Hi, how are you? Today’s blog post looks at three albums that are coming out this Friday (new ones from The Pretty Flowers, Private Lives, and Josaleigh Pollett) plus an album from The Fruit Trees that came out last month. Flowers? Trees? Gardens? Weeds? Indeed.
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 Pretty Flowers – A Company Sleeve
Release date: July 14th Record label: Double Helix Genre: Power pop, alt-rock Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital Pull Track: Baby Food
The Pretty Flowers are a Los Angeles-based quartet led by singer/guitarist/lyricist Noah Green and also featuring multi-instrumentalist Jake Gideon, drummer Sean Christopher Johnson, and bassist Sam Tiger. The band’s debut album, Why Trains Crash, came out back in 2018, followed shortly by the covers collection Golden Beat Sessions a year later. Although it took a half-decade for their second full-length, A Company Sleeve, to finally materialize, songs from the record had slowly been trickling out over the past three years (one of them “Bucket Beach”, appeared in an early post on this blog). The album is more than worth this wait–it’s a very strong collection of earnest guitar rock that incorporates bits of slacker rock, jangle pop, college rock, power pop, pop punk, and heartland rock all led charismatically by Green’s clear, everyman vocals.
The Pretty Flowers kick off A Company Sleeve by offering up a couple of tunes in their most frequent mode–that of later Replacements-indebted, big-chorus-featuring power-pop-punk. “Young Gray Enemies” takes a second to fire up, but it certainly does so, and the band rip through songs like “Another Way to Lose” and “Baby Food” in the first half of the record with speed and catchiness. The album’s A-side is stuffed with hits–it also features two successful deviations from the Pretty Flowers sound, the floating jangle pop of “Bucket Beach” and the breathtaking synth-aided centerpiece “Agendaless”. “Wildflowers” and “Doughboy Pool” keep the energy up into the back end of A Company Sleeve–although most of my immediate favorites came from early on in the record, a closer inspection reveals the quality doesn’t really decline. The giddy power pop of “Sit Right With You” lies in wait as track number ten, ready to become your favorite song on any given repeat listen–and A Company Sleeve is a record that invites such wearing out. (Bandcamp link)
Private Lives – Hit Record
Release date: July 14th Record label: Feel It Genre: Post-punk, garage punk Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital Pull Track: Anything for Love
Montreal’s Private Lives debuted in late 2022 with a self-titled EP that introduced the band (comprised of members of groups like Pale Lips, Priors, and Lonely Parade) with five songs of energetic, punk-y and post-punky garage rock– the group hit the ground running. All five of the tracks from Private Lives reappear on Hit Record, the band’s full-length debut, in addition to an equal number of brand new tunes that live up to their first EP’s promise. The new songs on Hit Record lock into place quite nicely with the older ones, although one does detect some movement from Private Lives between the two releases. Private Lives balanced both ripping garage rock and sharp post-punk, while Hit Record’s newer offerings find the quartet embracing their power pop undercurrent.
Hit Record opens up with two new incredibly catchy offerings–the clap-along glam-punk of “Trust in Me” and the bouncy “Anything for Love”–both of which hold their own against some of the darker material that immediately succeeds them. The brisk drumbeat of the title track guides it to the buzzsaw guitars that excitedly punch up its chorus, and the flying rhythm section of “Dead Hand” is the one new track that embraces Private Lives’ post-punk tendencies. The one new song that truly bucks the trend is closing track “Dark Spots”, which starts in typical Private Lives fashion only to build to a pounding, frantic conclusion. Although the repurposed Private Lives songs largely offer up the heavier end of the spectrum here, “Dark Spots” shows that Private Lives certainly haven’t lost that dexterity–they remain an exciting new band in their year two. (Bandcamp link)
Josaleigh Pollett – In the Garden, By the Weeds
Release date: July 14th Record label: Lavender Vinyl Genre: Experimental pop, indie folk, indie pop Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull Track: Empty Things
Josaleigh Pollett is a Salt Lake City-based singer-songwriter who’s been making and/or playing music in some form for the past decade and a half. For the past four years, they’ve been doing it with collaborator Jordan Watko, a partnership that began with 2020’s No Woman Is the Sea and continues onto their newest record, In the Garden, By the Weeds. Although Pollett’s new album is, in a literal sense, a bedroom pop record (recorded by the duo in a bedroom over the course of two years), it’s worth defining the fractured melodies of In the Garden, By the Weeds more clearly. What Low (a band Pollett cites as an influence) did to slowcore and 90s indie rock in their last few albums feels analogous to what Pollett and Watko seek to do with the indie folk and more modern kinds of indie rock on their newest album.
That is to say, In the Garden, By the Weeds starts from the foundation of familiar and recognizable genres and takes some sharp turns from this point. The first three songs on the album are all as catchy as they are intricate–“YKWIM” starts off as unassuming folk-pop before launching into the stratosphere, while “The Nothing Answered Back” wisely refuses to crack the tension that it hoards over its four-and-a-half minutes. “Empty Things” takes it a step farther–a massive piece of synth-aided pop married to stark singer-songwriter vocals and lyrics, it sounds like a Julien Baker song disintegrating upon reentry. Pollett is a force of a vocalist, this is very much apparent–whether they’re presenting the worry in “Jawbreaker” or the determination of “Earthquake Song”, the strength of their voice regularly pushes these songs over the edge. It’s a key ingredient to In the Garden, By the Weeds, but equally important are Pollett and Watko’s adventurous arrangements and the strong cores of the tracks themselves. (Bandcamp link)
The Fruit Trees – Weather
Release date: June 23th Record label: Flower Sounds Genre: Lo-fi indie rock, folk rock, slowcore Formats: Cassette, digital Pull Track: Sophie (Sludge)
The Fruit Trees is the southern California-based project of singer-songwriter Johnny Rafter, who released his debut album under the name last month via cassette label Flower Sounds (The Lentils, Wendy Eisenberg). Although Rafter plays over a dozen instruments throughout Weather’s fourteen songs and forty-six minutes, the album is far from a completely solo affair, also featuring vocal and/or instrumental contributions from eight others. One would guess that the expanded cast and stuffed runtime reflects a debut album pieced together over several years finally seeing the light of day. In that way, Weather is a grand statement, albeit a subtle one, in which Rafter keeps the songs spare enough to give off an impressively hushed tone.
Weather is both lo-fi and beautiful; it’s reminiscent of the fuzzy folk rock of groups like The Microphones in how Rafter straddles the line between rock band and solo project. Early on in the album, “Sophie (Sludge)” is a fully-realized version of the maximalist end of The Fruit Trees, blooming into a wide-ranging chamber folk sound. Although many more songs on Weather build like “Sophie (Sludge)” does, plenty of the album moves in a quieter way. These numbers, like the banjo-aided “Table”, the psychedelic “A Rainbow”, and the mostly-instrumental “Moth”, embrace an acoustic, slowcore-esque sound that reminds me of Dave Scanlon, and the pretty duet “Blue Eve” is almost in Belle & Sebastian territory. Weather is an album to get lost in, and before you know it, “Spoken (Spring)” is drifting off to put a cap on the record. (Bandcamp link)
Welcome to Pressing Concerns yet again! If you like EPs, this is the issue for you: new ones from Hell Trash, Other Houses, and Alpha Strategy grace this edition. For long-player fans, we’ve also got a new album from No Metal in This Battle to discuss.
If you’re looking for more new music, you can visit the site directory to see what else we’ve written about lately. If you’d like to support Rosy Overdrive, you can share this (or another) post, or donate here.
Hell Trash – Live at Home
Release date: June 30th Record label: Self-released Genre: Lo-fi indie rock Formats: Digital Pull Track: Violence
The band called Hell Trash is a Philadelphia-based duo comprised of vocalist, guitarist, and keyboardist Rowan Horton and guitarist/vocalist Noah Roth. Horton and Roth are also half of the excellent new band Mt. Worry, and I’ve writtenabout Roth’s solo albums before too. Hell Trash appears to be primarily Horton’s project, as they wrote four of the five songs on their debut release and handle lead vocals as well. Speaking of said “debut release”, Live at Home wasn’t intended to introduce Hell Trash to the world, but Dan Jordan and Stuart McKean decided to record a set the band played at the Treehouse of Horror on June 8th, 2023, and Horton liked how it came out so much that a mere three weeks later, these five songs inaugurated the band as a standalone EP.
I’d already gathered that Horton was a solid songwriter based on the strength of the Mt. Worry EP, and Live at Home only confirms that their songs stand on their own as well. Horton’s four songs are presented fairly stripped down here, either played with just an acoustic and electric guitar or keyboard and guitar–there’s nothing for them to hide under, and they don’t need to. The various moods and modes of the four originals come through regardless of medium–the slightly dangerous-sounding, 90s alt-rock-indebted opening track “Violence”, the chilly “Gold Little Things”, the overburdened “Chemical Road” all make their marks.
Live at Home‘s songs are interspersed with moments of sincerity caught by the recording–Horton joking about how the final track sounds like a certain Gym Class Heroes song, Roth mentioning that Facebook told them it’s the ten year anniversary of them buying their guitar. Perhaps the greatest example of this is Hell Trash’s cover of “Shrieking Matter”, a song from the recently-released and very good Eternal Bliss Now! by Leor Miller’s Fear of Her Own Desire. Live at Home was recorded right after Mt. Worry and Leor Miller toured together, and as Horton explains, they wanted to play the song because they miss hearing their friend play songs they loved every night. Hell Trash may be a new band led by a principal singer-songwriter, but their cover of “Shrieking Matter” is a strong reminder that this kind of music thrives when the people who make it don’t treat it as a pure exercise in individualism and instead pay attention to what’s happening around them. (Bandcamp link)
Other Houses – Didactic Debt Collectors
Release date: July 7th Record label: Aagoo Genre: Power pop, indie pop Formats: CD, digital Pull Track: Swine Among the Relics
New Jersey’s Morgan Enos began making music as Other Houses in the mid-2010s, and he managed to put together a fairly robust discography in a short amount of time before his own music got put on the backburner in recent years as he became a full-time music writer. Indeed, I was familiar with Enos’ writing on Guided by Voices (among others) from Grammy.com, and he’s also a prolific jazz writer. The five-song Didactic Debt Collectors EP is Enos’ most substantial release since 2019, and it’s a charming collection of power pop-flavored indie rock that shows that Enos has learned a lot from both Robert Pollard’s bands and from the vintage power pop/pop rock that inspired Pollard himself. Didactic Debt Collectors was recorded by Enos alone in his “tiny home office”, and it strikes a nice balance between studiousness and lo-fi–the arrangements and writing feels deliberately-placed, but the relatively barebones recording style ensures the songs don’t come off as too labored-over.
Other Houses displays a knack for both a Pollardesque warped but pleasing melody and curiously memorable turns of phrase on Didactic Debt Collectors. Both of these tendencies are perhaps best expressed by closing track and highlight “Swine Among the Relics”, a relatively lo-fi and chilly song featuring chiming melodic guitar playing and a chorus in which Enos triumphantly sings of “Reliquary swine / With articulating spines”. The twisting structure of “Jacket’s Creed” also feels Guided by Voices-indebted, but Didactic Debt Collectors pulls from other kinds of guitar pop as well, from the deliberate acoustic pacing of opening track “Captive Audience” to the Jon Brion-esque straight-ahead power pop of “Drab Vocabulary”. The percussionless “Arc of the Arrow” layers the electric and acoustic guitars, but not distractingly enough to mute Enos’ wistful melody and lyrics. All of Didactic Debt Collectors ends up shining under this kind of presentation. (Bandcamp link)
Alpha Strategy – Staple My Hand to Yours
Release date: July 8th Record label: Self-released Genre: Noise rock Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull Track: Mr. Wobbles
Alpha Strategy emerged out of Canada in the mid-2010s as practitioners of a specific low-end-heavy brand of Jesus Lizard-esque controlled-chaos noise rock, recording albums like 2016’s Drink the Brine, Get Scarce and 2018’s The Gurgler with Steve Albini at Electrical Audio. In the five years since their last album, Alpha Strategy bandleader Rory Hinchey relocated to Berlin and later to Prague–while Hinchey originally kept the previous lineup of the band together, it eventually ceased being possible and he assembled a new band, featuring guitarist Martin Doležal, drummer Filip Miškařík, and bassist Ondřej Červený. This is the version of the band that made their first record since 2018, the four-song Staple My Hand to Yours EP, also with Albini at Electrical Audio.
