The second edition of Pressing Concerns of the new year highlights a large-scale reissue from The Dream Syndicate, new albums from Kids on a Crime Spree and Reptaliens, and the debut EP from Prize Horse. It’s a good year (musically, at least) already!
The Dream Syndicate – What Can I Say? No Regrets…Out of the Grey + Live, Demos, & Outtakes
Release date: January 14th Record label: Fire Genre: Alternative rock, psychedelic rock Formats: CD, digital Pull track: Slide Away
I’ve always respected The Dream Syndicate more than actively enjoyed them. I’m well aware of how important they are to several of my favorite bands, from Eleventh Dream Day to Silkworm to the one after which this website is named, sure. I’ve heard their consensus best record, The Days of Wine and Roses—the one that’s key to about a half-dozen subgenres of indie- and alt-rock—and I like it just fine, and their first “reunion” record, 2017’s How Did I Find Myself Here?is a very good album in its own right. As impressive as those two albums are, Out of the Grey is the Dream Syndicate record that’s hit me the hardest thus far, and is the closest to what I’ve imagined this band to be.
Originally released in 1986, Out of the Grey was the first Dream Syndicate record not to feature key members Kendra Smith and Karl Precoda, which is a big deal to some people from what I understand. I can certainly hear a difference between it and The Days of Wine and Roses—the latter album splits the difference between dreamy psychedelia and speedy desert rock and roll. Out of the Grey zeroes in on the latter, and instead of ping-ponging, finds a wide range within it to explore. The “rockers” no longer sound hurried and frantic; on the converse, The Dream Syndicate come off like a band with all the time in the world. Songs like the opening title track, “Boston”, and “Blood Money” all find the band hitting on something and just riding it for as long as they deem it necessary, which is generally the exact right amount.
The Dream Syndicate (at this point, the quartet of vocalist/guitarist Steve Wynn, guitarist Paul Cutler, bassist Mark Walton, and drummer Dennis Duck, all of which except Cutler are still in the band today) find time in Out of the Grey to put together some of the sharpest pop songs I’ve heard from the band; namely the giddy chord changes of “Slide Away” and the borderline-inappropriate bouncy sing-along melody of “Drinking Problem”. They still rocked, of course—even though you can actually dance to “Dancing Blind”, they see no need to minimize the blistering lead guitar in order to further this achievement. And the catharsis of closing track “Let It Rain” takes awhile to fully develop, but when it’s there, it’s unmistakable. One of the previously-released bonus tracks What Can I Say? No Regrets… offers up is a sharp, stomping version of “Cinnamon Girl”, which should be an “a-ha” moment if you hadn’t gotten there already.
On the heels of a long-overdue vinyl reissue of the original record last year, Fire Records has produced two discs’ worth of previously-unreleased bonus material to enhance the CD release of What Can I Say? No Regrets…. While I imagine someone who’s been a bigger fan of The Dream Syndicate would get more out of these extras, I found myself thoroughly enjoying the 1985 live set that comprises the second CD. The production and recording choices of Out of the Grey don’t bother me at all, but if your problem with the record is it’s not loud and jammy enough for you, head straight to the Live at Scorgies, NY section. The covers and demos of the third disc do little for me, true, but two different looks at one great collection of songs is more than enough for me to cosign What Can I Say? No Regrets…. (Bandcamp link)
Kids on a Crime Spree – Fall in Love Not in Line
Release date: January 21st Record label: Slumberland Genre: Noise pop Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital Pull track: When Can I See You Again?
Bay Area noise pop trio Kids on a Crime Spree have been kicking around for a decade or so, but it took until 2022 for a full-length record of theirs to emerge. Fall in Love Not in Line’s 25 minutes are an eternity in comparison to the rest of the band’s releases, the most substantial of which was previously 2011’s We Love You So Bad EP. They did release a few singles in the intermittent time period, though, and it doesn’t take long for Fall in Love Not in Line to remind the listener of the power of a single song. The record’s first two tracks are fuzzy power pop excellence from singer-songwriter Mario Hernandez, the chiming “Karl Kardel Building” wringing a hell of a lot out of an instrumental riff and the brisk “When Can I See You Again?” balancing Hernandez’s delicate vocals and lyrics pleasingly with the tuneful squall of the band.
Kids on a Crime Spree could’ve stopped there and added another no-fat single to their discography, but they dig a bit deeper on the rest of Fall in Love Not in Line and uncover more to enhance their repertoire. This includes a few reverb-y pop songs that rival the openers in the anxious undertones of “All Things Fade” and bouncy stomp of “Goods Get Got”, and it also features a couple of sonic expansions. “Vital Points” dials the distortion down just enough to let its 60s-cool melody shine a little brighter, and if “Overtaken by the Soil” is at times, ah, overtaken by noisiness, it isn’t enough to overwhelm the handclaps and stop-start guitar riff that put the track over the top. Whatever form these songs take, they all benefit from Hernandez’s hooky writing, as well as the ability of Hernandez and bandmates Becky Barron and Bill Evans to wring melody out of noisy sonic terrain. (Bandcamp link)
Prize Horse – Welder
Release date: January 19th Record label: New Morality Zine Genre: The heavy shoegaze/grunge/emo/post-hardcore spectrum Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull track: 3 Tiles
Welder may be the debut release from Minneapolis’ Prize Horse, but the trio have been playing together for several years now. The six-song EP was produced by Corey Coffmon of nü-shoegazers Gleemer and released through New Morality Zine, a reliable source for punk and heavy rock music as of late—if you’re familiar with either of those touchstones, you can probably guess approximately what Welder sounds like. That doesn’t make at any less strong of a debut release, though. Guitarist/vocalist Jake Beitel, bassist Liv Johnson, and drummer Jon Brenner play a blown-out brand of alt-rock that suggests they’ve spent several hours with classic space rock opuses like Fantastic Planet and Downward Is Heavenward, and Beitel’s unshakable monotone vocals are very 1990s as well.
While Beitel is too high in the mix for Prize Horse to come off as a straight shoegaze band, Welder certainly sound like they’re playing with a firmly-fixed downcast expression. Songs like “Emeryth” and the title track do get loud, but only in the service of creating dark, chilly listening experiences. Beitel’s downtuned guitar rakes across both these and the more traditionally “rocking” songs like “Far” and “Musket”, and the rhythm section (particularly Johnson’s concrete-solid bass playing) anchors these tracks in a workmanlike way, not unlike the profession to which the EP’s title alludes. It’s all very no-frills, but through sheer commitment Welder is able to suck you in completely in spite of—or maybe perhaps because of?—that. (Bandcamp link)
Reptaliens – Multiverse
Release date: January 21st Record label: Captured Tracks Genre: Indie pop, psych pop, dream pop Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital Pull track: I Feel Fine
Here we have a band that’s on the complete opposite end of the “space rock” spectrum from Prize Horse. Portland, Oregon’s Reptaliens have made a name for themselves over the past half-decade with their casually futuristic lounge-pop, and with their third record, they’ve put together a strong collection of songs by exploring deviations from this sound. Multiverse follows a reverse indie rock band trajectory, embracing guitars and reducing the synths in something of a insular turn by the band’s core duo of Cole and Bambi Browning. Reptaliens are good enough at churning out subtle, airy pop music with any toolset that Multiverse isn’t a jarring listen—still, the steady downstroked electric guitar and shuffling drumbeat that announce album opener “I Feel Fine” are, if nothing else, rather exciting.
Songs like “In Your Backyard” and “Take It” take the six-string clarity of “I Feel Fine” and crank up the reverb for some confident dream pop moments, and the latter even flirts with a feedback jam as it draws to a close. The distortion in “Do You Know Are Sleeping?” isn’t restricted to the last moment—it’s a formative part of the song. Bambi’s vocals don’t sound shaken by the music, retaining their half-to-herself sung-spoken melodies in all of Multiverse’s ten tracks. More than anything, it’s her voice that provides the throughline, performing much the same role in the brisk power pop of “Don’t Wait for Me” at the center of the record as in closing track “Jump”, which is effectively made out of another drum shuffle and some positively groovy guitar leads. It all hangs together, it feels natural, but most importantly it’s a fun listen. (Bandcamp link)
It’s late-stage January, so let’s get on with what music 2022’s had to offer so far already. The first Pressing Concerns of the new year hits on new records from Jeff Tobias (Sunwatchers, Modern Nature), Artsick (Burnt Palms, Lunchbox, Boyracer), and Patrick Brayer, and the debut EP from Party’z (Kittyhawk).
