Pressing Concerns: Graham Hunt, Wishy, Aunt Katrina, Phantom Signals

It’s time to wrap up yet another busy week in December. This edition of Pressing Concerns features two records that come out tomorrow (a new album from Graham Hunt and a new EP from Wishy), and two EPs from the past couple of weeks in Aunt Katrina and Phantom Signals. Rosy Overdrive’s Top 25 EPs of 2023 went up earlier this week, and I implore you to check out the selections there, and you should also dig into Monday’s Pressing Concerns (featuring The Human Hearts, Dan Darrah & The Rain, The Age of Colored Reptiles, and Bounaly) if you haven’t yet.

If you’re looking for more new music, you can visit the site directory to see what else we’ve written about lately. If you’d like to support Rosy Overdrive, you can share this (or another) post, or donate here. And last but not least: don’t forget to vote in the 2023 Rosy Overdrive Reader’s Poll!

Graham Hunt – Try Not to Laugh

Release date: December 15th
Record label: Smoking Room
Genre: Power pop, alt-rock, pop rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Emergency Contact

Madison’s Graham Hunt has been playing in various Wisconsin bands for a while now, but he’s been a prolific solo artist as of late, putting out Painting Over Mold in 2021 and If You Knew Would You Believe It last year. I first heard about Hunt because he was playing a show with Dazy, a band that’s a good starting point for what his solo material sounds like. Although, whereas James Goodson would cut his power pop, pop punk, and alt-rock with “classically cool” genres of music like Jesus and Mary Chain-esque noise pop, Hunt dares to ask the question: what if you did this, but only with the historically lame stuff? As it turns out, you can pull it off, but you’d better be able to write a damn good hook. On his third album in as many years, Try Not to Laugh, Hunt pulls together the unserious attitude of pop punk with the energy of late 90s “alt-pop” groups like Third Eye Blind and even Sugar Ray, creates something undeniably new and weird, and wipes the floor with “respectability”.

Try Not to Laugh is presented in a pretty dangerous format–eight songs in about a half-hour, meaning that Hunt rides several of these songs out for over four minutes. The opening title track is one of the shorter ones, although it’s a highlight, with its wobbly chorus still standing on its own two legs. Hunt sounds practically frantic on “Taste”, trying to get absolutely everything he can out of the title line, although the biggest moments on the album come in the center, between “Emergency Contact” and “Zoomed Out”. The former is a brilliant lost-pop-hit single just about packed with hooks in every aspect, and the latter nearly matches it by the strength of its title line alone (“I’m not dumb, baby / I’m just zoomed out,” a slacker rock motto if I’ve ever heard one). The second half of Try Not to Laugh doesn’t quite beat the listener over the head quite as much–“Tasmere Anthill” carefully seeds its hooks evenly across the song’s four minute runtime, while the rough-around-the-edges “Seein’ the World” and the acoustic “Options in Community Living 23” present a couple different sides of Graham Hunt. That being said, it’s no less robust than Try Not to Laugh’s ironclad A-Side; Hunt got one more great album in before the buzzer in 2023. (Bandcamp link)

Wishy – Paradise

Release date: December 15th
Record label: Winspear
Genre: Dream pop, shoegaze, indie pop, noise pop
Formats: Cassette, digital
Pull Track: Donut

Wishy are new dream poppy, shoegaze-y indie rock group from Indianapolis who’ve received a fair amount of buzz ahead of the release of Paradise, their five-song debut EP. Bands with this kind of profile admittedly have a solid track record of failing to impress me much, but Paradise is a promising first record that lives up to the hype accompanying it, thanks in large part to the pair of singer-songwriters at the helm of Wishy. It should be noted that this band didn’t exactly come out of nowhere–for fans of hazy, dreamy indie rock, co-leader Kevin Krauter is perhaps a familiar name between his solo career and his work in Hoops. Although the other half of Wishy’s songwriting duo, Nina Pitchkites, may not have the same pedigree, her contributions to Paradise (Krauter penned three of these songs, Pitchkites the remaining two) are no less impressive pieces of laid-back distorted guitar pop.

The title track (written by Krauter, primarily sung by Pitchkites) opens Paradise on a high note, with a sleepy but still driven mid-tempo piece of deliberate indie pop. Having eased us into the EP, Wishy then rip into the most straight-up shoegaze moment on the record with Pitchkites’ “Donut”, with its wall-of-sound and revved-up guitars declining to drown out the track’s soaring chorus. “Spinning”, which immediately follows it, showcases the other side of Pitchkites as a songwriter, riding a 90s alt-poppy drumbeat into a transfixing piece of vintage, smooth dream pop–it pairs nicely with Krauter’s “Blank Time”, which fights hard to be the most low-key song on the EP. This rock-solid introduction to an intriguing new band ends with “Too True”, a track that does a good job of summing up Wishy to date–it’s got the full band energy of “Donut”, but it’s a bit more casual and freewheeling like the EP’s midsection (and excellent lead guitar from Jacky Boy’s Steve Marino doesn’t hurt, too). Wishy has grown to a quintet since the recording of Paradise, and I will be interested to see what the next step for this band will look like. (Bandcamp link)

Aunt Katrina – Hot

Release date: December 8th
Record label: Crafted Sounds
Genre: Noise pop, experimental pop, bedroom pop, lo-fi indie rock
Formats: Cassette, digital
Pull Track: Optimistically

A couple of years ago in Pittsburgh, Ryan Walchonski co-founded a good shoegaze-noise-pop band you may have heard of called Feeble Little Horse. Feeble Little Horse is still going strong–you probably have seen their Saddle Creek debut, Girl With Fish, on some best-of lists this year–but Walchonski now lives in Washington D.C., and a desire to keep playing locally despite being separated from his main band has led to the creation of Aunt Katrina. Aunt Katrina began as a Walchonski solo project, and most of what you’ll hear on Hot, their debut EP, was recorded by Walchonski himself, aside from drums provided by Snail Mail’s Ray Brown and guest vocals from Laney Ackley on “Let Me Go” (Brown and Ackley have since become a part of the Aunt Katrina live lineup alongside Eric Zidar, Emma Banks, and Connor Peters).

For those of us who enjoyed the off-the-cuff, surprising, noisy bedroom pop of Feeble Little Horse’s earliest recordings, Walchonski is operating in this vicinity throughout Hot. Although there are moments of fuzzed-out guitars at various points on Aunt Katrina’s debut release, it’d be somewhat of a stretch to label the EP as “shoegaze”. That being said, it’s a primary ingredient in the opening punch of “Sunday” and “Obsessed”, two songs that flit between soaring, electric guitar-forward rock music and stranger, more insular bedroom experiments. The weirder side of Aunt Katrina appears to win out in “Choir”, which takes its titular sound and musses it up, but the guitars come screaming back to life in “When I Go Away”. The back half of Hot is less immediate, but sneakily contains some of the most intriguing material–“Optimistically” takes a minute before fully committing to its chilly lo-fi pop sound, the post-punk mumble of “Get Me Out of Bed” is an interesting outlier, and “Let Me Go” quietly sends Hot out in a haze of pianos and buzzing guitars. Hot is the sound of Ryan Walchonski working out something familiar but new, and the process’ results are compelling in their own right. (Bandcamp link)

Phantom Signals – Phantom Signals

Release date: December 1st
Record label: Self-released
Genre: Emo-y indie rock
Formats: Digital
Pull Track: Basement

Phantom Signals are a Brooklyn-based quartet that have been putting out singles throughout 2023, culminating in their self-titled debut EP that came out at the beginning of December. Phantom Signals’ opening statement is a half-dozen songs and twenty-one minutes of incredibly spirited, earnest indie rock with an alt-rock crunch to some parts of it and an emo-ish energy to others. There’s no obvious interesting “narrative hook” accompanying Phantom Signals–they aren’t from some far-flung outpost of the world, the members aren’t part of more famous, well-known bands, and if there’s some exciting backstory to how this band formed or how these songs were written, Phantom Signals aren’t telling. Sometimes, a band is just four people who are, together, very good at what they do, and that’s exactly what vocalist/lyricist Melody Henry, guitarist Joey Russo, bassist Mike Petzinger, and drummer John Morris are on Phantom Signals.

The first impression we get of Phantom Signals is “Basement”, a piece of well-crafted but humble-sounding indie rock song that is immediately lovable. It works both as an introduction–building slowly but confidently across its two-and-a-half-minutes–and also as a subdued but potent pop song in its own right. From that moment on, Phantom Signals are off and rolling,  with “Full Stop” and “Swimming” presenting themselves as multi-faceted, dynamic rock songs–in particular, the former song stops and starts alongside Henry’s impressive lead vocal performance. Henry’s voice, confident and arresting, is the most striking piece of Phantom Signals, but the rest of the band’s performance in presenting it–rushing up to meet her in “Play Out”, punching alongside her in “Breakdown”–shouldn’t be overlooked. Phantom Signals doesn’t need a big-finish, slow-burn closing track in order to be a successful first entry, but nevertheless, the quartet set their sights on putting together the five-minute, crescendoing (aptly-titled) “Slow Burn” to send off their debut statement with one last impressive gasp. (Bandcamp link)

Also notable:

Rosy Overdrive’s Top 25 EPs of 2023

We’re still only a week out from the music world-shattering publication of Rosy Overdrive’s Top 100 Albums of 2023, but now it is time to take a look at a shorter but still very substantial list/release format. 2023 was another great year for EPs, and I’ve done my hardest to narrow my favorites down to a top twenty-five. There are a lot of wildly overlooked records and bands here; I know you’ll find something new to you and very good on this list.

Here are links to the EPs on this list that are on streaming services: Spotify, Tidal. Look for a Best Compilations/Reissues of 2023 list and at least two (possibly three!) more Pressing Concerns before the year’s out. To read about much more music beyond what’s on this list, check out the site directory, and if you’d like to support Rosy Overdrive, you can share this (or another) post, or donate here. Thank you for reading, and, last but not least: don’t forget to vote in the 2023 Rosy Overdrive Reader’s Poll!

25. Touch Girl Apple Blossom – EP

Release date: August 29th
Record label: Self-released
Genre: Jangle pop, indie pop, power pop, twee
Formats: Digital

Touch Girl Apple Blossom are a new Austin-based group (with a great name) who have been playing around their home city for a while, but only just put out their debut release. The Touch Girl Apple Blossom EP is vintage C86-inspired jangly guitar pop through and through–there’s just a bit of dreaminess, but it’s pretty peppy and uptempo as well. Opening track “Sidewalk” is the kind of song that instantly puts a smile on my face, and the pop music found throughout the EP as a whole is punched-up by an impressive full-band energy, one that suggests Touch Girl Apple Blossom are already in lockstep with each other.

24. Charles the Obtuse – Charles the Obtuse

Release date: May 15th
Record label: Self-released
Genre: Synthpop, indie pop
Formats: Digital

The five song Charles the Obtuse EP is Charlie Wilmoth’s first work as a solo artist, and his first entirely electronic project. It picks up the more synth-based thread that Wilmoth had been exploring on his last two records with Oblivz (the Uplifts and Managers EPs), but he doesn’t have guitarist Andrew Slater to lean on here. Charles the Obtuse’s songs are brief, and Wilmoth’s stated influence of The Magnetic Fields’ The Wayward Bus is borne out here–these are not dense psychedelic soundscapes so much as discreet synth-based pop songs that get busy, but not overwhelmingly so, and the EP is thematically packed with classic Wilmoth subjects (soulless capitalism, suburban decay, paranoia, horror movies). (Read more)

23. Mulva – Seer

Release date: January 20th
Record label: Self-released
Genre: Noise rock, alt-rock, post-rock, sludge metal
Formats: CD, cassette, digital

Mulva is a new Providence-based band led by Christina Puerto, guitarist in Kal Marks and Bethlehem Steel, and also featuring Carl Shane (of the former of Puerto’s bands), Patrick Ronayne (of the latter), and Adam Berkowiz (of Ex-Breathers). Based on their lineup, it’s no surprise that their debut EP, Seer, is an intriguing record of heavy-leaning alt-rock. There’s an impressive range on the EP, with the first two songs presenting this sound in an accessible, hook-featuring package, before “Futuremind” and (especially) “Melpomene” dive headfirst into lumbering, wandering drone. Looking forward to seeing where Mulva goes from Seer.

22. The Reds, Pinks & Purples – Unloveable Losers

Release date: June 16th
Record label: Burundi Cloud
Genre: Indie pop, jangle pop
Formats: Digital

Glenn Donaldson had a great year in long-players in 2023 (both Helpful People and The Reds, Pinks & Purples made my year-end list), but his EP output this year actually rivals it. The subdued Build Love, the more collaborative Murder, Oral Sex & Cigarettes, and the covers-only You Know You’re Burning Someone all merit a mention, but my personal favorite is Unloveable Losers, which contains a high percentage of the best songs Donaldson put out this year in its six tracks. The title track and “Cleaner City Streets” are gigantic guitar pop songs that are impressive as anything else he’s done, and “Richard in the Age of the Corporation” is something that I wouldn’t expect from anyone but Donaldson at this point.

21. Amanda X – Keepsake

Release date: April 21st
Record label: Self Aware
Genre: Alt-rock, indie punk
Formats: Digital

Philadelphia’s Amanda X were one of the more underappreciated practitioners of the punky, 90s-influenced indie rock that populated the second half of the 2010s, but they’d been fairly silent since 2017’s solid Giant. Keepsake is their triumphant return, and it’s a record that shows that the group still have plenty of hooky rock songs left in them. Amanda X sounds like a real power trio on Keepsake, with all of these tracks utilizing a tough rhythm section and pleasing guitar play to sound fully-developed. Having Amanda X back in general is worth celebrating, let alone the fact that they’ve returned with a release as strong as Keepsake. (Read more)

20. Wish Kit – Guitars Take Flight

Release date: November 17th
Record label: Chillwavve
Genre: Power pop, pop punk
Formats: Digital

Denton, Texas’ Wish Kit are a band that have been slowly growing in my esteem–late last year, I stumbled upon their solid Hot Gold EP, they upstaged established Rosy Overdrive favorites Mo Troper, New You, and Gnawing on the Rock Against Bush split EP at the beginning of this year, and just last month they put out Guitars Take Flight, their strongest record yet. Wish Kit combine laid-back 90s alt-pop-rock energy with hard-charging power pop on the EP’s first two songs, and even closing track “Yesterdayman” with its contemplative, restrained opening eventually builds to a big finish with guitars, indeed, taking flight. 

19. The 3 Clubmen – The 3 Clubmen

Release date: June 30th
Record label: Lighterthief/Burning Shed
Genre: Psychedelic pop, psychedelic folk
Formats: CD, digital

The post-XTC music career of Andy Partridge is vast, nonlinear, and full of detours, but through it all, two regular Partridge collaborators have been Swindon producer/multi-instrumentalist Stu Rowe and Albuquerque-based singer-songwriter Jen Olive. The idea for the three of them to form a band together dates back over a decade, finally becoming realized in the self-titled, four-song 3 Clubmen CD EP. The three clearly work well together, as they explore pastoral folk-pop and groovy, trippy electric psychedelia over these four disparate but unified tracks. (Read more)

18. Thanks for Coming – What Is My Capacity to Love?

Release date: September 29th
Record label: Danger Collective
Genre: Lo-fi indie rock, singer-songwriter, bedroom pop
Formats: Digital

Rachel Brown is, these days, pretty well-known for fronting hit indie rock group Water from Your Eyes, but I’ve always had a particular affinity for their lo-fi pop solo project, Thanks for Coming. Thanks for Coming has slowed down a bit as Water from Your Eyes has taken off (peruse their extensive Bandcamp back catalog if you’ve been missing them), but we did get the eight-song, twenty-one minute What Is My Capacity to Love? this year. I’m pleased and unsurprised to say that the immediacy and casual-yet-substantial feel of the project hasn’t been lost in the interim. What Is My Capacity to Love? is a “working things out” record from someone who seems to always be on the move; thankfully, they put a pause on things long enough to put these songs together. (Read more)

17. Shredded Sun – Translucent Eyes

Release date: August 4th
Record label: Self-released
Genre: Garage rock, psychedelic pop
Formats: Digital

The Chicago-based trio of Sarah Ammerman, Nick Ammerman, and Ben Bilow have played together a long time (in Fake Fiction in the 2000s, as Shredded Sun for the better part of the past decade), a chemistry that’s apparent both on Each Dot and Each Line (one of my favorite albums of 2023) and its follow-up, the four song Translucent Eyes EP. Nick Ammerman described the record as “one psychedelic summer ballad, three trashy stompers”, and the EP does indeed continue to reflect the dexterity of Shredded Sun in this fashion–garage-punk, surf-punk, power pop, and floating psychedelia all mark this brief dispatch. (Read more)

16. Ted Leo – Heaven’s Off

Release date: April 7th
Record label: Self-released
Genre: Power pop, punk, singer-songwriter
Formats: Digital

Although Ted Leo didn’t quite release Bandcamp-only EPs at the same clip he did in 2022, April’s Heaven’s Off is more than enough to get the power pop/punk icon back on this list for the second straight year. Heaven’s Off mixes new Leo and old; the title track and “Coming Back to Bloom” were written days before the EP came out and show that the singer-songwriter is still in peak form, while the two songs resuscitated from out-of-print B-sides and one pledge-drive only tune are certainly welcome additions as well (Leo’s The Both bandmate Aimee Mann even pops up on “Gideon Gray”).

