In this eclectic edition of Pressing Concerns, Rosy Overdrives discusses new records from Trevor Nikrant (of Styrofoam Winos), Big Heet, and Hans Condor, as well as Floating Mill Records’ reissue of London post-punk band The Antelopes’ discography.
Release date: November 5th Record label: Floating Mill Genre: Post-punk, dance punk Formats: Cassette, CD, vinyl (single only), digital Pull track: How Can We Dance (With Our Backs Up to the Wall)
Right on the heels of their reissue of Tampa band The Stick Figures’ late 70s/early 80s recordings, Pittsburgh’s Floating Mill Records have unearthed another lost post-punk band, this time from across the pond. Formed by three braille translators (guitarist/vocalist Glenn Dallender, bassist Martin O’Keefe-Liddard, and guitarist Steve Empson) and a pub worker (vocalist Tilly Vosburgh) and later adding a drummer (Vince Brown), The Antelopes originally lasted long enough to make a single six-song recording session in 1981. Their only release was a 7” single comprised of two of those recordings, and although the London band self-reissued some of their material last year, Breaking News seems to be a comprehensive physical document of all the band’s output as well as a few bonus tracks from an Antelopes offshoot called The Class of ‘76.
The two tracks that made up The Antelopes’ lone single (which Floating Mill has also reissued) paint the band as practitioners of the dark, moody post-punk that was typical of British bands around this time. This isn’t to say that they aren’t great—the “epic scream” that Vosburgh unleashes near the end of the claustrophobic “Hour of Light” alone is worth the price of admission—but it’s the previously unreleased tracks that are the most intriguing aspect of The Antelopes to me. These songs find the group dabbling in everything from psychedelia (“10,000 Flies Can’t be Wrong”) to groove-rock (“Keys to the Kingdom”) to country-rock (“Mississippi Line”), suggesting a band capable of a wide range of sounds that merely chose the two songs most in-line with what was going on around them to release.
The rhythm section of “Keys to the Kingdom” is perhaps the most obvious path to the final three songs on Breaking News: a group of previously-unreleased recordings from Dallender and Brown’s post-Antelopes band, The Class of ’76 (which also featured bassist Martin Grant and a host of rotating vocalists and/or guitarists including Rupert Sweeney, Chris Homewood, and Mark and Paul Brandon). Like The Stick Figures across the Atlantic, The Class of ’76—an excellent name for a post-punk band, by the way—also cited Parliament/Funkadelic as an inspiration for their groovy funk rock, and songs like “Going Nowhere (My Hands Are Tied)” have more in common with Chic than The Cure. Listen to Breaking News all the way through and it feels like a natural progression, but it would be shocking to hear the slap bass agitprop of “Uprising” and the mopey Joy Division plod of “Prisoners” back-to-back. Even more impressive than this range, however, is that both ends of Breaking News are compelling. (Bandcamp link)
Trevor Nikrant – Tall Ladders
Release date: November 19th Record label: Dear Life Genre: Folk rock, dream folk Formats: Cassette, CD, digital Pull track: We Need You for Our Plan
True Rosy Overdrive heads will recall Trevor Nikrant as one-third of the Nashville group Styrofoam Winos, who appeared in Pressing Concerns way back in February of this year. All three Winos have had solo careers beyond their band, and Nikrant is the latest to step out on his own. Tall Ladders is Nikrant’s first proper solo album in nearly four years, and he’s deemed it a “sonic and thematic sequel” to that last one, 2018’s Living in the Kingdom. As hinted at by that record and his contributions to Styrofoam Winos, Tall Ladders is an abstract folk/country album that sounds very David Berman-influenced in several spots. Nikrant is not the only member of the modern Americana movement to find inspiration in the Silver Jews; traces of Berman can be found on both his own label’s roster and among the acts on Styrofam Winos’ label. Unlike a lot of his peers, however, it’s not a “lo-fi” or “punked-up” version of this sound—in fact, Nikrant runs all the way to the other side of the spectrum with Tall Ladders.
Outside of opening track “Panic @ the Café”, which comes off as a slightly more subdued version of Styrofoam Winos’ “Stuck in a Museum”, Tall Ladders is a languid, meandering take on dreamy indie folk-rock. The rougher edges of Living in the Kingdom and Styrofoam Winos have been largely sanded down here, giving way to an expanded instrumental pallet and some eyebrow-raising song lengths. Tracks like the gently-picked “We Need You for Our Plan” almost remind me of Dagger Beach-era John Vanderslice, featuring studio flourishes colliding with more austere indie folk-rock songwriting. “Dead Skin”, something of the album’s centerpiece, floats into eight-minute territory aided by slow-marching piano and a smartly-harnessed wall of sound, while “Slow Notion” introduces sad horns into the fray in one of the moments that most recalls 2000s maximalist indie folk It’s all done in Nikrant’s own subtle way, however—he always sounds in control of everything around him on Tall Ladders. (Bandcamp link)
Big Heet – Playing the Bug
Release date: November 19th Record label: Living Lost Genre: Post-punk, noise rock Formats: Cassette, digital Pull track: Body of Noise
It’s been a nice and balanced year for David Settle. Although the Philadelphia-based musician also released three records in 2020, this year’s trio are evenly split among Settle’s current bands: February saw the lo-fi psych-pop of The Fragiles’ On and On, the garage-rock fuzzy power pop of Psychic Flowers’ For the Undertow followed in July, and for this month he’s returned to the longest-running of the three acts, Big Heet, for that project’s third album (oh, and he also released a cassette compilation of recording sessions culled from his Under the First Floor podcast). Although Settle’s other two bands are different from one another in their own ways, Big Heet is increasingly the odd one out among the three. It’s the one that isn’t primarily “pop”, instead inspired by underground noise rock and post-punk: everything from Blonde Redhead to Devo to Wire runs through Playing the Bug.
As anyone familiar with the previously-mentioned bands knows, these reference points should give Settle a lot of different sounds and styles with which to work. Album opener “Body of Noise” (featuring lead guitar from Jon Samuels of 2nd Grade and Friendship) is a motorik, somewhat restrained beginning that doesn’t quite sound like any Settle project, while “Life Is Limitless” is modern meaty post-punk at its crunchy, fidgety best. If there’s such a thing as a “classic Big Heet” sound, it’s exemplified by the rhythm-section-heavy garage-y egg punk of Playing the Bug’s midgut—songs like the needs-no-further-explanation mumbling of “American Reichstag” or the treadmill bark of “Octogenarians”. Closing track “Gilded Hand” reminds me of the recent strain of indie rock/hardcore hybrid bands like Militarie Gun, even though it’s still recognizably Big Heet. At eight songs and 18 minutes, Playing the Bug is the slightest of Settle’s 2021 releases, but Playing the Bug gives us plenty on which to chew. (Bandcamp link)
Hans Condor – Breaking & Entering
Release date: November 16th Record label: Dial Back Sound Genre: Garage rock, garage punk Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital Pull track: Breaking & Entering
The Nashville garage punk trio Hans Condor recorded Breaking & Entering several years ago, half at RCA’s historical Grand Victor Sound and half in something called “The Shed”, which is presumably not quite as renowned. Soong afterword, however,, “a series of managerial and personal snags” that were punctuated by the tragic death of bassist Erik Holcombe led to Hans Condor taking an indefinite hiatus and these songs gathering dust at Mississippi’s Dial Back Sound studio and label. The reuniting of the remaining members of the band last year has inspired Hans Condor and Dial Back Sound to finally let these songs loose into the light of day, consequences be damned. Breaking & Entering is for those who like their garage rock at its most unhinged and threatening: even disregarding its felonious title, glancing at its tracklist also reveals gems such as “Blood on the Rug”, “Hardwired for Death”, and “Pent-Up Aggression”.
Lead singer Charles Kaster barks and howls his way through the pure chaos of opener “Rock n Roll Animal” and screams appropriately along to “All Messed Up on Death Metal and Shit” among others, but the (admittedly only by comparison) restraint of the title track and “Pent-Up Aggression” suggest that Hans Condor can hold themselves together long enough to bust out a killer punk rock tune whenever they’ve got one to deliver. And that’s not even taking into account “Hannah Van Condor”, the acoustic closing track that seems to have been directly lifted from a ten-year-old video session, in which the band sing a elegy to their recently deceased tour van through the static of something on a completely different planet than “professional audio quality”. It’s somehow both completely different than and extremely appropriate for Hans Condor. (Bandcamp link)
Pressing Concerns returns! New albums from Wendy Eisenberg, Grass Jaw, Thalmus, and Log Across the Washer are featured this week. If you’re a fan of alt-country, broadly-defined folk music, and “weird Americana”, whatever that means to you, then this edition is for you. If you’re not, then it’s still for you, because these albums are all just plain good.
Release date: November 5th Record label: Dear Life Genre: B A N J O Formats: Cassette, CD, digital Pull track: Little Love Songs
Wendy Eisenberg is building something. Eisenberg first came on my radar with 2020’s Auto, a genuinely exciting album that suggested its creator was capable of making many more quality records. I didn’t necessarily expect that to happen over the next 12 months, however—Eisenberg kicked off this year with Tell Me I’m Bad, the debut full-length from their math-jazz-noise rock band Editrix, and a couple of limited-release solo albums (particularly March’s Cellini’s Halo) probed the edges of Eisenberg’s output thus far. Which brings us to Bent Ring, an album made “on a dare”—the accomplished guitar player has made a record without any guitar. While Eisenberg is far from the first to challenge themselves in this fashion, Bent Ring is notable in that, rather than trying to distract from this absence using a hodgepodge of other instruments, Eisenberg fully embraces their chosen replacement: a “strange, salvaged, nameless banjo”.
While Bent Ring is not 100% banjo-made audio—Eisenberg plays bass and enlists Michael Cormier on percussion, not to mention their strong-as-ever vocals—nobody is going to mistake this record for anything other than capital-B Banjo music. It’s a singer-songwriter album that has a stubborn pop side like Tell Me I’m Bad does, but by necessity it’s a quieter affair (and this is even without factoring in the two renditions of the hymn “Abide with Me” that nearly bookend the album). While Editrix traded in organized chaos, Bent Ring almost feels like a musical purgatory over which Eisenberg sings and speaks contradictions—mid-tempo songs like “Mental Image” embody the concept of pacing back and forth very well, and the whispered “Amends” is a leveling-up moment of subtlety. Eisenberg is still pushing, however—“Analogies” and “Don’t Move” are about as driving and nervy as Eisenberg’s version of banjo-vocal music could be. Very rarely does Bent Ring musically resemble a typical-sounding banjo/folk record, but when it does (“Evening Song” and “Little Love Songs” in the album’s second half), it does that well too. Even in what is in theory their most restrictive record thus far, Eisenberg succeeds on several levels with Bent Ring. (Bandcamp link)
Grass Jaw – Anticipation
Release date: November 5th Record label: Habitforming Genre: Alt-country, folk rock Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull track: Siblings
Brendan Kuntz is a longtime punk drummer who’s recently veered hard into a solo career as Grass Jaw—Anticipation is Kuntz’s fourth record in two and a half years under the name. Although at first glance one might slot Grass Jaw as another adherent to (or causality of, depending on your perspective) the punk-to-country pipeline, Anticipation is as much an alt-rock record with rootsy influences as the other way around. Album opener “Dark Months” slowly creeps into view as a doom-y piece of gothic alt-country that reminds me of The Handsome Family, and the title track boasts pedal steel (courtesy of Sam Norris) that embellishes the song’s slowcore-indebted twang. Kuntz’s deep voice helps Anticipation acquire a dark feeling, but the instrumentation and subject matter that the upstate New York-based musician pursues on the record service this overarching vibe just as well.
On some of the album’s louder songs, Kuntz sounds like a less scream-y Rick Maguire of Pile, another band that reaches into country territory without ever constraining themselves to it. Perhaps this is best exemplified by the winding, multi-part “Weight/Chemicals”, a ragged noise rock song that twists from haunted chamber country to a mid-tempo descending-chord stomper to a frightened garage rock belter. The narcotic meditation of that track is a glimpse into the anxious, nervous center of Anticipation. Despite being one of the calmer songs on Anticipation, the aptly-titled “Juggling” reflects this as well as anything else, featuring Kuntz lamenting “On days like these when I’m not at my best / Days like these, I hope you forget” with a lonesome vocal. The other song on Anticipation that employs the quiet, time-out backing music is album closer “Siblings”—Kuntz sings a steady, cautiously optimistic message that suggests that “tired” doesn’t necessarily mean “hopeless”. (Bandcamp link)
Thalmus – Midnight Country
Release date: October 1st Record label: Self-released Genre: Alt-country, country rock, dream folk Formats: Digital Pull track: Schizophrenia
While Midnight Country is the first release by Atlanta’s Jonathan Merenivitch that I had heard, the artist currently known as Thalmus hasn’t been waiting for my attention to put together a body of work. He’s been making music in the compelling post-punk group Shepherds for a while now, and his Thalmus project finds him taking on roots and country music. If you’d assume a post-punk musician would have an “abnormal” take on country, well, you’re right and you’re wrong—before Midnight Country, the last Thalmus project was Low Country, a country re-imagining of side one of David Bowie’s Low, and this latest release also features a selection of covers. Midnight Country’s eight songs are four (mostly) Thalmus originals interspersed with an equal amount of covers that run the gamut from Sonic Youth to Anita Baker.
Other than the opening title track, which has a bit of Shepherds’ post-punk stomp (and incorporates elements of Thundercat’s “Them Changes”, covered in full later in the album), however, Merenivitch embraces a country music structure wholeheartedly. His takes on Anita Baker’s “Rapture” and Rae Stremmurd’s “Swang” both loosely end up translated into dreamy, R&B-adjacent folk, but Merenivitch doesn’t try too hard to bridge the time gap between the two songs—his torch song vocal distinguishes the former, while the latter uses an acoustic guitar to approximate the song’s rhythm and applies some modern vocal effects. Among the Thalmus originals, “Pharaoh Sings the Blues” is a simple acoustic strummer that’s as tastefully traditionalist musically as it is fiery lyrically.
With “Pharaoh”, Merenivitch continues the tradition of great political southern rock by drawing on the still-strong vestiges of the Civil War (“Mourning your brother who died in a traitorous war / While glossing over the atrocities that he died fighting for”) and Old Testament metaphor (“When a little bit of equality begins to creep in / That’s when the Pharaoh cries out that he’s being oppressed”) all over a rollicking country-rock backdrop. Meanwhile, the “death isn’t nothing to make a fuss over” gospel undertones of “Bury Me Loose” might feel a little lighter, but even it is laced with economic realism (“You said caskets are how much?”). “House of God” might be Thalmus’ best overall performance, a confident, twangy number that bridges the gap between some of the other songs’ straightforward country-folk and the more exploratory cover selections. If this is what Midnight Country means, then I’m all for it. (Bandcamp link)
Log Across the Washer – It’s Funny How the Colors
Release date: November 12th Record label: Crash Symbols Genre: Psychedelic pop, experimental pop Formats: Cassette, digital Pull track: Listen to Xasthur
Around a decade ago, Tyler Keene began releasing music under the name Log Across the Washer, and was also contributing to Portland post-punk group And And And. However, Keene left that band after two years, and the steady stream of Log Across the Washer releases seemed to dry up as well. Several years, a hiatus from recording music, and one relocation to South Orange, New Jersey later, West Virginia experimental label Crash Symbols is releasing It’s Funny How the Colors, a sixteen-song cassette that’s culled from what sounds like a creative rebirth for Keene. Self-recorded and self-produced at home and in a rented practice space, It’s Funny How the Colors is as intimate as any modern bedroom pop release—and despite Keene’s experimental inclinations and interest in jazz, the record certainly puts itself squarely into the “pop” end of that genre too.