As one might expect, Staple My Hand to Yours is ten minutes of vintage, beefy, scuzzy noise rock. The band offer up every necessary tenet of this sound–prominent and aggressive bass playing, frantic-sounding guitar leads, and insistent drumming. Hinchey is a natural noise rock vocalist, hollering, wailing, screaming, and muttering in a way showing he’s been to the school of David Yow (and I hear a bit of David Thomas in there, too). There’s some sharp and surprising structural choices on the EP, as well–the disorienting opening track “Mr. Wobbles” just straight-up stops for a few seconds, showing that Alpha Strategy aren’t just interested in blowing off steam and can pull off subtlety. The twisting blues rock of “Steel Hair” and the minimal post-punk zippiness of “Mosquito Generation Point” feel self-contained as well; Staple My Hand to Yours may be relatively brief, but it makes its mark nevertheless. (Bandcamp link)
No Metal in This Battle – Wie Kraut Und Ruben
Release date: June 16th Record label: Muaaah!/A tant Rêver Du Roi/Don’t Trust a Bear Genre: Post-punk, dance punk, krautrock, psychedelic rock Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull Track: Lightrider
When Luxembourg’s No Metal in This Battle formed over a decade ago, the trio (now a quartet) came from various European math rock and emo bands, but their latest album demonstrates a group that has come a long way from their genres of origin. Wie Kraut Und Ruben is a six-song album comprised of two brand-new songs and four songs that had initially been released as singles over the past couple of years. The record’s songs are, by and large, the sound of slickly-played, groove-heavy post-punk and dance punk: No Metal in This Battle’s influences on Wie Kraut Und Ruben sound like krautrock, psychedelic rock, and afrobeat above anything else.
Wie Kraut Und Ruben comes out blazing with “Lightrider”, one of the two new tracks, which offers up a slick piece of synth-colored, new wave-y funk rock, and the dancing guitar leads of “Shimokita” one song later keep its initial takeoff speed rolling along quite pleasingly. The other new track, “Lord of Fuzz”, is the record’s heaviest song, diving head-first into (as the title implies) fuzzy, smoking psychedelic rock. Two songs on Wie Kraut Und Ruben balloon to krautrock length–the seven-minute “Zeitzonensynchronisationmechanismus” and nine-minute “Fano”. Both of these songs show off No Metal in This Battle’s interest in Fela Kuti and afrobeat more generally, from the former’s swinging rhythm section and ticking-time-bomb structure to the latter’s Farfisa-aided explorations. The band steer through these turns deftly, but just as importantly, it sounds like they’re enjoying themselves as well. (Bandcamp link)
Welcome, welcome to a Thursday Pressing Concerns! Today’s post covers three records that are coming out tomorrow: new long-players from 12 Rods and Fort Not and a new EP from Wandering Summer, plus an EP from The Illness that came out a couple of weeks ago. If you missed Rosy Overdrive’s June 2023 Playlist with the holiday weekend and all, I’d recommend checking that 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.
12 Rods – If We Stayed Alive
Release date: July 7th Record label: American Dreams/Husky Pants Genre: Indie-alt-pop-new-wave-rock Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull Track: Comfortable Situation
Minneapolis’ 12 Rods are from a different era of indie rock, one in which the ascendent world of music blogging and the declining but still real power of record labels created an environment where a band could experience a palpable “rise and fall” that moved beyond idle internet chatter. The Ryan Olcott-led band rose on the strength of acclaimed pop rock records like 1996’s Gay? EP and 1998’s Split Personalities, got turned on hard by critics with 2000’s Todd Rundgren-produced Separation Anxieties, and got dropped by their label and subsequently petered out a couple years later. Ryan Olcott (who, along with his brother Ev, had been the only consistent member of the band during its initial run) discovered a few unfinished 12 Rods demos during the pandemic and finished them himself, resulting in the fifth 12 Rods album and first in twenty-one years: If We StayedAlive. If We Stayed Alive certainly sounds like 12 Rods–its seven songs evoke the turn-of-the-century moment that bands like them and the Dismemberment Plan were cracking open indie rock to evoke new wave and prog-pop influences like XTC and Rundgren.
Perhaps reflecting the solo nature of the album as well as the passing of time, If We Stayed Alive is a lot more mellow than the louder, full-band sound of their older records. This doesn’t blunt the pop impact of these songs, however–in actuality, it leads to an album that feels like how a “2023 12 Rods album” should sound like, in conversation with their earlier work but not coming off as an attempt to recreate the past. Subtle opening track “All I Can Think About” and the two tracks that immediately follow it put 12 Rods to work immediately in creating layered, smart, and engaging pop songs, and when Olcott deploys a bit of fuzz and distortion in “Comfortable Situation” it’s just another tool to serve the song rather than overwhelming it. The post-punk-indebted first half of “Hide Without Delay” is probably the most “classic 12 Rods”-sounding moment on If We Stayed Alive, and even that devolves into a floating, dream pop second half (and what’s more, it comes right after the rocksteady-evoking “The Beating”). Incredibly accessible but not without sonic depth, If We Stayed Alive is a welcome return from a pop songwriter who’s been away for too long. (Bandcamp link)
Wandering Summer – Wandering Summer
Release date: July 7th Record label: Repeating Cloud/Safe Suburban Home Genre: Noise pop, 90s indie rock, fuzz rock Formats: Digital Pull Track: Show Me the Way
Earlier in the year, Safe Suburban Home introduced us to the fuzzy but poppy indie rock of York’s Sewage Farm, and for their latest release, they’re hopping over to Leeds to present another winning practitioner of this kind of music. The self-titled debut EP from Wandering Summer is being co-released with Repeating Cloud Records, and it’s a collection of vintage indie rock landing somewhere between the louder end of C86/indie pop and the friendlier side of Sonic Youth noisy indie rock. The four-piece Wandering Summer (led by guitarist/vocalist Geddy Laurance and also featuring guitarist Luke Wheeler, drummer Jamie Deakin, and bassist Niall Kennedy) contains enough might to truly pull off some noisy freakouts while squarely keeping one foot in pop rock as well.
Wandering Summer opens with the triumphant-sounding fuzz-pop of “Show Me the Way”, a song which ends up setting the stage for the rest of the record. It is perhaps the EP’s most straightforward and accessible moment, but it’s not the only song that qualifies as such–both the stomping “Kick In” and the almost jangly “Ghost in Your House” rival the opening track in terms of pure catchiness, directing their noise and distortion to the hookiest possible end result. The other two songs on Wandering Summer are a bit more exploratory, although they’re not impenetrable either– “A New Mastery” is a sprint of a song, offering up a pleasing Stereolab/Yo La Tengo-esque propulsion, while closing track “Hexagons” is the band at their most Sonic Youth-evoking, tiptoeing forward uncertainly before exploding into a noise rock squall of a finish. (Bandcamp link)
Fort Not – Depressed for Success
Release date: July 7th Record label: Meritorio Genre: Lo-fi indie pop, twee Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull Track: Ringo Starr
Fort Not are a Kungälv, Sweden-based indie pop duo, and Fredrik Söderström and Robert Carlsson make a kind of lo-fi, rickety version of indie rock with a long and storied history. They cite (and their music reflects) decades of offbeat music, from The Velvet Underground to 80s “outsider” artists like Half Japanese to classic twee bands like Beat Happening to more “traditional” (but still weird) 90s flagship indie rock. Depressed for Success is their second full-length album, and it contains thirteen pop songs dressed simply in pop structures and basic indie rock instrumentation, but delivered with a conviction essential for making this kind of music work.
As simple as Depressed for Success’ songs may sound, there’s a desperation to the songwriting (sometimes provided by Söderström alone, sometimes in collaboration with Carlsson)–Fort Not’s narrators are preoccupied with unstable, waning, and perhaps unrequited love, a pop subject as old as time. Songs like “Longing” hit on universal “big feelings”, sporting a timeless melody over lyrics that very much tackle the titular subject. Throughout Depressed for Success, no matter where Fort Not are in regards to their relationships, they offer up catchy indie rock, either as a celebration or a balm. The optimistic uncertainty of “Ringo Starr” (“Do you wanna be my girlfriend…I don’t know for sure”), the complete dependence of “Candy Crush” (“Without you, I’m so stupid I can’t talk”), the disturbingly cheery suicidal ideation of “Stop Mclovin” (“If you don’t want me, I’ll go [varying measures of offing one’s self]”)–Fort Not don’t see why one can’t dance through it all. (Bandcamp link)
The Illness – Summerase
Release date: June 23rd Record label: Sea Genre: Indie pop, 90s indie rock, baroque pop Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull Track: Summerase
The Illness are a British-based “collective” that apparently have no set lineup but feature members of several groups I don’t know too much about (Ambulance, Wolf Solent, Broken Arm, Alisia Casper). Their debut single (2020’s “The Illness”) featured contributions from Pavement’s Steve West and Bob Nastanovich, although their first record, the Summerase EP, doesn’t exactly sound like that band’s brand of indie rock–at least, not exclusively so. Truthfully, the four songs of Summerase are all over the map–all of them are varying degrees of “pop song”, although The Illness take a few different tacks over the EP’s 13 minutes in presenting them.
The casual pop rock of “Everybody Knows That I’m a Fool” opens Summerase with the closest the EP comes to “slacker rock”, its staggered delivery failing to mask its charms. The Illness then immediately veer into their weirdest moment, the spoken word post-punk-y “Alone/Aline”, which is effectively an instrumental with some muttered vocals on top of it. The second half of Summerase offers up as many surprises as the first half, in the form of the sparse, slowcore beauty of “I Was a Quarrelsome Youth” (the band bio mentions Smog and Papa M for this one, which is on the money to my ears) and the gorgeously full-sounding baroque pop of the closing title track. Summerase is an intriguing debut from a band that is perhaps mysterious, but not difficult to listen to. (Bandcamp link)
Welcome to a weird sort-of holiday weekend–tomorrow’s the fourth of July, and I’m pleased to present Rosy Overdrive’s June 2023 playlist for you to throw on while you grill your various foods (for the Americans among us, at least). A lot of great brand new selections on this one!
Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit and Tough Age have multiple songs on this playlist.
Here is where you can listen to the playlist on various streaming services: Spotify, Tidal, BNDCMPR (missing two songs). Be sure to check out previous playlist posts if you’ve enjoyed this one, or visit the site directory. If you’d like to support Rosy Overdrive, you can share this (or another) post, or donate here.
“Country Roads”, Spirit Night From Bury the Dead (2023)
Spirit Night is the project of West Virginia-originating, Brooklyn-based singer-songwriter Dylan Balliett, whose last full-length album, Shame, came out back in 2015. I’ve liked Spirit Night for a while (the title track from Shame made an early appearance on this blog), but Balliett’s long-awaited fourth Spirit Night album and its lead single both represent a huge leveling-up moment for him. “Country Roads” is not the John Denver song (although Spirit Night do cover it for the single’s B-side), but an original fiery, massive alt-rock anthem that I never quite expected from Spirit Night, but one that makes perfect sense. Baillett digs deep here, repurposing the albums of his youth (“emo, punk rock, early 2000s Saddle Creek and Dischord Records”) and connecting the 17 year old driving around the Eastern Panhandle hanging onto music desperately with the thirty-something expat who’s “still back there all the time”.