15. Mt. Worry – A Mountain of Fucking Worry

Release date: February 3rd
Record label: Mountain of Worry
Genre: Fuzz rock, noise pop, shoegaze
Formats: Cassette, digital

Mt. Worry is a Philadelphia four-piece band featuring some recognizable names to Rosy Overdrive readers–Noah Roth, Bad Heaven Ltd.’s John Galm, Hell Trash’s Rowan Horton, and No Thank You’s Nick Holdorf. They’ve all released a ton of impressive music on their own (some even this year), and, pleasingly, they excel just as well together. A Mountain of Fucking Worry is a glorious mess of fuzz rock, shoegaze, and noise pop–glimpses of, say, Roth’s solo records or Bad Heaven Ltd. occasionally peak through, but the band is, on the whole, making a unique racket.

14. Mopar Stars – Shoot the Moon

Release date: July 19th
Record label: Furo Bungy
Genre: Lo-fi indie rock, power pop, fuzz rock
Formats: Digital

Philadelphia’s Mopar Stars began as the project of Nao Demand, who plays in garage rock/post-punk group Poison Ruïn and metal band Zorn, although they’ve since morphed into a full band. Mopar Stars is decidedly different than Demand’s heavier fare in that their four-song debut EP is pure, catchy power pop. There are traces of some garage rock, fuzz rock, and alt-rock in Shoot the Moon, to be sure, although these songs sound more similar to The Replacements and The Lemonheads than anything else. Hopefully Shoot the Moon augurs more for Mopar Stars than just a one-off side project, as there’s clearly something potent here. (Read more)

13. The Croaks – Croakus Pokus

Release date: July 28th
Record label: Self-released
Genre: Folk rock, progressive folk, baroque folk
Formats: CD, digital

The Croaks are a Boston-based prog-folk-rock band led by the duo of Anna Reidister and Haley Wood, who have been making music together since 2017–the nine-song, thirty-minute Croakus Pokus is their first record, following a couple of single. One of the most fascinating-sounding releases of the year, The Croaks are quite serious about incorporating the baroque and medieval into their music (armed with dulcimer, flute, harp–the works), but they’re just as likely to emphasize the rock end of folk rock, with some guitar soloing, feedback, and a sharp rhythm section characterizing more than a bit of Croakus Pokus. (Read more)

12. Blues Lawyer – Sight Gags on the Radio

Release date: September 29th
Record label: Dark Entries
Genre: Noise pop, power pop, indie pop, fuzz pop
Formats: Vinyl, digital

2023 was the year of Blues Lawyer. In addition to their third album, All in Good Time (one of the best LPs of the year), coming out in February, the Oakland power pop group got back together a few months later to put out the four-song Sight Gags on the Radio seven-inch EP.  On their latest record, Blues Lawyer are as catchy as ever, but they’re also louder than ever–the band embrace distortion and fuzz in their pop songs in a way that even the more rock-based power pop of All in Good Time hadn’t quite suggested. Twee and jangle pop collide with amplifier fuzz and a shoegaze level of reverb in a short, strong punctuation mark to Blues Lawyer’s 2023. (Read more)

11. Dagwood – Everything Turned Out Alright

Release date: August 2nd
Record label: Self-released
Genre: Power pop, pop punk
Formats: Digital

New Haven power-pop-punk quartet Dagwood were busy churning singles out throughout 2023 (including a few that came out after the release of this EP). Back in August, however, they gathered up the three singles they’d released this year up to that point, tacked on three brand-new songs, and, viola, the Everything Turned Out Alright EP was born. “Sheep on Mars” is genuinely one of my favorite songs this year, and the rest of the EP offers up a similar fuzzy 90s alt-rock energy. A dozen minutes, a half-dozen songs, energy and pop smarts everywhere–Everything Turned Out Alright, indeed. (Read more)

10. Downhaul – Squall

Release date: May 10th
Record label: Self-released
Genre: Alt-rock, emo
Formats: Cassette, digital

Squall constitutes the most substantial release from Richmond’s Downhaul since 2021’s PROOF. The four-song EP was released without any advance singles–the songs are all in the same key, bleed into each other, and can be thought of as “one 12-minute song with four suites”, according to the band. I personally think the tracks are distinct enough to be considered on their own, but either way, it’s a dozen minutes of Downhaul doing what they do best (putting forth rising and falling emo-tinged alt-rock–or alt-rock tinged emo–guided by frontperson Gordon M. Phillips’ distinct vocals) without sounding complacent at all. (Read more)

9. Perennial – The Leaves of Autumn Symmetry

Release date: September 1st
Record label: Self-released
Genre: Post-hardcore, art punk, dance punk
Formats: Vinyl, digital

Last year’s In the Midnight Hour was a revelation from Perennial–a fiery mix of garage rock, thrashing post-hardcore, and sassy dance punk, captured in a full, clear recording by producer Chris Teti. Their follow-up, The Leaves of Autumn Symmetry is a five-song EP containing “reworkings” of select songs from their 2017 debut, The Symmetry of Autumn Leaves. It seems to exist to both give the band a chance to redo these songs after growing as a group, and to re-present these songs with Teti’s production. It succeeds on both counts–Perennial have clearly taken leaps forward since 2017, and it comes through on these spirited, full-steam-ahead readings. (Read more)

8. Cal Rifkin – Better Luck Next Year

Release date: May 30th
Record label: Really Rad
Genre: Power pop, pop punk, jangle pop
Formats: Cassette, digital

Cal Rifkin is a Washington, D.C. power pop trio who’ve been kicking around since 2018–Better Luck Next Year is their second EP, following a self-titled one in 2020. Their latest five-track record serves as an excellent introduction to the intriguing style of guitar pop that the group makes. Better Luck Next Year strikes a balance between the music–which cranks up the amps to evoke the fuzzier, louder end of the power pop spectrum–and lead singer Erik Grimm’s vocals, which are gentle, melodic, and frequently harmonized, sitting on the “quietly pretty” end. In a short amount of time, Cal Rifkin recall the best of Teenage Fanclub, Superdrag, 2nd Grade, and Matthew Sweet. (Read more)

7. Stoner Control – Glad You Made It

Release date: June 2nd
Record label: Sound Judgement
Genre: Power pop
Formats: Digital

Glad You Made It is Stoner Control’s first new original material since 2021’s Sparkle Endlessly (one of my favorites from that year), and this five-song EP finds the Portland trio putting together songs that hold up against their previous best work, even as it has its own personality separate from their last full-length. Stoner Control sound a bit looser and less polished here, with producer Matt Thomson letting the band’s slacker, 90s alt-rock side shine through a bit more, but they’re no less catchy here. (Read more)

6. Cel Ray – Cellular Raymond

Release date: February 20th
Record label: Self-released
Genre: Garage punk, egg punk
Formats: Cassette, digital

Cellular Raymond is the debut release from Chicago’s Cel Ray, and this six-song cassette EP is fifteen minutes of full-force Windy City punk rock at its finest. The sound of the quartet certainly has traces of the egg-punk, Devo-core sound that the band’s name, album title, and cover art all would suggest, but one should definitely file Cellular Raymond first and foremost under “ripping, guitar-forward garage punk”. Maddie Daviss’ vocals are the work of an instantly compelling punk frontperson, while the rest of Cel Ray are crisp and tight, playing as fun or as heavy as best fits each song with the ease of a band far beyond its debut EP.​​ (Read more)

5. Dancer – Dancer

Release date: February 10th
Record label: GoldMold
Genre: Post-punk, indie pop
Formats: Cassette, digital

Glasgow’s Dancer are a new group featuring members of bands like Order of the Toad, Nightshift, and Robert Sotelo, and their first record together, a self-titled EP, came out in February (followed mere months later by the just-missing-this-list As Well). The Dancer EP is a half-dozen tracks that straddle bright indie pop and sharp post-punk; I certainly hear traces of the members’ other bands on these songs, as well as fellow Glasgow band Life Without Buildings and indie pop godfathers XTC, but Dancer takes its various building blocks to make a distinct “Dancer sound” that sounds fresh and snappy over its six songs. (Read more)

4. Fox Japan – Cannibals

Release date: October 16th
Record label: Self-released
Genre: Power pop, post-punk
Formats: Digital

West Virginia-originating quartet Fox Japan began in the late 2000s making sharp, nervous-sounding post-punk revival-ish music, but have aged gracefully into a classic guitar pop sound in recent years. Cannibals picks up where the quartet left off with 2020’s What We’re Not–sort of.  If anything, Fox Japan sound looser here than they have of late–almost like, after a couple years experimenting away from indie rock with his Oblivz and Charles the Obtuse side projects, vocalist Charlie Wilmoth (and subsequently the rest of the band) are enthused to be inhabiting this skin yet again. (Read more)

3. Deady – Deady

Release date: September 29th
Record label: Never Nervous
Genre: Post-punk, math rock, post-hardcore
Formats: Cassette, digital

Louisville, Kentucky’s Deady roared to life this year, with guitarists Sam Goblin and Chyppe Crosby joining forces with rhythm section Clayton Ray and KJ Bechtloff and vocalist Mandy Keathley to create one of the most exciting new bands of 2023. On their debut cassette EP, the quintet make weirdo, blaring, catchy egg punk that’s a potent Brainiac-ian mix of post-punk and post-hardcore noisiness. Sometimes new wave-y and playful, sometimes loud and crushing, and even with a little bit of slowcore mixed in with “Sad Sack”, Deady captures what the band do best and hints at where more long-form Deady material might go. (Read more)

2. Negative Glow – Volume 1

Release date: April 20th (digital)
Record label: Let’s Pretend/RTR Tapes
Genre: Fuzz rock, punk rock, 90s indie rock
Formats: Cassette, digital

Negative Glow is a Bloomington, Indiana four-piece group led by singer-songwriter-guitarists Tina Lou Vines and Tommy Beresky, and their first record together is five songs and 13 minutes of no-fat, incredibly catchy fuzz rock by way of 90s indie rock, power pop, and pop punk. Volume 1 takes me back a bit to the mid-2010s era of punk-y indie rock revivalists–bands like Swearin’, Chumped, and Screaming Females–but with a bit of a tougher alt-rock edge. As new as they are, Negative Glow already sound great on Volume 1–urgent but cool, loud but catchy as anything, aware of the past but very much alive in the present tense. (Read more)

1. Emperor X – Suggested Improvements to Transportation Infrastructure in the Northeast Corridor

Release date: March 9th
Record label: Self-released
Genre: Lo-fi indie rock, folk punk, electro-folk, experimental rock
Formats: Digital

Emperor X’s six-song Suggested Improvements to Transportation Infrastructure in the Northeast Corridor EP is, more or less, what its title suggests–each of the half-dozen tracks is rooted in the transit systems of one of a city in the American Northeast, and all of them are, as Emperor X mastermind Chad Matheny says, pulled from “transit policy and 30 years of public infrastructure memories” from an American expat currently living in Berlin. If anyone could write emotionally-resonating songs grounded in transit policy, it’s Matheny, who’s rung pathos out of and achieved universality with everything from air conditioners to Facebook statues. Eschewing the relative polish of his last album, The Lakes of Zones B and C, Suggested Improvements… was recorded via four-track, aiding its feeling of scribbled observations by Matheny made while riding the mobile town halls of the American Northeast. It’s a dispatch from somebody who’s lived and experienced what’s he’s singing about–he’s right there, riding the rails. (Read more)

Honorable mentions:

Pressing Concerns: The Human Hearts, Dan Darrah & The Rain, The Age of Colored Lizards, Bounaly

We’re in the middle of year-end season on Rosy Overdrive: our 100 favorite albums of 2023 went up last week, and a smaller but still gobsmacking list of EPs will be going up later this week. Pressing Concerns presses on nonetheless, and today’s entry is anything but a postscript: this is a classic one, absolutely full with music you’re going to like. A compilation of non-album tracks from The Human Hearts, as well as new albums from Dan Darrah & The Rain, The Age of Colored Lizards, and Bounaly appear in today’s post.

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. And last but not least: don’t forget to vote in the 2023 Rosy Overdrive Reader’s Poll!

The Human Hearts – Viable

Release date: October 20th
Record label: Open Boat
Genre: Indie pop, power pop, 90s indie rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Inland Valley Water Table Blues

Inland Empire-originating singer-songwriter Franklin Bruno has an impressive resume–his 90s indie rock group Nothing Painted Blue was one of the great undersung acts of that era, the two albums he made with the Mountain Goats’ John Darnielle as The Extra Lens (formerly The Extra Glenns) stack up against the best of Darnielle’s other band, and he’s got plenty of great solo records as well. Bruno’s current band, The Human Hearts, has been around for about as long as Nothing Painted Blue was by now, although it still feels like his “new” band. Part of that might be that there are only two Human Hearts albums (the long-awaited follow-up to 2012’s Another, previewed in 2020’s Day of the Tiles EP, does finally seem around the corner), but, as demonstrated by Viable, Bruno and his collaborators have put out plenty of other Human Hearts material in the form of EPs, singles, and compilation appearances. This new compilation collects non-album material from 2011 to 2015 on one LP–although it’s not the third Human Hearts full-length I was expecting, it’s a record that holds its own against Bruno’s “proper” albums.

As anyone who has heard Nothing Painted Blue’s Emotional Discipline or Bruno’s Local Currency compilations can attest, he’s a songwriter who doesn’t always save the “hits” for the albums. Viable confirms this remained true into the 2010s–the alt-rock meditation of “Flag Pin” (originally from the 2012 EP of the same name) and its lilting defiance is one of The Human Hearts’ finest moments. In my head, I’ve viewed The Human Hearts as less of an “indie rock” band than Nothing Painted Blue, and more of Bruno exploring pop music of several bygone eras (more attuned with his solo career), but with the help of a backing band. The Human Hearts offer several such selections on Viable (see the Jenny Toomey-sung “Loyal Opposition”, “Sell Pile”, and “Last Words of Her Lover”, sung by Bree Benton), but between the opening track, the firecracker power pop of “Inland Valley Water Table Blues”, the speedy “Plot of a Romance”, and the saxophone-aided sleaze of “Art Books”, The Human Hearts also rock a fair bit more than I remembered them rocking here.

Viable is a bit all over the place, as can be expected for a compilation, but Bruno’s songwriting feels instantly recognizable. “Distracted” bridges the gap between the rockier songs and the poppier ones on the compilation, with Toomey’s effortless-sounding vocals sliding alongside a brisk drumbeat from David Brown. “Top of My Lungs” is a breathtaking throwback to Bruno’s solo work, just his vocals and an electric guitar spilling out the kind of song that most would only dream of penning, and the piano-and-strings “Nick Cave” is a rumination on celebrity and fandom that’s moved me more than anything by its titular artist. Really, it’s the interspersed cover songs that mark Viable as a compilation above anything else. Not that that’s a bad thing–The Human Hearts’ takes on others’ songs result in both the most straightforward moment on the album (a pure jangle pop version of The Everly Brothers’ “June Is As Cold As December”) and its weirdest ones (“Business”, a frothing fifty-second thing apparently written by Pete Seeger, and “Terrible Criminal”, an interpretation of an unreleased song from Shrimper Records mainstays Wckr Spgt that’s sort of like…dub?). For those unfamiliar with Franklin Bruno, Viable is as good a place to start as any, and for those of us already on board, the gathering of some not-so-easy-to-find material on this record is a welcome development. (Bandcamp link)

Dan Darrah & The Rain – Rivers Bridges Trains

Release date: October 27th
Record label: Sunday Drive
Genre: Indie pop, jangle pop, folk rock, power pop
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Blue

I associate San Antonio record label Sunday Drive with punk and emo music, although they have, at the very least, dipped their toes into the world of breezy guitar pop this year with Rivers Bridges Trains. Dan Darrah is a Toronto-based singer-songwriter who’s been putting out music for a while–he released two albums in 2016, and another one in 2020–but his fourth full-length seems like a milestone for him. It appears to be his first record on vinyl, his first recorded in a studio, and the first record credited to “Dan Darrah & The Rain”, a backing band made up of Scott Downes, Jacob Hellas, Darian Palumbo, and Danielle Clarke. The five musicians of The Rain dress Darrah’s songs up in a blissful and wistful version of power pop, drawing on the more melancholic side of Teenage Fanclub in a way that tapers some of the album’s grander moments and bolsters some of its quieter ones.

Darrah sings in a gentle tone throughout Rivers Bridges Trains–the central voice of the record sounds so humble that it almost masks just how big these songs are. Nevertheless, these ten songs aren’t ones to fade into the background–opener “Charade” is all hooks, from its instrumental to every line, and the jaunty “Look Away” continues the strong rollout. Whether it’s Darrah or The Rain, the guitar melodies throughout Rivers Bridges Trains are some of the most captivating I’ve heard this year, stealing the show on highlights like “Rule of Three” and “Blue”. Darrah is also influenced by folk rock and 60s psychedelia, but Rivers Bridges Trains is such a pop-focused record that he and The Rain can only give these sides of his songwriting a few glimpses. They primarily come in the second half in the form of acoustic-based “I’ll Be Surprised” and “High Note” as well as the backmasked interpolations of “May Moon Interlude”, but even then Darrah and the Rain intersperse them with the soaring, maximal power pop of “Thorn” and the sweeping chorus that marks “Rivers Without Swimmers”. Rivers Bridges Trains is an impressive statement of an album, establishing Dan Darrah & The Rain as quite skilled at writing and executing pop songs. (Bandcamp link)

The Age of Colored Lizards – Diver

Release date: November 16th
Record label: Sotron
Genre: Jangle pop, bedroom pop, lo-fi pop
Formats: Digital
Pull Track: Don’t Say Goodbye

Here at Rosy Overdrive, we love a good prolific lo-fi jangle pop project, and so it was only a matter of time before we shone the spotlight on Oslo’s The Age of Colored Lizards. The band is led by singer/guitarist Christian Dam, sometimes with a backing band, sometimes on his own; on Diver, the third Age of Colored Lizards album of 2023, Dam is assisted on bass by Anders Bøe and on drums by Håvard Berstad. Back in April, Dam put out Hang On, an album that contained a solid amount of noisy, distorted indie pop songs as well as some quieter moments; it appears that the trio are zeroing in on the project’s sparser, more subdued side to close out the year. The louder guitars are in the minority this time, with the bulk of Diver’s 26 minutes taken up by deliberate, delicate pop songs that even trend towards slowcore territory in some places.