Single “Listen to Xasthur” works itself up into a piece of Martin Newell-esque reverb-y jangle pop, while Keene’s tinkering doesn’t take away the gorgeous ballad at the heart of “Over My Head” or the sincere groove of “Oregon”. The leisurely, almost-twee “Arizona” is a grin-inducer, and even opener “Plates of Grass” presents a bouncy acoustic welcome before an odd left turn in its last few seconds. It’s Funny How the Colors does have some off-color moments like the end of “Plates of Grass”, but they’re subservient to the album’s songwriting and most of them (like the amusing spoken word of “Ok Dorks” and the jazz piano in the first half of “Arguably Never Recovered from the Season”) are overall enhancements. It’s Funny How the Colors is a record that asks the listener to hand over the reins and trust Log Across the Washer, and Tyler Keene is, at this stage in his music career, working at a level that justifies this request. (Bandcamp link)
The Rosy Overdrive monthly playlist is back! It’s the October edition this time! This one is very good, in my opinion! You will find plenty of new music here, as well as a few discoveries from my 1996 deep dive, and a couple of miscellaneous tracks.
Artists with multiple tracks this time around: Mo Troper (4), Lilly Hiatt (2), Superdrag (2). Not very many this time, huh. Casting a wide net this month, I suppose.
“Southern Mark Smith (Big Return)”, The Jazz Butcher From A Scandal in Bohemia (1984, Glass/Fire)
Even though I was never a huge Jazz Butcher fan, I still was outraged on behalf of the late Pat Fish that his death seemed to garner little to no acknowledgement from the current indie rock landscape. Wouldn’t have happened if I’d won the primaries, not under my watch. Like I said, not particularly qualified to write the man an elegy, but I do know that “Southern Mark Smith (Big Return)” is one of the great guitar pop songs of history. Seemingly the closest thing to a signature Jazz Butcher song, it’s a charmer that’s actually distinguished by its appropriately-opaque nod to Mark E. Smith, who is one of the most defiantly northern people that I as a non-Brit know of, and whose music has maybe never been described as “charming”. I’d imagine Fish had a hand in solidifying the strummy British version of jangle pop, and “If I find out nothing else, I’m gonna find out what makes your heart sing” probably wouldn’t fly on the other side of the pond. I’m glad it all came together here.
“The Expendables Ride Again”, Mo Troper From Dilettante (2021)
“The Expendables Ride Again” is the lead single and first (non-intro) track on Dilettante AKA Mo Troper IV, and it introduces the new incarnation of a looser, fuzzier, but still firing-on-all-cylinders Troper perfectly. Vocally, it’s a non-stop hook-fest from Troper, and the crunchy guitar stomp underneath him is nearly as captivating. Lyrically, it’s some of Dilettante’s most classic Troper writing—I don’t know exactly what “I woke up a bitter pill / In a clown car en route to the loser’s circle” means, but it wouldn’t be out of place on Exposure & Response, and there’s a part where he offers this song to another songwriter who, presumably, doesn’t have a 28-track just-released record to their name. But it closes with the carefully-balanced ambivalence of Troper musing “What’s the name of your new band? / The one with you and my old friends? / I can’t lie, I’m a fan,” before hanging onto the titular line for just long enough. Read more about Dilettante here.
“Face”, Lilly Hiatt From Lately (2021, New West)
Speaking of Mo Troper—here is another artist that released a record at the beginning of pandemic times and has just now returned with a follow-up palpably shaped by the ensuing year and a half. For Lilly Hiatt, it was last March’s Walking Proof (one of my favorite records of 2020), which hinted at worlds beyond her (very solid) brand of alt-country, and now it’s October’s Lately, a stripped-down, mid-tempo-heavy roots rock collection that finds Hiatt embracing an earned subtlety. “Face” is a classic simple double entendre, of which the mostly single-word titles on Lately make ample use—“Your face is saying what your words would never let you” for the noun, and “It hurts to look at you anymore” for the verb.
“Be”, Frogpond From Count to Ten (1996, Columbia)
Alright, so Frogpond was and is a band from the Kansas City area who knocked out two records of Breeders/Pixies-influenced, unabashedly 90s power pop in the latter half of the relevant decade. I’d already heard their 1999 sophomore album, Safe Ride Home (“I Did” is an all-timer), but I’ve just gotten to their 1996 debut, and it holds up pretty well too. The “hit” is probably “Be”, a pop-song-power-chord anthem that would’ve sat nicely on a radio playlist in between “Not Too Soon” and one of those Veruca Salt songs in a more just world. Frogpond are gearing up to release their third record—their first in over 20 years—in mid-November, which is a complete coincidence with regards to their appearance here. But if there’s another “Be” on that one, we’ll be hearing from Frogpond again soon.
“A Message to You”, EEP From Winter Skin (2021, Hogar)
The second record from El Paso shoegaze five-piece EEP finds the group stepping out of their comfort zone with some electronic, funk, and even Mexican balladry-influenced material, but “A Message to You” shows that they can still nail their primary genre just as easily. The message that singer Rosie Varela is attempting to convey was inspired by trying to comfort a clearly distraught woman in the chaos of a loud rock show, and the heavy but warm layers of fuzz that adorn a beautiful pop melody are just as consoling as the lyrical comfort that Varela imparts (“It’s okay to cry”). Read more about Winter Skin here.
“Head on the Ground”, Bulletin From Hiding to Nothing (2021)
The difficult-to-Google band Bulletin have been kicking around the Boston (and possibly Providence) area for the last few years, and they sound to my ears very much in line with the strong undercurrent of 90s alternative/indie rock-inspired bands that have been pouring out of New England in recent memory. Their latest record and debut full-length album Hiding to Nothing actually does a fair bit of genre-hopping, but single “Head on the Ground” is a distinct blend of grunge and power pop that’s as warmly familiar as it is immaculately executed. Landing somewhere between a harder-charging Superdrag and a more tuneful Foo Fighters song, singer David Khoshtinat stoically intones the titular lines for an instant eerie hook, before letting “Head on the Ground” loose as it should be.
“Big Sky”, Alexa Rose From Headwaters (2021, Big Legal Mess)
This single from Headwaters, the second album from Asheville, North Carolina’s Alexa Rose, features a clear, clean chugging power-chord foundation, a timeless roots-pop chorus, and awestruck lyrics about leaving the South and finding out just how damn big the Western United States is—it couldn’t have been called anything else but “Big Sky”. What I keep coming back to about it is how it’s such a big, wide, open song about what is ultimately an insular feeling—“It takes a big sky to feel small”, as Rose says in the found chorus, as well as feeling “both alone in the company of a friend”. Rose is a very good singer—but then, so are plenty of other people who have exactly zero “Big Sky”s to their names, with nothing that can actually transport a listener to “somewhere on the 113, playing ‘California Stars’, three-quarter tank of gasoline”.
“End of the World”, Gulfer (2021, Topshelf)
The second stand-alone single from Montreal’s Gulfer in 2021 is an alt-rock heater of a track that doesn’t really waste any of its three and a half minutes of runtime. In “End of the World”, math-y riffs from guitarists Joseph Therriault and Vincent Ford dance around the edges of the song’s loud fuzz-rock foundation, and the vocals of Ford (who released a solid solo album as Stevenson earlier this year) are just distant-sounding enough to add a layer of intrigue to the song’s lyrics. “End of the World” is still unmistakably melodic in spite of everything going on, nevertheless—both in terms of the guitarists’ inspired playing and in Ford’s singing, the song stacks up against the hookiness any single by one of your more pop punk-indebted emo revival bands.
“The Moon”, Trace Mountains From House of Confusion (2021, Lame-O)
The best Dave Benton songs always sound so easy. Not necessarily easy to write—in fact, it’s probably harder to write songs like this and make them good, deep, and memorable—but easy to get, easy to understand, and easy to feel like they’ve always existed in the air somehow. Starting with LVL UP and blossoming with Trace Mountains, Benton’s songs have always felt like they’ve inhabited their own world, and now it makes sense to hang “The Moon” over it. House of Confusion embraces the Americana of last year’s Lost in the Country (“Late June, I took a ride in the country with you” is one of this song’s lyrics), and maybe Benton couldn’t have penned these lyrics a half-decade ago (“I’m at the point of my life when all these kind of things come rushing through”), but “The Moon” feels like a foundational Trace Mountains song, even years after the foundation has been laid.
“Destination Ursa Major”, Superdrag From Regretfully Yours (1996, Elektra)
I knew I would like Regretfully Yours. There are plenty of 1990s major-label money-losing power pop records that I already like (some of which, unfortunately, made by absolute monsters of human beings), and I have already heard and liked Superdrag’s 1998 cult classic Head Trip in Every Key. That brings us today to Regretfully Yours, which is the big one, the one with the only ever actual hit single (which we will get to). It’s definitely more slick and zeitgeisty than Head Trip (or, apparently, their pre-major label EPs, which I haven’t heard), sure—“Destination Ursa Major” here is a good old-fashioned roaring alt-rock pop song. I would imagine that John Davis’ vocals being buried might be a deal-breaker for more traditionalists, but this isn’t exactly a shoegaze song. I can make him out well enough. He’s going to Ursa Major. Superdrag is taking us all up there, I think. It sounds like a blast.
“September”, The Stick Figures From Archeology (2021, Floating Mill)
The Stick Figures, who formed at Tampa’s University of South Florida, released one four-song EP in 1981 that was a shining example of American post-punk before disbanding. An archival campaign from Pittsburgh’s Floating Mill Records, however, (aptly titled Archeology) has unearthed quite a bit more than that. “September” was one of those original four, but it still stands out even among reissue’s baker’s dozen of solid tracks. It’s one of the poppiest of Archeology’s songs—the dance-punk influence from the likes of Pylon and Gang of Four is felt in the bassline and in Rachel Maready Evergreen’s commanding vocals, but it also has a jangly undercurrent that wouldn’t be out of place on Captured Tracks’ Strum and Thrum college rock compilation from last year. Read more about Archeology here.
“Better Than That”, Mo Troper From Dilettante (2021)
“You said you wanted somebody normal / But you know I’m better than that”: Mo Troper chooses to come out swinging in the 75-second “Better Than That”, a song that’s more or less all hook. It’s lo-fi power pop at its best, and Troper even finds the time and space to sneak a little call-and-response vocal somewhere in the middle of the song. Is this a sequel to “Somebody Special” from 2016’s Beloved? Unlikely, but at least Troper sticks up for himself a little more in this one, if so. Read more about Dilettante here.
“Never Graduate”, ME REX From Pterodactyl (2022, Big Scary Monsters)
Well, it looks like it’s time for what I’m pretty sure is Rosy Overdrive’s first foray into upcoming 2022 releases. You may remember London’s ME REX from their ambitious 52-song experiment Megabear that I wrote a bit about back in June, which will (spoilers) probably claim a spot on the Rosy Overdrive year-end list whenever I get around to that. But the group is already prepping a follow-up, an EP called Pterodactyl that’ll come out on Big Scary Monsters on February 4th. It sounds like the band is to a degree returning to the dinosaur*-titled EPs that gained ME REX notoriety in the first place, back when it was effectively a Myles McCabe solo project. Still, the leveling-up that happened with Megabear hasn’t been lost with “Never Graduate”, which features what may eventually come to be known as a “classic McCabe” lyric over a sharp but unobtrusive synth-pop-rock instrumental.
*no paleontology or taxonomy on my post please
“That’s the Way I Like It”, Lily Konigsberg From Lily We Need to Talk Now (2021, Wharf Cat)
What, you thought we’d get another month without a Lily Konigsberg song? Her “main” band, Palberta, helped kick off the year back in January, released a compilation of her solo material in May, released an EP as My Idea with Nate Amos two months later, and appeared on severalreleases by Amos’ This Is Lorelei project throughout 2021. Amos produced Lily We Need to Talk Now, which is somehow only Konigsberg’s debut full-length, and there is definitely some of This Is Lorelei’s bouncy pop-rock in songs like “That’s the Way I Like It”. Or, maybe This Is Lorelei sounds like “That’s the Way I Like It”. Konigsberg hops around genres quite a bit on Lily We Need to Talk Now (check the ambient haze of “Don’t Be Lazy with Me” or the minimalist pop of “Hark”), but they work and hang together alongside the stream-of-consciousness power pop of “That’s the Way I Like It” because when it comes down to it, it’s all distinctively Lily Konigsberg.
If you haven’t experienced Galactic Static’s transmissions from a Friendly Universe, then “Fresh Cut & Bessie” might be the Rosetta Stone that interprets their interplanetary pop rock for our human senses. Lo-fi, fuzzy, and above all else catchy as hell, it’s a captivating lead single that even has some lyrics that could be seen as relatable to (some of) us Earth dwellers. Sure, the title feels like it was translated to a different language and back, but the bummer pop message hits home in the final verse (“Some say to look on the bright side, but when I go outside it just burns my eyes / Forever doomed to a sedentary life”). Read more about Friendly Universe here.
“The Bastard Overture”, Superconductor From Bastardsong (1996, Boner)
I listened to Superconductor for the first time this month. I was, uh, unprepared for it. I knew that they were/are different from A.C. Newman’s other bands, of course, in theory, but I didn’t know Carl was effectively making Fucked Up albums in the mid-90s. Bastardsong is a chaotic trip, and it seems like it’s not their most beloved release, but it’s definitely an album that I’ve heard in full now. Is it good? Do I like it? Well, something kept me going back to it. Maybe just the novelty of Newman screaming his way through a prog-post-hardcore double album but still being recognizably A.C. Newman. “The Bastard Overture” is great—the first half could be a New Pornographers song if it was cleaned up and had less screaming, before it devolves into the frantic noise piece that attempts to justify the “overture” title. Even if I’d rather listen to Electric Version (or, for that matter, Look What the Rookie Did) nine times out of ten, I wouldn’t mind Newman revisiting this well at some point.
“Cat Song”, Gold Dust From Gold Dust (2021)
“Can I really be that bad if the cat follows me around?” is one of the best opening lyrics of the year. Stephen Pierce ponders this age old question, as well as the follow-up “Is it ’cause she needs a friend and I’m the only one around, or does she see something in me I can’t see?” in “Cat Song”, one of the musically lightest and brightest moments on Gold Dust. Pierce notably plays in a couple of heavier bands (Kindling and Ampere) that could be described as “definitely not what Gold Dust is doing”; the delicate folk of “Cat Song” is one of the furthest moments away from Pierce’s past work, lacking even the distorted rock of some of the record’s other tracks that would put it in the same ballpark as Kindling’s shoegaze. But “I’ll try to be the good you see in me” wouldn’t quite have the same impact buried under a couple layers of reverb. Read more about Gold Dust here.
“3h et des personnes”, Pays P. From Ça v aller (2021, Peculiar Works)
Paris noise rock band Pays P. have built up a following primarily through their live act that includes Big Thief’s Buck Meek (who invited them to open for his main band’s European tour) and Brooklyn’s SAVAK (who ended up recording Ça v aller and releasing it on their own label, Peculiar Works), and judging by “3h et des personnes”, I’d bet that they’re a force on the stage. Pays P. choose to open Ça v aller in confrontational fashion, with this dramatic six-minute crawler of distortion, pounding percussion, and a vocal that swings between muttering and wailing from lead singer Laura Boullic. The trio (also made up of brothers Lucas Valero on guitar and Pablo Valero on drums) are “on” all throughout Ça v aller, but ““3h et des personnes” in particular feels like a relentless showcase of their full force.
“Demolished”, Strange Ranger From No Light in Heaven (2021)
I do remember Sioux Falls, the Bozeman, Montana duo that made the colossally underrated indie rock worship double album Rot Forever back in 2016 (and appeared in one of the first posts on Rosy Overdrive). It’s only been a half decade, but the band that would become Strange Ranger has kept moving forward. There have been pop classics, dreamy growers, a move to the West Coast (Portland) followed by the East (Philadelphia), and now No Light in Heaven, a highly experimental pop “mixtape” that’s assuredly caused at least one emo kid to have a meltdown. The synthed-up Remembering the Rockets-esque “Needing You” and the modern soft rock of “Pass Me By” are both successful left-turns, but fear not: I’ve chosen “Demolished”, the under-two-minute lo-fi pop-punk banger that’s the closest to vintage Strange Ranger. Oh wait, that’s not what “vintage Strange Ranger” sounds like either? Shit, what do they sound like?
