This week’s Pressing Concerns covers new albums from Oneida, Dust Star, and Freak Genes, and the latest EP from Ali Murray. It’s a wild one!
If you’re still looking for more new music, you can browse previous editions of Pressing Concerns or visit the site directory.
Oneida – Success
Release date: August 19th Record label: Joyful Noise Genre: Garage rock, psychedelic rock, krautrock Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital Pull track: I Wanna Hold Your Electric Hand
Brooklyn’s Oneida has amassed perhaps one of the most intimidating discographies in indie rock over their twenty-five years as a band. Their records are typically colossal, unpredictable masses of heavy psych, kraut, and experimental rock music, not the least of which is their last full-length together, 2018’s Romance. The opening guitar chords of Success’ first track, “Beat Me to the Punch”, however, invite the listener to throw out their all their ideas of what an Oneida record should sound like (and, if one is unfamiliar, assures them not to worry about all that). Effectively, Oneida have circled all the way around the sun and put together what’s first and foremost a straightforward garage rock record.
Success is a lot closer to Oneida’s 2017 one-off single “Town Crier” than anything off of Romance, but even that track’s demented psych rock doesn’t prepare one for just how…pleasant the band can sound on this record. “Beat Me to the Punch” isn’t an outlier on Success; its plainly-presented, basically two-chord structure also marks the other two singles from the record, the euphoric “I Wanna Hold Your Electric Hand” and the matter-of-fact “Rotten”. There’s a kick to these songs despite their simplicity that reminds me of the more transcendent moments of studious rock bands like Yo La Tengo, Silkworm, Stereolab, and Eleventh Dream Day, all groups who can switch casually between pop music and stranger fare.
Because it’s Oneida, these relatively accessible moments still feature occasional bursts of noise and feedback, and most of the rest of Success is comprised of three longer jams—“Paralyzed” crosses the ten-minute mark, while “Low Tide” and “Solid” aren’t far off from that. While the former two aren’t “pop” songs, they are both propulsive sprints, remaining grounded as they confidently traverse through time and space. If closing track “Solid” is the least-structured song on Success, that’s because it’s where the band lets loose for pure guitar heroics—ending with a declaration that the traditional Oneida way is, in fact, consistent with rock and roll. (Bandcamp link)
Dust Star – Open Up That Heart
Release date: August 5th Record label: Lame-O Genre: Power pop, garage rock Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull track: Work It Out
Dust Star is the duo of Justin Jurgens of Sirs and Cameron Wisch of Cende, and their debut record together is a desert-touched album of garage-y power pop. Open Up That Heart (released by Lame-O Records, which—between this, their recent signings of Mo Troper and Dazy, and their longtime flagship band Hurry—may need to be broken up by power pop antitrust monitors) occupies a middle lane between fuzzy West Coast psych-garage-rock and retro-70s inspired pop rock. It comes off as the work of studious fans of those genres, but it also features the songwriting necessary to stand against their predecessors. Open Up That Heart’s thirteen songs seem to fly by (even as some come in at nearly twice as long as your typical two-minute garage rocker), and the tracks’ hooks present themselves eagerly and often.
The speedy, bass-anchored “Nothing in My Head” kicks off Open Up That Heart on a psych-tinged garage rock note, but then the harmonies in the mid-tempo title track and the leisurely classic rock of “Work It Out” introduce the less frantic side of Dust Star. I can’t read the title of “Can’t Stop Thinkin’ of You” without its hook appearing instantly in my head, and the middle-of-record breather “I’m Waiting for You” evokes the more spare moments of Brian Wilson’s music. Open Up That Heart doesn’t lose any steam in its second half; in fact, it feels like Jurgens and Wisch saved some of their most straight garage rockers from the end of the record. They tear through “Get a Grip”, “Miles Away”, and “Ash” in the album’s twilight moments, before riding off into the desert with the perfunctory stomp of “March”. (Bandcamp link)
Freak Genes – Hologram
Release date: August 19th Record label: Feel It Genre: Synthpunk, post-punk, garage rock, new wave Formats: Vinyl, cassette (with Power Station), digital Pull track: Moving Target
Freak Genes, the British duo of Charlie Murphy and Andrew Anderson, have been rolling out their garage-y take on synthpunk for a half decade now, and starting with 2021’s Power Station, have found a natural home on Feel It Records. Hologram is the band’s fifth record, and it feels like a particularly grandiose and dramatic entry into their discography. Although some of Freak Genes’ past material could have been plausibly described as “minimalist”, this doesn’t feel like the case with Hologram—both the synths and the guitars sound ramped up and as if they’re competing for attention.
There’s no small amount of Devo-core throughout Hologram—it’s unsurprising given Freak Genes’ aesthetic, but the new-wavey attitude and nervous rhythms of the title track and “New Crime” go beyond surface-level similarities and capture the true essence of their inspiration. Elsewhere, the duo do straight-up, ripping synthpunk just as well—songs like “Strange Charm” and “The War” blow by determinedly—and on the purely robotic end of the assembly line, the bubbling tension of “Step Off” and the dark dance club vibe of “The Future Is Mine” also grab one’s attention. The latter features guest vocals from Ketty M. Marinova, who pops on several songs on Hologram to contribute an unsettlingly stoic presence among the sirens. As busy as Freak Genes make these thirteen songs, their twists and accents all feel sharp and purposeful. (Bandcamp link)
Ali Murray – Passing Through the Void
Release date: July 31st Record label: Dead Forest Genre: Slowcore, indie folk, dream pop Formats: Digital Pull track: Passing Through the Void
I first wrote about Ali Murray, the prolific singer-songwriter from the Isle of Lewis in northern Scotland, earlier this year with the release of his most recent solo album, April’s Wilderness of Life. That record found Murray exploring everything from quiet dream pop to traditional folk to full-on indie rock over the course of a full-length LP. The three-song Passing Through the Void EP can’t cover the same ground simply due to time constraints, but it’s still a worthwhile presentation of Murray’s strengths.
The appropriately-named title track is perhaps the most vintage Murray song we get on Passing Through the Void—it’s a gorgeous-sounding, deliberately-moving electric slowcore song that ends on a transcendent note by contrasting Murray’s tender vocals with a soaring guitar lead. “Passing Through the Void” is the most immediately attention-grabbing song on the EP, but neither of the other two tracks are filler. “Boy” is the acoustic-based one, with Anna MacKenzie’s cello contributions tilting it more towards the “folky” side of Murray’s acoustic songs. “Silence of Space” is the one where Murray’s shoegaze influence comes through the clearest—it’s not a straight shoegaze song per se, but a demonstration of Murray’s ability to layer sounds without losing the gentle beauty that marks the best of his music. (Bandcamp link)
We are not slowing down here! This week’s Pressing Concerns looks at new albums from Dogbreth and Faye, plus new EPs from The Special Pillow and Guitar.
The Rosy Overdrive July playlist went up earlier this week, which I recommend checking out if you haven’t already. If you’re still looking for more new music, you can browse previous editions of Pressing Concerns or visit the site directory.
Dogbreth – Believe This Rain
Release date: August 5th Record label: Phat ‘n’ Phunky Genre: Jangle pop, alt-country Formats: CD, cassette, digital Pull track: The Threshhold
Tucson, Arizona’s Dogbreth (formerly of, at various points, Phoenix and Seattle) was one of the DIY poppy-and-punky-but-not-pop-punky indie rock bands that sprung up in the late 2000s/early 2010s when mainstream indie was in its yacht rock phase. Like several of those bands, the group (led by singer/songwriter Tristan Jemsek) has strayed a bit from where they started but still are making worthwhile and rewarding music. The fifth Dogbreth record, Believe This Rain, is a sincere, starry album that’s equal parts desert country and classic jangle pop. The band cite some names that are eye-popping for Rosy Overdrive’s target demographic (namely Teenage Fanclub, Tommy Keene, and Miracle Legion) in the creation of Believe This Rain, but there’s also a wide-openness to these songs’ sound that befits their Arizona home and distinguishes them from their influences.
Believe This Rain’s first full-length song, “How You Did That”, is a gorgeous jangly ballad, introducing the openness that’s reflected both in the music and Jemsek’s lyrics, the latter of which is particularly exemplified by the rusty “Like a Walletchain” (“Gonna take better care of myself,” Jemsek vows, and the full title line is “I wear my heart like a walletchain)”. “The Threshold” is shimmery and cinematic, even adding fluttering synths to evoke the best of heartland indie rock acts like Wild Pink. The quieter songs are what make the backbone of Believe This Rain, but the rockers are anything but slight: “Morning Moon (Electric)” proves that fuzz rock is as good a tool as any for the elemental exploration that marks the record, the one-minute, one-verse “Kept Me Here” features maybe the hardest-hitting lyrics on the album, and “Sneak Preview” captures pure joy excellently. But still, it’s the sparse “Like Rain” that closes the record—Jemsek singing “I want every day to smell like rain” over pedal steel and minimal acoustic guitar just feels like the right ending. (Bandcamp link)
Faye – You’re Better
Release date: August 12th Record label: Self Aware Genre: Alt-rock, fuzz rock, punk rock Formats: Vinyl CD, digital Pull track: No Vibes
Charlotte’s Faye is part of a small but notable group of 90s alt-rock-influenced bands that have come out of their home city, including groups like Alright and Late Bloomer. The core of Faye is the duo of Sarah Blumenthal (who fronts the former of the two other aforementioned bands, and co-runs Self Aware Records with Josh Robbins of the latter) and Susan Plante, currently rounded out by drummer Thomas Berkau. The Justin Pizzoferrato-produced You’re Better is the band’s long-awaited debut full-length record (their most recent release had been a self-titled EP on Tiny Engines way back in 2016), and it’s a roaring, excellent-sounding rock record that wears its Breeders influence openly on its sleeve but has too much personality from its two songwriters to come off as derivative or “just” hero worship.
The thundering opening sprint of “No Vibes” sets up most of the key parts of You’re Better—the clear sound makes it easy to hear the equally-balanced fuzz bass from Blumenthal and Plante’s wildly swinging guitar contributions, and both of them are excellent understated vocalists, preferring to let the emotions baked into the songs slowly reveal themselves. In true 90s fashion, Faye find a way to turn every song on You’re Better into loud, amp-cranked alt-rock, no matter at what tempo or volume it starts. This goes for the more upbeat tracks like “Dream Punches” (built around a nice meaty guitar riff), the one-minute “Swing State”, and the rumbling “Nag D”, of course, but they also rock out in the record’s more subtle numbers. “In the Dark” begins with a relatively sparse fuzz bass and drumbeat intro that’s particularly Deal and Deal-esque (and that’s even before Blumenthal and Plante harmonize in the refrain), while closing track “Mortal Kombat” quietly builds for almost two minutes before closing out You’re Better in an appropriate way: with the band plugging in, letting loose, and sounding completely in tune with each other. (Bandcamp link)
The Special Pillow – Mind Wipe
Release date: August 12th Record label: Self-released Genre: Indie pop, psych pop Formats: CD, digital Pull track: Mind Wipe
The Special Pillow is a long-running, Hoboken-based group that’s been putting out their specific strain of indie pop since the mid-90s, led by songwriter, bassist, and former Hypnolovewheel member Dan Cuddy. Their New Jersey roots, the male/female vocal trade-offs, and their ability to shift from three-minute pop songs to seven-minute psych odysseys on a dime all recall their peers in Yo La Tengo, who are confirmed fans of the band because of course they are. I hear plenty more than that on their latest EP, Mind Wipe, though—decades of classic guitar pop bands, both 60s and 60s-evoking psychedelia, and Katie Gentile’s violin even gives parts of it a Mekons-y feel. The EP opens with the snappy psych-rock of the 90-second “Red Lantern”, which deftly marries the accessible and “out there” sides of the EP.
