It’s the first Pressing Concerns of May! Today, we’re looking at new albums from Mister Data and The National Honor Society, an upcoming reissue from Lynx, and a new EP from Unlettered.
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.
Lynx – Lynx (Reissue) / Human Speech
Release date: May 5th Record label: Computer Students Genre: Math rock, experimental rock Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull Track: Mrs. Lynx/ Human Speech
Lynx were an instrumental rock band from Boston who initially lasted for one self-titled album, originally released on CD in 2000. The band was comprised of guitarists Mike Hutchins and Dave Konopka, bassist Paul Joyce, and drummer Dale Connolly–Konopka later went on to play in beloved math rockers Battles for fifteen years as Lynx went dormant. Computer Students reissued a similarly overlooked record in French math rockers Cheval de Frise’s self-titled album last year, and they’ve now given the same treatment to Lynx. With this one, however, there’s an added bonus–the (first ever time on vinyl) reissue of Lynx comes with Human Speech, a three-track, fifteen-minute EP of songs written by the band during their initial run but recorded just two years ago, with the members of Lynx reuniting for the first time in over twenty years to capture these previously-unrecorded songs.
Twenty-three years from its outset, Lynx stills sounds like an excellent rock record, jagged around the edges but with all four members sounding in sync with each other. The record kicks off with “Look at That Table and Make It Spin in Your Head”, a thundering opening statement, and the punchy, spiked “Mrs. Lynx” one song later continues the record’s strong beginning. The record’s first side ends with two linked songs, the percussion-less, hovering “In Snow” which flows into “In Sand”, a dramatic-sounding tune that takes a while to develop into its galloping final form. The second half of Lynx is where the band stretch out a bit–see multi-part tracks like “Aries”, “Prynx”, and “Raisins”, which speeds its way to a big finish. The best thing I can say about Human Speech is that it sounds like an extension of the album, and doesn’t show any of the signs of dust one might fear based on the long gap. It sounds like it was recorded a little differently (a more…cavernous sound), but all three of these songs writhe and twist and explode like the best of Lynx. (Computer Students link)
Mister Data – Pleasure in a Fast Void
Release date: April 19th Record label: Self-released Genre: Pop rock, power pop Formats: Digital Pull Track: I’m a Sensation
Hailing from Houston Texas, Mister Data is a five-piece guitar pop band that makes music that’s on the more laid-back side of the genre, but their debut full-length album, Pleasure in a Fast Void, is still full of both attention-grabbing hooks and musical surprises. The band is led by vocalists Austin Sepulvado (who also plays guitar) and Ellen Story (also a pianist), and is rounded out by Marshall Graves on guitar, drummer Gus Alvarado, and bassist Jack Gordon. I’ve seen a couple of New Pornographers comparisons for Mister Data, and while I think that their style is more casual and patient than that band’s frequently more hurried, chaotic attitude, I won’t deny that the vocal interplay between Sepulvado and Story in songs like “Bad Actors” give off just a bit of Neko Case/A.C. Newman energy.
“I’m a Sensation” opens Pleasure in a Fast Void with a pop classic that sets the tone for the record–it starts as standard, unassuming (but very good) indie rock, before veering into an out-of-nowhere big chorus. “Bad Actors” continues Pleasure in a Fast Void’s momentum with some churning, slick power pop, and the mid-tempo title track works its way up deliberately and rewardingly to its soaring chorus. Mister Data surprisingly reveal themselves as skilled in stretching their pop songs out a bit after the first few hits–the minimalist “The Measure of a Man”, the Lambchop-esque cavern country of “Odd Feelings”, and the layered “Bird in Hand” all stretch beyond five minutes and feel at home doing so. “Life Ordinary” pleasingly sniffs a little bit at 90s radio-ready alt-pop-rock, but by and large the eight shining guitar pop songs in Pleasure in a Fast Void feel unhooked from any specific time or place. (Bandcamp link)
Unlettered – New Egypt
Release date: April 18th Record label: Self-released Genre: Post-punk, noise rock Formats: Vinyl*, digital Pull Track: Group of Compilers
If Mike Knowlton sounds particularly inspired by a specific strain of underground 90s indie rock, that’s probably because he’s from right in the thick of it. The Bandcamp page for his latest project, Unlettered, lists groups like Unwound, Sonic Youth, and Polvo as inspiration for his sound, but he also had his own 90s band–Gapeseed, a New York group that released two albums on Silver Girl Records in 1994 and 1997. Knowlton began making music as Unlettered in 2021, and New Egypt is the project’s third EP since its inception. On the latest EP, Knowlton explores a dark post-punk sound, with the record’s five songs trudging through some low-end-heavy explorations in a hypnotic and captivating way.
“Malfroid Archives” opens New Egypt with a slow, measured Unwound-esque echoing guitar line and downcast vocals, and it never quite shakes its eerie, crawling feeling. “Too Good to Be True” and “D>B>H” pick up the pace just a little bit, with the former’s bell-tolling-guitar-riff being accompanied by a more brisk drumbeat, and the latter cranking up the distortion over top of the song’s body. “Group of Compilers” (which, along with “Malfroid Archives”, makes up the 7” single that is the only physical release related to this EP) is something of a drain-circling singalong with its clearly-defined chorus. The shady “Sin Sip” closes New Egypt with a lyric “inspired by a recent trip to Atlantic City” per Bandcamp, and its grotesque, decaying Americana imagery proves Unlettered’s noise rock bona fides if nothing else had already. (Bandcamp link)
The National Honor Society – To All the Distance Between Us
Release date: April 21st Record label: Subjangle/Discos de Kirlian/Shelflife Genre: Jangle pop, indie pop, power pop Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital Pull Track: When the Lights Go Down
The National Honor Society are an indie pop four-piece from Seattle, Washington who take influence from 80s post-punk, new wave, and college rock groups, but don’t come off as merely trying to recreate a decade long past. Instead, the quartet (vocalist/guitarist Coulter Leslie, guitarist Jerry Peerson, bassist Andrew Gaskin, and drummer Will Hallauer) absorb lessons from these bands and incorporate them merely as one element of their shiny, wide-ranging power pop. Their second album, To All the Distance Between Us, features ten well-crafted guitar pop tunes that vary from wistful to peppy, from slow-building to immediate, and from straightforward to multifaceted.
To All the Distance Between Us’ first three songs all have massive hooks, but present them in different skins–opening track “As She Slips Away” is the tightly-constructed, almost baroque-classical pop tune, “Control” is the brisk, blooming “rocker”, “In Your Eyes” is the melancholic, jangly-college radio-esque one. The National Honor Society’s devotion to mining this area of pop music recalls The New Pornographers–most obviously on “Jacqueline”, which nails that band’s sound shockingly well, but A.C. Newman’s songwriting is evoked prominently on “Remember the Good Times” and “The Following”, among others. To All the Distance Between Us saves a few surprises towards the end–the Sloan-esque swaggering power pop of “The Trigger” and the light Andy Partridge touches of closing track “When the Lights Go Down”–but both of them are well in line with the overall world of The National Honor Society. (Bandcamp link)
We’ve almost made it to the end of the week, and what a week it was! Today, Rosy Overdrive is looking at new records from Negative Glow, Morwan, John Andrews & the Yawns, and Miscomings. Yesterday, I wrote about Improved Means to Deteriorated Ends, the new record from Washer that’s out tomorrow, and on Monday I covered new records from Patches, Amanda X, Monde UFO, and Triple Fast Action. That’s a lot of music, but it is all worth checking out!
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.
Negative Glow – Volume 1
Release date: April 20th (digital) Record label: Let’s Pretend/RTR Tapes Genre: Fuzz rock, punk rock, 90s indie rock Formats: Cassette (forthcoming), digital Pull Track: Gazer
Bloomington, Indiana has a legitimate case for being one of the best Midwestern music towns–it’s the home of bands like Mister Goblin, Mike Adams at His Honest Weight, and Jacky Boy, in addition to Let’s Pretend Records, which has put out great records by Posmic, Meat Wave, and Tetnis, among others. Let’s Pretend is also co-releasing (along with RTR Tapes) the debut cassette EP from an exciting new Bloomington band, Negative Glow. Negative Glow is a four-piece group led by singer-songwriter-guitarists Tina Lou Vines and Tommy Beresky, and also featuring the rhythm section of Noah Ketchem (drums) and Cyan Carey (bass), and their first record together is an incredibly strong opening statement. Volume 1 is five songs and 13 minutes of incredibly catchy fuzz rock that’s a mix of 90s indie rock, power pop, and pop punk with zero fat.
Volume 1 takes me back a bit to the mid-2010s era of punk-y indie rock revivalists–bands like Swearin’, Chumped, and Screaming Females–but with a bit of a tougher alt-rock edge (less “scrappy”, with a layered-enough sound that the “shoegaze” tag on their Bandcamp makes some sense). “Gazer” is a hell of a first song, a big distorted fuzzfest with crystal-clear vocals and legitimate guitar heroics. “Hover” is more mid-tempo and features co-lead vocals from Vines and Beresky, trending into Samuel S.C.-esque emo-punk territory. All five of these songs land incredible hooks–the sprint-to-strut “F.S.” pulls off its trick slickly, “Lite-Brite” roars behind a pummeling drumbeat, and closing track “Dissolve” sends us all off with a big slacker rock finish. As new as they are, Negative Glow already sound great on Volume 1–urgent but cool, loud but catchy as anything, aware of the past but very much alive in the present tense. The physical edition of Volume 1 isn’t even out yet, but it’s never too early to start thinking about Volume 2. (Bandcamp link)
Morwan – Svitaye, Palaye
Release date: April 28th Record label: Feel It Genre: Post-punk Formats: Vinyl, cassette, digital Pull Track: Сяєш
Ukrainian post-punk band Morwan have been around for a half-decade or so–Svitaye, Palaye is their third full-length album, and their second for Cincinnati garage rock imprint Feel It Records, following 2020’s Zola-Zemlya. The Kyiv band had planned on attempting to make a “lighter” and “somewhat danceable” follow-up record to their previous work, but, as I would imagine is obvious and understandable to all reading this blog, Russia’s invasion of their home country impacted both the development of and the content within Svitaye, Palaye. Eastern Europe has long had a reputation for offering up the gloomiest and darkest sides of post-punk, and Morwan certainly find themselves in the realm of this territory with their latest album. Svitaye, Palaye is not, however, a listless and formless dark cloud of a record –Morwan sound driven, animated, and purposeful as they move through these seven living rock songs.
There are traces of Morwan’s original concept for Svitaye, Palaye on opening track “Журба”–atmospheric interludes eventually give way to a bit of New Order flexibility and a drumbeat that, yes, could conceivably be danced to. Although this ends up being the brightest moment on Svitaye, Palaye, the band’s rhythm section continues to operate at full force as the record advances. “Сяєш” stomps through both minimalist, skeletal post-punk and some noisy sections, while the awestruck-sounding “Полетіли” takes a few minutes to build to its determined conclusion. Songs on Svitaye, Palaye stretch out to six minutes or so, Morwan hammering every bit of emotion and catharsis out of them until they move on. The record’s closing two tracks both feature characteristic pounding percussion, but to different ends–“Відчуваєш” is built almost entirely around the drums for the majority of its runtime, sounding primal before morphing into an intense rock conclusion, while “Земля палає” introduces some synths as warning sirens, letting their resonances close out the record on a frantic but beautiful-sounding note. (Bandcamp link)
John Andrews & the Yawns – Love for the Underdog
Release date: April 28th Record label: Woodsist Genre: Folk rock, orchestral pop Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull Track: Walking Under My Love’s Ladder
Singer-songwriter John Andrews has been active in the northeastern American folk rock scene for several years at this point–he’s played in the band Quilt, contributed to records from the likes of Woods and Kevin Morby, and his band The Yawns contains members of Cut Worms, to list a few connections. Andrews has been slowly but steadily building a following over the course of three full-length records for stalwart label Woodsist, and the fourth album from the New Hampshire-originating, New York-based musician continues his mission of crafting subtle but friendly music. On Love for the Underdog, Andrews reaches into the past to grasp some tried-and-true methods for dressing up his songwriting. The eight-song album offers up gentle vocal melodies, lush string arrangements, and some Woods-y light-psych bass grooves, all conjuring up pop rock auteurs of the 1970s and even earlier.