Release date: January 7th Record label: Strategy of Tension Genre: Experimental pop, post-punk, synthpop Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull track: We’re Here to Help
New York’s Jeff Tobias is a ringer of sorts—he’s played various instruments, most notably saxophone, for bands like Sunwatchers and Modern Nature—but his debut “pop” album as a solo artist is something new for him. Recurring Dream is an adventurous album—Tobias alone is credited with playing fourteen different instruments on the record—but it’s also a highly cohesive one. Tobias loosely settles into a synth-pop style across Recurring Dream, but that gives him a lot of room with which to work. Just in the first two songs, we get the blaring alarm sounds that twine with saxophones on the urgent chaos of “Our Very Recent Past” and the minimalist funk rhythms that help “We’re Here to Help” pull off something of a smooth swagger. Like all of Recurring Dream, these two songs are grounded by the steady presence of Tobias’ voice—it’s a subtle voice that sounds both fervent and intimate. The barely-there but certainly audible smirk in the titular line of “We’re Here to Help” (that is, help relieve the wealthy of the burden of their horded wealth) is why it works.
The nonprofit grifter and offshore tax cheat character studies in “We’re Here to Help” aren’t atypical here—Recurring Dream is a heady record with a lot on its mind, something of a synth-heavier version of the Personal Space record from last year, and the lyrics don’t always spell out their messages in the way that song’s does. But Tobias glides us confidently from scene to scene, pushing his voice in the soft rock lament of “Transparency” and throwing us into the thick of it with the dire opening of “Venezuela”. Even between Tobias’ bag of musical tricks and at-times intimidating lyrics, Recurring Dream commits fully to being a pop album—every song I’ve mentioned has something I’d consider a hook, and it ends with “Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror”, a shimmering piece of synthpop propulsion that feels like it could go on forever. Recurring Dream has all the tools to confuse and overwhelm, and it does when it wants to, but it’s just as likely to artfully smooth out its own creases and ripples. (Bandcamp link)
Artsick – Fingers Crossed
Release date: January 21st Record label: Slumberland Genre: Twee, indie punk Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital Pull track: Stress Bomb
Christina Riley played guitar and sang in Burnt Palms for most of last decade, and more recently has been playing with long-running indie pop punk group Boyracer, featuring heavily on last year’s Assuaged. Boyracer isn’t the only 90s twee/indie pop connection that can be traced to Riley’s latest band, Artsick: both members of Lunchbox are involved in Fingers Crossed as well (Donna McKean plays bass on the record, Tim Brown recorded it). Not surprisingly, the Oakland-based trio (Riley, McKean, and drummer Mario Hernandez of Kids on a Crime Spree) sound right at home on indie pop royalty Slumberland Records: Riley’s frequently droll vocals prominently anchor the sound of a band bashing out loose but confident pop music. Like Boyracer, Artsick are on the louder end of the twee spectrum: Fingers Crossed isn’t afraid to rock. They cite Tiger Trap as an influence, and I certainly hear it.
Artstick balance the pop and the rock well: the crunchy fuzz of “Despise” also pulls out enthusiastic handclaps, and if “Ghost of Myself” is a workout, it’s because they’ve sped up a jangly pop rocker just a bit more than your average K Records band would (and one doesn’t get any more pop-reverent than that song’s intro, no?). As a vocalist, Riley delivers: she holds her own in the noisier numbers, but when the clouds part a bit, she takes full advantage of the clarity. The triumphant gallop of opening track “Restless” contrasts with an ennui-gripped Riley grasping at various methods of dulling the titular emotion, and then in “Stress Bomb”, she just as memorably mutters “just shoot me” at the lobber of the title. Only 28 minutes long, Fingers Crossed is a brief yet not ephemeral first look at the latest chapter of Christina Riley’s pop music career. (Bandcamp link)
Patrick Brayer – Cabbage and Kings: An Inland Shrimpire Anthology
Release date: January 21st Record label: Shrimper Genre: Folk, country Formats: CD, digital Pull track: Note to Self (To Say Goodbye)
Patrick Brayer is something of a contradiction, or at the very least a curious case. Major folk players like Alison Krauss and Dave Alvin have covered his songs, but here he is releasing an album on Shrimper Records, primarily known as an underground lo-fi cassette label from the 90s. He’s a prolific songwriter, as evidenced by scores of digital releases on his Bandcamp page, but there’s only ever been a small handful of official, physical Patrick Brayer releases. His first record came out in 1979—over forty years ago. So, what to make of Cabbage and Kings? Well, the record does keep one foot planted firmly in the underground—if there’s any question as to how Brayer fits in with the Shrimper world, these songs reveal traces of Refrigerator’s quieter side and Simon Joyner, and there’s a desert-folk ramble a la Howe Gelb of Giant Sand that’s not too far off either.
But at the same time, Cabbage and Kings places Brayer among more well-known company. If Leonard Cohen and Johnny Cash could make great records in the later years of their careers, well, so can he. Brayer sounds infinitely comfortable on Cabbage and Kings’ songs, which stretch out to hold everything Brayer has to give. “If you’ve had a life as rich as mine, I doubt it, but good for you,” he sings in “Empty Cage”, a tribute to Chris Darrow that, first-personal or not, is one of several songs that succeed in spanning a lifetime into a few minutes. “Note to Self (To Say Goodbye)” takes over nine of those minutes to complete its stare, but Brayer doesn’t blink the entire way through. These songs are incredibly captivating; it really does come off as the work of someone who’s spent decades mapping out a unique version of well-trodden songwriting hills. (Midheaven link)
Party’z – Party’z EP
Release date: January 14th Record label: Self-released Genre: Fuzz rock, noise pop Formats: Digital Pull track: Getting Warmer
One of my favorite compilations of last year was Mikey’s Favorite Songs by Kittyhawk, a collection of non-album material from the Chicago emo band. While Kittyhawk seems to be active again in some capacity, that hasn’t stopped a couple of its members from debuting as Party’z this month. It’s the project of Kittyhawk’s guitarist/vocalist Mark Jaeschke, with the band’s bassist Clare Teeling joining a lineup rounded out by keyboardist Delia Hornik and drummer Andy Hendricks. However, very little of the elder act’s Midwest emo sound is apparent in Party’z’s four-song debut EP, at least not on the surface. Jaeschke and the band have put together a record of amp-cranked, fuzzy power pop.
In the opening kick-off of “Getting Warmer” and (especially) the closing reverb-fest of “Follow the Sound”, Party’z flirt with being a straight-up end-of-the-2000s shitgaze band—they sound closer to Times New Viking than any of their “main” group’s fellow fourth-wave emo revivalists. Intentionally or otherwise, however, the Party’z EP argues for some common ground here: these are four earnest pop songs underneath the feedback. Hornik’s keyboard routinely pokes out, delivering hooky Rentals/Anniversary synths even as the guitar threatens to drown it out, and Jaeschke is as likely as not to use the distortion to emphasize the emotion in their vocals as to obscure them. Party’z already have plans for a follow-up full-length record, and what they’ve put down together so far suggests that one should keep an eye on the young band. (Bandcamp link)
If you chose to read this, you probably know who Silkworm were, but I’ll try to briefly go over it for anyone who doesn’t. Silkworm formed in the late 1980s in Missoula, featuring singer/guitarists Andrew Cohen and Joel Phelps and singer/bassist Tim Midyett, and then moved to Seattle and added Michael Dahlquist, the greatest drummer of all time. In the mid-90s Phelps left and started a solo career, the band continued on as a trio, and they ended up in Chicago. Silkworm ceased to exist in 2005 after Dahlquist’s death. Cohen and Midyett played in the band Bottomless Pit together in the aftermath of Silkworm’s demise, but that band is no longer active either. Midyett currently leads the band Mint Mile, while Cohen released a solo record in 2017 and was playing live shows up until the pandemic began. Phelps’ last record with his band, The Downer Trio, came out in 2013.