“Miserable Ways”, Boyracer From Assuaged (2021, Emotional Response)
Stewart Anderson’s band Boyracer has been around since the early 1990s and fourteen albums, but vocalist and lead guitarist Christina Ridley has only been with the band for two years and as many records. Despite this, Ridley leaves her distinct mark on Assuaged, and there’s no better example than her lead vocal on “Miserable Ways”, a kiss-off anthem to what sounds like a truly unpleasant person. At least, one would assume—for me, it would take a lot to get “You should hate yourself, not everyone else,” out of me, which Ridley gleefully sings over the song’s bridge. The bridge is also where the song breaks out its crowd-pleasing handclaps—this is Buzzcocks-esque pop-punk at its best. Read more about Assuaged here.
“Take It Back”, Salt From Salt (2021, Sleeper Records)
The most recent release from Philadelphia’s Sleeper Records (2nd Grade, Friendship, Russel the Leaf) is the debut from Salt, the new project from Erased! Tapes’ Jon Hankof, who has also released music as Sundog in the past. The self-titled Salt album is, on the surface, the kind of low-key slowcore-influenced folk rock that has been chased by a lot of East Coast bands in the past few years, but Hankof offers a spirited take on it. This kind of music can easily fall into the “all the songs blend together” trap, but Salt has plenty of sneakily memorable melodies, and “Take It Back” is a steady highlight. Hankof’s voice is very matter-of-fact over top of gently chugging guitar chords and the simplest drumbeat, so much so that the ramp-up in the song’s final minute, featuring Salt turning “break it down and take it back, break it down” into some sort of mantra, just kind of arrives out of nowhere.
“Queen Sophie for President”, The World Is a Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid to Die From Illusory Walls (2021, Epitaph)
Now, here’s a The World Is a Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid to Die song that I could dance to. That’s what we’ve all been waiting on TWIABP to do, right? No? Well, “Queen Sophie for President” is a pretty incredibly pop rock single that just happens to be by one of the premiere emo-post-rock-maybe-prog-metal-now bands out there. Keyboard player Katie Dvorak takes lead vocals on this song, and her synth playing is a pretty good counterpart to the driving rhythm section (which is also a feature of most of Illusory Walls). Apparently the title of “Queen Sophie for President” references a nickname earned by Dvorak’s late grandmother, but the dire lyrics seem to deal with a more realistic and subsequently more horrifying look at politics. But at least for three and a half minutes, “Never get better and never do anything” is head-bob-worthy.
“Breaking Glass”, K. Campbell From Breaking Glass b/w More Than a Memory (2021, Poison Moon)
The very Rosy Overdrive-friendly fuzzy power pop of K. Campbell’s latest single, “Breaking Glass”, finds catharsis in the form of a big, grin-inducing chorus. The Houston-based Campbell trains his ire at one specific asshole who has negatively impacted the life of a friend (“This town’s a railroad track and he’s a bottle, so take aim and throw / Let’s hear some breaking glass”), but the song’s smashing solution can’t quite drown out the chorus’s starry-eyed declaration of “This is how it feels to be alone”. Although, maybe being alone isn’t that bad if it sounds like how “Breaking Glass” sounds. The frustration in the song seems only to be exacerbated by the ramshackle condition of the building in which it takes place (“Paint is peeling, collapsing ceiling…You can hear the red bricks screaming”), which adds a personal touch to Campbell’s decision to donate all proceeds from the physical single to Houston Tenants Union.
“Cry”, Thornetta Davis From Sunday Morning Music (1996, Sub Pop)
Sunday Morning Music came out on Sub Pop, oddly enough, but I like the pairing after thinking about it for a bit. Considering how much grunge (I mean like real, actual grunge) at least attempted to incorporate the spirit of early rock and roll, why not just release a blues rock record from Detroit? I’ve seen Sunday Morning Music called a soul or gospel album (the latter most likely due to its title track), and those genres are certainly there, but the record has too many rippers for me not to think of it as rock music first. Album opener “Cry”, for instance, starts with a mid-tempo atmosphere-builder instrumental before ramping up in the chorus in a way that’s very mid-90s. Only, most people singing over those instrumentals couldn’t sing like Thornetta Davis.
“Sucked Out”, Superdrag From Regretfully Yours (1996, Elektra)
Oh, here it is. The hit. Twenty-five years ago, “Sucked Out” shot all the way up to #17 on Billboard’s Modern Rock chart, which—okay, well, that’s higher than anything else on this playlist. While if I was trying to formulate a rock radio hit for 1996, it wouldn’t necessarily look like “Sucked Out”, that’s mainly because nobody seemed to know what a rock hit in 1996 looked like (#1 hits around the time of “Sucked Out” included “Ironic” by Alanis Morissette, “Pepper” by the Butthole Surfers, and a mediocre Cranberries song that no one remembers). But with the sing-song verses, surprisingly strained John Davis chorus vocal, and general Gen X jadedness—I get it. But even though it technically worked, “Sucked Out” still sounds like a single that forever gets referred to as one that “should’ve been a hit”—it’s not self-consciously stupid enough to be a “Buddy Holly” or a “Stacy’s Mom” and lodge itself into the culture.
“Sugar and Cream”, Mo Troper From Dilettante (2021)
“Sugar and Cream” is Dilettante’s “fake musical theater song”, and even among that record’s grab-bag attitude, it sticks out like a sore thumb. Mo Troper slips into falsetto for the entire ninety-second track, and sings about the very pair of ingredients (“With berries or coffee, and everything else in between”) over a spare acoustic guitar instrumental. The most obvious musical theater nods (at least to a philistine like myself) are when Troper lists off other classic pairings (“Mac and cheese”, “Bert and Ernie”, “Woodstock and Snoopy”) as well as the “my favorite devices” line. Looking forward to the moment in the Mo Toper musical where he steps away from confusing emails and scrolling through his mentions to reflect on the finer things and sing “Sugar and Cream”. Read more about Dilettante here.
“People Die”, Travis Morrison From Travistan (2004, Barsuk)
So, I had the idea to see if I wanted to talk about anything from the Dismemberment Plan’s Change since it just turned twenty this month, but I ended up falling down a rabbit hole, and long story short, we’re revisiting Travistan this time. “People Die” is a pretty clear highlight from the record, an electronic-based, mortality-observing pop song that blooms into a classic Morrison steamroller midway through. The mid-00s were an interesting and underrated time for the indie rock circles in which Morrison was steeped. Barsuk labelmate and Travistan guest John Vanderslice was forging his own brand of balancing a singer-songwriter outlook with his increasing interest in production, while former collaborator Chad Clark was challenging the D.C./Dischord crowd with his band Beauty Pill in a way that was both similar and different to how Ian MacKaye and Guy Picciotto’s band did the same a decade previously. It still pisses me off we didn’t get to see what would have happened if Morrison had been able to fully embrace the promise of songs like “People Die”.
“We Are”, Gates From Here and Now (2021, Wax Bodega)
New Jersey’s Gates make a shimmery, atmospheric kind of post-rock-heavy emo—they’re currently on tour with The World Is a Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid to Die, which feels like a correct pairing. Here and Now is the band’s first record in five years, and the EP (which, at 25 minutes, is longer than plenty of fifth-wave emo “LPs”) is full of darkly dramatic rock music that’s accessible despite not being rigidly structured. “We Are”, with its anthem of a refrain, feels like Gates at their most front-facing—singer Kevin Dye’s voice is compelling throughout, but like any good post-rock-emo, you have to wait until the second half of the song for things to really take off. Also like good emo, Dye’s lyrics that ruminate on futility and shame are hardly “uplifting”, but do tap into something potent.
“Shirley Don’t”, April Magazine From If the Ceiling Were a Kite: Vol. 1 (2021, Tough Love)
San Francisco’s April Magazine released a new record, Sunday Music for an Overpass, on Paisley Shirt Records in September. “Shirley Don’t” is a little older, however—first released in 2018, the song got a formal home last month on If the Ceiling Were a Kite: Vol. 1, a compilation of various bedroom four-track recordings that the band made over their first couple years of existence. The lo-fi medium suits “Shirley Don’t” just fine—it’s a sleepy, lazy pop song whose brilliance one might miss if they aren’t paying close enough attention (are you?). Singer Katiana Mashikian has also played in other Bay Area bands like The Reds, Pinks, & Purples, Flowertown, and her solo project Mister Baby—in a scene that’s rife with new music, I’d say she’s done plenty to make herself stand out.
“Psychocastle”, Taraka From Welcome to Paradise Lost (2021, Rage Peace)
Taraka Larson made a name for herself as one-half of the psych-dance-new age duo Prince Rama—Welcome to Paradise Lost is the first music she’s made on her own since the group’s breakup. The whole album is a bit of everything—maybe it could be described as “a lo-fi garage punk record with several, uh, detours from that sound”. Lead single “Psychocastle”, however, is a straightforward psych rock ripper that boasts a classic pop hook of a chorus. In said chorus, huge fuzzy chords meet a compelling, dance-friendly call-and-response vocal performance from Taraka to herself—repeated as many times as necessary.
“Johnny on the Spot”, Texas Is the Reason From Do You Know Who You Are? (1996, Revelation)
Texas Is the Reason (who were, unsurprisingly, not actually from Texas) are the latest untouchable 90s emo band that I can now say I understand well enough. Their sole album, 1996’s Do You Know Who You Are?, is a polished, punk-indebted album that, as the story goes, could certainly have broken out if the New York band could’ve stayed together (imagine if Dear You had less distinct vocals but better songs). “Johnny on the Spot”, which opens both the proper album and the CD-length compilation of everything Texas Is the Reason ever recorded, is a driving pop song that doesn’t noodle any more than the hooky opening guitar riff allows. It comes out of the gate strong but also does the classic emo thing of slowing itself down for a dramatic finish.
“Knapsack”, Amy Rigby From Diary of a Mod Housewife (1996, Koch)
Oh, this is good. Amy Rigby has had a memoir-worthy career—she’s lived in Pittsburgh, Nashville, New York, played in The Shams, had a song of hers recorded by Ronnie Spector, and has recently made several records with her husband, power pop legend Wreckless Eric. Diary of a Mod Housewife, the first album she released under her own name, has several songs that could’ve been easily highlighted here, but “Knapsack” is streaming, so I’ll go with this one. “Knapsack” is just Rigby and her acoustic guitar: just three minutes of Rigby absolutely nailing the bullseye of a vivid, torrential world of imagined interaction and real infatuation with a stranger—in this case, the man who takes Rigby’s bag at the entrance to a bookstore. “I want to tell him I’m not just some soulless jerk / Hey—I got a band, I understand what life is for,” she insists to nobody, like a normal person.
“Lately”, Lilly Hiatt From Lately (2021, New West)
“One day this will all be a distant memory / But right now it’s living inside of me,” is how Lilly Hiatt opens the title track to Lately, and it might as well be the thesis statement of the record. Hiatt doesn’t make it a secret that this record is a byproduct of the chaos of 2020, to the point where this collection of songs began “as a means of keeping sane”. Like the album art suggests, Lately ended up being a snapshot of a tumultuous time—although I don’t think the title track’s sentiment of confusion and an isolated imagination running wild (“You have no idea what this has done to me lately”) will end up dating it. Nor will the jarring keyboard that opens the song and dances between the verses—that’s just another distinct touch from a record that has a lot more of them if you look close enough.
“Still in Love”, Cat Power From Myra Lee (1996, Smells Like)
I’m not really a Cat Power person—at least, I haven’t been. I’ve heard Moon Pix, and it didn’t leave much of an impression on me. But there’s something about “Still in Love”, a shambling, mid-tempo Hank Williams cover from her relatively unheralded debut record, 1996’s Myra Lee. Since I’m not really a Cat Power person, I have no idea how this record is viewed today by Chan Marshall stans, but What Would the Community Think came out on Matador mere months later and that’s probably where the Cat Power story begins for most. Steve Shelley of Sonic Youth is who’s on the steady drumbeat, but it’s the surprisingly faithful country guitar flourishes and Marshall’s restrained vocals that hint at passion behind the resignation that make the tune.
“My Master’s Voice”, Mo Troper From Dilettante (2021)
Here is a fourth Mo Troper song! You’d think with all of this practice, I’d be able to spell Dilettante by now without looking, but nope—still want to add two “l”s and remove one “t”. “My Master’s Voice” is as good as anything else on that record, starting relatively restrained and exploding into a cascading guitar wall in about a minute and a half. All just in a day’s work for Troper. Is “My Master’s Voice” from the perspective of the dog on the cover, hearing the sound of its owner yelling? Is it a metaphor for domestic ennui? I don’t know! But it’s good! Read more about Dillletttante here.
“Never Getting Older”, Zaq Baker (2021)
Minnesota’s Zaq Baker has been making “theatre-influenced pop punk” with his grand piano as lead instrument for a few years now, and his latest single leans hard into his orchestral side without abandoning pop song structure. “Never Getting Older” begins with Baker whispering over quiet piano chords, before both he and the keys swell to deliver the message the song’s title hints at: “I’m terrified of whatever comes next”. You can take the power chords out of the aging pop-punker, but you can never fully alleviate the confusion and anxiety that comes with everyone around them growing older, getting married, and doing general adult things. Oh, and is that a string quartet? Yes, it is.
“Freezing Rain”, Signal Valley featuring Sydney Atkinson From Fire, Lightning, and Rain (2021)
The second Signal Valley album of 2021 feels like an ambitious step forward for Daniel Spizuco, the mind behind the project. While it might not be as straightforwardly accessible as April’s aptly-titled Music for People, Fire, Lightning, and Rain charts a path that nods to decades of art-pop music to traverse its hour-long, literally elemental journey. It all leads to album closer “Freezing Rain”, a duet with Sydney Atkinson that unsurprisingly falls under the “Rain” subsection of the album (I mentioned classic prog rock as a structural Signal Valley influence when I talked about Music for People, and I wasn’t kidding around). Although Spizuco throws a lot at the listener, they know when to hold back, and most of “Freezing Rain” is built up of piano and minimal synths that allow Spizuco and Atkinson’s chilly back-and-forth to shine. “I’m still here, still here for you,” Spiuzco bellows. “You’re still here because you can’t admit it—what else can you do?” Atkinson replies.
The November era of Pressing Concerns has begun! Today we’re looking at two records that come out this Friday—the debut from San Francisco’s Chime School, and the sophomore album from El Paso’s EEP—as well as two October highlights from Gold Dust and Galactic Static.
Release date: November 5th Record label: Slumberland Genre: Jangle pop Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital Pull track: Dead Saturdays
Chime School, the solo project of San Francisco’s Andy Pastalaniec, is certainly aptly named—the chiming sounds of classic jangle rock are all over his self-titled debut record. Chime School is also further evidence of the fertile jangle pop soil that has taken hold in the San Francisco Bay area, and of Slumberland Records’ recent attempt to shine a light on it (which it has also done with The Umbrellas and The Reds, Pinks, and Purples). Pastalaniec’s first record evokes the delicate balance of nostalgia and bittersweet emotions in which the best of the genre trades, but it does so while keeping its foot almost entirely on the gas. Pastalaniec, who’d mostly been notable as a drummer up until this point, gives most of Chime School a driving tempo that puts it much closer to the “peppy” than “melancholic” end of the jangle pop spectrum. Even the slower tracks on Chime School still feel upbeat, like the mid-tempo opener “Wait Your Turn”, or the early R.E.M.-chime of “Gone Too Fast”.