“Another Sorrow” is an impressively low-key opener, relying on little more than whispered vocals and heavily-reverbed guitar strumming to ease us into Diver just about as leisurely as possible. In the second slot, “Don’t Say Goodbye” is a sleepy but fuzzier piece of jangle pop with a hook that perhaps cements it as the album’s “hit”. The only other real rocker on the record, “All My Friends Are Gone”, also occurs in the first half, although it has a darkness to its noise pop that fits its title. Songs like the acoustic-based “Heaven” and “Winter” represent the other end of The Age of Colored Lizards–skeletal, unconcerned with meeting the “pop” side of the band halfway at all. Somewhere in the middle is the title track and “Sirens”, which give the second side of Diver a mellow but still jangly feeling. There are moments of warmth throughout Diver, but it certainly feels like a winter record–the haunted “I Will Never See Tomorrow” is a pretty dark send-off for something that can be as friendly as Diver is in its catchiest moments, but it’s far from out of step from The Age of Colored Lizards as a whole. (Bandcamp link)

Bounaly – Dimanche à Bamako

Release date: November 17th
Record label: Sahel Sounds
Genre: Electric desert blues
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Wato To

A few years ago, one of my cousins got married, and I couldn’t attend the wedding in Pittsburgh because I was out of the country for an extended period of time. When I got back, my entire family kept telling me what a great, exciting, exhilarating event I’d missed out on–knowing the bride and groom, I was skeptical, but if they’d told me that they had flown out Ali “Bounaly” Traore from Mali to play their wedding, there’d certainly be no question about it. Dimanche à Bamako is the full-length debut from the guitarist–from Niafounke in central Mali, currently living in the country’s capital–and it was indeed recorded live at a wedding performance, with Bounaly accompanied by vocalists Alousseyni Maïga and Abdoulaye Touré (aka DJ Sali), drummer Mahamadoun Samba (aka Sangho), and calabash player Ibrahim Cissé. For 45 minutes and a half-dozen songs, Bounaly gets absolutely everything he can out of his guitar, shredding through noisy and kinetic rock-and-roll informed by the desert sound of his place of origin.

The title of Dimanche à Bamako refers to Sunday, the day of celebration in Mali, and Bounaly and his band–playing to a crowd of Northern Mali diaspora–conjure up just that with their set. Bounaly’s guitar screams throughout the eight-minute opening track “Wato To”, punctuated by shouts from Alousseyni Maïga and DJ Sali as well as Sangho’s frantic percussion. “Ma Chérie” only lets up on the gas a little bit–every inch of empty space opened up in this song is filled by Bounaly’s playing–then it’s back to noisy, rocking blues with “Touré Iseye”. The nine-minute “Mali Mussow” is perhaps the climax of Dimanche à Bamako, with Sangho pounding out a steady, sprinting beat for the first half, and Bounaly’s guitar absolutely exploding in the second half, swirling and smoldering in the form of a never-ending, transfixing solo. Closing track “Tamala” is the exclamation mark, a concise, five-minute take on Bounaly’s sound that starts to resemble a blues rock stomp. It only tilts in that direction, however–Bounaly is just as impossible to corral on that one than he is throughout Dimanche à Bamako. (Bandcamp link)

Also notable:

Pressing Concerns: Bory, Common Thread, STOP MVP, Music for Cooking

Yesterday and the day before, Rosy Overdrive published its Top 100 Albums of 2023. There’s a good chance you’ve read it; it’s a great list, so be sure to catch up on what you missed (unless you’ve already heard all 100 albums on there, in which case, reach out for a Rosy Overdrive commemorative plaque). However, bands and labels have stubbornly continued to release new music in December, and here we are to look at some of it: a new album from Bory (which actually appeared on Rosy Overdrive’s year-end list earlier this week), a reissue of a thirty-year-old album from Common Thread, and two new compilations from WarHen Records and SPINSTER Sounds.

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. And last but not least: don’t forget to vote in the 2023 Rosy Overdrive Reader’s Poll!

Bory – Who’s a Good Boy

Release date: December 8th
Record label: Earth Libraries/Earth Worms
Genre: Fuzz rock, power pop
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
Pull Track: Our New Home

Who’s a Good Boy feels like the missing piece of a certain corner of indie rock. Bory is Brenden Ramirez, a Portland, Oregon-based singer-songwriter and guitarist who’s established himself as a part of the exciting new wave of power pop over the past few years. He’s associated with the great Mo Troper–Ramirez has played in Troper’s band, and he contributed guitar to Domino by Diners, an album that Troper produced. All the while, he’s done this without a full-length album–the sole Bory release, until this week, had been 2021’s Sidelined EP. Troper also produced Who’s a Good Boy, and like on Domino, he plays drums–everything else you hear on this record is played by Ramirez. Although shades of Troper and Diners’ Blue Broderick can certainly be heard in this album’s songwriting, Ramirez develops a style distinct from the sharp concision of Domino and the pop explosions of the last couple of Troper records.

Who’s a Good Boy is a comparatively cooler record–it’s a bit more muted, low-key, “slacker rock”-y in parts–which, in a way, makes the giant power pop choruses that Bory nonetheless offer up throughout the record hit even harder. The album is a pleasingly asymmetrical journey–a somewhat odd but transfixing beginning, a pure power pop center, and a muted but still quite potent conclusion. Album opener “The Flake” is a fuzzed-out piece of noise pop that’s far from the most immediate song on the record, and “Five-Course Meal” is a mid-tempo lo-fi rocker that feels like a strange choice for a single, but there’s a lot to like in both of them, and their warped catchiness makes it even more thrilling when Ramirez and Troper rip through three golden, straight-up power pop songs in the middle of the record in “Our New Home”, “North Douglas”, and “We Both Won”. Even at its most euphoric, Who’s a Good Boy has a bittersweet feeling, so it’s not surprising that Bory find plenty of melancholy to accompany the pacing tones of “Sidelines” and the acoustic “Take It from Me” to close the record. Does Ramirez still write great pop hooks into these final two songs? Well, have you even been paying attention? (Bandcamp link)

Common Thread – Fountain (30th Anniversary)

Release date: December 8th
Record label: Fort Lowell
Genre: Noise rock, shoegaze, 90s indie rock, post-punk
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Template

This year, Wilmington, North Carolina’s Fort Lowell Records have put out new music from a couple of longtime indie rockers in James Sardone and Summer Set, but for their final release of 2023, they’ve gone even further and grabbed a lost southeastern-U.S. indie rock record to hoist from relative obscurity in Common Thread’s Fountain. Common Thread originated in the late 1980s in the suburbs of Jacksonville, Florida, putting out Six Marbles and a Bowl of Mud in 1990 and following it up with Fountain, released only on cassette, in 1993. The band–guitarists Joe Parker and Travis Taylor, bassist Joey Zimmerman, and drummer Craig Parlet–toured the East Coast extensively, making an impression on the co-founders of Fort Lowell Records with their noisy but melodic mix of 1980s post-punk, noise rock, and shoegaze. The label’s James Tritten and Tracy Shedd have made it clear that this reissue campaign is especially personal for them–but, as someone who hadn’t heard of Common Thread at all before this year, I can confidently say that one didn’t have to “be there” at the time to appreciate their sophomore album. 

Last month, I wrote about The Veldt, another band who was making loud, layered indie rock at the same time in the same part of the country. It’s enough to suggest that the American Southeast is an underappreciated part of this era of underground music–not the least of which is because Fountain sounds so different from The Veldt’s Cocteau Twins-indebted sound. Common Thread were certainly influenced by Sonic Youth, as they had a similar attitude with regards to wringing noise out of their guitars, but they also brought a British sense of dour melody to their music that Parker, Taylor, and Zimmerman (all singers and songwriters) hid underneath their instruments. At the same time, the prominent, rumbling bass that marks songs like “Sesame” and “Digit” feels very American noise rock–coupled with Parlet’s tireless drumming, Common Thread boasted a rhythm section that a lot of contemporary “amplifier worship” guitar-heavy bands didn’t really have. Fitting of a band with three different leaders, Fountain feels like a lot–it’s absolutely a statement worth shining some more light on after three decades. (Bandcamp link)

Various Artists – STOP MVP: Artists From WV, VA & NC Against the Mountain Valley Pipeline

Release date: December 1st
Record label: WarHen
Genre: Folk, country rock, bluegrass, experimental, ambient, hip hop
Formats: CD, digital
Pull Track: The Coal Tattoo

As if the people and environment of Appalachia have not already experienced enough destruction at the hands of extraction capitalism from the fossil fuel industry (an industry whose profits never seem to reach the people whose livelihoods are most impacted by it), the Mountain Valley Pipeline is on track to weave a trail of damage through Virginia and West Virginia by next year (with bipartisan support, mind you). As with anything with this kind of money behind it, the government is fully on the side of capital, and courts have been utilized to harass, intimidate, and imprison activists for exercising their First Amendment rights. WarHen Records, based out of Charlottesville, has curated an impressively stacked compilation with this in mind–over the course of two CDs, forty musicians from Virginia, West Virginia, and North Carolina offer up a wide variety of songs for a collection whose proceeds go to the Appalachian Legal Defense Fund, specifically for “bail, legal defense and defendant support”.

Although Stop MVP showcases a host of genres, those expecting to find traditional “Appalachian music” here will certainly not be disappointed–folk, bluegrass, and country feature heavily into this lineup, in the form of everything from Joe Bachman’s smoldering acoustic blues-folk “The Coal Tattoo”, Jimmy Costa’s rendition of “old railroad song” “The Dolly Womack Wreck”, and instrumental exercises like Joseph Decosimo’s banjo-heavy “Mulberry Gap” and Rosy Overdrive favorite Yasmin Williams’ joyous-sounding “Hawksbill Summit”. Other familiar faces to Pressing Concerns readers here are two WarHen artists in Dogwood Tales and Tucker Riggleman & the Cheap Dates, both of whom combine traditional country with rock and roll on their selections, the former from a new EP and the latter from an upcoming LP. STOP MVP also finds plenty of other types of music reverberating in these hills, from conscious rap (geonovah’s “STAY Alive” and Prolo’s “John Brown”) to psychedelic (Høly River’s “Spirit Riot”) and garage rock (New Boss’ “Frantic”) to experimental fare from Tallulah Cloos and Dog Scream (as well as selections from modern folk darlings Nathan Bowles and Daniel Bachman which remind us that “experimental” and “folk music” don’t have to be oppositional). I’ve really only scratched the surface of STOP MVP, a compilation full of artists who brought their best in service of a cause that merits it. (Bandcamp link)

Various Artists – Measure, Pour & Mixtape: Music for Cooking

Release date: December 1st
Record label: Spinster
Genre: Folk, experimental, ambient, country, bluegrass, singer-songwriter
Formats: Cassette, digital
Pull Track: Whistlin’ Down the Rows

We’re two for one on loosely Appalachian/folk music-based various-artists compilations this week, as we’re also going to be looking at North Carolina/West Virginia-based SPINSTER Sounds’ Measure, Pour & Mixtape: Music for Cooking. The label refers to the cassette release as an “auditory cookbook”, made up of exclusive tracks inspired by eating, kitchen maintenance, recipes, cooking, and anything in this realm. SPINSTER has enlisted an impressive array of musicians to contribute to Measure, Pour & Mixtape, including their own Lou Turner, folk legend Michael Hurley, Texas folk experimentalists Little Mazarn, and, (somewhat oddly, albeit not in a bad way) Animal Collective’s Avery Tare (if you’re thinking “this feels like very similar territory to the WarHen compilation”, you’d be right–in fact, multiple artists have contributed a song to both albums, including SPINSTER co-founder Sally Anne Morgan).

Some of the artists on Measure, Pour & Mixtape offer up selections that are recognizably structured as folk songs, while others interpret the assignment in a more deconstructive manner, although in both cases it’s not difficult to make the connection between cooking and what they’ve put together for the compilation. The album begins with the gorgeous “Whistlin’ Down the Rows”, a deep but immediate piece of folk songwriting from Sarah Bachman and Andy McLeod that’s so striking that it’s hard to believe that it’s the first ever piece of recorded music from the former. Measure, Pour & Mixtape has plenty of music that excels in this vein–Turner and Morgan both offer up folk highlights, and Little Mazarn and Lavender Blue’s contributions keep one foot in this world while probing a bit outside of it. The leisurely pace of Hurley’s “Clatskanie” and the way it deals in repetition without ever tiring (in actuality, getting more spirited as the song crawls along) particularly feels like a capturing of the singer-songwriter’s attitude towards cooking. The second half of the cassette steps into the world of improvisation, ambient, and experimental electronic music, but comes full circle with the quiet acoustic “Folly of Tomato” by Ziona Riley as its final course. SPINSTER hit on something here by asking artists to step out of the box and into the kitchen. (Bandcamp link)

Also notable:

Rosy Overdrive’s Top 100 Albums of 2023 (25-1)

Here it is! Rosy Overdrive’s 25 favorite albums of 2023, revealed today along with albums 50 through 26, and coming a day after albums 51 through 100. This was the hardest year yet in terms of the top; specifically, the top twelve albums on the list I kept rearranging up until press time. I’m more than satisfied with what you’ll read below, however. Once again, thank you for reading, vote in the Rosy Overdrive Reader’s Poll, and stay tuned for upcoming EP and compilation lists as well as a few more Pressing Concerns.

See also:
Part One (100-76)
Part Two (75-51)
Part Three (50-26)
Playlist with all albums (Spotify link) (Tidal link)

25. Shredded Sun – Each Dot and Each Line

Release date: February 24th
Record label: Self-released
Genre: Psychedelic pop, indie pop, garage rock, noise pop
Formats: Digital

Shredded Sun’s members have a shared history dating back to their time in 2000s lo-fi garage punk group Fake Fictions, and they’ve also put out another album and a few EPs under their newer band over the past decade. Their time playing together assuredly is helpful in pulling off something like Each Dot and Each Line, which is a delightfully eclectic indie rock record that combines fuzz rock/shoegaze noiseness, a garage-punk edge, and power pop catchiness. They pull from several different eras of “alternative” and indie rock in a Yo La Tengo-esque, “music fan first and foremost” way, and their overall enthusiasm ensures that they pull off every genre shift. (Read more)

24. William Matheny – That Grand, Old Feeling

Release date: August 4th
Record label: Hickman Holler
Genre: Alt-country, singer-songwriter
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital

West Virginia’s William Matheny has slowly but surely crafted a distinct world of worn-out vans, drifters, and hazy Biblical figures in his solo records for quite some time now. If you liked the sharp alt-country tunes of his last album, 2017’s, Strange Constellations, you won’t be disappointed in That Grand, Old Feeling, even as there’s a different feeling with this one–it feels like one long exhale, like Matheny’s taking a step back from the action and the movement for a moment. Just a moment, though; then it’s off to the next hole-in-the-wall for Matheny’s various narrators. (Read more)

23. Brontez Purnell – Confirmed Bachelor

Release date: November 10th
Record label: Upset the Rhythm
Genre: Power pop, garage rock, fuzz rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital

Short but incredibly potent, Confirmed Bachelor is a no-filler collection of immediate garage-rock-power-pop that picked up where Oakland’s Brontez Purnell left off on 2020’s White Boy Music EP. The former Younger Lovers frontperson tears through fuzzy, hooky rock and roll like it’s his job (which I suppose it is, at least when he’s not being an author, dancer, filmmaker, or choreographer)–we’re five songs in before we get a track longer than two minutes. The weirdest-sounding moment on Confirmed Bachelor might be the AutoTune-heavy cover of The Amps’ “Bragging Party”, although it’s arguably even weirder just how easily Purnell turns Sixpence None the Richer’s “Kiss Me” into a “Brontez Purnell song”.

22. Rust Ring – North to the Future

Release date: February 24th
Record label: Knifepunch/Storm Chasers Ltd.
Genre: Emo, punk rock
Formats: Vinyl, cassette, digital

Named after Alaska’s state motto, North to the Future uses the Last Frontier’s isolation as a jumping point for Rust Ring frontwoman Joram Zbichorski to write about her relationship with gender in a fantastical but still very close-hitting way. Oh, and it’s also a jumping point for a bunch of very good, very cathartic, gang-vocal-sporting emo-punk anthems. It’s a really great-sounding record, with Zbichorski and her collaborators bringing their A-game musically–North to the Future is interesting conceptually, but it wouldn’t be nearly as remarkable if Rust Ring didn’t execute it as well as they do. (Read more)

21. The Tubs – Dead Meat

Release date: January 27th
Record label: Trouble in Mind
Genre: Post-punk, jangle pop
Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital

The debut full-length record from The Tubs delivers on the promise of their 2021 EP Names (perhaps unsurprisingly, given Owen Williams’ work in Joanna Gruesome and Ex-Vöid). Dead Meat is an ace mix of vintage 80s post-punk and jangly indie pop, as catchy as it is chilly overall. The Tubs have a propulsive urgency to them in highlights like “Illusion Pt. II” and “Wretched Lie”, and Williams’ dark, self-lacerating songwriting gives a bite to songs like “Sniveller”, counterbalancing its massive chorus.