Mind Wipe’s jangly title track is The Special Pillow at their most pure pop, and the aforementioned seven-minute psych odyssey “So Inclined” is a pop song at its core as well, just one punched up and buttressed by lengthy instrumental passages around its edges. The bouncy, acoustic “Access Denied” is also quite catchy—while it doesn’t sound like NRBQ per se, its shuffling beat and its irreverent, tech-inspired lyrics that are about everything and nothing (“Can you prove that you’re not a robot? / …Access denied because you didn’t pass the test / You can continue as a guest”) remind me more of the New Rhythm and Blues Quartet than anything I’ve heard in a while. The Special Pillow save their most psych-heavy moments for the end of the EP, going out with the kaleidoscopic instrumental “Organic Panic” and the trippy, rhythmic “Another Tragic Chorus”; all their bases are covered effectively in six songs and around twenty minutes. (Bandcamp link)
Guitar – Guitar
Release date: July 22nd Record label: Spared Flesh Genre: Lo-fi indie rock, post-punk, garage rock Formats: Cassette, digital Pull track: 122
The impossibly-named Guitar is the solo project of Portland’s Saia Kuli, who has previously played in the bands Gary Supply, Nick Normal and released music under his own name. The project’s debut release, the Guitar EP, is a muddy, scuzzy bedroom punk record that was “Frankensteined” together by Kuli almost entirely alone, with the end result sounding chaotic but captivating. “Twasn’t Meant to Be” and “_Cowbell2” kick off the EP with two garage-y, post-punk sounding tunes that hit hard with the low end (perhaps appropriately considering its title, Kuli used his guitar as a bass for the EP in addition to the “normal” guitar parts).
The rest of the EP continues with the mix of weird chord changes, in-your-face sonics, and rewarding indie rock hidden underneath, although the latter songs of Guitar do differentiate themselves from the first couple. “122” relies on a hypnotic surf-y riff and the chanting between Kuli and his partner, Jonny (the only other contributor to Guitar), while the cyclical “Joy Cometh in the Morning” is still rough but slows things down just a little bit, and has some nice falsetto vocals from Kuli. It is worth spending some time with Guitar; if you’re reading this, there’s a good chance this is for you. (Bandcamp link)
The Rosy Overdrive July 2022 playlist is here! A host of new music (but previously-touched on and thus far untouched on the blog), some selections from my 1980 exploration, and a couple random tunes, as always.
Lee Bains III + The Glory Fires, Friendship, New You, Fox Japan, Gordon M. Phillips, and Perennial all have multiple songs on the playlist this time around.
Here is where you can listen to the playlist on various streaming services: Spotify, Tidal, BNDCMPR. Be sure to check out previous playlist posts if you’ve enjoyed this one.
“Listerine”, New You From Candy (2022, Lonely Ghost)
New You open up their most substantial release yet (and their first as a full band, after beginning as guitarist/vocalist Blake Turner’s solo project) with a monster of a loud pop song in “Listerine”. Turner’s melodic vocals steady the exuberant instrumental, and when he matches it in the chorus (with “They’re playing our song on the radio,” aided by some excellent backing vocals), it’s just the right amount of familiarity. Read more about Candy here.
“Dark Dependency”, BOAT From No Plans to Stick the Landing (2022, Magic Marker)
Seattle’s BOAT has been churning out music somewhat regularly since the mid-2000s (with a notable gap in the late 2010s), and there’s something of an aughts-era, Barsuk-ish earnestness that permeates No Plans to Stick the Landing, even as the band’s easy-to-grasp power pop sound keeps things timeless. “Dark Dependency” is a hell of a single, an unstoppable anthem that nevertheless maintains a level of urgency and pause—I believe this is what music writers like to call “vital”.
“When Life Hands You Problems”, Cheekface From Too Much to Ask (2022)
“When Life Hands You Problems” is a classic Cheekface number to open up Too Much to Ask (the band described it as their “Welcome to the Working Week” in a recent Twitter thread), but it also speeds things up in a heretofore unseen way for the trio. Despite its zippiness, it’s hard to miss Greg Katz’s typically brilliant lyrics (my favorite one here would have to be the title line, the second half of which is: “Make problem-ade”). Read more about Too Much to Ask here.
“Perennial in a Haunted House”, Perennial From In the Midnight Hour (2022)
It’s a never-ending, frantic party throughout In the Midnight Hour, an ambitious, genre-gobbling punk record that is, most importantly, extremely fun to listen to. Single “Perennial in a Haunted House” features all the great hallmarks of the record: traded-off lead vocals, bonkers yet memorable lyrics, and a roaring instrumental that is just always going off. Read more about In the Midnight Hour here.
“Chomp Chomp”, Friendship From Love the Stranger (2022, Merge)
“Chomp Chomp” was the fourth and final single from Love the Stranger, and I had a real “how do they do it” moment when I first heard it. Apparently this song is built off of a composition from drummer (and Dear Life labelhead) Michael Cormier, which then underwent several edits and changes—and yet it sounds effortless and perfect. Every instrumental flourish and line delivered by Dan Wriggins is in just the right place—setting up the “I gave you lousy advice” guard-drop final verse excellently.
“Not in My Head”, Fox Japan From The Right to Be Forgotten (2017)
If all you knew about Fox Japan was their 2000s post-punk-revival indebted earlier music, the relatively straightforward jangle/power pop of The Right to Be Forgotten might be somewhat surprising (similar to half the band’s surprising turn to synthpop on their recent Oblivz side project). But songs like opening track “Not in My Head” have a fizzy energy to them that puts them…if not in the same neighborhood as the band that did “Glenn Beck”, at least the same galaxy.
“Tarmac”, Gordon M. Phillips From Seasonal (2022)
“Tarmac” kicks off Seasonal, the first full-length record under the full name of Downhaul’s Gordon M. Phillips, and a bit of new territory for the singer-songwriter. Phillips frantically strums an acoustic guitar as “Tarmac” strains against its humble origins to turn out something of an anthem, and the titular strip of the song joins the train stop of “Brushstrokes” (from the collaborative You Are with Me EP) and the docks of “Dried” (from Downhaul’s PROOF) as transportation-based fertile songwriting locations for Phillips. Read more about Seasonal here.
“With Abandon”, Megamall From Escape from Lizard City (2022, Fanta)
The brisk-tempoed pop rock of Escape from Lizard City, the debut EP from Vancouver’s Megamall, opens with the unimpeachable “With Abandon”. It’s toe-tapping the whole way through, features some smartly-placed melodic lead guitar, and its greatest weapon is Alie Lynch’s vocals, which sprint around in a way that reminds me of Spud Cannon’s Meg Matthews.
“Down”, Lawn From Bigger Sprout (2022, Born Yesterday)
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: one of the best genre combinations a band can have is “jangle pop/post-punk”. I’m no stranger to New Orleans’ Lawn (2020’s Johnny was one of my favorite records of that year), but their most recent record Bigger Sprout is probably their most evenly-distributed among those two poles. “Down”, in which the band effortlessly conjure their inner Martin Phillipps and The Chills, falls firmly into the “jangle pop” camp.
“Beat, Perpetual”, Martha From Beat, Perpetual (2022, Dirtnap)
2016’s Blisters in the Pit of My Heart was one of my favorite records of the decade and, realistically, all-time. Nothing Martha has done since has quite captured that same feeling for me, but “Beat, Perpetual” is a promising one-off (for now) single that comes close. As the title kind of hints at, the song rolls on appropriately quickly, but there’s plenty going on as its three minutes zip by.
“Superglued to You”, Hallelujah the Hills (2022, Discrete Pageantry)
Few things can make me happier than a band staying the course and creating great music while paying no heed to the shifting ground beneath them. Musically, we’re a long way since 2007, but “Superglued to You” is as good as anything from Hallelujah the Hills’ Collective Psychosis Begone. Ryan H. Walsh is in something of a storytelling mode in the verses, but the two-line chorus (“What are we gonna do? / Turns out I’m superglued to you”) doesn’t keep any space between himself and the listener.
“Problem with It”, Plains From I Walked with You a Ways (2022, Anti-)
I don’t know who Jess Williamson is and (for the moment) I don’t really care, but any new Katie Crutchfield project is welcome. “Problem with It” announces Crutchfield and Williamson’s debut record as the duo Plains, and it’s a mid-tempo indie country-rocker that has way too much Katie Crutchfield personality to fade into anonymity like a lot of modern entries into the genre. My only “problem with it” is that it’s gonna make it harder to find information on the New Hampshire Built to Spill-core band of the same name.
“(In Remembrance of the) 40-Hour Week”, Lee Bains III + The Glory Fires From Old-Time Folks (2022, Don Giovanni)
The second single from Lee Bains III + The Glory Fires’ Old-Time Folks is a bit more of a classic, straightforward Lee Bains southern rock anthem, even if it also embraces the acoustic guitars and clearer vocals that the band declared were their ambitions when the record was announced. The crushing weight of endless work is an evergreen topic for Bains, although this time he and the Glory Fires are quite spirited in their examination, not letting themselves be flattened or deflated.
“Reggae Fi Peach”, Linton Kwesi Johnson From Bass Culture (1980, Island)
I was very curious to finally get to Bass Culture as I worked through my list of records from 1980. I suspected that the record of dub poetry would be interesting and powerful, but songs like ”Reggae Fi Peach” have replay value aside from Linton Kwesi Johnson’s words. Johnson’s lyrics are pretty transparently about the murder of anti-Nazi activist Blair Peach at the hands of London police, a statement aided greatly by his dynamic delivery and backing music.
“110 Blues”, David Nance From Pulverized and Slightly Peaced (2022, Petty Bunco)
Pulverized and Slightly Peaced is an alternate version of the David Nance Group’s 2018 record Peaced and Slightly Pulverized—this one was recorded by Nance alone before he decided to go with “fleshed out” full-band takes instead. The Pulverized and Slightly Peaced version of “110 Blues” actually sounds more accessible to my ears—it’s twice as long, sure, but it’s a sincere, straightforward Nance garage-rocker through and through.
“Ramekin”, Friendship From Love the Stranger (2022, Merge)
The list of what Friendship and Dan Wriggins can do is already fairly long, but we can now add “Making the lines ‘Ramekin / With the grape jelly remnants’ sound profound” to it. In terms of memorability, “Ramekin” is up there with any of Love the Stranger’s four singles (both in the song’s composition and classic Wriggins lines like “Apathy joins me in the booth”), but it has something of a dark undertone that perhaps was best served by holding back for the record.
“I Fall into Her Arms”, Mo Troper From Mo Troper V (2022, Lame-O)
Of course, I loved it at the time, but I think in hindsight we will all look at Mo Troper’s Dilettante as an especially important work in his career trajectory. That album busted down a bunch of doors for Troper to walk through, a few of which get probed further on Mo Troper V (aka MTV). Lead single “I Fall into Her Arms” is undeniably one of the catchiest Troper pieces yet, even as it goes in a direction he hadn’t really traversed yet. I’ll have more to say on MTV next month.
“Note on the Table”, The Cat’s Miaow From Songs ’94-‘98 (2022, World of Echo)
Songs ’94-’98 collects compilation appearances and one-off singles during the titular period of activity from Melbourne, Australia’s The Cat’s Miaow, and the end result is a group of light, airy twee indie pop that drifts along breezily. “Note on the Table” is distinguished by something of a snappy chorus that zigs away from the still-pleasing-yet-more-subtly verses.
“Dear Miss Lonely Hearts”, Phil Lynott From Solo in Soho (1980, Warner/Vertigo/Mercury)
Solo in Soho is a weird album, as one might expect from a Phil Lynott solo record put together as the 1970s were ending. There are the requisite synth flirtation moments, an oddly intriguing rap about U.K. punk bands, and plenty of “yeah, this sounds like Thin Lizzy”. Opening track “Dear Miss Lonely Hearts” is a successful mix, a classic, mid-tempo Lizzy-evoking tune that has some synths running unobtrusively underneath its surface.