As the 2013 documentary Couldn’t You Wait: The Story of Silkworm emphasizes, this is a band with a small but fervent cult following. I’m not the first person to be inspired by their music enough to write 7,000-odd words about it, but I wanted to try to be comprehensive with my submission into this world. Silkworm doesn’t sound like anybody else. Spawning from Montana has something to do with that, sure, but it’s more than that. Cohen, Midyett, and Phelps are all extraordinary songwriters—and all three’s styles are fairly different from the others’. Even the “lesser” albums and EPs by them deserve looks. I’ve made a companion playlist to this piece that emphasizes this, pulling from almost every record included in this list (it’s ordered for flow, not to reflect the order of my list). If you aren’t familiar with Silkworm or any of their related groups, I hope you find something in here that speaks to you. If you are familiar with Silkworm—yes, I know Libertine is too low. You don’t have to yell at me about it.
Some notes to other people who also care deeply about Silkworm: This list does not include Silkworm’s early demo cassettes. I never liked the early Silkworm stuff I’ve heard enough to try too hard to track those down. It doesn’t include any of the bands that original drummer Ben Koostra ended up in, but I’m sure they’re perfectly fine. It doesn’t include the other bands by late-era keyboardist Matt Kadane, but I shouldn’t have to tell you that Bedhead and The New Year are quality groups. It doesn’t include any of the Sunn O))) albums that Tim Midyett played on, although there is a record in here with a different Sunn O))) connection. It doesn’t include the Silkworm live bootlegs that have shown up on Bandcamp in recent years, although I’m grateful those exist. It doesn’t include any of the one-off tracks from any of the members, eventhoughtherearemanygoodones.
36. Alison Chesley, Steve Albini, and Tim Midyett – Music from the Film Girl on the Third Floor (2020)
I’m betting a lot of you didn’t know this existed, and it’s probably up some of your alleys, so I’m happy to be including this for that purpose, at least. It’s not really up mine, though. It is notable for the novelty of hearing Tim Midyett make music with two great collaborators: Steve Albini (who engineered almost everything by Silkworm, but to my knowledge never played with them) and indie rock’s greatest cellist, Alison Chesley (aka Helen Money) of Verbow. If you like slow, mostly-instrumental, (literally) cinematic post-rock, then give Music from the Film Girl on the Third Floor a listen.
35. Dama/Libra – Claw (2014)
The most recent full-length record to feature any contributions from Joel Phelps, the Northern Spy-released Claw paired his vocals up with music from former Sunn O))) member, brother of Michael, and noted crow enthusiast G. Stuart Dalhquist. It is, like the previous record on this list, not really my bag—this is definitely the closest thing to a drone album here, sounding something like Sunn O))) songs shortened into “normal” track length and featuring admittedly great Phelps vocals. Plus it has “Been to the Water”, the record’s most tuneful song and a no-brainer entry into any Joel Phelps best-of collection.
34. Joel R.L. Phelps and the Downer Trio – Consulate EP (2017)
Consulate was recorded at the same time as 2013’s Gala, but didn’t surface until a little over three years later, making it Joel Phelps’ most recent release. It’s a short one, featuring two alternate version of tracks from Gala and two EP exclusives. The two revisits strip the songs down to parts, turning the ripping “Blinding Light” and the rhythm-section showcase “Goldentown” into a mid-tempo acoustic shuffle and piano ballad, respectively. The two “new” songs are even sparser, Phelps rising barely above a whisper above delicate instrumentation in “On the Side” and “Roll on Columbia”. Hardly a major release, but any new Joel Phelps is welcome at this point.
33. Silkworm – You Are Dignified EP (2003)
My favorite thing about Silkworm’s You Are Dignified covers EP is how great of a selection these songs are. When I was at my peak obsession with this band, this EP helped me either discover or strengthen my admiration for Robbie Fulks, Bedhead, Nina Nastasia, and Shellac. Even the Pavement selection (“And Then…”) is a well-chosen obscurity, an early version of “The Hexx” that was relegated to Brighten the Corners B-side status. As for the acoustic, mandolin-heavy versions themselves, they’re fun (particularly Michael’s version of “Prayer to God” and Tim and Andy’s “Let’s Kill Saturday Night”), if admittedly fairly inessential for most.
32. Ein Heit – The Lightning and the Sun (1997)
Well, something has to be the lowest-ranked “rock” album on this list. Ein Heit was the band that originally united Joel Phelps, Tim Midyett, and Andy Cohen in Missoula before they formed Silkworm and decamped to Seattle. They’ve always seemed fond of the band, and it’s commendable that they got back with Ein Heit members John Kappes and Tom Kipp to make a permanent record of the group, even reuniting with Joel Phelps after he somewhat acrimoniously left Silkworm. The Lightning and the Sun isn’t without its charms—the Phelps-sung “Lonesome Heart” is killer, and when I’m in the right mood, the seven-minute “Without Warning” sounds profound to me—but these are largely songs from a handful of musicians who hadn’t reached their best form yet. It’s an incredibly unique-sounding record, though, I have to give it that.
31. Silkworm – Marco Collins Sessions EP (1995)
Like You Are Dignified, the Marco Collins Sessions EP found Silkworm in stripped-down mode, but they’re playing their own songs here, which helps it rank a little higher. Marco Collins is a longtime Seattle DJ whose Wikipedia page claims he was “instrumental” in breaking Harvey Danger’s “Flagpole Sitta”, among other songs, so he should be commended both for that and facilitating this four-song EP. Another feather in the Marco Collin Sessions EP’s cap is that the acoustic version of “Couldn’t You Wait?” is actually better than the album version—credit that to Tim Midyett’s vocal performance, especially at the song’s climax. The whole EP was reissued as a bonus with Comedy Minus One’s 2013 reissue of Libertine.
30. Tim Midgett – It Goes Like This EP (2002)
It Goes Like This was initially part of a CD subscription series from Three Lobed Recordings, and then made more widely available a few years later by Comedy Minus One. Three out of the EP’s six songs would eventually wind up on Silkworm albums, so might be tempting to call this a demo dump, but there’s also a cover of The Zombies’ “Time of the Season” into which Midyett clearly put a good deal of effort. My favorite song here is the windswept “As Long…”, one of the two unreleased-elsewhere originals, and among the eventual Silkworm tracks, it’s a treat to hear “Something Hyper” without the (cool) weird stuff they did with it on It’ll Be Cool, as well as Italian Platinum highlight “Young” sung by Midyett instead of Kelly Hogan as it is on that record.
29. Joel R.L. Phelps and the Downer Trio – The Downer Trio EP (1997)
The Downer Trio isn’t the only Joel R.L. Phelps release to hover somewhere between EP and full-length—it nears the 30-minute mark thanks to a couple of covers, an alternate version, and a brief instrumental. None of the three original tracks would be on my shortlist for favorite Phelps tune, but the twitchy, rhythm-section-heavy opener “Razorback” probably merits an honorable mention, and the gliding alt-country of “At El Paso” connects the dots between the first two Phelps LPs nicely. Among the covers, The Clash’s “The Guns of Brixton” becomes a haunting piano ballad, but it’s Phelps’ surprisingly intense take on “Emerald City” by Dramarama that’s the most successful.
28. Mint Mile – In Season & Ripe EP (2015)
Mint Mile, Tim Midyett’s first band without Andy Cohen (without him as a creative partner, at first, and later without him at all) introduced themselves to the world rather quietly, with a trio of four-song EPs. In Season & Ripe feels low-key even among the other two, relying heavily (for Midyett) on acoustic guitar and kind of drifting through its four tracks. The lazy strut of “Mountain Lion” opens the EP with Mint Mile’s first classic song, sounding like vintage Midyett but also distinct from Silkworm and Bottomless Pit. The rest of In Season & Ripe doesn’t quite deliver on “Mountain Lion”’s promise, but if “Modern Day” and “Wound” can feel a little dizzying sometimes, it’s a unique moment in Midyett’s music career.
27. Joel R.L. Phelps and the Downer Trio – Gala (2013)
While Gala as a whole doesn’t reach the heights of Joel Phelps’ previous records, I am grateful that it exists at all; after a worsening battle with substance abuse resulted in nearly a decade without any new music from Phelps, the triumph that marks Gala’s strongest songs is completely earned. Phelps vows “I want to grace to put my bottle down” in opener “The Nashville Sound”, one of the greatest songs he’s ever written, and The Downer Trio sound as alive as ever on highlights “Blinding Light” and “Thank You and Goodnight”. While it looks increasingly likely with every passing year that Phelps’ sudden flurry of musical activity in the early 2010s was a blip on the radar rather than the beginning of a new era, the world is better for it to have happened.