20. Teenage Tom Petties – Hotbox Daydreams

Release date: November 3rd
Record label: Repeating Cloud/Safe Suburban Home
Genre: Lo-fi power pop
Formats: Vinyl, digital

Wiltshire, England’s Tom Brown recorded the self-titled debut Teenage Tom Petties album entirely on his own at home; a year later, the band is now a five-piece, three-guitar group that recorded their sophomore album, Hotbox Daydreams, in a real recording studio. As great as lo-fi Teenage Tom Petties sounded, I’m pleased to say that not only does Hotbox Daydreams retain that initial spark, it’s a leap forward for Brown and his collaborators in every way. It’s deeper, more energetic, more consistent, and it sounds better. Every song on Hotbox Daydreams could’ve been a single–and in a better universe, they all were. Shh, be quiet, “This One’s on You” just came on the radio. (Read more)

19. Sharp Pins – Turtle Rock

Release date: March 1st
Record label: Hallogallo/Tall Texan
Genre: Lo-fi indie rock, noise pop, 90s indie rock
Formats: Vinyl, cassette, digital

Sharp Pins is the solo project of Chicago’s Kai Slater, who also plays in good bands like Dwaal Troupe and Lifeguard. Sharp Pins’ latest album, Turtle Rock, hews closer to Dwaal Troupe’s lo-fi, poppy indie rock than Lifeguard’s post-hardcore sound, although Slater covers a lot of ground over the album’s thirteen songs and 35 minutes. Slater has a knack for wistful but exuberant lo-fi pop that reminds me of early Guided by Voices in a way that goes beyond aesthetics and recording styles–Sharp Pins will lapse into noisiness, but nothing can dull the impact of gems like “Bettie Wait” and “You Turned Off the Light”.

18. Onesie – Liminal Hiss

Release date: August 18th
Record label: Totally Real/Pillow Sail/Kool Kat Musik
Genre: Jangle pop, power pop, psych pop
Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital

Brooklyn power pop quartet Onesie have a rock edge to them, although they deploy it strategically on Liminal Hiss, their third album. Sometimes the ornate touches let the band’s love of 60s/70s studio-based pop rock come through, while some of the looser moments on Liminal Hiss imagine The Chills as a more freewheeling, 90s indie rock-inspired group (like if the Flying Nun bands had taken influence from Pavement and Guided by Voices, instead of the other way around). Bandleader Ben Haberland puts together a barrage of warped, proggy pop hooks; nevertheless, they come through loud and clear and are nothing but joys to listen to. (Read more)

17. Coventry – Our Lady of Perpetual Health

Release date: September 19th
Record label: Septic Jukebox
Genre: Folk rock
Formats: CD, digital

Chicago’s Coventry is a new collaboration between Jon Massey (Silo’s Choice) and Mike Fox (Arthhur, Flesh of the Stars). Their debut CD together, Our Lady of Perpetual Health, is an accessible but decidedly offbeat collection of excellently-penned pop songs and ornery folk rock. Judging by the sheen of Our Lady of Perpetual Health, Massey and Fox certainly have spent plenty of time with classic folk rock and “studio pop” from the 1960s and 70s, but it’s also a very Chicago record, channeling the spirit of both Drag City iconoclastic troubadours and Thrill Jockey jazz-fusion scientists. (Read more)

16. Norm Archer – Splitting the Bill

Release date: September 28th
Record label: Panda Koala
Genre: Power pop, 90s indie rock, pop punk, psych pop
Formats: Digital

Unlike 2022’s Flying Cloud Terrace, Splitting the Bill was recorded with all live drums, allowing the music of Norm Archer to catch up just a little bit to bandleader Will Pearce’s kinetic energy. Splitting the Bill is still a pop record, but the edges of Norm Archer are as sharp as ever, merging power pop with Archers wqof Loaf-style 90s indie rock. Every facet of Pearce’s pop songwriting skills is on full display on Splitting the Bill, from grandiose, Pollard-esque multi-part suites to humbler, Westerbergian power-pop-punk. Splitting the Bill is an ornate work, one in which a closer inspection of even its less showy moments reveals exquisite detail. (Read more)

15. Washer – Improved Means to Deteriorated Ends

Release date: April 28th
Record label: Exploding in Sound
Genre: Garage rock, post-punk, punk
Formats: Vinyl, digital

Washer’s long-awaited third album has been one of my most anticipated records since 2017’s All Aboard–six years later, we finally have Improved Means to Deteriorated Ends, and from the first seconds of opening track “King Insignificant”, the band instantly bridges the long gap. Washer haven’t abandoned their core sound (a barebones blend of punk, post-punk, post-hardcore, and noise rock), but what they’ve been working on, it seems like, is packing it with as much as possible. The record’s fifteen songs grapple with thoughts on the passage of time, difficulties in holding on to motivation, and failing to meet one’s own expectations and live up to one’s self-image, all over their spirited music. (Read more)

14. Taking Meds – Dial M for Meds

Release date: September 1st
Record label: Smartpunk
Genre: 90s indie rock, power pop, indie punk
Formats: Vinyl, digital

In my small circle of the music world, Dial M for Meds qualifies as a genuine breakout record. The New York four-piece really put the “power” in power pop on their fourth full-length album–there are shades of Superchunk and Archers of Loaf all over the record, and it’s not not heavy, but Taking Meds take these tools and aim for massive and polished hooks and choruses with a straightforwardness rarely seen in 90s indie rock/punk revivalists. Listening to the melodic squall of “Outside”, it’s hard to believe nobody saw the potential in making something like Dial M for Meds–it just sounds so self-evident.

13. Ryan Davis & the Roadhouse Band – Dancing on the Edge

Release date: October 27th
Record label: Sophomore Lounge/ever/never
Genre: Alt-country, folk rock, country rock, singer-songwriter
Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital

On Ryan Davis’ first solo-ish album and first “song” record since the last album from his country rock group State Champion in 2018, the Louisville singer-songwriter is as sprawling and as “country” as ever. Davis’ unbothered Kentucky tones and the Roadhouse Band’s post-post-country rock-and-roll both sound brilliant across Dancing on the Edge, expanding Davis’ songs into seven-plus-minute behemoths. Closer inspection of the record only yields more and more impressive results, as Davis’ characteristically winding but sharp writing is as strong as ever. (Read more)

12. Whitney’s Playland – Sunset Sea Breeze

Release date: March 17th
Record label: Paisley Shirt/Meritorio
Genre: Power pop, indie pop, jangle pop
Formats: Vinyl, cassette, digital

The debut record from the Bay Area’s Whitney’s Playland is a strong opening statement. The band’s sound fits in with the sleepy, dreamy side of jangle pop, but Sunset Sea Breeze is also one of the straight-up catchiest records I’ve heard this year–it’s a lo-fi power pop record first and foremost. The four-piece band offer up the transcendent indie pop of the title track, the big-electric-guitar-wielding “Mercy”, and a host of other hits; Sunset Sea Breeze offers enough strong hooks for several records’ worth of indie pop. (Read more)

11. Spirit Night – Bury the Dead

Release date: August 4th
Record label: Self-released
Genre: Emo-y indie rock
Formats: Digital

There’s a moment in “Country Roads”, a song about Dylan Balliett’s complicated and activating relationship with his home state of West Virginia, where the Spirit Night frontman sings “Now I’m carrying with me / The rapid river / And the people it claimed / Who I can’t forget”. In perhaps the single most illustrative moment on Bury the Dead, Balliett directly hovers over still-sharp memories of the people he’s outlived and the places he’s outran. Trailing out from this state of mind are the ten songs of Bury the Dead, an album that navigates this complicated tightrope soundtracked by the sounds of classic, spirited, emo and punk-informed indie rock. (Read more)

10. Curling – No Guitar

Release date: August 11th
Record label: Self-released
Genre: Prog-pop, power pop, math rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital

Curling’s third album, No Guitar, was assembled slowly but surely, “bit by bit”, over the past five years. The two Pacific Ocean-separated members of the band, Jojo Brandel and Bernie Gelman ended up building an album that reflects their love of vintage 60s-esque, heavily-tinkered-with studio pop rock, without straying too far from the sound of their previous, more math rock-indebted music. No Guitar is a wholly unique combination of Game Theory, XTC, Jon Brion, progressive pop, power pop, and math rock (with, yes, a little bit of emo in there too); Brandel and Gelman’s influences are apparent here, but they also completely transcend them. (Read more)

9. Poppy Patica – Black Cat Back Stage

Release date: May 5th
Record label: House of Joy
Genre: Power pop, 90s indie rock, indie pop
Formats: Vinyl, digital

After a string of self-recorded and -released records, Poppy Patica’s Peter Hartmann takes advantage of a full band backing on his latest album, Black Cat Back Stage. Although these recordings place Hartmann’s songwriting front and center, the songs are dressed up with a style that combines Hartmann’s 90s indie rock influences with deep, layered synths and organs brought forward by the other members. It’s a charming but weighty sheen for Black Cat Back Stage, which deals with Hartmann’s original home of Washington, D.C. over the course of its ten songs. (Read more)

8. Vista House – Oregon III

Release date: February 10th
Record label: Anything Bagel
Genre: Alt-country
Formats: Cassette, digital

Portland, Oregon’s Tim Howe first appeared on my radar last year as one half of First Rodeo, but he also fronts the country rock group Vista House. The newest Vista House album, Oregon III, contains plenty of the twangy sound found in Howe’s contributions to First Rodeo, but it also accentuates Howe’s fuzzier and rockier sides. The album achieves a full-band indie rock sound in places, although it also has a bedroom pop charm in others. Howe’s voice is the main constant throughout Oregon III, a comforting and deep-felt presence throughout the record. (Read more)

7. Blues Lawyer – All in Good Time

Release date: February 17th
Record label: Dark Entries
Genre: Indie pop, power pop
Formats: Vinyl, digital

Blues Lawyer has expanded from the founding duo of Rob I. Miller and Elyse Schrock to a quartet on All in Good Time, their third full-length album. Subsequently, it’s a full-sounding power pop album, containing traces of dreamy jangle pop but shaken awake and enlisted into the service of making big indie pop anthems. Miller and Shrock are intriguing songwriters beyond their pop instincts: All in Good Time’s songs are full of hard-earned realizations about interpersonal relationships, but as uncomfortable or desperate as things get on the album, it always sounds fantastic. (Read more)

6. Pacing – Real poetry is always about plants and birds and trees and the animals and milk and honey breathing in the pink but real life is behind a screen

Release date: October 13th
Record label: Totally Real
Genre: Anti-folk, bedroom pop, singer-songwriter, indie folk
Formats: CD, cassette, digital

Real Poetry… is an album well-served by its title. Pacing’s Katie McTigue wriggles back and forth in her writing between stubbornly conversational and surprisingly poetic throughout the record’s twelve tracks. Pacing has been tagged “anti-folk”, which is partially true, but Really Poetry…’s indie pop structures (while frequently acoustic guitar-based, yes) range from sketched sparsely to keenly orchestrated, dramatic, intimate, and experimental and more in under thirty minutes. The questions and musings about art, legitimacy, and presentation of concepts at the core of the album only come clearer into focus the more chaotic Real Poetry… gets, however. (Read more)

5. Buddie – Agitator

Release date: April 21st
Record label: Crafted Sounds
Genre: 90s indie rock, fuzz rock, power pop
Formats: Cassette, digital

On their second full-length album (and first since lead singer/songwriter Dan Forrest relocated to Vancouver from Philadelphia), Buddie deliver eleven deep, fulfilling, and sharply-realized indie rock songs. Forrest remains a towering but approachable songwriter on Agitator, thinking in big-picture terms but never losing sight of the day-to-day and direct interpersonal minutia of his grand topics. Forrest’s gentle vocals are juxtaposed by the sweeping music that accompanies them, encompassing Built to Spill-esque 90s indie rock, fuzz rock, and power pop–delivered with an earnestness from the band that matches their frontperson. (Read more)

4. Connections – Cool Change

Release date: March 24th
Record label: Trouble in Mind
Genre: Lo-fi power pop
Formats: Vinyl, cassette, digital

Connections’ sixth album, Cool Change, took five years to come out (an eternity for a band who started off putting out multiple records in the same year), but it’s anything but a soft relaunch for the Columbus band. The new album has a bit of everything–a massive, five-minute opening statement of purpose with “In Space”, smooth power pop in “Slow Ride” and “Unsolved Mysteries”, and subtlety with “I Confess” and “You Are All I Need”. With a half-dozen records and a decade together under their belt, Connections remain at their peak. (Read more)

3. Soft on Crime – New Suite

Release date: February 3rd
Record label: Eats It
Genre: Jangle pop, power pop, psychedelic pop
Formats: Cassette, digital

Soft on Crime eagerly explore guitar pop of several stripes on their debut record, New Suite. The trio toss off excellent tunes in the vein of retro psychedelia, fuzzy lo-fi indie rock, and starry-eyed college rock across the album’s runtime–the pitch-perfect “Telex Eyes”, the giddily melodic “Crying Pool”, the crunchy “Splendid Life”. Soft on Crime jam these dozen songs with as many instrumental and vocals hooks as possible per track, even when they’re putting together numbers that reflect their less overtly poppy influences, like the jerky, Devo-ish “Pretty Purgatory”. (Read more)

2. Star 99 – Bitch Unlimited

Release date: August 4th
Record label: Lauren
Genre: Power pop, pop punk, twee
Formats: Vinyl, digital

Bitch Unlimited is ten songs and 26 minutes long, and just about every second of it is crammed with hooks. Although it’s the San Jose band’s debut album, its members have played in Bay Area bands for a while–perhaps explaining how Bitch Unlimited so effortlessly pulls off that unmistakable sound of early 2010s indie-pop-punk bands like P.S. Eliot, Chumped, and Gladie. Star 99’s philosophy seems to be that there’s nothing that can’t be made into excellent, catchy, fizzy, and quite memorable power pop, with every wrinkle on the record (the shared lead vocal duties, the slightly buried but still noticeable big synth hooks, and, of course, plenty of power chords) defending this thesis admirably. (Read more)

1. Upper Wilds – Jupiter

Release date: July 21st
Record label: Thrill Jockey
Genre: Fuzz rock, space rock, noise pop
Formats: Vinyl, digital

Upper Wilds continue to storm through our Solar System loudly and grandly with their fourth album, and third in their series of planetary-based albums that began with 2018’s Mars and continued with 2021’s Venus. The Brooklyn trio have always been ambitious, so it’s no surprise that their album based upon the largest planet in Earth’s neighborhood rises to the challenge, and then some. The band’s loud, catchy, and massive-sounding fuzz rock is perfect for the scale, and for bandleader Dan Friel’s writing, which uses the titular planet to explore fascinating subjects both terrestrial and extra- as the band white-knuckles through the cosmos. With Jupiter, Upper Wilds have finally found a muse that’s gigantic enough to match them. It’s their best album yet, and it’s my favorite album of 2023. (Read more)

Honorable mentions:

Click here for:
Part One (100-76)
Part Two (75-51)
Part Three (50-26)

Rosy Overdrive’s Top 100 Albums of 2023 (50-26)

Hello! Welcome back (or just welcome) to Rosy Overdrive’s Top 100 Albums of 2023! Today reveals the top 50 albums on the list. Yesterday unveiled numbers 100 through 51, so be sure to check those out as well if you haven’t yet.

See also:
Part One (100-76)
Part Two (75-51)
Part Four (25-1)
Playlist with all albums (Spotify link) (Tidal link)

50. ME REX – Giant Elk

Release date: October 20th
Record label: Big Scary Monsters
Genre: Indie pop, synthpop, folk rock
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital

ME REX have already been in a class of their own, but that hasn’t stopped the London trio from continuing to evolve and push themselves. Giant Elk is their first “normal” album after a bunch of EPs and the experimental Megabear; surprising no one, the band can absolutely hold their own in an eleven-song, 40-minute format. Myles McCabe continues to be one of the most underappreciated songwriters in indie rock, and the band sounds as loud, polished, and confident as ever as they find new and exciting new hidden depths to McCabe’s already substantial songs.

49. Patio – Collection

Release date: September 22nd
Record label: Fire Talk
Genre: Post-punk, art punk
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital

Patio’s second album has something for everyone; musically, Collection is a collection of quite aurally pleasing indie rock and art-punk, dealing in both garage-y bluntness and more restrained melodicism. At the same time, there’s plenty of unexpected and exciting instrumental moments, and Collection’s lyrics are attention-grabbing too, both when Loren DiBlasi and Lindsey-Paige McCloy decide to be straightforward and when they’re a bit cagey. It’s a record that prompts one to listen a bit more actively, rewarding any such attention bestowed upon it more and more with each pass. (Read more)

48. Local Drags – Mess of Everything

Release date: March 17th
Record label: Stardumb
Genre: Power pop
Formats: Vinyl, digital

Local Drags is a power pop group from Springfield, Illinois, and their latest record, Mess of Everything, represents the best of the genre–big, catchy hooks abound on it. There’s just no other way of saying it; these songs are timeless. It’s another no-fat release on this list–twenty-four minutes, ten songs, and endless fun. It starts off with a few massive hits, but Local Drags also do the Midwestern thing of hiding the best couple of tracks (the note-perfect “Aloe” and the massive “Better Now”) at the end.