“Gimme Some Truth”, Militarie Gun (2022)
Who knew that Militarie Gun covering a John Lennon song would be some kind of sweet spot for me? Lead singer Ian Shelton’s love of power pop is well-known (to me, at least), and taking on “Gimme Some Truth” allows Shelton and the band to bend one of the godfathers of the genre to their post-hardcore will, rather than injecting a bit of pop into their originals. It works really well.
“The Fall”, Gordon M. Phillips From Seasonal (2022)
Like “Tarmac”, “The Fall” is clearly a big Gordon M. Phillips song that can’t be hidden by an acoustic, four-tracked setting. Unlike “Tarmac”, though, “The Fall” takes its time along its way, allowing Phillips’ simple but effective lyrics space to reverberate. Oh, and there’s one hell of a melodica solo toward the track’s end. Read more about Seasonal here.
“Tooth Plus Claw”, Perennial From In the Midnight Hour (2022)
It’s pointless to try to pick the best song on In the Midnight Hour (it’s like choosing a favorite feral child) but if you have to go with just one, “Tooth Plus Claw” would be far from the worst option. It feels more barebones than “Perennial in a Haunted House”, getting a lot of mileage out of a demented surf rock riff, even though there’s still a lot going on in these 90 seconds. Read more about In the Midnight Hour here.
“Support Your Local Nihilist”, Frances Chang From Support Your Local Nihilist (2022, Destiny Is a Dog)
The title track of Support Your Local Nihilist is, perhaps appropriately, something of the record in a nutshell. It starts as a guitar piece, jumping head-first into emotional, exciting alt-rock, but then deconstructs itself in its second half into a synth-based soundscape. Read more about Support Your Local Nihilist here.
“Aparecida”, Tomato Flower From Construction (2022, Ramp Local)
Although they only have two EPs to their name thus far, Baltimore’s Tomato Flower have already cultivated something of a signature sound, and “Aparecida” may be the best example of it yet. It is space-y, lounge-y psych pop at its finest, with a soaring chorus that feels directly lifted from your personal favorite Elephant Six record. Read more about Construction here.
“Mark on You”, the Mountain Goats From Bleed Out (2022, Merge)
Between “Training Montage” and “Mark on You”, Bleed Out is my most anticipated Mountain Goats record in quite some time (I found the single that came out between the two, “Wage Wars Get Rich Die Handsome”, somewhat lacking in depth, but even that one is sonically exciting enough on its own). “Mark on You” is both the most traditionally-Goats sounding song of the three (the tempo is in typical John Darnielle range, and his vocals are right there) and still quite out there (it’s a bass-driven song that sounds shockingly like 90s alt-rock).
“I Know It for a Fact”, Fox Japan From The Right to Be Forgotten (2017)
It would’ve been very funny if The Right to Be Forgotten had ended up being the final Fox Japan album—although then we wouldn’t have gotten 2020’s excellent What We’re Not in that case. Like “Not in My Head”, “I Know It for a Fact” is on the peppy/upbeat end of the power pop spectrum—if there’s any of the genre’s trademark wistfulness in it, it’s in Charlie Wilmoth’s vocal delivery, although he musters up the authority to deliver the title line with the gusto it deserves.
“Last of You”, Try the Pie From A Widening Burst of Forever (2022, Get Better)
A Widening Burst of Forever is the first record from San Francisco’s Try the Pie since 2015, and it’s highly recommended for those of us who like our indie rock loud and distorted but also clearly song-first. Single “Last of You” is a roaring album highlight, with 90s-indie-rock-guitar heroics rising and falling throughout the track but never enough to take away from Bean Tupou’s vocals.
“Globbed”, Hellrazor From Heaven’s Gate (2022)
“Globbed” is part of Heaven’s Gate’s opening one-two salvo—it’s an incredibly hooky loud-pop tune that’s all dirty power pop in its verses and featuring a chorus that’s a dead ringer for a Bleach-era Nirvana highlight. Read more about Heaven’s Gate here.
“World As Bad Idea”, JUMBO From World As Bad Idea (2022)
I don’t know too much about Bristol’s JUMBO. I know they share members with the band SLONK, about which I also know little. I also know that the title track to their recent World As Bad Idea EP knocked me off my feet when I heard it. The seven-minute, frequently horn-laden “World As Bad Idea” has a drive to it that reminds me of another band on this playlist, Hallelujah the Hills. Sincere, accessible pop rock that doesn’t dumb itself down in any way—you’ll like it.
“Lizard People”, Lee Bains III + The Glory Fires From Old-Time Folks (2022, Don Giovanni)
“(In Remembrance of the) 40-Hour Week” is Lee Bains’ successful attempt at nailing the “okay, got it” protest music he wanted to explore on Old-Time Folks; something like “Lizard People” is going to be a bit thornier than that. It’s incredibly catchy, sure, it’s got that in common, but “Lizard People” also requires one to come along with Bains on a workday, navigating conspiracy-addled broken thoughts from co-workers. Bains lays everything out clearly with his analysis in the third verse, but the outro (“Everybody’s good, everybody’s evil / But why does it pay to play like lizard people?”) is a question rather than a slogan.
“(I’m) Screwed”, Titus Andronicus From The Will to Live (2022, Merge)
A rousing, anthemic punk rock single that’s named “(I’m) Screwed”? Yes, Titus Andronicus are back. The single that announced The Will to Live (albeit not the first song released from the record; that’d be the then-one off “We’re Coming Back” from earlier this year) is vintage Titus, somehow feeling economically excessive, with Patrick Stickles putting his all into lines that just hang there (“Is it still a murder if it occurs gradually?”).
“Double Edged Knife”, Slant 6 From Soda Pop * Rip Off (1994, Dischord)
I’ve never had a Slant 6 song on one of these playlists, and I put Soda Pop * Rip Off on the “great under-appreciated 90s rock records” shortlist, so here we are. Really, I could’ve chosen just about anything from this album, but “Double Edged Knife” is such a brief but complete summation of the whole Slant 6 deal, evoking the full-throated Pacific Northwest “fans also like” bands but one foot firmly in the rumbling Dischord/D.C. camp of their hometown.
“This Is Love”, Nina Nastasia From Riderless Horse (2022, Temporary Residence Ltd.)
Riderless Horse sounds like a Nina Nastasia record in that it’s marked only by Nastasia’s voice and acoustic guitar, only this time the backdrop serves to deliver a collection of brutal songs whose circumstances are a bit too much to get into here. The bleak “This Is Love” is perhaps the most ear-catching example of the juxtaposition on Riderless Horse, with Nastasia declaring “I guess I’ll just stay in hell with you if this is love” multiple times in the track. Read more about Riderless Horse here.
“Solitaire”, Krill From Alam No Hris (2012, Sipsman/Sren)
The cult band Krill are reissuing their debut record Alam No Hris for its tenth anniversary, and they’ve chosen “Solitaire” as an advance single. If you’re familiar with just their master work Lucky Leaves and its stretched-out follow-up A Distant Fist Unclenching, “Solitaire” sounds fairly similar to what you’d expect in the best way possible—a rougher, ramshackle version of the sound Krill would go on to half-heartedly attempt to tame over their time as a band.
“Everybody Hertz”, Kal Marks From My Name Is Hell (2022, Exploding in Sound)
My Name Is Hell is Kal Marks’ first record as a four-piece, and it features an all-new line-up aside from founding guitarist/vocalist Carl Shane. While the new members haven’t taken the band in a wildly different direction, the group’s fifth record sounds like a relatively cleaned-up version of the Boston band’s noise rock. Single “Everyboy Hertz” may be the best example of it on the record—it’s positively friendly-sounding (if still somewhat aggressive) and hews surprisingly towards sincerity in its message. Read more about My Name Is Hell here.
“The Tears of a Clown”, The Beat From I Just Can’t Stop It (1980, Sire/Go-Feet)
So, here’s a ska song for you. The Beat (The English Beat, if you must) and their debut record were one of my most “it holds up” forays into 1980, and I’ll just stick with one of the most immediately infectious songs from I Just Can’t Stop It and offer up their version of “The Tears of a Clown” here. It was their debut single, and they’d make music that’s probably more impressive overall from there, but they already had something with their adaptation of the decade-old-at-the-time Smokey Robinson hit.
“Big Surprise”, New You From Candy (2022, Lonely Ghost)
Coming right after “Listerine”, Candy loses no momentum going into track two. The loud, 90s-indebted power pop of “Big Surprise” is not exactly a surprise (big or otherwise) to those already familiar with New You, but that doesn’t take away from just how well-executed the song is. Blake Turner shines over the blaring instrumental, and that chorus is vintage power pop if I’ve ever heard it. Read more about Candy here.
“Walk Like Me”, Blondie From Autoamerican (1980, Capitol)
I am not a Blondie superfan (not at this stage in my life at least); my understanding is that Autoamerican is “the weird Blondie album” (or, at least, one of the weird Blondie albums). It sounds like a band with several creative personalities trying to pull it in several different directions—and the end result is a very listenable record, if disjointed. “Walk Like Me”, however, is one of the most “classic” Blondie songs on the record, prowling through the verses so that Debbie Harry can, of course, give her all in the chorus.
“Thing”, Thin White Rope From Moonhead (1987, Frontier)
Thin White Rope is one of the bands that have an unimpeachable opening trio of records, and there’s no wrong answer as to which of them is best. The dark, paranoid Moonhead is the black sheep of the three in a good way, and although the sparse acoustic “Thing” doesn’t really sound like the rest of the record, it fits well, with Guy Kyser’s distinct vocals taking on a particularly haunted timbre in the quiet context.
“Sirens of Titan”, Tim Heidecker feat. Kurt Vile From High School (2022, Spacebomb)
I do think Tim Heidecker is funny, but “Sirens of Titan” is the first time I’ve heard one of his songs and have felt like I would’ve cared about it regardless of its author. Part of that probably has to do with the singular Kurt Vile, an always welcome presence, but the whole song is just an immaculately-done slick indie pop rock tune.
It’s the first Pressing Concerns of August, and it is a big one! Here, we look at new albums from Cheekface, Kal Marks, and Hellrazor, and a new EP from Tomato Flower. For the first time in what feels like forever, all four selections came out/will come out this very week (and there are a couple other albums from this week that I didn’t get to but plan to cover in the near future).
If you’re still looking for more new music, you can browse previous editions of Pressing Concerns or visit the site directory.
Cheekface – Too Much to Ask
Release date: August 2nd Record label: Self-released Genre: Garage rock, post-punk, Cheekface Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull track: When Life Hands You Problems
Another year, another quality Cheekface album. January 2021’s Emphatically No. was probably the first great record of last year, and the surprise-released Too Much to Ask ensures that the Los Angeles trio won’t be left out of the 2022 discussion either. Like Emphatically No. before it, the band’s third album is partially made up of singles that steadily appeared over the past year and a half: “We Need a Bigger Dumpster” showed up in a post here last April, and “Next to Me (Yo Guy Version)” and “Featured Singer” have been out since 2021 as well. If Too Much to Ask was just a compilation of songs at that level it would still be worth discussing, but it also hangs together quite well as a whole album.
To be sure, the cohesion of Too Much to Ask has to do with the vintage Cheekface sound and feel—Greg Katz’s monotone vocals and flung-at-a-cultural-dartboard lyrics pared with pop-friendly instrumentals that are nonetheless somewhat hard to pin down musically. But it also has to do with the record’s willingness to stretch their sound. Even as Too Much to Ask opens with three pure Cheekface anthems, “When Life Hands You Problems” speeds everything up to a surprising and rewarding degree. And that’s only the start of it: “I Feel So Weird!” veers hard immediately after the opening trio, featuring Katz straining his vocals in a way that’s completely opposite of a typical Cheekface tune (fear not, the verses still deliver excellent lines like “It’s the ten year anniversary of everything from ten years ago / Think about it, just think about it”).