26. Silkworm – Even a Blind Chicken Finds a Kernel of Corn Now and Then (1998)
Even a Blind Chicken Finds a Kernel of Corn Now and Then is a two-CD compilation that compiled some of Silkworm’s harder-to-find releases: their 1992 debut record, L’ajre, 1993’s His Absence Is a Blessing EP, and various non-album singles. I decided to include the compilation instead of breaking the LP and the EP out separately to highlight a couple non-album tunes: namely “Slipstream”, the first great song Silkworm made together, but “Violet” and “Around a Light” (originally released together) are strong, too. Of the two major releases here, L’ajre is definitely the weaker of the two (ranking probably ahead of Consulate, if you’re curious)—all of “Homoactivity” is awesome, and parts of several other songs are too, but it’s the sound of a band still yet to figure out how to restrain themselves enough to make great records. In my opinion, His Absence Is a Blessing is a little overrated—it’s not until In the West that they truly ascend, to me—but it does contain “Scruffy Tumor”, the First Great Silkworm Song (which is distinct from the first great song made by Silkworm, it should be noted). Rank it between Inland Empires and Tradition, if you must.
25. The Crust Brothers – Marquee Mark (1998)
The Crust Brothers are likely 90s indie rock’s greatest supergroup, slotting ahead of The Halo Benders and that time Johnny Marr was in Modest Mouse. The Brothers were the three members of Silkworm at the time (Midyett, Cohen, Dahlquist) and Stephen Malkmus of Pavement, and Marquee Mark captures one of the group’s few live performances. The Crust Brothers gleefully make Silkworm’s (and, I guess, Pavement’s) classic rock undertones explicit; almost all of these tracks are covers of songs that could be generally described as “classic rock”. It’s a really fun album, and maybe should be higher—Malkmus leads the band through a ripping version of “Feel a Whole Lot Better”, all of them sing together on “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere”, and Midyett’s scorching take on “Heard It Through the Grapevine” is the definitive version of the song (not that I’m biased or anything). Oh, and they get Malkmus to sing a Silkworm song—his “Never Met a Man I Didn’t Like” is charming.
24. Joel R.L. Phelps and the Downer Trio – Inland Empires (2000)
There’s only one original song on Inland Empires, but it’s a doozy. “Now You Are Found (1962-1999)” is a beautiful, heartbreaking tribute to Joel Phelps’ sister, who’d died of a drug overdose in what was the very, very recent past at the time. It’s a bit of a tough listen, as incredible as it is—possibly why the song finds itself the centerpiece of a curious, seven-song, mostly-covers record that straddles the line between LP and EP instead of one of many originals on a “normal” album. Not that the other songs on Inland Empires are relief, exactly, but they’re emotional in different ways. Phelps gives Steve Earle’s “Someday” a slow, bittersweet reading that gazes into the past deliberately, and his version of Iris Dement’s “My Life”, coming right after “Now You Are Found” as it does, is silence-inducing. Inland Empires more than earns “Apology Accepted”, a Go-Betweens cover that’s probably the most upbeat the Downer Trio have ever sounded.
23. Joel R.L. Phelps and the Downer Trio – Tradition EP (2004)
Tradition was originally a bonus CD that came with 2004’s Custom, and it’s more of a piece with that record than with anything else in Joel Phelps’ discography. Like Inland Empires, it’s mostly covers (three of them, plus two originals), but the Downer Trio announce from the opening notes of “What Are You Doing Here Cowboy?” that they’re not trying to recreate that album’s sparse, pin-drop intimacy. That song, as well as an intense, six-minute version of Joy Division’s “24 Hours” finds Phelps, William Herzog, and Robert Mercer with amps cranked up, and when they slow to a crawl in “Right Now”, it’s a full-band, bass-and-drums-led one. The one exception is a hushed take on Townes Van Zandt’s “Flying Shoes”, which I believe might be an Inland Empire outtake (they went with “Our Mother the Mountain” instead).
22. Bottomless Pit – Lottery 2005-2012 EP (2012)
The physical edition of Lottery 2005-2012 was a Japan-only two-CD compilation of everything Bottomless Pit had released up until that point, plus a couple of exclusive bonus tracks. That’s not the version I’m ranking here; this is for the digital version, which made the three previously-unreleased songs available to everybody else. This is a small release, sure, and maybe shouldn’t even count, but these three tracks are all very good to great and stack up against any of the “proper” Bottomless Pit records. Like the Developer bonus tracks, “State I’m In” and “The Colchis Eagles” show that Midyett and Cohen prune songs off their albums due to how well they “fit in” with the record’s mood, rather than the individual tracks’ quality. The “fast” version of “Winterwind”, the third and final song, is better than the album version, and is maybe Bottomless Pit’s greatest achievement as a single recording, but the “slow” version fits Blood Under the Bridge better, so off to Japan this one went.
21. Joel R.L. Phelps – Warm Springs Night (1995)
After Joel Phelps was either fired from or quit the band he co-led and helped found, he struck out on his own with a fiery, rickety record of shambling country/garage rock that doesn’t sound quite like any of the following albums, even as it set up the path the Downer Trio would follow. Even though it’s not billed as “Joel R.L. Phelps and the Downer Trio”, the other two members of the trio—William Herzog and Robert Mercer—play on Warm Springs Night, and the rockers sound like a rough version of what they’d make together. Phelps never tried to recreate the post-hardcore squall of Silkworm with The Downer Trio, and while he probably comes closest on Warm Springs Night—the loose anger of “Counsel”, the noise-punk “God Bless the Little Pigs”—there are plenty of subtle moments to mark the beginning of his second act. The western slowcore of the title track and “OK Reno” as well as more electric lonesome tracks like “The Graze and the Graves” and “All We Want” both ended up being fruitful paths for the singer-songwriter to follow.
20. Mint Mile – The Bliss Point EP (2016)
The Bliss Point saw the return of the electric guitar to prominence in Tim Midyett’s music, and thus Mint Mile sounds a bit more like his previous bands here—at least on the surface. Opener “City of Speed Traps” is maybe the most Silkworm-y Mint Mile song, keeping things surprisingly straightforward with a nice pop song chord progression and a chiming guitar riff. It’s a classic. As is “Park”, a song that doesn’t particularly sound like Silkworm. That song chimes as well; I’m not enough of a gearhead to be sure who or which of the various stringed instruments on The Bliss Point is responsible for it, but it’s a fun touch all over the appropriately-titled EP. The extended, drum-less instrumental intro and oddly groovy choruses of “Park” make it stand out like a sore thumb, but it works. The two other tracks are more slippery, although “Bellflower” in particular is an intriguing combination of the “new” Mint Mile sound and that of In Season & Ripe’s.
19. Mint Mile – Heartroller EP (2018)
The final entry in Mint Mile’s introductory trio of EPs is the most consistent one, and it also has what’s probably the band’s best song so far in “Disappearing Music”. Especially in its first three songs, Heartroller settles on a rolling country-rock sound that it feels like Midyett and crew had been working towards since the beginning of Mint Mile. By this point, Mint Mile had solidified into a set lineup (Midyett, drummer Jeff Panall, guitarist Justin Brown, bassist Matthew Barnhart), and it definitely shows. “Fight It All the Way” stretches to seven minutes, but every second of it is full of drive and determination, and the balladry of “Golden to the Point of Being Common” rises and falls appropriately. The drum machines and keyboards that mark closer “Disappearing Music” make it the EP’s black sheep, but the song’s hypnotic march would be out of place anywhere, I suspect, and it’s too damn good to leave off of anything. Apparently the song took fifteen years for Midyett to finish, and needed Mint Miler collaborator Howard Draper to help complete it. They nailed it.