47. Nicole Yun – Matter

Release date: April 14th
Record label: Kanine
Genre: Indie pop, dream pop, power pop
Formats: Vinyl, digital

Nicole Yun led the 2010s Richmond dreamy indie rock group Eternal Summers, but in recent years she’s turned her attention to a solo career. Her second album, Matter, is a breezy collection of fluffy but meaty pop rock songs that are aided in no small part due to Yun’s front-and-center, charismatic vocals. There’s a Guided by Voices-esque effortless catchiness to a lot of Matter (interestingly enough, Yun has collaborated with GBV’s Doug Gillard before, but not on this record), although it takes a seasoned songwriter to offer up this many hooks.

46. Fust – Genevieve

Release date: June 16th
Record label: Dear Life
Genre: Alt-country, folk rock, country rock
Formats: Vinyl, cassette, CD, digital

I really loved Fust’s 2021 album Evil Joy and its pensive but confident take on alt-country, and it’s been exciting to see the North Carolina band turn a few heads with their follow-up, Genevieve. The differences between Evil Joy and Genevieve are subtle but noticeable–the expanded lineup (MJ Lenderman and Indigo De Souza, among others, guest on the album) and sound (recorded in a proper studio) don’t overwhelm bandleader Aaron Dowdy’s songwriting, and in fact enhance it–an appropriate addition for a collection of tracks that, even for Fust, feels particularly ruminative. (Read more)

45. Total Downer – Caretaker

Release date: January 27th
Record label: Just Because
Genre: Power pop, pop punk, emo
Formats: Cassette, digital

Total Downer’s debut full-length album is an excellent collection of punk-y power pop tunes that establishes bandleader Andy Schumann as both a catchy and weighty songwriter. Caretaker is a brief record, coming in at about 26 minutes, but Total Downer tear through thirteen fiery tracks that find Schumann covering lyrical subjects that can be as wide-ranging as they are hard-hitting. Total Downer wield big choruses in the service of pure catharsis, tackling everything from childhood trauma to shitty bosses to the loss of a close friend with good and loud alt-rock. (Read more)

44. The Bug Club – Rare Birds: Hour of Song

Release date: October 18th
Record label: We Are Busy Bodies
Genre: Power pop, pop punk, twee
Formats: Vinyl, digital

It’s been a whirlwind of a 2023 for Welsh trio The Bug Club–reissuing their first two records, a live album composed entirely of new material, and, capping it all off, a beast of a double LP. Interspersed with brief spoken word reprieves, Rare Birds: Hour of Song is, indeed, sixty-plus minutes of The Bug Club at their garage-rock-power-pop best. High-octane rock and roll tunes like “Fully Clothed”, “Samuel Was Beautiful Tonight”, and “Can Ya Change a Thing Like This?” would be centerpieces for most bands; on Rare Birds: Hour of Song, you’d best grab onto them before The Bug Club move on to the next bird.

43. Timeout Room – Tight-Ass Goku Pictures

Release date: February 3rd
Record label: Tough Gum
Genre: Power pop, lo-fi pop, jangle pop
Formats: Cassette, digital

The first release from S.T. McCrary’s solo project Timeout Room (fascinatingly called Tight-Ass Goku Pictures) is a guitar pop album with personality and hooks to spare in its thirty minutes. McCrary’s home recording style is lo-fi but clear-sounding, in a way that reminds me of The Cleaners from Venus, and his influences range from bright indie pop groups like those on Flying Nun’s roster to more punk bands like the Wipers. Tight-Ass Goku Pictures ends up a unique mix that doesn’t quite sound like either of those extremes, offering up groovy punk-pop bangers and off-kilter and swerving songs in spades. (Read more)

42. Rob I. Miller – Companion Piece

Release date: May 12th
Record label: Vacant Stare
Genre: Lo-fi indie rock, jangle pop, singer-songwriter, power pop
Formats: Cassette, digital

Rob I. Miler’s debut solo album came out mere months after an excellent record from his main band, Blues Lawyer (which is also on this list somewhere). One listen to Companion Piece makes one hear why these songs fit more under Miller’s own name. For one, it’s a full-on breakup album, with the album’s eleven songs focusing intently on a disintegrating relationship. And, befitting of the solo nature, Companion Piece is a lot more humble-sounding than All in Good Time’s relative polish, mostly recorded at home by Miller himself–but Miller is still the same songwriter, and his pop instincts are no less potent on Companion Piece. (Read more)

41. The World Famous – Totally Famous

Release date: October 13th
Record label: Lauren
Genre: Power pop, pop punk
Formats: Cassette, digital

Los Angeles’ The World Famous are one the most exciting new guitar pop groups to debut this year. the Massachusetts-originating band pulls from both coasts on Totally Famous–I hear Weezer-y surf-pop song construction, the lazy darkness of The Lemonheads, the suburban wandering pop of Fountains of Wayne, and the wide-eyed California as inhabited by Jason Lytle on their debut album. It all adds up to an incredibly inviting and promising power pop debut (and one that is surprisingly back-loaded–side two is just about perfect in its overabundance of chorus-worthy hooks). (Read more)

40. Diners – Domino

Release date: August 18th
Record label: Bar None
Genre: Power pop, indie pop
Formats: Vinyl, cassette, digital

Domino is the prolific Blue Broderick’s seventh full-length album as Diners, and the first since she moved from Phoenix to Los Angeles. With help from producer and power pop scholar Mo Troper, Broderick takes a turn for the louder, rockier, and full-band-embracing on this one, but the Diners of Domino consistently put together songs that don’t abandon the project’s previous sound (that of lo-fi, casual bedroom pop) so much as punch it up. Breezy but with the band (Troper, Broderick, and Bory‘s Brenden Ramirez) alert and at the ready, Domino is power pop in its hookiest, sturdiest, purest form. (Read more)

39. Interbellum – Our House Is Very Beautiful at Night

Release date: April 7th
Record label: Self-released
Genre: Folk rock, experimental folk, psychedelia
Formats: Digital

Beirut’s Interbellum is the project of Karl Mattar, and it’s quite impressive that he made the bulk of Our House Is Very Beautiful at Night himself, given how intricate and involved the album is as a whole. It’s a beautiful and frequently head-spinning indie-folk-rock-noise record, encompassing everything from charming and straightforward pop rock to acoustic folk songs to fuzzy, layered psychedelia. Early 2000s-era Microphones and Elephant 6 feel like touchstones for this album, but Mattar is at the helm for all of Our House Is Very Beautiful at Night, and his vision is a unique one. (Read more)

38. Teenage Halloween – Till You Return

Release date: October 20th
Record label: Don Giovanni
Genre: Pop punk, power pop, emo
Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital

It took Teenage Halloween three years to follow up their excellent self-titled debut album, but I’m happy to report that Till You Return is every bit that album’s equal in terms of massive power pop hooks and electric punk rock energy. The Asbury Park group offer up a murderer’s row of emo-punk songs–just about every track here reaches “anthem” status. They’ve slimmed down to a quartet since their last album, and it feels like the four of them have a lot of chemistry together here–although it takes a bit of time before the initial sugar rush wears off and one can even start to think about intraband dynamics.

37. Leor Miller’s Fear of Her Own Desire – Eternal Bliss Now!

Release date: May 19th
Record label: Candlepin
Genre: Experimental pop, lo-fi indie rock, dream pop
Formats: Cassette, digital

Leor Miller is a New Haven-based singer-songwriter who’s been making noisy, hazy rock music on her own for several years now. Her latest, Eternal Bliss Now!, is mostly a guitar-based album, but it’s not one that lives entirely in the world of indie rock. I can hear how Miller has been inspired by non-rock genres (hip hop, electronica, and hyperpop, per her bio) in presenting these songs, even as she approaches them from an indie rock perspective. As disparate as the influences are, Miller remains laser-focused on interpersonal connectivity and other big but interconnected subjects throughout the record. (Read more)

36. 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

The High Water Marks are on their third album since 2020, and they’re only getting better. Your Next Wolf just might be their strongest front-to-back record yet, with founding Apples in Stereo/Elephant 6 member Hilarie Sidney and her partner Per Ole Bratset continuing their mission to combine 60s psychedelic pop with messier indie rock to incredible ends–it’s seventeen songs and forty minutes of loud, fuzzy pop music with a full-band bite and a characteristic High Water Marks catchiness. (Read more)

35. Mo Troper – Troper Sings Brion

Release date: November 17th
Record label: Lame-O
Genre: Lo-fi power pop, art pop
Formats: Digital

We’ve gotten (at least one) Mo Troper full-length every year since 2020, and while this year is no different, the Portland power pop hero has taken a different tack with Troper Sings Brion. The concept–Troper records fleshed-out, full-band versions of cast-off songs that the legendary behind-the-scenes popsmith Jon Brion didn’t include on his sole solo “pop” album Meaningless–is brilliant, and Troper is just the ringer for the job. Intricate construction, lethal melodies, bizarre musical turns–it’s hard to tell exactly where Brion ends and Troper begins throughout the record, but Troper Sings Brion is too much fun to be concerned with such matters.

34. Yo La Tengo – This Stupid World

Release date: February 10th
Record label: Matador
Genre: 90s indie rock, experimental rock, noise pop
Formats: Vinyl, CD digital

As usual, I like the new Yo La Tengo album, and this time it seems a lot of other music writers did, too! I’m less interested in doing the “Yo La Tengo’s best album since ___” game and more apt to just appreciate This Stupid World for being a very good Yo La Tengo album (a commodity that maybe had been undervalued in recent years). Nine fairly disparate but all classic Yo La Tengo songs here–the beautifully empty “Apology Letter”, the transcendent noisiness of “Brain Capers”, hit single “Fallout”, that opening track. Okay, maybe This Stupid World is the best front-to-back Yo La Tengo album since–

33. Ther – A Horrid Whisper Echoes in a Palace of Endless Joy

Release date: April 14th
Record label: Dead Definition
Genre: Indie folk, slowcore
Formats: Cassette, digital

Coming fourteen months after their latest album, Ther’s A Horrid Whisper Echoes in a Palace of Endless Joy takes a turn towards quiet and sparse but quite spirited-sounding indie folk. A Horrid Whisper… is a stark-sounding, vulnerable album that’s guided by Heather Jones’ unwavering, central vocals, but Ther find shades within their folk sound, like the prominent pedal steel in the country-tinged “Impossible Things”, the acoustic-picked slowcore of “Love Is Always”, and the soaring, crescendoing folk rock of “Big Papi Lassos the Moon”. (Read more)

32. Gaadge – Somewhere Down Below

Release date: August 4th
Record label: Crafted Sounds/Michi Tapes
Genre: Shoegaze, noise pop
Formats: Vinyl, cassette, digital

If 2021’s Yeah? was the sound of Gaadge moving from the solo project of Mitch Delong into a real-live band, then their sophomore album, Somewhere Down Below, is the sound of the Pittsburgh quartet embracing it. The album’s fourteen songs feel like largely group efforts, with the varied-sounding record equally taking influence from Guided by Voices’ hooky lo-fi basement pop, heavy-duty shoegaze like Lilys and My Bloody Valentine, and the more electronic and experimental version of shoegaze practiced by their present-day peers. Somewhere Down Below is the best kind of record from a creative team–one that’s full of ideas, where one can find something new and great with each listen. (Read more)

31. Telehealth – Content Oscillator

Release date: March 31st
Record label: Very Famous
Genre: New wave, synthpunk, egg punk, post-punk
Formats: Vinyl, cassette, digital

Telehealth’s debut record, Content Oscillator, is an incredibly fun-sounding synthpop/egg punk record, devoting just as much time to jamming lead singer Alex Attitude’s societal observations, sketches, and satirical portrayals into its songs as it devotes to making them as enjoyable and entertaining as possible. Telehealth sound a lot like Devo on Content Oscillator–and, befitting of its subject matter, Attitude and collaborator Kendra Cox accomplish this by embracing much more than surface-level “Devo-core” aesthetics, going further and dedicating themselves to developing an entire worldview over the course of the record. (Read more)

30. Empty Country – II

Release date: August 4th
Record label: Get Better/Tough Love
Genre: 90s indie rock
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital

I’ve long been an open fan of the dearly departed Cymbals Eat Guitars, and while I enjoyed frontman Joseph D’Agostino’s 2020 self-titled debut as Empty Country, the project’s second album is a huge and somewhat dizzying leap forward. D’Agostino has put together a dark but fascinating world in Empty Country II, pulling from industrial horror and mythology to create an unsettling parallel universe to ours (the album comes with an accompanying short story). Musically, Empty Country is up to the gargantuan task at hand, creating a massive tangle of indie rock that feels distinct (but not removed) from D’Agostino’s previous band.

29. Annie Hart – The Weight of a Wave

Release date: August 4th
Record label: Uninhabitable Mansions
Genre: Synthpop, indie pop
Formats: Vinyl, digital

New York’s Annie Hart was part of synthpop trio Au Revoir Simone, and in recent years has moved into the world of film scores and instrumental composition; Hart’s fourth solo album, The Weight of a Wave, makes it clear that the singer-songwriter is still in touch with her synthpop roots. The record’s ten indie pop tunes sound sharply-written and -recorded but not overly labored-on–Hart cites krautrock as an influence, and the minimal presentation of these pieces of synthesizer-driven songs bear this out. Gigantic hooks abound nonetheless, and The Weight of a Wave is a full-realized pop record regardless of how busy it is at any given moment. (Read more)

28. Bell and the Ringers – Bell and the Ringers

Release date: March 10th
Record label: Self-released
Genre: Pop punk, power pop, emo
Formats: Digital

Bell and the Ringers are a long-distance duo made up of Melbourne’s Lucas Bell and Toronto’s Brent Vipond, and their self-titled debut record evokes a very specific kind of 2000s-era indie-pop-punk. Bell and the Ringers has some heft to it–the balance that Vipond and Bell walk throughout the album is keeping the pop punk energy up while still developing the tracks (and, to be clear, they are successful in delivering an incredibly energetic record). What the duo put together here is enough to sell an intriguing, promising under-the-radar band. (Read more)

27. Sunshine Convention – The Sunshine Convention

Release date: July 21st
Record label: Cardinal Telephone
Genre: Lo-fi indie rock, power pop, fuzz rock
Formats: CD, digital

As Sunshine Convention, Brooklyn’s Jake Whitener has a familiar and pleasing sound–fuzzy, lo-fi, loud, but above all massively pop-friendly. Nevertheless, The Sunshine Convention doesn’t feel played out at all due to Whitener’s sharp songwriting skills, the album’s excitable energy, and the fact that there’s still plenty of room to explore in the space of these genre labels. Whitener is fluent in everything from lo-fi Guided by Voices to early Elephant 6 to Sparklehorse to Yo La Tengo, and he can turn any of these starting points into loud, hooky indie rock anthems with ease over the course of a debut record that hits the ground running. (Read more)

26. Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit – Weathervanes

Release date: June 9th
Record label: Southeastern/Thirty Tigers
Genre: Alt-country, country rock, folk rock, singer-songwriter
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital

We all know Jason Isbell is a great songwriter. It’s not surprising that Weathervanes is a good album. Still, after Reunions, I may have been too quick to put him in the “twilight” phase–he’d show up every few years and release an unobjectionable album that nonetheless wouldn’t surprise me at all. Weathervanes is not that–it’s the work of an artist who’s absolutely still at their peak. It’s full of shooting-star songs, snagging lines and scenarios that other writers could try forever to approach, and it does it while taking the most tedious kind of album format possible (thirteen songs, 60 minutes) and making it seem like the perfect length.

Click here for:
Part One (100-76)
Part Two (75-51)
Part Four (25-1)

Rosy Overdrive’s Top 100 Albums of 2023 (75-51)

Welcome to part two (of four) of Rosy Overdrive’s Top 100 Albums of 2023! For any and all background info, see part one.

See also:
Part One (100-76)
Part Three (50-26)
Part Four (25-1)
Playlist with all albums (Spotify link) (Tidal link)

75. Helpful People – Brokenblossom Threats

Release date: August 27th
Record label: Tall Texan/Burundi Cloud
Genre: Jangle pop, indie pop
Formats: Vinyl, digital

As if Glenn Donaldson didn’t have enough going on with the near-continuous stream of new music he’s releasing as The Reds, Pinks & Purples, he’s teamed up with Carly Putnam of The Ollies and The Mantles to form Helpful People. Brokenblossom Threats is a seamless, smooth collaboration–Putnam sings lead vocals throughout the album but she and Donaldson split music and lyric writing, and I hear a lot of the fuzzy side of The Reds, Pinks & Purples’ guitar pop all over these twelve songs. (Read more)

74. Florry – The Holey Bible

Release date: August 4th
Record label: Dear Life
Genre: Alt-country, country rock
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital

Philadelphia’s Francie Medosch has been making music as Florry since at least 2018, but the third full-length from the alt-country group is the work of a massive seven-piece lineup. Medosch is still the songwriter on The Holey Bible, but the rest of the band’s performance on her songs is impressive and essential–balanced throughout, equally likely to lean into their rock and roll instincts as their earnest country side. It takes craftsmanship to make a record that feels as laid-back and loose as The Holey Bible does. (Read more)

73. Tee Vee Repairmann – What’s on TV?

Release date: February 4th
Record label: Total Punk
Genre: Garage punk, power pop
Formats: Vinyl, cassette, digital

The debut full-length from Sydney’s Tee Vee Repairmann follows a couple of EPs over the past two years, and their take on Australian garage rock-y power pop is quite compelling on What’s on TV? The group cut through a dozen songs in 24 minutes, although tracks like “Out of Order”, “Time 2 Kill”, and “Bus Stop” don’t need any more than their 1-2 minutes to make their marks. What’s on TV? is an energetic and occasionally less-than-polished album, but Tee Vee Repairmann are a pop group at their core, and the entirety of the record reflects this.