After “Wait Your Turn”, really Chime School takes off by tearing through toe-tapping, jangly pop anthems—brisk guitar arpeggios and drumbeats in “Taking Time to Tell You” and “Dead Saturdays” are counterbalanced by Pastalaniec’s melodies, while mid-record songs like “Anywhere But Here” and “Radical Leisure” are pulled along by the bass guitar as much as anything else. Another great vocal melody, the one in “Get a Bike”, ends up being outshone (out-chimed?) by an exuberant opening guitar riff. In “Get a Bike”, Pastalaniec instructs the listener to “ride a motorbike out in the country, if you want to understand”, while also referencing “1960s cars” and a “little Honda”. The transportation motif seems important—it isn’t the only song on the record with a motorcycle allusion in the title, and with how zippy Chime School is, I doubt it’s unintentional. I don’t think that one necessarily needs to call in sick, drive out to the country, and feel the wind in one’s hair in order to “get” Chime School, though—these songs can take you there on their own. (Bandcamp link)
EEP – Winter Skin
Release date: November 5th Record label: Hogar Genre: Shoegaze, dream pop Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital Pull track: A Message to You
Rosie Varela had been playing in cover bands since the early 90s and witnessed firsthand the initial wave of shoegaze acts like My Bloody Valentine, Lush, and Slowdive, but her decision to combine two of her passions came much later, and unintentionally. One song recorded with friends in 2018 quickly became EEP, a five-person band that, in addition to Varela, features El Paso music scene veterans Sebastian Estrada, Serge Carrasco, Lawrence Brown III, and Ross Ingram (who released an excellent solo album earlier this year). Their debut album Death of a Very Good Machine came out last July, and EEP (whose name comes from a mutated version of the Folk Implosion’s E.Z.L.A. that also incorporates their hometown of El Paso) are back less than a year and a half later with Winter Skin. Although Varela sings the majority of the songs, Winter Skin feels like the work of collaborators working together in lockstep. EEP have never fully come off as a dogmatic shoegaze band, and Winter Skin sees the band reach further out in several directions.
That isn’t to say that Winter Skin’s not a shoegaze record, and the album’s first three songs—the urgent “Hanging on a Wire”, the driving “No Inbetween”, and the heavy pure pop of “A Message to You”—are all robust, reverb-heavy rockers that can go toe-to-toe with any recent nü shoegaze revival LP. Winter Skin is only just getting started, however. The title of “Stubblefield” is a nod to James Brown’s drummer Clyde Stubblefield, and the song is based around a classic funk drum riff, something I can’t think of any other shoegaze band even somewhat approximating. In addition, EEP bust out the psychedelia of “Today I Woke Up” and the dream pop “Ángeles”, the latter of which is entirely sung in Spanish and is inspired by “traditional Mexican love ballads”. “Stargazer” and “Slow Down” (the latter of which, apparently, grew out of a version of the former) are electronic-influenced songs that seem the most strongly influenced by Ingram’s solo career and production background (he owns Brainville, the El Paso recording studio in which Winter Skin was recorded). The latter song’s ambient pop lullaby benediction in particular would not have been out of place on Ingram’s Sell the Tape Machine. Even when they’re a world away from the shoegaze of the first couple of tracks, however, nothing is out of place on Winter Skin. (Bandcamp link)
Gold Dust – Gold Dust
Release date: October 15th Record label: Self-released Genre: Folk rock Formats: Cassette, CD, digital Pull track: Oh Well
Easthampton, Massachusetts’ Stephen Pierce first became known to me through his work in Kindling, the underrated western-Mass shoegaze band who appeared in one of Rosy Overdrive’s first ever posts. The solo moniker Gold Dust is Pierce’s first step out on his own, and it finds him embracing a warm folk rock sound. After the dreamy instrumental intro “Water Street, 2am”, “Oh Well” exemplifies Gold Dust’s Neil Young-ish hybridization of folk songs and rock band instrumentation, marrying lazy acoustic guitar picking and strumming and a beautiful vocal melody from Pierce with a meandering, soaring electric guitar solo in the song’s second half. The fuzziness from Pierce’s other recorded output still guests frequently, particularly in songs like “All’s Well That Ends” and “Brookside Cemetery Blues”, which earn the Crazy Horse comparison that Gold Dust’s Bandcamp page cites, but the distortion even colors around the edges of the quieter songs, in a way that reminds me of the Torment & Glory album from earlier this year.
In a way, these heavier moments give an extra sense of clarity to when the light shines through on Gold Dust. “The Shortest Path” is a nice, sincerely subtle song about people finding ways back to each other, while the seemingly straightforward “Cat Song” asks a question that I’ve more or less asked myself before (“Can I really be that bad if the cat follows me around?”) in the service of a resolution-spurred-by feline ending that’d make John K. Samson proud. While “Cat Song” is perhaps the clearest example of Pierce’s songwriting acumen, his passion for classic 60s and 70s folk is all over Gold Dust if one cares to look. Buried beneath a swirling instrumental, “Anywhereing” features some excellent nomadic lyrics from Pierce. “These are songs you thought you’d never sing”, he remarks in a song about isolation and a lack of fulfillment. “But I’m still thinking there’s a chance for me to finally get it right,” he affirms at the end of “Anywhereing”, a thread that hangs in the air until the end of album closer “Small Song”: “If you sing that song ‘til you believe it, pretty sure you’re okay. You’re okay”. (Bandcamp link)
Galactic Static – Friendly Universe
Release date: October 22nd Record label: Corrupted TV Genre: Lo-fi power pop, indie punk Formats: CD, digital Pull track: Fresh Cut & Bessie
Galactic Static is an “intergalactic friendship-core” band that hails from “the edge of the universe”. Or maybe they’re a couple of guys from Brooklyn who are committed to unabashed, hooky lo-fi power pop. Whoever or whatever they are, they bring tidings of a “Friendly Universe”, which to them seems to mean garbled but catchy positive guitar pop that reminds me of bands like Ohio’s Connections or even Mythical Motors. It wouldn’t surprise me too much if Galactic Static are extraterrestrials, as Friendly Universe definitely feels a bit off at times. “Friendship Rd.” is perhaps the record’s upbeat theme music, attempting to beam out a message of camaraderie through bouncy pop punk, until a Mark Linkous-esque self-sabotaging interruption grinds the song to a halt (then it starts right back up again).
Album opener “Dark Night of the Soul” is, befitting the title, dark and urgent-sounding, an intriguing red herring of a beginner track. Even the most complete power pop tune on Friendly Universe, “Fresh Cut & Bessie”, has something of a non-sequitur right there in the title. Still, there must’ve been some warm blood involved in a record that contains a mid-tempo Zippo lighter-holder like “Choose Your Own Adventure”. And the big finish closing track, “Time Enough (Don’t Let’s Give Up)”, burns through chunky power chords, basement-scale “Baba O’Riley” grandeur, and one last rally-around-the-flag effort for over five minutes, declaring not to give up even when “the world’s just not enough”. When you have a Friendly Universe, maybe you don’t need just one silly planet. (Bandcamp link)
The Last Pressing Concerns of October is upon us! This incredibly spooky, hook-heavy edition looks at the latest full-lengths from pop song machines Mo Troper, Mythical Motors, and Boyracer, as well as a new EP from an up-and-comer, Louisville’s Molly O’Malley.
Release date: October 15th Record label: Self-released Genre: Power pop Formats: CD, digital Pull track: The Expendables Ride Again
Even though it eventually became one of my favorite albums of last decade, Mo Troper’s 2017 record Exposure & Response threw me for a loop at first. That album’s tightly-controlled, polished venom wasn’t how I conceptualized an “underground power pop album” at the time. I suppose I was expecting something more like Dilettante. With his newest record (also known, apparently, as Mo Troper IV), Troper has put together a 28-track, 50-minute marathon of an album that somehow feels like both the record that hews closest to Teenage Fanclub-inspired guitar pop and his most adventurous yet. It’s been quite a ride to get to this point—Troper got his last album,Natural Beauty, in right before everything shut down last February, and spent his months of quarantine making a reverent song-by-song cover album of The Beatles’ Revolver.
Like Mo Troper’s Revolver, Dilettante’s songs are almost entirely played and sung by Troper himself, and it’s a little fuzzier compared to his last couple of proper records (but not in a garage rock way, mind you). Still, Troper is a pop star above everything else, and Dilettante finds his songwriting as sharp as ever. Literally nothing could stop the runaway hooks in blissful rockers like “The Expendables Ride Again”, “Better Than That”, and “Winged Commander”. The music seems to be attempting to rise to the level of the inspiration of Troper’s lyrics on some of these tracks—“Can’t talk about how I feel inside / Without alienating everyone in my life,” he confesses in the love song “Tears on My Dockers”, and “The Perfect Song” is about something perhaps equally important for Troper. Other times, Troper’s penchant for sardonic scene observations surfaces again, but not quite as frequently, and “The Expendables Ride Again”, “All My Friends Are Venmo”, and “Camelot” all seem to greet it all with a bemused shrug more than with a smirk or scowl.
As mentioned earlier, Troper has packed Dilettante full of songs, and the smaller, in-the-cracks tracks have plenty to recommend as well. The falsetto, spare “Sugar and Cream” is breathtaking, as is (for completely different reasons) the disturbingly-spot on Elvis Costello pastiche of “Wet T-Shirt Contest”. To refer to a different 28-track album, there are plenty of “Motor Away”s on Dilettante, but the “Pimple Zoo”s are pretty good too. The acoustic, Andy Partridge-esque “My Canary Was Sure to Run” is another hidden gem almost unfairly tucked away at the penultimate track slot, and it might not even be the best song on the record about a bird. And the much-better-than-its-title-suggests “Armpit” is—you know what? Maybe they’re all hits. (Bandcamp link)
Mythical Motors – A Rare Look Ahead
Release date: October 29th Record label: Lo-Fi City Genre: Power pop, lo-fi pop Formats: Cassette, digital Pull track: Years of June
At about two minutes into “Drag Days”, a jangly album track from Guided by Voices’ 1996 record Under the Bushes Under the Stars, Robert Pollard kicks his voice up an octave to give the song a triumphant, power pop finish. It is, I think, somewhere in the midst of this moment that Chattanooga, Tennessee’s Mythical Motors were born. Mythical Motors bandleader Matt Addison shares Pollard’s penchant for collage-based album art, lo-fi guitar pop, and even choice of collaborators (A Rare Look Ahead was mastered by frequent Pollard producer Todd Tobias)—even if Addison’s exuberant, ageless voice sounds more like Tobin Sprout. A Rare Look Ahead is Mythical Motors’ only record of 2021 so far, and it picks up where their second album of 2020 (October’s Sleepwalking on Main Street) left off, with a chiming title track that continues to carry their torch for lo-fi pop rock.
In true Mythical Motors fashion, A Rare Look Ahead chugs through some psych-tinged, fantastical pop concerns (song titles include “Vivian of the Unseen Sun”, “Carnival Machine Man”, and “That’s Why I Conjured You”), tossing out 4-tracked power chords and vocal melodies at a clip of about two minutes per song. Early on in the album, “Years of June” sports what might be Addison’s finest hook yet, and “Crashing Waves of Fascination” roars to give the song a bit of a full-band bite, but A Rare Look Ahead is surprisingly backloaded. Side two of the record kicks off with the effortless “Fix the Circulation” and the fuzz-rock “The Flower Disappears Without You”, neither of which last much longer than a minute. The composed closing track “The No Name Followers” is as catchy as any of the earlier tracks, but also goes on for three-and-a-half minutes, just to show that Mythical Motors could stretch these songs out if they wanted to. Even with these longer tracks, or acoustic numbers like “Holy Midnight”, A Rare Look Ahead never lets go of its pop convictions. (Bandcamp link)
Molly O’Malley – Goodwill Toy
Release date: October 21st Record label: Mollywhop Record Shop Genre: Synthpop, dream pop Formats: Digital Pull track: Language!
“It doesn’t take much now to get me going,” Molly O’Malley announces in the chorus of “Princess Mia (Ybsntcht)”, the opening track to her new Goodwill Toy EP. In the song’s dizzying music video, it may or may not be implied that Fabio is the subject of this declaration. Although sonically “Princess Mia” is a little bit of an outlier compared to the rest of Goodwill Toy, it’s a good “you’re in or you’re out” moment as any. Either you’re into O’Malley’s specific blend of synthpop production and reverb-guitar tones, journal entry-evoking lyrics delivered in a wistful voice, and an ambitious presentation that goes far beyond what one might expect for a four-song EP (i.e., every single track has its own music video)—or you’re not very fun, are you?
Although O’Malley clearly is a fan of and incorporates the guitar flourishes of dream pop into her music, her confident, emotional, front-and-center voice ensures that Goodwill Toy won’t be mistaken for sleepy-time music any time soon, and hews closer to emo-tinged indie rock like Death Cab for Cutie or Petal. It’s a voice that sounds equally at home helming an all-out pop banger like “Princess Mia (Ybsntcht)” or a bittersweet, dramatic lyric like closing track “Tangible”. Even on the dreamiest song, the reverb-drenched “You Look So Good”, O’Malley’s voice won’t be denied while delivering the titular line. Other than the strong presence of O’Malley herself, Goodwill Toy hangs together thematically as well: The EP starts with “You know how to paint my cheeks a new shade of pink” among its first lines, and the following two songs offer up “I wanna know what’s going on in your mind / I wanna know what thoughts run wild at night” and “You look so good wearing my future,” respectively. This “liberated feeling of fearlessly falling into another person,” as O’Malley describes it, takes a thoughtful turn inward before Goodwill Toy ends. It’s short, but it’s complete. (Bandcamp link)
Boyracer – Assuaged
Release date: August 6th Record label: Emotional Response Genre: Indie pop, pop punk, power pop Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull track: Miserable Ways
Assuaged is Boyracer’s fourteenth full-length record since 1990. Over the band’s thirty years or so of existence, they’ve released music on notable indie pop labels like Slumberland and Sarah, all the while hewing towards the rougher, punkier end of that particular spectrum, and at some point bandleader and sole original member Stewart Anderson relocated from England to central Arizona (no, I had no idea anyone lived there, either). Even though they’re no longer the band that recorded 1994’s More Songs About Frustration and Self-Hate, Assuaged doesn’t feel like “Stewart Anderson solo album”—multi-instrumentalist Matty Green has been with the band for over twenty years and plenty of records’ worth of music, and while vocalist and lead guitarist Christina Riley (of Artsick) has only been in Boyracer for two years and one previous album, her presence on Assuaged is as strongly-felt as anyone else.
The theme to this edition of Pressing Concerns seems to be “musicians tearing through a bunch of pop songs”, and Boyracer certainly bash out Assuage’s fourteen tracks with no small amount of bite. The trio come roaring out of the gate with punk-pop rave-ups “Stuck with You” and “Tommy McNeil”; the bite-sized glam of “Scapegoats and Martyrs” is really only a breather in comparison to the previous two, and then the rollicking “Spoils” picks right up where Boyracer left off. The musical and songwriting flourishes that make these songs pop out from one another are aplenty, particularly in the second half: the busy, bouncy bass underneath “Bulletproof”, the razor-sharp guitar work on “Drinks with the Girls”, the trumpet in the fuck-this-job anthem “40 Hours”. Boyracer also save some of the biggest successes for late in the album, like the absolutely brutally catchy diss track “Miserable Ways”, sung by Ridley (“You should hate yourself, not everyone else,” she proclaims drolly over one of the record’s many handclap backbeats), and the exuberant duet-chant “1 Am”—there isn’t a dull moment on Assuage. (Bandcamp link)
This week, a very special episode of Pressing Concerns discusses debut albums from Dummy and ZOO, an archival release from The Stick Figures, and the latest EP from Cuffed Up.
Release date: October 22nd Record label: Trouble in Mind Genre: Noise pop, shoegaze, neo-psychedelia Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital Pull track: Daffodils
The Los Angeles-based Dummy arrived in 2020 with a pair of EPs on the quality indie labels Pop Wig (Big Bite, Angel Du$t) and Born Yesterday (Stuck, Café Racer), and have since landed with Chicago’s Trouble in Mind for their debut full-length. Broadly speaking, Mandatory Enjoyment is the kind of crate-digging guitar pop music that fits well among their new label’s roster, but instead of the minimalist post-punk kind (like Nightshift or Smoke Bellow) or breezy jangle pop (The Tubs, Salad Boys), it is of the sensory overload, noise-pop variety. “Fissured Ceramics” and “Final Weapon”, the first two non-instrumental tracks that open the record, marry the buried vocals and heavy reverb of My Bloody Valentine with a krautrock rhythm section and droning keyboards, grabbing one’s attention fully and setting the stage for the rest of Mandatory Enjoyment to expand on the set-up.