18. Silkworm – Blueblood (1998)
Other than L’ajre, which doesn’t really count, Blueblood is the lowest proper Silkworm album on here. It’s always had an air of “last by default” to it (the Couldn’t You Wait documentary skips over it entirely, for instance), and I’m not really here to challenge that perception of Blueblood. Maybe it was fatigue from releasing three records in as many years, or maybe it was a necessary transition before Silkworm entered their most fertile period in the early 2000s, but it’s a noticeable step down from the records that came both before and after it. But even a below-average Silkworm album is still a very above average normal album. Blueblood gifts us with “I Must Prepare (Tablecloth Tint)”, a low-key Midyett number that’s the record’s one true short-lister, and several other Silkworm classics—among them, Cohen’s absurd opening track “Eff”, and Midyett’s two-song closing punch of “Pearly Gates” and “Clean’d Me Out”. And my complaints—“Redeye” feels like a lesser version of “The Lure of Beauty” from Firewater, “Empty Elevator Shaft” feels like a dry run for better Michael Dahlquist lead vocal songs, and I can never remember how “Tonight We’re Meat” and “Ritz Dance” go—are relatively minor in the end, and I still like all of those songs. Besides, this way I can be pleasantly surprised by the “Tonight We’re Meat” riff every time I hear it.
17. Joel R.L. Phelps and the Downer Trio – 3 (1998)
There are some words that keep coming up when I talk about Joel R.L. Phelps’ music. Stark. Quiet. Intense. Insular. “Difficult”. Listening to “The Way Down” once probably illustrates what I’m getting at better than any of my words could. Phelps sings accompanied only by the plucking of an upright bass, and occasional stabs of horns. Phelps’ voice is a whisper at first, until rising to a strained holler by the song’s end. And this is how he chose to start 1998’s 3. The rest of the record isn’t so difficult—unless you’re a typical Silkworm fan. That is to say, there’s very little alt-rock on 3; if it’s alt- anything, it’s country. And it’s very good at it, too—the steel guitar-driven “Rev. Robert Irving” is one of Phelps’ best songs, and “Always Glide” lilts in the same right ways. And there are plenty more long, lonesome ballads—“Hope’s Hit” and “Fifty” both scratch that itch, Phelps sounding no less passionate over music more subdued than over either Silkworm or most of The Downer Trio’s faire. Phelps’ next two proper records rocked more than 3, and I like them more than 3, but I wouldn’t change 3 from what it is, not at all.
16. Andrew Cohen and Light Coma – Unreality (2017)
Andrew Cohen was the last songwriting member of Silkworm to make a record on his own (although Midyett’s bands had made only EPs at this point). Cohen contemplated retiring from music after Bottomless Pit ended and he found the role of sideman in Mint Mile unfulfilling. Instead, he fell in with Light Coma, a Chicago band that’s released two records on their own and is led by Bottomless Pit bassist Brian Orchard. Unreality answers the question of whether an album made up of just Andy’s songs would work on its own with a resounding “yeah, duh”. It’s a classically-sequenced record, with a surprisingly shiny and inviting side one paired with a thornier, headier second side. “Your Biography” and “Repack” are just about the brightest Cohen has ever sounded, but there is a darkness to Unreality; in addition to the loss of Dahlquist, the death of acquaintance Jason Molina hangs over several songs here too, notably “Midwest DTs” and “Midwest Delirium” (the same song, but done both acoustic and electric).
15. Mint Mile – Ambertron (2020)
Around about here is where the rankings get very difficult. Ambertron has already risen a lot from where I would’ve put it at the time of its release; I suspect that a few years from now, it’ll be even higher on my personal list. Even though Tim Midyett always felt like the most prolific songwriter in Silkworm, it took the longest time for him to make a full-length record of entirely his own songs, but the hour-and-change Ambertron is more than worth the wait. Midyett seizes on the country-rock sound Mint Mile hit on with Heartroller and uses it to expand these songs. And just from a writing perspective, Ambertron feels like a high water mark moment for Midyett—the cores of “Shy”, “Riding On and Off Peak”, and “Giving Love” could’ve come from any point in his music career, but the details and the performances all sound only like Mint Mile. Kelly Hogan, who sang one of Silkworm’s best songs on Italian Platinum, returns to make “Sang” even more intriguing. All of the aforementioned songs (as well as the inviting opener “Tobacco Coffee Wintergreen”) could be the best one, but my favorite track from Ambertron I think has to be “Fallen Rock”. The loping, slow-trotting song unhurriedly unfolds its highway drama over seven minutes; it doesn’t sound like anything else on Ambertron, but it isAmbertron as much as any of the other songs are.
14. Silkworm – Libertine (1994)
Yes, yes. As I alluded to in the intro, I know Libertine is ranked too low. Sorry. I love it dearly; I just love a dozen of these albums more. Like I said, this is where it gets difficult. It’s a lot of people’s number one favorite Silkworm record, and I can see why—it’s still got the noisy post-punk sound of In the West, but it cleans it up and polishes it just enough for the classic rock-indebted sound of their future to slightly peek through. I will also say that Libertine, the last album to feature contributions from Joel Phelps, is also his strongest moment as a member of Silkworm: the central trio of “Yen + Janet Together”, “Oh How We Laughed”, and “The Cigarette Lighters” showcase three different but equally compelling sides to his songwriting, and is the defining aspect of Libertine. Or maybe it’s Midyett’s “Couldn’t You Wait”, which—even though I admitted I prefer the Marco Collins version, is breathtaking and captivating in any context. Or maybe it’s “Grotto of Miracles”—it isn’t as straightforward as, say, “Into the Woods” or “Dust My Broom”, yet it established Andy Cohen as a singular musical force in every way: lyricist, vocalist, guitarist, composer.
13. Bottomless Pit – Hammer of the Gods (2007)
There was no question of whether Silkworm would continue to exist after Michael Dahlquist’s death in 2005 (it wouldn’t), but there was almost as little question as to whether or not Tim Midyett and Andy Cohen would continue to make music together (they would). Thus begat Bottomless Pit, a band that was as strong and powerful as Silkworm in its own way. Joined by Seam’s Chris Manfrin on drums and .22 and Light Coma’s Brian Orchard on bass (Midyett moved to baritone guitar, which he’d been playing more often than not in Silkworm anyway), Hammer of the Gods isn’t the only post-Silkworm album colored by Dahlquist’s death, but it’s probably the one most defined by it. Nearly every song seems either directly or indirectly about it, from Midyett’s fairly straightforward eulogy “Human Out of Me” and swelling opener “The Cardinal Movements” to Cohen’s dark, brooding songs like “Dead Man’s Blues” and “Greenery”. Hammer of the Gods is smooth and refined in a way that Silkworm never were—I wouldn’t have guessed Cohen could ever lead a song as delicate as “Dogtag”, for instance.
12. Joel R.L. Phelps and the Downer Trio – Customs (2004)
For a while it seemed like Customs was going to be the final statement of Joel R.L. Phelps and the Downer Trio, and while thankfully that didn’t turn out be the case, it would’ve been a strong note on which to go out. In some ways, it’s the most streamlined Downer Trio record—it continues the roaring alt-rock that Blackbird hit upon, but sharpens down that record’s vast expanses to knife-edge power chords in the opening one-two of “From Up Here” and “Be First!”. It’s the best opening to a Phelps record—the former featuring the strongest use of steel drums in indie rock, and the latter “merely” being possibly the fieriest thing the band ever put to tape. Although the big Joel Phelps ballads eventually show up on Customs, particularly in the second half, there’s also a middle ground—songs like “What the Sgt. Said” and “Kelly Grand Forks”, mid-tempo power chord chuggers that strike a balance between Phelps’ hushed subtlety and the unbridled release of the record’s first two songs. My only real complaint with the record is sequencing: too many loud songs in front and quiet songs in the back, causing the four track after “Shame” too blend together a bit too much, even though they’re all strong on their own (especially the hulking “The Lie for the Day”).
11. Bottomless Pit – Congress EP (2008)
Congress is four songs and nineteen minutes of Bottomless Pit coalescing into a fine-tuned band. If they’d held these tracks back and made a full album, they might’ve capitalized on the moderate buzz Hammer of the Gods had gotten and maybe Bottomless Pit could’ve rivaled the popularity of Cohen and Midyett’s previous band. But like Silkworm, they did things their own way, for the better—Congress isn’t a compendium to either Hammer or 2010’s Blood Under the Bridge. It’s its own thing. Midyett’s two songs, “Red Pen” and “Pitch”, are both long, propulsive, rhythm-emphasizing tracks that aren’t as leisurely as “Winterwind”, nor as urgent as “The Cardinal Movements”. The transfixing “Red Pen” sounds like something off of Shade Perennial that’s been unwound and spread out a bit. Cohen’s two songs are shorter and are closer to, if still removed from, the heart of Hammer of the Gods. In particular, the two-minute-thirty “Fish Eyes” (which was once covered by Waxahatchee; it’s worth digging for that) feels a lot more “bittersweet” than “hopelessly despairing”. The way Cohen sings the title (“Fish uh-eyes”) is equal parts brilliant and silly.
10. Joel R.L. Phelps and the Downer Trio – Blackbird (1999)
After the quiet alt-country of 3 just one year previously, one might’ve thought Joel Phelps was going to fade (or grow, depending on your perspective) into an acoustic, lonesome folk singer-songwriter. Then he and the Downer Trio made Blackbird, the strongest record Phelps ever released after he left Silkworm. The electricity that marked a good deal of Warm Springs Night was back, as opening rocker “Then Slowly Turn” announced triumphantly, but he, William Herzog, and Robert Mercer sound more focused here, tighter as a trio than ever before. Like Customs, it starts with a hell of a one-two punch, with “I’ve Got a Live One” coming off as “Be First!” if it were too anxious to fully commit to its anger. Unlike the following record, however, the most powerful moments on Blackbird aren’t necessarily its loudest ones: third track “Unless You’re Tired of Living” rocks but in a sprawling, delirious fashion, and the centerpiece of the album, a six-minute cover of the Comsat Angels’ “Lost Continent”, is a masterpiece of restraint. Phelps has always been able to wring out unthinkable emotion from relative simplicity (think “Pilot” and especially “Dremate” from In the West) and Blackbird features his two best songs in this fashion: the cavernous “Invited” and the closing “Landslide”.
9. Bottomless Pit – Blood Under the Bridge (2010)
Blood Under the Bridge, the most underappreciated and misunderstood Bottomless Pit album, doesn’t really rock. Other than the rare instrumental “Dixon” and the steam-blow-off closing track “38 Souls”, it’s a deliberate and slow-paced record that doesn’t go out of its way to grab your attention. It’s an inward turn—if it’s not exactly “acceptance” to Hammer of the Gods’ “grief”, it’s at least more considering of the possibility. Like Congress, Blood Under the Bridge opens with a seven-minute Tim Midyett song, but the steady, gorgeous plod of “Winterwind” feels less like a complete journey than an excerpt of something even larger. And that’s one of Midyett’s louder numbers on the record—we also get the floating, percussionless “Rhinelander” and the last-thoughts-before-falling-asleep “Q.E.D.”. Then again, there’s also the upbeat, new wavey “Late”, which features probably the best usage of “fuckers” anywhere on this list. Blood Under the Bridge is the strongest “Midyett” album of Bottomless Pit’s three, although “Summerwind” feels like a major work in the oeuvre of Andy Cohen (even if it’s more of the “impenetrable obelisk” and less of the “great American novel” variety).
8. Silkworm – It’ll Be Cool (2004)
A Pitchfork writer once claimed that toward the end of their career, Silkworm “made few missteps but brought fewer surprises”. While the first part is accurate, to the second, I would submit that the author must not have really listened to It’ll Be Cool, a deeply weird and surprising album that ended up being an unexpected yet fittingly odd final statement. The opening six-and-a-half minute “Don’t Look Back” is basically krautrock Silkworm, and looked toward Bottomless Pit more than anything else in their discography. And that’s one of the more “normal” ones. “Penalty Box” is almost a typical Andy Cohen rocker, except for the squeaky riff (I believe it’s a sped-up guitar) sprinkled liberally throughout, and even without the slowed-down vocal effect harmonizing with Tim Midyett throughout “Something Hyper”, that song would still be one of the most unique tracks Silkworm ever recorded. And that’s not even getting into “Xian Undertaker”, which turns Midyett’s mandolin flirtations and new-ish member Matt Kadane’s ringing piano into a rousing, barroom singalong that certainly doesn’t sound like anything else on It’ll Be Cool (and, other than maybe “Bourbon Beard”, anything else by Silkworm). The underappreciated “The Operative” is one of Silkworm’s sweetest and most straightforward moments, and (along with instrumental “His Mark Replies”) it’s an incredible note on which to end Silkworm’s final album.
7. Silkworm – In the West (1994)
I’ve made it clear that I like a lot of earlier Silkworm recordings, but in earnest, there wasn’t much among them to suggest that they were just around the corner from making a record like In the West, the peak of the band’s four-piece years. If it were all they’d managed to accomplish together, they’d still be a fascinating case. Silkworm was still a “noise rock” band at this point, but beginning to show why that label could never accurately hold them. First track “Garden City Blues”, their best album opener, sets up several tenets of Silkworm perfectly: delicate and subtle despite its most notable feature being Dahlquist’s pounding drums, unbridled guitars that nevertheless can and do hold back when necessary, and a generally unpredictable but smooth structure. Andy Cohen steals the show on In the West between “Into the Woods” and “Dust My Broom”, which both showcase Silkworm at full might, but all three songwriters take a step forward on the record. Between the album opener and “Punch Drunk Five” (which benefited greatly from Comedy Minus One’s recent remastered reissue of the record), Tim Midyett is more than holding his own, and all three Joel Phelps songs on the album are absolute scorchers (I’ve always been fond of the post-punk closer “Pilot”, which seems to get the least love of the three).
6. Silkworm – Developer (1997)
A lot of what I said about Blood Under the Bridge also applies to the equally-underappreciated Developer, but on a larger scale. 1996’s Firewater was not a breakout, but Silkworm were as popular as they’d ever be, and instead of capitalizing, they made an aggressively un-commercial follow-up to it. Tim Midyett in particular seemed to be chasing something on Developer—between the glacial, Dahlquist-showcase opener “Give Me Some Skin”, the murmuring “The City Glows”, and the watch-glancing “Waiting on a Train”, this is the closest Silkworm ever came to being a slowcore band. But they didn’t even commit to that fully: Andy Cohen’s first three songs—the joyous “Never Met a Man I Didn’t Like”, the pummeling title track, and the anxious fever dream of “Ice Station Zebra”—all rock in decidedly different ways, but they all rock. Despite all this, Developer is a deeply rewarding album that all hangs together incredibly—they left some good songs off of this record, namely “Ogilvie”, but I wouldn’t change Developer a bit. The last few tracks in particular took me ages to fully come around to, but “Sheep Wait for Wolf” and “Goodnight Mr. Maugham” contain some of Cohen’s best and most interesting writing, even if it was the stretch from “Never Met a Man I Didn’t Like” to “Ice Station Zebra” that led me back to Developer enough times to actually see it.
5. Silkworm – Firewater (1996)
Firewater is the big one. The mid-90s double album that fans of their era of indie rock are most likely to remember. The Matador debut. The concept record. The one where Andy Cohen goes absolutely wild on every single one of his songs. Cohen’s lyrics and images are the most immediate memory stickers on Firewater—“the crowd’s a rapacious beast”, “Friday night is sacred, it’s not time to be wasted”, his friend Jean-Luc on the subway, and nearly every word of “Nerves”. It’s a fascinating surface, but there’s so much more going on below just a few one-liners—such is the nature of a 60-minute album where every song is worthwhile, and most are superb. It’s reputation as an “alcohol album” is earned—there’s “Drunk”, for one, and “Severance Pay” and “Slow Hands” are explicit about it as well—but that’s not the entire picture. Several of these songs are about the rough circumstances behind Joel Phelps’ departure from the band; Midyett has said as much about “Swings” (“Now I know that I made a big mistake on you”) and “Caricature of a Joke” (guess to whom the title refers). But Firewater can’t be boiled down to that either; there’s just too much here. There’s the “he’s still going?” endless guitar solo in “Killing My Ass”, the equally-absurd one in the otherwise-acoustic tour tale “Miracle Mile”, Cohen’s most-divorced-man-ever character in “Don’t Make Plans This Friday”. Not only were Silkworm going to be fine after the departure of Phelps, but they were going to get better. And better.
4. Silkworm – Chokes! EP (2006)
Michael Dahlquist, Douglas Meis, and John Glick were killed in Skokie, Illinois, in 2005 while driving from their workplace together to get lunch. One of the least important results of this senseless loss of life was that the greatest band in the world would immediately cease to exist. The instrumentals that would become the four original songs on Chokes! had been recorded weeks before Dahlquist’s death—after an understandable amount of time had passed, Cohen, Midyett, and Kadane finished the tracks and added two previously-recorded covers. Since Touch and Go had dropped Silkworm (presumably to sign fifty more dance-punk bands), 12XU issued it initially. If the band had gotten to finish Chokes!, it could’ve been their best album—the four songs are just that good. The thundering call-and-response of “Internat’l Harbor of Grace” is a massive achievement for Midyett, only slightly overshadowing his triumphant and, in these circumstances, quite moving “Bar Ice”. This time around, Andy Cohen gets to be the subtler one—neither “Low Blow” nor “Lily White & Cherry Red” qualifies as an “anthem”, but both of them are sharp reminders of everything this band did well. I almost don’t need the two extra covers—not that I would get rid of them, no. Especially not “Spanish Harlem Incident”, a live-recorded Crust Brothers version of the Bob Dylan song sung by Dahlquist that closes the record.
3. Bottomless Pit – Shade Perennial (2013)
Bottomless Pit couldn’t have made Firewater, but Silkworm couldn’t have made Shade Perennial. Like the death of Silkworm, the probably permanent “indefinite hiatus” of Bottomless Pit makes me sad, but it’s a different kind of sadness. Silkworm’s end was cruel and random, but Bottomless Pit bowed out after reaching the group’s logical endpoint; that is, Shade Perennial. To try to expound on earlier Pit analysis—Hammer of the Gods was raw grief, Blood Under the Bridge was the uneasy acceptance that the passing of time brings, and Shade Perennial is…ascension? Otherworldliness? Bottomless Pit were already a tight band, but here everything sounds nearly completely as one. It’s a 30 minute out-of-body experience. Opening track “Fleece” is a mountain with thunderclouds surrounding it, every note and moment perfectly arranged in a seemingly-impossible manner. “Incurable Feeling” is much the same way except that, improbably, you can also dance to it. The storm parts to reveal the clung-to happiness of “Bare Feet”, strengthens again in the deluge of “Sacred Trench”. The intentness of “Full of Life” gives way to perhaps the record’s most grounded song, Cohen’s nevertheless towering “Horse Trading”, and the whole thing ends improbably (again!) with a six-minute sprint called “Felt a Little Left” that starts in the most incredible way possible and strongly resists ending.
2. Silkworm – Italian Platinum (2002)
Italian Platinum is Silkworm’s best collection of songs. It’s a lost greatest hits record from a 1970s classic rock band that should’ve treated AOR as its personal playground. Or maybe it’s from an adventurous 1980s post-punk band that would inspire a legion of British music-mag-hyped imitators decades later. Or a 90s alt-rock group that united the underground and the mainstream and provided a respite from Red Hot Chili Peppers on modern rock radio. Every song’s got its own world here: Andy Cohen both opens and closes the record with monster riffs and maximum absurdity (“A Cockfight of Feelings” is probably Silkworm’s best song title, if not best album closer), and lands an emotional bullseye right in the middle of it with “LR72”, a song that wasn’t written about Michael Dahlquist but is now inseparable from his death to me. In between, Tim Midyett weaves in and out of brilliant pop songs, from the cloudy new wave of “The Brain” to the cheery stop-start of “Is She a Sign” to the propulsive post-punk of “The Third”. Midyett and Cohen firing off perfect songs too boring for you? Well, here’s Kelly Hogan singing Midyett’s stunning ballad “Young” (holy shit, wow, Kelly Hogan!). And there’s Midyett and Dalhlquist dueting on “Bourbon Beard”, a stunningly sad singalong that’s the latter’s peak as a vocalist. And did I mention that this album is Matt Kadane’s crowning achievement with Silkworm? Probably not, because there’s just too much else going on in Italian Platinum.
1. Silkworm – Lifestyle (2000)
When people joke about how they only listen to the same five artists, albums, playlists, or what-have-you, I never feel more alienated. Anyone who reads Rosy Overdrive knows that I much, much prefer to (in some way need to) keep finding new-to-me music. This means I don’t look back too much, at least not in the way most people do. I don’t have big, insurmountable Favorites of much of anything. I talk about Guided by Voices more than any other band, but a lot of that is because they always have something new. That being said, Lifestyle is my favorite album from any band, from any year, ever. The story behind it is laughably simple: Silkworm stopped trying to “make it” as a touring band, all its members got permanent day jobs, and they put together an album of music that they wanted to make for themselves. It’s perfect. Lifestyle has half a dozen pop songs that, I think, require no particular fondness for “indie rock” to immediately love—so, of course, the record starts with “Contempt”, the album’s weirdest song. “Slave Wages” and “Treat the New Guy Right” veer to the other end of the spectrum—the third and fourth best songs on Lifestyle, they’d be the two best songs in the discography of nearly any other band. The sub-two-minute “Raging Bull” is a mini-epic that absolutely goes on a journey, and the gleeful “YR Web” happily stays right where it is to no less great an effect. Lifestyle doesn’t run out of steam, either—the frantic “Dead Air” is my favorite song Tim Midyett ever wrote, which means it is one of the greatest songs ever, and the acoustic closing track “The Bones” comes just shy of eclipsing it. Lifestyle deserves more than just a long paragraph (somebody wrote an extremely long piece on it I deliberately avoided rereading before doing this), and I’m sure I will want to come back to it eventually despite all this writing I’ve just done about Silkworm. I could write the length of this post over just on “Plain” and still feel the same way, I’m sure. I can’t say that about any other band or album.
2021 may be long dead by now, but there’s plenty of music from that year that I’d rather not leave behind in 2022. Some of these songs were chosen for the playlist while I was finalizing Rosy Overdrive’s year-end lists, some I stole from other blogs’ lists, and there are more songs from 1996 on here again. Right now we’re in a (mostly) dead zone of new music, so there’s no excuse for you not to find something to listen to in here.
Artists with multiple tracks this time around: Delay (3), They Might Be Giants (2). Andrew Taylor and the Harmonizers (2).
“Moonbeam Rays”, They Might Be Giants From BOOK (2021, Idlewild)
There are a lot of They Might Be Giants songs and albums that I haven’t heard, which is odd, because what I have listened to, I like a good deal. I almost skipped over BOOK, but one listen to “Moonbeam Rays” put an end to that—they are still nailing these pop rock tunes, and this is one of their catchiest ones ever, with no qualifiers at all. As triumphant as the Johns sound on “Moonbeam Rays”, it sounds like the song is some kind of severance, the narrator fleeing across state lines away from a relationship that was unsatisfactory in their eyes. Still sounds like they care about how the addressee of the song reacts to it, though.
“For This to Pass”, Andrew Taylor and the Harmonizers From Andrew Taylor and the Harmonizers (2021, Bobo Integral)
The end-of-December playlist usually has a couple of these: albums that should’ve been on my year-end list but I didn’t hear them in time. Andrew Taylor is one-half of The Boys with the Perpetual Nervousness, which made my one of favorite albums of 2021, and has also made music as Dropkick. This is the first album under his own name, culled from songs written during the pandemic for which Taylor didn’t have another outlet, and it’s a front-to-back sublime collection of wistful jangle pop. “For This to Pass” embraces the synths with which the most recent Boys with the Perpetual Nervousness album slightly flirted, but the bleeps only enhance the melodic guitar leads rather than try to replace them in any way.
“Roman Candle, Both Hands”, Delay From Songs for Money (2021, Salinas)
Delay is some band from Ohio that’s apparently been going since the late 90s. Kind of surprising that I didn’t know about them yet, because Songs for Money is very much my shit. Opening track “Roman Candle, Both Hands” is a pretty good indicator of what you’re going to get from this album, which—say it with me now—Would Have Made The Year End List If I’d Heard It Earlier. It’s some shambolic but incredibly confident indie-pop-punk, with the band pumping out 90 seconds of gleeful basement-dance-party rock music like it’s nobody’s business.
