New Playlist: April 2023

Well, well, well. If it isn’t the Rosy Overdrive April 2023 Playlist. And would you look at that, it features a ton of great songs from this year, a handful of tracks from 2022 that I am just now discovering, and a couple of songs from 1981 (more on what I’m doing back in 1981 in a future blog post).

Buddie, Mt. Worry, and Bell and the Ringers all get multiple songs on the playlist this time.

Here is where you can listen to the playlist on various streaming services: Spotify, Tidal (missing a song), and BNDCMPR (missing a couple songs). Be sure to check out previous playlist posts if you’ve enjoyed this one, or visit the site directory. If you’d like to support Rosy Overdrive, you can share this (or another) post, or donate here.

“Gazer”, Negative Glow
From VOLUME 1 (2023, Let’s Pretend/RTR Tapes)

Bloomington, Indiana’s Negative Glow have an excellent debut record on their hands with the five-song VOLUME 1 cassette EP. It takes me back a bit to the mid-2010s era of punk-y indie rock revivalists, but with a tougher alt-rock (and even shoegaze-sounding at some point) edge. “Gazer” is a hell of a first song, a big distorted fuzzfest with crystal-clear vocals and legitimate guitar heroics. Read more about VOLUME 1 here.

“Rocket”, Mt. Worry
From A Mountain of Fucking Worry (2023)

Mt. Worry is a Philadelphia four-piece band featuring some recognizable names to Rosy Overdrive readers–I’m familiar with Noah Roth and John Galm as songwriters (the former with their solo work, the latter as Bad Heaven Ltd.), and Nick Holdorf plays drums with No Thank You. I don’t recognize the singer of “Rocket” (perhaps it’s the only member I didn’t previously know, Rowan Horton), but whoever it is, they helm an excellent noise-fuzz-pop song that only gets better the more I listen to it. The first few seconds of the track, in which an acoustic guitar gives way to a thundering full-band arrangement, is just indie rock perfection.

“Never to Be Seen Again”, Bell and the Ringers
From Bell and the Ringers (2023)

Bell and the Ringers is the work of Melbourne’s Lucas Bell and Toronto’s Brent Vipond, a duo who make a certain brand of earnest but energetic indie-pop-punk that triangulates Death Cab for Cutie, The Thermals, and Relient K. Bell and the Ringers really sell their songs–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. Read more about Bell and the Ringers here.

“Backwards, Behind”, Buddie
From Agitator (2023, Crafted Sounds)

“Backwards, Behind” was the song from Agitator that immediately hit me, and it’s not hard to hear why. On this track, Buddie keep it relatively simple, with the punchiness of the chorus really landing its sentiment (“When you’re backwards, a little behind / You couldn’t be wrong”). Musically, it reminds me in a weird and good way of “The Middle” by Jimmy Eat World, but there’s some troubling stuff going on beneath the positive surface of “Backwards, Behind” (“Isn’t it ironic we’d evolve to behave like this / Now we’ll be our own end”). Read more about Agitator here.

“Death of an Empire”, Washer
From Improved Means to Deteriorated Ends (2023, Exploding in Sound)

I’ve said a lot about Improved Means to Deteriorated Ends on this website already, so let me just summarize: Washer’s third album was worth the wait. “Death of an Empire” sticks out in particular, a jaunty but deeply-felt song. In it, Mike 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). Read more about Improved Means to Deteriorated Ends here.

“Fired, Walk with Me”, The Collect Pond
From Underwater Features (2023, Candlepin)

The latest record from Boston’s The Collect Pond, Underwater Features, splits the different between dark-post punk and catchy 90s indie rock jams, all presented with a lo-fi basement rock sheen. Single “Fired, Walk with Me” is in the latter camp–Danny Moffat and his new band bash out pure, giddy pop rock for two sharp minutes on the track. That opening guitar lead ends up doing the most in terms of hooks, but Moffat’s understated but melodic vocals do their job quite well too. Read more about Underwater Features here.