Love for the Underdog eases us into things with the slow-building baroque pop of “Checks in the Mail”, a song that takes over a minute to truly bloom into its bright chorus. Even if it’s not the most immediately attention-grabbing way to start off the album, it’s representative of the record as a whole in how it rewards patience. The mid-tempo trot of “Never Go Away” and the multi-part folk rock of closing track “I Want to Believe” might pick up the pace a little bit, but the album as a whole doesn’t go out of its way to grab the listener by the collar. That being said, after having spun this album a few times, it’s hard not to hear the multitude of great moments that Love for the Underdog has to offer, like the seven-minute soft rock suite of “Fourth Wall”, or the organ-led humble pop of “”Walking Under My Love’s Ladder”. Once Love for the Underdog comes into focus, there’s no shaking John Andrews’ charms. (Bandcamp link)
Miscomings – Hat
Release date: April 14th Record label: Sixwix Genre: Post-punk, egg punk, no wave, punk rock, noise rock Formats: Cassette, digital Pull Track: Sativa
Seattle’s Miscomings are new to me, but they’re not exactly new at this whole music thing–their latest, Hat, is their fourth full-length record since their debut in 2016. Still, the four-piece band is kind of starting anew on their new album–it represents a line-up change (according to Bandcamp, the band is now comprised of Crow, Chani, Ziam, and Sid), and their sound has evolved to match. Based on my sampling of their previous material, Miscomings have morphed from an experimental synthpunk/new wave band to a much tougher, louder, and more frantic-sounding noise-punk group on Hat. They rip through a dozen songs in twenty minutes, with a full-powered rhythm section, coiled and chaotic guitars, and in-your-face vocals all grabbing the listener practically the entire way through.
Miscomings stomp through opening track “Anxiety” (featuring some lasers of guitar lines), and offering up an excellent post-punk/egg punk bassline on “Sativa”. The vocals are certainly memorable throughout Hat–the musicians of Miscomings deserve credit for cooking up instrumental firestorms in noise-punk tracks like “Dilly Bar” and “Saviour Self”, but whichever member of the band is singing does everything possible to match the musical intensity (to say nothing of that delivery of “Beverly wants…to kill someone!” in “Beverly”). Songs like “3R” and “Stoned Soup Self” are fascinating, rubbery-sounding egg punk, showing that while Miscomings never let up on the intensity, they’re frequently declined to deliver it in a skewed fashion. That, in a nutshell, is who Hat is for–those of us who like our punk rock to always have its foot on its gas, but never to travel in a straight line. (Bandcamp link)
Release date: April 28th Record label: Exploding in Sound Genre: Garage rock, post-punk, punk Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull Track: King Insignificant
I’ve never talked about Washer on Rosy Overdrive before, but then, the Brooklyn/Philadelphia-based duo of Kieran McShane and Mike Quigley had been pretty quiet for the duration of this blog’s existence up until quite recently. A few years prior, they’d established themselves as one of the key bands on Exploding in Sound Records’ roster with their superb debut album, 2016’s Here Comes Washer, and they followed it up a year later with All Aboard, a record that kept the great parts of their last one and expanded on them, making it one of the best albums of the decade. The third Washer album has been one of my most anticipated records for some time now, even before it became apparent that it was (partially due to the pandemic, as well as the realities of its members being split between two cities) going to take over a half-decade to be released.
Six years later, though, we have Improved Means to Deteriorated Ends, and the first seconds of opening track “King Insignificant” immediately hit on the feeling of listening to a Washer album in a way that instantly bridges the gap. Washer have always been a duo, and they’ve always sounded like it–they certainly fit in well with their labelmates like Pile, Kal Marks, and Rick Rude, but they’ve always been more stripped-down than any of those acts. They’ve made up for it with an intense energy and strong songwriting; All Aboard experimented just a bit with opening things up and letting their music hang out, going out on a limb to snag another dimension to their sound. Improved Means to Deteriorated Ends is not a radical departure for Washer–the instruments were still entirely played by McShane (drums) and Quigley (guitar), with a few guest vocalists (from Rebecca Ryskalczyk of Bethlehem Steel and Dana Murphy) being the only outside contributions.
On Improved Means to Deteriorated Ends, they’re still an indie rock band that takes influence from punk, post-punk, post-hardcore, and noise rock but with an undeniable pop aspect to most of their songs. So, Washer haven’t abandoned their core sound–what they’ve been working on, it seems like, is packing it with as much as possible. Lyrically, Improved Means to Deteriorated Ends puts Washer in step with some more of their big-picture indie rocker peers–what Bad History Month does with sprawling post-rock and Knot has done with jittery math rock, Washer roll out in bite-sized, two-minute indie punk songs. Tons of songs on the album–“The Waning Moon”, “Threadbare”, “The Itch”, “Blammo”, and “Grift on Repeat” are perhaps the more obvious ones–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. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that Improved Means to Deteriorated Ends is an album about making an album, but I have to imagine these themes were on the band’s mind in the interstitial time between records.
Quigley can still work himself up to a holler over the course of a song, and Washer are adept as ever at creating a runway for this, from the slow-building opening track “King Insignificant” to the wheels-off “Not Like You” to the out-of-nowhere final refrain of “False Prize”. Washer combine their jaunty pop side with some of the record’s deeper concerns throughout Improved Means to DeterioratedEnds, with “Death of an Empire” sticking out in particular. In this tune, Quigley cheerfully suggests that “maybe we should be lighting things on fire,” and points out the irony that “all the wrong people love themselves” (in the context that, in this dying empire, the ones holding onto and believing they’re deserving of the waning power are the ones making the rest of us miserable).
Washer save their most musically dour moment for “Answer to Hell”, which is a harsh look inward of a song (“I’m alive, I’m alive / I’m a decomposing shell,” Quigley sings soberly). Even ugly reminders that one is still alive count–Quigley hits on this again in “Blammo”, where he’s an old man watching time “slither, shake and writhe past [his] eye”. “It’s how I ease the doubt that I’m alive,” he remarks upon this sight. The parts of Improved Means to Deteriorated Ends that aren’t dedicated to fumbling toward this realization are dedicated to fumbling forward armed with it, and figuring out what that means. Maybe it means that you embrace failure because it can’t wink out your existence (“Fail Big”). Maybe it means that you try to reach out to other living beings even though you know you’re not so good at it (“Cheap Therapy”). Maybe you write a record about all of this, showcasing exactly what its title describes. (Bandcamp link)
It’s a Monday Pressing Concerns! This one looks at new albums from Patches and Monde UFO, a new EP from Amanda X, and a compilation from Triple Fast Action.
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.
Patches – Scenic Route
Release date: April 14th Record label: Self-released Genre: Post-punk, jangle pop, college rock Formats: Digital Pull Track: Ask Me Again
Last year, Patches released their debut album, Tales We Heard from the Fields, which ended up being one of my favorites of 2022. The record was a remote collaboration between the trio of lead singer/guitarist Evan Seurkamp, drummer/guitarist Aaron Griffin, and bassist RKC, with the three of them indulging in a shared love of both clanging, dark post-punk and bright, poppy college rock. Given that Seurkamp has another full-time band going on with The Laughing Chimes (who released an excellent EP just a few months ago), I wasn’t expecting Patches to return so soon, but Scenic Route is certainly a welcome surprise. The sophomore Patches album picks up where their debut left off, but represents a sonic evolution as well–instead of splitting the difference between darker and lighter material on a track-by-track basis, the songs on Scenic Route combine them individually, with each one containing a mix of both jangle pop and post-punk.
There’s nothing quite as openly bright and poppy as “Parallel Mind” off of their last album, but, underneath a layer of lo-fi, almost dream pop distortion, there is no shortage of hooks on Scenic Route. The opening duo of “Do You Remember Me in the Summer?” and “Prisoners of the Parthenon” kick off the record with a pair of hazy, jangly indie rock anthems, and the band breaks out the acoustic guitars for the vintage college radio could’ve-been-a-hit “Ask Me Again”. The second half of Scenic Route offers up the incredibly tight-sounding, laser-precise “Dead Air”, but it’s also where Patches deliver “Whales and Constellations”, an underwater-sounding, dreamy tune that’s the band at their mistiest. Seurkamp’s vocals still have that tinge of nostalgia that reminds me of early Guided by Voices, and nowhere is it more apparent on Scenic Route than on closing track “Ursorichville”, a song that threatens to evaporate but, like the rest of the album, stays on its feet and sees the pop tune through. (Bandcamp link)
Amanda X – Keepsake
Release date: April 21st Record label: Self Aware Genre: Alt-rock, indie punk Formats: Digital Pull Track: Twin Flame
Philadelphia’s Amanda X were one of the more underappreciated practitioners of the punky, 90s-influenced indie rock that populated the second half of the 2010s, but they’d been fairly silent since 2017’s solid Giant. That’s finally changed with the release of the five-song Keepsake EP, a record that shows that the group hasn’t lost any momentum and still have plenty of hooky rock songs left in them. The band–guitarist Cat Park, drummer Melissa Brain, and bassist Kat Bean–sounds like a real power trio on Keepsake, with all of these tracks utilizing a tough rhythm section and pleasing guitar play to sound fully-developed.
“Carousel” opens Keepside with a pure blast of 90s alt-rock enthusiasm, sounding earnest but playful, deploying some crunchy, anthemic guitars and low-key but commanding vocals. “Crave” is almost glam-punk, with a chanting chorus and cocky guitar leads similarly balancing their fun and serious rocker sides. The mid-section of the EP is where the band show off the most– “Eight Ball” and “Slight” are not quite as single-ready as the first few songs (or as the big-finish closing track “Twin Flame”), but the steady workout-tempo of the former and the chugging, noisy alt-rock of the latter are both excellent entries into the Amanda X discography. Having Amanda X back in general is worth celebrating, let alone that they’ve returned with a release as strong as Keepsake. (Bandcamp link)
Monde UFO – Vandalized Statue to Be Replaced with Shrine
Release date: April 21st Record label: Quindi Genre: Ambient pop, dream pop, jazz pop, lounge pop Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull Track: Rectory
Los Angeles’ Monde UFO makes music that falls on the warm and friendly side of the indie rock spectrum, but that hardly means that the trio of Kris Chau, Kern Haug, and Brian Bartus aren’t adventurous. That’s anything but the case on their second proper album, the excellently-titled Vandalized Statue to Be Replaced with Shrine. The album’s ten songs float through keyboard and synth washes, shuffling percussion, and downcast lo-fi indie rock esque vocals and percussion to create a transportive listening experience. Jazz and bossa nova horns color the record–like with a lot of genre-omnivorous indie rock, the likes of Stereolab and Yo La Tengo come to mind, but Vandalized Statue to Be Replaced with Shrine is a lot lighter and more delicate than most of those bands’ work–there’s not really the threat of noise rock rave-ups, just of getting deeply lost in the vibes.