72. Worriers – Trust Your Gut

Release date: September 15th
Record label: Ernest Jenning Record Co.
Genre: Power pop, pop punk
Formats: Vinyl, digital

The second Worriers album of 2023 steps back from the low-key, bedroom-pop-ish aura of Warm Blanket to return Lauren Denitzio and their collaborators (including members of The Hold Steady and Against Me!) back into the world of sharp indie-pop-punk from which they originated. Denitzio’s songwriting has always been the main draw of Worriers, rather than the clothes in which their songs are dressed, and Trust Your Gut is a reminder that their lyrics can resonate and echo just as effectively in a “polished” pop context as in “intimate” bedroom rock. (Read more)

71. Lonesome Joan – On North Pond

Release date: October 23rd
Record label: Self-released
Genre: Folk rock, singer-songwriter, lo-fi indie rock
Formats: Cassette, digital

On North Pond is explicitly a concept album about the North Pond Hermit, a recluse who lived in the titular area of Maine with virtually no direct human contact for 27 years until 2013. Lonesome Joan’s Amanda Lozada clearly found something resonant in this figure, channeling it into a quietly impressive collection of folk rock with a depth that reveals itself to me more and more on repeat listens. For a mostly self-recorded folk album, On North Pond is pleasingly dynamic–frequently hushed and intimate, yes, but also rousing and rocking in more places than one would expect. (Read more)

70. Royal Ottawa – Carcosa

Release date: October 17th
Record label: Self-released
Genre: College rock, folk rock, psychedelic rock, Paisley Underground
Formats: Vinyl, digital

Royal Ottawa are an elusive Canadian band whose members have been sporadically releasing and playing music since the 1980s (originally as the early punk/post-punk band Bugs Harvey Oswald). For a band that’s existed under the radar for so long, Royal Ottawa are pretty good at selling themselves–they describe Carcosa as “sand-blasted through time to create a sonic experience that is at once familiar and hauntingly alien”. Listening to the album, it’s clear that Royal Ottawa have been playing the long game, following a unique, winding path to arrive here in the form of a nineteen-song, eighty-minute behemoth of desert rock, folk music, and psychedelia. (Read more)

69. Slaughter Beach, Dog – Crying, Laughing, Waving, Smiling

Release date: September 22nd
Record label: Lame-O
Genre: Singer-songwriter, alt-country, folk rock
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital

Crying, Laughing, Waving, Smiling, the fifth Slaughter Beach, Dog album, is a laid-back folk rock record that finds bandleader Jake Ewald completely in his element. It’s an album made by someone who’s always had a knack for songwriting–he’s cultivated a folk-indebted, earnest, and distinctly hand-drawn style over several Slaughter Beach, Dog releases–but who’s continued to grow and become more comfortable and trusting in his work (and in his band, who, having been given more room to explore than in past Slaughter Beach records, more than do these songs justice). (Read more)

68. Lydia Loveless – Nothing’s Gonna Stand in My Way Again

Release date: September 22nd
Record label: Bloodshot
Genre: Country rock, alt-country, singer-songwriter
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital

Lydia Loveless is back at the rebooted Bloodshot Records for Nothing’s Gonna Stand in My Way Again, and with it comes more of a return to the country rock from which Loveless had stepped away with 2020’s Daughter’s more “atmospheric indie rock” sound. Songs like “Runaway” and “Feel” suggest that it’s not an entirely clean break (nor should it be; Daughter was very good), although it’s always invigorating to hear Loveless rip through material like “Poor Boy” and “Toothache”, or wander their way through the heady but catchy maze of “Sex and Money”.

67. Aux Caroling – Hydrogen Bonds

Release date: October 27th
Record label: Half a Person
Genre: Singer-songwriter, folk rock
Formats: CD, digital

Hydrogen Bonds is a reluctant indie pop record made by North Carolina’s Scott Deaver, finally seeing the light of day after resting in a Dropbox folder for several years. The first (non-holiday-themed) album from his project Aux Caroling is a collection of songs preoccupied with the passing of time and what that means for its narrators, albeit in a subtle and gradually-revealing way. Deaver and collaborator Mike Albanese give these thirteen songs a polished indie rock sheen, but they don’t get in the way of the compelling songwriting that helps Hydrogen Bonds stand out in a crowded field. (Read more)

66. Sparklehorse – Bird Machine

Release date: November 3rd
Record label: Anti-
Genre: Lo-fi indie rock, power pop, psych pop
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital

I did not expect to be listening to an entire new Sparklehorse album in 2023, but Bird Machine is here, and it’s full of delicately beautiful songs that remind us all just how impossibly gifted the late Mark Linkous was at all of this. These fourteen songs are notably less fussed-over than the four previous Sparklehorse records–supposedly Linkous intended to make a record this way, though one wonders if he would’ve continued tinkering with Bird Machine had he not passed away a year after its recording. Regardless, I’m grateful for this album, which contains several instant Sparklehorse classics and a few songs that ask for a bit more time and leeway before fully revealing themselves.

65. The Smashing Times – This Sporting Life

Release date: November 3rd
Record label: K/Perennial
Genre: Jangle pop, psychedelic pop
Formats: Vinyl, digital

This Sporting Life, the fourth Smashing Times album since 2019, might be the most fully-realized that the Baltimore quintet have sounded yet. It’s their most pop-forward offering, even as they haven’t abandoned the exploratory streak that made them stick out in the first place. The Smashing Times’ music is a warped wonderland where vintage jangle pop and folk rock take strange and unknowable twists and turns all over–there’s unsurprisingly a lot to get lost in on This Sporting Life, but there are also several memorable signposts in the form of sneakily brilliant pop songs. (Read more)

64. En Attendant Ana – Principia

Release date: February 24th
Record label: Trouble in Mind
Genre: Jangle pop, post-punk, dream pop
Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital

En Attendant Ana eagerly slide pop song after pop song out toward the listener on Principia, the French band’s third album. Margaux Bouchaudon remains the band’s primary singer and songwriter, but the whole band give Principia its sound–the rhythm section keeps one foot of the record firmly rooted in post-punk, while the vocals, trumpets, saxophones, and shimmering guitars help push Principia into dreamy indie pop territory. En Attendant Ana are operating at a high level on Principia–it feels like the work of a band who we can expect to be a reliable source of good indie rock for a long time. (Read more)

63. Dusk – Glass Pastures

Release date: October 20th
Record label: Don Giovanni
Genre: Country rock, alt-country, roots rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital

Glass Pastures is the first proper Dusk album in a half-decade, although it finds the Appleton, Wisconsin sextet in just as rare a form as they were on 2018’s Dusk. It’s a timeless-sounding collection of vintage pop music in the form of enjoyable country rock and roll, and there’s also a somewhat surprising depth to songs like the rambling “At the Roadside” that feels like a new facet of Dusk. On the whole, Glass Pasture’s vibes are immaculate, just begging to be played with the windows down in the summer–but it’s certainly sturdy enough to be enjoyed in all weather and terrain.

62. Flat Worms – Witness Marks

Release date: September 22nd
Record label: GOD?/Drag City
Genre: Garage rock, post-punk, fuzz rock
Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital

Los Angeles’ Flat Worms have always been one of my favorite modern bands who loiter at the corner in between post-punk and garage rock. Stuff like the Into the Iris EP and Antarctica take a no-nonsense, song-first, “workmanlike” approach to the genre, and on their first record in three years, they haven’t lost a step. Even for a band that excels at making music like this, Witness Marks particularly has a “back in the saddle” feeling, even more focused on rolling through sharp garage rock as a single, in-lockstep unit. Frontperson Will Ivy’s writing is heavier than ever this time around, and Flat Worms don’t soften their blows as they take his material on. (Read more)

61. Noah Roth – Florida

Release date: October 6th
Record label: Rocket to Heaven
Genre: Singer-songwriter, folk
Formats: Digital

The third Noah Roth solo album in a year and change is a departure for the Chicago/Philadelphia singer-songwriter. After the studio-friendly folk rock of Breakfast of Champions and the noisy experiments of Don’t Forget to Remember, Florida is almost entirely drawn from Roth’s vocals and an acoustic guitar, recorded alone over a couple of days during a stay in the titular state. Roth remains an ornate pop songwriter, and the skeletal nature of the record does nothing to dampen the musical personality they’ve honed in on as of late. (Read more)

60. Screaming Females – Desire Pathway

Release date: February 17th
Record label: Don Giovanni
Genre: Alt-rock, punk, power pop
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital

Five years after the last Screaming Females record (2018’s All at Once), the immediately-hitting Desire Pathway makes it feel like they were never gone. The trio sound as tight and laser-focused as ever on the new one–it’s a little surprising that they’ve returned with something this concise compared to All at Once’s sprawl, but Screaming Females sound so alive while playing songs like “Desert Train”, “Mourning Dove”, and “Ornament” that it’s clear that they’re exactly where they should be on Desire Pathway.

59. The Cowboys – Sultan of Squat

Release date: August 25th
Record label: Feel It
Genre: Power pop, garage rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital

On their sixth album and first in three years, Bloomington, Indiana’s The Cowboys dive further into polished, gleaming power pop over thirteen songs of rock-and-roll rave-ups and dramatic cascades of hooks. Sultan of Squat’s opening title track and “Raining Sour Grapes” are some of the best pop moments of the year, bar none, and The Cowboys keep things full steam ahead with an exuberance and energy that reflects their garage rock roots, even as they sound as refined as ever. (Read more)

58. Frog – Grog

Release date: November 17th
Record label: Audio Antihero
Genre: Experimental pop, folk rock, psychedelic rock, freak folk, prog-pop
Formats: Digital

The fifth album from Frog, the Queens duo of brothers Danny & Steve Bateman, is a pleasingly divergent record. Nearly every song on Grog takes a different tack than the track coming before it, even as the Batemans hold it together with shaky but intact pop hooks and Dan’s timeless-sounding, surprisingly versatile voice. Listening to Grog kind of feels like an alternate-universe oldies station in how it picks and chooses sounds from throughout the past to create a new listening experience. (Read more)

57. Guided by Voices – Welshpool Frillies

Release date: July 21st
Record label: GBV, Inc.
Genre: Lo-fi indie rock, 90s indie rock, power pop, post-punk
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital

The current lineup of Guided by Voices has developed a reputation for slow-burners, for intricate prog-indebted records that take a few listens to soak in (the three or records before this one really seemed to cement this). In contrast, Welshpool Frillies, the group’s varied and limber second album of 2023, feels like the most immediate they’ve allowed themselves to be in at least a dozen records, rolling out vintage post-punk-pop Robert Pollard hits like “Why Won’t You Kiss Me” and even allowing some lo-fi acoustic highlights to sneak in with “Mother Mirth” and “Chain Dance”.

56. Greg Mendez – Greg Mendez

Release date: May 5th
Record label: Forged Artifacts/Devil Town Tapes
Genre: Indie folk, slowcore
Formats: Vinyl, cassette, digital

Greg Mendez is, loosely, an indie folk record with some classical pop touches and some moments (like the organ-and-vocals “Sweetie”) that sound a little Jeff Mangum-influenced–but mainly, the album sounds like whatever Greg Mendez thinks serves the songs best. It’s subtle, quiet, and not openly concerned with being immediately liked, but it’s undeniably captivating. Mendez’s blunt assessments of thorny and complex interpersonal situations are where his songwriting shines–there are a lot of good songs about sad subject matter, but Greg Mendez is a truly masterful example of spinning ugliness into prettiness. (Read more)

55. Hammer No More the Fingers – Silver Zebra

Release date: October 20th
Record label: Trinity House/Defend Vinyl
Genre: Math rock, power pop, prog-pop, post-punk
Formats: Vinyl, digital

A great new-to-me discovery in the waning hours of 2023, North Carolina’s Hammer No More the Fingers have returned after a decade of inactivity with the all-hits, no-filler 22-minute Silver Zebra. J. Robbins recorded this, and the trio certainly trend towards the hooky end of Dischord Records (and of modern Dischord-influenced bands like Mister Goblin, through whom I found this band), although they’re also just straight-up prog-pop “XTC-core” on songs like “Afterlife”. Immediate, hard-hitting, interesting, and exploratory guitar music.

54. Parister – Here’s What You Wonder

Release date: May 11th
Record label: Candlepin
Genre: Lo-fi indie rock, alt-country
Formats: Cassette, digital

The humble presentation of Here’s What You Wonder’s songs, in addition to Parister’s not-infrequent use of 90s indie rock distortion, helps them fit in with other bands on their label, Candlepin Records. There’s an obvious twang in the playing of the Louisville band and in the songwriting of guitarist/vocalist Jake Tapley that also puts them in the realm of modern fuzz-country (“country-gaze”, perhaps) groups. Here’s What You Wonder is a generous album, with its thirteen songs all feeling full and complete, unfolding with Tapley’s unassuming but steady vocals guiding them, and the band play as polished or as loud as any one track requires. (Read more)

53. Subsonic Eye – All Around You

Release date: September 13th
Record label: Topshelf
Genre: Dream pop, indie pop, fuzz pop
Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital

On their third full-length record, Singapore’s Subsonic Eye pick up where 2021’s underrated Nature of Things left off–it’s an album of wide-eyed, big-sky indie rock marked by lead singer Nur Wahidah’s compelling, expressive vocals and hooks that work well with All Around You’s grandiose ambitions. All Around You feels fuller and bigger than its 29 minutes, with the band packing a lot into a lot of these songs’ relatively brief runtimes. As Subsonic Eye probe guitar-driven dream pop, amp-cranked fuzz-pop, and sparkling heartland rock, Wahidah holds them together, always ensuring the band’s personality shines through. (Read more)

52. The Pretty Flowers – A Company Sleeve

Release date: July 14th
Record label: Double Helix
Genre: Power pop, alt-rock
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital

Although it took a half-decade for the second full-length album from Los Angeles’ The Pretty Flowers to finally materialize, A Company Sleeve 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 frontperson Noah Green’s clear, everyman vocals. The whole record is stuffed with hits, with Green really tapping into a rich vein of later Replacements-indebted, big-chorus-featuring power-pop-punk again and again without wearing out their tools. (Read more)

51. 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

For a certain subset of guitar pop fans, you’re not going to find a more satisfying record in 2023 than the latest from Vancouver’s Tough Age. The trio tear through ten spirited tracks of Flying Nun-inspired indie rock music on Waiting Here, the band’s fifth album–frontman Jarrett Evan Samson is a gifted pop songwriter who captures a range of emotions with a relatively barebones setup, and rhythm section Lauren Smith and Jesse Locke enthusiastically give these songs a full-band energy that’s missing from a lot of modern Dunedin-inspired bands. (Read more)

Click here for:
Part One (100-76)
Part Three (50-26)
Part Four (25-1)

Rosy Overdrive’s Top 100 Albums of 2023 (100-76)

We’re finally here! Welcome to the fourth annual (and third annual ranked version of) Rosy Overdrive’s Top 100 Albums of the Year. Today, albums 51 through 100 are being posted, and tomorrow (Wednesday, December 6th), the top 50 will be revealed. Wow! So much great music!

Thank you to anyone reading this list, anyone who has shared Rosy Overdrive with others, or anyone who even just makes it a part of their music life in some way. I am truly grateful. 2023 was the biggest year for the blog yet, and I am fully planning on bringing that energy with us into 2024 (plus, I’m aware that if I don’t keep Rosy Overdrive at 200% annual growth indefinitely, my shareholders will fire me and replace me with AI).

Here is a playlist featuring all of the records from this list that are available on streaming services: on Spotify, on Tidal. As with last year, separate lists for EPs and compilations/reissues will go up over the next couple of weeks. To read about more music beyond what’s on this list, check out the site directory, and if you’d like to support Rosy Overdrive, you can share this (or another) post, or donate here. This year, we’re doing a Rosy Overdrive Reader’s Poll as well, so if you haven’t filled that out, get on it and be a part of all this, too! Okay, okay, let’s get to the important stuff!!

See also:
Part Two (75-51)
Part Three (50-26)
Part Four (25-1)
Playlist links (Spotify) (Tidal)

100. DJ Silky Smooth – I’m Glad for Life

Release date: March 27th
Record label: Bee Side Cassettes
Genre: Indie pop, indie folk, experimental pop
Formats: CD, cassette, digital

DJ Silky Smooth (aka Jacob Schwartz) has been making music under the name since at least 2017, and his latest full-length record I’m Glad for Life is full of bright, shiny, guitar-based indie pop songs. Instead of just sticking to the more pure folk-y/baroque indie rock of bands like his labelmates Another Michael and Blue Ranger, however, Schwartz throws in some interesting electronic additions, the occasional vocal effect, and prominent drum machines. “Offbeat” touches aside, however, I’m Glad for Life is an indie pop record first and foremost. (Read more)

99. Living Dream – Living Dream

Release date: January 20th
Record label: Long Gone Sound System
Genre: Psychedelia, jangle pop, dream pop, experimental rock
Formats: Cassette, digital

We’re reaching all the way back to January for this one, but it’s worth it. Living Dream are a four-piece group from Indianapolis whose self-titled debut record is an intriguing, fascinating album of lo-fi, hazy, but frequently accessible indie rock which also features a surprising amount of flute. Living Dream wanders around unpredictably, more often than not in the same song–charming, jangly electric guitars give way to psychedelic, flute-led passages, and then it’s back to indie rock all over again. 