“Love Beyond the Grave”, Crocodiles
From Upside Down in Heaven (2023, Lolipop)

It seems like Crocodiles were one of those bands that showed up towards the end of the 2000s as part of that surf rock/lo-fi indie rock/reverb-y garage rock revival thing, but I’d never checked them out. “Love Beyond the Grave” caught my attention, though, and I can report that their latest album, Upside Down in Heaven, is a pretty fun pop rock record. The opening track is my favorite one, zipping through a slick garage-pop-punk instrumental with understated but still hooky vocals.

“New Age Love Song”, Living Dream
From Living Dream (2023, Long Gone Sound System)

I don’t know too much about Living Dream–they’re a four-piece group from Indianapolis whose debut self-titled record is an intriguing album that presents a bunch of lo-fi, hazy, but frequently accessible indie rock and also features a surprising amount of flute. “New Age Love Song” is the biggest highlight–it starts out at full force, with a chiming, lo-fi psych guitar part that twists into something weirder and almost proggy towards its end–but it never stops being catchy and fascinating.

“You Turned Off the Light”, Sharp Pins
From Turtle Rock (2023, Hallogallo)

Sharp Pins is the solo project of Chicago’s Kai Slater, who also plays in good bands like Dwaal Troupe and Lifeguard. Sharp Pins’ latest album, Turtle Rock, hews closer to Dwaal Troupe’s lo-fi, poppy indie rock than Lifeguard’s post-hardcore sound, especially on “You Turned Off the Light”, a hell of a song. Slater puts together a bouncy, fluffy-sounding track that still has a bit of meat on it–every lo-fi pop song will get Guided by Voices comparisons, but Slater really does evoke Robert Pollard’s songwriting here. 

“Won’t Be Coming Back”, Black Thumb
From The Flying Propeller Group (2023, Dandy Boy)

Black Thumb’s The Flying Propeller Group is an intriguing, adventurous indie rock album that probes spacey, psychedelic, and dreamy territory. Even with that, however, the album doesn’t quite prepare you for “Won’t Be Coming Back”, a massive sounding, frenetic, noise-pop-rock song that comes out of nowhere midway through the record. San Francisco’s Colin Wilde (who, fun fact, used to live in Appleton, Wisconsin and played with the underrated country-rock group Dusk) throws everything he’s got into this song–a gas-floored rhythm section, frantic piano playing, organs, and, of course, loud guitars.

“For You to Sing”, Mo Troper
From MTVI (2023, Lame-O)

“For You to Sing” is the first song from Mo Troper’s MTVI (the follow-up to last year’s excellent MTV)–there’s no release date or official announcement for the album yet, but the lead single is more than enough to get everyone excited about where Troper is headed. Apparently Troper labored over this song extensively, spending months and recording tracks upon tracks for it–the end result is something that feels “cleaner” than the majority of his recent output, but still retaining a lot of the Dilettante/MTV-era’s home-recorded, commercially-agnostic charm. 

“Twin Flame”, Amanda X
From Keepsake (2023, Self Aware)

The five-song Keepsake EP is Amanda X’s first record in a half-decade, but it contains everything you’d want the Philadelphia 90s indie rock revivalists to offer up: a few single-ready alt-rock bangers, a couple less immediate, mid-tempo tunes, and “Twin Flame”, the big-finish closing track. The song starts off unassumingly, but the trio work their way up to an eternal-sounding, massive pop rock chorus. “Wild horses run the path to pasture / If I told you that I loved you, would it even matter?”, now there’s a lyric. Read more about Keepsake here.

“Beneath the Screen”, Street Fruit
From Beneath the Screen (2022, Waste Management)

Street Fruit are a new Los Angeles-based punk group (although half of the band played together in the nineties band Dura-Delinquent, so they’re hardly neophytes) who released their debut album, Beneath the Screen, last November via Waste Management Music. The title track is my favorite song off the record–an excellent slice of casual, West Coast indie-punk-rock that’s got a bit of slacker DNA in it. “There’s no room for expertise here,” offers vocalist Hans Dobbratz toward the end of the song–Street Fruit are quite good at what they do, regardless.

