make a beautiful version of guitar pop that fits both their band name (somewhere between “unsettled” and “tranquil”) and their Bay Area home; Petterson is an ace songwriter of vintage college rock, containing shades of folk rock, C86 indie/jangle pop, and dream pop across the record’s ten songs. Escape Scenes feels in line with yet distinct from a lot of California jangle pop I’ve covered, coming off as a folkier version of Melancolony’s 80s-revival college rock or a more polished version of Evening Glass’ nautical, Dunedin-inspired pop.
Aside from a few remote contributions (violin and vocals from Sara Mohan on “No Poetry” and percussion from David Brandt on “Daybreak”), Escape Scenes was recorded by Petterson at his Livermore home studio. With plenty of home recording experience, Sea Dramas sound anything but “lo-fi” here–Petterson manages to turn these songs into fully-fleshed-out pieces of baroque, psychedelic pop music with a toolkit far beyond his languid guitar playing and wistful vocals. The instrumental folk of “Daybreak” is a disarming opening statement, setting the scene for the listener to become fully engrossed in the lush psychedelic folk rock of “Long Goodbye” and the smooth, dreamy pop feeling of “Nite Passengers”. The busy bassline and slightly-sped-up tempo of “Running Thoughts” helps it earn its “single” status without disrupting the record’s main vibe, and although the album flows from one song to the next seamlessly, instrumental choices in “Moon Breaks” and “No Poetry” are attention-grabbing second-half choices. By the titles alone, it’s clear that Sea Dramas are wrapping things up with the final two tracks on Escape Scenes (“Sundown” and “Turn the Tide”), although these songs will stick with you after the waves have receded and night has fallen. (Bandcamp link)
Hello, and welcome to the first 2024-based edition of Rosy Overdrive’s monthly playlist and round-up! The December/January ones are always fun because they’re the most random of these: you’ve got stuff from January releases, singles from records coming out later in the year, a bunch of songs from 2023 that I found through other people’s year end lists, and a few old songs from my 1993 project. It rules. If you missed yesterday’s Pressing Concerns, featuring new records from Cheekface, Girls Know, and Fantastic Purple Spots plus the most recent Heavenly reissue, you oughta check that one out, too.
Fust and Now have two songs on the playlist this time.
Here is where you can listen to the playlist on various streaming services: Spotify, Tidal (missing two songs), BNDCMPR (also missing two songs). Be sure to check out previous playlist posts if you’ve enjoyed this one, or visit the site directory. If you’d like to support Rosy Overdrive, you can share this (or another) post, or donate here.
“Maybe”, Rotundos From Fragments (2024)
“Shoulda never said ‘I love you’ if I didn’t mean it,” and then the guitars kick in–now that’s how you start a pop punk song. Chicago’s Rotundos are decidedly more than just that–their latest EP, Fragments, is only four tracks but it covers art punk, garage rock, post-punk, and maybe even a bit of mathy post-hardcore–but they make their opening statement with their catchiest side. “Maybe” is excellently ragged power poppy-punk rock that still finds some time to stop and start and rip thorough long, guitar-hero instrumentals in between the verses and chorus. I don’t know too much about this band, but they’ve left a strong impression on me, and I’ll be keeping my eye on Rotundos in the new year.
“Pink Slip / White Truck”, Dead Billionaires From Disaster Preparedness Coloring Book (2023, Possum Lick Farms)
Dead Billionaires are a pop punk/90s alt-rock/power pop trio from Richmond, zippier, scrappier, and maybe a bit more theatrical than the grunge rock of the other such RVA band I know about, Gnawing. “Pink Slip / White Truck” is two minutes of careening, hooky pop rock and roll music, a brief highlight on their brief debut album, Disaster Preparedness Coloring Book. As one might guess from their name, Dead Billionaires are “punk” in more ways than just chord choices, and while “Pink Slip / White Truck” isn’t as explicit about it as, say, “15 Words” from the same album is, frontperson Warren Campbell has a lot to run through before letting it all out in the chorus (“I don’t wanna be a pawn anymore”).
“Asymmetrical”, Capsuna From Capsuna (2024)
Capsuna are a Belgian band formed by former Cincinnati resident David Enright and fronted by lead vocalist Louise Crosby, and they just released their debut cassette at the beginning of the year. The first ten Capsuna songs are vintage guitar-forward indie pop at its best, with Crosby’s vocals maximizing these songs’ melodies over top of instrumentals that can be somewhat charmingly fuzzy and lo-fi, but not overwhelming so. The garage-y “Asymmetrical” kicks off Capsuna with arguably its loudest moment, but the distorted guitars chug along to a catchy pop song progression and Crosby’s vocals, while somewhat buried, are prominent enough to deliver hooks in that form as well. Read more about Capsuna here.
“Grace”, Lily Seabird From Alas, (2024, Bud Tapes)
Burlington, Vermont’s Lily Seabird is responsible for the first great “folk rock/alt-country-influenced indie rock” record of the year; throughout Alas,, Seabird offers up both laid-back folk rock and explosive, wall-of-sound country rock reminiscent of both the genre’s heavy hitters (Big Thief, Wednesday) and lesser-known peers (GracieHorse, Florry). My favorite song on Alas, is part of a particularly strong opening punch–“Grace” is a Cheshire Cat grin of a country song that roars into its fuzz rock chorus in a way that ought to make you throw your fist up. The cheery verses that introduce us to “Grace” (the song and the subject) are all the more effective when chased with such bombast. Read more about Alas, here.
“Roses After H.D.”, Now From And Blue Space Is Burning Noon (2023, Sloth Mate)
There is a lot of great music coming out of the Bay Area (to state the obvious to anyone who reads this blog regularly), so it’s not surprising that a couple of good such bands would escape my notice in this recent flurry of activity. I didn’t know about the trio of Now until Rosy Overdrive favorite Chime School listed And Blue Space Is Burning Noon as one of their top albums of last year–and while it’s still new to me, I can safely say it’s–at the very least–one of the most intriguing albums from 2023 that I’ve heard. Singer-songwriter Will Smith (who, of course, also plays in Cindy, because all these Bay Area bands bleed into each other) sounds like a young Scott Miller (or The Telephone Numbers’ Thomas Rubenstein), but the rest of the band are groovier, more psychedelic, and…more rubbery than either of those singers’ bands, exemplified but the excellent exploratory dream-prog-psych-pop of highlight “Roses After H.D.”.
“Armchair”, Yungatita From Shoelace & a Knot (2024)
On their debut album, Los Angeles’ Yungatita remind me a bit of bands like The Beths–ace creators of pop hooks delivered in indie rock form. That being said, Shoelace & a Knot is more all over the place: messy, energetic, noisy, and, above all, entertaining. “Armchair” is a nervous-sounding power pop song that rides an exploratory indie rock instrumental introduction into a giant-sounding anthem that blows the entire record wide open. Bandleader Valentina Zapata is just as compelling a performer (changing their inflection and delivery in unexpected ways throughout the song) as they are a lyricist (not that “Armchair” is the most straightforward song, but lines like “It’s one thing to call me crazy / But it’s just weird, you’re the one that raised me” offer hints). Read more about Shoelace & a Knot here.
“Heavy Hauler”, KNOWSO From Pulsating Gore (2024, Sorry State)
Cleveland garage punk group Knowso’s latest album, Pulsating Gore, is inspired by singer Nathan Ward’s day job as a trucker–the way Ward pairs his horrifying, mundane, disquieting version of Americana writing with his dead-eyed, lucid vocal delivery is transfixing and effective. The influence of Ward’s line of work is made explicit in “Heavy Hauler”, an early highlight on the record. It’s recognizably garage punk in its structure, as Ward depicts vehicles careening off ledges and futile struggles with nature in the lyrics, and the eerie chorus that answers Ward in the song’s refrain pushes an already-memorable track even further. Read more about Pulsating Gore here.
“Nuclear Football”, Stuart Pearce From Nuclear Football (2024, Safe Suburban Home)
Last year, I wrote about Red Sport International, the debut studio album from Nottingham’s Stuart Pearce. They’re a band with a clear debt to The Fall, but they succeed more than most Fall imitators in making fresh-sounding music by emphasizing the more flexible and fun end of the band rather than the drab, one-note side (which you realistically need to be a Mark E. Smith to pull off). Nothing emphasizes the appeal of Stuart Pearce better than “Nuclear Football”, the opening track of an EP of the same name (which is otherwise made up of live recordings) and the band’s best song yet. On “Nuclear Football”, Stuart Pearce have their foot on the gas from the get-go–they’ve got plenty to say, some of it quite sharp, but they sound like they’re having a blast while doing so.
“Belt of Orion”, Crystal Canyon From Stars and Distant Light (2023)
They seem to have a pretty impressive “dream pop bands per capita” ratio going on in Portland, Maine. In last month’s playlist, I highlighted a song from Maine group Little Oso, and Crystal Canyon have made it two in a row this time around with “Belt of Orion”, my favorite track from their 2023 album Stars and Distant Light. They’re more shoegaze-indebted than Little Oso’s indie pop, but “Belt of Orion” in particular has a classic jangly, dreamy, almost college rock-y sound that is the recipe for one hell of a guitar pop song. It’s got a tough-feeling backbeat that’s perhaps the greatest evidence of their ability to get heavier, but on “Belt of Orion”, Crystal Canyon train their might on filling out the song with chiming guitars and sparkling harmonies.
“Mother Mary”, Late Bloomer From Another One Again (2024, Dead Broke/Self Aware)
It feels so good to have “rock” Late Bloomer back. I thoroughly enjoyed their introspective turn on 2022’s Where Are the Bones EP, but it was the catchy but loud stylings of 2018’s Waiting that initially won me over, so it’s quite exciting that we’re finally getting its follow-up in Another One Again. Of the two singles the Charlotte alt-rock revivalists have released from it, the one I love the most is “Mother Mary”, a five-minute song that’s a bit more restrained and even alt-country-indebted compared to the other one, “Self Control”. What really puts “Mother Mary” over the top is the second half, where its slow build starts to pay off in the form of transfixing guitar soloing and excellent, passionate dueling vocals. I’ll have more to say about Another One Again soon.
“Here”, Texas 3000 From tx3k (2023)
One of my favorite albums from last year was No Guitar by Curling, a trans-Pacific duo made up of Berkeley’s Bernie Gelman and Tokyo’s Jojo Brandel. However, Brandel has a completely different band that also released an entire album in 2023–Nakano City’s Texas 3000, in which he sings and plays guitar along with drummer Hirotaka Sakiyama and bassist Hiro Tamang. Although No Guitar is hard to beat, tx3k has a lot to love on it as well–it’s more emo-indebted than Curling are at this point, but it does feature plenty of Brandel’s other band’s experimental, studio-friendly pop side. The gorgeous guitar pop of penultimate song “Here” is as good as anything by Curling–Brandel is a triumphant, timeless-sounding rock bandleader when delivering the line the entire song leads up to (“All cops die here”).