Album opener “Rectory” starts with some percussion echoes that give way to dripping, psychedelic jazz pop. “Government Employee” and “The Woods Behind St. Marthas” build off of minimalist bossa nova guitar play that gets shaded by some horns, while “Air Quality” stuffs some orchestral indie pop into its swirling, lo-fi base. This hazy, jazzy indie rock is the dominant style on Vandalized Statue to Be Replaced with Shrine, but Monde UFO don’t settle into a rut, with “Cement and Reasoning” being one of the best-executed and busiest examples of this sound towards the end of the album, and then the whole record closes with a very Monde UFO-style cover of Fugazi’s “I’m So Tired”. “I’m So Tired” originally appeared on a four-song Fugazi covers EP they released last year–while I might not go so far as to call Monde UFO “punk”, I will say that it’s not surprising they found kinship with a band who similarly loved to break and subvert the expectations and “rules” placed onto them by their genre. (Bandcamp link)
Triple Fast Action – Triple Fast Action
Release date: April 21st Record label: Forge Again Genre: Alt-rock, post-grunge, power pop Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital Pull Track: Small Amount
Triple Fast Action is a recognizable name for indie-alt-rock fans of a certain age, particularly those from the Midwest. The Chicago group lasted for two albums in the late 1990s before disbanding (one of which you can hear easily now because it was released on an indie label, and another that you can’t because it wasn’t), and they slot alongside fellow Windy City groups like one-hit-wonders Local H (which drummer Brian St. Clair would later join) and never-weres Fig Dish. Triple Fast Action had a more power-pop-punk edge to them, updating the sound of nearby Rockford’s Cheap Trick for the post-grunge era. Although Triple Fast Action are not “back”, a massive self-titled compilation from the band offers up plenty of new-to-us material that perhaps illustrates their strengths even better than their proper albums did. The bulk of Triple Fast Action are demos recorded by the band in their practice space in 1994 before the recording of their debut album, 1996’s Broadcaster–some of these appeared on the final album in some form, others did not.
The first disc of the 2-CD (or 3LP) collection is entirely from those 1994 sessions or earlier, and it’s the sound of a young rock group throwing it all into their songs. Highlights include opening track “Small Amount”, in which the band show just enough restraint where they need to, the bittersweet heartland punk of “I Am”, the thrashing “Tommy”, the exhaustive “Mattering”, and the show-stopping “Poppin’ Wheelies”. The compilation closes with a few covers that are instructive in hearing what ingredients went into making Triple Fast Action’s songs (Thin Lizzy! Electric Light Orchestra! The Beach Boys!) but only an acoustic, bashed-out cover of Sparklehorse’s “Someday I Will Treat You Good” truly steps out of the original’s shadow to make something memorably transformative. For the most part, it’s the Triple Fast Action originals that have stayed with me, and, thankfully there are plenty of them. Something new sticks out every time–maybe on this listen it’ll be the hazy, almost space rock of “Satellite”, or the frantic “Tag Along”. (Bandcamp link)
Once again it is Thursday, and it’s time to talk about new music. Today’s post looks at four great records coming out tomorrow: albums from Buddie, Brian Mietz, and The Collect Pond, and an EP from System Exclusive.
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.
Buddie – Agitator
Release date: April 21st Record label: Crafted Sounds Genre: 90s indie rock, fuzz rock, power pop Formats: Cassette, digital Pull Track: Restive Summer
Toward the end of last year, I wrote about Transplant, a four-song EP from Vancouver’s Buddie. That excellent record marked the beginning of a new phase for the band–lead singer/songwriter Dan Forrest had moved to Canada from Philadelphia and formed a new group. Although Buddie’s Philadelphia lineup largely recorded Transplant’s songs, tracks like “Indecision” made it clear that the record was made with the upcoming fork in the road clearly in view. A few months later, Agitator, the EP’s full-length follow-up, makes good on the earlier release’s promise, delivering eleven deep, fulfilling, and sharply-realized indie rock songs. Forrest remains a towering but approachable songwriter, always thinking in big-picture terms but never losing sight of the day-to-day and direct interpersonal minutia of his grand topics. The band puts together a pristine but friendly-sounding album–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 that matches their frontperson.
Agitator begins by scaling the “Break of the Sun”, a slow-building, thunderous song that has a determination that sets the tone for the album (and also is perhaps the moment where Buddie most earn the not-infrequent LVL UP comparisons they’ve gotten). The brisk, almost-garage rock of “Class Warfare” and the deliberate “Global Consequence” are vintage Buddie, Forrest delivering lyrical diatribes that are nevertheless rewarding and even pleasant to listen to thanks to his delivery and the band’s potent fuzz rock (“They know it’s a game, but they’re in love with it / Hoarding resources for generations,” he excoriates in the latter song, in a tone sounding like A.C. Newman). Almost in answer to the previous few songs, the following “We’ll Never Break” and “Worried” look inward towards Forrest’s self and those close to him, affirming that these “smaller-scale” bonds are important to maintain while dealing with the wider screens present before.
The first half of the record is unimpeachably solid, but some of the album’s best single moments come on the B-side. On “Backwards, Behind”, Buddie keep it relatively simple, with the punchiness of the chorus really landing its sentiment (in a weird and good way, it kind of reminds me of “The Middle” by Jimmy Eat World). The way that “Labyrinth” speeds up and slows down in the chorus to evoke “find[ing] our way again” by getting lost is so satisfying that it balances out the corny pun that comes in the next line. Agitator closes with a gigantic song in “Restive Summer”–it starts as a solo electric guitar number whose first section culminates with Forrest singing “We worked ourselves up to the point where we broke”. The rest of the track covers a wide swath of Agitator’s feelings in one song, from Forrest’s determined “We’ll have to work like twice as hard” to the closing wonderment of “And I wonder how we’ll go to sleep?” (Bandcamp link)
Brian Mietz – Wow!
Release date: April 21st Record label: Sludge People Genre: Power pop, indie pop, lo-fi pop Formats: Cassette, digital Pull Track: Buried Alive (Too Tired)
New Jersey’s Brian Mietz has previously played in the bands It’s a King Thing and Cabana Wear, and in 2020 he released Panzarotti, the first album under his own name. Panzarotti was a great under-the-radar album that ended up being one of my favorites of that year, so I was thrilled to see the announcement of Wow!, a full-length cassette follow-up record coming out on Sludge People Records. I was charmed by Mietz’s style on Panzarotti–it’s a humble work of pop rock that evokes some “bummer” power pop artists like Fountains of Wayne, Elliott Smith, Mo Troper, and even a bit of Weezer in places. With Wow!, Mietz remains an ace pop songwriter–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.
“Capture the Flag” opens Wow! with what I’m beginning to recognize as a vintage Mietz sound–jaunty but subtle, with an effortless melody that could’ve been grafted onto any kind of guitar pop in the last half-century. A good deal of the first half of the album is surprisingly busy–while no less immediately catchy, the stretch from “Cranefly” to “Steal Some Time” is denser than a lot of Mietz’s previous work. Another surprise is “Call in My Car” towards the end of the record, a straight-up synthpop tune with a shining chorus. These new layers are interesting and rewarding, but Mietz succeeds when he presents his songs more plainly, as well–the weary pop rock of “Caller” and “Buried Alive (Too Tired)” might be the best part of the entire record, and the just-fuzzy-enough alt-rock of the title track closes Wow! on a particularly satisfying note. (Bandcamp link)
The Collect Pond – Underwater Features
Release date: April 21st Record label: Candlepin Genre: Lo-fi indie rock, post-punk, lo-fi power pop Formats: Cassette, digital Pull Track: Fired, Walk with Me
The latest edition to the ever-expanding and always worthwhile Candlepin Records roster is The Collect Pond, a Boston group led by Bellingham, Washington native Danny Moffat. Underwater Features is the second Collect Pond album, but the first Moffat has made with a full-time band (bassist/keyboardist Roger Maranan, drummer Rob Carrington, and guitarist/keyboardist Ben Bonadies). Moffat, who also lived in New Zealand for a while, is a clear aficionado of underground and lo-fi indie rock of many eras: Underwater Features is clearly influenced by 90s indie underdog popsters like Guided by Voices and Sebadoh (putting them in line with modern groups like Connections, Mythical Motors, and Smug Brothers), while also retaining a post-punk edge in places and a haziness evoking a few Flying Nun and Xpressway group.
The first half of Underwater Features’ tracklist runs the Collect Pond gamut–opening track “Cardigan” and “On Track” are on the more post-punk, darker side of their sound, even as there are some new wave-y guitar lines that bubble up now and again, while with “Fired, Walk With Me” they bash out pure, giddy pop rock, and the muscular “Influential Consequential” is 90s-clad power pop. “Subtle with a Joke” has a sprinting sound that’s immediately enjoyable, even as its multiple sections actually make it one of the weirder songs on the record. The Collect Pond are deft at piecing together the post-punk and pop sides of their sound on Underwater Features even without the closing duo of “On Track II” and “Subdued Excitement”, both of which are an extended, acoustic-based reimagining of the earlier version of “On Track”. They didn’t need to turn the most brooding rocker on the cassette into a pretty acoustic ballad to make the record into a success, but it adds to an already enjoyable set of songs. (Bandcamp link)
System Exclusive – Party All the Time
Release date: April 21st Record label: Mt.St.Mtn./Six Tonnes de Chair Genre: Synthpunk, post-punk, synthpop Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull Track: Part Time Pierre
Pasadena’s System Exclusive established themselves as West Coast synth-punk players on last year’s self-titled debut album, released by Castle Face. The duo of Ari Blaisdell and Matt Jones (who, between the two of them, have played in Male Gaze, The Beat-Offs, Blasted Canyons, and Lower Self) are back a year later with a follow-up in the Party All the Time EP. While these three songs, running nine minutes total, are on a smaller scale than their forty-minute, eleven-song debut full-length, System Exclusive sound confident and controlled here, suggesting they’ve got a lot of great work to come and also crafting a record that’s plenty enjoyable on its own terms, brevity aside.
Party All the Time is made up of two brand-new System Exclusive exclusives and the title track, which is, indeed, a cover of the Eddie Murphy number two hit single. Both of the original System Exclusive songs are strong ones, and they end up sounding fairly different from each other–opening track “Part Time Pierre” is the more immediate one to my ears, a slinking piece of synth-glam-punk whose instrumentation saunters along with Blaisdell’s intensely casual vocals. “Paint the Town” is some busier-sounding vintage, wide-eyed synthpop, executed with tangible excitement. And then there’s “Party All the Time”–System Exclusive certainly turn it into one of their own songs, but they keep its structure largely intact in doing so. Its edges are sharpened down to the System Exclusive style, but it’s still very much a party. (Bandcamp link)
It’s a Monday Pressing Concerns yet again, and we’ve got some good under-the-radar music to talk about today. In this edition, we’re looking at the physical release of The Rishis‘ debut album, new full-lengths from Sudden Voices and Worms in Dirt, and a new EP from Melancolony.