98. Upchuck – Bite the Hand That Feeds

Release date: October 13th
Record label: Famous Class
Genre: Garage punk, noise rock, hardcore punk, garage rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital

I always appreciate a band that strikes while the iron is hot, and that’s exactly what Atlanta’s Upchuck have done on Bite the Hand That Feeds. Barely a year after Sense Yourself (one of my favorite albums of 2022), the garage punk quintet have returned with their Ty Segall-produced sophomore album. It doesn’t abandon what worked from their debut–hardcore punk ferocity balanced with plenty of undeniably “pop” moments–but it does find the band honing their skills and songs even further down into short, sweet daggers.

97. Six Flags Guy – And Nothing Did So What

Release date: July 14th
Record label: 329
Genre: Post-rock, noise rock, 90s indie rock, post-hardcore, slowcore
Formats: Digital

Columbus, Ohio’s Six Flags Guy are a post-rock trio–specifically, they’re practitioners of the Slint-Unwound-Touch & Go-Quarterstick vein of the genre, the version with roots in post-hardcore and American 90s indie rock. The band find plenty of new and exciting ground in these old haunts; And Nothing Did So What’s eight songs prowl through smoky, dingy soundscapes unmoored from recognizable structure, with subtle vocals and guitar work both ready to launch into a frenzy of noise at any given moment. (Read more)

96. Bory – Who’s a Good Boy

Release date: December 8th
Record label: Earth Libraries/Earth Worms
Genre: Fuzz rock, power pop
Formats: CD, digital

Bory is Brenden Ramirez, a Portland, Oregon-based singer-songwriter and guitarist who’s played with power pop ringers Diners and Mo Troper, the latter of whom produced Who’s a Good Boy. Although shades of Troper and Diners’ Blue Broderick can certainly be heard in the album’s songwriting, Ramirez develops a style distinct from either of them on the debut Bory full-length. Who’s a Good Boy is a comparatively cooler record–it’s a bit more muted, low-key, “slacker rock”-y in parts–which, in a way, makes the giant power pop choruses that Bory nonetheless offer up throughout the record hit even harder. (Read more)

95. The Reds, Pinks & Purples – The Town That Cursed Your Name

Release date: March 24th
Record label: Slumberland/Tough Love
Genre: Jangle pop, indie pop
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital

The Town That Cursed Your Name offers up plenty of the hallmarks that the prolific Glenn Donaldson has established as leader of The Reds, Pinks & Purples–gently-strummed chord progressions, generous melodies, and a wistful, melancholic voice overseeing it all. That being said, Donaldson sounds a bit louder, more electric, and fuzzier than he has of late on this one–not that he needs a reason to turn the amps up a bit, but it feels appropriate for The Town That Cursed Your Name’s subject matter, which deals with the familiar plight of many fledgling bands and musicians. (Read more)

94. Podcasts – Podcasts

Release date: August 4th
Record label: Prefect
Genre: Indie pop, post-punk, jangle pop
Formats: Vinyl, digital

The annoyingly-named Podcasts are an Oslo-originating four-piece (Kyle Devine, Tore Størvold, Emil Kraugerud, and Trust Fund’s Ellis Jones) who’ve been working on their debut record since 2019. Although it’s only their first album, Podcasts clearly shows the band has gelled as a four-piece–loosely speaking, the record recalls vintage British-inspired guitar-based indie pop groups, although there’s a trickiness to it as well, displaying the band’s fondness for unexpected twists and turns in their pop songs, which they pull off with confidence. (Read more)

93. Your Heart Breaks – The Wrack Line

Release date: July 7th
Record label: Kill Rock Stars
Genre: Folk rock, power pop, singer-songwriter
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital

Seattle’s Clyde Peterson has been helming Your Heart Breaks for over two decades now–their peers include John K. Samson, Kimya Dawson, and Nana Grizol, all of whom appear over the course of The Wrack Line’s nineteen songs and 64 minutes. Peterson’s latest is a lot to take in, but it’s more than worth giving Your Heart Breaks all the leeway that The Wrack Line asks of us. The album boasts gorgeous folk songs, toe-tapping indie rockers, and a host of insights and observations that are completely unique to its creator.

92. Advertisement – Escorts

Release date: September 15th
Record label: Feel It
Genre: Garage rock, psychedelic rock, post-punk, krautrock
Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital

Seattle-originating sextet Advertisement have spent the last half-decade cultivating a singular sound, a freewheeling, adventurous take on rock-and-roll that evokes everything from Lou Reed to Creedence Clearwater Revival to The Men to heavy psychedelia. Escorts is fairly uncategorizable–it’s a jammy album made by a band that doesn’t really sound like a “jam band”, it feels indebted to classic rock but is quite liberal with synths, and it frequently wanders but always feels on its way to somewhere. (Read more)

91. Patches – Scenic Route

Release date: April 14th
Record label: Self-released
Genre: Post-punk, jangle pop, college rock
Formats: Digital

I wasn’t expecting Patches to return so soon after last year’s superb Tales We Heard from the Fields, but Scenic Route was certainly a welcome surprise. The sophomore Patches album picks up where their debut left off, but represents a sonic evolution for the remote-collaborative trio as well–instead of splitting the difference between darker and lighter material on a track-by-track basis, the songs on Scenic Route combine them individually, with just about every one of them containing a mix of both bright, poppy jangle pop and clanging post-punk. (Read more)

90. Daily Worker – Autofiction

Release date: February 3rd
Record label: Bobo Integral
Genre: Lo-fi power pop, psychedelic pop
Formats: Digital

Harold Whit Williams has played guitar with Austin jangle pop group Cotton Mather since the early 1990s, but the Alabama native also makes music on his own as Daily Worker. Autofiction, my favorite of the four 2023 Daily Worker records (two LPs, two EPs), is an album of lo-fi, home-recorded power pop whose ramshackle charms only enhance his songwriting. Williams presents his songs casually, but not enough so to diminish their power–it reaches the level of many “big” psychedelic pop records, with only a fraction of the excess production those albums possess. (Read more)

89. The Hold Steady – The Price of Progress

Release date: March 31st
Record label: Positive Jams/Thirty Tigers
Genre: The Hold Steady
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital

Unlike the past couple of Hold Steady records, The Price of Progress wasn’t an immediate “hit” for me. I’ve warmed on it throughout the year–seeing them live undoubtedly helped–to the point where I’m finally, belatedly, fully on board with this one. Yes, the band sounds a bit more subdued on this album, but that slowly reveals itself as an essential part of The Price of Progress’ structure–Craig Finn is on fire here as a writer, and something like the powerfully self-contained “Sixers” undoubtedly couldn’t have been pulled off by the band in 2004.

88. Eyelids – A Colossal Waste of Light

Release date: March 10th
Record label: Jealous Butcher
Genre: Jangle pop, college rock
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital

The fourth Eyelids full-length (five if you count the half-live, half-odds-and-ends Maybe More) contains plenty of the massive, blissful, timeless-sounding pop rock we’ve come to expect from Chris Slusarenko and John Moen (“Crawling Off Your Pages” kicks things off with an all-timer), although A Colossal Waste of Light feels a little exploratory as well. Songs like the title track and “Runaway, Yeah” feature some of Eyelids’ best choruses, but they take relatively unexpected paths to get there, suggesting there’s still plenty of fruit in the band’s core collaboration.

87. The Mountain Goats – Jenny from Thebes

Release date: October 27th
Record label: Merge
Genre: Folk rock, piano rock, indie pop, singer-songwriter
Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital

Jenny from Thebes is the first Mountain Goats studio album under 45 minutes long since 2012’s Transcendental Youth, but it feels like the quartet pack even more into this one than they did in some of their more rambling recent material. It’s something of a sequel to John Darnielle’s boombox swan song All Hail West Texas (those sons of bitches made a Hold Steady album, didn’t they?), but the band has evolved pretty far from the early lo-fi days. No tolerance of tape hiss or knowledge of these characters’ lore is required to enjoy the Mountain Goats’ ever-more polished pop rock here.

86. Hurry – Don’t Look Back

Release date: August 11th
Record label: Lame-O
Genre: Jangle pop, indie pop, power pop
Formats: Vinyl, digital

Don’t Look Back is the fifth Hurry album, and it contains plenty of what’s made Philadelphia’s Matt Scottoline such a reliably great songwriter–heart-on-sleeve, bittersweet melodies, gorgeous guitar work, middling tempos and four-minute runtimes galore, and, of course, undeniable hooks. Scottoline doesn’t favor the louder, more distorted end of the power pop spectrum, instead trending towards intricate, deliberate song structure. Don’t Look Back is both a subtle record and an immediate one; it never passes up an instant-gratification chorus, but it’s full of tracks built to last for the long haul. (Read more)

85. Misophone – A Floodplain Mind

Release date: December 1st
Record label: Another Record/Galaxy Train
Genre: Chamber pop, folk rock, psych pop
Formats: CD, cassette, digital

The English band Misophone (led by the songwriting duo of S. Herbert and M.A.) arose in the mid-2000s, releasing at least seven albums between 2007 and 2013. After a decade off, the massive A Floodplain Mind more than bridges the interstitial gap. The album is overwhelmingly long (thirty songs and 120 minutes), adventurous in its arrangements, but friendly and welcoming at its core. It’s just about as “digestible” as something of this size can be, with its sprawling but pleasing mix of chamber pop, orchestral psych pop, and earnest folk rock never growing stale or tedious. (Read more)

84. Glow in the Dark Flowers – Glow in the Dark Flowers

Release date: April 14th
Record label: Born Yesterday
Genre: Dream pop, lo-fi indie rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital

Glow in the Dark Flowers is the duo of Jessee Rose Crane and Philip Lesicko, who gained notoriety over the past decade for their work in Chicago group The Funs. The self-titled Glow in the Dark Flowers album is some very good sleepy, distorted late-night indie rock, with elements of slowcore, post-rock, fuzz rock, and dream pop, but without slotting neatly into any of those. The songs on Glow in the Dark Flowers glide forward and the vocals are right in the middle of it all, creating an album that’s immediate but one that rewards digging under the surface as well.

83. Silicone Prairie – Vol. II

Release date: July 28th
Record label: Feel It
Genre: Garage rock, post-punk, punk rock, power pop, jangle pop
Formats: Vinyl, digital

Although My Life on the Silicone Prairie Vol. II still very much feels like a bedroom rock record, it’s polished in comparison to the first album from Kansas City lo-fi punk musician Ian Teeple. The success of Vol. II comes first and foremost due to Teeple’s songwriting, which is wide-ranging beyond the vast majority of lo-fi garage rockers; underneath the Tascam-recorded sheen is a vintage college rock-inspired record, one that reminds me of a more off-the-cuff version of early Game Theory, and there’s plenty of bizarre psychedelic pop moments on Vol II. as well. (Read more)

82. Madder Rose – No One Gets Hurt Ever

Release date: August 4th
Record label: Trome
Genre: Dream pop, psych pop
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital

Billy Coté and Mary Lorson went through the pandemic differently–the latter “didn’t feel much music”, while the former wrote an album’s worth of songs. Luckily the Madder Rose co-leaders have each other–with Lorson on lead vocals, the two have made a great record of dreamy, lightly psych-y, lightly slowcore-y indie rock with No One Gets Hurt Ever that holds up quite well against the group’s canonical 1990s albums. Made with the patience of musicians who have been at it for three decades, No One Gets Hurt Ever is pop music at its most substantial. 

81. Brian Mietz – Wow!

Release date: April 21st
Record label: Sludge People
Genre: Power pop, indie pop, lo-fi pop
Formats: Cassette, digital

Brian Mietz is a subtly great pop songwriter–he’s one of the best modern practitioners of “bummer” power pop, as seen on his underrated 2020 album Panzarotti. On the follow-up to that record, Wow!, Mietz remains skilled in pop songcraft–these ten songs sound laid-back but emotional, and Mietz keeps the melodies simple, but he isn’t opposed to building around them a little bit, with several songs on the record sounding surprisingly busy. Songs like “Caller” and “Buried Alive (Too Tired)” sound incredibly effortless, but “Cranefly” and “Steal Some Time” lose nothing in their relative complexity. (Read more)

80. The Unknowns – East Coast Low

Release date: March 10th
Record label: Bargain Bin
Genre: Garage punk, power pop
Formats: Vinyl, digital

The Unknowns are yet another excellent Australian garage rock/power pop band, a subset that really shone in 2023.  The Brisbane group have been around for awhile and are associated with Aussie punk superstars The Chats, although their second album, East Coast Low, is a lot more indebted into classic punk-adjacent power pop than the bigger band’s pure punk rock. Songs like “Shot Down”, “Thinking About You”, and “Crying” are pure rock and roll with massive hooks and plenty of shout-along moments.

79. Deep State – Diary of a Nobody

Release date: April 15th
Record label: Self-released
Genre: Alt-country
Formats: Digital

I hadn’t heard of Athens, Georgia’s Deep State before stumbling upon Diary of a Nobody, which, according to their Bandcamp page, seems to be their final album. Diary of a Nobody is a comfortable, rootsy sounding garage rock album led by singer-songwriter Taylor Chmura and also featuring Rosy Overdrive favorite Christian “Smokey” DeRoeck (Blunt Bangs, Little Gold). Deep State sound just as adept barreling through rockers like “Young People” and “Tired Medium” as they do in the laid-back “Secret Freezer”.

78. Vulture Feather – Liminal Fields

Release date: June 2nd
Record label: Felte
Genre: Post-punk, art rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital

Vulture Feather have risen from the ashes of Wilderness, a Baltimore-based 2000s indie rock band that seemed to disappear at the end of that decade. Half of the band (guitarist Colin McCann and bassist Brian Gossman) have recently reemerged in the tiny northern California town of Hayfork, added drummer Eric Fiscus, and picked up where their last band left off, making a slow, deliberate, Lungfish-esque version of guitar-heavy post-punk on their debut together. The rhythm section lumbers, McCann’s guitar chimes and drones, and his vocals sound focused but emotive, gamely supplying Liminal Fields with the final ingredient in turning these songs into unlikely anthems. (Read more)

77. Fixtures – Hollywood Dog

Release date: February 24th
Record label: Naturally/Bobo Integral
Genre: Power pop, 90s indie rock, post-punk, “noir pop”
Formats: Vinyl, digital

Brooklyn’s Fixtures were a six-piece band who stuck around for a half-decade, just long enough to put out their first, last, and only full-length album. On Hollywood Dog, Fixtures commit fully to a familiar-feeling but nevertheless distinct sound–they start off with the foundation of sturdy, guitar-forward 90s indie rock and blow it up with a 2000s indie-esque love of big choruses, auxiliary musicians, and several vocal contributions from various members. Fixtures contained multiple full-time horn players (trumpet player Riley Cooke and saxophonist Jules Block), and neither’s prominence feels out of place throughout the album. They’ll certainly be missed by me, and, after you listen to Hollywood Dog, you as well. (Read more)

76. Guided by Voices – La La Land

Release date: January 20th
Record label: GBV, Inc.
Genre: 90s indie rock
Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital

Sixteen albums into their “new lineup”, this iteration of Guided by Voices still have a ton left in the tank, as their trio of 2023 releases has demonstrated. La La Land kicked off the band’s 2023 in January with the lineup’s fourteenth full-length, and it feels like a departure from GBV’s twin 2022 releases–a bit less muscular than Trembler and Goggles by Rank and Crystal Nuns Cathedral and a little more ornate and regal. Really, though, listen to the stretch from “Ballroom Etiquette” to “Slowly on the Wheel”–four completely different-sounding songs, all classic, all recognizably Guided by Voices.

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Part Two (75-51)
Part Three (50-26)
Part Four (25-1)

Pressing Concerns: Pespi, Cime, Joe Ziffer, Otis Shanty

It’s a Monday in December, and we’re kicking the week off with a good, old-fashioned classic edition of Pressing Concerns. New albums from Pespi and Joe Ziffer, a live album from Cime, and an EP from Otis Shanty are featured in this edition. This is the last Pressing Concerns before Rosy Overdrive’s Year-End List season begins, but far from the last Pressing Concerns of 2023, so stay tuned for both of those in the coming days and weeks.

And, of course, this is your regular reminder to vote in the Rosy Overdrive Reader’s Poll by Christmas.

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.

Pespi – Salt Pepper Catshit

Release date: December 1st
Record label: Chemical Plant
Genre: Emo, punk
Formats: Digital
Pull Track: Rats Don’t Dance

The memorably-named Pespi are a new New York-based emo-rock trio, although their roots stretch back to Connecticut a decade ago. The band’s lead singer and guitarist Harrison Watters has been releasing solo material for the past ten years, and brothers Rob and Matt Falcone have played bass and drums (respectively) in the band Blonde Otter since 2017. However, before that, the three played together in a high school band, and after reuniting to play a Modest Mouse cover set for Halloween last year, they found that a spark was still there, and Pespi was born. Salt Pepper Catshit, the debut Pespi release, is an odd record earning its curious name–Watters is clearly a striking and driven emo frontperson, and while his compositions form the backbone of the record, the Falcones’ rhythm section turns them into something else entirely, interspersing Watters’ ruminations and soul-pourings with lengthy instrumental passages that owe more to noisy, kinetic post-punk than the expected Midwest emo.