The delicate dream pop of “Cloud Pleaser” and “Tapestry Distortion”, as well as the five-plus minute mid-album psychedelic journey of “H.V.A.C.”, fit with the opening salvo of Mandatory Enjoyment like a glove but avoid merely retreading it. Although “Cloud Pleaser” and “Tapestry Distortion” slow things down a bit, they’re still relatively busy tracks. When Dummy do turn it down a notch, it’s for justified reasons: the restrained post-punk of “X-Static Blanket” and the spare lounge pop of “Aluminum in Retrograde” are both welcome late-half left-turns. The last turn on Mandatory Enjoyment is a bit of everything—the closer, “Atonal Poem”, is effectively four minutes of pure synth experimentation before ending everything with an understated, brief noise pop outro.
At the bottom of Mandatory Enjoyment’s Bandcamp page, Dummy list a huge group of modern similarly-minded bands to listen to, many of which I’ve covered or wanted to cover on Rosy Overdrive. Krautrock/psychedelic noise pop isn’t known for inspiring the kind of scene-unifying devotion that, say, punk rock or emo seems to, and many that are truly hardcore about the genre are more often than not stuck in the past instead of looking for new bands. This is to say that seeing a list of a bunch of acts making this kind of music is inspiring to me—and that it’s attached to something as strong as Mandatory Enjoyment certainly gives it more weight. (Bandcamp link)
The Stick Figures – Archeology
Release date: September 3rd Record label: Floating Mill Genre: Post-punk Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital Pull track: September
One of my favorite “no, I’m serious” things to say to a certain kind of person is that American post-punk is better than British post-punk. If you stop being a stick in the mud and widen the idea of the genre to something greater than “a band that sounds like a band that sounds like Joy Division” (as well as discarding that pesky stipulation that it has to be entirely “post” the initial wave of punk rock), it doesn’t seem like such a crazy idea. Pere Ubu, Devo, Mission of Burma, The Feelies, The Wipers, The Minutemen, plenty of other SST bands that didn’t fit neatly into “hardcore”, everything coming out of Athens, Georgia…The Brits just had better press, is all. Which brings us to Tampa, Florida’s The Stick Figures, which formed in the late 70s at the University of South Florida and could’ve ended up just as revered as any of those bands listed previously in a different life. The aptly-titled Archeology is an expanded reissue of the band’s only official release, a four-song 1981 EP, that adds a full record’s length of unreleased studio and live recordings.
Of the bands and scenes mentioned above, Athens, Georgia is the closest to The Stick Figures geographically, and it lands not too far off to how they sound as well. Songs like “N-Light”, “Energy”, and “Green” are Pylon/B-52’s-esque dance-punk that also proudly display a funk rock influence. At their cleanest and most straightforward (the slinky “Yesterday” and the two poppiest songs, “September” and “Make a Fire”), they’re as immediate as any crowd-pleasing post-punk revival group. At their most inscrutable (the two scuzzy noise-punk live tracks, particularly “Screaming”, and the experimental “Ellis Otivator Dub” and an even wilder 2021 remix of said dub), they’re more adventurous than most of this brand of music. The Stick Figures broke up less than a year after the release of their only EP, but apparently they amassed another record’s worth of unreleased recordings that Pittsburgh’s Floating Mill Records is planning for a 2022 release. I imagine there are plenty of inspired post-punk bands from moderately-sized U.S. cities that continue to languish in obscurity worth revisiting. I doubt any of them sound exactly like The Stick Figures, though. (Bandcamp link)
ZOO – No Man’s Land
Release date: October 22nd Record label: Good Eye Genre: Psychedelic folk Formats: Cassette, digital Pull track: Sleeping Dogs
Cincinnati’s Cody Pavlinac has been making music under the name ZOO for the better part of a decade, so the project’s full-length debut, No Man’s Land, is some time in the making. The record’s ten songs are full of laid-back, unhurried instrumentals that befit the self-described introverted Pavlinac, who recently became a father. Although he hails from the same city as famous ‘sad dad’ group The National, Pavlinac’s airy vocals and the lightly psychedelic-tinged Americana of the music puts ZOO closer to the new strand of retro folk rock practiced by the likes of Hiss Golden Messenger, Cut Worms, and Daniel Romano. Some Byrdsian jangle-rock is audible in No Man’s Land, but Pavlinac hews closer to the psychedelic subsection of the 1960s. In addition, No Man’s Land’s intimacy and relatively humble presentation reminds me of the Mike Uva album I reviewed earlier this year.
No Man’s Land eases us into ZOO’s sound with the understated, pastoral “Go with Me”, where Pavlinac builds a delicate, subtly intricate soundscape that isn’t too busy and still leaves a lot of open space. The especially vulnerable side of Pavlinac rears up again in the tender “What’s There to Lose” and the pin-drop sparseness of side-one closer “Worry”, which has a cavernous quality that really lends weight to Pavlinac’s confession of “I’ve got worry on my mind”. Thematically and musically, No Man’s Land isn’t all so dark; lead single “Sleeping Dogs” masks up lyrics about political anxiety and isolation with a bouncy, upbeat instrumental track, and “Honeybug” doesn’t need to disguise anything about its contentedness. Like several of the tracks on No Man’s Land, “Honeybug” casually pushes the four-to-five minute mark and evolves from a grounded folk-rock song to trippy psychedelia. “What can I say now that’s already been said?” Pavlinac sings over a wash of synths in album closer “Trash Night”, a beauty-in-the-mundane epilogue, before following it up with “turn off the TV and get ready for bed”. It’s just another vivid dispatch from No Man’s Land. (Bandcamp link)
Cuffed Up – Asymmetry
Release date: October 22nd Record label: Royal Mountain Genre: Post-punk Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital Pull track: Bonnie
Cuffed Up is a Los Angeles-based post-punk band led by the alternating vocals of guitarists Ralph Torrefranca and Sapphire Jewell and backed by the rhythm section of drummer Joe Liptock and bassist Victor Ordonez. Jewell in particular is having a notable 2021; she is also a member of the shimmery post-rock band Gypsum, who just released their debut album, as well as currently playing in a band you may have heard of, “tenderpunk” group Illuminati Hotties. Cuffed Up explores a different genre of music than either of those concerns: dark, dramatic post-punk. The four-song Asymmetry is the band’s second EP since their debut in 2019 and comes in at under 15 minutes, but it’s a shiny, polished affair that succeeds at maximizing its limited time.
Asymmetry was produced by the prolific Brad Wood, who’s had his hands on everything from 90s radio-ready alt-rock (Veruca Salt/that dog.) to thorny post-hardcore (mewithoutYou/Touche Amore). Even though Asymmetry clearly has one foot in the world of the largely-U.K.-based current wave of reverent post-punk revival, these songs have a massive sound that isn’t particularly constrained to that arena (look at this video of the band citing Foals and Deftones, among others, as beloved music, for instance). Take the track that’s one of the most clearly post-punk influenced: “Bonnie”, which has that classic sense of propulsion (like “Canaries”, the other obvious one), but also manages to get an icily intense alt-rock chorus shoehorned in there. The cinematic, noir-ish “Terminal”, meanwhile, is practically all chorus, without dithering on the way there. Cuffed Up has yet to make a full-length album, and though they describe themselves as a “full time band”, it’s fair to wonder how much Jewell and Torrefranca’s other pursuits might impact the group going forward. Nevertheless, Asymmetry is quite a firm foundation. (Bandcamp link)
Another week, another edition of Pressing Concerns. This week, we look at a tribute record inspired by Wink O’Bannon featuring Antietam plus a wide cast of guests, the re-released Weak Signal sophomore album, the debut EP from Mt. Oriander (Keith Latinen from Empire! Empire! I Was a Lonely Estate and Parting) and the first Gypsum album.
Antietam Plus – His Majesty’s Request: A Wink O’Bannon Select
Release date: October 15th Record label: Motorific Genre: Indie rock, punk rock, post-rock, jazz, post-punk, folk rock Formats: Digital Pull track: Beware of Darkness
Matthew “Wink” O’Bannon was a longtime fixture of the Louisville, Kentucky music scene, from the late 70s until his death in June of last year. I was familiar with him as a member of indie rock behemoths Eleventh Dream Day; though he was only in the band for a couple of years, he helped record perhaps their two best records, 1993’s El Moodio and 1994’s Ursa Major. He also played in the roots rock band Bodeco and released a solo album, but there may be no greater measure of his impact on the music world than seeing just how many great musicians have lined up to help make His Majesty’s Request: A Wink O’Bannon Select happen. The album is helmed by Antietam, themselves a long-running Louisville institution, and also features, among others, several members of Eleventh Dream Day, Will Oldham, Todd Brashear of Slint, Tara Jane O’Neil of Rodan, and all three members of Yo La Tengo (who, having covered an Antietam song way back in 1989, are honorary Louisvillians).
His Majesty’s Request is a covers album—the idea being that it’s fourteen of O’Bannon’s favorite songs performed by his friends and collaborators, plus one of his originals covered at the end of the record. One can chart O’Bannon’s favorite music along the rock history timeline, with British Invasion and psychedelic/baroque pop of the 1960s giving way to the punk rock and post-punk of the following decades. His Majesty’s Request subsequently (intentionally or otherwise) makes a case for the dark Americana, post-rock, and post-hardcore misfits that arose disproportionately from Kentucky in the 1990s as an inheritor of this lineage. 60s pop songs like The Beatles’ “The Night Before” (sung by Georgia Hubley) and Donovan’s “Hurdy Gurdy Man” (sung by a chorus of voices, many of whom appear elsewhere on the record) are in capable hands, and Will Oldham singing George Harrison’s “Beware of Darkness” is such an obvious pairing that I’m surprised it had never (to my knowledge) happened until now.
The core trio of Antietam make their presence most known on the punk numbers—they rip through the Ramones’ “Commando”, the New York Dolls’ “Vietnamese Baby”, and The Clash’s “English Civil War” either on their own or with guest vocalists, and they assist Rick Rizzo ably in capturing the moodiness of Joy Division’s “Shadowplay”. But O’Bannon and those around him were never merely narrow-scope garage/punk rock revivalists, so it’s telling that both the earliest (Wolf Knapp’s take on Charles Mingus’ “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat”) and latest (Tortoise and Eleventh Dream Day’s Douglas McCombs’ faithful rendition of Sonny Sharrock’s “Who Does She Hope to Be?”) songs chosen for the album are jazz compositions, and at least one punk number (Gang of Four’s “To Hell with Poverty”) gets gloriously deconstructed by experimentalist Jaime Fennelly and Eleventh Dream Day’s Janet Bean. The album ends with an extended Antietam jam on O’Bannon’s own “Hundred” from his sole release under his own name, featuring actual recording of O’Bannon himself playing as the song fades out. Wink O’Bannon is no longer with us, but His Majesty’s Request is just one reminder that he isn’t gone.
Release date: October 15th Record label: Colonel Genre: Garage rock, fuzz rock, psychedelic rock Formats: Vinyl, cassette, digital Pull track: I’m a Fire
An unmastered version of Weak Signal’s second album, Bianca, appeared on Bandcamp with no lead-up in May of last year; after making a few waves as word spread, the New York band is seeing the record’s physical and formal release over a year later thanks to Colonel Records. It seems appropriate that I talk about Eleventh Dream Day elsewhere in this post, because Bianca deals in the same brand of fuzzy, guitar-heavy indie rock that the marked the early records of the former band. Singer and guitarist Mike Bones has played as a hired gun with everyone from Cass McCombs to Run the Jewels, but Weak Signal is where he gets to take center stage. The rhythm section of bassist Sasha Vine and drummer Tran are more than bit players, however—they’re certainly up to the task of building a foundation for Bones’ six-string.
When Vine and Bones sing together (as they often do), it reminds me of a harder-psych version of another band that feels like a reference point for the group—Yo La Tengo (this is particularly pronounced in slower songs like “Come Back” and “I’ll Stay”). It’s not all so quiet as the two previously-mentioned tracks, of course— the Vine-led opening track “I’m a Fire” and the lumbering paranoia trip “Drugs in My System” light things up early in Bianca, in addition to the chugging power chords of “Voice Inside My Head”. In “Don’t Turn Around”, Weak Signal let loose with their own version of southwestern desert rock a la Giant Sand or Thin White Rope, and the galloping “Sorry” is pretty much the band’s turn at pop punk. Bones always seems interested, either during the rockers or the space-out songs, in the interaction between his instrument and the others’—less-immediate tracks like “Zones” seem to exist almost entirely for the moment when the trio come together musically in its second half. It’s always compelling when Weak Signal does this. (Bandcamp link)
Mt. Oriander – This Is Not the Way I Wanted You to Find Out
Release date: October 8th Record label: Count Your Lucky Stars Genre: Midwest emo Formats: Cassette, digital Pull track: Nothing After Nothing Came Bursting Out
The title of the surprise-released This Is Not the Way I Wanted You to Find Out is a little piece of self-deprecation on the record’s part. Keith Latinen (former frontman of emo group Empire! Empire! (I Was a Lonely Estate) and head of Count Your Lucky Stars Records) has spent the last few years writing and recording the debut album for his new solo project, which presumably has been delayed due to the current state of things, leaving this quickly-recorded five song EP to introduce Mt. Oriander to the world instead. While the record’s name might be an attempt to lower stakes and expectations, This Is Not the Way I Wanted You to Find Out needs no such shunting. Latinen already returned to making new music earlier this year as co-leader of the band Parting, and here he picks up where that band’s debut record left off, albeit in a more subtle fashion.
The most distinct aspect of Latinen’s music is his voice: clean and melodic, and capable of portraying a palpable heaviness. These five songs, in which Latinen plays every instrument and sings every word himself, place him even more front-and-center than normal. I’ve been listening to a lot of slowcore lately, and Mt. Oriander contains a similar gravitas to the likes of full-band Idaho and early Pedro the Lion, but with the Michigan-based Latinen providing his typical Midwestern emo spin. For one, look at the verbose media references of song titles—I get “It’s Always Been Wankershim” and “I’m Never Going to Say My Lines Faster Than Jamie Taco”, but had to look up “Dream Ruby Glitch”. The Jamie Taco song in particular, despite all of those words in its title, is a bummer of a song whose sting is enhanced by its vagueness. Although Parting dispensed with something of a positive, cathartic ending on Unmake Me, Latinen gives us no such relief on his own, with the especially rough “Nothing After Nothing Came Bursting Out” offering up only numbness and the marching of time. Can’t wait for that LP. (Bandcamp link)
Gypsum – Gypsum
Release date: October 12th Record label: Sonic Ritual Genre: Indie rock, post-rock, psych rock, dream pop Formats: Digital Pull track: Follow Me
The debut album from Los Angeles’ Gypsum reminds me a bit of the reissued Supernowhere album from earlier this year—similarly to that group, they’re a trio that manages to craft a “big” sound and hop across structures and genre signifiers with the relatively simple guitar-bass-drums setup. They do claim the post-rock mantle, and the spindly opening to first track “Follow Me” inhabits that world—until they reach the chorus, where a showy bassline and a smart backbeat (from drummer Jessy Reed) steers the song into directly into dance-rock territory. Such is the way of Gypsum; a sonically intriguing record that’s characterized by a high, soaring, reverb-heavy lead guitar that tugs against a grounded, sturdy rhythm section, all while the voices of singers Sapphire Jewell and Anna Arboles stand firmly in the center of it all.
These ingredients help give a trippy, skewed edge to some of Gypsum’s more “pop” songs, like “Give It” and “Kaleidoscope”, which combine rhythmic experimentation with strong melody, and in the case of the latter, a loud, spirited psychedelic rock stomp that takes over the track’s second half. The less immediate songs, like the steady, motorik “Gull Lake” and the firm, restrained album centerpiece “Snow White”, make up for less obvious hooks with extended compelling spacey-psych instrumentals. Appearing in the middle of Gypsum’s second side, the stop-and-start of “Satisfied” might sneakily feature the strongest vocal turn of the album, but lest they show off too much, they follow it up with the spoken-word “Margaret”. Album closer “Disappear” has a foot in both ends of the Gypsum spectrum—even though it pushes boldly past the six-minute mark and takes awhile to develop, it still boasts a solidly melancholic chorus to cap off a successful first outing. (Bandcamp link)
The Rosy Overdrive monthly playlist is back! It’s the September edition this time! This one is very good, in my opinion! You will find plenty of new music here, as well as a few discoveries from my 1996 deep dive, and a couple of miscellaneous tracks.
Artists with multiple tracks this time around: Telethon (4), Erin McKeown (2), Blunt Bangs (2), The Posies (2), Susanna Hoffs (2).
“Everyone Rise”, The Bevis Frond From Little Eden (2021, Fire)
It’s not exactly simple being a casual Bevis Frond fan, but I’m managing as best I can. Last time we checked in on them, back in May, I was pulling highlights from their 1991 two-hour magnum opus New River Head. The band’s newest record, Little Eden, is a “mere” 82 minutes, and while it doesn’t quite match Nick Saloman and crew’s peak, there’s plenty to like contained within. Opening track “Everyone Rise” is an instant keeper; two and a half minutes of effortless, almost lazy lead guitar-driven pop that also boasts a classic wistful Saloman vocal melody. Perhaps you need to be a little hardcore to dive into Little Eden’s twenty songs, but “Everyone Rise” couldn’t be any more inviting of a way to kick the record off.
“Cupido Stupido”, Erin McKeown From Kiss Off Kiss (2021, TVP)
I am not naming any names. I would never want to blow up anyone’s spot, per se. All I’m saying is that some of you may be in need of Kiss Off Kiss, and all it does for break-up music. Twenty years and eleven albums into her career, Erin McKeown has made what might be the sharpest record in her catalog so far. The Virginia-based songwriter (and current touring member of The Mountain Goats) unloads a lot of classic-punk-pop-soundtracked grievances throughout Kiss Off Kiss, and “Cupido Stupido” is as catchy (plenty of “da da da dah”s) as it is aggrieved at its own narrator (“How could someone so smart be so suddenly stupid / To think somehow I would reinvent Cupid?”). Things can only go up from here, right?
“Malden, MA”, Kitner From Shake the Spins (2021, Relief Map)
I’ve been sitting with Kitner’s Shake the Spins for a while now, and it’s really grown on me. One song that I’ve loved from the get-go, however, is “Malden, MA”. Although it’s not exactly a “departure” from the rest of the record’s Get Up Kids/Bright Eyes triangulation and works very well in the context of the album, the primary touchstones for the ripping “Malden, MA” are Dinosaur Jr. (local heroes for the Boston band, and if the guitar solo isn’t quite J. Mascis-level, it serves the track well) and The Hold Steady (that geographical title, the bar-band harmonica, and the fact that “I’m starving but I’m not an artist / They say Pollock was too drunk to paint and that I’m too drunk to stand up straight” could go up against plenty of great Craig Finn lyrics). Read more about Shake the Spins here.
“Detroit Basketball”, Bad Bad Hats From Walkman (2021, Don Giovanni)
Bad Bad Hats’ debut album, 2015’s Psychic Reader, is one of the big “always better than I remember it being” records for me. Sure, it’s one of countless indie pop rock albums that were coming out around the time, but it’s done very well, and nearly every song on it is quite catchy. Anyway, I lost track of them for a while (I remember 2018’s Lightning Round not grabbing me, although I may not have given it much of a shot), but their third album coming out on the excellent Don Giovanni label got my attention, and, well: it’s good, too. Although “Milky Way” is the most purely catchy song on Walkman, it’s the slightly more subtle bounce of “Detroit Basketball” that stands out the most to me. Credit to vocalist Kerry Alexander for nailing the delivery of “Gotta find a man who deserves my kissing / And doesn’t blow my money on the Detroit Pistons”.
“She’s Gone”, Blunt Bangs From Proper Smoker (2021, Ernest Jenning Record Co.)
Blunt Bangs is an Athens, Georgia trio made up of Reggie Youngblood (Black Kids), Christian “Smokey” DeRoeck (Woods, Little Gold), and Cash Carter (Tracy Shedd, Little Gold). Proper Smoker, however, doesn’t end up sounding much like early Woods’ freak folk or Black Kids’ post-punk revival; this much is clear from the moment opening track “She’s Gone” busts out its descending-chord structure, melodic guitar solos, and breezy vocal harmonies. “Don’t ask me anything about her, ‘cause she’s gone,” begins Youngblood’s lyrics, kicking off a classically Teenage Fanclub-esque bittersweet power pop anthem. Read more about Proper Smoker here.
“Daily Mutilation”, The Posies From Amazing Disgrace (1996, DGC)
In 1996, a West Coast power pop/alternative rock band prepped a noticeably darker follow-up to their breakthrough record a couple years earlier for 90s rock kingpin DGC Records. I am, of course, talking about Weezer’s Pinkerton, but this all more or less applies to Bellingham, Washington’s The Posies as well. Except for the fact that Amazing Disgrace is, you know, very good, and doesn’t come with any Rivers Cuomo-sized baggage. Something was in the water of the songwriting duo of Jon Auer and Ken Stringfellow (revered in power pop circles, unknown elsewhere); this much was apparent merely from the title of “Daily Mutilation”, the record’s opening track. “A daily mutilation and a bludgeoning review,” is how the song’s chorus elaborates on the title. It’s fuzzy and angry, but it’s never “Seattle grunge”, much closer to a bitter Matthew Sweet than a tuneful Mudhoney.
“Positively Clark Street”, Telethon feat. Gary Louris From Swim Out Past the Breakers (2021, Take This to Heart)
Telethon’s Swim Out Past the Breakers is anything but starved for memorable, triumphant pop songs, but “Positively Clark Street” might be the best of the bunch. Gary Louris of The Jayhawks assists the song on backing vocals, and The Hold Steady’s Franz Nicolay is on the harmonica, and both feel right at home on this track. Lyrically, it’s a “One Great City!”-esque tribute to lead singer Kevin Tully’s adopted hometown of Chicago, and musically it’s as much a tribute to The Weakerthans as it is to 90s alt-rock behemoths like Counting Crows and (naturally) Everclear. “It’s easy to play crank when you’re not the one having fun,” reminds Tully to local residents grumbling about blocked-off streets, beer gardens, and “blue-jay flocks” of people. Read more about Swim Out Past the Breakers here.
“Dance of Gurus”, Guided by Voices From It’s Not Them. It Couldn’t Be Them. It Is Them! (2021, GBV, Inc.)
No notes on the album rollout for It’s Not Them. It Couldn’t Be Them. It Is Them!. As solid as the “new lineup” era of Guided by Voices has been, it seemed like Bob Pollard and crew weren’t always picking the best advance singles for all those albums. That’s not the case with INT.ICBT.IIT!; I’ve already talked about “My (Limited) Engagement”, and neither of that song’s two follow-ups have been a dip in quality. The only reason I’m not talking about second single “High in the Rain” is because “Dance of Gurus” topped it mere weeks later, and I probably need to save some space for album tracks. “Gurus” is smart and punchy, a lot more calculated than “My (Limited) Engagement”, despite the fact that it’s also quite psychedelic. Of course, it’s hard not to think of “Dance of Gurus” as a bit of a mindfuck after seeing the song’s music video, which might be the most appropriately Guided by Voices music video in a long time.
“Cowboy Dan”, Cashmere Washington From The Shape of Things to Come (2021, Fish People Birds/Black Ram)
One of my favorite new discoveries over the last month has been Cashmere Washington, the Midland, Michigan solo project of Thomas Dunn II. Their debut EP, The Shape of Things to Come, is a promise-brimming mix of lo-fi indie rock, emo, and R&B, and the record’s lead single, “Cowboy Dan” is an instant attention-grabber. It’s one of the most straightforward “rock” songs on the EP, featuring fuzzy guitars that cascade over Dunn’s passionate vocals and a prominent bassline that fills in the song’s gaps. “Cowboy Dan” is apparently Dunn’s next door neighbor, who seems like a bit of a character—an odd, constant unflappable presence in Dunn’s life that contrasts with their own personal crises that the rest of the EP explores more fully. Read more about The Shape of Things to Come here.
“All I Want”, Susanna Hoffs From Susanna Hoffs (1996, London)
The 1996 self-titled Susanna Hoffs album is quite good. This shouldn’t be too much of a surprise, given the amount of good music she’s been involved with over the years, as well as the record’s eye-popping list of personnel and songwriters (Jon Brion! Jason Falkner! Mark Linkous! Linda Perry!). “All I Want” is a Lightning Seeds cover from their 1990 debut album, which Hoffs and crew transform from an end-of-the-decade synth/Britpop tune into a crisp folk-pop rocker. As that long list of backing musicians might suggest, “All I Want” gets a bit busy in its second half, but thankfully Hoffs’ voice never loses control of the song (which is, presumably, one of the greatest benefits to having the voice of Susanna Hoffs).
“Loud Cliches”, Dirty Shrines From Digital Ego (2021, Black Numbers)
Fort Collins, Colorado’s Dirty Shrines are comprised of a few punk veterans: Tim Browne (vocals/guitar) and Brian Van Proyen (guitar/vocals) are from Elway, Drew Johnson (bass/vocals) was in Chumped, and all three of them played in Your Loss. Now with drummer Max Barcelow, Dirty Shrines combines a crowd-pleasing punk/alt-rock sensibility with some heady topics with Digital Ego, in a similar way to a couple of bands I’ve written about on Rosy Overdrive, Nora Marks and Man Random. Dirty Shrines take a little bit more from classic rock than either of those bands, though, and “Loud Cliches” is where they most proudly fly their Thin Lizzy flag. Dueling lead guitars and an infectious stomp lead off Browne’s quasi-apocalyptic lyrics: instead of “Whiskey in the Jar”, we get “amphetamine and moonshine”, and we’ll “dance right through the end times” instead of “Dancing in the Moonlight”. Hey, it is called “Loud Cliches”!
“White Horses”, Low From HEY WHAT (2021, Sub Pop)
This’ll be the third month in which something from HEY WHAT graces these playlists—suffice it to say, the full record delivered on the promise that “Days Like These” and “More” hinted at (if any songs that sound like that can even be considered to “hint” at anything). Like those two songs, Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker reclaim the center of the music after being scrambled thoroughly in 2018’s Double Negative, but the aural corruption aided by producer BJ Burton is right there with them. Sparhawk and Parker begin the song intertwined as usual, accompanied by a sharp but minimal electronic beat, and it’s not until halfway through the five minute song that everything begins to distort and corrode. But when it does, the chaos flows and ebbs until the final minute, where nothing is left of the track but a ticking timer.
“Travelator”, Telethon feat. Future Teens From Swim Out Past the Breakers (2021, Take This to Heart)
The synth-positive “Travelator” is one of the most electric moments on Swim Out Past the Breakers. The song comes barreling out of the gate with breakneck pop punk speed and the aforementioned synth scribbling, and Kevin Tully is at his most earnestly urgent by the time we’ve reached the chorus. A “travelator” is, apparently, a British term for those moving walkways that one sees at the airport or train station or subway station. Here it’s a metaphor (and a good one at that) about the steady stream of anxiety and dread that no amount of Viewtiful Joe can totally shut up. Oh, and also there’s a part of the song that describes détente with a spider, which more songs should discuss. Daniel Radin and Amy Hoffman of Future Teens sing the final chorus of this song. I’m not really familiar with their band, but they do a good job! Read more about Swim Out Past the Breakers here.
“The Stone and I and Everybody”, Maxshh From Bonus Flowers (2021, Exploding in Sound)
Max Goldstein has certainly been on a tear this year. Bonus Flowers is the third record this year to be released under the name of his solo project, Maxshh, after January’s Feedback & PB and April’s As a Treat. Goldstein hooked up with Exploding in Sound Records for Bonus Flowers, and the album finds the somewhat unclassifiable singer-songwriter-drummer embracing an acoustic-based stoner-psych-folk sound. Album opener “The Stone and I and Everybody” starts out as such, with Goldstein picking and strumming his way through, uh, memorable lyrics about a “pleased” cabbage and a glass of water on top of a stone. Unlike a lot of the rest of the LP, however, Goldstein steers the song into noisy alt-rock territory in its second half that reminds me that, ah, yes, he’s also the drummer for “spastic heavy jazz experimental” band Fred Cracklin.
“Through to You”, Motorists From Surrounded (2021, We Are Time/Bobo Integral/Debt Offensive)
Apparently Toronto is the place to go if you want to play in or find rock bands that split the difference between post-punk and jangle pop. Obviously, Kiwi Jr. has been somewhat of a breakout star over the past two years, but there’s also the new Ducks Ltd. album, and now Motorists are here to tastefully strum and thrum their way into your hearts. Surrounded is their first album, but the members have played in a few notable bands like Tough Age and the reunited Simply Saucer, so they’ve been around a bit. Although they can do the garage-y post-punk motorik thing well (see the album’s title track), “Through to You” is pure pop; the chorus is bursting with power pop enthusiasm, while the intro and (especially) outro brim with Peter Buck energy. In one line of the song, Motorists nod to both Sloan and R.E.M. (“Automatic for the people of the sky”) and make this almost too easy.
“Go Along / Get Along”, Erin McKeown From Kiss Off Kiss (2021, TVP)
Like “Cupido Stupido” from earlier in the playlist, “Go Along / Get Along” is an infectious, shiny pop song about, um, “relationship unpleasantness”. Unlike that song’s pissed-off self-criticism, however, “Go Along / Get Along” is about something that’s frankly even darker: resignation. Erin McKeown follows up the titular line by muttering “Get this over quick, so I can get out from under you,” and she means in the most literal sense possible. The most emotional McKeown gets in “Go Along / Get Along” is in the bridge, where she reflects on just how she ended up in this situation: “In your eyes, I could see something…Used to turn something on / But now it’s gone”. The song ends with McKeown quietly resolving to “change the sheets”, “freshen up”, and “move on”, but we clearly aren’t there just yet.
“The Ballad of the Surfin’ Cowboy”, Nora Marks From Opt Out (2021, Take a Hike)
“Talking with my friends up in the sky, convincing them I’m not that kind of guy,” is how singer Michael Garrity introduces the best song on his band Nora Marks’ debut-full length. Although Opt Out is nominally a punk rock record, it makes its deepest impression with mid-tempo, alt-rock sing-along belters, including “I Think You Earned It”, “Nice to Me”, and this one. Like much of the album, “The Ballad of the Surfin’ Cowboy” seems to deal with Garrity attempting to write about the march of technology and communication, but in a weirdly indirect way, which results in some enjoyably surreal lyrics. I could spend awhile trying to parse the rest of “The Ballad of the Surfin’ Cowboy” in relation to the rest of Opt Out, sure, but the reason I come back to it is because everyone in the band injects “Intend to never stop / Raging bull, China shop” with a real sense of shout-along catharsis. Read more about Opt Out here.
“Sun Self”, DoomFolk StarterKit (2021, Like You Mean It)
DoomFolk StarterKit is Portland, Oregon’s David Swick, who has been steadily releasing music in some form under the name since 2017. 2021 has seen a couple of one-off singles on Like You Mean It Records (the Gillian Welch cover “Look at Miss Ohio” and the original “Old Times”), and in the time between “Sun Self” reached me and the publication of this post, Swick released the instrumental SunFaded album. “Sun Self” is a fluttery, breezy indie folk track that expands into a full-band song with the assist of Lou Turner (flute/harmonies) and Trevor Nikrant (guitar) of Styrofoam Winos, as well as drummer Allie Cuva. Turner’s flute, in particular, helps nudge “Sun Self” towards Elephant Six/Sparklehorse/Flotation Toy Warning territory in the song’s second half.
“Brooklyn Central Booking”, Alex Orange Drink From Everything Is Broken Maybe That’s Ok (2021)
Everything Is Broken Maybe That’s OK is an almost journal-like account of Alex Zarou Levine’s (most notable for his time with The So So Glos) struggle with his lifelong genetic disorder homocystinuria, among other turbulent aspects of his life, past and present. “Brooklyn Central Booking” starts the record right in the thick of it: with Levine, picked up by the cops for “drinking”, “smoking”, and “public urination”, hallucinating after the police confiscate the necessary medication for his disorder, and wondering if this is the future for him and his home (“Another noise complaint and we’ll be through”). All this is delivered over an appropriately simple folk-punk instrumental that’s remarkably catchy. Read more about Everything Is Broken Maybe That’s Ok here.
“Rope Bridge Crossing”, John Parish & PJ Harvey From Dance Hall at Louse Point (1996, Island)
Dance Hall at Louse Point is pretty good, if not an essential entry in Polly Jean Harvey’s discography. Some forgettable moments, some intriguing ideas, and a couple unqualified successes, the greatest of which is pretty easily “Rope Bridge Crossing”. Her frequent collaborator and musical partner for this record, John Parish (who produced a very good John Murry album which came out earlier this year), offers up a dusty, loping scuzzy blues-rock instrumental that Harvey lets play out for around two minutes before she starts contributing vocals. “Rope Bridge Crossing” winds and sways like the bridge to which its title alludes, and Harvey similarly swings between whisper-talk-singing and some of the record’s most theatrical moments.
“The Billy”, Flower Crown From Heat (2021, Crafted Sounds)
Heat, the third record from Pittsburgh dream pop quintet Flower Crown, is a charmingly psychedelic album that benefits greatly from the backbone its expansive lineup provides it. Along with the almost-making-the-playlist “Only Life”, “The Billy” is one of Heat’s best pure pop rock moments. The record’s lead single, it immediately hits the listener with a casually catchy guitar pop chord progression and quickly evolves into a spacier version of the classic C86 jangle pop that clearly has made an impact on Flower Crown’s music. Read more about Heat here.
“Queens”, Aeon Station From Observatory (2021, Sub Pop)
So, you folks hear about this Wrens thing? I won’t recount it, because if you care about it you already know about it, but as somebody who’s had plenty of deep personal moments soundtracked by The Meadowlands, the existence of Aeon Station and “Queens” is very surreal. The debut single from Kevin Whelan’s post-Wrens not-band solo project sounds like something that could’ve been on the probably-never-happening fourth Wrens album, even if I don’t think it’s one of the tracks originally intended for such (based on lyrical content alone). That is to say, it sounds like a more layered version of something from The Meadowlands, although thankfully it’s not too layered (although this does make me anxious that infamously fussy Charles Bissell’s Wrens songs, if we ever hear them, might go too far overboard). I didn’t really need to hear “Queens” to be excited for Aeon Station’s debut, and it’s really hard to hear the song objectively, but I can pretty confidently say this: it’s good, and I hope the rest of the record is as good as it. Read more about Observatory here.
“Tragic Head”, Daniel Romano From Cobra Poems (2021, You’ve Changed)
Come to think of it, it doesn’t appear that I’ve touched on Daniel Romano for Rosy Overdrive yet. If the blog had been more active last year, I almost certainly would’ve: there was plenty to like among the singer-songwriter’s eleven (correct me if I’m miscounting) releases from 2020. This year, comparatively, has “merely” featured a live album, one Bandcamp-only digital album, and one “normal” studio record. “Tragic Head” is the opening track to the latter of the three, and it’s an instant highlight among Romano’s classic 70s country-rock-influenced material. The build and release at the beginning of the chorus justifies “Tragic Head” on its own, but surely you want to stay for a few lines just to hear Romano growl “Somebody oughta put a bag over your tragic head”.
“Hedonism (Just Because You Feel Good)”, Skunk Anise From Stoosh (1996, One Little Independent)
Apparently Skunk Anise were/are something of a big deal, but I never heard of them until I started going deep into 1996. It seems like they didn’t really make it out of Europe, so I apologize if this is old news on Britain or the continent. Anyway, the band’s second and biggest album, Stoosh was kind of being sold to me as “political hard rock!!”, and it starts out as a ho-hum version of this, but Skunk Anise really caught my attention when they deviated a bit from it. “Hedonism (Just Because You Feel Good)” comes right after the slow, dreamy, six-minute “Infidelity (Only You)”, and while it continues to run away from the muscle of the album’s first couple of tracks, it does so by embracing hooks. Musically, “Hedonism” is some amalgamation of cornily sincere post-grunge balladry, airy dream pop, and straight-up slick 90s mainstream pop. It seems to be the band’s most popular song, and while I certainly don’t know enough about Skunk Anise to say if it’s their best one, it’s worth of its notoriety.
“Tom Ford”, Blunt Bangs From Proper Smoker (2021, Ernest Jenning Record Co.)
Although I haven’t seen anywhere that lists who wrote and who sings which songs on Proper Smoker, I’m pretty sure that “She’s Gone” from earlier is Reggie Youngblood’s, and “Tom Ford” is Christian “Smokey” DeRoeck. Hidden away in the middle of the record’s second side, “Tom Ford” takes full advantage of DeRoeck’s roots rock background for a hearty, energetic vocal delivery, and the urgent organ that rears its head in the chorus helps put the song over the top. In a world where Superchunk and Teenage Fanclub became household names, “Tom Ford” is a surefire top-of-the-charts success. Read more about Proper Smoker here.
“Cyan” & “Worm Dirt”, Telethon From Swim Out Past the Breakers (2021, Take This to Heart)
These two songs go together because A) they’re both really short and B) they’re back to back on Swim Out Past the Breakers, so who am I to mess with excellent sequencing? Actually, I just realized that all four songs from Telethon’s latest album that I selected for this playlist are all back-to-back on the album, so I’ve already messed with excellent sequencing! What a stretch, though. “Cyan” is the longer of these two at over 90 seconds, and it starts with a ska-dabbling guitar intro before an email exchange ignites some spiraling by Kevin Tully, aided by Devon Kay & The Solutions, a band I don’t know but are probably good because basically everybody who’s on Swim Out Past the Breakers is. I also love the Cyan/sighin’ swap-out thing.
“Worm Dirt” begins with Tully(?) remarking “that song’s so short, let me just do it again”, before beginning a song that clocks in at a nice, even 52 seconds. The band refer to this one as “a little ditty about God and religion and the afterlife”, and it certainly does seem like Tully is participating in a confession of some sort here (“I apologized that I didn’t buy it / I wish I could, but I got a little sick of trying” is more than a little relatable), and the extended semi-truck metaphor is also fascinating to me. Et cetera, and something stupid about the dust in the wind.
And then they go into “Travelator” on the record! Wow!
“Fast Canoe”, Polvo From Exploded Drawing (1996, Touch and Go)
Today’s Active Lifestyles seems to be the Polvo album that gets the most shine these days, and I get it. It’s the explosive, attention-grabbing noisy math rock single LP that continues to not be adequately recognized for its influence on guitar music to this day. But I recently got into Exploded Drawing, and to me, that one feels like Polvo’s biggest statement. It’s a full hour of ambitious but streamlined, expansive but utilitarian, anti-personality-led indie rock greatness. If you consider yourself a fan of 90s indie rock bands but haven’t gotten to this album yet, I highly recommend it. I can’t get into it too much here, but album opener “Fast Canoe” should let you know immediately if this is for you or not. The nearly seven-minute track spends its first two minutes just building up to the “main” riff and Ash Bowie’s vocals, but it doesn’t “build” from there so much as ebb and flow, alternatingly lapsing and reconstructing itself, even throwing in a few seconds of post-hardcore aggression in as the song draws to a close.
“Dawn Bends”, Mac McCaughan From The Sound of Yourself (2021, Merge)
Speaking of 1990s Chapel Hill indie rock: hey, Mac McCaughan made a solo album last month! The Sound of Yourself feels like a low-key but sturdy affair from the Superchunk frontman and Merge Records co-owner, in which dreamy instrumental tracks sit alongside New Order-esque synthpop experiments and more “classic” McCaughan-sounding faire. Lead single and penultimate track “Dawn Bends” is firmly in the “vintage solo McCaughan” camp; it could’ve easily been on Non-Believers or a later-career Portastatic record and fit well. As with anyone who’s been making music for three decades and been particularly generous with it, it’s easy to take a steady stream of “good Mac McCaughan songs” for granted, so I would like to remind everyone that Mac’s still got it, and that he’s capable both of songs like these and of envelope-pushers (look up “The Sound of Yourself” and “I Hear a Radio” if the idea of post-punk McCaughan intrigues you) in 2021 is worth celebrating.
“The Coronation”, Sleepyhead From Communist Love Songs (1996, Homestead)
So, who were/are Sleepyhead, one of my latest 1996 discoveries? Well, they were a New York indie pop/rock band that reminds me a bit of the noise pop that D.C.’s TeenBeat Records frequently put out around this time. They released three records in the 90s on legendary indie labels Slumberland and Homestead Records. They never formally broke up, relocated to Boston, and released a record in 2014—and apparently are working on its follow-up as of last year. “The Coronation” is the third song on 1996’s Communist Love Songs (which was re-released in 2018 as part of the Future Exhibit Goes Here compilation), and it sounds like guitarist Chris O’Rourke is the lead vocalist here, with drummer Rachel McNally (they’re a married couple) backing him up. Musically, “The Coronation” swaggers, with O’Rourke and McNally’s low-key vocals laying in wait before nailing the emotional climax: “I swear I’m never, ever, going back to Hoboken!”
“Electric Sickness”, Alexalone From ALEXALONEWORLD (2021, Polyvinyl)
Alexalone is the project of Alex Peterson, who one could describe as a “player” in the Austin, Texas scene: they’ve been in the touring lineups of both Hovvdy and Lomelda, two bands you probably know of if you read Rosy Overdrive. Their Bandcamp page characterizes their music as “soft songs played loud”, and the opening track from their debut full-length fits this description well. “Electric Sickness” is a reverby, light-shoegaze instrumental that’s guided by Peterson’s quiet, subtly melodic voice and a couple noise-rock rave-ups. Although Alexalone started (unsurprisingly) as a solo project, ALEXALONEWORLD is apparently the work of a four-piece band also featuring Sam Jordan, Mari Rubio, and Andrew Hulett, making “Electric Sickness” sound much bigger than a one-person basement recording.
“Please Return It”, The Posies From Amazing Disgrace (1996, DGC)
“Please Return It” is about as flawlessly executed a Posies song as there could be. It’s dark but catchy, it’s emotional but it’s also surgical, it’s “very 90s” but not dated. It’s got the Jon Auer/Ken Stringfellow harmonies running through almost the entire song, and it’s also got some showy power pop guitar tones hovering over the distortion. Supposedly there’s a saxophone somewhere in “Please Return It”, but one really has to strain to even hear something resembling it. I don’t know if the Posies conquering the airwaves was ever in the cards, but it would’ve been nice if DGC could’ve gotten “Please Return It” over the finish line (much stranger things have happened).
“Beekeeper’s Blues”, Susanna Hoffs From Susanna Hoffs (1996, London)
Two Susanna Hoffs songs! And it was almost three, too (look up “Enormous Wings”, which is a Hoffs-Mark Linkous co-write)! The opening track to Susanna Hoffs, “Beekeeper’s Blues”, was co-written by Hoffs and a couple of ringers: David Baerwald, who has a host of impressive credits, and David Kitay, who I know nothing about. The song exemplifies that kind of bubbly folk-pop-rock that Susanna Hoffs to which suddenly took an interest, to the benefit of her music (Did I mention that Baerwald was involved in Sheryl Crow’s Tuesday Night Music Club?). The addressee of “Beekeeper’s Blues” just seems like no good, but no amount of lyrical dissing (“I know you know that you’re good-looking / And you’re not known for too much else”) can prevent from Hoffs’ boots from “walking back” to them: “What else can I do?”
“Friends”, Rainwater From In-Between (2021, Furious Hooves)
In-Between, the latest record from Seattle’s Rainwater, is a dew-dampened mix of delicate dream pop, lights-in-the-distance new wave/synthpop, and rustic indie folk. “Friends” falls squarely into the camp of the latter of the three, with its leisurely trot of a tempo and sparse, swaying instrumentation. Rainwater leader Blake Luley’s gentle voice is aided by harmonies contributed by his wife, Aviva Stampfer, as he sings a sweet but thoughtful lyric about relying on others while struggling with mental illness and grief. “Same mixed up brain, in need of a friend who embraces your pain,” Luley murmurs, while also wondering if what he’s feeling is a “phase” or something greater. “They’re growing in their own way, and I’m growing in mine,” he concludes of those around him at the end of “Friends”; as well as “I hope we can grow together over time”.
“No Big Crime”, Torment & Glory From We Left a Note with an Apology (2021, Sargent House)
We Left a Note with an Apology is a “heavy folk” album—Brian Cook, the person behind the project, is most famous for his work in metal groups such as Botch and Sumac, but Torment & Glory unearths gorgeous acoustic songs underneath a wall of fuzz. Despite the grandiosity that the feedback skyline affords the record, lead single “No Big Crime” is about small successes and quiet moments. The song is effectively an ode to shoplifting cigarettes, and how it might be in the past tense for Cook but he sees no issue with the action. “No grand gestures now, just petty victories,” is how he summarizes learning how to stealthily sneak a pack. Read more about We Left a Note with an Apology here.
“Waltz Across Debris”, Chainsaw Kittens From Chainsaw Kittens (1996, Scratchie)
Almost last, but certainly not almost least, a brief mid-tempo piano-rocker from Norman, Oklahoma’s Chainsaw Kittens. I will probably look at the Chainsaw Kittens in greater detail at some point in Rosy Overdrive’s future, but here’s the deal: they were a glam/alt-rock act led by Tyson Meade, who’s one of those frontmen who get spoken reverently in small circles and counted Kurt Cobain and Billy Corgan among his fans. Chainsaw Kittens, the band’s fourth album, came out on Scratchie Records, a mid-90s curiosity of a label that was co-founded by (among others) James Iha, D’arcy Wretzky, and Adam Schlesinger. “Waltz Across Debris” is certainly not one of the band’s louder numbers—to use an R.E.M. comparison, it’s more “Electrolite” than “The Wake-Up Bomb”. In fact, the similarities between “Debris” and the former R.E.M. song—and, for whoever cares to write the essay, Meade and Michael Stipe—are actually rather remarkable.
“Zion’s Blood”, The Upsetters From Super Ape (1996, Upsetter)
I am not a hypocrite, although I suppose that Rosy Overdrive might be. I do think it’s hack for a website dedicated to writing about music to ignore the output of a living artist only to swing hard for them after they die, and it’s right to call bigger publications out for this. However, Rosy Overdrive is a one-person operation that has been around for less than a year, and furthermore, I consider it a personal log to some extent (I know, shocking, right). This is to say that I listened to a lot of revered Lee “Scratch” Perry material after his death last month, and I enjoyed my time doing so. I’m not an expert on dub or reggae by any means, but I liked Super Ape, so if Perry’s body of work is intimidating, maybe just start there. Or here, I guess, with its hypnotic opening track. It’s music for anybody.
In this early-week Pressing Concerns, we’re looking at new albums from Alex Orange Drink, Flower Crown, Screamcloud, and Hello Whirled. If you’re looking for more new music, you can browse previous editions of Pressing Concerns or visit the site directory.
Alex Orange Drink – Everything Is Broken, Maybe That’s O.K.
Release date: September 17th Record label: Self-released Genre: Punk rock, folk punk Formats: Digital Pull track: Brooklyn Central Booking
Two connected but distinct themes stand out on Everything Is Broken, Maybe That’s O.K., the latest album from Brooklyn’s Alex Orange Drink. One of them should be familiar to most—that of love, heartbreak, and a general frustration with the fact that humans are controlled by and addicted to chemicals created by their own bodies. The other theme is homocystinuria, a serious, life-threatening, long-term metabolic genetic disorder. Alex Zarou Levine is most famous for being the lead singer of the garage-punk band So So Glos; “Alex Orange Drink” is the name of the music he makes on his own, and the moniker “orange drink” refers to a specific medication for his disease. Alex Orange Drink’s sophomore record seems to have flown under the radar a bit compared to his “main” band, but Everything Is Broken, Maybe That’s O.K. is a major work in its own right.
As alluded to earlier, Levine doesn’t shy away from getting into the specifics of how homocystinuria impacts his life—in fact, that’s how Everything Is Broken, Maybe That’s O.K begins. Opener “Brooklyn Central Booking” starts with Levine, picked up by the cops for “drinking”, “smoking”, and “public urination”, hallucinating after the police confiscate his medication, and wondering if this is the future for him and his home (“Another noise complaint and we’ll be through”). “Homocystinuria, Pt. 1 (1987-1994)” and “Homocystinuria, Pt. 2 (1995-1999)” provide a concrete backstory; in the former, Levine begins to recognize the unfairness of the health care system (“They take my blood and my mommy’s dough”) and to use music to “drown” out the effects of his disease, specifically punk and hip-hop. It seems to work to some degree until the second part of the saga, a pissed-off garage rock track about how coping with pre-existing conditions gets more complicated as one grows into a self-conscious person of one’s own.
Perhaps above anything else, Everything Is Broken, Maybe That’s O.K. wants to make the point that everything is chemical, and that’s where homocystinuria and love intersect. “It’s Only Drugz (Limerence)” and “Oxytocin (Love Buzz)” both explicitly reckon with this seemingly simple fact, while “Clickbait, Click Me” folds yet another source of dopamine into the equation. These personal distance-attempting songs about love and romance are something of a counterbalance to the more emotionally vulnerable tracks on the record, which find Levine hanging on for dear life in a bad relationship in “How High?” (“Could you give me some good news / That don’t end in self-abuse?” Levine asks the subject of the song, who appears to have complete control over him), and cheerily wounded in “I L.U.V.I.O.U.” (“You still owe me words that I don’t ever wanna hear you say”…ouch). Although at one point Levine mourns that his problems have isolated himself to the point where he’s the only one “who’s ever felt this uniquely lonely”, maybe if Everything Is Broken, then no one truly can be that alone. As he says in “Teenage Angst Forever”: “I think there’s an army marching behind me”. (Bandcamp link)
Flower Crown – Heat
Release date: September 24th Record label: Crafted Sounds Genre: Dream pop, psychedelic pop, jangle pop Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital Pull track: The Billy
Pittsburgh “haze pop” group Flower Crown make a blurrily beautiful brand of indie rock that fits naturally well on the band’s current home of Crafted Sounds Records. Over their half-decade or so of existence, they’ve put out an EP, two full-lengths, and grown from the initial duo of Richie Colosimo and Aaron Mook into a quintet. Their third record, Heat, is an unabashed dream/psychedelic pop record, but also clearly benefits from the full band lineup that Flower Crown have built up in recent years. The first half of the record features a pair of easy pop rock successes in “Only Life” and “The Billy”; the former features a taut, Dehd/Ne-Hi-esque guitar riff that counterbalances its reverb-laden vocals, and “The Billy” is a slightly swirlier version of classic C86 jangle pop. “The Heat”, falling in between the two aforementioned tracks, is a little spacier, but it has a prominent drumbeat that keeps the song anchored in the realm of rock music.
The second half of Heat continues the momentum that Side A builds up, offering more indie jangle rock done Flower Crown’s way (“Islands in the Sky”), slices of psychedelia played by a rock band (“Through It”), and a genuine left-turn surprise in the crooner “All That You Ever Need” (which they describe as their “first-ever waltz”). Heat is a short, sweet listen—it only barely makes it across the 30 minute mark, and is a little below it if you discount the “Intro” and “Interlude” instrumentals (which you shouldn’t, because like their heavier labelmates in Gaadge, they thread these short gap tracks between the “normal” songs in a way that makes a lot of sense). Nevertheless, Heat is an album that you can throw on and enjoy any time; if you want something light or something a little busier, if you want pop music or something to chew on, Flower Crown have you covered. (Bandcamp link)
Hello Whirled – Wood Anniversary
Release date: October 4th Record label: Sherilyn Fender Genre: Lo-fi indie rock Formats: Digital Pull track: Full Blown Makoto
The wood anniversary is the fifth one, if you’re unfamiliar, and for Hello Whirled, the title is to be taken literally. Wood Anniversary comes out on a Monday because that’s five years to the date of the project’s first release. Ben Spizuco, more often than not the sole person behind Hello Whirled’s music, has celebrated multiple milestones this year—No Victories, from this May, was the 100th Hello Whirled release—which seems inevitable if one releases material at Spizuco’s rate. In fact, even though the centennial release threshold is undoubtedly impressive, it may be the more useful marker for something like Hello Whirled’s discography (“38 albums, 103 releases, 1021 songs” in a half-decade), to break the large mass into time-based chunks. Wood Anniversary loosely follows the structure of Hello Whirled’s most recent album, July’s History Worth Repeating, in that it begins and ends with two attention-grabbing tracks, with the more “normal” songs filing in between them.
The dour opener “Chance Encounters With Everyone I Thought I Loved: A Fiction” sort of picks up the thread that History Worth Repeating’s closing track, “Thousand”, despondently played with, while the record closes with “Wallpaper”, effectively a surreal story set to music that indulges Spizuco’s irreverent/creepy/fantastical side. “Wallpaper” is also over 12 minutes long, which helps explain what might be the biggest difference between the last couple Hello Whirled albums and this one: it’s over 70 minutes long. History Worth Repeating tore through the midsection of its runtime, but Wood Anniversary lets the “quick” tracks stretch out a little bit. While there are clearly a few tracks that stick out over the others—the mid-tempo bummer “A History of the Road”, the energetic “Full Blown Makoto”, the synth-buoyed “Maximum Riffage and Cartoon Violence”—it’s harder to pick out anything (other than perhaps the slightly irritating interlude “Three Songs Played at Once at Incorrect Speeds”) that should’ve been left on the cutting room floor. To those unfamiliar with Hello Whirled, No Victories and History Worth Repeating are probably friendlier initial listens, but Wood Anniversary is more than worth stopping along the Hello Whirled Highway to admire for those aboard. (Bandcamp link)
Screamcloud – Let’s Break Something
Release date: October 1st Record label: Self-released Genre: Grunge, garage rock, alt-rock Formats: Digital Pull track: Bad Habits
Screamcloud make music for people who enjoy the low end. The debut album from the Philadelphia trio certainly doesn’t skimp on that front, led by the buzzsaw attack of Emily Daly’s baritone guitar and backed up by bassist Danielle Lovier and drummer Charles McQuiggan’s rhythm section. Their heavy but still pop-based alt-rock puts them squarely in the same ballpark as fuzz-rock revivalist peers like Screaming Females, Rid of Me, and Low Dose, not to mention much of the Exploding in Sound Records roster. Even though it’s absolutely loud, Let’s Break Something isn’t always running at a breakneck pace. “Let’s Break Something” opens the record up with a propulsive full-band workout, but the number two track, the Breeders-esque mid-tempo “Take without Looking”, is the song that’s more reflective of Screamcloud’s overall sound.
The record’s catchiest moment is probably the stomp of “Bad Habits”, which turns into a kind of grunge sing-along led by Daly and Lovier in the song’s second half. Let’s Break Something is something of a push-and-pull album; there are certainly moments of restraint (like most of the empty-space showcase “Pull Me Under”) and jolts of energy (like the guitar solo that rips through the last part of album closer “Drop of Bleach”). Introducing a bit of dynamics seems like a smart move on Screamcloud’s part, given that song titles like “Drop of Bleach”, “Dark Times”, and (of course) “Let’s Break Something” all conjure up images of the grey dystopia that noise rock bands love to call home. Let’s Break Something ends up being an album that alternatively makes you want to break something and to question whether or not it even matters if you break it. (Bandcamp link)
Do you enjoy punk rock music? Because there’s quite a bit of it in the latest edition of Pressing Concerns. Today, we’re looking at brand new records from Kitner, Nora Marks, and Oscar Bait, as well as the Blunt Bangs album from a couple weeks ago (which is also the biggest genre outlier among these four).
Release date: October 1st Record label: Relief Map Genre: Emo-indie-rock Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull track: Malden, MA
The indie rock that ended up being formative for me was of the irony-steeped and “esoteric” variety; I enjoyed plenty of albums and bands from the more earnest emo and punk scenes that ran simultaneously, but casually, and from a distance. I have no strong opinion on when Vagrant Records and Warped Tour “stopped being good”, and the only Conor Oberst album I’ve heard in full is the one he did with Phoebe Bridgers. That is to say, I immediately recognize and appreciate the sphere into which Boston’s Kitner have placed themselves with their debut LP, Shake the Spins, but I’m not fluent in it. If “the Omaha indie scene” means anything to you, songs like the heartland emo of “Junebug” and “Orient Heights” will be familiar in the warmest and best way. The lead singer of Kitner, Conor Maier, sounds the most like Conor Oberst’s warbling voice on these quiet-to-dramatic tracks.
Kitner aren’t neatly slot-able into “Bright Eyes clone” territory. Guitarist James Christopher cites the Get-Up Kids as a starting point for his contributions to the band’s sound, and throughout Shake the Spins, the delicateness of Maier’s voice and the ornamental keyboard of Brianne Costa are just as likely to be accompanying a straight-up pop punk instrumental, like the first proper song “Suddenly” and the latter half of “Beth Israel” (which utilizes that classic, ‘acoustic first, then full band’ punch). The band reference local heroes Dinosaur Jr. as an inspiration for the most “rocking” song on Shake the Spins, the exuberant “Malden, MA”, but the geographical title and bar-band harmonica remind me more of The Hold Steady (Tell me that “I’m starving but I’m not an artist / They say Pollock was too drunk to paint and that I’m too drunk to stand up straight” couldn’t be a Craig Finn lyric).
Shake the Spins also just sounds great—credit to engineer Ryan Stack and the extra dimension that Costa’s keyboards give the record for that, among other things. I already mentioned “Beth Israel”, but “New Haven, CT” also relies on the acoustic-to-full-band transition and the dynamic shifts that come with it, and even electric-from-the-get-go songs like the mid-tempo “Bowery” and “Henry Miller ‘91” take a few turns that help deepen the record as well. Shake the Spins has been described as a “Lost Saddle Creek Records album”, and while it absolutely sounds like it could’ve emerged from that camp, this also rings true in the “lost” sense. The record comes five years after Kitner’s promising but rough-around-the-edges debut EP, so it’s somewhat of a surprise that the record even came together at all. At least, that might be how it looks from the outside—once you hear Shake the Spins, it’s pretty clear what a shame it would’ve been if songs this strong and a band this tuned-in to each other had just faded away. (Bandcamp link)
Blunt Bangs – Proper Smoker
Release date: September 17th Record label: Ernest Jenning Record Co. Genre: Power pop, alt-rock Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull track: Tom Ford
Reggie Youngblood made a name for himself in Black Kids, the Jacksonville post-punk revival band had a huge moment in the late 2000s. Christian “Smokey” DeRoeck was an early member of Woods in their lo-fi freak folk days, and most recently surfaced in the Silver Jews-indebted alt-country band Little Gold (who have appeared on Rosy Overdrive before). Together, the two make…power pop? Yes, the debut record from Blunt Bangs definitely showcases a different side to its two primary songwriters, something that becomes apparent from the moment opening track “She’s Gone” busts out its descending-chord structure, melodic guitar solos, and breezy vocal harmonies. By the time lead single “Decide” rolls up in the album’s second slot, Youngblood and DeRoeck (along with drummer Cash Carter, also of Little Gold) have fully transported us all back to 1993, with shades of Teenage Fanclub, The Posies, and even the Gin Blossoms coloring their work.
In defense of making a straight power pop record, Carter emphasizes that “we’re not trying to reinvent the wheel”, which, sure, but Proper Smoker never reverts to boring or unremarkable. The clever “Silence Is Golden” (a re-recording of an old Woods demo, apparently) harkens back to DeRoeck’s alt-country work, and the fizzy college rock of “Speed Reader” lands somewhere around mid-period Superchunk—just a couple of the details that help Proper Smoker feel very much like a product of all three members’ adopted home of Athens, Georgia. The fast, organ-tinged “Tom Ford” is an alt-rock hit from another universe hidden away in the middle of Side Two, and “Moshi Moshi” also stands out among the last couple of tracks due to Youngblood’s gleefully profane lyrics about “twirling at a Christian rave”, among other activities. Blunt Bangs had been kicking around for a few years before Proper Smoker eventually showed up, presumably due to the members’ other projects, but hopefully the record’s solid foundation encourages the trio to build upon it sooner rather than later. (Bandcamp link)
Nora Marks – Opt Out
Release date: October 1st Record label: Take a Hike Genre: Punk rock, pop punk Formats: Digital Pull track: The Ballad of the Surfin’ Cowboy
It’s apparently Chicago Punk week at Rosy Overdrive (see also: the next entry), and there’s no better place to start than the debut full-length from the Windy City’s Nora Marks. Opt Out is characterized by a nice, clean punk rock sound that’s accompanied by singer Michael Garrity’s nervous, post-punk-y vocals and occasional Dismemberment Plan-ish keyboard stabs. Although Nora Marks barrel out of the gate with the full-on anthem “Epiphany I’ve Had Before”, the rest of Opt Out fucks around with everything from kitchen-sink instrumental interludes (“Warshboard”, “Transmission”) to rockabilly piss-takes (“66”), all the while making its bones with mid-tempo, alt-rock sing-along belters. The band really shines on songs like “I Think You Earned It”, “Nice to Me”, and “The Ballad of the Surfin’ Cowboy”, which get a lot of mileage out of relative restraint, and helps give Opt Out a “making music for the sake of making music” Chicago indie rock feel a la Silkworm and countless other bands that have passed through Electrical Audio’s doors.
Garrity characterizes Opt Out as having grandiose ambitions regarding the Internet and AI’s effects on human behavior and emotion, but despite (or perhaps because of) this, the record is thematically marked by small, futile-feeling moments. It starts right at the beginning with the “here we go again” sigh of “Epiphany I’ve Had Before” (“You almost did something brave,” Garrity remarks to himself, ruefully) and continues to the “it’s all downhill from here” energy of “Nice to Me” (“I never even did enough to truly fail,” he mumbles). The narrator of “I Think You Earned It” spends the song reckoning with the fact that they’re “not so great” and devoted their life to creating “garbage”, and “A General Malaise” details a failed attempt to break out from the titular affliction. It’s relatively straightforward to figure out how, for example, the information overload of “Too Much History” relates to Garrity’s lyrical inspiration for Opt Out, but the personal snapshots and stream-of-consciousness, riddle-esque lyrics shine perhaps even brighter for Nora Marks. I could try to parse the chorus of “The Ballad of Surfin’ Cowboy” in relation to the rest of the record, sure, but the reason I come back to it is because everyone in the band injects “Intend to never stop / Raging bull, China shop” with a real sense of shout-along catharsis, shaking something worthwhile out of the noise Nora Marks sift through in Opt Out. (Bandcamp link)
Oscar Bait – Everything Louder Than Everything Else
Release date: October 1st Record label: Little Elephant Genre: Melodic hardcore, post-hardcore Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull track: Blitzer
It seems like melodic post-hardcore music is having a bit of a moment—Drug Church has worked their way into being one of punk’s most beloved new bands, Fiddlehead released one of the most acclaimed records of the year so far in May, and Militarie Gun’s pair of EPs show that they’re well on their way to greater heights. Everything Louder Than Everything Else, the second EP and first release since 2018 from Chicago’s Oscar Bait, might be the platonic ideal of this brand of heavy music. For one, the EP rips through six catchy bursts of energy in less than ten minutes. For another, they’ve got the tough exterior backed with an introspective underneath thing down pat. Musically, lead singer Jim Howes jumps between throaty yelling and clean singing as the song calls for it. Lyrically, Howes pulls from both ends of the punk-dude-poet continuum, with song titles nodding to both David Foster Wallace (“This Is Water”) and a former NFL player and announcer (“Trent Dilfer for a Year”).
One doesn’t need to own a half-read copy of Infinite Jest or to tune into Monday Night Football in order to enjoy Everything Louder Than Everything Else, mind you. Jim Howes’ lyrics, characteristic of no small amount of orgcore-adjacent music, deal with fairly universal themes of the weirdness of growing up, and of taking lessons from the chaos of youth without becoming overly attached to it. “Cheap Sunglasses” and “Denim Days” are the two tracks that most heavily mine the past to this end, with both Howe and those around him playing the chaos agents, while the final two songs feel more future-pointing. “Trent Dilfer for a Year”, in particular, ends with Howes’ ultimatum of: “Send me back for another college / Or take me out of here and bring me back to life”. Of course, Oscar Bait’s brand of high-energy rock and roll is plenty enjoyable even without taking the microscope to Howes’ lyrics, but there is enough going on there to warrant the look. (Bandcamp link)
Rosy Overdrive 