Meanwhile, the jaunty “You Always Want to Bomb the Middle East”, the groovy “Friends” (shout-out to the rhythm section of bassist Amanda Tannen and drummer Mark Echo Edwards for that one), and the roundabout sincerity of “Next to Me (Yo Guy Version)” all feature some unabashed guitar heroics, and “Featured Singer” completes the most daring idea on the record (Cheekface explicitly as dance music) in a completely appropriate way. There’s no song on Too Much to Ask that feels out of place on the record, and none of the moves within the songs feel like wrong turns either. So, come on: let yourself feel Cheekface’s energy. (Bandcamp link)
Kal Marks – My Name Is Hell
Release date: August 5th Record label: Exploding in Sound Genre: Noise rock, punk rock Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull track: Everybody Hertz
My Name Is Hell is the fifth record by Boston’s Kal Marks, but it’s the first one featuring the band’s new four-piece lineup, comprised of founding guitarist/vocalist/lyricist Carl Shane and entirely new members otherwise. While the band’s new players (guitarist Christina Puerto of Bethlehem Steel, bassist John Russell, and drummer Dylan Teggart) haven’t taken Kal Marks in a radically different direction, the expansion to a quartet from a trio ironically seems to have cleaned the band up a little bit. Shane’s vocals are cleaner, and the four of them all seem game to put to tape what ends up being a straightforward meaty rock record.
Like any good noise rock album, My Name Is Hell leans quite a bit on its rhythm section—songs like “Shit Town” and “Who Waits” come alive because of notable low ends and pummeling percussion. However, Kal Marks make it clear that they can use their other tools in key moments in My Name Is Hell as well— opening track “My Life Is a Freak Show” introduces a theatrical lead vocal from Shane that steals the proverbial freak show, and his howls in the title track compete with a dueling lead guitar for the starring role of the song. In the mid-section of the record, songs like “New Neighbor” and “Ovation” prove that “atmospheric” tracks can still be quite noisy and rocky.
Of the two biggest departures for the band, “Everybody Hertz” is the more familiar one sonically—it’s basically just a friendlier version of the loud rock that typifies Kal Marks—but despite its titular wordplay, the sincerity buried underneath is surprising in its bluntness. The other outlier is closing track “Bored Again”, a mid-tempo slow-builder that features Shane vowing that “We’ll find a way” towards its end. Kal Marks did find a way to go on, and My Name Is Hell makes it clear that it was the right call. (Bandcamp link)
Hellrazor – Heaven’s Gate
Release date: August 2nd Record label: Self-released Genre: Fuzz rock, grunge, punk rock Formats: Digital Pull track: Globbed
New Haven’s Hellrazor is led by Michael Falcone (currently of Speedy Ortiz, formerly of Ovlov), and the version of the band one hears on Heaven’s Gate also features bassist/vocalist Kate Meizner (of The Glow) and drummer Michael Henss (who has since left the band “under friendly circumstances” to focus on his solo material). Heaven’s Gate is Hellrazor’s first record in six years (following their 2016 debut Satan Smile), and the band describes it as a “best of” album culled from everything Falcone and company had been working on in the gap between releases. Heaven’s Gate is indebted to classic alternative rock (you know, the underground version of it), but, as the album’s nine songs helpfully demonstrate, there’s a wide range of music within this field for Hellrazor to explore.
The record opens with two incredibly hooky loud-pop tunes that are dead ringers for Bleach-era Nirvana (“Big Buzz” is the more consistently Cobain-esque, but the chorus to “Globbed” is the clearest single moment). From there, Hellrazor serve up acid-fried, Butthole Surfers-esque punk (“Demon Hellride”), Soundgarden-evoking downtuned riff rock (“Lanscaper”), and 1995 Modern Rock Radio-ready catchy singles (“Jello Stars”). Heaven’s Gate comes off noisier and more sonically busy than fellow Dinosaur Jr./Nirvana revivalists like Late Bloomer and Gnawing, but it’s not any more of a straight shoegaze record than, say, You’re Living All Over Me is. Heaven’s Gate is on the shorter side (it’s 26 minutes and change, and that’s counting closing track “All the Candy in the World”, a Henss creation that is…decidedly an outlier), but both in hooks and breadth, it covers plenty of ground. (Bandcamp link)
Tomato Flower – Construction
Release date: August 5th Record label: Ramp Local Genre: Psychedelic pop, space pop Formats: Cassette, CD (with Gold Arc), digital Pull track: Aparecida
Only a few months after their debut release (February’s Gold Arc EP), Baltimore’s Tomato Flower are already back with a second six-song record in Construction. Not so much a sequel to Gold Arc as a companion piece, the two EPs were recorded simultaneously, but the staggered release makes sense, as they feel like two separate statements. Construction is not an entire world away from the colorful psychedelic pop of Gold Arc, but it feels a bit darker and, somewhat appropriately, more visibly displaying its base elements than the previous record’s more frequent sensory overload.
The spacey, lounge-y pop of Gold Arc is still there—“Aparecida”, for one, might be the strongest version of it that Tomato Flower have put together yet, and the harmonies of closing track “Taking My Time” also evoke the previous EP’s best moments—but Construction opens with the curveball of “Bug”, which stops and starts for three minutes hypnotically, and also offers up the languid, stretched-out “Blue”. The EP’s title track is perhaps the best synthesis of Tomato Flower’s multiple sides—it contains moments of kaleidoscopic, kitchen-sink-instrumentation indie pop, but (in a reflection of Construction as a whole), this is merely one section of a larger, multi-part structure. (Bandcamp link)
New music? Yes! This week’s Pressing Concerns looks at new albums from Gordon M. Phillips, Nina Nastasia, and Ben Woods, and a new EP from New You.
If you’re still looking for more new music, you can browse previous editions of Pressing Concerns or visit the site directory.
Gordon M. Phillips – Seasonal
Release date: July 22nd Record label: Self-released Genre: Folk rock, singer-songwriter Formats: Digital Pull track: Tarmac
Gordon M. Phillips is probably best-known as the lead singer of Richmond’s Downhaul, whose PROOF was one of my favorite records of last year (or maybe you know him as a very good music writer in his own right). It is, perhaps, not a huge surprise that Phillips does not attempt to recreate the baritone-guitar-led, cinematic emo sound of PROOF on Seasonal, the first full-length released under his own name. However, Phillips’ solo debut album also doesn’t quite sound like the material he’s released under his own name thus far—the relatively slick country-ish songs of the You Are With Me EP he made with Maxwell Stern, and the one-off single “The Hotel”. Seasonal was recorded entirely by Phillips on a Tascam 4-track, and it’s subsequently a sparse-sounding album.
The pared-down sound doesn’t mean Seasonal is all quietness, however—it’s recognizably Phillips-sounding, which means I can hear echoes of Downhaul and his other solo material in these songs. Opening track “Tarmac” and mid-record highlight “The Fall” both strain against their acoustic foundations, recalling some of the big choruses of Phillips’ past (the titular strip of the former joins the train stop of “Brushstrokes” and the docks of “Dried” as transportation-based fertile songwriting locations for Phillips). The twangy “April” could’ve been adapted to fit into Phillips’ more country endeavors, and the moody “At, At” feels like something from PROOF stripped to its barest elements.
Even the songs on Seasonal that sound the most like the product of a home-recording session all take different paths on this journey. For one, there’s the drum-machine and sample-aided “On Purpose”, which would feel completely out of place if it wasn’t for the familiarity of Phillips’ vocals throughout, and then immediately after it, the minimalist acoustic guitar that marks “I.N.T.L.” is necessary to quietly and unobtrusively give the heartbreaking story at the center of the song some space. “I.N.T.L.” looks down a bleak abyss and ends with Phillips quietly resolving “What I know is this: I need to live”, something that gets echoed in “Somebody”, another Seasonal song that’s well-served by the spareness of the record. Over just a casually-strummed guitar and ample background noise, Phillips cycles through a litany of experiences, distractions, and circumstances before shrugging and saying “Somebody’s gotta do it, I guess”. (Bandcamp link)
New You – Candy
Release date: June 24th Record label: Lonely Ghost Genre: Power pop, fuzz rock Formats: Digital Pull track: Listerine
I first heard of New You last year through their one-off single “Suffer”, a Smashing Pumpkins-indebted piece of hooky alt-rock that put them somewhere between the one-man power fuzz of Dazy and the more melodic side of New Morality Zine’s roster. Last month’s Candy EP is the Seattle group’s most substantial release yet, and as its name implies, it veers hard into a muscular power pop sound, evoking “Super-” bands like -Crush and –Drag (who they’ve covered before). The fuller sound is no accident—after beginning as guitarist/vocalist Blake Turner’s solo project in Massachusetts, his move back to the Pacific Northwest has resulted in the band growing to a four-piece, and Candy sounds like it.
Opening track “Listerine” is a monster of a loud pop song, with Turner’s melodic vocals steadying the exuberant instrumental, and when he matches it in the chorus (with “They’re playing our song on the radio,” aided by some excellent backing vocals), it’s just the right amount of familiarity. The EP’s other bookend is “Fairweather”, which finds New You rising and falling to meet the song—the first minute is just Turner’s voice accompanied by some choppy power chords, before it soars in its second half. Although those two tracks are the biggest personal standouts, the middle of Candy doesn’t really fall under the realm of “album tracks”—hooky lead guitar parts, big choruses, and Turner shining over blaring fuzzy rock abound throughout. (Bandcamp link)
Nina Nastasia – Riderless Horse
Release date: July 22nd Record label: Temporary Residence Ltd. Genre: Folk Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital Pull track: This Is Love
Nina Nastasia’s sparse folk music has always existed in the realm of noise rock, metal, and just generally “heavier” genres—she regularly records with Steve Albini, has released records on Touch & Go, and toured with Mogwai this year. This heaviness associated with her music feels especially relevant with the release of her seventh record, Riderless Horse. Both the dozen-year gap that separates it from her most recent album and the actual contents of Riderless Horse are linked inextricably to Kennan Gudjonsson, her longtime romantic and musical partner who died by suicide in 2020 and with whom she had a difficult relationship until his death.
Riderless Horse sounds like a Nina Nastasia record in that it’s marked only by Nastasia’s voice and acoustic guitar, presenting these songs as simply as possible. With nowhere to hide, the record dives into the relationship at its core from the beginning—the understated “Just Stay in Bed” frets around the corners and gives into the unblinking account of “You Were So Mad”. The bleak “This Is Love” is perhaps the most ear-catching example on Riderless Horse (“I guess I’ll just stay in hell with you if this is love”), but Nastasia examines everything up to the last track with lyrics, “Afterwards”, which acknowledges the loss of Gudjonsson before closing with Nastasia’s assessment of herself: “I want to live / I am ready to live”. (Bandcamp link)
Ben Woods – Dispeller
Release date: July 15th Record label: Shrimper/Melted Ice Cream/Meritorio Genre: Experimental rock, slowcore, chamber pop Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital Pull track: Trace Reel
Christchurch’s Ben Woods has played in notable New Zealand bands Wurld Series and Salad Boys, but since the theme of today’s post seems to be “solo artists making different music than they’ve made with bands”, Dispeller is pretty far removed from either of those groups’ jangly guitar pop. The wide sonic palette of the record—one that frequently hovers away from traditional guitar-based music—makes it seem like an odd surface fit for lo-fi indie rock haven Shrimper Records, but a close listen reveals Dispeller mixes pop music and experimental fare in equal measure, much like Shrimper’s flagship band, Refrigerator.
Take “Trace Reel”, which floats a ringing piano part around in the first half of the song, and then congeals around it for a rousing finish. Elsewhere, “The Strip” is a sleepy dream pop ballad evoking Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness of all things, and “Punishing Type” builds something warm and welcoming out of intrusive noises and a molasses tempo. The shuffling “White Leather Again” closes out the record in slow-moving pop mode as well, an appropriate ending for an album that has a lot to appreciate, but only if one is willing to meet it at its own, unhurried pace. (Bandcamp link)
This week’s Pressing Concerns is comprised of new(-ish) records from Perennial, Hello Whirled, Frances Chang, and Anne Malin.