“Kill Your Body, Metaphor”, Uncouth (2024, Ratbag)
One of my favorite new bands of the past couple of years has been Athens, Ohio jangle pop group The Laughing Chimes, so when I heard that the Chimes’ core duo of Evan and Quinn Seurkamp were part of a brand new quintet that had just released its debut single, I was keen to spin it. Uncouth (also featuring Chason Anthony, bassist Scott Moore, and drummer Casey Rees) are a bit darker than The Laughing Chimes’ sparkling sound, although “Kill Your Body, Metaphor” is still quite catchy. Uncouth is an attempt to merge the Seurkamps’ guitar pop influences with emo and post-hardcore brought forth by the rest of the band, and what they’ve created is something that isn’t quite either of them. “Kill Your Body, Metaphor” is a weird convergent evolution version of post-punk, one that is both poppier and angrier than the wild-type variety of it. It’s very good!
“Mock the Hours”, David Nance From David Nance & Mowed Sound (2024, Third Man)
Anyone who’s been following his Bandcamp page hasn’t exactly been hurting for new David Nance material as of late (his album-length cover of Devo’s Duty Now for the Future is certainly worth a listen, as is an alternate version of his 2018 album Peaced & Slightly Pulverized called, naturally, Pulverized & Slightly Peaced). Still, it’s been over three years since the last “proper” album from the Omaha garage rocker (2020’s Staunch Honey)–but he’s now with Third Man Records, and judging by the first single from the upcoming David Nance & Mowed Sound, the man hasn’t lost a step in the time since. “Mock the Hours” is an excellent fuzz-roots-Americana-whatever anthem–I hear all kinds of inspired instrumental choices going on underneath the surface, but it still has that hot-to-the-touch quality of earlier Nance.
“Burned”, Veruca Salt From Cinnamon Girl: Women Artists Cover Neil Young for Charity (2008, American Laundromat)
I listened to a lot of Neil Young covers compilations in January, but Cinnamon Girl: Women Artists Cover Neil Young for Charity is the only one of them that’s streaming, so I’m choosing my favorite cover from this one for the playlist. That would be by none other than Veruca Salt, who make the inspired choice to turn Buffalo Springfield’s 1966 song “Burned” into a ripping alt-rocker. Appearing on a compilation that features a lot of folk rock and adult alternative, their version of “Burned” immediately sticks out, both by being a somewhat less-obvious song to cover and because Veruca Salt turn it into a “Veruca Salt song” with amazing ease. Read more about Cinnamon Girl: Women Artists Cover Neil Young for Charity here.
“Leash Biter”, Savak From Flavors of Paradise (2024, Peculiar Works)
I saw Savak live when they were fresh off recording Flavors of Paradise–I didn’t know the name of the album, let along any of the songs on it, but they played just about everything that ended up on the record that night and I thoroughly enjoyed hearing them. “Leash Biter” (which in my notes from that concert I decided to call “Dogs on Every Corner” in honor of its first line) is classic Savak, somewhere between garage rock, post-punk, and catchy alt-pop-rock in a way that’s distinctly them. It’s got a loitering sleaziness to it–it wouldn’t have struck me as the lead single when I heard it live, but it’s both representative and a strong track on its own as a finish product. I’ll have more to say about Flavors of Paradise soon.
“The Rougarou”, Field Studies From The Rougarou (2024)
Well, well, well, if it isn’t another pretty-sounding indie pop band with “Field” in their name. It’s not Field Guides nor Field School nor The Field Mice–it’s Field Studies, and the Maine quartet (again, Maine with the vintage guitar pop music!) just put out their first non-demo release, the three-song EP The Rougarou. The opening title track is the best song on the record–it’s an incredibly strong statement of purpose, singer/keyboardist Bekah Hayes sounding confident up front while the rest of the band (guitarist Zach Selley, drummer Tim Scanlon, and bassist Josh Denk) put forth a gently rolling but still relatively “brisk” instrumental. Selley’s guitar reaches for a winning dream-jangle combination, while Denk’s low-end is prominent enough to feel a little post-punk inspired.
“Battering Ram”, Fust From Songs of the Rail (2024, Dear Life)
Before North Carolina’s Fust was a full band releasing great alt-country records, songwriter Aaron Dowdy put out seven EPs (featuring four songs each) in 2017 and 2018. The new digital-only Songs of the Rail compiles all seven EPs–nearly 90s minutes of music–in one place. Dowdy’s intimate, lo-fi bedroom pop take on folk/country is pretty far from where his band ended up, but it’s a brilliant and singular documentation of a productive time period. My favorite song on Songs of the Rail, “Battering Ram”, has an oddness to it that feels like a half-remembered dream, especially when Dowdy is repeatedly spelling out “Cabbagetown” as the song winds down. Read more about Songs of the Rail here.
“Paul’s Song”, Arcwelder From Continue (2024)
The trick to making good “funny” music is to not put all your eggs in that particular basket, no matter how good the joke is. For instance, I’d been listening to Continue (the first new album from Minneapolis Touch & Go legends Arcwelder in over twenty years, by the way) for quite some time and enjoying “Paul’s Song” in particular even before I listened closely enough to understand what the song’s actually about. The conceit and execution of “Paul’s Song” are both genuinely hilarious, but everything from Scott Macdonald’s stoic swagger to the (explicitly) McCartney-influenced songwriting are key to both selling the song and having it stand on its own as a piece of hooky indie rock. Read more about Continue here.
“Sunny”, Flesh Tape From Flesh Tape (2024, Power Goth)
Flesh Tape are a new shoegaze-y quartet from Fort Collins, Colorado who’ve been getting a bit of buzz lately around the release of their self-titled debut album (mastered by Heather Jones of Ther). The whole thing is worth a listen–some of the songs are full-on, wall-of-sound noisy shoegaze, others have a more downcast 90s indie rock feel to them, but of course the song I liked the most from Flesh Tape is the least representative one. The bright guitar pop of “Sunny” doesn’t exactly discard the heaviness of the rest of the album, but it pushes it to the periphery for three vibe-y minutes, revealing the band (Larson Ross, Nick Visocky, Jae Smith and Jake Lyon) as bittersweet but potent pop songwriters beneath the distortion.
“The House That I Grew Up In”, Loto From A Year in Review (2024)
Loto is Lautaro Akira Martinez-Satoh, a Montreal-based musician who seems to be quite busy and juggling several different projects at the moment but still found time to put out A Year in Review, a brief but impressive collection of lo-fi music that’s surprising and all-over-the-place but quite accessible when it wants to be. “The House That I Grew Up In” reflects both Loto’s penchant for storing pop melodies inside of slapdash-feeling and chaotic packages and their frequently dark and pained writing. When they sent me the lyric sheet to A Year in Review, they purposefully left this one out–beneath the charging, lo-fi indie fuzz rock, the chorus (“I think I’m gonna die inside the house that I grew up in”) says more than enough to understand where the track’s mind is at. Read more about A Year in Review here.
“Shotgun”, Tucker Riggleman & The Cheap Dates From Restless Spirit (2024, WarHen)
Three years in the making, the second full-length from West Virginia country rockers Tucker Riggleman & The Cheap Dates is just a few weeks away, but you can hear “Shotgun”, possibly my favorite song from the record, already. One of Restless Spirit’s rockers, “Shotgun” is one of the most complete-sounding songs from Riggleman yet, glomming onto a polished, swaggering country-rock-power-pop tune and letting Riggleman’s self-effacing side battle it out with a less-frequently-seen confidence (for a lifer like Riggleman, it’s fitting that the key line in the chorus is “I let the music bring me back around”). I’ll have more to say about Restless Spirit soon.
“Understand”, Twikipedia From Still-Life (2024)
Twikipedia is a “19 year old experimental artist and producer” from Rio de Janeiro, per their Bandcamp page. They’ve put out a couple of records, most recently the six-song Still-Life EP at the beginning of this year (Small Albums shared this one, is how I found it). Still-Life is a charming lo-fi bedroom pop EP that’s primarily built around guitars but with some electronic and synth touches throughout. My favorite song on the EP, “Understand”, is one of the more low-key songs in terms of instrumentation, but don’t mistake that for something lightweight–the two-minute, acoustic guitar-based track is a muted but brilliant pop song, and by the end of its runtime it feels like an anthem in spite (or maybe, somehow, because of) Twikipedia’s insular delivery of it.
“Hazy Road”, Bong Wish From Hazy Road (2023, Feeding Tube)
I found this album and band through Post-Trash’s best of 2023 list–that’s probably my favorite music blog, so most of the records on that list I’d already heard or at least heard of, but somehow Bong Wish’s Hazy Road slipped by me. Rest assured, though, it’s an excellent collection of Feelies-ish indie rock that’s deserving of “best of year” honors, merging jangly guitar pop with psychedelia, folk rock, and dream pop in a really friendly and welcoming way. The title track hits on a bright, sunny guitar riff and rides it out for over four minutes, never losing steam as it adds in some arresting bass playing and unpredictable synth touches throughout its length.
“The Shopkeeper”, Healing & Peace From Healing & Peace (2023)
So there was this band from Columbus called Kneeling in Piss who released an album and a few EPs’ worth of garage-y post-punk from 2019 to 2021 on Anyway Records (St. Lenox, Smug Brothers, Joe Peppercorn). Apparently, head piss-kneeler Alex Mussawir got tired of being in a band called “Kneeling in Piss”, so last year he rechristened the project Healing & Peace and debuted it with a self-titled EP. Healing & Peace actually does reflect the new name, offering up a casual, lo-fi, and friendly collection of folk-y indie rock. “The Shopkeeper” opens the EP with a slow, deliberate vignette that’s also a pretty catchy piece of Pavement-ish indie pop. It’s quite good, and I’m ready for the Healing & Peace era.
“Prose Kaiser”, Rip Van Winkle From The Grand Rapids (2024, Splendid Research)
I’ve liked-to-loved every Guided by Voices album that the band’s most recent, surprisingly stable lineup has put out, but Robert Pollard is always at his most brilliant with a little bit of unpredictability. This is why I’m particularly excited for whatever his Rip Van Winkle project is–of course, it helps that the first single from the upcoming EP, “Prose Kaiser”, rules. It’s got a lo-fi brittleness to it that harkens back to the underappreciated Please Be Honest or even Plantations of Pale Pink, but what’s different from those two is that Pollard appears to be plowing through a multi-part, nü-Guided by Voices-esque prog-pop skeleton of a song with a relatively rudimentary setup (sounding kind of like the transitional but brilliant August by Cake). Whatever The Grand Rapids EP ends up sounding like, it’s already got one winner on it.
“Uranium Baby”, Christy Costello From From the Dark (2024, Hollander)
I hadn’t heard of Minneapolis’ Christy Costello (aka Christy Hunt) before this year, but she’s been playing in bands since the 1990s–leading or co-leading Ouija Radio and Pink Mink, and playing guitar in The Von Bondies. From the Dark is surprisingly her first solo album, but it rocks–it’s an excellent and spirited collection of garage-y power pop which also includes a girl-group-influenced cover of the Smoking Popes’ “Need You Around”. Hard-charging single “Uranium Baby” is my favorite song from the record, a massively catchy piece of new wave-y power pop (Matt Pahl is credited with “Elvis Costello Style keys” on the track, and lives up to the billing).
“When You Find Out”, The Umbrellas From Fairweather Friend (2024, Slumberland/Tough Love)
In between their first and second albums, San Francisco jangle pop quartet The Umbrellas toured with Fucked Up and Ceremony, and while I’m not going to say I heard any hardcore in Fairweather Friend, it does “rock” a bit more than the pure platonic indie pop of their debut record. There’s more than a bit of fuzzy punk-pop and quick tempos on Fairweather Friend, although it comes in bits and pieces for the most part–my favorite track on the album, “When You Find Out”, is pretty clean-sounding, but its giddy energy takes it beyond its guitar pop foundation. Read more about Fairweather Friend here.
“Drop Me Anywhere”, The Bear Quartet From Cosy Den (1993, A West Side Fabrication)
This was a highlight from my 1993 deep dive that I completed at the beginning of the year. It turns out, Sweden had some good indie rock happening around this time too–at the very least, they had The Bear Quartet. Cosy Den (one of, it looks like, two different albums they put out in 1993) is some excellent melodic indie rock music that’s right up my alley—if you like the more “polished” sides of Pavement and Dinosaur Jr., this is a 16-song, 50-minute treat, and my favorite song from the album, “Drop Me Anywhere”, sounds like a refined reunion Dino-era J. Mascis song before that band had even gotten there. There’s a little bit of distortion, but for the most part this falls under “indie rock as power pop”, which is perfectly fine by me.
“Axe Falls”, Be Safe From Unwell (2024, Count Your Lucky Stars)
Frostburg, Maryland’s Be Safe are a new band comprised of several indie rock and emo veterans–together, the quartet meet at the intersection of thorny but oddly tranquil math rock, chilly emo, vintage slowcore, and the golden era of basement indie rock on their debut album. Unwell does “rock” on occasion, but Be Safe rarely ride this side of them for an entire song, and the band’s ability to sharpen their sound a bit makes the quieter moments of Unwell hit even harder. The instrumental outro to “Axe Falls” comes after some all-in emo-rock in its first half, and it subsequently feels like the aftermath of its own title. Read more about Unwell here.
“Crazy Man”, Freakwater From Feels Like the Third Time (1993, Thrill Jockey)
Freakwater’s Feels Like the Third Time was one of the many new-to-me 1993 albums to appear in my most recent listening log post, and even though my impressions of it at the time were somewhat mixed, “Crazy Man” is easily one of the best songs I heard through that project. As I said previously, the album as a whole is a successful re-creation of traditional, bluegrass-y folk-country, but it’s at it’s best when it sounds particularly inspired by its subjects, which “Crazy Man” achieves effortlessly. Hearing Catherine Irwin and Janet Beveridge Bean sing “I won’t have far to go when I go crazy” with the kind of zeal they bring to the song is the kinda thing that country music is all about.
“No Connection”, Power Pants From PP5 (2024)
Power Pants is a new-to-me band, but they were all over the place last year, releasing four full-length albums in 2023. The Winchester, Virginia-based band kicked off 2024 with their fifth album (PP5), and that record’s opening track, “No Connection”, does a pretty good job of summing up Power Pants’ whole deal in under two minutes. Lo-fi, punky, and catchy, “No Connection” is right in the center of “egg punk”, “power pop”, and “synthpunk”, with worried-but-hooky guitars and synths intertwining over top of nervous-sounding lyrics whose Internet-inspired poetry would make Devo proud. It’s a pleasant surprise to find an Appalachian band making this kind of music, and, even more pleasantly, Power Pants seem like they’ve become quite good at it, too.
“Muriel’s Big Day Off”, Being Dead From When Horses Would Run (2023, Bayonet)
Being Dead’s When Horses Would Run showed up on quite a few “best of 2023” lists, including a few by people/organizations that I actually trust, so I added it to the “check out during the early January lull” pile. It’s pretty dang good—all-over-the-place poppy indie rock that’s not always my thing but hitting on plenty of moments of brilliance. One of these moments is the entirety of “Muriel’s Big Day Off”, which cycles through different moments of indie pop, trippy indie rock, and jazz-rock, but is always catchy, energetic, and transfixing. Congratulations to Being Dead, who made something that I have no problem at all with being “critically acclaimed”, even though it’s not something that’d be on my personal list.
“Eu Não Existo”, Fantasma From Demo 2023 (2023)
I discovered Demo 2023 through the year-end list of Zachary Lipez’s Abundant Living newsletter–realistically, if you’re looking for good demo EPs from underground punk bands, there’s probably not a better follow out there. The six-song EP from the New York-via-Brazil duo is some excellent blunt-object-post-punk, with monotone vocals perching threateningly over top of instrumentals that can feel immovable and surprisingly liquid at various points. “Eu Não Existo” is my favorite of the three, a sub-two-minute piece of dead-eyed punk rock that gets a lot of mileage out of a frightening guitar lead accompanying its title line.
“Cocteau Jetplane”, Now From And Blue Space Is Burning Noon (2023, Sloth Mate)
I had to throw another one from the Now album on here, because it’s just that good. “Cocteau Jetplane” is one of the shorter tracks on And Blue Space Is Burning Noon but it’s still quite substantial–it starts off as scampering, rhythmic indie pop and it blossoms into a chaotic piece of orchestrated but ramshackle psychedelic pop in its second half. The Bay Area group made something that’s worth taking in as a full statement with this record, but the smart, unpredictable, and overflowing-with-ideas energy of songs like “Cocteau Jetplane” ensure that it’s got plenty of “single-worthy” moments as well. Definitely a band on my radar now.
“Scaling Walls”, Pile From Hot Air Balloon (2024, Exploding in Sound)
There’s nothing like a good Pile song, and the band’s latest EP has plenty of them. Hot Air Balloon kicks off with “Scaling Walls”, a song that’s both fairly unclassifiable and recognizably Pile–laser-precise drumming, Rick Maguire’s weary, haunting vocals, eerie, dramatic synths, and a weird, distorted, almost country-ish guitar line come together in a way that only would ever make sense for this band. Although Maguire isn’t yelling like on earlier Pile records, he’s still a dynamic vocalist–as “Scaling Walls” builds to a chaotic crescendo, he’s more than able to deliver a performance matching it. Read more about Hot Air Balloon here.
“Härvest”, Poison Ruïn From Härvest (2023, Relapse)
I came to Philadelphia’s Poison Ruïn all backwards–at first I heard Mopar Stars, Poison Ruïn band member Nao Demand’s independent power pop side project, and from there I’ve gone on to check out his more well-known, Relapse-signed garage punk/post-punk group. Härvest is not as much “my thing” as Mopar Stars’ Shoot the Moon EP is, sure, but I’m enjoying its title track quite a bit. It’s got a one-minute atmospheric instrumental opening which then kicks into a catchy piece of post-punk that kind of sounds like if the Ramones were dead serious all the time. It also reminds me of the most recent Flat Worms album, which is high praise because I think they’re one of the best modern post-punk bands going.
“Gloom and Doom”, Raul Gonzalez Jr. From Wanderer (2023)
Another discovery from Small Albums, Raul Gonzalez Jr. appears to be a prolific bedroom rocker from Austin, Texas–last year, there were two different Gonzalez Jr. LPs and three EPs. The Wanderer full-length was the first of these, coming out last January, and it seems to have a lot of gorgeous, lo-fi guitar pop on it. There are some moments on the album that are more “rock”, but my favorite is the dream pop/post-punk “Gloom and Doom”, which polishes up Gonzalez Jr.’s sound and deploys prominent bass guitar to create a complete four-minute indie pop picture that I find quite impressive.
“Beware Magical Thinking”, Zowy From Beware Magical Thinking (2024, Lost Sound Tapes)
As Zowy, Zoë Wyner embraces electronics and synths in a way that her previous bands (Halfsour, Temporary Eyesore) didn’t even really hint at, although the Beware Magical Thinking EP remains accessible both due to her strong pop songwriting and due to how similarly Wyner seems to approach making guitar- and synth-based music. There’s a rock band exuberance and energy to be found within its four songs–the drum machine backbeats are hard-hitting, not in a cold, industrial way but rather a punchy rock-and-roll kind of way, and the synths rise and fall and drop in and out like guitar leads would. The EP’s title track begins with a lo-fi chamber pop instrumental, eventually beginning to march forward alongside some dreamy guitar playing that works well alongside swooning synths. Read more about Beware Magical Thinking here.
“Cow Calls”, Fust From Songs of the Rail (2024, Dear Life)
I wouldn’t necessarily say that Songs of the Rail is my favorite Fust release at this point (those two proper albums are going to be very hard to beat), but it’s a fascinating compilation that I just keep coming back to and finding new things to enjoy. “Cow Calls” is a beautiful piece of Lambchop-esque ambient country rock, with Aaron Dowdy’s low, possibly manipulated vocals gliding over slow, choppy electric guitar and saxophone from Ryan Hoss, one of the few non-Dowdy musicians on the record. When Dowdy pushes himself in the chorus, it’s very recognizable as the Fust we all know and love, however. Read more about Songs of the Rail here.
Welcome to the last Pressing Concerns of January, and the first of the week! We’ve got a big couple of days ahead of us, starting off with today’s post, which looks at the new Cheekface album, new EPs from Girls Know and Fantastic Purple Spots, and a reissue of Heavenly‘s third album (which also includes that “Atta Girl” and “P.U.N.K. Girl” singles/EPs).
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.
Heavenly – The Decline and Fall of Heavenly (Reissue)
Release date: February 2nd Record label: Skep Wax Genre: Indie pop, twee, jangle pop, power pop, pop punk Formats: Vinyl Pull Track: Me and My Madness
The year is 2024, and I have to say that I like the band Heavenly more right now than I ever have before. To be clear, I’ve always enjoyed and appreciated the music of the British indie pop legends, but the recent entire-discography reissue campaign from Skep Wax (run by the band’s Amelia Fletcher and Robert Pursey, who also use it to release music from their currentprojects) has caused me to look closer at their short but hefty discography and realize just how well it holds up under scrutiny. After their first two records, 1991’s Vs. Satan and 1992’s Le Jardin de Heavenly, saw vinyl re-pressings in 2022 and 2023, respectively, Skep Wax has moved onto 1994’s The Decline and Fall of Heavenly this year. Although all the vinyl reissues have featured bonus tracks drawn from non-album singles released concurrently, this reissue’s extra material is particularly notable–1993’s “P.U.N.K. Girl” and “Atta Girl” singles and their B-sides (also released together as an EP in 1995) both appear on side two of The Decline and Fall of Heavenly, ensuring that those five songs–regarded as some of the best the band ever put to tape–aren’t left out of this reissue series.
Even for a Heavenly album, the proper The Decline and Fall of Heavenly is a short one (about twenty-five minutes), but the band’s momentum hadn’t slowed down a bit on the original eight songs. The band continued to get more polished and impressive in their song construction–songs like “Me and My Madness” and “Skipjack” in the first half of the album are giant-sounding, fully teased-out pop songs, and there are plenty of moments–the strings in the former of the two mentioned tracks, the horns punching up “Modestic”, the guitar solo in “Itchy Chin”–that show just how hard the band were trying to pack every song with just about everything they could. The vocal interplay between Fletcher and guitarist Cathy Rogers is a more important part of the band than ever here, both in the rockers (the chaotic pop chorus of “Me and My Madness”, answering each other in the retro romp of “Sperm Meets Egg, So What?”) and even on the relatively subtler songs (like “Three Star Compartment”, where they drift into and out of each other).
Fletcher and Rodgers singing over each other is also a key component of the “P.U.N.K Girl” / “Atta Girl” songs, particularly the A-side of the latter. These five songs are clearly of a piece, loosely and deftly weaving a narrative around some pretty heady topics together. The assault at the center of the EP is explicitly described in “Hearts and Crosses”, but the rest of the EP doesn’t shy away from it–with “Atta Girl”, the way Fletcher and Rodgers sing completely different lyrics is a compelling portrait of conflicting emotions, while on the other hand, the a cappella “So?” delivers its final verdict with pure certainty. What strikes me about these songs is that Heavenly neither tone down their “twee” indie pop side while writing about “serious” subjects, nor do they “play it up” in some sort of twisted, ironic way. They approach it the same way they would anything else, which shouldn’t be surprising when looking at “Atta Girl” and “P.U.N.K. Girl” in the context of Heavenly’s body of work (and, hell, the various other bands the members have formed after this one’s dissolution). Heavenly were true believers in the power of this kind of music–indie pop, twee, whatever you’d like to call it–and its ability to tackle anything head-on, and they left behind four albums that only proved them right. (Bandcamp link)
Cheekface – It’s Sorted
Release date: January 22nd Record label: Self-released Genre: Dance-punk, post-punk, art punk, Cheekface Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull Track: Life in a Bag
We know the drill with Cheekface by now, right? The Los Angeles trio release strong one-off singles whenever they feel like it, and then around once a year, with no pre-release or fanfare, an album shows up containing a few of those singles as well as some new material. That was the case with 2021’s Emphatically No. (the lead-off album of the first-ever issue of Pressing Concerns), that was how it went with 2022’s Too Much to Ask (their first self-released album and one of my favorites from that year), and now we’re back again in early 2024 with It’s Sorted, the fourth Cheekface LP. All four original songs they put out as singles last year make the cut (I’m not counting their cover of “(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding”), plus six new ones. The band still largely sound like Talking Heads, Elvis Costello, and Television devotees, and frontman Greg Katz is still sing-speaking and delivering line after quotable line to a degree that makes it difficult not to turn this writeup into a recounting of my favorite ones.
And yet, It’s Sorted is something different than anything Cheekface has done up to this point. I went into the album blind, and, after a couple of listens, became struck with just how groovy it is. I dug around for the press release, and I found Katz talking about how the band decided not to worry about how they were going to play the album live while putting it together in the studio (apparently a departure for them). For Cheekface, this new approach resulted in something a little less “rock” and more rhythmic and dancefloor-ready. When they flirted with this kind of thing in previous songs (“Featured Singer”, “Vegan Water”) it was something of a novelty for them–this time around, it’s songs like the zippy punk of “Trophy Hunting at the Zoo” and the power poppy “Popular 2” that are the outliers. Call it Cheekface’s Berlin era, or say It’s Sorted is their Wide Awake!–either way, the trio are quite good at it.
Bassist Amanda Tannen and drummer Mark Echo Edwards can lock in with the dance-punkiest of them, transforming songs like “Grad School” and “Largest Muscle” into a completely new kind of Cheekface anthem, and adding a new dimension to more recognizably-Cheekface tracks like “I Am Continuing to Do My Thing” and “Life in a Bag”. Katz still sounds likes Katz, of course, but he’s also shifting his approach to meet the band’s new sound, juking, dodging, and stuttering his way through his lyrics (“I contain multitudes! I contain multiple dudes!”) like a millennial Max Headroom as necessary. It’s Sorted’s biggest surprise might be penultimate track “Don’t Stop Believing”, a guitar ballad unlike anything else in the band’s catalog. Katz actually sings in a way he doesn’t typically do on this one, and even though the lyrics aren’t exactly a departure from typical Cheekface fare, the change in delivery seems to unlock something the band hadn’t yet offered. Sure, Katz nicks one of the most iconic song titles of all-time to make his statement, but to paraphrase the song’s most memorable lyric–who can blame him? He lives in a society. (Bandcamp link)
Girls Know – All This Love Could Kill Me!
Release date: January 26th Record label: Friend’s House Genre: Fuzz rock, noise pop, lo-fi indie rock, garage rock Formats: Digital Pull Track: Stranger
Girls Know are a Bellingham, Washington-based indie rock band started in 2022 by main songwriter Paul Sawicki, and they released their debut single “Some Words” the same year. They’ve since grown into a full band and have played a good deal of live shows in northern Washington, and have kicked off 2024 with the release of All This Love Could Kill Me!, their debut EP. Listening to the EP’s distorted, fuzzy rock music with a few electronic elements thrown in, it’s tempting to lump Girls Know in with the current wave of experimental shoegaze/dream pop groups, although they’re coming at it from a different angle than a lot of those bands. Underneath the waves of fuzz, Sawicki’s songwriting hews towards post-Strokes poppy garage rock more often than not, and there’s also a bit of early Car Seat Headrest-era lo-fi Bandcamp rock coming through on All This Love Could Kill Me! and even some emo-punk (notably, it also reminds me of fellow Washingtonians Enumclaw, another omnivorous rock group that uses copious distortion to color their guitar pop).
Girls Know take their time getting to their hooky side–“What a Horrible Night to Have a Curse…” is a bizarre introduction, found-sound spoken-word vocals over top of a synth-heavy soundscape, and “Stranger” glitches out before the curtain is finally pulled back and the band launch into a catchy fuzz-pop anthem. The “noise” and “pop” continue to stand side by side in “Ruin” (which starts off as the EP’s clearest moment before distorting itself just so) and “Lovesick” (whose reverb and special effects can’t obscure the mid-tempo ballad at the center of the song). The most urgent-sounding, quickest-paced moment on All This Love Could Kill Me! comes with “All That I Do”, a foot-on-the-gas rocker that steers itself into post-punk revival territory with its hard-hitting nervousness. Girls Know close the EP right where they started–“Girls3xxx”, All This Love Could Kill Me!’s closing track, is another sound collage-esque piece of experimental pop that bookends the record’s more familiar-sounding middle section. It gives the sense that Sawicki is working with an overarching vision in mind, making me intrigued for future Girls Know material–but, more importantly, All This Love Could Kill Me! is a blast to listen to. (Bandcamp link)
Fantastic Purple Spots – Vibrations Now
Release date: January 26th Record label: ATHRecords Genre: Indie pop, fuzz pop, twee, psychedelic pop, psychedelic rock Formats: Digital Pull Track: Vibrations Now
Fantastic Purple Spots are an Austin-based psychedelic pop group co-led by Barrett Jones and Dave Junker. They debuted with a self-titled album in 2022, which was impressive enough to shake local indie rock chronicler ATHRecords (Flesh Lights, Pelvis Wrestley, Swansea Sound) out of a semi-hiatus to put out their follow-up record, the five-song Vibrations Now EP. Judging by this EP, Jones and Junker are fans of vintage indie rock and indie pop–they bring a Yo La Tengo-esque noise-pop dichotomy, a Guided by Voices-ish sense of melodic guitar playing, and a Flying Nun/K Records-y looseness and irreverence to their songwriting. All of this is shot through across Vibrations Now with psychedelic sensibilities that are, indeed, right out of the 1960s, whether it’s achieved through the instrumental textures, lyrics, or both.
Vibrations Now starts off with the hypnotizing, catchy, and melodic guitar riff that introduces opening track “Wondering, Wandering”, a piece of echo-y chamber pop that’s a fittingly low-key beginning for the EP. Second track “All Beings Happy and Free” ups both the band’s “psychedelic” and “pop” dials–the friendly acoustic strumming that anchors the track feels right out of Dunedin, while the mantra-like repetition of the titular line and the fractured guitar solo break that happens in the song’s second half both turn the song into something that floats cheerily above its simple pop structure. “Flyways of the Purple Spotted Tern” goes even further, a spoken-word piece of bright indie pop about the titular (fictional) bird and “the swift, imminent collapse of human civilizations”. The two more electric-sounding songs on Vibrations Now are the title track and closing number “You Can Always Come Down”–the former is a gently chugging tune that’s dripping with both fuzz and pop, and the latter is an indie pop skeleton that echoes via the cavernous-seeming recording and sails into backmasking drone-pop oblivion. It’s an enjoyably confusing punctuation mark to an enjoyably confusing record. (Bandcamp link)
Welcome! The final full week of January is upon us, and this edition of Pressing Concerns looks at four records that either have already come out this week or will come out on Friday. New albums from The Umbrellas, Radical Kitten, and Yama Uba, as well as a new EP from Honeypuppy, appear in this blog post. If you missed Monday’s Pressing Concerns (featuring Be Safe, Loto, Zowy, and Capsuna), check that one out here. Also this week, I explored the world of various-artist Neil Young cover compilations on Bandcamp, which is hopefully as fun for you to read as it was for me to put together.
If you’re looking for more new music, you can visit the site directory to see what else we’ve written about lately. If you’d like to support Rosy Overdrive, you can share this (or another) post, or donate here.
The Umbrellas – Fairweather Friend
Release date: January 26th Record label: Slumberland/Tough Love Genre: Jangle pop, indie pop, power pop Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital Pull Track: When You Find Out
When I think of “modern jangle pop”, the song that comes to mind almost immediately is “She Buys Herself Flowers” by San Francisco quartet The Umbrellas, off of their 2021 self-titled debut album. It’s just such a well-crafted, instantly-memorable piece of guitar pop in the middle of a record that, in some ways, feels like the platonic ideal of C86-inspired indie pop. Just about the only knock one could have on The Umbrellas is that it’s so laser-focused on recreating a previous era of pop music that it might not exactly have a distinct personality of its own, but this is the arena the band have turned to conquer next with their sophomore album, Fairweather Friend. Vocalist/guitarists Matt Ferrara and Morgan Stanley feel more intertwined than ever across these songs, and rhythm section Nick Oka (bass) and Keith Frerichs (drums) are sharper, too. One interesting footnote is that The Umbrellas toured with both Fucked Up and Ceremony–two bands rooted in hardcore punk but make music that expands beyond that genre–in between their two albums, and while I’m not going to say I heard any hardcore in Fairweather Friend, it rocks, on average, more than The Umbrellas did.
Fairweather Friend kicks off with “Three Cheers”, a song that’s not as fast-paced as other moments on the record but, thanks to the band’s performance, is a Heavenly example of indie pop played deftly by a full-on rock band. When they want to make a fuzzy, downhill-sledding punk-pop song, they set their mind to it with “Toe the Line”, a surprisingly noisy rocker, and while The Umbrellas don’t put all that together in the exact same way again on the record, there are pieces of that side of them throughout Fairweather Friend–the distortion in “Say What You Mean”, the bursting energy of “When You Find Out”, and the giddy bassline and guitar soloing in “Gone” and “Games”. Even something like “Goodbye”, which has all the makings of wistful autumnal indie pop, starts off as a power pop single and gets punched up by a brisk drumbeat throughout its entire runtime. When The Umbrellas have a song on their hands that’d be best served by the quartet holding back a bit–like the penultimate “Blue”–they still do so, grinding the high-flying side of the band to a halt for nearly four and a half minutes to let the acoustic folk-pop track do everything it’s capable of doing. It’d be a strong, stark closer, but The Umbrellas instead cap off Fairweather Friend with the triumphant power pop of “PM”, a song that keeps finding another gear in which to shift to push against its quite melancholic core. It’s both a nod to the classic indie pop from which they arose and a demonstration of just what the band can do with it. (Bandcamp link)
Radical Kitten – Uppercat
Release date: January 26th Record label: Araki/Attila Tralala/Contraszt/Coolax/Domination Queer/Dushtu/Gurdulu/Hidden Bay/La Loutre par les cornes/Cartelle/Seitan’s Hell Bike Punks/Stonehenge/Tomaturj/Uppercat Genre: Post-punk, noise rock, punk Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital Pull Track: Never on Time
A week after looking at Petit Bureau’s Bear’s Brain, we’re back again this time with yet another French band who are releasing a record on a comically large number of record labels. Like Petit Bureau, Radical Kitten are from Toulouse, and are putting out their second album, Uppercat, through Hidden Bay–as well as a dozen other imprints. Radical Kitten are a “rrriot postpunk meow” trio made up of bassist/vocalist Marin, guitarist/vocalist Iso, and drummer Lambert (although the drums on these recordings are by founding member Marion, who departed the band soon thereafter). Compared to their debut, 2020’s Silence Is Violence, Uppercat is shorter (seven songs, twenty minutes and available as a 12” max single, compared to the twelve-track, 35-minute debut LP), but Radical Kitten manage to pack plenty of energy and fury in the form of noisy punk and post-punk within these confines. It’s easy to cite Sonic Youth as an influence, but Radical Kitten incorporate elements of that band in an intriguing way–they take Sonic Youth’s penchant for ear-splitting guitar feedback and apply it to turn-of-the-century garage-y post-punk in a manner that can be both heavy and fun-sounding.
Opening track “Never on Time” distills Radical Kitten down to their base elements pleasingly–a runaway post-punk bass girds the low-end of the track, marked by the rise and fall of generous levels of distorted guitar. The vocals on that one veer between post-punk restraint and riot grrrl belting, and on the punkier “Mouse Trap”, the vocalist leans into the latter to go with the instrumental’s noisy, new wave-y stutter. Radical Kitten don’t separate out their playful side and their heavy-duty noise rock side throughout all of Uppercat–closing track “Worst Friend”, for instance, opens with a colorful splatter of a guitar riff and closes with a cathartic, noisy chewing-out of the titular ex-friend. The middle of the record is where Radical Kitten come off the most as straight-up “riot grrrl punks”, with “No Means No” and “Fake As Fuck” selling their relatively simple punk rock foundations with an energy to match the (just as present) noisy guitar assault. That being said, my favorite moment on the record just might be penultimate track “Afraid to Die”, a song where Radical Kitten take their energy and focus it on blowing out a post-punk chant into something harrowing. True to their name to the end, Radical Kitten sound friendly and dangerous in equal measure throughout Uppercat. (Bandcamp link)
Honeypuppy – Nymphet
Release date: January 24th Record label: Indecent Artistry Genre: Indie pop, twee, fuzz rock, power pop Formats: Cassette, digital Pull Track: Kerosene
Last year, I wrote about Ad Nauseum by Athens, Georgia’s Telemarket, a warped collection of 90s-inspired indie rock that fit in well with the quintet’s hometown. This year sees the introduction of Honeypuppy, a new group featuring four-fifths of the Telemarket lineup. While guitarist/bassist Adam Wayton was the lead songwriter of Telemarket, Honeypuppy is the project of Telemarket keyboardist Josie Callahan–for the new band, Callahan is the lead vocalist, songwriter, and rhythm guitarist, Wayton is on bass, and Telemarket’s Will Wise and Jack Colclough round out the band on lead guitar and drums, respectively. The five-song (seven if you count two bonus demos) Nymphet EP is our first glimpse of Honeypuppy, and they seem more like straight shooters than Telemarket–Callahan is an excellent pop songwriter, as all of these songs boast big hooks. And yet, Honeypuppy still find time to break out some noisy, speedy, guitar-freakout indie rock in their opening statement, almost certainly benefiting from the quartet’s previous experience playing together.
“Penny Press” opens Nymphet with a fluffy, retro-sounding twee/indie pop song that’s about midway between C86 and Elephant 6 and featuring a winking chorus (“When she was good, she was very very very good / When she was bad, she was horrid”) that does a great job of establishing Callahan’s voice as a songwriter. The one thing “Penny Press” doesn’t prepare the listener for is the louder side of Honeypuppy, which rears up in every subsequent song on the EP, albeit some (the punk-pop attitude-heavy sprint of “Suck Up” and fiery garage rock closer “Kerosene”) more than others (the title track and “Thrum a Thread”, both of which start off as low-key pop rock before building to big conclusions). Nymphet is always a pop record, whether it’s via the girl-group-on-Kill Rock Stars vibes of “Suck Up”, the subtly toe-tapping title track, or the laid-back sunny flower-garden pop of “Thrum a Thread”. This feeling extends into the two “bonus tracks” at the end of the EP, demo versions of “Penny Press” and “Nymphet”. The former sounds pretty damn close to the final product, but the early version of the title track is a surprising piece of dreamy folk that sounds pretty far removed from anything else on Nymphet. It’s a testament to what the collaboration of the members of Honeypuppy can accomplish but also evidence of an interesting core. (Bandcamp link)
Yama Uba – Silhouettes
Release date: January 24th Record label: Ratskin/Psychic Eye Genre: Darkwave, synthpop, post-punk, goth Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital Pull Track: Disappear
Yama Uba is an Oakland-based darkwave/goth rock duo made up of vocalist/bassist/synth player Akiko Sampson and vocalist/guitarist/saxophonist Winter Zora. Sampson and Zora play together in post-punk quartet Ötzi; Zora also plays in Mystic Princess, while Sampson is the founder of Psychic Eye Records. Psychic Eye is co-releasing Yama Uba’s debut album along with Ratskin Records–after a string of singles and compilation appearances dating back to 2018, Silhouettes is the culmination of a half-decade of the band, collecting a few of their previously-released tracks and pairing them with plenty of new material. On Silhouettes, Zora and Sampson do their best to transport us all back to the early 1980s, marrying a Siouxsie and the Banshees-esque “dark, but pop” attitude with an early synthpop or even industrial-pop reliance on drum machines to hammer out their tunes.
It becomes very clear from the opening moments of “Disappear”, a dark new wave pop song with a pounding drum machine backbeat, that Yama Uba aren’t dealing in half-measures–Silhouettes is all-in on this kind of music. The synthpop of “Shapes” is punched up by some dramatic vocals and Zora’s saxophone, and “Shatter” moves sleekly and slowly before, ahem, shattering in the chorus. Yama Uba pull out a cover right in the middle of the record–The Passions’ “I’m in Love with a German Film Star” is a classic of the genre, but it’s also not the most obvious choice, and the band’s increasingly-busy-sounding synth-rock take on it fits in well with the rest of Silhouettes. I wouldn’t say that there are many big surprises throughout the record–you’re going to get plenty of full-sounding, confident goth-pop anthems, from “Facade” to “Laura”–although it does get a little frayed at the end between the somewhat-psychedelic “Claustrophobia” and closing track “Angel”. The latter track was the first song Yama Uba ever released, and this recording of it sounds looser and more lo-fi than the rest of the record, almost industrial in its noisiness. Even so, Zora and Sampson hold the song together until the end. (Bandcamp link)
Is there anyone more influential on modern indie rock than Neil Young? Maybe there is, but it’s hard to argue he isn’t a central figure in shaping the current landscape. For one, there’s the way that plenty of modern alt-country/indie folk bands adhere to his style of veering between ragged-but-unhurried, noisy country rock and quiet, intimate acoustic folk, and there’s also an undeniable indirect influence if you consider how much Young and Crazy Horse influenced the guitar-hero side of 90s indie rock that informs much of the genre today (Martsch? Mascis? Malkmus? Ranaldo, Moore, and Gordon?).
I’m not exactly sure when I noticed that there were several different Neil Young cover compilations on Bandcamp, but at some point I got the idea to listen to all the ones that were on there. I discovered there were five such compilations, ranging from a 2008 one that was put on there retroactively to two that materialized over the pandemic in 2020 and 2021. This only includes the ones on Bandcamp, so I didn’t do the legendary 1989 The Bridge compilation, which included notable Young disciples The Flaming Lips, Pixies, and Dinosaur Jr., but there are plenty of notable names to be found here (notable to someone who likes the kind of music Rosy Overdrive covers normally, sure, but a few actual Names do pop up as well). What follows are my thoughts on all five of them, presented in the order in which I checked them out. I’ll try to touch on notable appearances, highlights, and interesting choices both in terms of song selection and adaptation. Without any further ado, let’s “walk on” before “time fades away”, because “tonight’s the night” to listen to 138 different Neil Young covers. You’d have to be a “crazy horse” not to enjoy this one. Oh, let’s just get to it.
If you’re looking for music that wasn’t necessarily written by Neil Young, you can visit the site directory to see what else we’ve written about lately. If you’d like to support Rosy Overdrive, you can share this (or another) post, or donate here.
To Sample & Hold – A Benefit Tribute to the Songs of Neil Young (2021)
We begin with what appears to be the most recent Neil Young cover compilation on Bandcamp. I actually remember this one coming out, although I don’t believe I ever listened to it in full. This is one of the longer compilations, as it’s 27 songs long. According to the album artwork, it was organized by Albany’s Blue Ranger, the project of ex-Pinegrove guitarist Josh Marre, as a benefit for Free Food Fridge Albany (“an anonymous & direct food access point to food insecure neighborhoods, systemically oppressed and marginalized neighborhoods”). Reflecting of the kind of music that Marre makes and the larger makeup of Albany’s indie rock scene, To Sample & Hold is heavy on bedroom pop, lo-fi folk, alt-country, and soft-sounding singer-songwriter type music. It’s a lot to wade through, but there’s maybe more gems here than any of the other compilations.
There are plenty of recognizable faces on To Sample & Hold, including a couple of other Pinegrove-associated acts—Nick Levine’s Jodi contributes a gorgeous version of “Only Love Can Break Your Heart”, and while Evan Stephens Hall’s “Long May You Run” isn’t as overly impressive, it’s a nice song selection from the former Pinegrove frontman. On the less “alt-country” and more “pop” side, Rosy Overdrive favorite Russel the Leaf (led by Josh Marre’s brother, Evan) offers up a beautiful synth-ballad take on “The Bridge”, and similar lo-fi Beach Boys devotee Thank You Thank You actually attempts to merge folk rock and lo-fi pop in a brisk, drum machine-heavy take on “Walk On”. Albany’s Another Michael (who fall somewhere between “studio pop” and “folk rock”) take on “Lotta Love”, sounding subdued but spirited enough to turn it into an “another Another Michael song”. Last but not least, Ben Seretan helms maybe the most rocking moment on To Sample & Hold, a fuzz-dance-pop-punk take on “Fuckin’ Up” that works shockingly well.
I’d put Ben Seretan, Jodi, and Russel the Leaf’s contributions near the top of To Sample & Hold’s highlights, but plenty of bands I’m not as familiar with have highlights on the album as well. In the “country rock” department, Coupons’ soaring take on “Borrowed Tune”, Zena Kay’s steady “Out on the Weekend”, and the gently rolling “Unknown Legend” provided by Will Brown all fall under “not reinventing the wheel, but really enjoyable takes on the songs nonetheless” territory. Eliza Niemi takes a Casio-shaped sledgehammer to “Mellow My Mind”, dialing up a prominent drum machine beat but, impressively, keeping the song’s delicate nature intact. Andrew Young Stevens actually ends up fleshing out the previously-skeletal sounding “Will to Love” into blooming (but still meandering) folk rock, while Whitney Ballen’s “Love in Mind” is all stark piano.
Let’s say we define “classic Neil Young” as everything up to and including Rust Never Sleeps, plus Freedom, Ragged Glory, and Harvest Moon. In that case, I must give credit to Blue Ranger themselves, as they’re the only ones to venture out of this familiar zone with their selection by taking on “Bandit” from 2003’s Greendale. If you hadn’t already heard “Bandit”, you’d be forgiven for thinking that their lo-fi, spoken word, almost ambient-folk take on the song is some kind of radical reinvention, but it’s actually a lot closer than you’d think (“Bandit” is my favorite song from Greendale and probably on the shortlist for favorite 21st century Young song). It’s not as good as the original version, but I do appreciate it showing up here. (Bandcamp link)
Look Out for My Love: A Neil Young Covers Album to Benefit RAICES (2020)
My first instinct was to call this one of the many pandemic-era covers compilations, but it actually predates lockdown by a couple of weeks. This one was put together by Shayla Riggs of the Richmond band Yeehaw Junction (between recent ones from WarHen and SPINSTER Records, the Virginias have continued to keep their various-artist-compilation game up as of late), and it’s to benefit RAICES (“a nonprofit that provides free and low-cost legal and social services for immigrants”). Compared to To Sample & Hold, it’s on average less quiet indie folk and more fuzzy country rock, although there’s some overlap in the two genre-wise. If you like the more electric side of Young and Crazy Horse, there’s plenty of highlights on this one for you (even as it’s only a “mere” eighteen songs compared to To Sample & Hold’s twenty-seven).
If you’re into modern bands that are doing the 90s indie rock thing, there’s a good chance you’ll recognize some of these acts, as I do—even though I was surprised to realize that I’ve only ever actually covered one of them on the blog before (note: we can up this to one and a half, because after I wrote this, I covered a new EP from Zowy, side project of Halfsour, who contributed a version of “Words (Between the Lines of Age)” to the compilation). Richmond’s Gnawing are a perfect fit for the ragged garage-y rock and roll side of Neil Young and Crazy Horse, so it’s kind of surprising that the band offer up a mostly-acoustic take of “Walk On” for Look Out for My Love. It’s got a lo-fi, almost demo-y quality to it that’s still pretty charming in its own right. I also recognize a few other bands here—orchestral grunge rockers Lung offer up a characteristically heavy and dramatic take on “Don’t Let It Bring You Down”, Adult Mom adds a simple but pleasant acoustic “Harvest Moon”, and Anna Mcclellan’s lo-fi piano pop version of “Out on the Weekend” is oddly transfixing. I’m also familiar with the pair of explosive rockers that close out the album—Exploding in Sound alumni Rick Rude bash out a six-minute, fiery “Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere”, and Sophomore Lounge scuzz-rockers Wren Kitz one-up them by crawling through a heavy, distorted, psychedelic eight-minute take on “Cortez the Killer”.
There are also more “deep cuts” on Look Out for My Love than To Sample & Hold—we can debate whether or not “Transformer Man” from 1983’s cult classic Trans counts as such, but it’s more obscure than most of the songs here, and I really love Spit Take’s power-poppy-garage-punk performance of it here. The other odd selections here don’t blow me away as much, but Bunny Boy’s new age-y take on “Philadelphia” is intriguing, and Pressed Orchid’s deconstructed version of “Are You Passionate?” might be the most interesting choice I’ve encountered yet. I’d definitely consider Lung’s contribution one of my favorites on the album, although for the most part it’s new-to-me faces who offer up my favorite tracks here.
Aside from the previously-mentioned Spit Take, Adult Magic’s garage rock/fuzzy power pop version of “Don’t Cry No Tears” is another great moment on Look Out for My Love that’s in a similar vein. Yeehaw Junction themselves actually offer up another of my favorites, a lo-fi pop take on “Only Love Can Break Your Heart” that works a lot better than most of the other attempts to do this I’ve heard on these compilations. Winter Jogger, Donna Geese, Zoe Stone, & Cali Serino bring some wonderful, personable harmonies to their otherwise barebones acoustic version of “Love Is a Rose”, and, last but not least, I do need to commend Julie Karr for finding new life in a song whose original version I’ve heard so many times I have no need of ever hearing again (“Rockin’ in the Free World”). (Bandcamp link)
Headed for the Ditch – A Michigan Tribute to Neil Young (2012)
The previous two compilations have done a very good job of illustrating just how pervasive Neil Young’s influence is in present-day “indie rock”. Both the electric, sprawling country-infused rock music of the Crazy Horse albums and the intimate, polished but personal-feeling folk music of his solo ones are well-represented in the current landscape. In 2012 this was not so much the case—indie music was in its woozy synth-y, lightly R&B-flecked phase, more modern pop-curious than in the past, and the underground was more straight-up punk and the burgeoning emo revival. This is the backdrop for Headed for the Ditch, a perhaps appropriately-named album-length compilation of Michigan indie rock bands covering Neil Young. Headed for the Ditch was actually put out on vinyl by Lower Peninsula Records (a seemingly-inactive Lansing label most notable for putting out a couple of records from Frontier Ruckus, Matthew Milia’s band), but only a digital copy is available here on Bandcamp.
There’s only one band I recognize on here, but it’s a good one. Saturday Looks Good to Me—the longtime band led by Fred Thomas, currently of Idle Ray—does a weary, twitchy “See the Sky About to Rain”, layering guitars and synths over top of Thomas’ subtle but more-than-sufficient vocals. Headed for the Ditch as a whole vacillates between kinda loose, punk-y indie rock and acoustic folk, putting it in similar territory as Look Out for My Love, although the “rockers” here are on average less heavy fuzz-rock and more casual pop-punk-adjacent material. Not that the album doesn’t get loud—in particular, The Casionauts’ dire, screeching “Southern Man” and The Hard Lessons’ chaotic closing version of “Hey Hey, My My” are some fine examples of Michigan garage rock, while New Granada’s version of “Barstool Blues” reminds me of another artist who’s covered Neil Young, Jeff Rosenstock, but with more distortion. The overall relaxed nature of the album is a boon when it comes to The Drinking Problem’s absolutely wild, free-wheeling country rock take on “Saddle Up the Palomino”, a song I never thought too much about, and to a lesser degree, the imminently enjoyable acoustic folk rock of Dave Lawson’s “Lookin’ for a Love” that opens the compilation.
The two weirdest selections on Headed for the Ditch are polar opposites—on the one hand, we’ve got The Rick Johnson Rock and Roll Machine charging through a synthpunk/dance-punk take on “We R in Control” (Neil Young—egg punk icon?), and on the other hand, Ian Saylor offers up a version of “Soldier” (a song that originally appeared on Journey Through the Past) that’s all incredibly stripped down, skeletal acoustic folk. This is maybe the most consistent of these compilations—I’m not sure what the best track is on here, but The Drinking Problem, The Casionauts, Dave Lawson, Saturday Looks Good to Me, and Edward (who does a nice version of “Birds” that takes off into soaring alt-rock) all come to mind. (Bandcamp link)
Cinnamon Girl – Women Artists Cover Neil Young for Charity (2008)
This was initially released as a double vinyl album by American Laundromat Records in 2008, and it’s pretty easily the compilation with the most notable names to appear on it. American Laundromat does a lot of these cover compilations—I remember their Elliott Smith one featuring J. Mascis, Julien Baker, and Waxahatchee from a few years ago, and they’ve also done The Smiths, Pixies, and The Cure, among others—but they’ve also released full albums from Tanya Donnelly and Juliana Hatfield. Donnelly appears on Cinnamon Girl, along with other indie/alt/folk rockers like Britta Phillips (of Luna), Veruca Salt, Kristin Hersh, Elk City, Lori McKenna, and Jill Sobule. That list should give you an idea of the kind of music to be found on here—less garage-y/punk-y than Headed for the Ditch or Look Out for My Love, less lo-fi than To Sample & Hold, we’re in the realm of refined, polished singer-songwriter-y folk rock and “adult alternative”. Also, as the title implies, everything on this album is either by a female solo artist or a band led by a woman. The charity for this one is Casting for Recovery (“whose mission is to enhance the quality of life of women with breast cancer through a unique retreat program that combines breast cancer education and peer support with the therapeutic sport of fly fishing”). I feel like Neil Young would approve of that.
The established names mostly offer up quality recordings, although some work better than others. Veruca Salt rip through “Burned”, probably the best “rocker” on Cinnamon Girl, while Jill Sobule (with an assist from X’s John Doe) takes “Down by the River” and deconstructs it into a borderline freak folk masterpiece. Tanya Donnelly and Elk City offer up pretty versions of “Heart of Gold” and “Helpless”, respectively, but both of those songs I’ve heard so many times and I don’t think either really added anything to the songs (okay, okay, the version of “Helpless” is pretty enjoyable nonetheless). Kristin Hersh’s “Like a Hurricane” is maybe not the most essential, but listening to it really elucidates just how much she and her bands have been inspired by Young’s music over the years. Phillips’ “I Am a Child” and Louise Post’s “Sugar Mountain” are both forgettable. This is the first compilation to feature multiple versions of the same song—Dala and Darcie Miner both do “Ohio” for some reason, the latter as a rocker and the former as a piano ballad.
Dala has more success taking on “A Man Needs a Maid” elsewhere on the album, the eerie folk-rock-drama gaining another layer sung through her voice. Some of my favorite songs on Cinnamon Girl are the rockers—the previously-mentioned “Burned”, plus Heidi Gluck’s big, friendly power pop take on “Walk On” which closes the album and Euro-Trash Girl’s ripping version of “Cinnamon Girl”. Julie Peel’s cover of “I Believe in You” isn’t as much of a straight up rocker, but it balances delicateness and electricity quite nicely, and in terms of the quieter tracks, Kate York puts together a gently rolling version of “Comes a Time” that shines a light on a song that maybe should be ranked higher among Young’s folk songs (it should be noted that at this point I’m almost certainly getting fatigue in hearing the most frequently-covered songs, including “Tell Me Why”, “Only Love Can Break Your Heart”, and “Powderfinger”). (Bandcamp link)
PRF Monthly Tribute Series – May 2016: Neil Young (2016)
Alright, we’re closing this out with a pure free-for-all. The PRF Monthly Tribute Series arose out of the forums for Steve Albini’s Electrical Audio Recording Studio and the idea is fairly straightforward: each month, as many people from the forum as want to record a song from a previously-chosen artist, and the results are compiled on Bandcamp to listen to (the forum members then vote on the best cover, the creator of which gets to choose the next month’s artist as a reward). The Monthly Tribute Series archives on Bandcamp stretch all the way back to 2014, and it’s still going strong today (for January 2024, it’s Todd Rundgren). In 2016, they did Neil Young, and the artists of the PRF really showed out for this one—at sixty-one songs, this is easily the longest Neil Young cover compilation on Bandcamp, featuring a couple of names I recognize and a few more (“Uncle Shakey and the Honey Slides”, “The Ragged Glory Holes”, “Crazier Horse”) that were monikers presumably created solely for this project.
If all you’ve got to go on is the Albini association, you’d be forgiven for anticipating a bunch of Jesus Lizard-worshipping noise rock bands throughout this compilation, but it’s a pleasingly diverse array—just among the first three songs, we get “Kneel Young” and his deconstructed post-rock take on “Harvest Moon”, Absolutely Nothing’s straight-up acoustic folk “Birds”, and a garage-punk-pop “After the Goldrush” from Neutron-X. Interestingly enough, I do actually recognize a couple of these bands, and they offer up a few highlights. If you enjoy the heavy-but-catchy punk of bands like Militarie Gun and Drug Church, you might enjoy long-running Pacific Northwest group The Bismarck’s take on “Don’t Cry No Tears”, which ups the noise but also hones in on the pop song at the core of the track. Chicago noise rockers Nonagon contribute a fidgety, fiery post-punk take on “Revolution Blues”, and Light Coma choose to lock into a groove on “Dirty Dirty”, a song that’s just by Crazy Horse (I find this an incredibly enjoyable pick, because just a year later Light Coma would be the Crazy Horse to Silkworm guitarist Andrew Cohen by backing him on his solo album, Unreality).
Light Coma going for a Crazy Horse track is just one of the many, ah, “creative” choices to be found on this compilation. I guess for regular contributors to these compilations, just doing a “straight” cover each time gets a bit stale. Some of these work very well–The Bismarck incorporate a bit of The Jesus and Mary Chain’s “Head On” into their cover, Black Sabbatical turns “The Needle and the Damage Done” into a Black Flag song in a way that makes a shocking amount of sense, and to a lesser degree, Joe Sepi’s Bill Callahan-esque “Mr. Soul” and Luff’s fuzz rock “Tell Me Why” are also nice reinventions. I don’t even remember how “Pressure” from Landing on Water originally sounded, but I’d imagine that Ossifer’s chugging alt-rock version of it (complete with a freaky, disconnected chorus) is pretty different.
Just as many highlights don’t reinvent the wheel so much–The Five Mod Four faithfully trudging through ten minutes of “Over and Over”, Dave N. crawling through “On the Beach”, the (sigh) Ragged Glory Holes’ version of “Country Home”, The Dank Brothers’ “Kinda Sorta Like a Hurricane”–just good stuff. I’d also count “just like the original, but more Albini-y” tracks in this category: Crazier Horse’s “White Lines”, Blank Banker’s lumbering “Don’t Let It Bring You Down”, four o’clocker 2’s absolutely awesome version of “Heavy Love”, and the Nonagon song all qualify. Actually, my favorite thing on this whole damn compilation might be “Side 2 of Time Fades Away” by Gwen Glass and Her Boy Gang. Glass and the boys do, indeed, rip through “Don’t Be Denied”, float through “The Bridge”, and then burn everything down with “Last Dance” over the course of eighteen minutes. Is there also some stuff on this compilation that’s not very good? Sure. But if you like Neil Young it’s more than worth spinning it for moments like this. (Bandcamp link)
As we enter into the second half of January, the end-of-year dead zone is trickling into what looks to be a busy February. Today’s post rounds up a few odds and ends from the first couple weeks of the year: new albums from Be Safe and Capsuna, and new EPs from Loto and Zowy. This is a weird one, and a strong one.
If you’re looking for more new music, you can visit the site directory to see what else we’ve written about lately. If you’d like to support Rosy Overdrive, you can share this (or another) post, or donate here.
Be Safe – Unwell
Release date: January 19th Record label: Count Your Lucky Stars Genre: 90s indie rock, slowcore, emo Formats: Cassette, digital Pull Track: Axe Falls
Frostburg, Maryland is decidedly not considered a hotbed for emo and indie rock (I think The Trend are the only band from there I’d ever written about before now), but don’t tell that to the members of Be Safe, all of whom have been making music in Appalachian Maryland for some time now. Guitarist/vocalist Matt Wojcik has played in fourth-wave emo band (and OG Count Your Lucky Stars signees) Perfect Future, as well as post-hardcore group Jorne and West Virginia power pop punks Aloner. Be Safe bassist Shane Sours also played in Jorne and guitarist Geoff Minnear was also a part of Aloner, while drummer BJ Lewis is most notable for playing in folk rock group Page France (whose frontman Michael Nau has gone on to have a successful solo career). Together, the four of them make something of a Maryland panhandle supergroup, creating a new sound that isn’t quite like any of their previous projects. Unwell is closest to the more contemplative moments of Perfect Future, taking a trip back to the late 1990s and visiting the intersection of thorny but oddly tranquil math rock, chilly emo, vintage slowcore, and the golden era of basement indie rock.
Unwell doesn’t exactly come barreling out of the gate, but there’s still something engrossing about opening track “Thursday, 9 AM”. Fans of downcast, Numero Group-adjacent 90s indie rock will be immediately hooked by it, with gorgeous guitars lightly fluttering around lyrics that make me want to commit the music writer sin of calling them “confessional” (“I’m still in therapy, working on my DBT…I hope you’re still proud of me”). Unwell does “rock” on occasion, but Be Safe rarely ride this side of them for an entire song–“In the House” starts off as mid-tempo alt-rock before drifting off into itself, while “Ghosts” takes off halfway through its probing instrumental. The band’s ability to sharpen their sound a bit makes the quieter moments of Unwell hit even harder–the instrumental outro to “Axe Falls”, coming after some all-in emo-rock in its first half, feels like the aftermath of its own title. Albums like Unwell, the ones that already feel like hidden discoveries, have plenty of nooks and crannies within themselves–once you make it past the dramatic, six-minute “Dark Cloud”, the two closing songs, the title track and “Without Love”, are the band at their most subtle and also their best. While Unwell hit immediately for me, I’d imagine it’d take some time to grow on others–whatever the record needs from you to get there, I recommend giving it. (Bandcamp link)
Loto – A Year in Review
Release date: January 12th Record label: Self-released Genre: Lo-fi indie rock, experimental rock, bedroom pop, folk rock Formats: Digital Pull Track: The House That I Grew Up In
Loto is Lautaro Akira Martinez-Satoh, a Montreal-based musician who appears to be pretty busy as of late. Their Bandcamp page lists several projects–in addition to Loto, they’ve also made music as HJKHLHL, BlueTintedGlass, and Purple Chank, and they’re a member of the bands Death As It Shook You and Antenna93 to boot. They’ve already put out two releases this year, a 20-minute ambient/experimental piece called “This Deserves No Title or Fanfare” and A Year in Review, a four-song EP that, according to Loto, sums up their 2023 (“It sucked”). Despite such a dour point of origin, A Year in Review is a quite beautiful record, even as a close reading of Loto’s lyrics reveal images of torment, despair, and pain among their lo-fi but full-sounding pop music. Assisted by contributions from Sean Hoss (soprano sax), Monty Cime (theatre organ), and Alma (djembe, cassette dubbing, “screaming”), Loto pull together a small but substantial collection of music that’s surprising and all-over-the-place but quite accessible when it wants to be.
A Year in Review was initially to be a two-song single featuring “Age of Slop” and “I’m Never Coming Back”; “Another Future” and “The House That I Grew Up In” were written while waiting for Alama’s contributions to be completed. Perhaps because I’m aware of this, the outer two and inner two songs seem to connect with each other–the middle of the EP is more lo-fi and folk/rock based, while the opening and closing tracks are a bit more experimental and “art pop”. That being said, “Age of Slop” and “I’m Never Coming Back” approach this in different ways–the former takes a pop core and gives it a dreamy, submerged-sounding coat to make it more ephemeral-seeming, while the latter is friendly bedroom pop for its first half before transitioning to an ambient conclusion. In between these songs, “Another Future” is a surprisingly smooth-sounding take on baroque saxophone-heavy indie folk, while “The House That I Grew Up In” is a charging, lo-fi indie fuzz rocker. Both of these feel intricate and beautiful despite feeling quite haunted lyrically (“Sell me another future, where I can feel more safe,” Loto pleads in the former, and they pointedly refused to even print the lyrics for the latter), although one hopes that the declaration of no return in the title of the closing track is a portent of a 2024 that sucks less. (Bandcamp link)
Zowy – Beware Magical Thinking
Release date: January 12th Record label: Lost Sound Tapes Genre: Synthpop, art pop, experimental pop, indie pop Formats: Cassette, digital Pull Track: Beware Magical Thinking
Rhode Island’s Zoë Wyner spent the second half of the 2010s making loud but hooky indie rock with Halfsour, keeping one foot in the world of indie pop and another in thorny, noisy New England rock (they were/are a band that could release records on both Fire Talk and Jigsaw and not sound out of place on either). Wyner also released a one-off EP as part of Temporary Eyesore in 2018, a duo with Catylyn Finlay that allowed Wyner to embrace a more casual, quieter sound while still remaining in the realm of lo-fi indie rock. The Temporary Eyesore record was put out by Lost Sound Tapes, who are also releasing Beware Magical Thinking, Wyner’s debut solo record (as “Zowy”) and the first new music from her in any form in nearly a half-decade. Aside from a couple of instrumental contributions from Big Nice Studio/Courtney and Brad’s Brad Krieger (who also mixed and mastered the cassette), everything on this four-song EP was written, performed, and recorded by Wyner herself, and it represents a pretty big departure from her typical styles of music.
As Zowy, Wyner embraces electronics and synths in a way that her previous bands didn’t even really hint at, although Beware Magical Thinking remains accessible both due to her strong pop songwriting and due to how similarly Wyner seems to approach making guitar- and synth-based music. There’s a rock band exuberance and energy to be found within these four songs–the drum machine backbeats are hard-hitting, not in a cold, industrial way but rather a punchy rock-and-roll kind of way, and the synths rise and fall and drop in and out like guitar leads would. Speaking of guitars, six-strings aren’t exactly absent from Beware Magical Thinking–Krieger punctuates the bubbling electronica of “Found” with a remarkable solo, and the title track marches forward alongside some dreamy guitar playing that works well alongside swooning synths. Just as strong a link to Wyner’s previous work is the big pop song moments throughout the EP, particularly in the trudging, busy “Harbored” and the mid-tempo, flagging but still incredibly memorable title track. Even though Beware Magical Thinking is under fifteen minutes in length, it still takes its time–the vocals in “Beware Magical Thinking” take nearly a minute to kick in, and it’s nearly two in “Found”. It’s worth sticking around to hear them though, and, after a while, you might find yourself appreciating the lo-fi chamber pop instrumental introduction of the title track just as much as the rest of it. (Bandcamp link)
Capsuna – Capsuna
Release date: January 1st Record label: Self-released Genre: Indie pop, jangle pop, fuzz pop, dream pop, lo-fi indie rock Formats: Cassette, digital Pull Track: Asymmetrical
I have to credit Add to Wantlist for bringing this one to my attention; I do love a blog that doesn’t take time off in late December and early January. Capsuna are a Brussels-based indie rock group formed by former Cincinnati resident David Enright (guitar/vocals), who’s amassed a five-piece band since moving to Belgium–lead vocalist Louise Crosby, drummer Moria Crowley, bassist Pierre Meremans, and guitarist/keyboardist Damien Rixhon. There’s been a steady drip of Capsuna material for the past few months–an EP last September, singles in November and December, culminating in a self-titled debut cassette that arrived on New Year’s Day. The first ten Capsuna songs are vintage guitar-forward indie pop at its best, with Crosby’s vocals maximizing these songs’ melodies over top of instrumentals that can be somewhat charmingly fuzzy and lo-fi, but not overwhelming so. Capsuna comes off as a more barebones version of poppy French indie rock bands like En Attendant Ana, EggS, and Hobby, with a pop ambition stretching beyond their guitar/bass/drums setup.
The garage-y “Asymmetrical” kicks off Capsuna with arguably its loudest moment, but the distorted guitars chug along to a catchy pop song progression, an aspect of the cassette that only gets more pronounced with the melancholic indie pop of “Methdreams” one song later. Somewhat muted but still memorable guitar riffs mark these ten songs, from the stop-start beginning of “Horrorscope” to the subtly triumphant Flying Nun-esque intro to “Le Toit”. The first half of Capsuna is fairly strong, but the back end of it might be more consistently impressive (which is a good sign for the band’s future–the cassette is sequenced chronologically, with the older, previously-released songs in the front). Two of the strongest tracks on the record are found towards the conclusion of Capsuna–the acoustic, dreamy jangle pop of “Sync With” (which reminds me a bit of Singaporean indie pop group Subsonic Eye) and the rainy but nevertheless toe-tapping “Storm”. Capsuna are now solidly in my “band to watch” pile; I’m interested in hearing their next ten songs. (Bandcamp link)
Welcome to Pressing Concerns, this fine Thursday in January. Today we’ve got four great albums hitting the shelves (physical, digital, or both) this week: new ones from Petit Bureau, PACKS, Heat Wrays, and Swimming Bell. If you missed Tuesday’s post, featuring Fust, Arcwelder, Knowso, and Still Ruins, check that one out here.
If you’re looking for more new music, you can visit the site directory to see what else we’ve written about lately. If you’d like to support Rosy Overdrive, you can share this (or another) post, or donate here.
Petit Bureau – Bear’s Brain
Release date: January 19th Record label: Hidden Bay/Les Disques Roblo/Dushtu Records/Epicericords/No Way Asso/Table basse Records/Skank Bloc Records/Le Celtic Pub Genre: Post-punk, experimental rock, art punk Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull Track: Matthew White
Toulouse duo Petit Bureau appeared on my radar because Hidden Bay–an imprint that appears in Pressing Concerns with regularity–is putting out their sophomore album, but as it turns out, they’re sharing the honor of releasing Bear’s Brain with seven other record labels. What’s caused the French underground to so thoroughly hitch their wagon to Petit Bureau? Well, Bear’s Brain is certainly a great example of the best of French indie rock–bassist/synth player/vocalist Stéphanie Marchesi and drummer/vocalist Laetitia Dutech apparently don’t even need guitars to make their brand of skewed but not-impenetrable post-punk. Bear’s Brain was mixed by Greg Saunier of Deerhoof (with whom the band had previously collaborated on 2021’s “The Tiny Desk Is Weak” single), and there’s more than a bit of the experimental “art punk” that’s long characterized Saunier’s band here–perhaps unsurprisingly due to the instrumental makeup of the band, they do a great job of getting the rhythmic side of Deerhoof-ish indie rock down pat.
Bear’s Brain starts off with Dutech’s drums right in the front of the mix on “Automaton”, hammering out a deliberate beat for about a dozen seconds before Marchesi’s bass slinks into the picture. Eventually, Marchesi starts flinging bass notes at the listener and Dutech bashes along to match–the song, coiled in its first half, strikes confidently after it’s satisfied with where it’s ended up. The first half of Bear’s Brain gets plenty of mileage out of the bass and drums setup, from the smoking, almost psychedelic rock and roll of “The Red Spot Cave” to the more traditionally post-punk “The Ninkasi Road”, but it also knows when to add another shade–the synth playing in the new wave-y “Matthew White” and in the eerie, minimalist “Who Has Seen the Wind” is a welcome addition. Bear’s Brain only gets sharper as the record goes on–the lean, dueling-vocal post-punk that marks the second half of the album in “The Swallow”, “Roasted Freak”, and the title track is the sound of Petit Bureau locking in and rolling out song after song of what they do best. The oddest turn on Bear’s Brain’s B-side is “Peurs”, a piece of atmospheric noise-art rock that somehow feels like it can’t be doing all that with just percussion and bass. It’s just Petit Bureau continuing to excel at their format of choice, however. (Bandcamp link)
PACKS – Melt the Honey
Release date: January 19th Record label: Fire Talk Genre: Lo-fi indie rock, garage rock, fuzz rock, folk rock Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital Pull Track: HFCS
PACKS is the project of Toronto’s Madeline Link, who has been steadily releasing music on Fire Talk Records for as long as Rosy Overdrive’s been around–2021’s Take the Cake, 2022’s WOAH EP, and last year’s Crispy Crunch Nothing. I hadn’t been able to get around to any of those albums on the blog even though I’d enjoyed them (particularly Take the Cake), but PACKS have started off 2024 by giving me another chance to talk about their music in the form of Melt the Honey, a brand-new full-length. On its surface, the record has the look of a vintage basement/“lo-fi” rock record–downbeat but fuzzed-out guitars, casual sung-spoken vocals, short song lengths (and short as a whole; the album comes in at under a half-hour). However, the sonic and structural choices of the record aren’t by happenstance or accident–Link has been working with the same backing band (guitarist Dexter Nash, bassist Noah O’Neil, and drummer Shane Hooper) for a while now, and they actually all traveled to Mexico City to record what would become Melt the Honey’s eleven songs.
One such choice that PACKS make is to open the record with “89 Days”, a song that’s a lot more restrained and deliberately-paced than most of the band’s other material. Link’s voice throughout the record can go from flat and emotionless to packed with feeling in a way that reminds me of Rachel Brown from Thanks from Coming/Water from Your Eyes, and it’s just as effective whether she’s wading through the observations of “89s Days” or twisting and turning a bit more to fit the active, nervously-pacing “Honey”. “HFCS” (standing for “high-fructose corn syrup”) is a clear side one standout, a messy but catchy fuzz rocker with a belting chorus, and if “AmyW” follows it up with a psychedelic-flavored instrumental, it’s one that nevertheless keeps the Melt the Honey’s energy up. Even though it doesn’t feel like a fast-paced album, Melt the Honey is over before you know it–you might have to give it a couple listens before fully appreciating what’s going on in the back half of the album, like the lilting guitar pop of “Paige Machine”, the brisk “Missy”, and the psych-folk exploration of “Trippin”. It’s pleasingly off-the-cuff-sounding, but Melt the Honey is the work of a committed and driven group of musicians. (Bandcamp link)
Heat Wrays – Drip Down
Release date: January 17th Record label: Self-released Genre: Garage rock, post-punk, garage punk, fuzz rock Formats: Cassette, digital Pull Track: On Notice
Heat Wrays are a quartet that hail from Leeds–they put out a three-song demo EP back in 2022, but they’re starting off this year by taking a huge leap forward in the form of an eleven-song, 45-minute debut album. On Drip Down, Heat Wrays are a bit hard to categorize–they’re one part fuzzed-out garage rock, another part blunt post-punk, and another part of them just wants to make loud, distorted pop music. One thing that strikes me upon listening to Drip Down is just how fully-developed these songs are–one of the reasons that it’s difficult to label Heat Wrays a pure “garage punk” act is their aversion to brevity and complete confidence in letting their songs stretch out to four and even (gasp) five minutes. The album was recorded at Stationhouse Studio, and part of why it works as well as it does is it sounds great–the bass is more than substantial, sounding like a post-punk/noise rock low-end, while neither the guitarwork–frequently thorny, reminiscent of 90s indie rock–nor the post-punk, sung-spoken vocals get shortchanged.
“Heat Ring” kicks Drip Down off with a runaway electric guitar riff before launching into some spirited garage-post-punk that just…never runs out of steam. “Professional Conduct” one track later similarly rolls forward for five minutes, but isn’t above adding in a few tricks–some vocals that sound about as animated as this kind of music gets, plus some melodic guitar leads that get a little buried but not enough to be obscured amidst the torrent of distortion. The hidden, bouncy riffs are the secret weapon of Drip Down, punching up workouts like “Atomic Football” and “Clairvoyant” (and singing right along with everything else in the seemingly-out-of-nowhere glam-power-punk anthem “On Notice”). Another thing I’ll say about Drip Down is that it does not let off the gas–just when you think you might need a breather, the guitars come crashing in on “Weaver St” and “Grapevine Cross”, or the drumbeat sprints out in “Buffet Memorial”, and we’re off to the races yet again. Drip Down is an ambitious debut, and it’s got more than enough energy to see it to its conclusion. (Bandcamp link)
Swimming Bell – Charlie
Release date: January 19th Record label: Adventure Club/Permanent Genre: Folk rock, country rock, singer-songwriter Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital Pull Track: I Believe in Us
Charlie is the sophomore album from Swimming Bell, the project of Los Angeles-based Katie Schottland, and it becomes apparent from the opening notes of “I Believe in Us” that Schottland and her collaborators (including producer/multi-instrumentalist Oli Deakin, horn player Kyle Resnik, pedal steel guitarist Tim Kelly, and drummer Morgan Karabel) have put together a collection of songs inspired by the Laurel Canyon sound that originated in their city of residence decades ago. However, the journey to Charlie is a bit more winding than “southern Californian folk artist makes southern Californian folk music”–it began five years ago when Schottland was still living in Brooklyn, and a look through her history reveals a singer-songwriter just as versed in indie rock as in classic folk (she’s covered Love as Laughter and Wand, and contributed to music from Savak). While Charlie certainly isn’t a post-punk or heavy psychedelic rock album, I do appreciate that Schottland lets these songs have a wide-open, full-band sound that’s within the Laurel Canyon guidelines but not sounding hamstrung by them.
Charlie’s opening shot, the immaculately-designed “I Believe in Us”, is as well-executed as its core is simple–Schottland’s endless chorus melody and simple pop song chord structure get slowly draped in Resnik’s horns, Allison Robinson’s harmonies, and extra guitar lines to immediately hook the listener. The rest of Charlie isn’t quite as immediately attention-grabbing, but it’s still got a palpable energy–check album midpoint “Ash in the Jar”, a winding, generous country rocker that has no shortage of impressive moments sewn into it, and even the quieter songs like “Company” and “Take It Easy” are fleshed-out in a way that other folk records might balk at. Schottland pulls out a curiosity in Charlie’s second half in her cover of 70s psych-folk-rock duo Curtiss Maldoon’s “Fly Like an Eagle”, finding a maximalist smoothness in it that turns the track decidedly into her own. Album closer “Just Begun” is perhaps the only moment where Swimming Bell really relents and lets Schottland carry a song with (mostly) just an acoustic guitar; after building something impressive, Charlie is content to end by finally trailing off into silence. (Bandcamp link)
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