“Buried Alive (Too Tired)”, Brian Mietz
From Wow! (2023, Sludge People)

The song is called “Buried Alive (Too Tired)”, and it sounds like it. Brian Mietz is an excellent penner of downcast power pop tunes, and “Buried Alive (Too Tired)” is three minutes of pure, weary pop rock. Mietz packs a lot of fun and interesting songs in his latest album, Wow!, but he keeps it pretty simple here–the chorus is colored by some synths and its catchiness almost gains power from being underplayed (in a way that reminds me of my favorite Mietz song, “Hollyweed”). Read more about Wow! here.

“Big Papi Lassos the Moon”, Ther
From A Horrid Whisper Echoes in a Palace of Endless Joy (2023, Dead Definition)

Ther open up their second album, A Horrid Whisper Echoes in a Palace of Endless Joy, with a brief introduction track and follow it immediately with the arresting “Big Papi Lassos the Moon”, a soaring folk tune that builds, speeds up, and crescendos in an unexpected but very welcome way. Heather Jones puts on an excellent vocal performance, rising and falling to meet the musical waves accompanying them. Read more about A Horrid Whisper Echoes in a Palace of Endless Joy here.

“Hot Seat”, Empire
From Expensive Sound (1981, Dinosaur Discs/Munster)

Empire were a solid recent discovery of mine. Apparently they were related to Generation X somehow, although Expensive Sound, their only album, doesn’t sound that much like them. This entire record is great and accessible, but in a skewed way–it jumps around from dark post-punk to straight power pop. The second song on the record, “Hot Seat”, has a big pop chorus, although it grooves on some darker material in between different hits of it. 

“Belts and Braces”, Smaller Hearts
From Rock and Roll Was Here to Stay (2023, Noyes)

Smaller Hearts are a synthpop duo from Nova Scotia, and their latest record, Rock and Roll Was Here to Stay, follows 2021’s solid Attention. Kristina Parlee and Ron Bates offer up something of a surprise on “Belts and Braces”, one of the advance singles from Rock and Roll Was Here to Stay–it’s still a synth-heavy tune, but the band let it take more of a guitar rock shape. It’s all too brief (80 seconds), but that’s enough time to get the job done here.

“The Storm”, Interbellum
From Our House Is Very Beautiful at Night (2023)

Our House Is Very Beautiful at Night is a deftly-crafted indie folk-rock record from Beirut’s Karl Mattar. Mattar effectively and frequently uses the Microphones-esque tool of mixing shiny pop songs with noisy, fuzzy material on the record, and one of the best examples of it is when the interlude track “The Storm (Detail)” parts to reveal the sunshine of “The Storm”, the brightest pop song on the record. Of course, this song works on its own (which is why it’s on the playlist), but it gains even more in context. Read more about Our House Is Very Beautiful at Night here.

“Virtue”, Tucker Riggleman & the Cheap Dates
(2023, WarHen)

The debut full-length from Tucker Riggleman & the Cheap Dates, 2021’s Alive and Dying Fast, was one of my favorite albums of that year, so I’m happy to hear that Riggleman is back with the first taste of the group’s upcoming follow-up record. “Virtue” continues the strengths of Alive and Dying Fast, with The Cheap Dates offering up a spirited but relatively measured country rock backbone, and Riggleman offering up a lyric that’s honest and fairly unsparing on a personal level. “I’m just practicing my sorrow / Like it’s another virtue that I’ve earned,” he remarks in the chorus (and if that’s a bit too abstract for you, he also offers up “I’m just working on my downfall / Like it’s another tractor in my barn”).

“Coming to Your Town”, Chime School
From Coming to Your Town (2023, Slumberland/Meritorio/FastCut)

Chime School’s self-titled debut album was one of my favorite records of 2021, so it’s a pleasure to welcome Andy Pastalaniec’s San Francisco-based project back with a new single. The A-side, “Coming to Your Town”, is another jangle pop classic, with Pastalaniec’s peppy and hook-stuffed songwriting out in full force here. “Coming to Your Town” is darker than most of the Chime School album, though–at least lyrically, where Pastalaniec grapples with the darker forces at work in the Bay Area. The chorus, in which Pastalaniec rhymes “monetize” with “terrorize”, makes it clear just who the source of all this is.