The inaugural Pespi album comes in at under a half-hour and only seven songs in length, a couple of which don’t seem to have actual titles–Salt Pepper Catshit sounds anything but incomplete or half-assed, though. Although the Falcones are largely responsible for blowing these songs wide open, Watters’ guitar playing is more than game to rise to what they lay in front of him, either chugging alongside the bass and drums when necessary or adding strange, memorable moments of melodies to the instrumentals (I mentioned that Pespi started by playing Modest Mouse covers, right?). Pespi holds out for over a minute in opening track “Rats Don’t Dance” before letting the vocals step onto the instrumental treadmill they created, while “Woes” finds time for both Dischord-y post-punk and emo-rock textures in about ninety seconds. With “Pespi_10”, it feels like Pespi is finally going to bust out a no-strings-attached emo anthem (“Overthinking everything / Underfeeling nothing,” Watters roars over a soaring instrumental), but they spend the second half of the song circling back and deconstructing it. This combination by and large works–listening to something like “Cereal”, it’s remarkable how Pespi toggles from Watters’ earnest indie-emo to sleek, instrumental math rock like it’s completely normal. (Bandcamp link)

Cime – Frida and the Filibusters Bid Farewell and Fall Asunder

Release date: December 1st
Record label: Syzygy/Skyline Tapes/BSDJ/Reasonable
Genre: Art punk, jazz punk, post-hardcore, noise rock
Formats: Cassette, digital
Pull Track: Compay (Independencia)

Back in August, I wrote about the latest EP from Honduras-originating, California-based musician Monty Cime. Laurels of the End of History is a torrent of Latin music-influenced noise rock and art punk which I called “one of the most unique-sounding records I’ve heard this year”. Although the project bears Cime’s name, the credits of her latest EP reveal that it’s far from a “solo” endeavor–and several of those collaborators are responsible for Cime’s whirlwind live show, as well. Frida and the Filibusters Bid Farewell and Fall Asunder was recorded live at the FTG Warehouse in Santa Ana, CA on Laurels’ release date (August 18th), and features a seven-piece Monty Cime band tearing through songs from the new EP as well as last year’s The Independence of Central America Remains an Unfinished Experiment. 

Frida and the Filibusters… serves to introduce a new player to the band (alto saxophonist Sean Hoss), wave goodbye to a few older members (drummer Aron Farkas and guitarist Diego Gonzalez, as well as Jack von Bloeker V, who couldn’t appear on the record), and capture the energy of all of them together (bassist Jay Ingram, guitarist Rowan Collins, and multi-instrumentalist Ian Dennis round out the live band here). The band truly is a unique experience that merits this recording–it’s a pummeling, horn-laden, unique punk-noise-jazz-Latin-rock-experimental-hardcore experience led by Cime haranguing the audience both in her full-throated performances of the songs and in the space between them (memorably, she threatens to kill anyone who leaves before the next band’s set multiple times).

The interludes and between-song banter (particularly Cime’s discussion of Honduran music legend Guillermo Anderson before covering his “Por Esa Negra” and discussing how she and Farkas met through “a very silly and dumb website called Rate Your Music”) don’t derail any of the band’s momentum–they’re contextual strengtheners that sharpen the subsequent performances of older tunes and new ones (one can tell that they’ve been playing the year-old songs together for a while, although new ones “Yoro” and “City Upon a Hill” are integrated seamlessly into the set). The big conclusion is a frantic, hurricane-like version of Laurels… closing track “The Lost Last Man”, a song that feels destined to be a set-capper. It’s certainly a fitting curtain-drawing for this era of Cime, but I think we’d better to stick around to see the next band–or else. (Bandcamp link)

Joe Ziffer – Long Shadows

Release date: November 24th
Record label: Tenth Court
Genre: Lo-fi indie rock, folk rock, psychedelia, indie pop
Formats: Cassette, digital
Pull Track: Master of Ceremonies

I’ve covered plenty of Australian rock music this year on Pressing Concerns, although I do believe that Joe Ziffer has facilitated Rosy Overdrive’s first foray into what’s going on in Adelaide. There’s been a lot of music from the continent as of late that combines guitar pop (in some form) with a lo-fi indie rock sensibility, but the debut Joe Ziffer album stakes out a uniquely memorable position in the field. Out on Tenth Court (Spice World, Mope City, The Sprouts), Long Shadows moves at a snail’s pace through ten deliberate pieces of unmarked pop music, with our guide creating a lovingly-crafted if not wobbly world of twilight rock music as he plays nearly everything on the record himself. The core tenet of Ziffer and his guitar is never toppled throughout Long Shadows–he’s clearly inspired by lost-sounding 1960s psychedelic folk, but while organs and keyboards add tallies to the psychedelic side of the equation, Ziffer stubbornly remains a molasses-moving troubadour throughout the album.

Joe Ziffer buries a good deal of pop melodies throughout Long Shadows–you’ll have to go digging for some of them, but that’s part of the appeal of Ziffer’s writing to me. The slow-breaking waves of opening track “Seaside” recall some of the lighter moments from labelmates Mope City, and the flute-aided “Master of Ceremonies” is a Flying Nun pop tune carefully traversing a gravel road. If one makes it through the sparsely hypnotic “Wishing Well”, Long Shadows rewards the listener with its version of “rock-and roll” in the form of “Waves”, “Mayday”, and “Ouroboros”, which lean on full band arrangements to take the record in some surprising directions (particularly the latter of the three, which rises to the level of “fluttering psychedelic pop” quite gamely). Along with Lucy May’s flute and vocals on “Mayday”, Elusive Radar’s bass on “Ouroboros” is one of the few outside contributions to Long Shadows–another one from Radar, organ on “Jet Streams”, is scarcely different from Ziffer’s own key-playing. Something like Long Shadows evokes an incidental, random air, but its pieces don’t fit together this well by accident. (Bandcamp link)

Otis Shanty – Early Birds

Release date: October 6th
Record label: Boston Street
Genre: Indie pop, jangle pop, folk rock, dream pop
Formats: Digital
Pull Track: Parting Ways

Otis Shanty are an intriguing quartet who formed in upstate New York in the late 2010s and are currently based in Somerville. They appear to be named for the town in western Massachusetts where they rented a cabin to record their debut EP, Space for Good Things, which came out in 2019; the Suite 33 full-length followed two years later. The band’s second EP and third overall record, Early Birds, is a four-song record that portrays the confidence and skill of a band who’s making something special together. The group (vocalist/multi-instrumentalist Sadye Bobbette, guitarist Ryan DiLello, bassist Julian Snyder, and drummer Jono Quinn) take their time letting these sparkling pieces of indie rock develop–the EP reaches nearly twenty minutes in length, and no individual song is under four. DiLello’s guitar playing is incredibly laid-back, sketching plenty of hazy, Real Estate-esque dreamy, jangly melodies as the rest of the band wander through sprawling, timeless-sounding folk and indie rock.

The opening title track to Early Birds is a workmanlike piece of guitar pop, with hooks baked into the song’s structure but not coming off as overly showy (in the same way that Bobbette’s vocals, which hover between conversational and wistful, are sneakily very impressive). “Early Birds” eventually builds to an impressive conclusion, while “Inch Away” takes much of the same ingredients and shows a bit more restraint in its more subdued finale. “Daylight Savings” lets Snyder’s bass dominate the opening half of the song, crawling along slowly but steadily before the big, horn-featuring conclusion that perhaps functions as the climax of the EP takes shape. “Parting Ways” closes Early Birds out with another slow-build, although it’s DiLello’s shimmering guitar that both comprises the bulk of the foundation and becomes the instrument of its Yo La Tengo-esque torching in the last minute. It’s a lot of space to traverse, but Otis Shanty are locked-in enough that it feels like a breeze. (Bandcamp link)

Also notable:

Pressing Concerns: Misophone, The Brights, Gabby’s World, Get Wrong

December is upon us, and before we dive into year-end list season, the first Friday of the last month of the year has a surprisingly stacked line-up of new releases for our collective consideration. I’ll be highlighting four of them below: new albums from Misophone, The Brights, and Gabby’s World, and a new EP from Get Wrong. This busy week has also featured the November 2023 Playlist/Round-Up and a Monday Pressing Concerns (featuring Neighboring Sounds, Dot Dash, Flat Mary Road, and Colt Wave), so check those too if you missed them earlier. And last but not least: don’t forget to vote in the 2023 Rosy Overdrive Reader’s Poll!

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.

Misophone – A Floodplain Mind

Release date: December 1st
Record label: Another Record/Galaxy Train
Genre: Chamber pop, folk rock, psych pop
Formats: CD, cassette, digital
Pull Track: All the Ghosts of Evening

Around Christmastime 2017, I discovered The Machine That Made Us by Flotation Toy Warning because somebody (I believe it was Trust the Wizards) had put it on their year-end list. The sophomore album from the cult chamber pop group was like nothing I’d heard before at the time, a collection of grandiose pop statements that seemed to materialize out of nothing and hover around in the ether indefinitely. I bring this up because I’m about to suggest you spend time with a two-hour-long album called A Floodplain Mind that checks a lot of the same boxes that those two Flotation Toy Warning albums do for me. The English band Misophone (led by the songwriting duo of S. Herbert and M.A. Welsh and featuring a host of other instrumental contributors) arose in the mid-2000s, releasing at least seven albums between 2007 and 2013. However, their only release in the past decade has been the archival And So Sinks the Sun on a Burning Sea–but the massive, ten-years-in-the-making A Floodplain Mind more than bridges that gap. The album–being offered as a double CD or double cassette–is as overwhelming in its composition (thirty songs and, as stated previously, 120 minutes) and adventurous in its arrangements as it is friendly and welcoming at its core.

A Floodplain Mind is certainly a lot to take in at once, but Misophone’s sense of pop songwriting makes it just about as “digestible” as something of this size can be. “All the Ghosts of Evening” and “Heart for Hills” ease us all into the album with a pleasing mix of chamber pop, orchestral psych pop, and earnest folk rock–they cite Elephant 6 as an influence, and the record comes off as something like a more-put-together older sibling to that scene’s scattered psychedelia. Featuring over a dozen guest musicians, A Floodplain Mind is more prone to surprise the listener in discrete moments throughout the record than throw everything at you at once–yes, there’s harp and bassoon and hurdy gurdy strewn throughout the album, but the core of Welsh and Herbert’s sprawling but accessible folk-pop writing is rarely flooded. Picking favorite songs from this one is difficult because just about the entire album is made up of legitimately well-crafted pop music and can strike at any given listen, but I will say to make sure you stick around for the second half of the album, because plenty of the most immediate numbers (“Night Comes Early”, “Strange and Sombre”, “Flickering Lights”) come after the break. To every band that’s been away for a decade–the bar for their returns has been set incredibly high with A Floodplain Mind. (Bandcamp link)

The Brights – Oyster Rock!

Release date: December 1st
Record label: Meritorio/Stable
Genre: Folk rock, indie pop, jangle pop
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Everyone in Town

Between Spice World, The Small Intestines, and Wurld Series, Meritorio Records has dug up plenty of odd but captivating indie pop from the edge of the world this year. Their latest foray Down Under comes in the form of the debut record from Sydney quintet The Brights, who’ve put out a couple of EPs since their origin in the late 2010s. Oyster Rock! contains plenty of the jangly guitars that are a hallmark for their label, but the band (vocalist/guitarist Sunny Blayney, vocalist/bassist Samuel Morris, drummer Cooper Anderson, guitarist Dylan Ferguson, and keyboardist Will Maddock) dress up these dozen tracks in laid-back, wandering folk rock skins that lead to this album sounding even more timeless and stateless than those of their peers. Oyster Rock! is (for the most part) slow-moving, but it’s not exactly “minimal”, with Maddock’s keys and Blayney and Ferguson’s six-strings frequently stacking on top of each other to make an album that’s either on the “ornate” side of “plain” or vice versa.

“Waiting”, the track with which Oyster Rock! opens, feels aptly named. It manages to sound joyous while opting for a hold music level of quietness–we’re almost in Belle & Sebastian territory here. The Brights shift into gear a song later on “Enough of You”, which that takes its time getting to the meat of the track and borrows a bit of drone-y guitar pop charm from their neighbors over in New Zealand. There’s a rainy and melancholy streak that turns up throughout the record–it really comes into focus on the shimmering “Quiet as a Cloud” and the folk strumming of “You Know That I’m Wrong”, but these aren’t the only instances (for example, there’s a song called “Overcast Hangover” on here, and it sounds like it). The swaggering power pop of “Everyone in Town” is the one true rocker on Oyster Rock!, although some of the more hushed moments are also broken up by the country-rock groove of “River Dogs” (which might be one of the most “early Wilco”-sounding songs I’ve ever heard come out of Australia) and the slow-building dream-psych-pop conclusion of “Detour Sign”.  The Brights’ primary mode is more casual and subtle than these louder moments, but when taken as a single piece of relaxed but developed guitar pop, everything makes sense. (Bandcamp link)

Gabby’s World – Gabby Sword

Release date: December 1st
Record label: Carrot All
Genre: Indie pop, synthpop, indie folk, singer-songwriter
Formats: Digital
Pull Track: Just for You to Hear

Gabby’s World is the project of Gabby Smith, a New York singer-songwriter who initially came up during the bedroom pop/indie folk boom in the mid-2010s alongside acts like Told Slant, Florist, Bellows, and Free Cake for Every Creature. A handful of records and singles led to 2015’s Double Double Whammy-released O.K., a stunning, dexterous album that remains one of my favorites to come out of that entire era, and the just-as-good Year of the Rabbit EP the following year. Smith’s songs could range from delicate folk constructions to grandiose, sweeping indie rock, something that remained true with O.K.’s full-length follow-up, 2018’s Beast on Beast. That album was underappreciated in its time, and preceded a half decade of silence from Gabby Smith the musician. Gabby’s World went on ice for a half-decade as Smith took a break from music, until inspiration from their now-wife, fellow musician Barrie Lindsay, led to Gabby Sword. Released song by song over 2023’s twelve months, the album reflects Lindsay and Smith’s romantic and creative partnerships in the music (which probes new territory for Gabby’s World) and in the subject matter (dealing with Smith’s newfound queer identity and the partner they found in Lindsay). 

The thirteen tracks of Gabby Sword embrace the “pop” end of bedroom pop–although it’s not exactly a “studio as instrument” reinvention of their entire style, the indie folk of past Gabby’s World records is largely superseded by a wider-ranging, synth-driven indie pop rock sound. I’d still consider it on the more minimal side of synthpop, and though the prominent drum machine beats of songs like “Just for You to Hear”, “Powerful”, and “Open the Door” are certainly stark, there are plenty of moments more reflecting of their previous output, like the quiet “33” and the electric folk rock of “Restore”. Even as the music changes, however, Smith remains the focal point, and their writing is recognizable even as it covers some different ground. The question that hangs at the end of “Just for You to Hear” feels like a look into their mind as they stepped away from music while at the same time sounding like vintage Gabby’s World, and the piano pop of “Fabby” lets Smith deliver a straight (well, er…) love song in a way I don’t think they’ve gotten to do as of yet. Smith and Lindsay balance the new and familiar on Gabby Sword in a way that makes for a welcome return. (Bandcamp link)

Get Wrong – Get Wrong

Release date: December 1st
Record label: Father/Daughter/Alcopop!
Genre: Synthpop, indie pop
Formats: CD, digital
Pull Track: Too Late to Hide

Get Wrong is a new project that brings together two underground indie rock ringers in Naomi Griffin of Martha and Adam Todd of The Spook School–although the duo take a turn away from the fizzy British power-pop-punk that’s defined both of them in my mind on their debut EP as a group. The five-song Get Wrong EP was recorded and produced by Peter Brewis of Field Music, and finds Griffin and Todd diving headfirst into full-on 1980s-inspired synthpop. It’s a bit surprising that these DIY indie rockers have committed so completely to their new sound on the EP, but given that their backgrounds are nevertheless in pop music (whenever Martha comes up, I simply must mention that 2016’s Blisters in the Pit of My Heart is one of the best albums of any kind from the past decade), it’s not a shock to see them excel at it as well.

Although Get Wrong isn’t a lush, oversaturated work of electronic music, it’s not rudimentary either, displaying Griffin and Todd’s intent to actually explore the various new doors and openings that synthpop affords them rather than just plugging in keyboards where guitars would’ve been. Synth accents and flourishes color these five songs, adding to a rich pop canvas that’s already quite strong due to the singers’ emotional, full vocals bursting through the music. Griffin’s hooks on “Something to Tell You” (“…I don’t wanna hurt you, but keeping it in would hurt you too”) and “Crying My Eyes Out” (“…for hours, thinking of you”) are as tangible and potent as anything she’s done with Martha, and while the music is a bit subtler on these slightly rawer ones, it’s still just as polished an exploration of synthpop as the more straight-up anthems found earlier in the EP (although as massive as something like “Too Late to Hide” sounds, there’s still plenty going on under the surface of that one, too). All told, it’s more than enough to make Get Wrong an intriguing starting point. (Bandcamp link)

Also notable: