Welcome to a Monday Pressing Concerns! Today, it’s new albums from Tough Age, Pretty Matty, Motorbike, and Seriously that get spotlighted (spotlit?). This is a classic post! If you like the music I typically write about on this website, all of these will be up your alley!
If you’re looking for more new music, you can visit the site directory to see what else we’ve written about lately. If you’d like to support Rosy Overdrive, you can share this (or another) post, or donate here.
Tough Age – Waiting Here
Release date: June 16th Record label: We Are Time/Bobo Integral Genre: Indie pop, jangle pop, power pop Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull Track: Give It a Day
Tough Age are a trio based out of Vancouver, British Columbia, and they make some of the most exciting guitar pop music I’ve heard so far this year. Waiting Here is Tough Age’s fifth album–the band has weathered a move to and back from Toronto, as well as a few lineup changes. Singer-songwriter-guitarist Jarrett Evan Samson is joined by bassist Lauren Smith and drummer Jesse Locke on this album, and together they tear through ten spirited tracks of Flying Nun-inspired indie rock music. Samson is a gifted pop songwriter, capturing a range of emotions with his relatively barebones band setup, and Tough Age give these songs a full-band energy that’s missing from a lot of modern Dunedin-inspired bands.
Tough Age can pull off both the ruminative, pensive side of bands like The Clean, and their moments of pop euphoria as well–look no further than how Waiting Here’s understated opening track “In a Garden” transitions into the runaway hit of “Give It a Day”, a song that is bursting at the seams with hooks and pure excitement. “Hideaway” similarly runs around in circles giddily, and the Smith-led “Paradise by Another Name” is propulsive jangle pop at its best. Tough Age have some more dimensions to their sound, however–the light psychedelia of “Which Way Am I?” reminds me a little bit of Guided by Voices, “Time & Time” again recalls the melancholic side of The Bats, and “Narrative Text” features a hard-working rhythm section and a droning keyboard that puts it into Yo La Tengo or The Feelies territory. Tough Age are a full-on pop band on Waiting Here, executing these ideas in the way they deserve to be. (Bandcamp link)
Pretty Matty – Heavenly Sweetheart
Release date: June 14th Record label: Self Aware Genre: Pop punk, power pop Formats: Cassette, digital Pull Track: Were
Matty Morand is half of the Toronto pop-punk-alt-rock duo PONY, whose excellent sophomore album Velveteen I wrote about just a month ago. In addition to their work in PONY, however, Morand also leads Pretty Matty, their own band that’s been around since 2018 and have an album and a couple EPs to their name already. Pretty Matty (also featuring PONY’s Sam Bielanski on bass, plus guitarist Christian Beale and drummer Josh Cassidy) explore a familiar but welcome style of hybrid pop punk/power pop on their second album, Heavenly Sweetheart, and it’s clear they’ve spent a lot of time listening and being moved by this kind of music. Morand sounds freaked out, strained, and bratty at various points on Heavenly Sweetheart–they’re a natural pop punk frontperson.
Morand covers a lot of ground on Heavenly Sweetheart–dealing with a stalker figure on “Changed My Number”, being broke for so long “that it doesn’t even faze [them]” on “Weird Year”, setting the record straight about a one-sided relationship in “Were”, and trying desperately to get in contact with someone in “After the Tone”. It’s all soundtracked by sweet and fuzzy-sounding pop rock with some fairly pleasing guitar work strewn about the instrumentals. Heavenly Sweetheart has a fairly uniform overcoat, but the songs differentiate each other within this context–“Been Worse” and “Life Support” are the louder pop punk tunes, “See You Around” is just a little jangly, “Changed My Number” and “After the Tone” cruise in mid-tempo. Morand makes sure to stuff more than enough to chew on in Heavenly Sweetheart’s 28 minutes–it doesn’t feel like being short-changed the way a few under half-hour albums might. (Bandcamp link)
Motorbike – Motorbike
Release date: June 16th Record label: Feel It Genre: Garage punk, punk rock Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull Track: Life Is Hell
Motorbike are the latest rock band to come out of Feel It Records headquarters Cincinnati, Ohio, led by the Welsh singer Jamie Morrison and featuring members of bands like The Drin, Good Looking Son, and Vacation backing him up. The self-titled debut Motorbike album is a blast of a record that lives up to its name–the quintet tear through nine fiery garage punk tunes in 26 minutes, sounding ferocious but with a classic punk catchiness buried underneath the multi-guitar attack (provided by Dakota Carlyle and Philip Valois). Morrison’s vocals hold their own, but the guitars are the star of Motorbike, roaring over everything else and delivering both catchy riffs and sonic squalls.
Motorbike start Motorbike with “Motorbike”, a dark but propulsive piece of rock and roll whose lead guitar riff is incredibly catchy against an almost post-punk backdrop. The band break out plenty more vintage garage punk workouts in the first half, including the explosive “True Method”, the breakneck “Throttle”, and the appropriately-named “Off I Sped”. “Life Is Hell” surprisingly features a recurring jangly lead guitar, and the playing in “Spring Grove” sounds triumphant–these songs are where the pop side of Motorbike peeks out most cleanly through the fuzz. Still, Motorbike save one of their best garage punk numbers towards the end (penultimate track “Pressure Cooker”), and close things out with the thorny burn-it-down anthem “The Language”. The whole thing rocks heavily and demands to be played loud. (Bandcamp link)
Seriously – Built Environment
Release date: June 16th Record label: Earth Libraries Genre: Post-punk Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull Track: Under the Boot of God
Seriously are a Birmingham, Alabama-based post-punk trio made up of guitarist/vocalist/synth player Michael Harp, guitarist/vocalist Jonathan Crain, and bassist/vocalist Chayse Porter (who now lives in San Francisco). I believe that Built Environment is the band’s first full-length album, following a couple of singles over the past few years. It comes out via Earth Libraries (Cash Langdon, Joe Kenkel, Pelvis Wrestley), and while the album certainly falls under the umbrella of post-punk, it resists settling into one lane or groove within that genre. Seriously deploy plenty of synths but remain a guitar-forward band, their songs typically have “normal” structures but they get a little experimental around the edges, and the songs range from noisy garage rock to smooth 80s new wave-esque numbers.
The first two songs of Built Environment are the sharp stomp of “Darkroom” and the floating bright colors of “With Delight”. Seriously don’t stop probing from there, offering up the bass-and-synths-led dance-punk of “No Salvation” in the record’s first half, and marking the midpoint with “The Architect”, an atmospheric synth instrumental that feels right out of 1982. Seriously shade their songs with a college rock/new wave-y sheen, with tracks like “What If the Dream Comes True?” plodding along its post-punk beginning to offer up a gorgeous, melodic chorus. The title track, meanwhile, evokes downer British jangle pop groups for its entire five minutes, and “Under the Boot of God” closes Built Environment out on a busy-sounding but slow-moving note. Seriously have clearly studied a lot of music from the early 1980s as Built Environment shows, but they move too quickly to ever get stuck making a mere recreation. (Bandcamp link)
It’s Pressing Concerns time! This one tackles four records that either came out or will come out this week: The High Water Marks, Corvair, FOOTBALLHEAD, and Faunas. Wow! Good music! If you missed Monday’s post, which looked at Lorelle Meets the Obsolete, Silver Car Crash, Stoner Control, and Mythical Motors, check that out here.
If you’re looking for more new music, you can visit the site directory to see what else we’ve written about lately. If you’d like to support Rosy Overdrive, you can share this (or another) post, or donate here.
The High Water Marks – Your Next Wolf
Release date: June 23rd Record label: Minty Fresh Genre: Lo-fi power pop, psych pop Formats: Vinyl, cassette, digital Pull Track: Trouble from the East
When The Apples in Stereo formed in Denver in the early 1990s, the group sought to combine the sounds of contemporary indie rock (which were in vogue at the time) with 60s psychedelic pop (which very much wasn’t). Over three decades since they set out with that mission, founding Apples/Elephant 6 member Hilarie Sidney is keeping this dream alive with her current band, The High Water Marks. The High Water Marks, led by Sidney and her partner Per Ole Bratset, released a couple of albums in the 2000s, but the band (now featuring multi-instrumentalists Logan Miller and Øystein Megård) has been on a tear recently, reeling off three albums since 2010.
What’s more–these new High Water Marks albums have only gotten better with time. 2020’s Ecstasy Rhymes was a solid re-introduction, last year’s Proclaimer of Things upped everything tightly, and Your Next Wolf just might be their strongest front-to-back record yet. Your Next Wolf is the first High Water Marks album from this lineup recorded in the same room–Miller’s Milford Sound studio in Kentucky (the rest of the band, I believe, still lives in Norway). The record was also mixed and mastered by Justin Pizzoferrato, the prolific engineer responsible for giving a lot of 90s indie rock bands and bands that sound like 90s indie rock bands a punch in their sound. All this together goes into making Your Next Wolf: seventeen songs and forty minutes of loud, fuzzy pop music with a full-band bite and a characteristic High Water Marks catchiness.
The highlights are all over the album–in the first half, the giddy “Stork” introduces the record with a punch, “Trouble from the East” is a blast of jangly rock, “I Could Never Be a Vigilante” chugs along to its simple and sweet chorus, and “Boreal Forest” rises near the midsection with a slick noisiness. There’s plenty of gems hidden on the B-Side of Your Next Wolf as well; singles “An Imposed Exile” and “Let’s Hang Out Forever” are on there, as well as a couple of songs towards the end (“China Aster” and “Just an Ordinary Day”) that might fly under the radar on first listen, but reveal themselves over time to be some of the strongest material on the record. Your Next Wolf is immediate but sturdy as well–rightnow feels like the best and most exciting time to be a fan of The High Water Marks. (Bandcamp link)
Corvair – Bound to Be
Release date: June 23rd Record label: Paper Walls/Where It’s At Is Where You Are Genre: Indie pop Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital Pull Track: Superstuck
In 2021, Corvair released their self-titled debut album, which ended up being one of my favorite albums of that year. Pulling from pop rock, power pop, and indie pop and rock of several decades past, the Portland-based husband-and-wife duo of Brian Naubert and Heather Larimer put together an ambitious and quite catchy record in Corvair–both were veterans of the Pacific Northwest music scene, but this new band was their first time playing together, and the results were immediate. Two years later, the second Corvair album, Bound to Be, pushes the band’s sound forward by continuing to probe vintage guitar pop music and songwriting. It feels slightly darker and pensive than Corvair was, but Naubert and Larimer (this time joined by Mike Musburger, formerly of the Fastbacks and The Posies, on drums) still offer up plenty of hooks in these ten songs.
Bound to Be opens with the relatively barebones “Shady Town”, whose infectious charms shine over top of a guitar riff and some synth accents. “We Fall Down” and “Right Hook” feel a little downcast for Corvair, with Naubert and Larimer’s vocals sounding melancholic and synths rising and falling over the instrumentals (they’re still quite poppy, though, particularly the latter song). “Superstuck” kicks off side two with what’s probably Bound to Be’s most straightforward upbeat pop moment, rolling forward over Naubert’s simple but effective singing and an effortless-sounding chorus. Bound to Be offers up some subtler but no less intriguing moments in the full-sounding ballad of “Wrong Again”, the hazy, floating “Ghost Perfume”, and the slightly nervous “Moon Was a Bowl”, all of which are successful detours. The melodic bass-led closing track “Kill My Time” ends Bound to Be with one last big pop finish, although Corvair don’t sound in a rush to get it over with, letting the song stop and start as they see fit. (Bandcamp link)
FOOTBALLHEAD – Overthinking Everything
Release date: June 20th Record label: Self-released Genre: Power pop, alt-rock, fuzz rock, pop punk Formats: Digital Pull Track: Etched You In
FOOTBALLHEAD is the project of Chicago’s Ryan Nolen, starting as a solo endeavor but expanding to include collaborators Snow Ellet and Adam Siska (The Academy Is…/Say Anything) on their first full-length album. Overthinking Everything follows last year’s Kitchen Fly EP and was preceded by a slow stream of singles that appear on the record and foreshadowed the band’s specific brand of catchy, 90s alt-rock indebted power pop. They’re in the same sphere as Ellet’s own music–FOOTBALLHEAD has a harder, rockier edge than Suburban Indie Rock Star, but Nolen doesn’t spend any less effort on catchiness on Overthinking Everything, nor does he neglect the bittersweet and melancholic touches that characterize many a great power pop record.
Racing through thirteen songs in under thirty minutes, FOOTBALLHEAD have plenty of ideas to present on Overthinking Everything. The tracks run the gamut from big-sounding fuzzy pop rock to dark and meaty alt-rock to cavernous and restrained-sounding quieter numbers. Nolen’s understated, melodic vocals shine over the guitars–for the first three songs, the music gets louder while Nolen keeps things steady throughout. Nolen haunts the empty space of “Like a Blister”, an eerie post-grunge mid-tempo tune that threatens to “kick in” but never relents (it’s less stark, but FOOTBALLHEAD pull of a similar trick in the hypnotic “Pilot”). Overthinking Everything tosses out catchy and heavy in equal measure through the giddy “Habits” to the nü-grunge of “Ugly Day” to “Etched You In”, an exhilarating side two highlight that combines punk speed with jangly guitars and an all-time pop punk chorus. FOOTBALLHEAD have a sound down already, and there’s more than enough quality tunes on Overthinking Everything; it’s a fully-realized and ready-to-go debut album. (Bandcamp link)
Faunas – Paint the Birds
Release date: June 20th Record label: Shitbird Genre: Folk rock, indie folk Formats: Digital Pull Track: Avid
Faunas is the Washington, D.C.-based duo of Genevieve Ludwig and Erin McCarley. They’ve been playing music for a while (Ludwig played in Big Hush), and their collaboration as Faunas dates back to 2016. The first Faunas release was 2017’s Shit Show EP, and it’s a record of very lo-fi, noisy garage punk. Ludwig and McCarley took six years to make a proper follow-up to Shit Show, and on Paint the Birds, they sound like a completely different band. On their newest record, Faunas veer hard into folk rock, offering up a collection of clean-sounding, beautiful songs. There’s a fuzziness that loosely connects it to their older work, but it’s hardly the most striking feature of Paint the Birds.
Opening with the instrumental “Cicadas”, in which some minimal guitar playing accompanies synths and ambient sounds, Paint the Birds already feels like a departure, which Faunas then cement with the first “proper” song, the acoustic “Jennings”. The track builds from its bare beginnings, even as it remains a folk song for its entire run. The next song, “Avid”, then turns into something else entirely–grand, sweeping heartland rock. Even with the muted power chords and jangly leads, the close-sounding vocals ground “Avid” and help it fit in with the quieter, more intimate side of the record. A few songs on Paint the Birds–the dark “Waxing Moon”, the lightly distorted “Sally’s High Priestess”, and the slick “Dear Johnny”–play around the edges of Faunas’ new folk rock sound, but they leave it mostly intact. They’re right to do so–the songs of Paint the Birds stand on their own. (Bandcamp link)
Welcome to Pressing Concerns! Today, we’re looking at brand new albums from Lorelle Meets the Obsolete, Silver Car Crash, and Mythical Motors, and a new EP from Stoner Control.
I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that today’s blog post happens to fall on Juneteenth, the day on which Bandcamp donates 100% of its shares from music sales to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. Today would be a great day to pick up one of these following records (or any other, really) on Bandcamp.
If you’re looking for more new music, you can visit the site directory to see what else we’ve written about lately. If you’d like to support Rosy Overdrive, you can share this (or another) post, or donate here.
Lorelle Meets the Obsolete – Datura
Release date: June 16th Record label: Sonic Cathedral Genre: Post-punk, psychedelic rock Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital Pull Track: Dos Noches
Baja California, Mexico’s Lorelle Meets the Obsolete have been around for over a decade at this point–Datura is their sixth album since 2011. I’d heard some of their previous music before (including their previous album, 2019’s De Facto), and I viewed the band (the duo of Lorena Quintanilla and Alberto González) as practitioners of experimental, spaced-out psychedelic rock that could be soft and drippy or heavy and impenetrable. With their newest album, however, Quintanilla and González have made something that feels a ways off from where Lorelle Meets the Obsolete had previously been. Gone are any wild song lengths (Datura is eight songs in 34 minutes, with only one of them crossing five minutes), and the rhythm section (handled by drummer Andrea Davì and bassist Fernando Nuti) grounds almost the whole album. What results is a fascinating record of post-punk that still has plenty of busy tricks up its sleeve, but delivers all of them while steadily marching forward.
The opening title track floats forward in a way that’s fairly recognizable for Lorelle Meets the Obsolete, although in this case Quintanilla’s vocals and the band’s synth stabs are ushered forward by a firm, insistent drumbeat. The chilly “Invisible” feels like a direct descendant of early 1980s Manchester, while the fuzzy “Dínamo” marries stomping psych-rock to a propulsive rhythm section. Most of the tracks follow the first couple of songs’ examples, putting together muscular, guitar-forward post-punk, although Lorelle Meets the Obsolete’s one real foray into true synthpunk, “Golpe Blanco”, sits well with the rest of the seven songs. Tracks like “Arco” and “Ave En Reversa” have moments of noise hidden in their patient, mid-tempo rocker foundations. Lorelle Meets the Obsolete keep exploring; closing track “Dos Noches” rolls along in a droning way that’s reminiscent of Stereolab or krautrock, with buzzsaw synths soundtracking the whole journey. (Bandcamp link)
Silver Car Crash – Shattered Shine
Release date: June 15th Record label: Crafted Sounds/Michi Tapes Genre: Noise rock, fuzz rock Formats: Vinyl, cassette, digital Pull Track: Pleasure Zone
Silver Car Crash are a Pittsburgh-based four-piece band who released their first album, Resource Body, back in 2018. The band took a half-decade to follow it up, but Shattered Shine feels like it’s arriving at the right time, when fellow fuzzy rock Pittsburgh groups like Feeble Little Horse, Gaadge, and Barlow are having something of a moment (much of which has been chronicled by Silver Car Crash’s label, Crafted Sounds). Compared to some of the more ephemeral-sounding bands in their home city, Silver Car Crash has a blunter, punker edge, feeling in debt to 90s noisy indie rock and more in line with modern bands like Pardoner, Gnawing, and Kal Marks. This isn’t to say that Shattered Shine is impenetrable, as the band offer up their share of loud pop songs as well.
Shattered Shine opens with the noise punk of “Interference” and the jerky “Nature” follows not long after, but “Lessons” in between the two sounds like a 90s indie rock anthem. “Crime” and “Pleasure Zone” come after the opening trio, and they’re even more of a surprise by offering up Guided by Voices-esque jangly, melodic guitars before launching into a more accessible but still recognizable version of Silver Car Crash. The band kick off side two of the album with the pleasing, roaring garage-punk of “Sacred Repetition”, and then work out with the dark, seething “Tee Vee”. Silver Car Crash never turn the amps down no matter where they’re at on Shattered Shine–whether it’s songs like “Minor Celebrity” that stomp all the way through or tracks like the multi-part closing track “Ways to Exist”–and this energy keeps the album engaging all the way through. (Bandcamp link)
Stoner Control – Glad You Made It
Release date: June 2nd Record label: Sound Judgement Genre: Power pop Formats: Digital Pull Track: The Candlemaker
In 2021, Stoner Control released Sparkle Endlessly, an incredibly hooky collection of power pop tunes that ended up being one of my favorite albums of that year. Glad You Made It is the Portland band’s first new original material since Sparkle Endlessly (they released a brief covers EP last year), and the five-song EP finds the trio putting together songs that hold up against their previous best work, even as it has its own personality separate from Sparkle Endlessly. Stoner Control sound a bit looser and less polished on Glad You Made It, with producer Matt Thomson letting the band’s slacker, 90s alt-rock side shine through a bit more than the (ahem) sparklier Sparkle Endlessly (particularly on Charley Williams’ songs), but they’re no less catchy here.
The most “rocking” songs on Glad You Made It are the first and the last one– “Glad You Made It” is a lost 90s rock radio anthem that the band sells completely, while “Too Bad” ends the EP on a loud and decidedly upset-sounding note (still fun to listen to, though). The three tracks in between them aren’t quite as mussed up–Sam Greenspan offers up the smart jangly pop of “Wearit Laze”, which wields its guitar line, slick verses, and bursting chorus to maximum effect, and “The Candlemaker”, a song that takes a few left turns but still feels like it hits every right note. Williams’ ballad “Show You Around” is the centerpiece of the EP, and it’s pulled off with as much aplomb as anything else on the record. Williams and Stoner Control keep it simple, letting the song earn its big instrumental finish. (Bandcamp link)
Mythical Motors – Join Her Circus
Release date: June 16nd Record label: Lo-Fi City Genre: Lo-fi power pop Formats: Cassette, digital Pull Track: The Howling Red
Chattanooga, Tennessee’s Matt Addison keeps plugging away at his lo-fi, bite-sized guitar pop without losing any of the sharpness in his songwriting. 2021 saw the release of his project Mythical Motors’ A Rare Look Ahead, which ended up being one of my favorites of that year, and while 2022 “only” saw a split release with Athens, Georgia’s Antlered Auntlord, Mythical Motors continue their streak into 2023 with Join Her Circus. If you’ve enjoyed previous Mythical Motors releases, Addison offers up a lot of his signature touchstones–big, hooky, Guided by Voices-influenced power pop with melodies sold by his high, excited voice. Mythical Motors has always been a lo-fi endeavor, but Join Her Circus feels a bit more fuzzy and louder than the last couple, which had a larger share of melancholic moments.
After the introduction of “Emerge from the Catacombs”, Mythical Motors begin to push things into the red with the punk-tinged “Tiger on the Balance Beam” and “In a Sanctuary”, which is a vintage, loud Mythical Motors anthem. Join Her Circus continues the spirited-sounding music by offering up garage-y takes on their sound (“Cut the Crimson Wire”, “Static Bird”, and “The Howling Red”), and a couple of really full, loud tracks that push Mythical Motors’ sound a lot closer to shoegaze than I would’ve expected (“The Thoughts Impossible” and “The Apparition”). Addison still sneaks in a couple of acoustic-and-strings songs as breathers (“Siren Parade” in the first half, “Father Hypnotist” and “Over the Fog” in the second), but they feel more like breathers on Join Her Circus than they would’ve on past records. Whether Mythical Motors are in their quieter, orchestral mode or cranking out fuzz rock, Join Her Circus delivers Addison’s pop songwriting in consistently sturdy vessels. (Bandcamp link)
Welcome to Pressing Concerns! June 16th is a pretty big release week, and we’re getting started a day early; today we’re looking at four albums coming out tomorrow from Fust, La Sécurité, TH Da Freak, and XDS. Rosy Overdrive’s Top 40 Albums of 2023 So Far went up earlier in the week; if you missed that, it’s essential reading.
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.
Fust – Genevieve
Release date: June 16th Record label: Dear Life Genre: Alt-country, folk rock, country rock Formats: Vinyl, cassette, CD, digital Pull Track: Trouble
I wrote about Fust’s 2021 album Evil Joy back in the early days of Pressing Concerns, and I still love that record. Bandleader Aaron Dowdy makes music that sounds pulled directly from his home state of North Carolina. Fust distinguish themselves from the more offbeat artists on their label, Dear Life Records, with their devotion to straightforward-sounding folk rock and Americana, and they distinguish themselves from the herd of bands making similarly-branded music with the endless depth that Dowdy writes into his songs. Genevieve follows Evil Joy two years later, and it’s the first Fust record recorded in a proper studio–and featuring notable guests like MJ Lenderman, Indigo De Souza, and Michael Cormier-O’Leary. The differences between Evil Joy and Genevieve are subtle but noticeable–the expanded lineup and sound don’t overwhelm Dowdy’s songwriting, and in fact enhance it–an appropriate addition for a collection of tracks that, even for Fust, feels particularly ruminative.
Fust have always been a measured band, but Genevieve tightens up some of Evil Joy’s looseness and comes across as quite deliberate. It’s still a record in motion, though–the opening title track is a slow burn that opens with the narrator “headed out to California” and away from the addressee of the song. “Violent Jubilee” hews to this feeling even more strongly; the singer has a lot to chew on, but he’s doing so while on the move. “Trouble” is the biggest rocker on the album, and it’s a gigantic-sounding song that’s new territory for Fust in a good way. Contextually, it makes sense–Dowdy, imbued with a confidence he knows is fleeting, proclaims his limits forcefully (“I can’t, I won’t”). Trouble rears its head again in “Rockfort Bay”, a song about thinking and hoping that still ends with Dowdy feeling that he’s “never gonna change” as he heads out of the titular town.
“Rockfort Bay” isn’t an electric country rocker in the same way that “Trouble” is, although it’s still an upbeat number. “Searchers” pulls the same trick, although to different ends–its rumbling guitars and Dowdy’s lyrics (particularly the final couplet: “It feels good to be part of a greater kind of looking / Gonna be a searcher for the rest of my days”) find a positive way to view and spin the same things Dowdy’s singing about on the entirety of Genevieve. The album ends with “A Clown Like Me”; like “Trouble”, it’s a full realization of the new version of Fust, but in a much different way. A seven-minute studio rock creation, it explores atmospheres and space previously unprobed by the band. There is, if anything, more room for Dowdy’s lyrics in this song. The scene in “A Clown Like Me” is vivid, the missing context only sharpening what Dowdy chooses to share, and it resonates long after the song’s chamber-country instrumental ends. (Bandcamp link)
La Sécurité – Stay Safe!
Release date: June 16th Record label: Mothland Genre: Post-punk, garage punk Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull Track: Dis-moi
La Sécurité is a five-piece band from Montreal that formed last year, with the various members having plenty of experience in other groups from the area (Choses Sauvages, Laurence-Anne, Silver Dapple, DATES, Pressure Pin). This experience feels like it was well-used in the construction of their debut album, Stay Safe!. The album’s ten songs are solid pieces of art punk–they’re all quite poppy, but with a garage rock/post-punk edge to them. La Sécurité are a dexterous group, sometimes letting the guitarists (Melissa Di Menna and Laurence Anne Charest-Gagné) whip up a frenzy, sometimes drawing back and letting the rhythm section (bassist Félix Bélisle and drummer Kenneth David Smith) do the work, and Éliane Viens-Synnott’s vocals never waver.
La Sécurité open Stay Safe! by snaking through opening track “Le Kick”, a somewhat restrained song that is hypnotically catchy between Viens-Synnott’s sung-spoken vocals, some sharp guitar riffs, and the occasional handclap. “Dis-moi” and “Suspens” are two pieces of zippy, synth-featuring egg punk, and La Sécurité really crank up the amps and get loud on “Anyway” and “Try Again”. The band’s post-punk side particularly shines on the enthralling sketch of “Waiting for Kenny” and on a couple dance-punk tunes that shade Stay Safe!’s second half (the lighter “Serpent” and the heavier “Hot Topic”). Stay Safe! is an engaging record all the way through, and it works as well as it does because it’s stuffed with sounds without sounding too labored over–La Sécurité sound like they’re having fun, and like they know that this kind of music works best when the listener can join in on that feeling as well. (Bandcamp link)
TH Da Freak – Indie Rock (Re-Release)
Release date: June 16th Record label: Howlin Banana/Les Disques du Paradis/Flippin’ Freaks Genre: Lo-fi indie rock, garage rock Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital Pull Track: I Was Around
TH Da Freak is Thoineau Palis, a prolific Bordeaux, France-based indie rock musician who’s amassed a pretty hefty discography since the release of his first album in 2016. Last year, he released Coyote, his “proper” album of 2022–but Palis also released an entirely separate collection of songs on his Bandcamp a few months before Coyote’s release. The aptly-titled Indie Rock was available for only 48 hours and then promptly removed–interest from three French labels (Howlin Banana, Flippin’ Freaks, and the brand-new Les Disques du Paradis) kept Indie Rock from fading into obscurity as TH Da Freak moved on to his next creative endeavor.
Indie Rock was recorded by TH Da Freak during the sessions for Coyote, but unlike that album, the eleven songs on Indie Rock were recorded entirely by Palis alone. Indie Rock is a tongue-in-cheek title, but god damn if it isn’t also indie rock. Palis has something of a cult following in his home country, and it’s hard not to see why here: although TH Da Freak is rooted in lo-fi, bedroom indie rock, he covers quite a bit of ground within these confines, and does it quite well. Just the first half of Indie Rock includes the beautiful 60s pop ballad “Somewhere”, the messy jangle pop of “I Was Around”, the fuzzy power pop of “Young Bro”, and the garage-y post-punk of “Serie A”. There’s a psychedelic haziness that hovers over songs like “Naked” and opening track “Feel Animal”, and the last two tracks (“Let Me See the Sun” and “A Drummy Alley Straight to Indie Rock Land”) are massive, spirited songs that push against their lo-fi origins. It’s all Indie Rock. (Bandcamp link)
XDS – Bicycle Ripper
Release date: June 16th Record label: Mt.St.Mtn. Genre: Art punk, experimental rock, post-punk Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull Track: Oct Cat Rainbow
Experimental Dental School formed in the early 2000s in Chico, California as the duo of Shoko Horikawa and Jesse Hall. Hall and Horikawa (with Ryan Chittick on drums at some point) made experimental, free-sounding noise rock that roughly fit into something of a movement in that decade, but the band seemed to disappear after their last album in 2009. Hall and Horikawa are now back as XDS, and while Bicycle Ripper raises a few questions (Where did they go for the last decade? Why return now? Why the new name?), the best course of action is to enjoy what is a delightful, experimental, but accessible rock record that eagerly throws in bits of dub, psychedelic rock, post-punk, synthpunk and more over its eleven songs.
The songs on Bicycle Ripper can come off as jumbles of synths and rhythm section instruments, but the noise isn’t noisy for the sake of noisiness. “Oct Cat Rainbow” moves through a couple sections of deconstructed dance-punk and ends with a surprisingly catchy pop rock final minute. “Dune Mellow” skulks around but still boasts a hypnotic refrain. Single “UFO Let Me Go” dips its toe into the kind of West Coast garage-y psychedelic rock that bridged a lot of the gap between Experimental Dental School and XDS, and it’s a natural fit. Songs like the title track and “Hot Panther Cold Moon” are hot pieces of synthpunk, with the vocals riding the tracks’ waves like they’re more typical rock/punk. XDS’ commitment to noise is inarguable, but their ability to sharpen it into something this pleasing on Bicycle Ripper is remarkable. (Bandcamp link)
If you’re only just now joining us: this is part two of my list of my favorite forty albums of 2023 thus far, presented in reverse alphabetical order. Thanks for reading!
Here are links to stream a playlist of these selections via Spotify and Tidal (Bandcamp links are provided below for all records).
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 (also appearing on this list). 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)
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 York-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)
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. With his latest album, 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)
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)
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.
Jon the Movie – The Holy Parking Lot
Release date: January 25th Record label: Jon Genre: Garage punk, progressive rock, post-hardcore Formats: Digital
Jon the Movie (Long Island’s Jon Gusman) followed up last year’s A Glimpse That Made Sense EP with the project’s debut full-length album, and January’s The Holy Parking Lot does not disappoint. The hardcore-rooted Gusman created Jon the Movie to explore his other influences (ranging from lo-fi indie rock to mainstream alt-rock to straight-up progressive rock) and dubbed the endeavor “prog-punk”. The Holy Parking Lot pulls this off with wildly varying song lengths, shout-along vocals, blistering guitar work, and plenty of catchiness among the chaos.
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)
Guided by Voices – La La Land
Release date: January 20th Record label: GBV, Inc. Genre: 90s indie rock Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital
I thought about not putting La La Land on this list, but then I listened to it again. Fourteen albums into their “new lineup”, this iteration of Guided by Voices still have a ton left in the tank. La La Land 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.
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.
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 are a six-piece band who’ve been around for a half-decade and have just put out their first full-length. On Hollywood Dog, Fixtures commit fully to a familiar-sounding 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. To put it one way: Fixtures contains multiple full-time horn players (trumpet player Riley Cooke and saxophonist Jules Block), and neither’s prominence feels out of place throughout the album. (Read more)
Eyelids – A Colossal Waste of Light
Release date: March 10th Record label: Jealous Butcher Genre: Jangle pop, college rock Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
Well, it’s new Eyelids season, so everyone get your vintage, blissful jangle pop-listening headgear on. The fourth Eyelids full-length (five if you count the half-live, half-odds-and-ends Maybe More) contains plenty of the massive, 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.
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, their 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)
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. Rest assured that Matheny is up to the task of wringing emotional resonance from songs grounded in transit policy. 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)
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”.
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. 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)
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. Williams’ latest, Autofiction (which is part of a recent prolific spell), is a record 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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
Welcome to what is roughly the middle of the year, which means that it’s time for Rosy Overdrive to select forty records that we’ve loved above the rest in the first half of 2023. The last few months have been the busiest ever for the blog, which means that I’ve covered a lot of good albums that I did not have room for on this list (view the website’s archive for a lot more good new music). Choosing the mid-year list is not as an exhaustive process as I go through for my year-end lists; consider this an incomplete but very strong snapshot of the best of 2023 thus far.
The list is unranked, ordered reverse-alphabetically by artist name (last year I did it alphabetically, and I alternate it every year). Like last year, I mostly stuck to full-lengths, but readers will notice a couple of EPs in here as well.
Thanks for reading, and here are links to stream a playlist of these selections via Spotify and Tidal (Bandcamp links are provided for all records).
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.
Young Fathers – Heavy Heavy
Release date: February 3rd Record label: Ninja Tune Genre: Art pop, experimental pop Formats: Vinyl, cassette, CD digital
Young Fathers’ last album, Cocoa Sugar, was nearly five years ago–I liked that one, but I wasn’t sure what to expect with Heavy Heavy a half-decade later. Well, the Edinburgh trio’s fourth album is a surprisingly excitable pop record that manages to feel incredibly lean but full-sounding all the same. Songs like opening track “Rice” and late highlight “Holy Moly” are massively catchy and straightforward, and the busier or less immediate ones like “Ululation” and “Drum” still work and fall into lockstep with the rest of Heavy Heavy.
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, although this time around there was a surprising amount of acclaim accompanying its release. 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–
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)
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)
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)
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 has 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.
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.
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)
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)
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)
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)
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.
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 Swimming 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)
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 every genre shift off. (Read more)
Sharp Pins – Turtle Rock
Release date: March 1st Record label: Hallogallo Genre: Lo-fi indie rock, noise pop, 90s indie rock Formats: 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”.
Screaming Females – Desire Pathway
Release date: February 17th Record label: Don Giovanni Genre: Alt-rock, punk, power pop Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
It’s been five years since the last Screaming Females record (2018’s All at Once), but 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.
Rust Ring – North to the Future
Release date: February 24th Record label: Knifepunch Genre: Emo, punk rock Formats: 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)
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)
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)
Welcome to Pressing Concerns! This is the first week in recent memory that’s only featured one of these, but today should be more than enough for you: we’ve got new albums from Noah Roth, Sir Bobby Jukebox, UAY, and TEKE::TEKE to talk about. If you missed the Rosy Overdrive May 2023 playlist, that went up on Monday, and I’d recommend checking that one out (it’s very good!).
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.
Noah Roth – Don’t Forget to Remember
Release date: June 9th Record label: Devil Town Tapes Genre: Lo-fi indie rock, folk rock, alt-country, experimental rock Formats: Cassette, digital Pull Track: Carl St Bernard, Pt 1
Last year, I wrote about Breakfast of Champions, an excellent record from the Philadelphia-based musician Noah Roth. Labored over for several years, Breakfast of Champions balanced more “traditional” folk rock with an experimentalist streak, making for an intriguing final product. For their follow-up, Don’t Forget to Remember, Roth took a different path–it was written and largely recorded during a three-week stay in their childhood home in the Chicago suburbs. Roth fully embraces their experimental, noisy, “fuck-up sounding” side on this one–being away from the studios, instruments, and musicians that helped record their last album necessitated this, to a degree, but I also suspect that Roth had already decided that the frayed edges at the ends of Breakfast of Champions were where they wanted to explore next.
This isn’t to say that Noah Roth isn’t still the songwriter they were on their last album–there are pop songs throughout Don’t Forget to Remember as well. Roth marries songs and noise in a way that reminds me of producer-songwriter John Vanderslice, what they’ve done recently with their other band, Mt. Worry, and the work of their recent tourmate Leor Miller. “C U Tomorrow” features melodic guitars and synths that battle against a wall of fuzz, “Perfect Detail” is based around some Vanderslice-esque acoustic distortion, and the surprising, bass-led “Carl St Bernard, Part 1” might actually be the catchiest song I’ve heard from Roth. “Needs” is, in a way, Don’t Forget to Remember summed up neatly–Roth takes an acoustic guitar-based song and contorts it, speeding it up and slowing it down in a way few people would think to do with this kind of music.
It feels like Don’t Forget to Remember stretches out a bit as it goes on, with songs like “Paris, Texas”, “Upside Down Photographs”, and “Carl St Bernard, Part 2” taking a bit more time to get where they’re going. There’s a breakup (“watching someone you loved become a stranger” as Roth puts it) at the heart of this album, and I hear it in these tracks: “When I see you again, I know we won’t be friends / But I promise you that I’m listening,” in “Paris, Texas”, in the entire outro of “Paper Tigers”, in the corrupted ballad of “Carl St Bernard, Pt 2”. I also hear it in closing track “Anymore”, a song that’s openly haunted and wounded–but there’s something else there, too. Maybe it’s the fuzz. (Bandcamp link)
Sir Bobby Jukebox – In the Organ Loft at Midnight
Release date: June 9th Record label: Popical Island Genre: Indie pop Formats: Digital* Pull Track: You Lit a Candle Wrong…
Since the 2000s, Dublin’s Sir Bobby Jukebox has released twenty-something albums as a bandleader or solo artist. Many of those records have been with his indie pop group No Monster Club, whose Deadbeat Effervescent I wrote about last year–In the Organ Loft at Midnight is the second full-length to come out under the Sir Bobby Jukebox name. While it might be a tad more insular than Deadbeat Effervescent, Jukebox hasn’t taken a big step away from No Monster Club’s sound with this solo album–if you liked the previous album’s bright, shiny, Unicorns-esque tropical-feeling indie pop, you’ll find plenty to enjoy on In the Organ Loft at Midnight.
Sir Bobby Jukebox brings the energy necessary to make a strong pop album throughout In the Organ Loft at Midnight, from the humble conga line of “Don’t Say Goodbye” to the bouncy piano pop of “Tropical Bird Lingo” early on to the synthpop epic of “Radio Tumbleweed” and woozy singalong “In the Nettles” in the album’s second half. Although Jukebox is pretty much always offering up bright, shiny island pop, he doesn’t restrict his emotions to one-note cheerfulness in doing so–“Totally Out of Sync” laments in between its hooks, and “No Fly Zone” has a surprising amount of bile in it. The big pop jaunt of “Nudity” is Sir Bobby Jukebox at his most straightforward and memorable, although my favorite version of him is the one on “You Lit a Candle Wrong…”: exuberant, twisting, tossing out melodies..speaking in French? Anyway, it’s just another solid pop tune on In the Organ Loft at Midnight, available now via bubblegum card. (Bandcamp link)
UAY – Kukulkan
Release date: June 6th Record label: Half Shell Genre: Psychedelic rock Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull Track: Oye
UAY is a Guadalajara, Mexico-based psychedelic rock band who released their first record, Mexicadelia, back in 2015 (under the name Fauno). Kukulkan is the quartet’s third full-length album and second as UAY, following 2020’s La Selva. UAY have a few connections to the country to their immediate north–they’ve toured the United States a few times, have played with Thee Oh Sees, and are releasing their newest album on Seattle experimental rock label Halfshell Records. They’ve certainly heard their fair share of U.S. and European psychedelic and indie music, I’m sure, but UAY also cite bands from their home country (Caifanes) and the rest of Latin American (Os Mutantes) as ingredients in their sound.
Kukulkan leans heavy on the psychedelic end of psychedelic rock–listeners should expect to hear swirling guitars, hypnotic percussion, and bursts of noise all taking place in the context of songs that could very well be described as “odysseys”. The soulful, emotive vocals of guitarist Francisco Lopez and bassist Rodrigo Torres are what keep the album grounded as much as anything else–while these seven songs contain plenty of lengthy instrumental breaks, when the singers do show up, they unlock an extra dimension to songs like opening track “Oye” and “No sale el sol”. Both the shorter and longer songs on Kukulkan are exploratory–the three-minute, jazz-influenced “La Llorona” is just as intriguing as the eight-minute, percussive “Inexplicable”–and they all work together. (Bandcamp link)
TEKE::TEKE – Hagata
Release date: June 9th Record label: Kill Rock Stars Genre: Experimental rock, psych rock, post-punk, art pop Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital Pull Track: Doppelganger
TEKE::TEKE are a freewheeling seven-piece rock band with an omnivorous sound that touches on everything from Japanese pop and traditional music, psychedelic and surf rock, American post-hardcore/noise rock, and film soundtracks. The Montreal-based group is gearing up to release their second album on Kill Rock Stars, Hagata, and it’s an adventurous record that feels accessible despite (because of?) its wide-ranging nature. The band’s members bring a lot to dress up these ten songs–for example, Yuki Isami plays flute, shinobue, taisho koto, and synths, Etienne Lebel plays trombone, gaida, and percussion, and four different members (Sei Nakauchi Pelletier, Hidetaka Yoneyama, Mishka Stein, and lead singer Maya Kuroki) all have guitar credits.
TEKE::TEKE sound like a big tent at the start of Hagata–opening track “Garakuta” is a maximal march that goes heavy on the flute and horns, and the mid-tempo strut of “Gotoku Lemon” and the rocking “Hoppe” keep the energy going. TEKE::TEKE get a little pensive in the record’s midsection–“Onaji Heya” is a bit loose but resolves to pleasing indie pop, “Me No Heya” is a peaceful-sounding instrumental, and “Doppelganger” synthesizes the band’s “indie rock” and “otherworldly psychedelic” sides quite nicely. The seven-minute “Kaikijyu” is relatively sparse for most of its length, with the band drawing back a little bit to let the song build up organically. They’re still there and ready to make a racket, though–which they do as the song draws to a close. (Bandcamp link)
It’s time for a ton of new music this Monday. Today sees the grand unveiling of Rosy Overdrive’s May 2023 playlist, and boy, this one’s an all-timer. I would call it a classic (a word I would also use for many of the songs which make it up).
PONY, Poppy Patica, Greg Mendez, Rob I. Miller, and William Matheny all have multiple songs on the playlist.
Here is where you can listen to the playlist on various streaming services: Spotify, Tidal, BNDCMPR (missing one song). Be sure to check out previous playlist posts if you’ve enjoyed this one, or visit the site directory. If you’d like to support Rosy Overdrive, you can share this (or another) post, or donate here.
“Down South”, Cal Rifkin From Better Luck Next Year (2023, Really Rad)
It’s always nice when a new power pop band spawns. Or, new-to-me ones, at least. Washington, D.C.’s Cal Rifkin have just released their second EP, Better Luck Next Year, and it rides both the “fuzzy and loud” and “gentle and melodic” ends of the genre. Better Luck Next Year opens with “Down South”, their version of an unstoppable, massive jangly power pop anthem–lead singer Erik Grimm can sing that chorus as understated as possible, but it’s still going to be a runaway train. Read more about Better Luck Next Year here.
“Lost Keys”, Nicole Yun From Matter (2023, Kanine)
Eternal Summers were/are a Richmond band that showed up around the beginning of the 2010s, making a kind of reverb-heavy, pop-heavy indie rock that had a brief moment around this time. They were pretty good, but they’d kinda slipped from my radar. I’m not sure if the band is still active (their last album was in 2018), but lead singer Nicole Yun has put out two solo albums since then, and her most recent one (April’s Matter) is very good. Album highlight “Lost Keys” is, I think, impossible to dislike, a breezy pop rock tune that Yun really sells in a way that I’m not sure most distortion-heavy frontpeople would be capable of doing. There’s a Guided by Voices-esque effortless catchiness to a lot of Matter (which I thought before I learned that GBV’s Doug Gillard contributed guitar to her previous solo album, 2019’s Paper Suit).
“Trouble”, Fust From Genevieve (2023, Dear Life)
One of the best albums of 2021 was Fust’s Evil Joy, an excellent country record from the Aaron Dowdy-led project. For whatever reason, I was relatively lonely in my acclaim of Evil Joy, but it already feels different this time around, as I’ve seen the lead-up to their next album, Genevieve, gaining some steam. For one, there’s legitimate star power (fellow North Carolinians MJ Lenderman and Indigo De Souza play on the album), and there’s also “Trouble”, a transcendent country rock tune that might be the best Fust song yet. Steady electric guitar and piano let Dowdy’s typically excellent vocals soar as he unspools a hell of a lyric here. I’ll have more to say about Genevieve soon.
“The Habsburg Jaw”, Califone From Villagers (2023, Jealous Butcher)
The new Califone album opens with “The Habsburg Jaw”, which is to say that it opens with some odd-sounding synths that give way to a beautiful acoustic-based indie rock tune that still flirts with giving into those odd synth sounds throughout (and does towards the end). Horns rise when Tim Rutili sings “Talk to me in the voice you use to talk to the cat,” and then he sings along with a corrupted-sounding voice. Nobody does songs like this better than Califone (or comes even close, really).
“Sick”, PONY From Velveteen (2023, Take This to Heart)
The second PONY album is a monster of a pop record–plenty of bands have mined this style of formerly-radio-friendly 90s alt-rock in recent years; few have done it as deftly and catchily as the Toronto do on Velveteen. “Sick” feels eternal, aided in large part due to an excellent frontperson performance from Sam Bielanski–here, they sound like they’re grabbing the mic aggressively to vividly try and wrest control of something. “Break my spine just to prove I have one,” they memorably offer in the chorus (equally memorable is their enunciation of “comp-licated” a couple of lines earlier). Read more about Velveteen here.
“Awful Sound”, Poppy Patica From Black Cat Back Stage (2023, House of Joy)
Black Cat Back Stage opens with a perfect indie-pop-rock tune in “Awful Sound”, a track that excellently synthesizes the ramshackle poppiness of Stephen Malkmus at his most accessible with some sparkling new wave-y synths. It’s the perfect bait for a certain kind of indie rock fan to be drawn into Peter Hartmann’s bright sounding, incredibly stuffed, complex tribute to his former home of Washington, D.C. that is the rest of the record. Read more about Black Cat Back Stage here.
“Wedge”, Rob I. Miller From Companion Piece (2023, Vacant Stare)
Companion Piece gets better and better the more I hear it. It’s a breakup record with something of a dark cloud hanging over it, but Rob I. Miller is an excellent power pop songwriter, and the hooks here are only “subtle” in comparison to his quite eager-to-please “main” band, Blues Lawyer. Single “Wedge” is a massive piece of Teenage Fanclub fuzz-pop that glazes over some lyrics that…well, they sound like what I imagine a San Francisco-area breakup sounds like. Read more about Companion Piece here.
“Stop Breakin’ Down”, Hunter Senft From American Love Songs (2023, New Morality Zine/Best Life)
Last year I wrote about The Brass Tax, an intriguing EP from Oklahoma heavy shoegaze band Downward. The Brass Tax flirted with a few genres outside their wheelhouse, but none of them quite prepared me for American Love Songs, the latest EP from Downward’s lead singer Hunter Senft. “Stop Breakin’ Down” is one of–probably the most catchy power pop song I’ve heard this year. Senft mentions Tom Petty and Roy Orbison as influences for the EP, and they’re in this song, among many other things–it’s got a big 80s pop sheen, some saxophone, a big old recurring riff, and a chorus that’s so massive that it’s basically showtune-esque.
“The Cut Off”, En Attendant Ana From Principia (2023, Trouble in Mind)
I wrote about Principia back in February, but I didn’t put anything from it on the playlist for that month. This was a mistake; “The Cut Off” should’ve been on it, and now it’s here. Seeing En Attendant Ana live and being struck by how effective a frontperson Margaux Bouchaudon is helped me to realize this, but the exuberance of this song’s chorus (“Something’s missing!”) comes through just as clearly on record. Read more about Principia here.
“Tonight and Every Night from Now On”, William Matheny From Moon Over Kenova (2018, Misra)
“Tonight and Every Night from Now On” is tucked away on William Matheny’s 2018’s Moon Over Kenova EP–what little attention that EP has gotten has mostly centered on the transcendent, spiritual title track and an ace cover of Songs: Ohia’s “Just Be Simple”, but “Tonight and Every Night from Now On” is no slouch. It’s a slick moment for Matheny’s narrator, the surety of the refrain bouncing off against verses that cast a much wider net.
“Nutrition Facts”, Parister From Here’s What You Wonder (2023, Candlepin)
Parister’s Here’s What You Wonder is excellent Kentucky indie rock, with distortion and twang coloring guitarist/vocalist Jake Tapley’s songwriting. Album highlight “Nutrition Facts” is pure twinkling, jangly power pop, and the titular line is beautiful in an offbeat way (it has the MJ Lenderman thing of hanging on a seemingly mundane image for just long enough). Read more about Here’s What You Wonder here.
“Jupiter”, Upper Wilds From Jupiter (2023, Thrill Jockey)
Should’ve been on the April playlist, whoops! Anyway, new Upper Wilds is always a momentous event, and “Jupiter” is no different. The Dan Friel-led power trio are continuing their planetary explorations, following 2018’s Mars and 2021’s Venus (both of which were among my favorite records of their respective years). The title track to Jupiter was released along with the also-very-good “10’9””–this is the punchier, more playlist-friendly one, but it still manages (unsurprisingly) to do justice to our solar system’s largest planet in a three-minute screeching noise-pop-rock tune.
Like several highlights on Greg Mendez, “Clearer Picture (of You)” is a really raw, close-cutting song that very bluntly deals with the hurt that can only arise from being intimate (in some form another) with someone. It’s not exactly similar songcraft-wise, but “Clearer Picture (Of You)” hits on Exile on Guyville-level subject matter in its lyrics, particularly that really rough second verse. And also like Greg Mendez’s highlights, “Clearer Picture (of You)” just sounds beautiful. Read more about Greg Mendez here.
“D. Boon-Free (A Ninth Grade Crime)”, Centro-matic From The Static vs. the Strings Vol. 1 (1999, Quality Park/Idol)
So, I’m mentally ill, and sometimes this negatively impacts my life. Last month was a really really good/bad example of this. One of the ways I coped with this was asking for song recommendations on Twitter that fit a very specific messed-up 90s indie rock vibe. “D. Boon-Free (A Ninth Grade Crime)” wasn’t quite what I was looking for (it’s too poppy), but it turns out it’s the song I needed. I’ve never really listened to Centro-matic–I’d probably like them, I like a lot of similar bands, I just haven’t gotten around to it. This is still the only Centro-matic song I’ve heard, and it’s perfect. I could say it sounds like the Archers of Loaf trying to make a power pop No Depression song about the Minutemen or whatever the fuck but the point is I’ve lived my whole life without hearing this perfect song, and one day I just stumbled on it (well, I mean, Sebastian Stirling suggested it to me, but you get the point). There are a lot of songs like this out there that I’ve heard, and probably an infinite number of ones like this I haven’t heard yet. Maybe Centro-matic have another song like this. If they don’t, somebody else will, and I’ll find it. Shit, I have to keep living, I guess.
“We Don’t Fuck”, Leor Miller’s Fear of Her Own Desire From Eternal Bliss Now! (2023, Candlepin)
Eternal Bliss Now!, the latest album from Leor Miller’s Fear of Her Own Desire, is an adventurous and multi-layered collection of experimental, electronic-colored indie rock. “We Don’t Fuck”, one of the album’s singles, is an eerie, frayed take on bedroom rock that is still a pop song against all odds. I feel like I could write an entire essay just on Leor Miller’s opening couplet alone (“We don’t fuck / But I give birth to myself in your truck”–to me that’s a particularly vivid way of capturing the unusual, inexplicable-feeling nature of queer relationships, with more than a bit of Eternal Bliss Now!’s theme of merging the intra- and interpersonal also present, but that’s just me). Read more about Eternal Bliss Now! here.
“I’m Glad He’s Dead”, Charles the Obtuse From Charles the Obtuse (2023)
Charlie Wilmoth has been making good music with Fox Japan and Oblivz for a while now, and his debut solo EP (as Charles the Obtuse) only continues the trend. The impossibly cheery “I’m Glad He’s Dead” closes Charles the Obtuse, and it has lived in my head rent-free ever since I first heard it. Wilmoth sends everyone off by explicitly encouraging the listener to cheer, celebrate, and toast the death of some asshole (deliberately kept vague, so you can break this one out on any number of occasions). It’s both a good argument and a good soundtrack for such a party (apropos of nothing, happy Pride Month). Read more about Charles the Obtuse here.
“I Can Handle It”, Radiator Hospital From Can’t Make Any Promises (2023, Salinas)
Sometimes simplicity is the way. Radiator Hospital open their latest album, Can’t Make Any Promises, with the blunt melodic pop rock of “I Can Handle It”. “If we’re really going through with it, I gotta know right now,” Sam Cook-Parrott begins the song, which presents a few more “If, then, okay if not” statements from there. Maybe I’m projecting a bit, but I hear a lot of pain and frustration in the way that these major requests and assertions have been boiled away to their essence. “If you really wanna make it right, you better make it right now / I can handle it if you won’t, but I gotta know”.
“What Does It Mean?”, Cusp From You Can Do It All (2023)
Back in 2021, I wrote about Cusp’s debut EP, Spill. The then-Rochester-based band (now living in Chicago) made an intriguing mix of spiky, thorny indie rock with pop hooks not infrequently sticking out among the noise. Cusp’s self-released first full-length album, You Can Do It All, came out last month, and if you liked Spill, it continues and expands on that sound. My favorite track is the penultimate “What Does It Mean?”, a very catchy song that zags very pleasingly in its chorus.
“Secret Freezer”, Deep State From Diary of a Nobody (2023)
I hadn’t heard of Deep State before, but they’ve been around for a decade or so, and I was intrigued due to Christian “Smokey” DeRoeck (Blunt Bangs, Little Gold) being involved. DeRoeck plays guitar and sings, although it seems like primarily the project of Taylor Chmura, who’s singing “Secret Freezer” (and shouting DeRoeck out explicitly in the chorus). It’s an excellent piece of gently-swaying, slightly twangy guitar pop, and Chmura’s delivery of “Smokey don’t feel so good!” in the final chorus is so charming.
“Fracture”, Downhaul From Squall (2023)
Downhaul get a little weird and (for them) experimental on their latest release, the four-song Squall EP, but they’re still the same recognizable Richmond emo-alt-rock band, and opening track “Fracture” is vintage Downhaul through and through. It’s the song on the record that makes the biggest bid for “big-chorus anthem” status, and there’s a surprise in the form of a blistering guitar solo that kicks in at the end of the song. Read more about Squall here.
“Edible Arrangements”, Grave Saddles From There You Ain’t (2023, Really Rad)
Hemet, California’s Grave Saddles’ latest release is the relatively brief three-song There You Ain’t EP, but the four-piece fuzz rock band leave their mark with it, particularly on the excellent opening track “Edible Arrangements”. It’s the most Dinosaur Jr.-esque song on There You Ain’t–clearly a shoegaze-influenced band, the vocals are relatively buried here, but both their inflection and the loud pop sound of the song are very Mascis. “Thank you for the fruit / I didn’t know just what to do with it” is a hell of a refrain, too.
“Hide”, Rob I. Miller From Companion Piece (2023, Vacant Stare)
“It was just after dark, and you were light on your feet”. I’ve heard this story before. It doesn’t end well. I’ve listened to “Hide” quite a bit over the past month or so, but it still floors me how Rob I. Miller married these lyrics with the sound of a massive jangle-power-pop anthem. Miller sends the song into the stratosphere, kicking off the chorus with “I’m sure about you / But I wish I didn’t have a clue”. The brief guitar solo is the sonic equivalent of screaming into your hoodie sleeve. Read more about Companion Piece here.
“Jim Watson You’ve Had It Too Good for Too Long”, Dart Trees From Consider Two Beers (2023, Club)
What’s this chord progression called, again? It’s an oldie but a goodie. “Jim Watson You’ve Had It Too Good for Too Long” is my favorite song from Consider Two Beers, the latest EP from Ottawa’s Dart Trees. Their Bandcamp calls them “college drunk rock for good times and bad times”– “Jim Watson…” isn’t so much a slacker rock tune as a burnout anthem (“It’s ten A.M., I’ll guess I’ll chug a Gatorade”). I’ve known the narrator of this song before–I wonder how he turned out.
“All Flowers Grow”, The Fever Haze (2023, The Stooge)
The Fever Haze’s An Apple on the Highest Branch came out in December 2022–if I’d discovered it before early 2023 it probably would’ve been on my year-end list, but now I’m fully on board with the Michigan widescreen indie fuzz rockers. “All Flowers Grow” is a one-off single that just came out, and it expands on An Apple on the Highest Branch’s distorted country-Americana sound. Jackie Kalmink pushes her vocals in an exciting way here in the chorus, helping The Fever Haze really commit to turning in an anthem here.
“Lead Paint”, Ryan Wong From The New Country Sounds of Ryan Wong (2023, Rocks in Your Head)
Back in 2021, I wrote about Joy, a collection of psych- and folk-tinged basement indie rock from Ryan Wong, released under the name Supreme Joy. Wong also plays in San Francisco psych revivalists Cool Ghouls, and now the Bay Area-by-way-of-Denver musician is a full-on solo artist with The New Country Sounds of Ryan Wong. As the album title suggests, Wong indeed embraces his country side here, dressing up tracks like highlight “Lead Paint” with pedal steel and delivering songs with a slow, longing vocal style (though he wisely doesn’t overdo it). It’s not actually a world away from Wong’s lo-fi psych-folk side, but it still qualifies as a “new country sound”.
“Holding in a Cough”, Liquid Mike From S/T (2023, Kitschy Spirit)
Rosy Overdrive moves at its own pace. I was aware of Marquette, Michigan’s Liquid Mike before I saw any social media chatter about them, and now I’m finally getting around to writing about them after the Liquid Mike Hype has died down a bit. Liquid Mike’s S/T moves at a much quicker pace than I do–it roars through eleven beefed-up power pop songs in eighteen minutes, including the frantic-sounding, nonstop hook-fest of “Holding in a Cough”. The song is a bit dire (the titular activity being a metaphor for pointlessness), but Liquid Mike don’t sound like they’re going to roll with it quietly.
“Shine”, American Levitation Co. (2023, Superfuzz)
Thanks to the album/EP-centric nature of Rosy Overdrive, I don’t really cover a lot of bands’ debut singles. There’s something about “Shine”, the first song from American Levitation Co., however, that wormed its way into this playlist. American Levitation Co. (who are, of course, not American, but Swedish) are noise poppists in the vein of Spacemen 3, LOOP, and (definitely) The Jesus and Mary Chain–“Shine” is an inarguably pleasing pop song wrapped in the most distortion possible that still leaves its core intact.
“Grand Old Feeling”, William Matheny From That Grand, Old Feeling (2023, Hickman Holler)
It’s been six years since William Matheny’s last full-length album (the excellent Strange Constellations), so I’m excited for That Grand, Old Feeling to come out in August (on his friend Tyler Childers’ Hickman Holler label, no less). Lead single and semi-title track “Grand Old Feeling” is vintage Matheny, a power pop/alt-country hybrid tune with a sprawling set of lyrics. Matheny’s music is at the intersection of a few genres of music that favor tight craftsmanship, but he and his band also know how to rock out, and “Grand Old Feeling” feels like Matheny’s letting just a bit more of that creep into the studio than previously.
“Talking to Girls (On the Internet)”, Kicking Bird From Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (2023, Fort Lowell)
Kicking Bird’s debut album, Original Motion Picture Soundtrack, is a nonstop pop rock blast from the Wilmington, North Carolina five-piece, and “Talking to Girls (On the Internet)” might be the strongest of the batch. The track’s breezy surf-garage-pop is a great distillation of Kicking Bird’s Pixies-as-straight-power-pop sound, with the band’s various vocalists shouting at each other playfully but sharply in the chorus. Read more about Original Motion Picture Soundtrack here.
“Did You Know There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd”, The Reds, Pinks and Purples From You Know You’re Burning Someone (2023, Burundi Cloud)
Glenn Donaldson doesn’t slow down. The prolific nature of his group The Reds, Pinks and Purples is well-documented, but it’s still worth noting that less than a month after his very good album The Town That Cursed Your Name, Donaldson has returned with a four-song EP that showcases his uniquely strong skills as a pop songsmith and–hold on, I’m being told that “Did You Know There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd” is a cover of a song by someone named “Lana Del Rey”. Well, whoever they are, they’re an excellent jangle pop songwriter!
“Hatchet”, Langkamer From The Noon and Midnight Manual (2023, Breakfast)
I’ve been aware of Bristol’s Langkamer since last year’s Red Thread Route EP, but “Hatchet” is where they’ve really grabbed my attention. The clearest highlight from their latest album, last month’s The Noon and Midnight Manual, “Hatchet” is a two-minute slice of very catchy, quite British post-90s-indie rock guitar pop. It’s a very jaunty tune about mortality, with the titular hatchet proclaiming to the tree its about to fell that anyone’s lucky to be alive for any time at all in the chorus.
“Totally Cool”, Magazine Beach From Constant Springtime (2023, Take This to Heart)
Magazine Beach are a Washington, D.C.-based pop-punk-emo-power-pop group–their debut album, Constant Springtime, is a fun listen, with single “Totally Cool” being my favorite track on the record. It’s a big anthem of a track, with whoever’s singing the song (the band seems to have a couple different vocalists) really selling the swirling of emotions that somewhat contradict the song’s title, and also getting plenty of help as other voices in the band join in to sing along.
“NASA T-Shirt”, Slime City From Death Club (2023, Last Night from Glasgow)
“NASA T-Shirt” is nuts, which makes sense because most of Death Club is nuts. “I see you wearing your Ramones T-shirt, well name five of their albums / I see you wearing your Gap T-shirt, well name five big holes,” begins the track over a big, loud alt-rock sheen. Slime City feel fairly indebted to Mclusky sonically (the unhingedness does it), although that band is not writing anything anywhere near as improbably dancefloor-ready as “NASA T-Shirt”.
“Mystery”, Daisy Clover From State Fair (2023)
Here’s what I know about Daisy Clover–they’re based in Long Beach, California, they’re led by vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Aldo Elizalde, and their new album, State Fair, is being sold in “CD + zine” form, perhaps one of the most blessed forms in which an album can be sold. Daisy Clover make a lo-fi, quietly pretty version of jangle pop–there’s some distortion in “Mystery”, the album’s best track, too, but it only pops up for a brief moment and lets the song get back to jangling joyously.
“Manny’s Song”, Marni (2023)
Marni is the project of Nicolas Lara, a Los Angeles-based indie rock musician who plays guitar with the excellent Garb, and their one-off single “Manny’s Song” follows last year’s Whiskey Girl full-length. Like Lara’s other band, Marni trades in downcast but frequently noisy 90s-inspired indie rock–“Manny’s Song” is a fuzzy, swirly shoegaze-inspired track that also features Lara’s vocals trending into post-hardcore territory towards its end.
“Haircut”, PONY From Velveteen (2023, Take This to Heart)
“Haircut” is the final song on Velveteen, and the carnival synths and slick guitars that kick it off let us all know that we’re in for one final rousing tune. It’s a triumphant, down-but-not out dog anthem that hits the same spot that Charly Bliss’ Guppy does for me, and Sam Bielanski really sounds just exasperated enough in the “I feel dumb and I feel old and I just want somebody to hold” chorus. The song’s bridge says a lot (“She’s so cute, she’s so resilient…”) but it resists spelling out a straightforward narrative and lesson that a lot of bands would feel obligated to shoehorn in. Read more about Velveteen here.
There are a lot of good songs about sad subject matter, but Greg Mendez is a truly masterful example of spinning ugliness into prettiness on his new self-titled album. The pin-drop quiet of “Best Behavior” is the best of the bunch–hearing Mendez sing “I’m on my best behavior, do you like it?” feels chilling in a too-close way. I should claim a conflict of interest here–not that I know Mendez personally or anything, but I feel like “Best Behavior” knows me personally. Read more about Greg Mendez here.
“Karaoke”, Pynch From Howling at a Concrete Moon (2023, Chillburn)
Pynch’s Howling at a Concrete sounds like a combination of Captured Tracks-esque “chill” indie pop, 2000s “landfill indie”, and Britpop, and against all odds the London band pull the sound off pretty well. Some of the album is a bit “much” for me, but “Karaoke” is the just the right amount, a twinkling piece of indie pop with clear, melodic vocals from Spencer Enock that say a lot but do so in a plain enough way, leaving the necessary empty space for the song to chug along.
“Ruptured Lung”, Stimmerman From Undertaking (2023, Invisible Planet)
Eva Lawitts is a Brooklyn-based producer and guitarist (she’s worked with Oceanator among other bands); she also leads the band Stimmerman. Fittingly for a producer-led band, Undertaking is an eclectic album, bouncing between genres and taking a lot of left turns, but closing track “Ruptured Lung” is pure cathartic indie rock. Lawitts’ vocal performance is key in how it matches the explosive guitars that rise and fall on the song, and “I’ve got a reason to live now, but it’s somebody else” in particular is quite a line.
“Is It Any Wonder?”, Daisies From Great Big Open Sky (2023, Perennial/K)
Great Big Open Sky, the fifth-full length album from Olympia’s Daisies, is an intriguing record that harkens back to a time in the late 90s when both mainstream and indie music were flirting with incorporating electronic elements into their sound. The acoustic, Mazzy Star-esque dreamy country of closing track “Is It Any Wonder?” doesn’t sound like anything else on Great Big Open Sky–it’s both a great record-capper and an excellent dream pop single in its own right. Read more about Great Big Open Sky here.
“Kiwi”, Poppy Patica From Black Cat Back Stage (2023, House of Joy)
“Kiwi” is a fascinating song. Poppy Patica excel at stretching the song out–it starts out in a weird new wave-y place and somewhat morphs into a golden pop chorus (both the sudden repetition of the title and the “It’s hard to catch you…” part qualify as this). Over six minutes, Peter Hartmann and his collaborators close the excellent Black Cat Back Stage on this head-scratching but beautiful note. I’m choosing to believe that this song (which, unlike the rest of the album, was recorded in New Orleans with Video Age’s Ross Farbe) is about the bird. Read more about Black Cat Back Stage here.
It’s time for Pressing Concerns, to be sure. Today’s post features new albums from Generifus, Vulture Feather, and The Stools, and a new EP from Cal Rifkin. If you missed Tuesday’s post, featuring PONY, Parister, Good Looking Son, and Kicking Bird, check that one out too.
If you’re looking for more new music, you can visit the site directory to see what else we’ve written about lately. If you’d like to support Rosy Overdrive, you can share this (or another) post, or donate here.
Generifus – Rearrangel
Release date: June 2nd Record label: Anything Bagel/Bud Tapes Genre: Alt-country, folk rock Formats: Vinyl, cassette, digital Pull Track: Rearrangel
Olympia, Washington folk rocker Spencer Sult has been making and putting out music as Generifus with various casts of musicians since the mid-2000s, frequently on his own label, Sultan Serves. Rearrangel is the first Generifus record in three years–something of a long gap for the fairly prolific Sult–and for this one, he’s receiving help in releasing it through a couple of Pacific Northwest stalwart labels in Anything Bagel (Vista House, Bluest) and Bud Tapes (Jack Habegger’s Celebrity Telethon, Jonny G and the Music Factory). On Rearrangel, Sult is joined by a wide range of local musicians, including producer Zach Burba of Dear Nora and singer-songwriter Lee Baggett. These ten songs are sharply penned folk-country tunes dressed up smartly but not distractingly by Sult’s collaborators, creating an immediately friendly album with plenty of depth as well.
The opening title track to Rearrangel is a welcoming party of a song–it’s a breezy, busy, but laid-back folk rock featuring some ace guitar contributions from Baggett. The record segues nicely into some more subtle, cosmic country moments from there with “Didn’t Even Look at the Mountain” and “Heat of the Night”, and the ballad of “Island from the Car” climbs atop the middle of the album confidently. In the second half of Rearrangel, Generifus offer up another acoustic-strummed cruiser in “Drive Away”, which turns the aching at its core into something nevertheless pleasant. “My Teacher” presents itself as barebones folk rock, allowing the titular question Sult asks to resonate. The opening title track’s triumphant sound is matched by the closing country rock of “Fearless Dealer”, another track that finds a well of inspiration in an unlikely place. Generifus believe that the titular dealer deserves to be played out with excited guitar solos and spirited rock and roll, and I can’t find myself disagreeing with how it sounds. (Bandcamp link)
Cal Rifkin – Better Luck Next Year
Release date: May 30th Record label: Really Rad Genre: Power pop, pop punk, jangle pop Formats: Cassette, digital Pull Track: Down South
Cal Rifkin is a Washington, D.C. power pop trio who’ve been kicking around since 2018–this week’s Better Luck Next Year is their second EP, following a self-titled one in 2020 and a couple of singles. Two of their previously-released singles show up on their latest five-track record, which serves as an excellent introduction to the intriguing style of guitar pop that the group (guitarist/vocalist Erik Grimm, drummer Keith Butler Jr., and bassist Robin Rhodes) 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 Grimm’s vocals, which are gentle, melodic, and frequently harmonized, sitting on the “quietly pretty” end. I definitely hear some Teenage Fanclub here, but also the louder end of 2nd Grade, Supers -crush and -drag, and some Matthew Sweet.
Better Luck Next Year opens with “Down South”, their version of an unstoppable, massive jangly power pop anthem–Grimm can sing that chorus as understated as possible, but it’s still going to be a runaway train. Grimm declares “So just go on and break my heart in two / It’ll be the best thing you could do,” in the shimmering pop rock of “Break My Heart”–the whole thing’s a real Power Pop Moment. The wide-open spaces and power chords of “I Know I Can’t Stay” imagines a power pop version of modern heartland indie rock like Wild Pink, and the chugging title track offers up an interesting change of pace as well. The jangle pop “Skater Vidz” (as in “all I really wanna do is watch them with you”) closes the EP on a note of subtlety, humanity, and ace songwriting. (Bandcamp link)
Vulture Feather – Liminal Fields
Release date: June 2nd Record label: Felte Genre: Post-punk, art rock Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull Track: Bell of Renewal
Wilderness were a Baltimore-based 2000s indie rock band who put out three albums on Jagjaguwar, recorded with Beauty Pill’s Chad Clark, and toured with Dan Friel’s pre-Upper Wilds band, Parts & Labor. All of that would suggest a band I would enjoy, but I never checked them out, and they seemed to disappear at the end of that decade. Fifteen years after their last album, however, half of Wilderness (guitarist Colin McCann and bassist Brian Gossman) have reemerged in the tiny northern California town of Hayfork, and along with drummer Eric Fiscus, have a new trio called Vulture Feather. From the bit of Wilderness I’ve now listened to, it sounds like McCann and Gossman have picked up where their last band left off, making a slow, deliberate, Lungfish-esque version of guitar-heavy post-punk.
While Liminal Fields, the debut Vulture Feather album, contains a bit of that 2000s indie rock bombast that aughts post-punkers like Wolf Parade practiced, the continued popularity of this kind of music into the 2010s and 2020s ensures that the band don’t sound dated–if anything, the zeitgeist has caught up to them. The primary difference is Vulture Feather’s lack of interest in speed or aggression–these songs move along at their own pace, feeling unhitched from any sense of time. The album is 38 minutes long, but you could’ve told me it was significantly shorter or longer and I’d probably have believed you. The rhythm section lumbers, McCann’s guitar chimes and drones, and his vocals sound focused but emotive, gamely supplying these eight songs with the final ingredient in turning a lot of them into unlikely anthems. (Bandcamp link)
The Stools – R U Saved?
Release date: June 2nd Record label: Feel It Genre: Garage punk, hardcore punk, blues punk Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull Track: Stare Scared
The Stools heard that you liked Detroit garage punk, and now they’re banging at your front door. Indeed, the press for R U Saved?, their debut album after a few EPs and singles, mentions a lot of Those names– MC5, Stooges, Gories (with whom The Stools are touring with later in the year)–but really, all you need to know about this music is that it’s loud, dirty, ripping garage punk. Okay, okay, one other Detroit band is worth mentioning here: Negative Approach. The Stools of R U Saved? (guitarist/vocalist Will Lorenz, bassist/vocalist Krystian Quint, drummer Charles Stahl) balance themselves between the version of punk rock that’s just mussed up rock-and-roll and the aggression of hardcore, and it’s a captivating place for them to be.
R U Saved? opens with the blues-y punk sprint of “Stare Scared”, and then The Stools follow it with a couple of songs that show off their fuzzy, frantic, hardcore side. The title track is a stomp, based around a massive riff and some chanted vocals that skulk around it, and the three-minute “Conner & Hell” takes the record into the direction of Cramps-esque strut-punk. “Into the Street” is a fun and incredibly cool-sounding tune that kicks off the second half of the album, letting you all know R U Saved? isn’t going to slow down any time soon. Highlights keep coming–the vintage punk rock of “Rum Runner”, the all-out “Bad Eye Bob”, and the cranked-up closing track “Tunnels” all stick out to me at this time. I’d open that door if I were you. (Bandcamp link)
Welcome to a rare Tuesday Pressing Concerns! Today, we’re rounding up new albums from PONY, Parister, Good Looking Son, and Kicking Bird. Also, if the website has looked weird for you lately, I’m sorry–Wordpress seems to have been having some major issues, and their support system has been quite unhelpful. I’ve done my best to at least make the front page navigable, but let me know if things still look too broken to use the website.
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.
PONY – Velveteen
Release date: May 19th Record label: Take This to Heart Genre: Power pop, pop punk, 90s alt-rock Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital Pull Track: Sick
There have been a lot of bands over the past decade or so that have used the more poppy, radio-friendly edge of alt-rock as a jumping off point for their music. It’s been arguably the dominant strain of “indie rock” since the excesses of blog rock died off in the early 2010s. One of those bands has been PONY, whose 2017 EP Do You I heard way back when and thought was pretty good, but whom I’d lost track of since then (Velveteen is their second album for Take This to Heart Records, actually). Honestly, I thought I got burnt out on this kind of music in recent years. Turns out that most people just aren’t stuffing it with enough hooks. Velveteen is a beast of a pop album, with PONY (singer/guitarist Sam Bielanski and multi-instrumentalist Matty Morand) wringing everything they can out of these ten songs, leaving nothing on the table.
Velveteen has an energy to it that I must compare to the pinnacle of the recent era of this genre, Charly Bliss’ Guppy. Bielanski is an excellent pop frontperson–they sound confident in every one of these songs, while still being able to sell the wide range of (frequently kind of rough) emotions these songs explore. The braintrust of Bielanski and Morand are a successful pair, as the duo (who play everything other than drums, handled by Josh Cassidy) give the tracks precisely what they need. Songs like “Peach” and “Sick” feel eternal–Bielanski takes a step back in the former to emphasize the aside nature of the lyrics, and they grab the mic aggressively in the latter to vividly try and wrest control of something (“Break my spine just to prove I have one,” that’ll stick with me). There are some other songs that deserve a specific mention (the churning grunge-pop of “Haunted House”, one last triumphant shit-kicking in closing track “Haircut”) but there’s not a dud on this one. (Bandcamp link)
Parister – Here’s What You Wonder
Release date: May 11th Record label: Candlepin Genre: Lo-fi indie rock, alt-country Formats: Cassette, digital Pull Track: Nutrition Facts
Parister is a three-piece band from Louisville, led by guitarist/vocalist Jake Tapley and rounded out by Matt Filip on bass and drummer Adam Dickison. Here’s What You Wonder is the band’s second album following 2021’s Please Take Back Your Seat, and their first for Candlepin Records. 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, but there’s an obvious twang to Tapley’s songwriting that puts it more in line with the likes of MJ Lenderman and fellow Louisville band State Champion than anything else (this isn’t quite “country-gaze”, but if that term intrigues you, you’d probably like this album).
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 sounding as polished or as loud as any one track requires. Parister pull off twinkling, jangly power pop in “Nutrition Facts”, downcast but uptempo country rock in “Opening Day”, fuzzy garage-barn rockers with “Bookmark” and “Pullover”, and restraint in “You Are the Paywall” and the two-minute epic “Crutch”. As a writer, Tapley practices less-is-more in the relatively straightforward lyrics to “Pet Sounds II” and “Bookmark”, but also can’t resist a Lenderman-esque odd metaphor here and there (the PEZ dispenser in “E-Z-P-E-Z”, the bag of chips in “Nutrition Facts”, “You are the paywall I deserve”). At the end of this strong collection of songs, Tapley sings about “slicing up a sizzle reel” over blaring guitars, inadvertently summing up Here’s What You Wonder quite nicely. (Bandcamp link)
Good Looking Son – Confirmed Bachelor
Release date: May 26th Record label: Feel It Genre: Piano rock, power pop, singer-songwriter Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull Track: Glitter Everywhere
As the lead singer of Bloomington, Indiana garage-rock-power-poppers The Cowboys, Keith Harman helms one of Feel It Records’ flagship bands. Harman’s piano playing and classic pop sensibilities helped shade The Cowboys’ intriguing flavor of rock and roll, and now he’s made an album as Good Looking Son that embraces these parts of his songwriting. Confirmed Bachelor follows 2021’s Fantasy Weekend EP, and this LP is a positively jaunty-sounding collection of spirited piano-led pop rock that still shows a bit of Harman’s other band (but without going out of the way to pay lip service to garage rock). Good Looking Son is a four-piece band (also featuring Jerome Westerkamp and John Clooney of Vacation, and Andrew Jody of Barrence Whitfield & the Savages), and the group of musicians punch up these pop songs without overwhelming them.
Confirmed Bachelor opens with something of a hybrid in the mid-tempo guitar pop of “Lovely Land of Massacre”, but Good Looking Son don’t hide their baroque sixties piano-pop side early on: “Forty Night Stand” and (especially) “*Glasses Clink, Men Laugh*” and “The Soft Open for the Cabaret” mark the album’s first half. While the latter features a mesmerizing guitar solo, it’s a piano-led song and no worse the wear for it. Good Looking Son show off their pop skills in the second half with the sugary circus-tent energy of “Glitter Everywhere” and the bouncy “The Unicorn”, refusing to run out of steam. The more garage rock-based songs on the album (“Lord Demon’s Delight”, “Long Form Girlfriend”, a sharp cover of the Bee Gees’ “I Don’t Think It’s Funny”) don’t feel out of place because they’re hook-fests as well. The Good Looking Son of Confirmed Bachelor follows Harman wherever he goes, and it’s all the better for it. (Bandcamp link)
Kicking Bird – Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
Release date: May 19th Record label: Fort Lowell Genre: Pop rock, power pop, indie pop Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull Track: Talking to Girls (On the Internet)
While I’ve written about plenty of East Coast bands in Pressing Concerns before, Wilmington, North Carolina’s Kicking Bird hail from a part of the Atlantic shoreline I believe I’ve yet to touch on. Released on local label Fort Lowell, Original Motion Picture Soundtrack is the five-piece band’s full-length debut, following a handful of singles and an EP in 2021. The first Kicking Bird album is a big old guitar pop record, an overstuffed collection of songs that feature three different vocalists (guitarist/bassists Shaun Paul and Tom Michels and keyboardist Shaylah Paul) and makes itself home in the world of vintage college rock, jangle pop, power pop, and wide-eyed indie rock.
Original Motion Picture Soundtrack knows how to make a good first impression–the roaring “Names Are Changing”, the smooth and persistent “Lauren”, and breezy surf-garage-pop of “Talking to Girls (On the Internet)” are all Pixies-as-straight-power-popper classics. The opening trio is hard to beat, but Kicking Bird toss out more rock-solid pop rock throughout the rest of the album– “Stuck” anchors the midsection of Original Motion Picture Soundtrack quite gamely, “238” chugs and handclaps its way into the heads of anyone who would hear it, and the fluffy “Rip Off” closes things out with a track that really underlines Kicking Bird’s 60s girl-group influences. It’s a commendable, hot-out-of-the-gate debut from a quite likable band. (Bandcamp link)
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