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 Rishis – August Moon (Vinyl Release)
Release date: April 21st Record label: Cloud Recordings/Elephant 6 Genre: Folk rock Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull Track: Holi
The Rishis quietly self-released August Moon digitally last year, but the upcoming physical edition of their debut album is being put out by a pair of labels that carry a lot of weight for a certain kind of indie rock fan: Cloud Recordings and Elephant 6. While the core duo of Athens’ Ranjan Avasthi and Sofie Lute are (at least publicly) new faces to the Elephant 6 world, plenty of familiar names from the famous collective went into this album’s creation: John Kiran Fernandes, Scott Spillane, Andrew Rieger, James Huggins III, and Andy Gonzales, to make an incomplete list. Despite the large number of collaborators, August Moon doesn’t slot into the dense, Olivia Tremor Control-esque multi-layered psych-pop side of Elephant 6, instead coming off as a quite friendly and straightforward folk rock album, with tinges of 60s pop as well.
August Moon opens with the gently rolling “Holiday”, a country-folk tune in which pedal steel and Avasthi’s warm vocals welcome everyone into the album. Scott Spillane’s horn contributions are unmistakable, adding a new layer of emotion to songs like the mid-tempo indie rocker “Oh So Young” and the dreamy “Migrations”. Lute sings lead on only one song on the record, but she makes the most of it, absolutely belting out centerpiece ballad “Make Me Love You”. Although the second half of August Moon features one folk rock classic in “Jetstream”, it also offers up the album’s busiest number (the cavernous “Just Between You and Me”), its most 90s indie rock moment (the quite catchy “Holi”), and closing track “Uttar Pradesh”, a gorgeous instrumental that takes its name from an Indian state as a way of nodding to Avasthi’s family history. (Bandcamp link)
Sudden Voices – Sudden Voices
Release date: April 14th Record label: Self-released Genre: Art rock, post-punk, post-rock, psych rock Formats: Digital Pull Track: Milk and Honey
London’s Ben Morris is hardly a new face in music, even though he has just released his first record as Sudden Voices this month. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Morris led Union Wireless, a post-rock/krautrock band that achieved some notoriety before dissipating after two albums. Morris stepped away from making records for a decade and a half, but stayed interested in music–Sudden Voices, an improvisation-based record that’s informed by fifteen years of making music just for himself, is the result. Morris and his collaborators cite a lot of the “elder statesman indie rocker” favorites as inspiration for their new album, and, impressively, quite a bit of it (CAN, Talk Talk, Bitches Brew) shines through here. Sudden Voices has a foot in multiple musical camps, keeping a sturdy indie rock foundation when it suits it, but veering into post-rock and playing with less “traditional” song structures just as naturally.
“Milk and Honey” opens Sudden Voices in a way that mirrors the entire record–starting with a steady, almost post-punk rhythm section before drifting into a psychedelic haze of synths and choral chants (for Morris, who sang in choirs regularly during his break from recorded music, this addition is more than an aesthetic one). “Happenstance” and “Way of the World” marry some interesting and prominent percussion (both analog and digital) with some of the album’s more casual-sounding instrumentals. Balance is key on Sudden Voices: “Sunrise” in the middle of the album sounds frantic; “Fixed Orbit” one song later re-steadies everything. Similarly, the post-punk energy of “That’s All We Have” later on fades into the piano-led “This Room”. (Bandcamp link)
Melancolony – Dreaming Backwards
Release date: March 25th Record label: Self-released Genre: Dream pop, jangle pop Formats: Digital Pull Track: Midnight Eyes
Georgia-originating, Santa Cruz-based Justin Loudermilk makes music under the appropriate name Melancolony, a project that has been around for the majority of a decade and has resulted in a few singles and two full-length albums. The latest Melancolony release is the Dreaming Backwards EP, which came out late last month. Dreaming Backwards’ five songs showcase Loudermilk’s skills at crafting a certain nostalgic brand of indie pop–over the course of the record, Loudermilk puts together an intriguing sound that combines dream pop, sophisti-pop, college/jangle rock, and synth-based psych pop while all sounding of a piece. Melancolony’s songs are brief on Dreaming Backwards–the entire EP is over in ten minutes, and you’ll miss a good deal of it if you blink, but it’s worth tuning in actively.
The wistful “Colorless” opens Dreaming Backwards with swirling synths, earnest vocals, and extra reverb-y guitar lines. Prominent 80s drum machines kick off the more purely synthpop title track, although Loudermilk guides it to a similarly melancholic place as the EP’s first song. “Midnight Eyes” is perhaps the most overtly “indie rock” of the songs here, with the bass and acoustic guitar gliding along across a track that feels particularly inspired by guitar bands of yore (mainly of the jangly college rock and C86 variety). “Reunion 2023” is the other song that leans on prominent guitars, starting with a folky, R.E.M.-esque skeleton and building to a humble but well-crafted dream pop conclusion. (Bandcamp link)
Worms in Dirt – Some Version of a Portal
Release date: April 7th Record label: Self-released Genre: Indie punk, folk punk, alt-rock Formats: Digital Pull Track: Eucalyptus Trees
Worms in Dirt is the project of Seattle-based singer-songwriter Sam Hendricks, and her latest record under the name is a loose, spirited collection of songs that certainly has a folk punk energy, even as Hendricks gives them a full electric rock band presentation. Some Version of a Portal is the first Worms in Dirt full-length album, and the bulk of it was recorded by Hendricks herself (drums were handled by Sheldon Kreger, and there are a few random vocal, synth, and keyboard features). Some Version of a Portal has an indie punk world-consciousness (even, perhaps especially, when Hendricks steers the songs into quite personal territory) mixed with some Pacific Northwest-appropriate roaring indie rock.
The minimal electric guitar-led “Violence” opens Some Version of a Portal with the feeling of being on a swaying ship, Hendricks pacing back and forth in the lyrics before we get a final minute of guitar heroics. The pop punk of “Outhouses” features a particularly animated Hendricks in response to the music, and the heavy “Wind Slows” mixes lumbering indie rock with some odd vocal effects. Some Version of a Portal rolls out some more memorable songs from there, like the hopefully apocalyptic “Eucalyptus Trees” (“Just try to embrace the possibility / That the entire system collapses by 2050,” Hendricks imagines), the unmoored and (trying to be) unbothered “Gameboy SP”, and the decomposing “Death Poems”. (Bandcamp link)
Pressing Concerns is back and guess what? There’s a lot of good music coming out tomorrow (April 14th). Today we’re looking at four of these albums: records from Ther, Cindy, Dave Scanlon, and Sweet Dreams Nadine. If you missed Monday’s post (covering Bell and the Ringers, Public Interest, Pure Material, and Second Body), 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.
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 Pull Track: Big Papi Lassos the Moon
Although I haven’t written about Ther on this blog before, Rosy Overdrive has covered plenty of music in which Heather Jones has been involved. As the owner of and engineer at So Big Auditory in Philadelphia, they’ve recorded, mixed, and mastered records from plenty of bands, including Sadurn, They Are Gutting a Body of Water, The Human Fly, Florry, and Frankie Valet. Jones has also been making music of their own as Their since 2018, with Ther’s debut full-length, Trembling, coming out last February after a couple of EPs and a split with Sadurn.
Trembling was an intriguing piece of indie folk-tronica which got Ther on my radar–fourteen months later, A Horrid Whisper Echoes in a Palace of Endless Joy follows up that album by taking a turn towards quiet and sparse but quite spirited-sounding indie folk. A Horrid Whisper Echoes in a Palace of Endless Joy falls under the umbrella of a certain kind of vulnerable, stark-sounding folk music that I’ve featured in Pressing Concerns before–records from Joan Kelsey, Jodi, and (coincidentally) Dave Scanlon come to mind–but Jones establishes themself in the midst of this well-worn setup pretty quickly. After the brief, slow-takeoff introduction of “1 Kid”, Ther deliver “Big Papi Lassos the Moon”, a soaring folk tune that builds, speeds up, and crescendos in an unexpected but very welcome way.
A Horrid Whisper Echoes in a Palace of Endless Joy is guided by Jones’ unwavering, central vocals, but Ther find shades within their folk sound, like the prominent pedal steel in the country-tinged “Impossible Things” and the sparse acoustic-picked slowcore of “Love Is Always”. The album does anything but trail off, with “With You” riding distortion, cello, and piano towards Ther’s version of post-rock or a Microphones-recalling sound, and “2 Holidays” ending A Horrid Whisper Echoes in a Palace of Endless Joy on a twinkling piece of alt-country. The latter’s pedal steel guitar and the appearance of a stray cat in the lyrics give the song a warm feeling–more than enough for Jones to dismiss the whisper in the album title. (Bandcamp link)
Cindy – Why Not Now?
Release date: April 14th Record label: Mt.St.Mtn./Tough Love Genre: Indie pop, slowcore, dream pop Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull Track: Earthly Belonging
Karina Gill has become a Bay Area guitar pop fixture in the past few years between her work with Flowertown (her duo with Tony Jay’s Mike Ramos) and Cindy, the San Francisco group that Gill has led for four full-length records now. The previous Cindy material had been made with a stable quartet lineup, but for this month’s Why Not Now?, Gill opted to work with a wider variety of musicians, including Ramos, longtime Cindy keyboardist Aaron Diko, and members of other Bay Area bands like The Telephone Numbers and April Magazine. Regardless of who contributed to Why Not Now?, Cindy retain their signature sound on the album–that of molasses-slow, somewhat-drowsy-feeling, Velvets-inspired indie rock that nevertheless has personality and pop appeal.
Plenty of San Francisco-area bands that could be loosely deemed “jangle pop” make music that falls on the sleepy, “dream pop” end of the spectrum, but Cindy follows this alleyway so deliberately and languidly that it’s genuinely correct to call them a slowcore band. Gill and her collaborators are almost confrontational in their slowness with how they open Why Not Now? The whispered lullaby of the title track and the dreamy instrumental track “Standard Candle 3” welcome the listener wearily before the band relents a little bit and offers up the relatively peppy, brief “Earthly Belonging” in the track three slot.
Gill’s voice sticks out on songs like “Wednesday” and “A Trumpet on the Hillside”, cutting through the quietness while still matching the overall feeling of the tracks. Cindy feels very much in their element with the sparse “Playboy”, but, perhaps determined to not let Why Not Now? drift off too casually in its final few songs, the band offers up some Flying Nun-esque psych-tinged indie rock with “Et surtout” and closes the album with a pleasing duet in “St. Marks”. Still, the record’s overall tone is quite subtle–Why Not Now? is an album that asks and rewards a little more attention. (Bandcamp link)
Dave Scanlon – Taste Like Labor
Release date: April 14th Record label: Whatever’s Clever Genre: Indie folk, experimental folk Formats: Cassette, digital Pull Track: Collapse
Back in early 2021, Dave Scanlon released Pink in each, bright blue, bright green, which was one of the first albums I ever wrote about for Pressing Concerns. That record was a deft indie folk record, minimal-sounding, emotional, and experimental, with none of those aspects seeming to contradict each other. Returning on Whatever’s Clever Records (Keen Dreams, Field Guides, Ben Seretan), Scanlon is back two years later with Taste Like Labor, an album that demonstrates that the singer-songwriter (who also plays in the band JOBS and is a librarian) still has a knack for finding interesting ways to make acoustic guitar-centric music. Taste Like Labor feels more full-sounding than Scanlon’s previous material, which he attributes to Stars Like Fleas’ Shannon Fields, who produced the record and contributed piano, synthesizer, and electronics to these songs as well.
Taste Like Labor is not a huge departure sonically for Scanlon–several of the record’s early tracks, like “Image Represent”, Collapse”, and “Why Do You Ask?”, are all familiar-sounding, fingerpicked straightforward acoustic folk songs, just with some more synth touches added underneath them. The gorgeous second-half highlight “I Am With My Feelings” in particular would’ve felt right at home on Pink in each, bright blue, bright green. Other songs on the album more clearly take advantage of the extra dimension to explore some new territory–the giddy folk rock of “Fearful People” is able to take off as smoothly as it does with the added instrumentation, the floating “Thus Went My Year” substitutes the guitar for synth washes, and the six-minute “Only” finds a lot of room to spread out, effectively turning into an ambient song by its end. (Bandcamp link)
Sweet Dreams Nadine – Sweet Dreams Nadine
Release date: April 14th Record label: Dear Life Genre: Indie pop Formats: CD, cassette, digital Pull Track: Indigo
New York’s Sweet Dreams Nadine debuted in 2018 with Oh My, a full-length record released on Father/Daughter records under the name NADINE. Now on Dear Life, Sweet Dreams Nadine have a new name that’s meant to emphasize the band’s nature as a collaborative trio (frontperson Nadie Hulett co-wrote these tracks with the other two members of the group, Carlos Hernandez and Julian Fader of Ava Luna), and a new self-titled sophomore album. Sweet Dreams Nadine is full of bright, intricate but welcoming indie pop, feeling of a piece with both Hernandez and Fader’s other group and with the NADINE album. Hulett’s voice, as well as all the members’ pop instincts and instrumental acumen, give the album a timeless pop rock feel, although it doesn’t lapse into overdone “retro” fetishism.
“Something on My Mind” opens Sweet Dreams Nadine with some friendly, immediate piano pop, with a bunch of extra flourishes making it one of the more captivating examples of the genre. “Indigo” somehow evokes Americana without mixing up Sweet Dreams Nadine’s sound all that much, while “Painted Blue” merely turns everything up a bit to turn in a swirling psychedelic pop tune. The gentle, lush “Weird Love” nonetheless lives up to its name, ending with a decidedly memorable spoken word moment from Hulett. Hulett’s delivery of the title line of “Make Good” is the instantly catchy part, but it’s the subtler rest of the song that grows on you over time. The second half of Sweet Dreams Nadine is maybe less immediate than the first, but makes up for it with a few curveballs, like the rhythm-heavy, partially Hernandez-sung “Track Star” and the simple “sdn”, both of which ensure the album is engaging until its end. (Bandcamp link)
Welcome to a new Pressing Concerns! Today features two albums that came out last Friday (by Public Interest and Pure Material) plus two records from earlier in the year that I’ve been meaning to get around to for a while (Bell and the Ringers and Second Body).
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.
Bell and the Ringers – Bell and the Ringers
Release date: March 10th Record label: Self-released Genre: Pop punk, power pop, emo Formats: Digital Pull Track: Give Me Therapy
Bell and the Ringers are a long-distance duo made up of Melbourne’s Lucas Bell and Toronto’s Brent Vipond–the latter is the lead singer, both of them write the songs and contribute instrumental parts. Vipond and Bell have been collaborating since 2017 and have a couple of EPs to their name, but Bell and the Ringers appears to be their first full-length together. Their Bandcamp bills themselves as an “alt-rock folk band”–maybe that was more true for their earlier material, but on their debut album, I hear a very solid rendition of a very specific kind of 2000s-era indie-pop-punk. Vipond’s vocals sound notably similar to Ben Gibbard’s (it does kind of feel like a more pop punk version of Death Cab for Cutie in some places), and I also hear hints of The Thermals and even a bit of Relient K.
Bell and the Ringers has some heft to it–the balance that Vipond and Bell walk throughout the record is keeping the pop punk energy up while still developing the tracks. And to be clear, Bell and the Ringers is a very energetic record–opening track “Never to Be Seen Again” is massively infectious with its power pop keyboard hook, Blue Album guitars in the chorus, and Vipond’s self-call-and-response vocals. The sprinting “Mistakes”, the bouncy “Give Me Therapy”, and the 90s-pop-punk-evoking “Easier” all keep the record’s foot on the gas in the first half. The core of the record is made up of a couple songs that slow things down in “Panic Attacks (Read Between the Lines)” and “Renter’s Suite” (which features, I think, the most prominent use of an acoustic guitar on the album). In the second half of the record, “GBSH” keeps things punchy with its melodic bass parts and triumphant power chords, and the alt-rock crunch of “Dawn to Dusk” sticks out towards the end of the album.
“I don’t know what else to say,” sings Vipond in Bell and the Ringers’ opening track, but that doesn’t stop Vipond from trying to find some words to sing over the soaring music across the course of the record. Vipond continues this thread by insisting “If I knew just what to say, that would make this all okay” in the midst of self-critical anthem “Mistakes”, and by trying to tell people not to take their words at face value in“Panic Attacks (Read Between the Lines)” (instead encouraging the addressee of the song to do as the second half of its title suggests). The brisk pace of Bell and the Ringers (and the relatively low-mixed vocals) means one might miss some interesting lines, but what does stick out (the particularly Gibbard-esque dialogue at the beginning of “Give Me Therapy”, for example) is enough to sell an intriguing, promising under-the-radar band. (Bandcamp link)
Public Interest – Spiritual Pollution
Release date: April 7th Record label: Erste Theke Tontraeger/Spiritual Pollution Genre: Post-punk, noise rock Formats: Vinyl, cassette, digital Pull Track: Why Bother?
Chris Natividad is a prolific Bay Area musician–he’s probably most notable for being part of Oakland garage-post-punks Marbled Eye, but he’s also played with Hides, Aluminum, Tanukichan, Blue Zero, and makes music on his own as Public Interest. Following 2019’s one-man-show Between EP, this month sees the release of Spiritual Pollution, the debut Public Interest full-length. Public Interest has since grown to a quartet featuring Andrew Oswald, Bee Wright, and Brendan Hagerty, and Spiritual Pollution certainly sounds like the work of a sharp rock band. On the record, Public Interest deal in a dark, guitar-heavy post-punk garage sound–perhaps more meditative than Marbled Eye but still in the same ballpark, Spiritual Pollution also reminds me more than a bit of DIÄT and even trends into some stoic Sonic Youth noise rock in places.
The somewhat brisk, reverb-y “Undone” opens Spiritual Pollution on a slightly busier note than the rest of the record–in a way, it’s the brightest that the album gets. On tracks like “Why Bother?” and “Slow Burn”, Public Interest let the low end lead the rest of the boat, prowling through dingy, coiled post-punk. There are moments of release throughout the record, to be sure–guitar rave-ups aren’t uncommon, from “Residue””s turn towards garage rock to the layers draped upon “Falling Ash” and the title track right in the middle of the album. Natividad’s vocals stay flat and unmoved throughout Spiritual Pollution, anchoring the rest of the band around him. Spiritual Pollution ascends slightly in closing track “Burden of Time”, adding in just a little bit of the brighter side of 80s alt-rock–Natividad, buried a bit more in the mix than usual, responds with some wordless vocals to send everything off. (Bandcamp link)
Pure Material – Orange Whip Licorice
Release date: April 7th Record label: Dandy Boy Genre: Lo-fi indie rock, dream pop, jangle pop, bedroom pop, psych pop Formats: Cassette, CD, digital Pull Track: Flowers by Your Bedside
Oakland’s Adam Widener has been active in the Bay Area music scene for a few years now as the lead singer and guitarist of fuzzy jangle pop group The 1981. Recently he’s begun a solo project, Pure Material, and his debut record under the name, Orange Whip Licorice, finds Widener making enjoyable guitar pop music of a different stripe. The eight-song cassette/CD “slacker pop” release feels more casual and stretched-out than The 1981’s more regimented indie rock–using only some synths, a typical rock band setup, and an understated voice that can still deliver an ace melody, Widener makes music that points towards 60s psychedelic pop and dream pop while still having one foot in the “90s lo-fi indie rock” camp.
“Flowers by Your Bedside” begins Orange Whip Licorice with something of a surprise psychedelic anthem, with the downcast guitar riff and wiggling synths all exploding into a wide-eyed chorus. “Tokyo Snow” isn’t quite as busy as the opening track, but it continues Pure Material’s feeling of quiet but fervent wonder as Widener sings the title line. In “Ambrosia”, the synth/organ leads are as much of an integral part of the song as anything else, with some of the track’s instrumental passages letting the synth lines deliver the memorable melodies. Although Orange Whip Licorice is a “bedroom pop” recorded made by Widener alone, it still can offer up a full-band sound when it wants to–the drum fills in “Neon Emotions” and “Take a Smooth Cruise” (among others) counterbalance those tracks’ dreamy sheens and keep one foot on the ground. Orange Whip Licorice closes with “New Dreamer”, the song in which Widener most leans into the organ tones, giving the record one last layered sendoff. (Bandcamp link)
Second Body – Fata Morgana
Release date: February 6th Record label: Self-released Genre: Folk rock, chamber pop, dream pop, indie rock Formats: Digital Pull Track: Summer Drive
Yann Geoffrey is a Montreal-based musician who has been playing in bands around the area for most of this century–he’s drummed for The Dears, Kill the Lights, and Pang Attack–but Second Body is the first time that Geoffrey has found himself at the helm of a project. Second Body’s debut record is the six-song Fata Morgana EP, featuring Geoffrey on vocals, guitar, percussion, synthesizer, and piano, as well as some notable contributions from his Kill the Lights/Pang Attack bandmate Alex Hackett on guitar and Suuns’ Liam O’Neill on drums, among others. Fata Morgana (which, at 25 minutes in length, is nearly a full-length record) is a charming collection of earnest, crystalline 2000s-era indie rock like that of the bands in which Geoffrey has previously played–and proof that he’s just as effective as the leader of this kind of band as he is behind the kit.
Opening track “Summer Drive” introduces Fata Morgana humbly but strongly, beginning with some sparkling indie pop before the song fully kicks in with a steady drumbeat, shimmering guitar lines, and full-sounding vocals from both Geoffrey and backing vocalist Josée Forsyth Morissette. Although Fata Morgana is a gentle-sounding record, it doesn’t fade into background music–the rhythm section in the title track is doing a lot of work behind Geoffrey’s sweeping vocals, and the jangle-rock of “Tiger Lily” is pretty but with a full-band forcefulness. The second half of the EP is even more laid-back, but it still features closing track “Voyeur”, in which Geoffrey and company go all-out with lengthy guitar interludes, some prominent 80s-evoking synths, and even a bit of alt-rock distortion towards the end. (Bandcamp link)
Welcome to Pressing Concerns! It’s been a big first week of April here on Rosy Overdrive–Monday’s post highlighted records from The Bug Club, miniaturized, Samuel S.C., and Lack of Knowledge, and Tuesday saw the March 2023 playlist go up. But we’re not done yet, as this is a big release week, and we dive into it with new albums from Interbellum, Bruiser and Bicycle, and Forest Bees, plus a new EP from Flycatcher.
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.
Interbellum – Our House Is Very Beautiful at Night
Release date: April 7th Record label: Self-released Genre: Folk rock, experimental folk, psychedelia Formats: Digital Pull Track: The Storm
Interbellum is the project of Beirut-based singer-songwriter Karl Mattar–his first record under the name was 2016’s Now Try Coughing, and Dead Pets, Old Griefs followed two years later. The third Interbellum full-length and first in a half-decade was recorded almost entirely by Mattar himself, with only the drums being handled by Postcards’ Pascal Semerdjian. Upon listening, it becomes even more impressive that so much of Our House Is Very Beautiful at Night is the work of one person, 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 feels like the biggest musical touchstone for the record, something that Our House Is Very Beautiful at Night makes clear from the beginning with the surging echo of “Archeology”, an excellently roaring piece of noise pop.
Instead of just ripping off more fuzzy, shoegaze-adjacent indie rockers after the opening shot of “Archeology”, however, Interbellum reaches out in a few different directions on Our House Is Very Beautiful at Night’s next few tracks. “Enemies (Or the Enemy of My Enemy Is My Enemy)” is a gorgeous piece of psych-folk that shows off Mattar’s melodic vocals, and “Ancestral Lines” and (especially) “Flotsam” feature a relatively stripped-down version of Interbellum’s sound. The fuzziness and rock band setup return on “Microcosms”, featuring a droning organ peaking through the wall of sound and an ace performance from Semerdjian. The semi-title track “Our House” is another Phil Elverum-esque tune in its balance of Mattar’s unadorned, sincere vocals and the rising and falling noisiness that accompanies him (we’re also perhaps in the folkier-side-of-Elephant-6 territory here as well).
The sleepy, late night indie pop of “Partners” blossoms after a ninety-second introduction track acts as a gestation period. This pulling back of the noise curtains to reveal shiny pop moments is an effective tool in Our House Is Very Beautiful at Night’s arsenal–it pops up most noticeably when “The Storm (Detail)” parts to reveal the sunshine of “The Storm”, the brightest pop song on the record. After the nice, friendly veneer of “The Storm”, Mattar chooses to end Our House Is Very Beautiful at Night with the sparse, scattered folk of “There’s That Feeling Again” and the ambient noise of “Dreams of Rubble”, giving every angle of Interbellum one last look before the record dissipates with the sun. (Bandcamp link)
Bruiser and Bicycle – Holy Red Wagon
Release date: April 5th Record label: Topshelf Genre: Psychedelic pop, experimental rock Formats: CD, cassette, digital Pull Track: Unknown Orchard
One of my favorite albums of 2019 was Bruiser & Bicycle’s debut full-length record, Woods Come Find Me. That album, made by the core duo of Albany’s Nick Whittemore and Keegan Graziane and released by Bee Side Cassettes, was a wonder, a collection of frantically-strummed, bonkers psychedelic folk songs that sounded like nothing anyone else was doing at the time and slowly built up a cult following among people who recognized this. Topshelf Records wisely scooped up the band for their long-awaited sophomore record, this month’s Holy Red Wagon, and it truly sounds like Bruiser and Bicycle spent all four interstitial years crafting this follow-up. Holy Red Wagon lands pretty far away sonically from the acoustic-based, ramshackle Woods Come Find Me, but the band (now featuring drummer Joe Taurone and bassist Zakariya Houacine, though only the former contributed to the record) are far from unrecognizable, either, just…more.
Holy Red Wagon feels and sounds like a conscious attempt to adapt their sound for the big screen, to blow it up proportionately and use the expanded palette to reach new areas while not losing their core sound. It’s a progressive pop album– both incredibly catchy and a lot to take in all at once. Seven of the record’s nine songs are over six minutes long, and Bruiser & Bicycle aren’t stuffing these tracks with ambient interludes or anything like that–they’re “on” for almost the entire run. “Aerial Shipyards” opens the record by lurching forward, a nautical, stretched-and-contorted piece of Beach Boys-esque studio pop that eventually surges into full-on psychedelia towards the end. This is a theme of Holy Red Wagon, with songs taking journeys and having enough time to get there that it ends up being a gradual transition from say, the jaunty first half of “Forks of the Jailhouse” to the more pensive closing few minutes to its psychedelic rock outro.
Pretty much all of Holy Red Wagon stacks its songs thusly–the frantic percussion in lead single “1000 Engines” isn’t less wild than anything else on the album, and the soaring vocals are as catchy as any other part of the record. The lyrics and their delivery throughout Holy Red Wagon match the music in being triumphant-sounding slices of psychedelia, like Bruiser & Bicycle have just climbed mountains and forded rivers to excitedly tell us all about rats coming out to play and cinnabar altars. A record this full needs to come off as eager in every facet in order to give the listener something to hold onto amidst its swirling parts, and there’s not an aspect to Holy Red Wagon that doesn’t meet this bar. (Bandcamp link)
Forest Bees – Between the Lines
Release date: April 7th Record label: Dandy Boy Genre: Indie pop, dream pop Formats: Cassette, digital Pull Track: At My Sphere
Around the turn of the century, Sheetal Singh played bass in San Francisco shoegaze band The Stratford 4, an Elektra-signed group who disintegrated in the midst of major-label purgatory around 2004. Singh stepped away from music for a while after that–she became a mother, writer, and began a career in children’s education–but she resurfaced in Berkeley in 2020 as Forest Bees, releasing a self-titled debut record that recalled her shoegaze past but also incorporated more electronic and dream pop influences. The second Forest Bees album–arriving via cassette through Dandy Boy Records–continues and expands upon this exploration of a few different stripes of indie music. Between the Lines has plenty of “rock album” touchstones (it features guitar contributions from former Stratford 4 bandmate Chris Streng, among others), but doesn’t feel content to stay in that mode.
Between the Lines was produced by Maryam Qudus of Spacemoth, another band that hovers between those two worlds. Forest Bees feels a bit lighter than Spacemoth–although I definitely hear the Stereolab influence that also marks Qudus’ band, Between the Lines doesn’t quite touch the ground enough to fully recall the French group’s analog-synth-rock, instead evoking some of the more empty-space and electronic-based groups from around the same time. I don’t believe the lack of easy categorization for this record is an accident–it’s literally called Between the Lines, for one, and Singh, the daughter of Indian immigrants, directly says that the “categories” that society might attempt to sort Asian Americans into informed the subject matter of these songs (the music itself reflects this in its incorporation of Bollywood soundtracks into its sound).
Between the Lines is slightly longer than LP length, pushing 50 minutes over its ten tracks. Closing song “All That Damage” stretches over seven minutes in length (although it should be noted that it’s a reworking of a Stratford 4 song that was originally fifteen minutes long, so Singh is, perhaps, actually practicing brevity here). It feels like not only is Singh taking the time to say all she wants to say in these songs–she’s also presenting it in a way that gives everything room to breathe. (Bandcamp link)
Flycatcher – Stunt
Release date: April 4th Record label: Memory Music Genre: Alt-rock, pop punk, fuzz rock Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull Track: Quitter
Stunt, the latest EP from New Brunswick’s Flycatcher, plants itself squarely in the wheelhouse of a certain subset of indie rock fans . Coming after two self-released full-lengths, this five-song record is their debut for Will Yip’s Memory Music, and the quartet harken back to a bygone era of radio rock across the length of Stunt. They’re not quite big 90s post-grunge revivalists like their labelmates Webbed Wing, instead feeling right at home in the world of turn-of-the-century alt-rock. These songs are touched a bit by the era’s pop punk, garage rock, pop-emo, and sincere indie rock without coming off as a pastiche of any of them. Frontperson Gregory Thomas Pease is an earnest lyricist with a lot to say across Stunt, and the rest of Flycatcher (guitarist Justin VanNiekerk, bassist Jack Delle Cava, and drummer Connor Carmelengo) bring the energy to back him up.
Stunt begins with two “rockers”, with the upbeat pop rock of “Games” opening things up in just about as bright and friendly a way as possible musically, even as Pease attempts to unwind an emotional and personal maze in the lyrics. “Always Selfish” is the simmering one, a darker shade of pop punk and alt-rock than the preceding track but still offering up hooks in the form of its chorus and its kickstart of a guitar riff. Flycatcher have a more midtempo mode that they reveal on the rest of the EP, kicking out a couple of emo-tinged slow-build anthems in “Sodas in the Freezer” and “Quitter”, contemplating their way to huge pop choruses. The latter sends Stunt off with an outro of distortion and a soaring guitar solo–sounding grand even while Pease sings about giving up, falling apart, and whatnot. (Bandcamp link)
Welcome to Rosy Overdrive’s March 2023 playlist! With the new year in full swing, almost everything on it comes from music released in the past month or two, so there is a ton of brand new things here for you. I’m planning on doing some more listening to older music in April, so if you miss my “archival” picks, they’ll be back.
Whitney’s Playland has multiple songs on this playlist.
Here is where you can listen to the playlist on various streaming services: Spotify, Tidal, (both of which are missing one song), and BNDCMPR. 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.
“Idiot Proof (nO SoUp Du JoUr)”, Telehealth From Content Oscillator (2023, Very Famous)
Seattle’s Telehealth is the duo of Alex Attitude and Kendra Cox, and the two of them make some of the most fun egg punk, synth-punk, and all-around Devo-core material I’ve heard in quite some time. Their debut record, Content Oscillator, opens with the pure blast of “Idiot Proof (nO SoUp Du JoUr)”, a positively sparkling piece of synth-punk whose call-and-response chorus will instantly lodge itself in your brain. Read more about Content Oscillator here.
“Let’s Be Friends Again”, The Toms From The Toms (1979, Black Sheep/Feel It)
The Toms’ self-titled debut album has been reissued several times over the years–the latest version of the record, a double-vinyl edition from Cincinnati’s garage rock imprint Feel It Records, feels like an appropriate new home for a landmark home-recorded power pop album. The Toms kicks off with “Let’s Be Friends Again”, an eternal-sounding, massive piece of pop rock that ranks among the finest examples of the genre, bar none, and hasn’t lost any luster over forty-some years. Read more about The Toms here.
“Surf’s Up (Garfield Park)”, Cel Ray From Cellular Raymond (2023)
Cellular Raymond, the debut EP from Chicago garage punk warriors Cel Ray, opens with “Surf’s Up (Garfield Park)”. It’s a straight-up perfect beefed-up power pop-punk tune–for two minutes, Cel Ray put on their best surf rock clothes (which includes a good bucket hat, I think), and lead singer Maddie Daviss’ delivery of everything from the various iterations of the song title to the way their voice cracks at the end (“Where is my towel?”) is just right for the track. Read more about Cellular Raymond here.
“Mercy”, Whitney’s Playland From Sunset Sea Breeze (2023, Meritorio/Paisley Shirt)
Bay Area-esque dreaminess aside, Whitney’s Playland’s 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. Following the casual catchiness of the opening title track, the big-electric-guitar-wielding “Mercy” finds Whitney’s Playland getting just a little bit louder, but being just as devoted to indie pop as anywhere else on the album. From the sunny, fuzzy chord progression to Showalter’s matter-of-fact vocals, “Mercy” is a big old pop wrecking ball. Read more about Sunset Sea Breeze here.
“Aloe”, Local Drags From Mess of Everything (2023, Stardumb)
One of the biggest musical Russian roulettes for me is “completely unknown modern power pop band”. It can be something I’ve already forgotten by the time the record is over, or I could find my new favorite song out of nowhere. 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. They’ve struck gold in particular with “Aloe”–that big riff that opens the song is the one that Paul Westerberg forgot to write (it just feels Midwestern in a way that’s hard to describe), and the other big moment of genius of the song is realizing that the almost-all-vowel “aloe” is the perfect power pop chorus yelping word.
“The Split”, Dancer From Dancer (2023, GoldMold)
Dancer’s self-titled debut cassette EP is a gem of a first release from a Glasgow group that’s flown under the radar a bit despite being comprised of members of some excellent local bands (Order of the Toad, Nightshift, Robert Sotelo). Its five tracks of cheerful, Life without Buildings-esque post-punk are all instantly memorable, but “The Split” is Dancer’s biggest pop moment, a glittering instrumental with vocals that, while not departing overly from the conversational speak-singing, take every right melodic turn for the track as well. Read more about Dancer here.
“21/1”, Fixtures From Hollywood Dog (2023, Bobo Integral/Naturally)
The debut full-length from New York’s Fixtures is an ambitious one–Hollywood Dog takes 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. The album kicks off with “21/1”, a steady-building indie rock anthem that captures Fixtures’ sound quite well–a saxophone intro gives way to chugging, clear-eyed indie rock that then gets punctuated with an instrumental, horn-based refrain. Read more about Hollywood Dog here.
“Shot Down”, The Unknowns From East Coast Low (2023, Bargain Bin)
Australia has typically been an excellent breeding ground for garage rock/power pop hybrid music, but 2023 has been an especially fertile year for it down under. The latest entry is the second full-length from Brisbane’s The Unknowns, a band that have been around for awhile and have been associated with Aussie punk superstars The Chats (East Coast Low is being put out by the band’s record label, Bargain Bin, and Unknowns singer Josh Hardy recently replaced founding guitarist Josh Price in The Chats). “Shot Down” is pure rock and roll, a muscular collection of hooks with a shout-along chorus that’s got about everything one could want from this kind of music.
“An Objection to the Location of the Entrance to the Girard Ave. ACME (for SEPTA and PRA)”, Emperor X From Suggested Improvements to Transportation Infrastructure in the Northeast Corridor (2023)
The latest Emperor X EP, Suggested Improvements to Transportation Infrastructure in the Northeast Corridor, takes inspiration from, as only Chad Matheny can, “transit policy and 30 years of public infrastructure memories” situated within the American Northeast. “An Objection to the Location of the Entrance to the Girard Ave. ACME (for SEPTA and PRA)” takes place in Philadelphia, but as Matheny points out in the lyrics, the corruption and greed at the heart of the song is happening in “a hundred other towns and a thousand other cities”. Just as importantly, though: “An Objection to the Location…” is an all-time Emperor X indie pop banger that ends with Matheny shouting “guitar!” and “even more guitar!” and being answered by blistering guitar soloing. Read more about Suggested Improvements to Transportation Infrastructure in the Northeast Corridor here.
“Growing Away”, Free Range From Practice (2023, Mick)
Free Range is the indie folk project of Chicago’s Sofia Jensen, with help from a few familiar faces to Rosy Overdrive readers. Jodi’s Nick Levine plays pedal steel and Wurlitzer on a couple of Practice’s tracks, and Noah Roth provides some backing vocals. Roth even co-wrote “Growing Away”, which I didn’t know when I selected it for this playlist–I’m a fan of Roth’s songwriting, so it makes sense, but it’s Jensen’s front-and-center, expressive vocals that truly sell this track for me. The catchiness, vocal delivery, and lyrics all remind me of a stripped-down Remember Sports–certainly a good place to be.
“I Know Nothing at All”, Dazy From OTHERBODY (2023, Lame-O)
Ah, Dazy. James Goodson always has more tunes to offer, it seems. The floodgates opened in late 2020 with a stream of singles and EPs (collected in the essential MAXIMUMBLASTSUPERLOUD compilation), continued into last year’s OUTOFBODY, and now we get a surprise-released companion EP, OTHERBODY. Supposedly Goodson recorded about a hundred songs for his debut album, and these eight tracks are selected from this vault–opener “I Know Nothing at All” is a stomper that harkens back to the earlier Dazy recordings and maybe wouldn’t have fit with the slightly more polished and refined nature of OUTOFBODY, but it certainly would’ve been one of my favorite songs on that album had it showed up there. Instead it gets to lead off a collection of songs that’s pretty damn strong in its own right.
“Caller”, Brian Mietz From Wow! (2023, Sludge People)
Brian Mietz’s Panzarotti was one of my favorite albums of 2020, so I’m quite happy to report that the New Jersey singer-songwriter is back next month with Wow!, a brand-new cassette full-length. Lead single “Caller” continues his last record’s winning streak of melancholic power pop–there may a little more reverb on this track than usual, but it’s still really great bummer pop rock for fans of the likes of Fountains of Wayne, Elliott Smith, The Goodbye Party, and Grandaddy.
“Soccer Mommy”, Shalom From Sublimation (2023, Saddle Creek)
I never really got into Soccer Mommy. A lot of people I respect like her music, and I give her props for working with Oneohtrix Point Never, but it was never my thing. I do, however, like this one song about “driv[ing] around, listening to Soccer Mommy” by Shalom. Shalom Obisie-Orlu and ringer Ryan Hemsworth turn the song’s conceit into a lo-fi indie-rock anthem, with Hemsworth soundtracking Obisie-Orlu’s after-the-fact-Eureka-moment lyrics with some in-the-red fuzz rock.
“Ride the Vibe”, Dim Wizard feat. Steve Ciolek, Jeff Rosenstock, and Illuminati Hotties) (2023)
The song’s called “Ride the Vibe”, and it does. Dim Wizard is the Washington, D.C.-based project of David Combs, who also plays in the excellent Bad Moves. There’s only a couple of Dim Wizard songs out there, but this one is a clear winner, and it crams a lot into its four minutes. As you can see from the heading, there’s a lot of people involved in its creation (Jeff Rosenstock co-wrote it, Illuminati Hotties’ Sarah Tudzin plays synth and guitar, both of them along with The Sidekicks’ Steve Ciolek sing on it, and Dazy’s James Goodson made the artwork)–whatever it took to make this slacker-power-pop jam, it’s a winning combo.
“Broken Bridge”, Sewage Farm From Mould (2023, Safe Suburban Home)
Although Sewage Farm’s name (as well as the title and artwork to Mould) conjure up images of scuzzy noise rock and roughed-up underground punk groups, the York band hews towards the tuneful side of the Our Band Could Be Your Life-core sound on their latest EP. Opening track “Broken Bridge” in particular kicks Mould off with all the right kinds of Hüsker Dü and Dinosaur Jr.-inspired moves, offering up a massive power pop hook dressed up in fuzzy, distorted clothing. Read more about Mould here.
“Unsolved Mysteries”, Connections From Cool Change (2023, Trouble in Mind)
Connections’ sixth record and first in a half decade doesn’t lose any steam in terms of offering up lo-fi, Ohio-bred power pop through and through. The B-side of Cool Change arguably bests the first half of the record–for one thing, that’s where you’ll find “Unsolved Mysteries”, a vintage Connections anthem if I’ve ever heard one. Everything’s in its right pop place on the two-point-five minute track, and Kevin Elliott’s delivery of the “We’re unsolved mysteries / The good and bad and the in-between,” is typically excellent work from an underrated frontman. Read more about Cool Change here.
“Time Moves for Me”, Disintegration From Time Moves for Me (2023, Feel It)
Alright, alright. Cleveland’s Disintegration are a new synth-punk trio made up of Haley Himiko from the under-appreciated Pleasure Leftists, plus Cloud Nothings’ Christopher Brown and Profligate’s Noah Anthony. The title track of their debut EP, Time Moves for Me, is an instant winner–it glides for five minutes over a hard-hitting drum machine, smartly deployed synths, and Himiko’s sweeping vocals. Hopefully Pleasure Leftists are still active in some form, but either way, I’d happily take an album of songs like “Time Moves for Me”.
“World Series Hangover”, Tombstone Poetry From World Series Hangover (2023, Candlepin)
The latest record from Tombstone Poetry is a five-song cassette EP called World Series Hangover. As a lo-fi, fuzzy country-gaze group from Asheville, North Carolina, the MJ Lenderman comparisons write themselves, but this seems unfair to singer-songwriter Caelan Burris, who’s been making music since before Lenderman “blew up”. I also hear some Conor Oberst influence on World Series Hangover, although the title track rocks in a haunted way, almost reminding me of Red House Painters’ more electric moments.
“Crawling Off Your Pages”, Eyelids From A Colossal Waste of Light (2023, Jealous Butcher)
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) opens with “Crawling Off Your Pages”, a timeless-sounding piece of modern college rock in which both Chris Slusarenko and John Moen’s vocals and the guitars are melodic juggernauts and monoliths. A Colossal Waste of Light features plenty more pop rock goodness (like single “Everything That I See You See Better”), but Eyelids sets the bar high early.
“Slow Motion Pain”, Near Beer (2023, Double Helix)
NEAR BEER’s self-titled debut record was one of my favorite albums of last year, so I’m happy to see that the Los Angeles trio are already back with a couple of (I assume) non-album singles. What’s more, my favorite of the two new tracks, “Slow Motion Pain”, feels like a step forward for the band and for songwriter Joey Siara. Musically, the song adds some jangly guitars to NEAR BEER’s underdog indie-punk sound, and it’s a perfect match, while Siara situates the song in the middle of a conversation at a holiday party, delivering several memorable lines in conveying the exchange (not the least of which is the title line).
“Watching the Credits”, The Beths (2023, Carpark)
Wake up, it’s new Beths time! “Watching the Credits” was recorded during the sessions for the band’s excellent third record, Expert in a Dying Field (one of Rosy Overdrive’s Favorite Albums of 2022)–I’m not sure why it didn’t make the cut, because it’s a vintage Beths tune through and through, with a chorus that could rank among their finest (and that’s a crowded field, to be sure, so I don’t say that lightly). The lyrics, in which songwriter Elizabeth Stokes presents herself as a director, feel like a way for her to talk about disillusionment and the pressure of having a “job in the arts” with one degree of remove (The violin touches coming after referencing film soundtracks–are they a bit on the nose? Sure. Does it matter? Not really).
“Carol Kane”, Toilet Rats From IV (2023, Brontosaurus Forever)
Truthfully, IV doesn’t sound anywhere near as trashy as I would expect a synthpunk group from Minneapolis named “Toilet Rats” to sound. That’s not a bad thing, mind you–especially considering that Thomas Rehbein (aka Tommy Ratz) embraces the widescreen version of new wave/80s synth-rock with these bite-sized anthems on IV. One of the best examples of this is “Carol Kane”, a surging piece of drum machine-aided post-punk that explodes into a shout-along, massive chorus. It’s about the movie When a Stranger Calls, by the way, starring the song’s titular actor, just to clear that up.
“Never Mean”, Tombeau From Idiot Rock (2023)
Alright, we’ve got some more Aussie garage punk here for you, and this one is a true gem. Wollongong’s Tombeau is the project of Tom Jones–the latest Tombeau release, the five-song Idiot Rock EP, is headlined by “Never Mean”, a brilliant sub-two minute piece of egg punk in which Jones and guest singer Jasmine Melinz trade off lead vocals from line to line. Over top of a running bassline and some beepy synths, Jones’ voice sounds human…ish (in a very Devo-y way), and Melinz’s conversational style balances it nicely.
“Black ‘n’ Milds”, Timeout Room From Tight-Ass Goku Pictures (2023, Tough Gum)
S.T. McCrary is a longtime Louisiana punk veteran who recently started a new project to explore another love of his–lo-fi, home-recorded guitar pop. Timeout Room’s debut album, Tight-Ass Goku Pictures, combines Wipers-esque one-man punk rock with Flying Nun/Cleaners from Venus-esque “whimsical” indie pop in a way that creates a weird mutant hybrid of the two–and a ton of catchy songs along the way. “Black ‘n’ Milds”, hidden on the second half of the album, is perhaps the biggest electric success on Tight-Ass Goku Pictures–it has a casual, effortless-seeming brilliance to it, but few of the many similarly-minded reverb-y, lo-fi pop albums can actually pull something like this song off. Read more about Tight-Ass Goku Pictures here.
“Tiny Frame”, Rust Ring From North to the Future (2023, Knifepunch)
North to the Future is a substantial emo-punk anthem record through and through, and nowhere on the album is this more apparent than single “Tiny Frame”. It’s certainly not the only track on North to the Future in which Chicago’s Rust Ring go all-out in their delivery, but “Tiny Frame” in particular conjures the feeling of scaling to the top of the rugged Alaskan terrain in which the album as a whole is set. Frontwoman Joram Zbichorski clutches the title line triumphantly, a true, confident moment of declaration. Read more about North to the Future here.
“Flower of Life”, Taleen Kali From Flower of Life (2023, Dum Dum)
The first full-length record from Los Angeles’ Taleen Kali is made up of ten loud, electric shoegaze-tinged tracks that still retain a pop core, and Kali’s strong presence as a frontperson is instrumental in helping sell both the energy and catchiness of Flower of Life. Kali and the band come barreling out of the gate with hard-charging opening title track–a swirling, foot-on-gas piece of distorted psych rock, “Flower of Life” blows open the rest of the record and establishes that the band is shooting for something heavier and denser than dreamy reverb-rock. Read more about Flower of Life here.
“Yer All in My Dreams”, Purling Hiss From Drag on Girard (2023, Drag City)
Drag on Girard is Purling Hiss’ first proper record in seven years, but the Philadelphia fuzz rockers kick off the record in the friendliest, most welcome way possible. “Yer All in My Dreams” is four and a half minutes of the group at their Dinosaur Jr.-recalling best–from the title on down to its potent concoction of some light jam band, light country rock, not-so-light guitar heroics, and nonstop massive melodies and hooks. Somehow the song feels half as long as it is–Purling Hiss could’ve ridden this groove out for quite a bit longer before it dragged.
Whitney’s Playland hail from San Francisco, and their debut record fits in with the sleepy, dreamy Bay Area jangle pop that Paisley Shirt Records (who released this album on cassette) has been documenting as of late. Sunset Sea Breeze’s opening title track is a transcendent indie pop experience, riding a simple ascending acoustic-guitar-and-bass progression triumphantly in a way that sounds like The Crabs crossed with The Sundays. Read more about Sunset Sea Breeze here.
“Meteora Blues”, Yves Tumor From Praise a Lord Who Chews but Which Does Not Consume; (or Simply, Hot Between Worlds) (2023, Warp)
I got on board with Yves Tumor after their breakout record, 2018’s Safe in the Hands of Love, which combined spacey modern industrial with the attitude of 90s alt-rock, and I’ve stayed a happy camper as Tumor has become more and more interested in incorporating the guitar-based sound into their music. While I’m not sure if I like Praise a Lord Who Chews but Which Does Not Consume; (or Simply, Hot Between Worlds) as much as 2020’s Heaven to a Tortured Mind, the highlights are just as good, at the very least. “Meteora Blues” is a blistering noise pop/shoegaze-rooted track that offers up wall-of-sound guitar textures and lead guitar heroics at the same time.
“The Most”, Miniaturized From Minituarized (2023, Manchester)
San Diego’s Miniaturized cover a lot of ground on their expansive self-titled debut album–it spends a lot of time probing mid-tempo college and heartland rock, but the group fully roar to life in the middle of the record with the synth-accented power pop/alt-rock of “The Most”. Singer/songwriter/guitarist Timothy Joseph really sells the go-for-broke, could’ve-been-a-hit-in-a-different-era chorus–Dave Grohl wishes he thought of this one. Read more about Miniaturized here.
“Shouldn’t Fear the Seer”, Mulva From Seer (2023)
Mulva is a new Providence-based band led by Christina Puerto, guitarist in Kal Marks and Bethlehem Steel, and also featuring Carl Shane (of the former of Puerto’s bands), Patrick Ronayne (of the latter), and Adam Berkowiz (of Ex-Breathers). Based on their lineup, it’s no surprise that their debut EP, Seer, is an intriguing record of heavy-leaning alt-rock. The semi-title track, “Shouldn’t Fear the Seer”, is my pick for their best single tune yet, a mix of lumbering noise rock and some prettier sections recalling 90s indie rock, with Puerto’s vocals shifting themselves accordingly.
“Quiet Covers Up a Lot”, Leon in the Wild From Leon in the Wild (2023, Recorded Psychic Readings)
San Francisco’s Leon in the Wild has been dropping non-album singles since 2020–for his debut physical release, a self-titled cassette EP, Recorded Psychic Readings has collected them along with a couple of brand-new tracks. One of these songs is the sharp “Quiet Covers Up a Lot”, a super catchy piece of power pop that combines the casualness of the 90s indie rock that’s a big influence on Leon’s music with California surf/fuzz rock to make a slacker rock hit.
“Matt and Adam”, Fairmont From Fairmont (2023)
Fairmont are an emo-punk group from Salt Lake City, and the band’s latest release, a four-song self-titled EP, came out at the beginning of this year. Fairmont throws some heartland pop punk in with their more traditional emo revival, and record highlight “Matt and Adam” even adds some 90s alt-rock and college rock jangle to the mix. “Matt and Adam” is a fine entry into the Gin Blossoms, Lemonheads, and solo Paul Westerberg-touched subgenre of punk rock–perhaps filtered through the lens of Joyce Manor and other emo-punk groups that have been drawing from the same well, but it sounds great regardless.
“Ordinary Misery”, Sakkaris From Ordinary Misery (2023, BIRTHDIY)
The latest record from Sakkaris–the Los Angeles-based duo of twin brothers Alex & Kevin Liu–is twenty minutes of no-fat lo-fi, reverb-y, surf/jangle-tinged indie rock that offers up plenty of catchiness in a humble, no-frills package. The title track to Ordinary Misery is the immediate standout, mainly thanks to its massive guitar riff of a hook–that alone would brighten the corners of any subgenre of guitar pop record, but on Ordinary Misery, it’s just one ace pop moment of many. Read more about Ordinary Misery here.
“Absolute Elsewhere (A Mile & a Day)”, Galactic Static From Golden Aeons of Absolute Elsewhere (2023, Corrupted TV)
Happy to welcome New York’s “intergalactic friendship-core duo” Galactic Static back–2021’s Friendly Universe was an ace under-the-radar record of lo-fi power pop, and half of the group (Conor Mac) stretched out a little bit on last year’s Diet Daydream as Soft Screams. Golden Aeons of Absolute Elsewhere is “a mixtape from a parallel universe”–not quite a full-length, but it still has time in its seventeen minutes for a couple of pop rock hits, my favorite of which is “Absolute Elsewhere (A Mile and a Day)”, a song that manages to be sweeping despite its lo-fi ingredients.
“A Love Song”, The Bug Club From Pure Particles (2021, Bingo/We Are Busy Bodies)
“How many times can you say ‘fuck’ in a love song / And really mean it?” Welsh trio The Bug Club ask this and several other thoughtful questions in the 74-second, delightfully profane “A Love Song”, in the form of gleeful, runaway rock and roll. While it’s a brief sample of what the band were doing on Pure Particles, their recently-reissued 2021 “mini-LP”, it’s a damn good one (and, in case you were wondering, The Bug Club do respond to their opening question: “The answer is nine”). Read more about Pure Particles here.
“Temps Gris”, M’lasse From M’lasse (2023)
I’ve encountered a bunch of pretty under-the-radar Canadian bands over the past month–in this post, we’re going to focus on Montreal’s M’lasse for a minute. These French Canadians put out their debut release, a self-titled EP, back in February, and it jumps around from shoegaze to surf rock to 90s-inspired indie rock over its six songs. Highlight “Temps Gris” even hops around within itself, starting off vaguely rough-and-tumble and even a little punk-adjacent before throwing in a melodic, dreamy-jangle pop guitar hook and eventually settling into fuzzy noise pop.
“My Therapist Said I Have a Fear of Time (He’s Right)”, Resignation From You Are More Than Right Now (2023, Friend Club)
Resignation are a Toledo, Ohio group featuring members of Oscar Bait and few other Midwest punk bands, and their Bandcamp description (“RIYL: Hot Water Music, Samiam, Grade, Silent Majority, Split Lip, Fairweather”) gives you decent ballpark guess of what to expect on their latest release, the five-song You Are More Than Right Now cassette EP. Record highlight “My Therapist Said I Have a Fear of Time (He’s Right)” is a great emo-pop-punk anthem, with Resignation polishing up their sound just enough to let the chorus soar the way it does.
“Dangerous”, Nova One From Create Myself (2023, Community)
Create Myself is the second full-length record from Providence, Rhode Island’s NOVA ONE, and it’s a solid and casual collection of smooth, dreamy indie rock. Lead single “Dangerous” isn’t the only song on Create Myself that rocks, but the way that NOVA ONE frontperson Roz Raskin and their collaborators pull this one off in particular is impressive and pleasing to hear. It’s a dream pop skeleton blown up to full-on fuzz rock, with a melodic bass running past jagged but comforting stabs of amped-cranked, distortion-heavy guitar.
“Frantically Wrong”, Real Terms From Vantage (2023)
Vantage is an intriguing record that I stumbled upon recently. Real Terms are a British group that make math rock on the poppy end of the spectrum, perhaps trending into “light prog” territory. The record kind of reminds me of XTC, but with an unmistakable “made by some math rock dudes” sheen. “Frantically Wrong” isn’t the only hooky song on the record, but it’s the one that’s continued to stick with me the most–everything on the track is catchy, and the chorus is doubly so.
“Welcome to the Project!”, Kondratieff Wave Generator From High Rise (2023, Unimagined Futures)
I don’t know a whole lot about Kondratieff Wave Generator–right now they’re based in Portland, Oregon, but they also may be from Dundee originally, or they just lived there at one point, so I’m not even sure on that. Their latest record, High Rise, is six songs of really spaced-out indie rock that pull from dream pop, shoegaze, ambient, post-rock, jangle pop… “Welcome to the Project!” is the clear “hit” on High Rise, presenting Kondratieff Wave Generator’s whole thing in a four-minute, reverb-y indie bedroom pop package, with a wistful-sounding but quite catchy refrain.
“Baby Food”, The Pretty Flowers From A Company Sleeve (2023, Double Helix)
Back in the (relatively) early days of the site, I highlighted “Bucket Beach”, a self-released, one-off single from Los Angeles’ The Pretty Flowers, which was a nice slice of slacker/jangle pop. Now the group has a new label, a new full-length record on the way (which will also feature “Bucket Beach”), and a new lead single in the perky power-pop-punk anthem “Baby Food”. A bit rougher around the edges than “Bucket Beach” but still quite hooky and friendly, “Baby Food” sprints through some major-label Replacements-era pop rock, slows everything down, and then pulls off a big finish.
“Ride”, Nothing Natural From NN (2023, Dandy Boy)
Oakland’s Nothing Natural are one of many new guitar groups to spring up from the Bay Area in recent years, but the sound of their debut cassette EP helps them stick out a bit among their peers. NN is 25-minutes of unabashed 90s alt-rock, fuzz rock, and borderline-shoegaze worship–it’s closer to the roster Candlepin Records or even New Morality Zine than their indie pop stalwart home of Dandy Boy Records. Still, Nothing Natural know a good pop hook, and “Ride” is slacker rock of the catchiest variety. The single feels torn between the tryhard alt-rock of Smashing Pumpkins and modern nü-shoegaze revivalists and tongue-in-cheek 90s indie rock revival, but either way, that guitar riff hook is undeniable.
Rosy Overdrive 