“How Much More”, The Go-Go’s
From Beauty and the Beat (1981, Capitol)

I like The Bangles and Blondie and stuff like that, so I’m not sure why I’d never really been keen to check out The Go-Go’s until now. Well, that’s past me’s loss and present me’s gain, because Beauty and the Beat is a really solid 80s big pop rock album. “How Much More” is hardly the only “hit” on the album, but I’ll go with this one, with the chiming guitar play and the every-note-is-catchy vocals.

“Give Me Therapy”, Bell and the Ringers
From Bell and the Ringers (2023)

The bouncy “Give Me Therapy” keeps the runaway train, catchy pop energy of the first half of Bell and the Ringers going. Singer Brent Vipond does some interesting sing-song vocal work while the guitars both take the form of choppy power chords and melodic leads. The (admittedly at times hard to hear) big-picture-sketching that Vipond is doing with the lyrics here feels particularly Ben Gibbard-esque (perhaps a bit more profane, but that’s hardly a bad thing). Read more about Bell and the Ringers here.

“Small Talk”, Sumos
From Surfacing (2023, Meritorio/Safe Suburban Home)

Hey! Here’s a new jangle pop band for you to get into. They’re called Sumos, they’re from Manchester, and their first full-length album, Surfacing, comes out in May on a couple of labels that are stalwarts of the genre (Meritorio and Safe Suburban Home). Single “Small Talk” is note-perfect indie pop, jangling and gliding its way through three minutes of easy-to-take-in hooks. Looking forward to hearing more from them.

“Aviatrix”, The 3 Clubmen
From The 3 Clubmen (2023, Burning Shed/Lighterthief)

This is an unexpected but very welcome treat. Andy Partridge of XTC (perhaps unsurprisingly, a foundational band for me) has not been completely quiet as of late, but he’s busied himself with smaller-scale projects that have flown under the radar in recent years. Perhaps his new band, The 3 Clubmen, will end up in the same way, but judging from their debut single, this could be Partridge’s most promising new music in quite some time. “Aviatrix” is a beautiful pastoral piece of folky-pop that evokes his old band’s Mummer era, and the other members of the band (Jen Olive and Stu Rowe) feel very much in tune with Partridge’s writing style.

“Your Head’s a Cathedral”, Glow in the Dark Flowers
From Glow in the Dark Flowers (2023, Born Yesterday)

Glow in the Dark Flowers is the duo of Jessee Rose Crane and Philip Lesicko, who gained notoriety over the past decade for their work in Chicago group The Funs. The self-titled Glow in the Dark Flowers album is some very good sleepy, fuzzy late-night indie rock, with elements of slowcore, post-rock, fuzz rock, and dream pop, but without slotting neatly into any of those. The two-minute-or-so “Your Head’s a Cathedral” is one of the more immediate songs on the album, hitting with a big, fuzzy, lifting chorus.

“You’re the One”, Odd Duck
From You’re the One (2023, Cruisin’)

I think that this playlist might have the highest concentration of Indiana bands that I’ve ever put together for this website. Anyway, Odd Duck are a DIY indie pop punk band from Bloomington, and their debut EP You’re the One (out on Cruisin’ Records, co-run by Nana Grizol’s Theo Hilton) is a really fun and hooky collection of songs. The title track is my favorite, I think–it pulls off sounding wistful, giddy, noisy, and incredibly catchy all at once.

“Dejected”, Provide
From For Me (2023, Lame-O)

Provide’s debut record, For Me, is a snappy and brief record of punk-y power pop that nails a particular niche of this kind of music very well. Evan Bernard has been playing in Philly-area bands for quite a while now (including being in No Thank You along with Nick Holdorf of the also-appearing-on-this-playlist Mt. Worry); he’s more than capable of making hits on his own, clearly, as well. “Dejected” is my favorite song on the album–it hits the ground running, and also offers up some big synth hooks despite being still relatively ramshackle-sounding.

“Walk Away from You”, The Age of Colored Lizards
From Hang On (2023, Sotron)

Oslo’s Christian Dam has been consistently putting out music as The Age of Colored Lizards for a while now–last year saw an EP and LP released under the name, and another Age of Colored Lizards full-length, Hang On, came out last month. Dam (with his band, bassist Anders Bøe and drummer Cato Holmen) makes beautiful guitar pop that reminds me in places of a more rough-around-the-edges Teenage Fanclub. “Walk Away from You” is on the sparse end, carried almost entirely by a jangly electric guitar and Dam’s melancholy voice.

“Hate to Run”, Shoes
From Tongue Twister (1981, Elektra)

Tongue Twister is a good album, and makes me want to go back to those other Shoes albums that never quite resonated with me when I gave them a shot a while back. “Hate to Run” closes the record out on a simple but very effective pop rock note, with the Zion, Illinois power pop band probing some classic power pop lyrical themes (confusion in love, you know) over a brief, two-minute instrumental which features some nice power chords and vocal harmonies.

“The Way You Set Me Straight”, Amos Pitsch
From Acid Rain (2022, Crutch of Memory)

Last year, I wrote a bit about Better Out Than In, a solo album from Julia Blair of Wisconsin country band Dusk. Somehow, though, I missed that another member of Dusk also released a solo album last year–vocalist/bassist Amos Pitsch. His Acid Rain is a casual but full collection of music that will be very much up the alley of anyone into Dusk–my favorite track is the brief roots rock of “The Way You Set Me Straight”, featuring a very memorable vocal delivery from Pitsch.

“A Part of It”, Piner
From A Netherworld (2023)

Piner is the country rock project of Claya Way Brackenbury, who originated in Kingston, Ontario and currently lives in Nova Scotia. As her latest album, A Netherworld shows, she’s adept at writing plenty of songs under the widely-defined “folk/Americana” umbrella, such as the excellent “A Part of It”. It’s a soaring, keyboard-aided anthem in which Brackenbury sings with a lot of emotion and energy, really making the track come alive.

“City at Eleven”, The Hold Steady
From The Price of Progress (2023, Positive Jams/Thirty Tigers)

The Price of Progress hasn’t hit for me in the same way that the last couple of Hold Steady albums have, as a whole. Musically, it reminds me more and more of Craig Finn’s recent solo material, which is fine, but not exactly what I want from them. “City at Eleven”, however–this song reminds me of Finn’s underrated and all-but-disavowed debut solo album, Clear Heart Full Eyes, and I’ll happily take more of that. It’s more than the Hawaii setting (which calls to mind Finn’s “Honolulu Blues”), it’s the surprising roots rock swagger, too.

“Neil & Joni”, K. Campbell
From Heart Shaped / K. Campbell Split (2023, Poison Moon)

I just wrote about a K. Campbell single in the February playlist, but the Houston-based power pop artist is already back with another one, and it’s very good, too. “Neil & Joni” is part of a split single with Heart Shaped (who I’ve also written before on this blog, and whose contribution to the single is also quite good), but I want to highlight “Neil & Joni”, an ace example of Campbell’s penchant for big-sounding choruses. Campbell duets in the refrain with Mandy Kim Clinton, which is a nice touch in the context of the song’s title.

“Knucklen’”, Country Westerns
From Forgive the City (2023, Fat Possum)

Country Westerns’ self-titled 2020 record was one of my favorites from that year, and it’s nice to hear that they’ve still got it on Forgive the City, their sophomore album. It feels like it picks up the thread the Nashville band left off on with their last album–it might be a little more southern rock-influenced, but as a whole it’s still an excellent collection of weary roots rock/country punk. Opening track “Knucklen’” is some excellent and gruff stuff, with Joseph Plunket’s vocals breaking a bit in a Two Cow Garage way in the chorus.

“Seven Year Curse”, Shasta Esprit Gilmore
From l’esprit de l’escalier (2023, Kiwi Bear)

Shasta Esprit Gilmore has been making music in bands around San Diego and Los Angeles for several years now, but l’esprit de l’escalier, recorded by Gilmore herself on 4-track while studying Russian Studies at UC Irvine, is her debut solo album. l’esprit de l’escalier is an intriguing record of lo-fi pop of several stripes–my favorite track on it, “Seven Year Curse”, is a downcast and melancholic but incredibly catchy piece of pop rock in which Gilmore declares “I’ve got a problem with you / Yeah, I mean you,” and lays out some very specific-seeming but universal-feeling lyrics from there.

“Salt the Sea”, Lowercase Roses
From Ordinary Terror (2022, Slush Unlimited)

Ordinary Terror, the latest record from Philadelphia’s Lowercase Roses, is a delicate album of fuzzy, dreamy indie folk music with a bit of electronic elements as well. “Salt the Sea” is something of an outlier, but I can’t shake this one. Over a steady pounding drumbeat, Matt Scheuermann lays down a mid-tempo noisy pop/fuzz rock song with some chanting vocals. It’s transfixing even before Scheuermann pushes his vocals and adds some harmonies in the bridge.

“キュー”, Yellow Magic Orchestra
From BGM (1981, Alfa)

“キュー” (“Cue”) is the obvious big pop song/”hit” from BGM, the first Yellow Magic Orchestra album I’d ever listened to in full. The whole record is an interesting foray into some genres I don’t know too well (early electronic rock/synthpop), but “Cue” is pretty immediate and I don’t think you have to be into this kind of music to be taken with it. The lyrics are in English and beg for the titular sign to end a personal rut, but it’s the soaring synths that really stick out on this song.

“Centerpiece”, Mt. Worry
From A Mountain of Fucking Worry (2023)

I’m going to do a second Mt. Worry song because it’s as good as “Rocket” and I hate having to choose between the two. Noah Roth is definitely singing lead on this one, and the song as a whole evokes their last solo album, Breakfast of Champions, in its balance of accessible pop rock and weird studio-creation touches (albeit in a more shoegaze-y/fuzz rock way, reflectant of Mt. Worry’s style). I keep coming back to the noise clearing up just in time for Roth to deliver “I’ve never been my first choice, either” (same, Noah, same).

“I Want to Live There with You”, Your Mom’s Car
From I Want to Live There with You (2022)

Your Mom’s Car is the San Diego-based project of Seb Oliva, and their latest album, December’s I Want to Live There with You, follows in the grand tradition of massive, noisy, personal, lo-fi bedroom indie rock records that spans 90s basement recorded-bands, 2000s wide-eyed fuzz-folk, and 2010s Bandcamp-core. Some of the record is fairly abrasive and experimental, but the title track is pure, accessible, earnest fuzz rock, Oliva’s emotional lyrics and vocal delivery matching the roaring music.

“I See You There”, The Sprouts
From Eat Your Greens (2023, Tenth Court)

The Sprouts are the latest Australian guitar pop band to come across my radar, and the Melbourne-based four-piece fall on the loose, casual end of the spectrum, a la Perth’s Spice World. Their debut album, Eat Your Greens, is a thoroughly enjoyable effort, and it’s the quiet, subtle “I See You There” that’s my favorite one off of it. It’s based almost entirely on a gently-played electric guitar and a pair of vocalists (one of which is guest Vivienne Remedios).

“Restive Summer”, Buddie
From Agitator (2023, Crafted Sounds)

Buddie’s latest record, Agitator, closes with a gigantic song in “Restive Summer”. It starts as a solo electric guitar number whose first section culminates with singer Dan 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?” Buddie know that there’s work to be done, but they are cognizant of the tolls of it. Read more about Agitator here.

Pressing Concerns: Lynx, Mister Data, Unlettered, The National Honor Society

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)

Also notable:

Pressing Concerns: Negative Glow, Morwan, John Andrews & the Yawns, Miscomings

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)

Also notable:

Pressing Concerns: Washer, ‘Improved Means to Deteriorated Ends’

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 Deteriorated Ends, 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)

Pressing Concerns: Patches, Amanda X, Monde UFO, Triple Fast Action

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)

Also notable:

Pressing Concerns: Buddie, Brian Mietz, The Collect Pond, System Exclusive

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)

Also notable:

Pressing Concerns: The Rishis, Sudden Voices, Melancolony, Worms in Dirt

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)

Also notable:

Pressing Concerns: Ther, Cindy, Dave Scanlon, Sweet Dreams Nadine

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)

Also notable:

Pressing Concerns: Bell and the Ringers, Public Interest, Pure Material, Second Body

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)

Also notable:

Pressing Concerns: Interbellum, Bruiser and Bicycle, Forest Bees, Flycatcher

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)

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