There are thousand hometown-hating pop punk bands who’d kill to have come up with “Country Roads”’ vicious, stomping chorus (I can’t stop thinking about the guitar line that rushes up to the front when Balliett singes “at least I’m finally gone”), and Dane Adelman’s trumpet is a reminder that Balliett has plenty of emo tricks up his sleeve too. I do think that one can appreciate “Country Roads” without growing up in the same state that Balliett did, although realistically, being from West Virginia is a stamp that for whatever reason is hard to explain to anyone from the rest of the continental United States. There’s both an isolation and a pull to it that necessitates “Country Roads” being as strong-sounding as it is, like it would’ve been swallowed whole by John Denver and Spruce Knob and Walmart parking lots and “BBs under the skin” if it was any less firm in its rebuke of Balliett’s state of origin. And then you can see the nuance in between the grand, sweeping gestures, both in the lyrics of “Country Roads” and in Spirit Night’s accompanying completely sincere cover of the John Denver song as well (considering that Balliett is originally from Jefferson County, he hails from one of the few places in West Virginia that actually is reflected in “Take Me Home, Country Roads”). I’ll have more to say about Bury the Dead next month.
“Avid”, Faunas From Paint the Birds (2023, Shitbird)
On their newest EP, Washington, D.C.’s Faunas reinvent themselves compellingly as a clean-sounding folk rock band and turn away from their noisy garage rock roots. On album highlight “Avid”, the duo of Genevieve Ludwig and Erin McCarley take this even further–it’s a piece of grand, sweeping heartland rock. Even with the muted power chords and jangly leads, the close-sounding vocals ground “Avid” and help it fit in with the quieter, more intimate side of Paint the Birds. Read more about Paint the Birds here.
“Give It a Day”, Tough Age From Waiting Here (2023, Bobo Integral)
The Vancouver-based jangle pop trio Tough Age are a fairly versatile group. One of their most comforting modes on Waiting Here, their fifth album, is when they’re exploring the moments of guitar pop euphoria that have long marked New Zealand bands like The Clean and The Chills. The runaway hit of “Give It a Day” is perhaps the best example on record–it’s a song that is bursting at the seams with hooks and pure excitement. Read more about Waiting Here here.
“Short Centuries”, Upper Wilds From Jupiter (2023, Thrill Jockey)
“Short Centuries” isn’t exactly a typical Upper Wilds single, but it feels just right for the Dan Friel-led power trio. For one, it’s just as catchy as any of their explosive noisy pop tunes are, but instead of belting out the winning melody, Friel and the band let “Short Centuries” unfold slowly and deliberately–it’s Upper Wilds’ version of a hymn. Friel is aided by vocals from Katie Eastburn and Jeff Tobias, adding up to something that matches the power of Upper Wilds’ “louder” songs. On Jupiter, Upper Wilds are inspired by “scale and perspective”, appropriate for an album named after our solar system’s largest planet–on “Short Centuries”, Friel’s subjects are apparently Julio Mora and Waldramina Quinteros, the oldest married couple on Earth.
“Days Move Slow”, Bully From Lucky for You (2023, Sub Pop)
I’ve liked a Bully song here and there before, and I still think their debut album is pretty good, but Lucky for You is the first time that they’ve moved the needle for me in a full-length context since 2015’s Feels Like. Lucky for You is hooky in a way that Alicia Bognanno’s previous work would circle around but wouldn’t always reach for me, and the edginess is still there. “Days Move Slow” is like one huge chorus, a massive lost 90s alt-rock hit.
“Eat Sleep”, Deady (2023)
Deady are a new band based in Louisville, Kentucky featuring Mister Goblin/Two Inch Astronaut’s Sam Goblin on guitar, which is how I found them. “Eat Sleep” is the band’s debut single, and it’s a very catchy and bonkers piece of blaring, weirdo indie rock that sounds more like an Ohio crop than the Bluegrass State’s variety. My co-worker who knows who The Jesus Lizard are agreed with me that it sounds like Brainiac (although he also said Mister Goblin sounds like Sufjan Stevens, which feels a little less on the mark).
“This Is Gonna Change Your Mind”, Martin Frawley From The Wannabe (2023, Trouble in Mind)
Martin Frawley is an Australian singer-songwriter who gained notoriety as the leader of the band Twerps, although I discovered the Melbourne-based musician with his 2019 solo debut, Undone at 31. That album was full of effortless-sounding jangly guitar pop that evoked neighboring New Zealand, and his follow-up album, The Wannabe, offers up a collection of songs that won’t disappoint anyone who enjoyed his first record. Opening track “This Is Gonna Change Your Mind” is perhaps my favorite song on it, a casual-sounding song that still manages to ascend to “anthem”.
“When We Were Close”, Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit From Weathervanes (2023, Southeastern/Thirty Tigers)
Jason Isbell has said that “When We Were Close” isn’t about anyone specifically, but I immediately thought of Justin Townes Earle when I heard it, as did seemingly everybody else who cares about interpreting Jason Isbell songs. It’s a howling rocker (written in the style of the Drive-By Truckers) about being the only one left standing among two once equally-self-destructive musician friends. Like most of Isbell’s songs, it’s just about as simple as it can get away with structure-wise, and infinitely complex everywhere else.
“Carl St. Bernard, Pt. 1”, Noah Roth From Don’t Forget to Remember (2023, Devil Town Tapes)
Don’t Forget to Remember is an interesting follow-up to last year’s Breakfast of Champions for Philadelphia’s Noah Roth. Their newest album was recorded quite quickly while visiting family in the Chicago suburbs, as opposed to their last album’s years-long gestation time. Songs like “Carl St. Bernard, Pt. 1” don’t show any signs of being tossed off, however–Roth messes around with effects and distortion like they do elsewhere on the album, but this song is as catchy and poppy as anything on Breakfast of Champions. Read more about Don’t Forget to Remember here.
“Part Time”, Oceanator (2023, Polyvinyl)
I can’t say enough about the talents of New York’s Elise Okusami, whose two most recent albums as Oceanator (2020’s Things I Never Said and 2022’s Nothing’s Ever Fine) were both one of my favorites from their respectiveyears. “Part Time” is a one-off single, and it’s one of the Okusami’s most straightforward and poppy moments yet, contrasting with the more inward turn of last year’s Nothing’s Ever Fine. “Part Time” was co-written with Cheekface’s Greg Katz, which might explain the bounciness a bit, but it’s still unmistakably an Oceanator track.
“Voices”, All My Friends Are Cats From The Way I Used to (2023, Grey Cat)
All My Friends Are Cats are a vaguely feline-themed pop punk/power pop/slacker rock trio from Pittsburgh led by vocalist/guitarist Dave Maupin and also featuring guitarist Patrick Roche and drummer Charlotte Pyle. “Voices” leads off their debut album, The Way I Used to, and it’s a really compelling opening statement–it sounds very casual, a mid-tempo track featuring Maupin talk-singing over some shaky but catchy guitar chords, and it slowly sneaks up on you from that foundation.
“Vanish”, Scrunchie From Scrunched (2023, Candlepin)
You can always count on an under-the-radar Candlepin Records release to show up on one of these playlists somewhere. This month, it’s a selection from Scrunched, the debut album from Los Angeles’ Scrunchie (which is an un-Googleable band name, by the way– “scrunchie band” is beyond useless as a search term). Scrunched is a modern shoegaze record if I’ve ever heard one, with Scrunchie’s Danny Rincon layering on the effects like no one’s business. “Vanish” has an incredibly catchy chorus underneath the fuzz nevertheless, even offering up some slick “ooh ooh oh”s.
“Etched You In”, FOOTBALLHEAD From Overthinking Everything (2023)
FOOTBALLHEAD’s debut album, Overthinking Everything, is a collection of thirteen power pop/alt-rock tunes run through in under half an hour. Chicago’s Ryan Nolen and his collaborators balance heaviness and hookiness quite nicely throughout the album, particularly on “Etched You In”, an exhilarating side two highlight that combines punk speed with jangly guitars and an all-time pop punk chorus. Read more about Overthinking Everything here.
“Forgiving Ties”, Deer Tick From Emotional Contracts (2023, ATO)
Deer Tick are another band that I’ve liked a song from every once in a while (I still get “Jumpstarting” from 2017’s Deer Tick Vol. 2 stuck in my head with some frequency), but I don’t think I’ve been taken with a song of theirs the way I have been with “Forgiving Ties”. The Emotional Contracts highlight is effectively a vintage roots rock/college rock throwback from the alt-country band, basically sounding like a modern version of Los Lobos or The Silos or even Miracle Legion. Who else is making music with these touchstones right now?
“Mostly Roses”, Long Odds From Fine Thread (2023)
I wrote about Connections’ new album, Cool Change, earlier this year–it’s one of this year’s best and a welcome return from the Columbus band. Although Cool Change was the first Connections album in a half-decade, there was a Connections-related album that came out last year: the debut album from Long Odds, the new project of former Connections and Times New Viking member Adam Elliott (and also featuring Connections bassist Philip Kim). “Mostly Roses” opens Fine Thread with a low hum, a sneakily catchy piece of lo-fi indie rock that will grow and grow on you.
“Pearl”, Empty Country (2023, Get Better/Tough Love)
I’ve long been an open fan of the dearly departed Cymbals Eat Guitars, and frontman Joseph D’Agostino’s self-titled debut as Empty Country was a highlight of 2020 for me. Empty Country’s first new music since then is “Pearl”, a single that for now stands on its own but hopefully augurs the advent of more music to come from the project. “Pearl” is an impressive statement on its own, twisting and turning and layering on itself over five minutes–it really feels like Empty Country is developing into something distinct (but not removed) from Cymbals Eat Guitars, and my curiosity is certainly piqued.
“The Candlemaker”, Stoner Control From Glad You Made It (2023, Sound Judgement)
“The Candlemaker” is possibly the first-place song on Glad You Made It, a rock-solid five-song guitar pop EP from Portland’s Stoner Control. The trio give the track a jangly sheen and also lead it down a few surprising left turns, but “The Candlemaker” nevertheless feels like it hits every right note. Sam Greenspan’s melodic vocal delivery is key for selling “The Candlemaker” (“Guided by candle, guided by candlelight” won’t leave my head). Read more about Glad You Made It here.
“Sixers”, The Hold Steady From The Price of Progress (2023, Positive Jams/Thirty Tigers)
I saw The Hold Steady live recently. It was great! They’re a great band! Maybe I’ll write more about it sometime, but for now I’ll just say that I came away from it really appreciating “Sixers”, a song I hadn’t really given a second thought to beforehand. I’m slowly coming around to The Price of Progress after being a little disappointed in it initially, and “Sixers” is a brilliant track that shows that the band still very much “have it”. Craig Finn’s lyrics here are as engrossing as anything he’s written, and if he feels a little muted, well, this story isn’t exactly a triumphant one.
“Aujourd’hui”, Savak From Rotting Teeth in the Horse’s Mouth (2020, Ernest Jenning Record Co.)
Brooklyn’s Savak recently recorded what will become their sixth album, but before that comes out, I have gone back and really checked out 2020’s Rotting Teeth in the Horse’s Mouth for the first time (long overdue, considering how much I enjoyed its follow-up, 2022’s Human Error / Human Delight). In addition to having one of the best album titles ever, Rotting Teeth in the Horse’s Mouth also contains “Aujourd’hui”, one of the best entries to the pop end of the Savak sound spectrum. The titular French phrase becomes an unlikely but undeniable hook as it repeats again and again over the soaring instrumental.
“China Aster”, The High Water Marks From Your Next Wolf (2023, Minty Fresh)
Your Next Wolf is a really stacked album–over seventeen songs and forty minutes, The High Water Marks deliver highlight after highlight of bright, hooky fuzzy pop rock. The album’s A-side has a bunch of hits, but, hidden away towards the end of the record, “China Aster” might sneakily be Your Next Wolf’s best song. Hilarie Sidney’s vocals are somewhat restrained, but the rest of the band give her plenty of space, only roaring into fuzz-pop in the breaks between. Read more about Your Next Wolf here.
“Dog Leg”, Rodeo Boys From Home Movies (2023, Don Giovanni)
Rodeo Boys are a garage-y, grunge-y, punk-y indie rock group that hails from Lansing, Michigan, and they tear through their second album, Home Movies, with appropriate ferocity. The catchy but still beefed-up-sounding “Dog Leg” is my favorite song from the album, and it takes me back to the vintage messy but determined sounding rock music from the 2010s that bands like Swearin’ and Screaming Females were making. Tiff Hannay sells the song completely, and there are also some legit guitar heroics towards the song’s end.
“Callin’ Out”, Paint Fumes From Real Romancer (2023, DIG!/Bachelor)
Paint Fumes is a practitioner of what we can perhaps go ahead and call Rosy Overdrive’s bread and butter–garage rock/power pop. The Charlotte-based band has actually been around a while–Real Romance is their fourth album since 2012 or so, and it’s a blast. “Callin’ Out” is the biggest highlight to my ears–that chorus hook is undeniable and the quartet get everything they can out of it, and there’s a big old guitar solo sticking out of its midsection too.
“Never Fucked Up Once”, Militarie Gun From Life Under the Gun (2023, Loma Vista)
I was moderately excited for the debut Militarie Gun album–I enjoyed some songs off the EPs, but I wasn’t a full acolyte of Ian Shelton’s music like others seem to be. Life Under the Gun was a pleasant surprise–it’s not my favorite album of the year or anything (yet), but it’s the band’s most fully-realized work to date and balances edginess and catchiness quite well. Shelton’s voice is probably still a deal-breaker for more traditional guitar pop fans, but he delivers the bittersweet “Never Fucked Up Once” about as well as one could hope.
“Sun Don’t Shine”, Luke and the Second Coming From Luke and the Second Coming (2023, Mossdeep)
“Sun Don’t Shine” is the lead single and opening track off of Luke and the Seconding Coming’s self-titled debut album, and it introduces the Pittsburgh-based band (led by Luke Crouse) on a high note. “Sun Don’t Shine” is a shimmery, jangly piece of mid-tempo alt-rock with a beast of a chorus: it’s got that “90s adult alternative” sheen that evokes singles from bands like the Goo Goo Dolls and Gin Blossoms, although it’s a little more electric when that chorus kicks in.
“The Version”, The Radio Field (2023, Less)
Dusseldorf, Germany’s The Radio Field is a new project from musician Lars Schmidt–I wasn’t familiar with Schmidt before now, but he’s been leading the Germany indie pop group Subterfuge for thirty years. The Radio Field only have five songs to their name so far, but if “The Version” is any indication, it appears that Schmidt has plenty of good guitar pop music left in him. “The Version” is aided by Max von Einem’s trumpet and trombone, a triumphant-sounding piece of jangle pop that is eager to please.
“Toothache”, Lydia Loveless From Nothing’s Gonna Stand in My Way Again (2023, Bloodshot)
New Lydia Loveless? That’s effectively a lock for the playlist, yes. “Toothache” leads off the announcement of Nothing’s Gonna Stand in My Way Again, Loveless’ first album since 2020’s excellent Daughter. Loveless is back with a rebooted Bloodshot Records for their new album, and if “Toothache” is any indication, it’ll continue their long winning streak. “Toothache” has one foot in the more atmospheric indie rock touches that colored Daughter, but it’s also a fairly grounded tune and it’s not hard to hear the “classic Lydia Loveless rock and roll” contained herein as well.
“Haunted”, Big Blood From First Aid Kit (2023, Ba Da Bing!/Feeding Tube)
I’ve vaguely heard of Big Blood before, but I think that First Aid Kit is the first time I’ve really checked out this Portland, Maine band, and it wasn’t quite what I expected. I knew that the band was in some way connected to 90s post-rock group Cerberus Shoal, but First Aid Kit is a pretty accessible, poppy post-punk/new wave record that feels right out of the early 80s. “Haunted” is a six-minute college rock anthem, plodding along with its bass triumphantly like a brighter Siouxsie and the Banshees cut.
“King of Joy”, Pickle Darling From Laundromat (2023, Father/Daughter)
Christchurch, New Zealand’s Pickle Darling is the project of Lukas Mayo, who’s been making their delicate, twee indie pop on small labels like Z Tapes since the mid-2010s. Laundromat is their first record for Father/Daughter Records, but it sticks to Mayo’s enjoyable, humble lo-fi pop roots. “King of Joy” is under 90 seconds long–you’ll miss it if you blink–but it sports what might be my favorite Pickle Darling melody, slowly working its way up to a hushed electro-pop lullaby.
“Cast Iron Skillet”, Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit From Weathervanes (2023, Southeastern/Thirty Tigers)
I’m thinking of that one Mountain Goats lyric– “I turned it over in my mind, like a living Chinese finger trap” (from “Pale Green Things”). This lived-in complexity, the kind that keeps your mind coming back to something and sifting through it, is why Jason Isbell is as good a songwriter as he is. The way that the title line of “Cast Iron Skillet” and a few similar ones invert typical “country wisdom” songwriting cliches to drive its points home is remarkable enough on its own, but there’s more and more to come back to even beyond a single clever subversion of expectations.
“Hideaway”, Tough Age From Waiting Here (2023, Bobo Integral)
“Hideaway” is another great example of Tough Age’s kiwi-flavored power/jangle pop, rivaling the undeniable energy of “Give It a Day” earlier in the playlist. The track runs around in circles giddily, with Jarrett Evan Samson’s excellent vocals throwing out melody after melody and the playing of the rest of the band being more than punchy enough to match him. Read more about Waiting Here here.
“Whale Party”, John R. Miller & The Engine Lights From The Trouble You Follow (2018, Emperor)
John R. Miller has a new album coming out in October, and I’m sure I’ll have something to say about it at some point, but this month I want to reach back to 2018’s The Trouble You Follow, an album I hadn’t really appreciated until recently. Miller is a great songwriter, and the loose but substantial The Trouble You Follow is a good example of it as any– “Whale Party” is one of the more fun songs on the album, a swinging piece of string-heavy folk-country with plenty of meat on it.
“Daytona 500”, Home Is Where From The Whaler (2023, Wax Bodega)
The new Home Is Where album certainly sounds a lot like Neutral Milk Hotel, doesn’t it? Not that that’s a bad thing–tons of bands claim In the Aeroplane Over the Sea influence but they somehow miss on actually creating something reminiscent of it, but Home Is Where bandleader Brandon Macdonald and her crew have definitely hit on something here. And “Daytona 500” is a pretty singular creation–if anyone were to question Home Is Where’s Florida bona fides, this is quite possibly one of the most Sunshine State songs to exist.
“Were”, Pretty Matty From Heavenly Sweetheart (2023, Self Aware)
Pretty Matty ends their latest album, the power pop hookfest of Heavenly Sweetheart, with the sweet and sour “Were”. It’s undeniably an anthem to send the record off with a bang, and lyrically it pulls no punches. In it, Matty Morand excoriates and sets the record straight about a one-sided relationship–Morand declares they have no intention whatsoever to return to “the good old days” of the addressee of the song enjoying themselves at Morand’s expense. Read more about Heavenly Sweetheart here.
“Sweet”, Feeble Little Horse From Girl with Fish (2023, Saddle Creek)
The Horse is back! I’m not sure yet how their breakout album, Girl with Fish, stacks up against their earlier work for me, but at the very least I can already put “Sweet” up there with their best songs so far. It’s an excellent piece of fuzzy noise pop, with the opening blaring piece becoming a dizzy hook, and Lydia Slocum and Sebastian Kinsler’s vocals playing off each other quiet nicely. It’s all over in two and a half minutes, but Feeble Little Horse make enough racket and excitement for “Sweet” to work perfectly.
“Big, Strange, Beautiful Hammer”, U.S. Highball From No Thievery, Just Cool (2023, Lame-O)
The British indie pop duo U.S. Highball have followed last year’s sublime A Parkhead Cross of the Mind with No Thievery, Just Cool, another solid collection of breezy guitar pop tunes whose surface simplicity doesn’t hinder their catchiness one bit. I could’ve chosen several from this album, but the verse melody of “Big, Strange, Beautiful Hammer” is so good that I have to go with this one.
“Huntin’”, Slander Tongue From Monochrome (2023, Alien Snatch)
Here’s another one of these garage rock power pop hits! I’m not sure if there’s much to say about “Huntin’”, which is just an excellent snotty piece of rock and roll that pulls from early 70s punk and power pop brilliantly and undeniably. Sometimes a good song is just good, and I’m not going to pass on “Huntin’” just because I can’t think of any cool hook to put in this little paragraph. They’re from Berlin, that’s kinda unusual for the music I write about?
“Homebound”, Grapes of Grain (2023, Drag Days)
Back in January 2023, Grapes of Grain released the Getaways EP, and I highlighted that record’s “In This Moment” in a previous playlist. The Utrecht-based band are back a few months later with a new two-song single (recorded during the sessions for an upcoming full-length album), and the A-side, “Homebound”, rivals anything from the group’s last record. It contains Grapes of Grain’s recognizable blend of vintage jangle pop and alt-country, with singer-songwriter Alexis Vos’ vocals rolling gently along the music provided largely by multi-instrumentalist Berend Jan Ike.
“Rockfort Bay”, Fust From Genevieve (2023, Dear Life)
I could’ve chosen plenty of songs from Genevieve to put here (one of them, single “Trouble”, already appeared on an earlier one of these playlists), but I keep coming back to the short and sweet “Rockfort Bay”. The roaming and displacement at the heart of Genevieve is quite present on this sub-two minute tune: it’s a song about thinking and hoping that still ends with Fust’s Aaron Dowdy feeling that he’s “never gonna change” as he heads out of the titular town. Read more about Genevieve here.
“Smoky”, Alright From Breaking Down (2023, Self Aware/Tor Johnson)
Charlotte, North Carolina’s Alright is the project of Sarah Blumenthal, who also co-runs Self Aware Records and co-leads the band Faye. “Smoky” was originally released as a part of a split single with Late Bloomer (whose Josh Robbins is a frequent contributor to Alright’s music, although Blumenthal recorded all of this single herself) along with “Pebbles”, another good track. “Smoky” shows off Blumenthal’s more pensive side, with synths and prominent bass guitar shading a wistful pop ballad.
About two years ago, Rosy Overdrive premiered “Gretchen Took a Ride”, a one-off single from Jack Habegger’s Celebrity Telethon. “Gretchen Took a Ride” was a warm and promising song, a piece of dreamy folk and indie-country that walked the line between familiar intimacy and West Coast cosmic psychedelia quite nicely. The song was recorded by the Portland, Oregon-based Habegger, multi-instrumentalist Jordan Krimston, and cellist Addison Clark, and came with the tentative promise of more material to come.
It took a couple years for Jack Habegger to follow up “Gretchen Took a Ride”, but he and the Celebrity Telethon were hardly idle in the meantime. The Celebrity Telethon bloomed into a five-piece band (Habegger, Clark, Isaac Beach, Skyler Pia, and Emmet Martin), played some shows backing up the late great Lavender Country, and signed to Portland’s Lung Records. All the while, they were working on a brand-new full-length album–the Celebrity Telethon’s first.
The Knockout Game comes out August 25th, and single and opening track “End Over End” is the first taste of the upcoming record. Whereas “Gretchen Took a Ride” merely flirted with alt-country, “End Over End” finds the Celebrity Telethon diving headfirst into cowpunk and countrified rock and roll. Habegger’s vocals still sound calm and friendly, but here they’re at the center of a western dust storm–the galloping rhythm section and toe-tapping guitar lines help “End Over End” land somewhere between a sped-up traditional country tune and a kinder, gentler version of the Meat Puppets. The song’s video leans into this sound, functioning both as an introduction to The Celebrity Telethon and as a repository for a bunch of images and clips that echo what we hear in “End Over End”.
“End Over End” is available now for pre-ordering as an 8″ (!?) single with “So Easy”, another song from their upcoming album, as the B-side, and with artwork from Mary Fleener and Pat Moriarity. The Celebrity Telethon are playing an album release show for The Knockout Game at Portland’s Clinton Street Theater on Thursday, August 24th, also featuring Laith & The Texas Birds, Nick Normal, and Scorch.
Hello! It’s a Thursday Pressing Concerns, and this one is going to look at four records that come out tomorrow: EPs from The 3 Clubmen and Shady Bug and albums from Special Friend and Young Moon. If you missed Monday’s post (which covered Tough Age, Pretty Matty, Motorbike, and Seriously) or Wednesday’s post (which covered the second half of my 1981 deep dive), I recommend checking 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.
The 3 Clubmen – The 3 Clubmen
Release date: June 30th Record label: Lighterthief/Burning Shed Genre: Psychedelic pop, psychedelic folk Formats: CD, digital Pull Track: Aviatrix
The post-XTC music career of Andy Partridge is vast, nonlinear, and full of more detours and alleyways that one would expect. You might know his Fuzzy Warbles series or the record he did with Robyn Hitchcock; I’m partial to the song he contributed to the most recent Monkees album and Wing Beat Fantastic, his collaboration with Mike Keneally. Two people that have been regular Partridge collaborators in his post-XTC era have been Swindon producer/multi-instrumentalist Stu Rowe and Albuquerque-based singer-songwriter Jen Olive. The three would pop on each other’s projects with some frequency: Partridge’s group Monstrance, Rowe’s band Lighterthief, Olive’s solo records. The idea for the three of them to form a band together dates back over a decade–work began, but perhaps fizzled out due to all three of their other projects and Olive’s physical distance. However, the pandemic found them reconnecting and putting together a real, fully developed 3 Clubmen release–a self-titled, four song CD EP.
The 3 Clubmen opens with an instant classic with “Aviatrix”. It’s a beautiful pastoral piece of folky-pop that feels right out of XTC’s Mummer era, with Partridge and Olive’s vocals floating around a hypnotic and peaceful instrumental. If you think that the EP is just going to be a revisitation of this period of Partridge’s past, however, “Racecar” immediately comes sliding in to disabuse you of that notion. It’s all blaring, groovy, trippy electric psychedelia, Olive’s vocals transforming into a droll taunt. The strangest song on The 3 Clubmen by far, “Racecar” feels like a fresh look on ingredients that Partridge has been using in his music for decades (this is perhaps where Rowe and Olive make themselves felt). “Green Green Grasshopper” and “Look at Those Stars” comprise the second half of the EP–the former splits the difference between the EP’s first two songs, with its folky, nature-inspired feeling slowly building to something more layered, and the latter sends the EP off with a perfect piece of fluttery psychedelic pop. It would be interesting to hear The 3 Clubmen create something longer than a four-track EP, but if The 3 Clubmen ends up being all that we get, that’s enough to call it a fruitful collaboration. (Burning Shed link)
Release date: June 30th Record label: Exploding in Sound Genre: 90s indie rock, noise rock Formats: Cassette, digital Pull Track: Zero Expectations
St. Louis’ Shady Bug first appeared on my radar with the release of 2019’s Lemon Lime, their second album and first for Exploding in Sound Records. It was a curious record, neither being one of the label’s more “accessible” albums nor one of the more “out-there” ones–on Lemon Lime, Shady Bug made music inspired by guitar-forward 90s indie rock, but primarily dealt with the insular and exploratory sides of it. The follow-up to that album took four years to materialize, and the What’s the Use? EP demonstrates the band growing as time has passed. They still make frequently noisy and unbridled indie rock, but the band (guitarist/vocalist Hannah Rainey, bassist Chris Chartrand, guitarist Ripple, and guest drummer Jack Mideke) sounds more streamlined and focused–perhaps to better serve the limited time an EP release offers–and Rainey’s vocals impress in their ability to command attention and deliver melody.
The two-minute “Zero Expectations” comes crashing in to introduce What’s the Use?, the opening squall of guitars giving way to something quite catchy, but the noisy interjections decline to abate as Rainey delivers her lyrics and gets her hooks in. “Frog Baby” and “Popsicle” are less loud than “Zero Expectations”, at least at first. The former floats along like said frog on a lily pad, peacefully-seeming on the surface but ready to leap at any moment–and in the chorus, Shady Bug do just that. “Favor” is about as straightforward as Shady Bug get, with the noisiness reduced to some discordant guitar stabs and a few moments towards the end as Rainey reels off a long train of thought on working endlessly to please others and Chartrand’s bass soars. Closing track “Lizard” is the one song that balloons to a notably longer length (six-and-a-half minutes), but for the most part it’s as accessible as the rest of What’s the Use? just with an extended outro where the band finally fully let loose, for just a little bit. (Bandcamp link)
Special Friend – Wait Until the Flames Come Rushing In
Release date: June 30th Record label: Skep Wax/Hidden Bay/Howlin Banana Genre: 90s indie rock, noise pop, dream pop, slowcore Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital Pull Track: Wait Until the Flames Come Rushing In
Special Friend is the Paris-based duo of guitarist/vocalist Guillaume Siracusa and drummer/vocalist Erica Ashleson, who formed in 2018 and have put out an album and an EP over the past couple of years on familiar labels like Hidden Bay and Howlin Banana. Their second album, Wait Until the Flames Come Rushing In, is being co-released with Skep Wax in the United States and United Kingdom, and it’s a compelling collection of classic indie rock. Sometimes dreamy, sometimes distorted, sometimes poppy, the record’s ten songs move at their own pace and roam in whichever direction Special Friend feels they should go.
Wait Until the Flames Come Rushing In marries noise and pop in a way that suggests Special Friend have listened to their fair share of Yo La Tengo, but there’s also ingredients from dream pop, shoegaze, C86, and slowcore in these tracks as well. The album’s first few songs have fuzzy undertones but deliver wistfulness and melancholy above everything else (if bands like Scrawl, Velocity Girl, and The Spinanes mean anything to you, I hear them in this album). The album veers into a more electric nervousness with “Fault Lines”, although Side B’s “Applause!” is the record’s one true unqualified rocker. The runaway fuzz rock of “Applause!” is great, although Special Friend have just as much if not more success in how they incorporate their louder side into multi-part songs like the captivating title track or the slow-building “Maze”. Although Special Friend mostly stick to their guitar-and-drums setup, they offer up more than enough energy and dexterity to flesh out and deliver Wait Until the Flames Come Rushing In. (Bandcamp link)
Young Moon – Triggered by Sunsets
Release date: June 30th Record label: Orindal Genre: Synthpop, post-punk, new wave, singer-songwriter Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull Track: September Youth
Trevor Montgomery was a San Francisco-based musician who, during the 2000s, played with post-rock legends Tarentel and made music on his own as Lazarus. During the following decade, Trevor Montgomery began his Young Moon project, releasing two records in 2012 and 2016. The first two Young Moon albums are both reverb-y collections of dreamy indie rock–there are traces of this sound on Triggered by Sunsets, but Montgomery’s third album under the name is a bit of a departure. The wide gap between Young Moon albums found Montgomery making a major life change–after the loss of a close friend at the end of 2019, he moved from the Bay Area to Nelson, New Zealand and weathered the pandemic far away from anyone he knew. The record he made during this time is a dark but clear-sounding album, built around relatively minimal synths, drum machines, and guitar parts moving slowly along with Montgomery’s baritone vocals.
Triggered by Sunsets is Young Moon’s first record with Orindal Records, and it feels kin to bands on the label like Friendship and Owen Ashworth’s projects (Advance Base, Casiotone for the Painfully Alone). Songs like “Dance Yer Sadness”, “Heart of Glass”, and “Say Young Moon” dive headfirst into this starker side of Young Moon, with Montgomery really shining in all the empty space that the music creates. Young Moon still knows how to create shining guitar pop or post-punk tunes, mind you–“I Laid on My Back with Death” strums its way toward being a side one highlight, while the soaring “September Youth” and “Take on Thee” rely on busy bass and jangly, melodic guitars toward the album’s end to give it a back-half kick. Triggered by Sunsets is a gentle-sounding album, but Montgomery’s voice and writing makes it an active listen as well. (Bandcamp link)
Welcome! This is Part 2 to a post that went up last month, so I’d recommend checking that one out for context if you haven’t already. It’s not too hard to explain, though: over the past couple of months, I’d listen to one new-to-me album from the year 1981 (first one every day, later reduced to every other day), write a couple sentences about my thoughts on it, and post it in the Rosy Overdrive Discord channel. I covered sixty albums in total; the first thirty appeared in the first blog post, and here below are the second thirty.
Keep in mind, these records are all ones that I’d never listened to in full before. There are plenty of great albums from 1981 (Solid Gold, Stands for Decibels, Re*ac*tor, Black Snake Diamond Role, Youth of America, Odyshape, and at least a dozen more) I already know and love and thus do not appear here.
Bandcamp embeds are provided when available, but most of these albums aren’t on there, so I’ve created a playlist (Spotify, Tidal) of a song from each one of these records (Parts 1 and 2 are combined into the same playlist) you can use to listen along if you’re so inclined. So, without any more ramblings from me, let us dive deeply into music from over four decades ago.
April 24th: The Durutti Column – LC (Factory)
The Durutti Column were an OG Factory Records band and one of the few post-punk “Names” I know very little about. I checked out LC to fill in this gap, and what I got was definitely not what I expected. It’s loosely post-punk, sure—I see the traces of it—but these tracks are very airy dream pop and ambient-inspired indie rock songs. It actually feels ahead of its time in how it combines all of this together in an accessible way—there are a lot of bands who are trying to sound like this (albeit with more layers/more shoegaze influence generally).
April 25th: Squeeze – East Side Story (A&M)
Squeeze! It took me a while to get to them but I’ve come to appreciate them lately. I think they’re sort of in the purgatory of being too big to be a hip “underground” band for alt-kids to be into but not big enough that they made it to the next generation in a more mainstream capacity. Plenty of great power pop songs here (“In Quintessence”, “Piccadilly”, “Heaven”), although like most of the best bands of that genre they’re not “just” that. This album is almost fifty minute for some reason, and probably shouldn’t be—the second half’s clearly weaker but there’s also not an obvious “cut” song.
April 26th: Marine Girls – Beach Party (Whaam!)
There’s a new Everything But the Girl album, but today I’m going way back to the first album from Tracey Thorn’s FIRST band. Things are pretty different with Marine Girls’ minimalist indie pop sound, and Beach Party is especially stark. Compared to their other album, Lazy Ways (which I’ve heard), it’s even more rudimentary/simple/whatever, with the barest of instrumentation accompanying the vocals. Sixteen songs that roughly point the way to where UK indie pop would go in the next few years, plenty of immediate tunes (“In Love”, “Honey”, “Flying Over Russia”) but as a whole this one takes a bit. It’s growing on me a little already.
April 27th: The Psychedelic Furs – Talk Talk Talk (Columbia)
Hey, any of y’all heard this “Pretty in Pink” song? Pretty good, eh? Okay, okay—this one reminds me of the Echo & the Bunnymen album in that it’s another “big”-sounding post-punk album, but this one sounds a little better to me initially because it feels a little less one-note and more…fun. Truthfully there’s a lot going on in these songs so I’m not sure if I’m totally absorbing them yet (I think the excessiveness of the instrumentation makes them an “80s band” as much as anything else). Best use of saxophone and best song title goes to the best track, “Into You Like a Train”.
April 28th: Phew – Phew (Pass)
Headed to Japan again. Phew is a musician who’s worked with members of Yellow Magic Orchestra, Einsturzende Neubauten, and CAN, the latter of which contributed to her first, self-titled, album. Compared to those acts, Phew seems simpler-sounding if no less straightforward—a lot of these songs are just a minimal post-punk groove or eerie experimental rock instrumental with Phew’s vocals over them. There’s something about these weird rickety little songs that keep me drawn to them, though. It feels like there’s a lot going on under the surface.
April 29th: Empire – Expensive Sound (Dinosaur)
This one got pulled from somewhat obscurity by Munster Records last year in a reissue. Apparently Empire were related to Generation X somehow although it doesn’t sound that much like them. This is actually a really catchy, pop-friendly album, but in an organic and decidedly not mainstream 80s way—songs jump from dark post-punk (title track) to straight power pop (“Hot Seat”). Feels like the works of punks but only sometimes like a “punk album”. Could’ve come out this year and sounded fresh.
April 30th: Tom Tom Club – Tom Tom Club (Island/Sire)
I’ve now heard the Tom Tom Club album. It’s alright—it gets off to a slow start. No matter how much I try to put myself in 1981 mindset I just cannot take “Wordy Rappinghead” seriously, and while “Genius of Love” is solid I don’t LOVE it like other do. Jams start with “L’Elephant” and Tom Tom Club are good at ‘em, though it gets a bit tedious after a while. Could’ve used a few more fun, simpler songs like “On, On, On…” to break them up. The cassette-only cover of “Under the Boardwalk” is pretty fun also.
May 1st: Brian Eno & David Byrne – My Life in the Bush of Ghosts (Sire/E.G.)
Part two of our impromptu swing through Talking Heads side projects continues today. And also another one, like Tom Tom Club, where I really gotta put my 1981 glasses on. This is one where the short summaries aren’t great—I’m sure there’s some long-form writing about the, uh, wide array of sampling going on here and how it reads in 2023. To me now it mostly just sounds like solid instrumental funk rock with random interjections placed over it now and then. Probably more interesting than the Tom Tom Club album, probably less likely to return to it.
May 2nd: Ludus – The Seduction (New Hormones)
Manchester post-punk group—never even heard of them before starting this, but they’re connected in some way to a lot of bigger groups from the scene. On the weirder, off-the-wall side of things. Ludus like to stretch and twist their songs, occasionally veering them into ditches. Three of the eight are over 8 minutes long. No surprise this wasn’t bigger at the time, kind of surprised it’s not more well-known now. It’s hard to get into a rhythm on this one but I’ll be coming back to it.
May 3rd: Wall of Voodoo – Dark Continent (I.R.S.)
AKA the one that doesn’t have “Mexican Radio” on it. Wall of Voodoo sound how I think of them here—a very weird band that one could dismiss as gimmicky on the surface, but I think that does them a disservice. Stan Ridgeway is definitely one of the more interesting frontpeople of the 1980s, and the music is pretty simple synth-rock (that actually does rock). I’d say that a lot of modern “synthpunk” bands don’t sound far off from this, with the caveat that if there’s somebody in a new band doing a similar thing to Ridgeway, I haven’t heard it. “Red Light” isn’t on streaming which is unfortunate because it’s one of the highlights.
May 5th: Daniel Johnston – Songs of Pain (Self-released/Stress)
This one took a while because it’s an hour long (plus I’ve been very busy). Anyway, this sure is a Daniel Johnston album. It’s his first, recorded in his parents’ basement in West Virginia, and it’s nowhere near my favorite of his that I’ve heard. It’s interesting to hear Johnston grapple with how his upbringing was clashing with his current feelings in the lyrics, but some of the subject matter gets tedious after 60 minutes. Still, there’s brilliant stuff here; he’s already a good songwriter and he was already keying in on something here that he’d really hit on in the next few years.
May 8th: Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark – Architecture & Morality (Dindisc)
Today I’m getting into a big name in synthpop that I’ve been pretty ignorant about before now. Probably due to the name, I’ve associated OMD with, like, coldwave and goth-pop kinda music, but that doesn’t really describe Architecture & Morality. There are darker moments, sure, but this is bright and pretty new wave-y synthpop for the most part. Sounds like a less druggy version of where New Order would end up in a few years, not to mention feeling like the blueprint for a lot of huge 80s music to soon follow. Pleasant surprise.
May 9th: Crass – Penis Envy (Crass)
It…might be too early in the morning for me to take all of this in. Had not listened to a full Crass album before but knew “Bata Motel”—and that’s not an outlier here. This is landmark screed-punk, it’ll take me several listens to absorb all Eve Libertine is saying here but I get the gist (and I’m intrigued yes). A little exhausting, a lot to take in all at once, but the band helps—ramping up the drama with something like the seven-minute “What the Fuck” or the deconstructed “Health Surface” gives the album some key dynamics (not that their default mode of rat-a-tat punk is a bad one).
May 11th: A Certain Ratio – To Each… (Factory)
I’ve heard the ACR album before this one and the one after it, and it does kind of sound like a midway point between the muddy post-punk of The Graveyard and the Ballroom (okay, not particularly memorable) and the sharp dance punk of Sextet (very good). The longer jams are appreciated (although yes the twelve minute “Winter Hill” maybe didn’t need to be that long), and the funk bass combined with the dour post-punk vocals is interesting (although this may end up falling into the “more interesting than good” camp for me).
May 13th: Romeo Void – It’s a Condition (415)
This is a good album. I’m surprised I don’t hear more about Romeo Void these days (I guess they’re technically a one-hit wonder); this album at least holds up. It’s on the post-punk – college rock – new wave axis somewhere—“Myself to Myself” sounds like what so much guitar music would sound like for the next decade. Oh, and there’s a lot of saxophone here too. It’s quite poppy (maybe a bit too much for the record collectors) but in a very non-dated way. Maybe would’ve gotten more respect if they were British instead of from San Francisco.
May 15th: Grauzone – Grauzone (EMI/Welt/Off Course)
Grauzone are a Swiss post-punk group most famous for their non-album “Eisbär” single (which also came out in ‘81). This was their only full-length album. It’s an interesting one—it’s split between guitar and synths, and it’s a little weird but the songs are hooky despite their dark European post-punk dressing. For this kind of music it feels surprisingly alive. I don’t know if this one record and that single is enough for me to elevate them into the cult short-lived band top-tier, but it’s pretty solid.
May 17th: Muddy Waters – King Bee (Blue Sky)
99.9 percent chance that this is going to be the only blues album that I do during this. King Bee was the final Muddy Waters album, recorded while he was in failing health and augmented with some older outtakes to make up for that. I’m probably not a big enough fan to tell the difference, but Waters still sounds good to me, even if these songs aren’t clearly game-changing like his earlier recordings—not essential but a perfectly fine note to go out on. I like the message of “Champagne & Reefer”.
May 19th: The Human League – Dare (Virgin)
I’ve hit on a bunch of synthpoppy albums while doing this, but this one is maybe the truest expression of the genre. The Human League sound like, as soon as they heard a synth play a pop song chord, they said “yes please, we’ll be doing that and only that”. Accordingly, given that I’m not huge on synthpop on its own, this album didn’t do much for me. Gravitated towards the weirder stuff like “I Am the Law” mainly for a change of pace. And “Don’t You Want Me” is one of the better “big” songs that’s shown up in these, I’d say that one holds up.
May 22nd: Polyrock – Changing Hearts (RCA)
I found Polyrock’s first album a while back—they seem kind of like one of these “if you know, you know” small post-punk bands. Like their neighbors one state over, The Feelies, Polyrock seem interested in stretching the bones of rock music out and riding some grooves, but they do it in a slightly more NYC art punk/new wave kind of way (honestly, The Strokes sound way more like this than Television or The Velvets). Changing Hearts is thirty-six minutes long and the rhythm section is always on. The self-titled album seems more highly regarded, but this one is nearly as good.
May 24th: The Slits – Return of the Giant Slits (CBS)
Ah, the “Difficult Second Album” was definitely a major feature of this era of music, and this might be one of the clearest adherents to this phenomenon. Not that The Slits were ever the poppiest band, but at least Cut sort of sounded like a punk album amidst the reggae and weirder flirtations. This one is all offbeat, out there stuff—maybe a bit too unmoored. The first song is awesome, there’s definitely more great moments (“Improperly Dressed”, also very good) and they’ve got a good “sound”, but it doesn’t quite work for me as a whole.
May 26th: Tuxedomoon – Desire (Ralph)
Hey, this is pretty neat! First album I’ve ever listened to by Tuxedomoon, a long-running “RIYL” weirdo rock band but one that doesn’t really (that I’ve seen) have the cult following the groups like Einsturzende Neubauten, The Residents, Pere Ubu etc have. Desire is recognizably a post-punk album, although certainly a wonky and post-rock-y one. The whole thing is interesting but it does lose some steam towards the end. As an opening punch “East/Jinx” is hard to top.
May 28th: Blue Öyster Cult – Fire of Unknown Origin (Columbia)
Hey, just because it’s the 80s doesn’t mean 70s hard rock disappeared immediately. Fire of Unknown Origin has BÖC’s SECOND biggest hit, “Burnin’ for You”, a nice piece of power pop (yeah, I said it) that I probably like better than that other song by them. The album’s full of BÖC’s brand of somewhat dark but still quite fun rock music—not every song on this one works, but the title track, “Joan Crawford”, “After Dark”—these songs have some meat on them. Music to paint your van to, yes.
May 30th: Scientist – Scientist Rids the World or the Evil Curse of the Vampires (Greensleeves)
Dub time. Today it’s Scientist (not to be contused with ScientistS, the garage rock band that put out a good album this year too), and his album with the really long title that seems to be one of his most beloved ones as well. I like a lot of dub-influenced things but rarely listen to full-on dub, but this was enjoyable. Other than the monster-inspired snippets, I don’t really have the knowledge to properly differentiate this from other dub albums, and I can’t say this one converted me to becoming a dubsciple, but I do see the appeal in this kind of thing. Thank you, Scientist, for ridding the world of the curse of the evil vampires.
June 1st: Agent Orange – Living in Darkness (Posh Boy)
California! Punk rock! A bit harder than, like, X, but not recognizably “hardcore” to me (I think the serious tone of it gets it stuck with that label more than the sonics, which are classic punk to me. Maybe they would’ve been a post-punk group band if they were British, but it’s better this way). The surf rock influence is pretty neat. I don’t really know too much about this band, but this album holds up pretty well forty-some years later (even though it’s less than 20 minutes long, stretching the whole “album” thing).
June 3rd: The Teardrop Explodes – Wilder (Mercury/Fontana)
I think this one gets grouped into the “difficult second post-punk album” camp, but really it’s not too esoteric of a listen unless you’re allergic to horns in your guitar music. It’s Julian Cope so there’s bound to be a bit of psychedelia contained herein; it sounds more or less how “The Teardrop Explodes” should sound. It didn’t really blow me away on first listen or anything, but it’s a worthy follow-up to 1980’s Kilimanjaro (which is probably still the one to check out for this band, but don’t skip this one if Kilimanjaro works for you).
June 4th: Dome – 3 (Dome/Rough Trade)
According to science, most people live their entire lives without hearing a single Dome album. I’ve now heard three of them. This was Bruce Gilbert and Graham Lewis’ side project while Wire was on ice for most of the 80s—it’s quite experimental. I like the first Dome album a little bit. The second is okay, but by the third most traces of the parts of their music I like aren’t present and it’s mostly just industrial somewhat ambient noise. Decidedly not for me.
June 7th: Roger – The Many Facets of Roger (Warner Bros.)
Roger Troutman is not the only reason to respect Ohio, but he’s one of the better ones. Between his solo albums and his band Zapp he’s an all-time funk great—I know the singles but this is the first full album I’ve heard. Six songs here, including his eleven minute vocoder synth-funk version of “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” and the laser of “So Ruff, So Tuff”. The stretch from “A Chunk of Sugar” to “Maxx Axe” is a lot smoother but still very good, especially the latter of the three.
June 8th: Genesis – Abacab (Charisma)
I’m almost done with these, but we’re going to check in on Pop Genesis before we go. Abacab is one of the albums that you aren’t “supposed” to like, but it’s pretty solid new wave-y 80s pop music (yes, it’s weird that this band also made Selling England by the Pound—okay, got that out of the way). Starts off strong, gets tedious around the seven-minute song about the dodo bird and the genuinely irritating “Who Dunnit?” but recovers with a couple nice ones towards the end. Even on the weaker songs, though, you can’t say they aren’t trying.
June 12th: Svart – Gryning (Stranded)
I stumbled upon this mostly unknown Swedish post-punk/art punk album while looking for albums to do for this exercise—this has to be the most obscure one I’ve done. This is a pretty interesting find—there’s some synthy new wave stuff but on the whole it sounds pretty weird. Some of it almost prefigures the indie rock of the next decade. It didn’t blow me away or anything, I wouldn’t put it up there with the best of ‘81–but, like I said, it’s an intriguing find.
June 17th: Tom Verlaine – Dreamtime (Warner Bros.)
Closing the door on this project with an album from the late legendary guitarist. I’m not surprised by how it sounds (like Television, but more singer-songwriter-y) but that’s not a bad thing. A testament to his/his band’s influence, Dreamtime doesn’t sound like ‘81, or any year, really. This is always necessarily going to be overshadowed by Marquee Moon, but if you like that album and haven’t explored Verlaine’s work beyond it, I’d say this is worth a listen.
Welcome to a Monday Pressing Concerns! Today, it’s new albums from Tough Age, Pretty Matty, Motorbike, and Seriously that get spotlighted (spotlit?). This is a classic post! If you like the music I typically write about on this website, all of these will be up your alley!
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.
Tough Age – Waiting Here
Release date: June 16th Record label: We Are Time/Bobo Integral Genre: Indie pop, jangle pop, power pop Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull Track: Give It a Day
Tough Age are a trio based out of Vancouver, British Columbia, and they make some of the most exciting guitar pop music I’ve heard so far this year. Waiting Here is Tough Age’s fifth album–the band has weathered a move to and back from Toronto, as well as a few lineup changes. Singer-songwriter-guitarist Jarrett Evan Samson is joined by bassist Lauren Smith and drummer Jesse Locke on this album, and together they tear through ten spirited tracks of Flying Nun-inspired indie rock music. Samson is a gifted pop songwriter, capturing a range of emotions with his relatively barebones band setup, and Tough Age give these songs a full-band energy that’s missing from a lot of modern Dunedin-inspired bands.
Tough Age can pull off both the ruminative, pensive side of bands like The Clean, and their moments of pop euphoria as well–look no further than how Waiting Here’s understated opening track “In a Garden” transitions into the runaway hit of “Give It a Day”, a song that is bursting at the seams with hooks and pure excitement. “Hideaway” similarly runs around in circles giddily, and the Smith-led “Paradise by Another Name” is propulsive jangle pop at its best. Tough Age have some more dimensions to their sound, however–the light psychedelia of “Which Way Am I?” reminds me a little bit of Guided by Voices, “Time & Time” again recalls the melancholic side of The Bats, and “Narrative Text” features a hard-working rhythm section and a droning keyboard that puts it into Yo La Tengo or The Feelies territory. Tough Age are a full-on pop band on Waiting Here, executing these ideas in the way they deserve to be. (Bandcamp link)
Pretty Matty – Heavenly Sweetheart
Release date: June 14th Record label: Self Aware Genre: Pop punk, power pop Formats: Cassette, digital Pull Track: Were
Matty Morand is half of the Toronto pop-punk-alt-rock duo PONY, whose excellent sophomore album Velveteen I wrote about just a month ago. In addition to their work in PONY, however, Morand also leads Pretty Matty, their own band that’s been around since 2018 and have an album and a couple EPs to their name already. Pretty Matty (also featuring PONY’s Sam Bielanski on bass, plus guitarist Christian Beale and drummer Josh Cassidy) explore a familiar but welcome style of hybrid pop punk/power pop on their second album, Heavenly Sweetheart, and it’s clear they’ve spent a lot of time listening and being moved by this kind of music. Morand sounds freaked out, strained, and bratty at various points on Heavenly Sweetheart–they’re a natural pop punk frontperson.
Morand covers a lot of ground on Heavenly Sweetheart–dealing with a stalker figure on “Changed My Number”, being broke for so long “that it doesn’t even faze [them]” on “Weird Year”, setting the record straight about a one-sided relationship in “Were”, and trying desperately to get in contact with someone in “After the Tone”. It’s all soundtracked by sweet and fuzzy-sounding pop rock with some fairly pleasing guitar work strewn about the instrumentals. Heavenly Sweetheart has a fairly uniform overcoat, but the songs differentiate each other within this context–“Been Worse” and “Life Support” are the louder pop punk tunes, “See You Around” is just a little jangly, “Changed My Number” and “After the Tone” cruise in mid-tempo. Morand makes sure to stuff more than enough to chew on in Heavenly Sweetheart’s 28 minutes–it doesn’t feel like being short-changed the way a few under half-hour albums might. (Bandcamp link)
Motorbike – Motorbike
Release date: June 16th Record label: Feel It Genre: Garage punk, punk rock Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull Track: Life Is Hell
Motorbike are the latest rock band to come out of Feel It Records headquarters Cincinnati, Ohio, led by the Welsh singer Jamie Morrison and featuring members of bands like The Drin, Good Looking Son, and Vacation backing him up. The self-titled debut Motorbike album is a blast of a record that lives up to its name–the quintet tear through nine fiery garage punk tunes in 26 minutes, sounding ferocious but with a classic punk catchiness buried underneath the multi-guitar attack (provided by Dakota Carlyle and Philip Valois). Morrison’s vocals hold their own, but the guitars are the star of Motorbike, roaring over everything else and delivering both catchy riffs and sonic squalls.
Motorbike start Motorbike with “Motorbike”, a dark but propulsive piece of rock and roll whose lead guitar riff is incredibly catchy against an almost post-punk backdrop. The band break out plenty more vintage garage punk workouts in the first half, including the explosive “True Method”, the breakneck “Throttle”, and the appropriately-named “Off I Sped”. “Life Is Hell” surprisingly features a recurring jangly lead guitar, and the playing in “Spring Grove” sounds triumphant–these songs are where the pop side of Motorbike peeks out most cleanly through the fuzz. Still, Motorbike save one of their best garage punk numbers towards the end (penultimate track “Pressure Cooker”), and close things out with the thorny burn-it-down anthem “The Language”. The whole thing rocks heavily and demands to be played loud. (Bandcamp link)
Seriously – Built Environment
Release date: June 16th Record label: Earth Libraries Genre: Post-punk Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull Track: Under the Boot of God
Seriously are a Birmingham, Alabama-based post-punk trio made up of guitarist/vocalist/synth player Michael Harp, guitarist/vocalist Jonathan Crain, and bassist/vocalist Chayse Porter (who now lives in San Francisco). I believe that Built Environment is the band’s first full-length album, following a couple of singles over the past few years. It comes out via Earth Libraries (Cash Langdon, Joe Kenkel, Pelvis Wrestley), and while the album certainly falls under the umbrella of post-punk, it resists settling into one lane or groove within that genre. Seriously deploy plenty of synths but remain a guitar-forward band, their songs typically have “normal” structures but they get a little experimental around the edges, and the songs range from noisy garage rock to smooth 80s new wave-esque numbers.
The first two songs of Built Environment are the sharp stomp of “Darkroom” and the floating bright colors of “With Delight”. Seriously don’t stop probing from there, offering up the bass-and-synths-led dance-punk of “No Salvation” in the record’s first half, and marking the midpoint with “The Architect”, an atmospheric synth instrumental that feels right out of 1982. Seriously shade their songs with a college rock/new wave-y sheen, with tracks like “What If the Dream Comes True?” plodding along its post-punk beginning to offer up a gorgeous, melodic chorus. The title track, meanwhile, evokes downer British jangle pop groups for its entire five minutes, and “Under the Boot of God” closes Built Environment out on a busy-sounding but slow-moving note. Seriously have clearly studied a lot of music from the early 1980s as Built Environment shows, but they move too quickly to ever get stuck making a mere recreation. (Bandcamp link)
It’s Pressing Concerns time! This one tackles four records that either came out or will come out this week: The High Water Marks, Corvair, FOOTBALLHEAD, and Faunas. Wow! Good music! If you missed Monday’s post, which looked at Lorelle Meets the Obsolete, Silver Car Crash, Stoner Control, and Mythical Motors, 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.
The High Water Marks – Your Next Wolf
Release date: June 23rd Record label: Minty Fresh Genre: Lo-fi power pop, psych pop Formats: Vinyl, cassette, digital Pull Track: Trouble from the East
When The Apples in Stereo formed in Denver in the early 1990s, the group sought to combine the sounds of contemporary indie rock (which were in vogue at the time) with 60s psychedelic pop (which very much wasn’t). Over three decades since they set out with that mission, founding Apples/Elephant 6 member Hilarie Sidney is keeping this dream alive with her current band, The High Water Marks. The High Water Marks, led by Sidney and her partner Per Ole Bratset, released a couple of albums in the 2000s, but the band (now featuring multi-instrumentalists Logan Miller and Øystein Megård) has been on a tear recently, reeling off three albums since 2010.
What’s more–these new High Water Marks albums have only gotten better with time. 2020’s Ecstasy Rhymes was a solid re-introduction, last year’s Proclaimer of Things upped everything tightly, and Your Next Wolf just might be their strongest front-to-back record yet. Your Next Wolf is the first High Water Marks album from this lineup recorded in the same room–Miller’s Milford Sound studio in Kentucky (the rest of the band, I believe, still lives in Norway). The record was also mixed and mastered by Justin Pizzoferrato, the prolific engineer responsible for giving a lot of 90s indie rock bands and bands that sound like 90s indie rock bands a punch in their sound. All this together goes into making Your Next Wolf: seventeen songs and forty minutes of loud, fuzzy pop music with a full-band bite and a characteristic High Water Marks catchiness.
The highlights are all over the album–in the first half, the giddy “Stork” introduces the record with a punch, “Trouble from the East” is a blast of jangly rock, “I Could Never Be a Vigilante” chugs along to its simple and sweet chorus, and “Boreal Forest” rises near the midsection with a slick noisiness. There’s plenty of gems hidden on the B-Side of Your Next Wolf as well; singles “An Imposed Exile” and “Let’s Hang Out Forever” are on there, as well as a couple of songs towards the end (“China Aster” and “Just an Ordinary Day”) that might fly under the radar on first listen, but reveal themselves over time to be some of the strongest material on the record. Your Next Wolf is immediate but sturdy as well–rightnow feels like the best and most exciting time to be a fan of The High Water Marks. (Bandcamp link)
Corvair – Bound to Be
Release date: June 23rd Record label: Paper Walls/Where It’s At Is Where You Are Genre: Indie pop Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital Pull Track: Superstuck
In 2021, Corvair released their self-titled debut album, which ended up being one of my favorite albums of that year. Pulling from pop rock, power pop, and indie pop and rock of several decades past, the Portland-based husband-and-wife duo of Brian Naubert and Heather Larimer put together an ambitious and quite catchy record in Corvair–both were veterans of the Pacific Northwest music scene, but this new band was their first time playing together, and the results were immediate. Two years later, the second Corvair album, Bound to Be, pushes the band’s sound forward by continuing to probe vintage guitar pop music and songwriting. It feels slightly darker and pensive than Corvair was, but Naubert and Larimer (this time joined by Mike Musburger, formerly of the Fastbacks and The Posies, on drums) still offer up plenty of hooks in these ten songs.
Bound to Be opens with the relatively barebones “Shady Town”, whose infectious charms shine over top of a guitar riff and some synth accents. “We Fall Down” and “Right Hook” feel a little downcast for Corvair, with Naubert and Larimer’s vocals sounding melancholic and synths rising and falling over the instrumentals (they’re still quite poppy, though, particularly the latter song). “Superstuck” kicks off side two with what’s probably Bound to Be’s most straightforward upbeat pop moment, rolling forward over Naubert’s simple but effective singing and an effortless-sounding chorus. Bound to Be offers up some subtler but no less intriguing moments in the full-sounding ballad of “Wrong Again”, the hazy, floating “Ghost Perfume”, and the slightly nervous “Moon Was a Bowl”, all of which are successful detours. The melodic bass-led closing track “Kill My Time” ends Bound to Be with one last big pop finish, although Corvair don’t sound in a rush to get it over with, letting the song stop and start as they see fit. (Bandcamp link)
FOOTBALLHEAD – Overthinking Everything
Release date: June 20th Record label: Self-released Genre: Power pop, alt-rock, fuzz rock, pop punk Formats: Digital Pull Track: Etched You In
FOOTBALLHEAD is the project of Chicago’s Ryan Nolen, starting as a solo endeavor but expanding to include collaborators Snow Ellet and Adam Siska (The Academy Is…/Say Anything) on their first full-length album. Overthinking Everything follows last year’s Kitchen Fly EP and was preceded by a slow stream of singles that appear on the record and foreshadowed the band’s specific brand of catchy, 90s alt-rock indebted power pop. They’re in the same sphere as Ellet’s own music–FOOTBALLHEAD has a harder, rockier edge than Suburban Indie Rock Star, but Nolen doesn’t spend any less effort on catchiness on Overthinking Everything, nor does he neglect the bittersweet and melancholic touches that characterize many a great power pop record.
Racing through thirteen songs in under thirty minutes, FOOTBALLHEAD have plenty of ideas to present on Overthinking Everything. The tracks run the gamut from big-sounding fuzzy pop rock to dark and meaty alt-rock to cavernous and restrained-sounding quieter numbers. Nolen’s understated, melodic vocals shine over the guitars–for the first three songs, the music gets louder while Nolen keeps things steady throughout. Nolen haunts the empty space of “Like a Blister”, an eerie post-grunge mid-tempo tune that threatens to “kick in” but never relents (it’s less stark, but FOOTBALLHEAD pull of a similar trick in the hypnotic “Pilot”). Overthinking Everything tosses out catchy and heavy in equal measure through the giddy “Habits” to the nü-grunge of “Ugly Day” to “Etched You In”, an exhilarating side two highlight that combines punk speed with jangly guitars and an all-time pop punk chorus. FOOTBALLHEAD have a sound down already, and there’s more than enough quality tunes on Overthinking Everything; it’s a fully-realized and ready-to-go debut album. (Bandcamp link)
Faunas – Paint the Birds
Release date: June 20th Record label: Shitbird Genre: Folk rock, indie folk Formats: Digital Pull Track: Avid
Faunas is the Washington, D.C.-based duo of Genevieve Ludwig and Erin McCarley. They’ve been playing music for a while (Ludwig played in Big Hush), and their collaboration as Faunas dates back to 2016. The first Faunas release was 2017’s Shit Show EP, and it’s a record of very lo-fi, noisy garage punk. Ludwig and McCarley took six years to make a proper follow-up to Shit Show, and on Paint the Birds, they sound like a completely different band. On their newest record, Faunas veer hard into folk rock, offering up a collection of clean-sounding, beautiful songs. There’s a fuzziness that loosely connects it to their older work, but it’s hardly the most striking feature of Paint the Birds.
Opening with the instrumental “Cicadas”, in which some minimal guitar playing accompanies synths and ambient sounds, Paint the Birds already feels like a departure, which Faunas then cement with the first “proper” song, the acoustic “Jennings”. The track builds from its bare beginnings, even as it remains a folk song for its entire run. The next song, “Avid”, then turns into something else entirely–grand, sweeping heartland rock. Even with the muted power chords and jangly leads, the close-sounding vocals ground “Avid” and help it fit in with the quieter, more intimate side of the record. A few songs on Paint the Birds–the dark “Waxing Moon”, the lightly distorted “Sally’s High Priestess”, and the slick “Dear Johnny”–play around the edges of Faunas’ new folk rock sound, but they leave it mostly intact. They’re right to do so–the songs of Paint the Birds stand on their own. (Bandcamp link)
Welcome to Pressing Concerns! Today, we’re looking at brand new albums from Lorelle Meets the Obsolete, Silver Car Crash, and Mythical Motors, and a new EP from Stoner Control.
I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that today’s blog post happens to fall on Juneteenth, the day on which Bandcamp donates 100% of its shares from music sales to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. Today would be a great day to pick up one of these following records (or any other, really) on Bandcamp.
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.
Lorelle Meets the Obsolete – Datura
Release date: June 16th Record label: Sonic Cathedral Genre: Post-punk, psychedelic rock Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital Pull Track: Dos Noches
Baja California, Mexico’s Lorelle Meets the Obsolete have been around for over a decade at this point–Datura is their sixth album since 2011. I’d heard some of their previous music before (including their previous album, 2019’s De Facto), and I viewed the band (the duo of Lorena Quintanilla and Alberto González) as practitioners of experimental, spaced-out psychedelic rock that could be soft and drippy or heavy and impenetrable. With their newest album, however, Quintanilla and González have made something that feels a ways off from where Lorelle Meets the Obsolete had previously been. Gone are any wild song lengths (Datura is eight songs in 34 minutes, with only one of them crossing five minutes), and the rhythm section (handled by drummer Andrea Davì and bassist Fernando Nuti) grounds almost the whole album. What results is a fascinating record of post-punk that still has plenty of busy tricks up its sleeve, but delivers all of them while steadily marching forward.
The opening title track floats forward in a way that’s fairly recognizable for Lorelle Meets the Obsolete, although in this case Quintanilla’s vocals and the band’s synth stabs are ushered forward by a firm, insistent drumbeat. The chilly “Invisible” feels like a direct descendant of early 1980s Manchester, while the fuzzy “Dínamo” marries stomping psych-rock to a propulsive rhythm section. Most of the tracks follow the first couple of songs’ examples, putting together muscular, guitar-forward post-punk, although Lorelle Meets the Obsolete’s one real foray into true synthpunk, “Golpe Blanco”, sits well with the rest of the seven songs. Tracks like “Arco” and “Ave En Reversa” have moments of noise hidden in their patient, mid-tempo rocker foundations. Lorelle Meets the Obsolete keep exploring; closing track “Dos Noches” rolls along in a droning way that’s reminiscent of Stereolab or krautrock, with buzzsaw synths soundtracking the whole journey. (Bandcamp link)
Silver Car Crash – Shattered Shine
Release date: June 15th Record label: Crafted Sounds/Michi Tapes Genre: Noise rock, fuzz rock Formats: Vinyl, cassette, digital Pull Track: Pleasure Zone
Silver Car Crash are a Pittsburgh-based four-piece band who released their first album, Resource Body, back in 2018. The band took a half-decade to follow it up, but Shattered Shine feels like it’s arriving at the right time, when fellow fuzzy rock Pittsburgh groups like Feeble Little Horse, Gaadge, and Barlow are having something of a moment (much of which has been chronicled by Silver Car Crash’s label, Crafted Sounds). Compared to some of the more ephemeral-sounding bands in their home city, Silver Car Crash has a blunter, punker edge, feeling in debt to 90s noisy indie rock and more in line with modern bands like Pardoner, Gnawing, and Kal Marks. This isn’t to say that Shattered Shine is impenetrable, as the band offer up their share of loud pop songs as well.
Shattered Shine opens with the noise punk of “Interference” and the jerky “Nature” follows not long after, but “Lessons” in between the two sounds like a 90s indie rock anthem. “Crime” and “Pleasure Zone” come after the opening trio, and they’re even more of a surprise by offering up Guided by Voices-esque jangly, melodic guitars before launching into a more accessible but still recognizable version of Silver Car Crash. The band kick off side two of the album with the pleasing, roaring garage-punk of “Sacred Repetition”, and then work out with the dark, seething “Tee Vee”. Silver Car Crash never turn the amps down no matter where they’re at on Shattered Shine–whether it’s songs like “Minor Celebrity” that stomp all the way through or tracks like the multi-part closing track “Ways to Exist”–and this energy keeps the album engaging all the way through. (Bandcamp link)
Stoner Control – Glad You Made It
Release date: June 2nd Record label: Sound Judgement Genre: Power pop Formats: Digital Pull Track: The Candlemaker
In 2021, Stoner Control released Sparkle Endlessly, an incredibly hooky collection of power pop tunes that ended up being one of my favorite albums of that year. Glad You Made It is the Portland band’s first new original material since Sparkle Endlessly (they released a brief covers EP last year), and the five-song EP finds the trio putting together songs that hold up against their previous best work, even as it has its own personality separate from Sparkle Endlessly. Stoner Control sound a bit looser and less polished on Glad You Made It, with producer Matt Thomson letting the band’s slacker, 90s alt-rock side shine through a bit more than the (ahem) sparklier Sparkle Endlessly (particularly on Charley Williams’ songs), but they’re no less catchy here.
The most “rocking” songs on Glad You Made It are the first and the last one– “Glad You Made It” is a lost 90s rock radio anthem that the band sells completely, while “Too Bad” ends the EP on a loud and decidedly upset-sounding note (still fun to listen to, though). The three tracks in between them aren’t quite as mussed up–Sam Greenspan offers up the smart jangly pop of “Wearit Laze”, which wields its guitar line, slick verses, and bursting chorus to maximum effect, and “The Candlemaker”, a song that takes a few left turns but still feels like it hits every right note. Williams’ ballad “Show You Around” is the centerpiece of the EP, and it’s pulled off with as much aplomb as anything else on the record. Williams and Stoner Control keep it simple, letting the song earn its big instrumental finish. (Bandcamp link)
Mythical Motors – Join Her Circus
Release date: June 16nd Record label: Lo-Fi City Genre: Lo-fi power pop Formats: Cassette, digital Pull Track: The Howling Red
Chattanooga, Tennessee’s Matt Addison keeps plugging away at his lo-fi, bite-sized guitar pop without losing any of the sharpness in his songwriting. 2021 saw the release of his project Mythical Motors’ A Rare Look Ahead, which ended up being one of my favorites of that year, and while 2022 “only” saw a split release with Athens, Georgia’s Antlered Auntlord, Mythical Motors continue their streak into 2023 with Join Her Circus. If you’ve enjoyed previous Mythical Motors releases, Addison offers up a lot of his signature touchstones–big, hooky, Guided by Voices-influenced power pop with melodies sold by his high, excited voice. Mythical Motors has always been a lo-fi endeavor, but Join Her Circus feels a bit more fuzzy and louder than the last couple, which had a larger share of melancholic moments.
After the introduction of “Emerge from the Catacombs”, Mythical Motors begin to push things into the red with the punk-tinged “Tiger on the Balance Beam” and “In a Sanctuary”, which is a vintage, loud Mythical Motors anthem. Join Her Circus continues the spirited-sounding music by offering up garage-y takes on their sound (“Cut the Crimson Wire”, “Static Bird”, and “The Howling Red”), and a couple of really full, loud tracks that push Mythical Motors’ sound a lot closer to shoegaze than I would’ve expected (“The Thoughts Impossible” and “The Apparition”). Addison still sneaks in a couple of acoustic-and-strings songs as breathers (“Siren Parade” in the first half, “Father Hypnotist” and “Over the Fog” in the second), but they feel more like breathers on Join Her Circus than they would’ve on past records. Whether Mythical Motors are in their quieter, orchestral mode or cranking out fuzz rock, Join Her Circus delivers Addison’s pop songwriting in consistently sturdy vessels. (Bandcamp link)
Rosy Overdrive 