If you’re still looking for more new music, you can browse previous editions of Pressing Concerns or visit the site directory.
Perennial – In the Midnight Hour
Release date: February 1st Record label: Self-released Genre: Post-hardcore, dance punk, garage rock Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital Pull track: Perennial in a Haunted House
In the Midnight Hour has been out a while (since February), but it’s new to me and this is my blog and I do what I want, so we’re talking about Perennial today. The New England band’s second album feels like a completely inhibition-less rock record, where thrashing post-hardcore, expanded-palette art punk, and catchy garage rock all combine to make something unforgettably attention-grabbing. Vocalists Chelsey Hahn and Chad Jewett trade off their taunts and howls on pretty much every song on In the Midnight Hour, Jewett’s guitar and Wil Mulhern’s drums slice and punch through each track, and the entire record sounds great, thanks in part to production from Chris Teti of The World Is a Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid to Die.
In the Midnight Hour immediately barrels through the opening duo of “The Skeleton Dance” and the title track, both of which come off as demented, demonically-possessed surf rock tunes that are carried by Mulhern’s pounding percussion. Although the dance-punk of third track “Soliloquy for Neil Perry” is slightly tamer by comparison, respites in In the Midnight Hour mostly have to be found within individual tracks, like when “Food for Hornets” and “Melody for a New Cornet” just kind of fade away after letting off steam. Other than “Hey Eurydice”, every song on the record finds the band “on”, with both of the album’s singles (“Tooth Plus Claw” and “Perennial in a Haunted House”) showing up on a side two that loses no steam whatsoever. (Bandcamp link)
Hello Whirled – Hoping for a Little More…Pizzazz
Release date: July 22nd Record label: Repeating Cloud Genre: Lo-fi indie rock Formats: Cassette, digital Pull track: Holding Back the Water
The CliffsNotes version of 90s indie rock is that it was populated with chronic irony peddlers, led by bands who simply could not communicate anything remotely sincere without obscuring and meta-writing. Hello Whirled’s Ben Spizuco does not strike me as someone who takes his cues from CliffsNotes. There’s the work ethic, for one—if you read Rosy Overdrive regularly, you’re familiar with the prolificoutputofHello Whirled (whose records are always written and performed almost entirely by Spizuco). For another, Spizuco’s music is aggressively, confrontationally sincere, digging down to the bedrock of lo-fi music—dudes expressing their emotions in the only way they know how (Lou Barlow is the patron saint of this, but far from the only one).
Hello Whirled’s long-awaited first full-length record of 2022 continues this trend from the get-go with “When Can I Admit I Miss You”, whose refrain begins with “I wanna cry in the shower / But then I’d have to learn how to,” only to be upstaged two lines later with “I wanna die in the sense / That everyone forgets who I am and leaves me alone”. Hoping for a Little More…Pizzazz then jumps to “Holding Back to the Water”, reminding the listener of Spizuco’s pop songwriting, the other main Hello Whirled hallmark. Hoping for a Little More…Pizzazz feels a little more sonically heavy than the 2021 Hello Whirled albums—not that those records didn’t have loud moments, but perhaps the longer gestation time allowed Spizuco to really punch up songs like “Ruins”, “Nothing Changes”, and the droning album closer “A Cathedral Repeatedly Falling Apart”. Still, the pop Spizuco comes through on single “Cheerleader” and “20 Minute Saxophone Solo”, among other songs, giving Hoping for a Little More…Pizzazz a rounded-out feeling. (Bandcamp link)
Frances Chang – Support Your Local Nihilist
Release date: July 22nd Record label: Destiny Is a Dog Genre: Experimental indie rock, slowcore Formats: Cassette, digital Pull track: Support Your Local Nihilist
Brooklyn’s Frances Chang has been in several bands and released music under various project names, but Support Your Local Nihilist is the first record she’s released under her own. Chang has made music that falls under the banners of ambient, musique concrète, and electronica, but Support Your Local Nihilist is clearly an indie rock record, if a decidedly asymmetrical one. The song’s nine tracks do not end up where they start, instead forming mazes of guitars, synths, and percussion that are held together by Chang’s centered vocals. Album opener “P Much Deranged” and the record’s title track both start off as guitar pieces—the former slips into a minimal presentation of Chang’s voice and guitar while “Support Your Local Nihilist” jumps into alt-rock—but both deconstruct themselves in the second half into synth-based soundscapes.
The quieter songs on Support Your Local Nihilist don’t have as far to travel—the acoustic-based “Escapism” carefully steps forward, although the reverb-y slowcore of “Flower Childs” starts vibrating towards its end. “Headless” is perhaps the most “normal” song on Support Your Local Nihilist—there are moments of noise, but these are around the edges of a weary, mid-tempo indie rocker. Closing track “Solo Tripping in the Deathverse” floats along, Chang draping a melody over synth washes and bursts of drumming. Support Your Local Nihilist drifts to an impressive degree, but there remains plenty to hold onto on the record. (Bandcamp link)
Anne Malin – Summer Angel
Release date: June 17th Record label: Dear Life Genre: Folk rock, freak folk, alt-country Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital Pull track: Pink Blur
Anne Malin is a Nashville-based poet and singer-songwriter, and her latest album Summer Angel is a folk- and country-indebted record that centers Malin ably. Malin and her band (featuring, among others, Trevor Nikrant of Styrofoam Winos on drums, organ, synthesizer, and vibraphone) color the songs of Summer Angel but leave plenty of empty space in a way reminiscent of the work of Nina Nastasia or Jason Molina. It’s an electric album, but a restrained one—the foot-tapping, cyclical guitar riff that opens first track “Pink Blur” sets the stage nicely for a set of sparse ballads and steady-footed mid-tempo folk rock.
Malin isn’t constrained by the traditionalism of the genres in which she’s operating—the saxophone in songs like “Mary (Dear God Please Help Me)” and “Burdens” feels as natural as the “normal” instrumentation, and mid-record highlight “Roses” imagines a middle ground between the country rock of Rosali’s No Medium and the hushed psychedelia of Spencer Krug’s recent solo material. Elsewhere, the organ-led “Destroyer” is Anne Malin’s run at star-driven, unstuck-from-time pop music—like the rest of Summer Angel, it takes familiar ingredients on a leisurely path to a memorable final product. (Bandcamp link)
Pressing Concerns is back after a brief hiatus. Today, we hit on new records from Vintage Crop, Flowertown, Options, and Fiver.
If you’re still looking for more new music, you can browse previous editions of Pressing Concerns or visit the site directory.
Vintage Crop – Kibitzer
Release date: June 24th Record label: Anti Fade/Upset the Rhythm/Weather Vane Genre: Post-punk, garage rock Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull track: Drafted
Geelong, Australia’s Vintage Crop have been tearing through their mix of ripping garage rock and talky post-punk since 2017, with vocalist Jack Cherry frenetically but smartly caricaturizing mundanity and corporate nonsense in releases like 2019’s Company Man EP and 2020’s Serve to Serve Again (one of Rosy Overdrive’s favorite records of that year). Their third full-length, June’s Kibitzer, delivers on both fronts, with the band barreling through hooky but muscular pieces of egg punk over top of confident-as-ever Cherry observations.
“It’s me, I’m the Duke / It’s me, it’s not a joke,” Cherry crowns himself in “The Duke”, which adds keyboard accents to push the song into synthpunk territory, even as it forms part of an opening garage rock salvo along with the show business-mining “Casting Calls” and the stomping “Double Slants”. Elsewhere on Kibitzer, Vintage Crop get their Naked Raygun on with the military-minded “Drafted” and “The Bloody War”—the former features insistent bass and scribbled guitar for instant gratification, the latter giving Cherry’s close-to-spoken vocals space to reverberate. Kibitzer works as well as it does because of how well-oiled the band sounds on these songs—particularly on rhythm-forward constructions like “Under Offer” and “Hold the Line”, kibitzing never sounded so good. (Bandcamp link)
Flowertown – Half Yesterday
Release date: July 8th Record label: Mt. St. Mtn./Paisley Shirt Genre: Jangle pop, dream pop, slowcore Formats: Vinyl, cassette, digital Pull track: The Intersection
Flowertown are a dreamy and leisurely San Francisco duo made up of Karina Gill (of Cindy) and Michael Ramos (of Tony Jay, whose Hey There Flower just got reissued by Mt. St. Mtn. as well). Although Gill and Ramos have only been making music together since 2020, Half Yesterday is their fourth record together, following two EPs (later compiled together) in their first year as a band and 2021’s Time Trials. Time Trials already landed squarely on the quiet and slow end of guitar pop, and with Half Yesterday, Flowertown sound even more determined to let these songs take their time.
Opening track “Buttercream” has a bit of a propulsive drumbeat, even as the warm guitar reverb and Ramos’ whispered vocals are the most prominent aspects of the song, while the title track casually adds a lilting organ tone into the mix. Elsewhere on Half Yesterday, the duo approach the starkness of Tony Jay by offering up little more than electric guitar and vocal trade-offs, like in “The Evergiven” and the pin-drop closing track “Gaper’s Delay”. Like a lot of the best slowcore, Half Yesterday’s appeal isn’t so much in the technical playing (the best song, “The Intersection”, features simple chord changes and a very basic drumbeat), but in how Flowertown present and put together their building blocks. (Bandcamp link)
Options – Swimming Feeling
Release date: July 1st Record label: Self-released Genre: Slowcore, emo-indie-rock Formats: Cassette, digital Pull track: Toast
In addition to being one of the more accomplished recording engineers in recent memory and the new drummer for Mister Goblin, Chicago’s Seth Engel is fairly prolific on his own as Options. Swimming Feeling is at least his eighth record under the name, and it’s a strong entry into an already-impressive body of work. On the whole, I would put Swimming Feeling closer to the chilly, serious indie rock of 2020’s twin Options releases of Wind’s Gonna Blow and Window’s Open and further from the playful bedroom pop of 2021’s On the Draw, but there’s elements of that one here too, as well as songs that don’t fit neatly into either of those two camps.
Swimming Feeling’s opening track, “Toast”, has an alt-rock punchiness to it, chopping through a solid melody from Engel. Not long after, “The Bend” starts in what has become a familiar way for Engel—a downbeat power chord stomp. The middle of the record finds Options rocking in a 90s indie rock way not unlike Mister Goblin’s invigorated sound on earlier-this-year’s Bunny, with the stretch from “Take Time” to “Take It Tough” sounding particularly electric. Like most Options records, Swimming Feeling is a subtle album, but the distinguishing touches—like, say, the double-tracked vocals and two seconds of AutoTune in “Breaker”—reveal themselves. (Bandcamp link)
Fiver – Soundtrack to a More Radiant Sphere: The Joe Wallace Mixtape
Release date: July 8th Record label: You’ve Changed Genre: Folk Formats: Cassette, digital Pull track: Rosemary & Rue
Joe Wallace was a Cold War-era “Communist poet, activist, and Canadian political prisoner”, as well as the subject of A More Radiant Sphere, a documentary film by Sara Wylie. Simone Schimdt, who makes versitile folk-based music as Fiver, is an inspired choice to soundtrack Wallace’s life story. The first five songs on Soundtrack to a More Radiant Sphere are comprised of Wallace’s poems set to music by Schmidt, and they are given as much care and dressing as Fiver’s wholly original songs. While “Song of the Mournful Millionaire” gets more or less a straight protest folk reading, Schmidt isn’t content to just adapt Wallace’s poems in this fashion.
“Sacco & Vanzetti” and “Rosemary & Rue”, for instance, prominently feature violin courtesy of John Showman, and opening track “Your Arm Is Strong Enough” is marked by leisurely piano playing from Nick Dourado. The full range of Schmidt and her collaborators is even more apparent in the instrumental second half of Soundtrack to a More Radiant Sphere, which hops from Nathan Doucet’s percussion-led “Cargo of Hollywood Stars”, to the ambient “If It Does Spread” to the full-sounding “Wallace Goes to Russia”. Even without words, Fiver find ways to communicate in these songs as well, such as the music callback to “Song of the Mournful Millionaire” in the piano of “Stuff My Vaults”. (Bandcamp link)
Welcome to the June 2022 Rosy Overdrive playlist! There are many good songs from the past month on here, as well as some songs not from 2022 that are still good and worth your time. You’ll see!
ME REX, Motherhood, and Wire get two songs on this playlist. Guided by Voices get three (I’m back on my bullshit).
Here is where you can listen to the playlist on various streaming services: Spotify, Tidal, BNDCMPR. Be sure to check out previous playlist posts if you’ve enjoyed this one.
“Ants”, Long Neck From Soft Animal (2022, Plastic Miracles/Specialist Subject)
The appropriately-titled Soft Animal is the fourth Long Neck album, and it finds Lily Mastrodimos backing away from the rockier elements of 2018’s Will This Do? and 2020’s World’s Strongest Dog (which was one of my favorite albums of that year) to lean on acoustic and folkier material. This side of Long Neck has always been there, and songs like “Ants” prove that Mastrodimos is no less effective with it. Mastrodimos harmonizes and duets with herself as her acoustic guitar (the only other accompaniment on the song) soundtracks the ticking away of months and seasons.
“The Perfect Crime”, Dazy From MAXIMUMBLASTSUPERLOUD: The First 24 Songs (2021, Convulse)
Zipping back to 2021 for a moment, I can still confirm that Dazy’s MAXIMUMBLASTSUPERLOUD is as fresh and exhilarating as I (and surely the rest of you) remember it. The twenty-four-song compilation (one of my favorites of last year) begins with “The Perfect Crime”, which is the “perfect” introduction to James Goodson’s incredibly captivating mix of mid 90s pop-punk/power pop fascination with late 80s/early 90s drum-machine-aided dance-friendly noise pop (whew!). I’ve talked about several songs from MAXIMUMBLASTSUPERLOUD on here before; the fact that I am only now just getting to this one is a testament to the comp’s overall quality.
“Lizard on the Red Brick Wall”, Guided by Voices From Tremblers and Goggles by Rank (2022, GBV, Inc.)
Tremblers and Goggles by Rank is the fourteenth Guided by Voices album since Robert Pollard re-revived the name in 2016, and it’s the third in a row to point in the direction of more focused, longer, and denser songs. Tremblers only has ten tracks (a GBV first), meaning several of them stretch into levels rarely seen on their records. Album opener “Lizard on the Red Brick Wall” is a “mere” four and a half minutes—it’s meaty, it’s explosive, it’s incredibly catchy, it’s an instant classic.
“Crawly I” and “Crawly II”, Motherhood From Winded (2022, Forward Music Group)
Winded, the latest record from New Brunswick’s Motherhood, roars out of the gate with the opening duo of “Crawly I” and “Crawly II”. Both “Crawly”s are revved-up post-punk garage numbers, although they accomplish their wild energy in different ways—the formers speeds along at a breakneck pace, while the latter stomps around intensely. Guitarist/vocalist Brydon Crain adopts a nervous reporter tone in the first “Crawly”, and a deranged bark in the latter. Read more about Winded here.
“Pledge Drive”, Cheekface (2022)
The latest Cheekface song is pretty much everything one could want in a Cheekface song—the band cites Television as an inspiration for “Pledge Drive”, and I can hear it, but mostly it just sounds like Cheekface and only Cheekface, which is a good thing. The title line (“I called the pledge drive / I got the suicide hotline”) is merely one of several lines delivered by Greg Katz that could have only been delivered by him, and the surprise acoustic guitar in the pre-chorus sounds very cool.
“Toilet of Venus”, ME REX From Plesiosaur (2022, Big Scary Monsters)
I like ME REX—I thought their Megabear LP from last year was a successful experiment of a release, and I usually find something to enjoy on the band’s constant output of EPs. Their latest one, the four-song (as always) Plesiosaur, is I think the strongest of them yet, and “Toilet of Venus” is the band’s greatest song thus far. Myles McCabe’s vocals are passionate and frantic, rushing to get out everything he wants to say in classic ME REX fashion, but the rest of the band basically explode alongside him in what feels like a big step forward of a moment.
“Con Art”, Smart Went Crazy From Con Art (1997, Dischord)
I’m sure several of you know about the recent health problems of Chad Clark (currently of Beauty Pill, formerly of Smart Went Crazy), and Rosy Overdrive certainly wishes him well and hopes with him that the most harrowing moments are now in the past. I’d be revisiting Con Art even if Clark wasn’t in my thoughts recently—I do this from time to time, because it rules. The record’s title track isn’t primarily sung by Clark—rather, it’s a spotlight moment for cellist Hilary Soldati, who jumps between stoicism and a slight grin to deliver the song’s blunt line after blunt line. Clark does get to echo Soldati toward the end of the song (the particularly creepy “If you’re such a….such a badass” part).
“Sirens and Thunder”, Kasey Anderson and the Honkies From Heart of a Dog (2011, Red River)
An older song I recently rediscovered for the first time in nearly a decade, “Sirens and Thunder” is country rock at its populist best. Kasey Anderson affects his best Steve Earle for the song’s roughly familiar vocals, the guitar parts (both the revved-up rhythmic parts and the absolutely explosive lead parts in between the verses) are just as memorable, and the absolute wrecking ball of a chorus puts the whole thing into classic territory. It doesn’t even need the kicker of the final few lines (“It ended with sirens and thunder, and nobody’s bed to crawl under / We were dogs howling back at each other and it was getting loud”) to do it.
“The New Booze”, This Is Lorelei From This Is Lorelei 1 (2022)
When This Is Lorelei’s Nate Amos released Falls Like Water Falls (one of my favorite albums of 2022 so far) in February, he alluded to his new sobriety in its creation. This Is Lorelei’s latest single, “The New Booze”, seems to be explicitly about this. From the cheery “pop off” double-meaning opening, Amos continually references cola (the titular new booze) as he wades through a nearly five-minute three-chord pop song about missing someone (in a rather ambiguous way) that somehow makes an Adam Levine/Avril Lavigne/Richard D. James-referencing chorus work.
“Summer to Fall”, Chronophage From Chronophage (2022, Post Present Medium)
The latest record from Austin’s Chronophage is an even-split mix of jangle pop and post-punk (really, one of the best genre combinations out there). Single “Summer to Fall” is, as its breezy title implies, one of the more openly poppy moments on Chronophage, with singer Sarah Beames’ grounded vocals anchoring a mostly simple but effective song foundation—there’s something that sounds like a buried roller-rink organ in the chorus, which works very well.
“Oh No Not So (Save the Bullet) [4th Demo]”, Wire From Not About to Die (Studio Demos 1977-1978) (2022, Pinkflag)
The least surprising revelation of the June playlist is that I’m quite into the formal release of Not About to Die (Studio Demos 1977-1978), a widely-bootlegged collection of early Wire recordings that serves as a wonderful companion to (and, perhaps, in its own way, equal of) the band’s first three records. The first half of Not About to Die in particular is Wire as a curious punk band, bashing out songs that would either mutate on later recordings or become forgotten. “Oh No Not So (Save the Bullet)” is a brief shot of poppy punk that could’ve been something big, but it works just fine in its “demo” form here as well.
“Mulholland Dr.”, Bartees Strange From Farm to Table (2022, 4AD)
Parts of Bartees Strange’s sophomore record, Farm to Table, are very good—and “Mulholland Dr.” by itself is enough to make the occasional bumpy rest of the album worth it to me. Unlike the face-slapping clear highlight from 2020’s (Rosy Overdrive-approved) Live Forever, “Boomer”, “Mulholland Dr.” represents a more subtle merging of Strange’s pop/R&B-influences with his beloved emo and stately National-inspired indie rock. The soaring chorus (“I don’t believe in the bullshit…”) is too slick for the DIY/underground world from which Strange emerged, but it makes sense and sounds completely in line with the best of Bartees’ brief but already memorable solo career.
“Middle of a Cloud”, Diners From Four Wheels and the Truth (2022, Lauren)
Four Wheels and the Truth is a gleeful-sounding pop rock record that is right up the alley of anyone who enjoys groups like Russel the Leaf and Cool Original, and the brief but sweet “Middle of a Cloud” couldn’t present the album’s charms any clearer. Blue Broderick’s lyrics and delivery are both subtle enough to mirror the track’s pop-song-power-chord progression—just try to get “Middle of a Cloud” out of your head.
“I Just Want to Touch You”, Utopia From Deface the Music (1980, Bearsville/Rhino)
So, Deface the Music is Todd Rundgren (under the banner of his band, Utopia) doing his best Beatles impression for an entire record’s length. Utopia do it all—psychedelia, orchestral, folk rock—but opening track “I Just Want to Touch You” is Rundgren and crew’s most obvious attempt to recreate the Beatles’ early-sixties crowd-pleasing pop rock. And it’s quite successful—Utopia (at this point a far cry away from their prog-rock roots) throws in handclaps, harmonicas, bouncy bass guitar, all to make “I Just Want to Touch You” land as strongly as possible.
“Mono Retriever”, Dummy From Mono Retriever (2022, Sub Pop)
The first new music from Dummy following their debut full-length record, last year’s Mandatory Enjoyment, consists of two songs for Sub Pop’s Singles Club. Both of the tracks on Mono Retriever are vintage-sounding Dummy; neither would have been out of place on Mandatory Enjoyment, but they both carve out identities of their own. B-Side “Pepsi Vacuum” is the headier one, the one that’s several sounds stitched together to form a single giant cloud overhead, while “Mono Retriever” is the short and punchy one. If you liked the more Stereolab-y moments on their last record, it hits the same marks as those, but it also feels even more revved-up than pretty much anything off of Mandatory Enjoyment.
“Thick and Thin”, Guided by Voices From Suitcase 4: Captain Kangaroo Won the War (2016, GBV Inc.)
Songs like “Thick and Thin” are why people like me care about Guided by Voices and Robert Pollard to the degree that I do. It’s why Pollard can release a fourth 100-song “Suitcase” compilation and still garner significant interest around it. Because “Thick and Thin” rules. It’s a perfect lost 60s pop-rock sounding nugget with the kind of “upbeat sad” Pollard vocal he did a lot in his early recordings. According to GBVDB, it was recorded in 1983—this song sat unused and unheard on some tape for over thirty years, which is nuts.
“Drafted”, Vintage Crop From Kibitzer (2022, Weather Vane/Anti Fade/Upset the Rhythm)
Australian post-punk/garage rock experts Vintage Crop have delivered another hit with their fourth record, Kibitzer, and second-half highlight “Drafted” is pretty much everything you’d want in a Vintage Crop song. The bass is frantic and busy pretty much entirely throughout, the guitar barrels through your typical four chords gleefully, and the talk-singing in the verses gives away to, uh, a different kind of talk-singing in the chorus that fits the song perfectly. I’ll have more to say about Kibitzer soon-ish.
“Mother’s Records”, Katie Bejsiuk From The Woman on the Moon (2022, Double Double Whammy)
Katie Bejsiuk has been operating on her own basically ever since she ended her curiously-named but very good Free Cake for Every Creature project in 2019, so I’d figured we’d get an album under her name for a while now. The Woman on the Moon picks up where the last Free Cake album, 2018’s underappreciated The Bluest Star, left off, with opening track “Mother’s Records” relying on Bejsiuk’s quietly passionate voice and minimally-accompanied acoustic guitar strums. The rest of The Woman on the Moon delves a little further into how a Katie Bejsiuk record differs from a Free Cake for Every Creature record, but here, it’s just good to hear her voice again.
“Soft”, Camp Trash From The Long Way, the Slow Way (2022, Count Your Lucky Stars)
I didn’t even talk about “Soft” when I wrote about The Long Way, the Slow Way for its release week; the debut record from Florida’s Camp Trash just had too many contenders of pop songs. Let’s not overlook it here, though: it’s a brilliant second-side shiner, jumping from section to section deftly: the tension-building intro, the well-oiled, percussion-first “main bit”, and the big-finish that lets the emo side of Camp Trash out for a bit. Read more about The Long Way, the Slow Way here.
“Alive Twice”, Friendship From Love the Stranger (2022, Merge)
The latest single from Philadelphia’s Friendship (the third from their upcoming Love the Stranger) is the first one that really harkens back to the band’s “ambient country” roots. In fact, it might even earn that descriptor more than 2017’s Fender Rhodes-and-drum machine-aided Shock Out of Season—lead vocalist Dan Wriggins sings accompanied by a simple synth part that comes and goes throughout the song, and virtually nothing else. It works.
“Jangle Manifesto”, Nana Grizol From South Somewhere Else (2020, Arrowhawk/Don Giovanni)
Going back a couple of years to 2020 and the most recent (very good) Nana Grizol record, the provocatively yet appropriately-titled “Jangle Manifesto” is up there with the title track for providing the heart of South Somewhere Else. “If there was something called ‘my country’ / It’s not a thing that I would save,” begins Theo Hilton after a typical Elephant Six horn intro, and then continues making quick work of rejecting several tenets of American culture that in a better world (not this one) would be rejected by all out of hand.
“Everybody’s Birthday”, Frank Meadows From Dead Weight (2022, Ruination)
I (and, presumably, several other Rosy Overdrive readers) know Frank Meadows as the co-head of the great Dear Life Records (MJ Lenderman, Wendy Eisenberg, Trevor Nikrant), but like theother Dear Life co-runners, Meadows makes his own music as well. Dead Weight is a compelling piano-led folk-country record that I only first heard two days ago as of writing this, but the album has already grown on me significantly. Opening track “Everybody’s Birthday” is an understated tune—or at least, it would be, if Meadows’ vocal performance (really nailing the “NYC via NC” part of his Bandcamp bio) didn’t spend the entire song subtly but evermore convincingly stealing the show.
“Leigh Can’t Leave”, DiskothiQ From Waterworld (1996, Shrimper)
Now, here’s one from the archives: DiskothiQ was a classic Inland Empire Shrimper Records band—never quite having even the limited cache that groups like Refrigerator and Nothing Painted Blue did, and is probably best remembered today as “the band Peter Hughes was in before he became the bassist for the Mountain Goats”. Still, they were quite good, and 1996’s Waterworld was the band’s greatest record. I could’ve chosen several songs from the album, but today I’m feeling the travelogue of “Leigh Can’t Leave”, which just kind of sounds like driving down the highway.
“Holding Back the Water”, Hello Whirled From Hoping for a Little More…Pizzazz (2022, Repeating Cloud)
Hoping for a Little More…Pizzazz will not be Hello Whirled’s firstrelease of 2022, but considering that it’s the project’s inaugural release with Repeating Cloud Records and will be released physically via cassette, it carries a certain weight (hence the self-deprecating title, perhaps). My favorite of the advance singles thus far has been “Holding Back the Water”, a blaring rocker featuring a high-energy chorus delivered by Ben Spizuco. I’ll have more to say about Hoping for a Little More…Pizzazz soon-ish.
“Mechanics”, The Bye Bye Blackbirds From August Lightning Complex (2022)
The Bye Bye Blackbirds is a true-believing guitar pop band led by singer/songwriter Bradley Skaught (and also featuring former Game Theory/Loud Family drummer Jozef Becker—true heads know the significance of this). By my count, August Lightning Complex is the band’s sixth album, and fans of song-first power/jangle pop in the vain of groups like The Crowd Scene could do a lot worse than to seek it out. Highlight “Mechanics” has an understated 70s power pop-ish verse groove before jumping up into a starry chorus.
“Can’t Hear the Phone”, Snow Ellet From Glory Days (2022, Wax Bodega)
“Can’t Hear the Phone” has been out for a while, but it was hearing it in the context of Snow Ellet’s recent Glory Days EP that really sold the song for me. The final track on the record, “Can’t Hear the Phone” is a two-point-five minute mix of several Snow Ellet hallmarks—the grounding drum machine, alt-rock guitar lines, just a hint of melodramatic synths, a big chorus, and lyrics that can go from zero to “thwack” in moments (“I mean, I wrote this song / I guess I write a lot,” they shrug at one point).
“Excuses”, Grass Jaw From Circles (2022, Habitforming)
“I asked you to compromise / You told me to go fuck myself,” begins “Excuses”, a highlight from Circles, the latest record from Grass Jaw. Like a lot of the record, Grass Jaw leader Brendan Kuntz sounds particularly worn-out and weary, even as Kuntz and his collaborators make the song sound full-bodied and spirited. Read more about Circles here.
“Kimberly”, Patti Smith From Horses (1975, Arista)
Part of me took perverse delight in Patti Smith being primarily “the woman from the Tom Scharpling elevator story” until this month, but I’m not one to deprive myself of good music to keep up weird quirks, and Horses, which I listened to for the first time a week or so ago, is indeed quite good. People a lot more eloquent than I have talked on length about that album, so I’ll try to keep this brief. I could’ve chosen several songs from the record for this playlist (indeed, it was almost “Free Money”), but “Kimberly” in particular plays to Smith’s strengths: the band locking into a pretty simple pop progression and letting Patti just do her thing (in this case, apparently she’s writing about her sister) over top of it.
“Jupiter Pluvius”, ME REX From Plesiosaur (2022, Big Scary Monsters)
A second highlight from Plesiosaur, which I can say by this point is pretty firmly my favorite ME REX EP thus far, single “Jupiter Pluvius” is another great example of the rest of the ME REX lineup providing the means for Myles McCabe to aggressively do his thing over tightly-constructed piano pop rock. “Jupiter Pluvius, flood me with all good shit,” pleads McCabe at the beginning of the track, and that line might be the least notable one in the opening paragraph (there’s also a bit about “catatonic monuments”, and of course “He’s one of the pantheon / He fucks like a champion”).
“Vanderbilt”, Hit From Vanderbilt/Great Conjunction (2022)
The impossibly-named Hit is led by Brooklyn’s Craig Heed, who also notably wrote an essay for Talkhouse about Brainiac around the time the group’s latest single was released. “Vanderbilt”/”Great Conjunction” is only the four-piece band’s second single, and yes, there’s a clear Brainiac influence in these two songs, but it’s not pastiche either. For one, Heed is no Tim Taylor, nor does he attempt to be –in “Vanderbilt”, his clear vocals are the calm at the center of the rest of the band’s storm, and the song also feels looser and more psychedelic than your typical Brainiac fare.
“I’m the One You Want”, Sob Stories From Fair Shakes (2022, Dandy Boy)
It’s a familiar story that hasn’t gotten old yet: Bay Area band led by a single singer-songwriter puts together a record of jangly power pop featuring several familiar faces—in this case, Joel Cusumano is the bandleader, and Rosy Overdrive readers will recognize drummer Phil Lantz (of Chime School) and Ray Seraphin (of R.E. Seraphin, who gets a co-songwriting credit). “I’m the One You Want” is not the only killer pop tune on Fair Shakes, but its classic college rock intro combined with almost Replacements-y power chord verses gives it a unique energy.
“I Can Hear It”, Editrix From Editrix II: Editrix Goes to Hell (2022, Exploding in Sound)
Editrix II: Editrix Goes to Hell (one of my favorite records of 2022 so far) feels more insular and more focused than last year’s Tell Me I’m Bad, although the band still captures the zany energy of their debut in songs like “I Can Hear It”. Guitarist Wendy Eisenberg, bassist Steve Cameron, and drummer Josh Daniel tumble through the first half of the song until pulling out of a tailspin into the triumphant, swinging alt-rock of “I Can Hear It”’s second half.
“Trying to Get Over”, The Dream Syndicate From Ultraviolet Battle Hymns and True Confessions (2022, Fire)
The unexpected but rewarding revival of The Dream Syndicate over the last half-decade or so has led the flagship Paisley Underground group to some pretty out-there locations, but their latest record, Ultraviolet Battle Hymns and True Confessions, falls firmly in line with the spirit of their original 1980s material. Perhaps the recent reissue of 1986’s Out of the Grey has the band back in a rollicking desert rock mood, but either way, the stomping “Trying to Get Over” charges its way into “classic Dream Syndicate song” status quite easily.
“Moving On”, Green/Blue From Paper Thin (2022, Feel It)
The modern post-punk stomp of “Moving On” doesn’t deviate from the main formula of Paper Thin, but it shines as a particular triumph of the record all the same. Jim Blaha and Annie Sparrows’ intertwined vocals are haunting, neither towering over nor being buried by the reverb and fuzz that gets expertly wielded across the music of “Moving On”. Read more about Paper Thin here.
“Baltimore Moon”, SAVAK From Human Error / Human Delight (2022, Peculiar Works)
“Baltimore Moon”, aside from merely being a highlight on Human Error / Human Delight, is also a key track in exemplifying SAVAK’s approach on their fifth record together. The song synthesizes the more straightforward and “artier” sides of SAVAK as well as any one song could. “Baltimore Moon” effectively has two back-to-back choruses—a bouncy, melodic power pop one and then a stomping post-punk one. Read more about Human Error / Human Delight here.
“Love Ain’t Polite [4th Demo]”, Wire From Not About to Die (Studio Demos 1977-1978) (2022, Pinkflag)
Another early, punk-Wire highlight from the first half of Not About to Die, the one-minute “Love Ain’t Polite” is as good and rewarding as any pop song by a 70s punk band. The Pink Flag-esque touchstones are there—the matter of fact chord changes, the animated bass, Colin Newman’s nervy yet confident vocals—and yet it’s a different path than their first proper LP entirely.
“Too Far Gone”, Young Guv From GUV IV (2022, Run for Cover)
“Too Far Gone” opens up GUV IV by announcing what the listener is in for, exactly: a mix of the straight-ahead power pop that marked the first three Young Guv records and a shimmery desert psychedelia. The song sports confident handclaps and a very catchy chorus, while Ben Cook’s vocals waver and stretch over the song’s hypnotic music. Read more about GUV IV here.
“Who Wants to Go Hunting?”, Guided by Voices From Trembles and Goggles by Rank (2022, GBV Inc.)
Another song that has been out for a while but I didn’t fully appreciate until I heard it in an album context, “Who Wants to Go Hunting?” ends Trembles and Goggles by Rank with a rarely-seen-by-Robert-Pollard-bands six minute iceberg. Although the song (originally released as a B-side to “Unproductive Funk” in May) contains proggy buildups and at least one instance of acoustic noodling, it doesn’t feel any more stitched-together or disjointed than your three-to-four minute modern Guided by Voices song: Pollard and the band just stretch out a bit more here.
“Hard Reset”, The Zells From Ant Farm (2022, Crafted Sounds)
“Hard Reset” comes at the end of Ant Farm, a frequently messy and earnest record of all the bombast 90s indie rock and punk-inspired music can provide. In context, “Hard Reset” is the “breather”, the quiet and meditative closer to the louder songs that came before it, but the song’s shrug-and-grin mid-tempo pop rock works just fine on its own. Bassist/singer Roman Benty gives a sneakily-powerful vocal performance over a straightforward instrumental—by the time the final “It was only just to show me she don’t owe me anything” comes around, the only appropriate response is “ah, yes, of course she don’t”.
This week’s Pressing Concerns looks at new albums from Camp Trash, Flamingo Rodeo, and Hurry Up, and a new EP from Careen. Good records!
If you’re still looking for more new music, you can browse previous editions of Pressing Concerns or visit the site directory.
Camp Trash – The Long Way, The Slow Way
Release date: July 1st Record label: Count Your Lucky Stars Genre: Power pop, emo, pop punk Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital Pull track: Weird Florida
Camp Trash and Rosy Overdrive are effectively the same age. The first person to ever contact the blog about submitting new music to it was Keith Latinen of Count Your Lucky Stars regarding the group’s debut EP, January 2021’s Downtiming. It feels like some kind of milestone to now be talking about the Florida four-piece band’s first full-length album, The Long Way, The Slow Way—one that would be basically ruined if the record wasn’t any good, but thankfully it echoes and expands on the promise that Downtiming showed. The sound that’s most recognizably Camp Trash is here—you know, the end-of-the-20th-century pop rock that pulls from both the 90s underground and 00s pop culture. Last year’s “Weird Florida” graces The Long Way, The Slow Way with its sugary harmonies—on the album, it’s part of a power pop opening trio that also includes the nervous earnestness of “Mind Yr Own” and “Pursuit”.
Not that the rest of The Long Way, The Slow Way isn’t full of emo/pop punk-tinged power pop, either—the second half of the record features the bouncy, economical, Oso Oso-evoking “Lake Erie Boys” and the 90s alt-rock loud guitar pop of “Let It Ride”. Camp Trash do take advantage of having a full dozen tracks to work with in order to explore a bit in the middle of the album, however: the fuzz-drone, LVL UP-ish “Another Harsh Toyotathon” is the one that immediately comes to mind, but there’s also a power ballad center of the record in “Poured Out” and “Enough Explaining”. The Long Way, The Slow Way is more of a “band” record than Downtiming, but like that EP, it’s still clear-sounding pop music. The vocals are front and center, and each song has at least one line that benefits from this positioning (from the insistence of “I’m not sad, I’m quiet sometimes” in “Enough Explaining” to “When I’m not making noise, I feel small” in “Church Bells”), and it’s stubbornly timeless-sounding for evoking such a specific era of guitar music. (Bandcamp link)
Flamingo Rodeo – Pontoon
Release date: June 30th Record label: Shuga Genre: Folk rock, alt-country Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull track: Mexico
Chicago’s Mikey Wells first became known to me as a guitarist for the now-defunct NE-HI, a band whose coiled-up garage rock energy still makes them stand out as under-appreciated and singular. Flamingo Rodeo has a little more in common with Wells’ post-NE-HI group, the chiller and lightly psychedelic Spun Out, but Pontoon occupies a different space than either of those bands. The project’s second record finds Wells fully embracing twang, hopping from tender folk rock to boisterous Midwestern alt-country over the course of ten tracks. Opening track “Tooth and Nail” is laid-back but driven, sliding through easygoing verses to get to a pumped-up chorus, establishing a country rock side to Flamingo Rodeo that shines throughout the record—namely, in the toe-tapping “Bacalar”, the woozy singalong “Sweet Serene”, and the rousing send-off of “Homily”.
The guitar effects, cosmic lyrics, and haphazardly-applied traditional elements of “Null Eternity” make it a great twisted country tune that harkens back to some of the more “out there” elements of Wells’ past bands. As attention-grabbing as that song is, though, there is notable growth in the sheer number of subtler moments scattered throughout Pontoon. The harmonica-aided “Sorrowflown” anchors the center of the record in thoughtful Americana, while plenty of the second half of the record drifts off like the boat in the record title—the spoken-word piano-led “El Nuevo”, the soundscape of the title track, and the pastoral folk of “Mexico”. Some of the information regarding Pontoon seems to imply that Mikey Wells will be focusing on other bands and projects rather than Flamingo Rodeo following its release; whether or not the country embrace of this record finds its way into Wells’ other music, Pontoon is a sturdy trip on its own. (Bandcamp link)
Hurry Up – Dismal Nitch
Release date: June 24th Record label: Comedy Minus One Genre: Punk rock Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull track: Days of Our Love
Hurry Up is a fierce Pacific Northwest punk rock trio made up of guitarist Westin Glass, drummer Kathy Foster (both formerly of The Thermals), and bassist Maggie Vail (Bangs). Dismal Nitch, the band’s sophomore record, is the first full-length by the band in seven years, and it appears to have been in the works for quite a while (“You Just Wait” showed up as a single back in 2018), but the record sounds anything but “over-labored”. The band play together deftly but not showily, ripping through thirteen tracks that evoke the spirit of West Coast garage punk—recalling everything from X to vintage Kill Rock Stars groups to Dead Moon (whose “Fire in the Western World” gets a scorching cover on Dismal Nitch).
The gleeful middle fingers of “No!” and “Oh Screw It” tear right into the more fun moments of 90s riot grrl, and tracks like opener “American Weirdos” and “Invasive Species” are just runaway trains of fuzzy pop songs. Dismal Nitch consistently sounds like a blast, which helps keep some of the heavier and less immediate moments from sticking out too much in the context of the album. The sharp-edged “Death Puberty” features dart-and-dash guitar playing and a dynamic vocal performance, while the blistering “You Just Wait” with its “you’ll get yours” message to an unnamed powerful individual (I wonder who it could be—there are so many possibilities) hits with a full-on assault. Dismal Nitch can be serious without being exhausting about it, and the three band members all make the most of their turns at frontperson without ever tipping the balance of an equal-on-all-sides trio. (Bandcamp link)
Careen – Careen Love Health
Release date: June 24th Record label: Self-released Genre: Post-hardcore, post-punk, noise rock Formats: Digital Pull track: Spit Choke
Bellingham, Washington’s Careen make an insular, noisy brand of post-hardcore and indie rock that evokes enigmatic 90s underground groups like Unwound and Polvo. The group—which recently expanded to a four-piece, adding drummer Neto Alvarado and guitarist Aiden Blau in addition to bassist Bryan Foster and guitarist/vocalist Desi Valdez—has released four EPs counting June’s Careen Love Health; although at 28 minutes, it’s a nearly full-length statement.
Half of Careen Love Health’s length is made up of its two bookend tracks—the six-minute opener “In the Light Of” and eight-minute closing track “Longest Piss” are both noise rock odysseys, veering from tense post-punk to feedback-and-hollering rave-ups on multiple occasions. Those two towering tracks are the immediate attention-grabbers, but the middle of Careen Love Health is where the group explore the edges of their sound a bit—particularly in the noise piece “Swallow”, but they also turn in the swirling instrumental “Slacker” and the slowcore/Slint-esque exercise in restraint that is “Unalloyed”. Not that bands like Careen are overly committed to “friendliness” in their music, but if you’re looking for a squall, Careen Love Health is a fairly rewarding one. (Bandcamp link)
If you’re still looking for more new music, you can browse previous editions of Pressing Concerns or visit the site directory.
Motherhood – Winded
Release date: June 24th Record label: Forward Music Group Genre: Post-punk, art punk Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital Pull track: Crawly I
An “avant-punk” trio hailing from the rather unlikely location of New Brunswick, Fredericton’s Motherhood have been marching to the beat of their own drum for nearly a decade now. Their latest record, Winded, has a barebones, almost live-in-studio feel, with the core of guitarist/vocalist Brydon Crain, bassist/vocalist Penelope Stevens, and drummer Adam Sipkema tearing through both garage rock rippers and weirder turns. Crain’s vocals have a really pleasing sung-spoken quality to them, especially in songs like single “Shepherd”, in which his delivery somehow sounds both lazy and rushed at the same time.
Winded roars out of the gate with the opening duo of “Crawly I” and “Crawly II”, both of which are revved-up post-punk garage numbers, although they accomplish this in different ways—the former speeds along at a breakneck pace, the latter stomps around intensely. Although Motherhood do rave up later on in Winded (see mid-record workout “Ripped Sheet”), the heart of the record is a more mid-tempo but still rather thumping version of prog-punk-pop. “Tabletop” is a hypnotic rhythm section workout, and the eerie “Handbrake” introduces the idea of a Motherhood ballad (explored further in “Shuttered Down”). The stop-start of closing track “Trees” slowly takes the shape of something akin to 60s pop-rock, a clear an example as any of Motherhood making something inviting out of unlikely beginnings. (Bandcamp link)
Young Guv – GUV IV
Release date: June 24th Record label: Run for Cover/Hand Drawn Dracula Genre: Power pop, jangle pop, psych pop Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull track: Too Far Gone
GUV IV is Young Guv’s second record of 2022, and it comes from the same origins as did March’s GUV III (one of my favorite records of the year so far). The impetus for both records began during an extended stay by Young Guv leader Ben Cook and his bandmates in the New Mexico desert in 2020, and they were both recorded in Los Angeles the next year. The short way to differentiate between the two is that GUV III was the more “traditional” power pop one, while GUV IV is airier and more psychedelic, but because it’s still Young Guv we’re talking about, these songs still strongly evoke the “pop” side of psych pop.
Cook’s foray into desert psychedelia is unsurprisingly deft, calling to mind both the Laurel Canyon sound and more modern practitioners of similar music like Ty Segall and Cool Ghouls. Songs like “Change Your Mind” float along lazily and hazily, and the multi-layered “Overcome” particularly feels like a trip. Most of GUV IV is more of a mix between the pure psych embrace and more traditional GUV pop fare—the confident handclaps of opening track “Too Far Gone”, the jangle pop heart of “Sign from God”, the brisk indie pop of “Cold in the Summer”, the surprising but quite accessible country rock of “Maybe I Should Luv Somebody Else”. Young Guv records have traditionally held a lot in which to get lost; it makes sense that Cook would eventually settle on evoking a whole desert for an album. (Bandcamp link)
Pet Fox – A Face in Your Life
Release date: June 17th Record label: Exploding in Sound Genre: Math rock, 90s indie rock Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull track: Checked Out
Pet Fox feels almost like the quintessential Exploding in Sound Records band—to the point where it feels strange that A Face in Your Life is only their first full-length record for the label. Just their connections to other EIS bands alone could qualify them: vocalist/guitarist Theo Hartlett and bassist Morgan Luzzi also play drums and guitar, respectively, in Ovlov, while drummer Jesse Weiss played in Grass Is Green and Palehound. But the music contained within A Face in Your Life also makes the case—the trio play a welcome math-y strain of 90s-influenced indie rock that’s well in line with the core of their label’s roster.
Opening track “Settle Even” eases into the Pet Fox experience with its slow-burn, five-minute runtime, before presenting the listener with some more Dischord-influenced songs (“A Face in Your Life”, “Undeserving You”, both of which also remind me of another Dischord-influenced EIS band, Two Inch Astronaut). “Checked Out” taps into the indie rock-by-way-of XTC nervous pop that’s one of my favorite sub-sub-genres in this type of music. Hartlett’s guitar leads continuously stick out on A Face in Your Life—chiming and melodic, they give the record the unique feeling of austere indie rock, but with bright marks and accents drawn over it. (Bandcamp link)
Grass Jaw – Circles
Release date: June 17th Record label: Habitforming Genre: Alt-country, fuzz rock, folk rock Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull track: Excuses
“All I want is to never have to do anything again,” sings Brendan Kuntz at the beginning of “Deer Song”, which comes midway through Circles, the latest record from his project Grass Jaw. Kuntz has been developing his own particular mix of slowcore/indie rock with folk and alt-country for a while now (Rosy Overdrive wrote about Grass Jaw’s Anticipation last November), but Circles in particular feels like a weary record. That doesn’t make it a depressing album on the whole, however—“Deer Song”, for instance, leads Kuntz to think “Maybe my life isn’t so hard” after seeing the titular animal, and songs like “Start Over” (featuring Pet Fox’s Theo Hartlett on guitar) are positively uplifting.
Although Kuntz’s Brett Sparks-esque stoic holler and rickety guitar are constants throughout Circles, the record features a somewhat-surprisingly adventurous assortment of other instrumentation, most prominently saxophone at the end of “Dopamine” (played by Tom Yagielski), but also trombone (Egor Remmer) and melodica (Kuntz himself). In addition, the “traditional” rock band instruments find time to let loose on the record (like in “Mules”), giving Circles a full and frequently loud sound, which suits these odd country tunes just fine. (Bandcamp link)
Rosy Overdrive 