“Across the Room”, Ok Cowgirl From Not My First Rodeo (2021)
Ok Cowgirl is a Brooklyn “dream rock” band that just dropped a promising debut EP, Not My First Rodeo. Singer Leah Lavigne is a wistful pop songwriter, which is apparent even in “Across the Room”, the one song from the EP that’s unquestionably a rocker. Lavigne puts forth frantic and wide-eyed lyrics, which describe a bolt of emotion brought on by seeing a former partner “in passing” and the subsequent flooding back of an entire lifetime. The rest of the band propels the song forward alongside her. Read more about Not My First Rodeo here.
“Instant Night”, Beauty Pill From Instant Night (2021, Northern Spy)
The title track to December’s Instant Night EP appeared as a standalone single in October 2020, right before the last presidential election, but one doesn’t need this context to understand the political climate at the dark heart of the song. The percussionless “Instant Night” floats along ominously in a way befitting its title, as singer Erin Nelson’s clear vocals breathlessly catalog the shadow overhead: “Look around, it was day, it was day…now it’s night,” she reports, wide-eyed. Read more about Instant Night here.
“The Hotel”, Gordon M. Phillips (2021)
There are myriad problems with the streaming service model of music listening, but probably the worst one is that Spotify Wrapped isn’t going to take into account the approximately sixty times that I listened to “The Hotel” by Gordon M. Phillips between Christmas and New Years this year. Now, I’m on record as having loved PROOF, the album Mr. Phillips’ band Downhaul released in the first half of 2021, but “The Hotel” doesn’t really sound like that cinematic emo-rock album. It’s a country song, I guess—Maxwell Stern, who also recently did a collaborative EP with Phillips, plays lap steel on it, and Phillips’ storytelling is captivating in a way that I don’t even know how he’s doing it. And it’s maybe my favorite vocal performance by anybody in 2021: the way Gordon kicks into “We gotta go! We gotta there!”, the quavering when he pronounces “I can tell there’s something wrong”, and the incredibly unexpected falsetto he shoots into with “It’s all over the ground now”…just listen to the damn song.
“Earth to Mike”, Spiritual Cramp From Here Comes More Bad News (2021, Industry Standard)
Here Comes More Bad News is an incredibly short four-song ride from San Francisco’s Spiritual Cramp, a blast of punk rock that’s influenced by garage rock, post-punk, and/or hardcore (whichever of the three you prefer, choose your own adventure). “Earth to Mike” is the best song, although it’s only by a hair. It’s 90 seconds long, so it wastes no time establishing what Spiritual Cramp does best: a careening instrumental and motormouth vocals from singer Michael Bingham, who is quite good at what he does even if it’s not “technically good singing”.
“Zero”, Thanks for Coming From #1 Flake in North America (2021)
It took me a couple months to get to September’s #1 Flake in North America, which of course means that Thanks for Coming’s Rachel Brown has already announced their next record, which might be out already by the time this goes live. Well, this last album is still worth a look, particularly “Zero”, a breezy acoustic-strummer of a song. It’s produced by Brown’s Water from Your Eyes bandmate Nate Amos, and it does has a This Is Lorelei-ish simple catchiness to it, although there’s actually quite a lot going on musically in the song underneath Brown’s acoustic guitar. “I’m thinking how nice it is to be consumed / How nice it is to be confused”—now there’s a good Rachel Brown lyric.
“Frozen Santa”, Death Hags From Frozen Santa (2021, Big Grey Sun)
A Christmas song, why not? I highlighted a song from Death Hags’ last release, Big Grey Sun #3, back in May, and I’m happy to let the group—the project of Los Angeles’ Lola G.—soundtrack my holidays, too. The title track to Death Hags’ new seasonal album just happens to be about old Saint Nick, but otherwise it sounds pretty similar to Lola G.’s best moments: a dreamy, surf-rock instrumental, some backing “Whoo-ooh”s, and a great lazy West Coast pop melody. Nearly as good on Frozen Santa is “Xmas on Your Own”, which ups both the “dream pop” and “girl group” influence proportions, and there’s also about 18 minutes of ambient winter tundra between “Titan Icy World” and “North Pole Chaos” if sunny 60s music isn’t your idea of Christmas.
“Song of the Seasons”, Neil Young and Crazy Horse From Barn (2021, Reprise)
Barn is a late-period Neil Young album, which is to say it’s got a few duds on it. But I will say this: the highlights are some of Neil’s strongest songs in recent memory. The eight-minute, chilly “Welcome Back” is transfixing, and “Heading West” is a classic shambolic Crazy Horse rocker. Best of all though is opening track “Song of the Seasons”—its probably-too-long-runtime points toward the post-LP era of Neil Young, sure, but the song itself is “Out on the Weekend”-level porch-sitting folk rock, and the harmonica and (especially) accordion are both nice touches.
“In the Shade”, Noun From In the Shade (2021, State Champion)
Screaming Females’ Marrisa Paternoster had a busy 2021, despite the lack of a full-length from her main band. December saw the release of Peace Meter, the first album under her own name, and in July she released a three-song EP as Noun, which was one of Rosy Overdrive’s Favorite EPs of 2021. The title track to In the Shade is Paternoster in classic “alt-rock banger” form, riding a mid-tempo power pop instrumental and a vocal hook that’s as good as that of any of Screaming Females’ singles.
“Shit Creek”, Delay From Songs for Money (2021, Salinas)
Second verse, same as the first. Sort of, at least. Like “Roman Candle, Both Hands”, the second song on Delay’s Songs for Money is an effortlessly catchy, fairly short piece of barebones pop punk, but the stakes feel a little higher in “Shit Creek”, believe it or not. The singer (who I think is Austin Eilbeck, but it might be his twin brother Ryan) is in some dire straits, but he’s “stubborn as fuck” and not going to let shitty jobs and cartoon villains take him down a peg: “The world’s got me down on my knees, but you don’t even gotta keep asking me / ‘Cause I don’t really wanna be anywhere else”.
“Bleeding Out”, Uncle Bengine and the Restraining Orders From Write Home (2021, Funny / Not Funny)
A tuneful mess of traditional country instrumentation and garage rock sensibilities, Write Home is a casual country-punk record, and its somewhat anxious undercurrents all come to a head midway through the album on “Bleeding Out”. The raving speak-singing of Uncle Bengine—Harrisonburg, Virginia’s Ben Schlabach— reminds me a bit of Micah Schnabel from Two Cow Garage, as he cracks that “someone told me ‘at least punk would be good again’” about these tumultuous times, before elaborating with some trouble ruminations on “civilizational decay” and Green Day. All over the band letting loose with a controlled rock-and-roll demolition of an instrumental. Read more about Write Home here.
“Lolo 13”, Laura Jane Grace From At War with the Silverfish (2021, Polyvinyl)
It took me awhile to get into At War with the Silverfish, but at least I did get into it. Last year’s LJG album, Stay Alive, was comprised of songs that were supposed to be recorded with Against Me! but ended up recorded by Grace alone because of the pandemic—and to me, they never shook the “unfinished demos” musk I got from them. Perhaps I should revisit it now, since Grace’s At War with the Silverfish EP is proof that she can still knock out some great stripped-down songs like the early days. “Lolo 13” is a delicate folk-pop tune that’s casual enough to sneak up on you but firm enough not to let go once it’s got you.
“Endless Summer”, Superchunk From Wild Loneliness (2022, Merge)
Oh good, Superchunk are back. And they’re brining their friends along, too: the credits for February’s Wild Loneliness list Rosy Overdrive favorites Mike Mills, Franklin Bruno, and none other than Teenage Fanclub’s Norman Blake and Raymond McGinley right here on “Endless Summer”. In terms of post-hiatus Superchunk, the laid-back pop rock of Wild Loneliness’ lead single isn’t the pissed-off punk of 2018’s What a Time to Be Alive, nor is it the fizzy power pop of 2010’s Majesty Shredding. It’s closest to a cut off of 2013’s I Hate Music, or even a slightly beefier Portastatic/Mac McCaughan solo track (but not like anything on last year’s The Sound of Yourself, as good as it was). But most importantly: it’s great, and I will continue to be grateful for Superchunk in 2022.
“The Romantic Egotist”, In a Daydream From This Side of Purgatory (2021)
Detroit “emo art rock band” In a Daydream released their first record in December, featuring a single that aggressively lives up to their genre billing. “The Romantic Egotist” is Beach Boys emo (let’s see if we can turn this descriptor into a movement in 2022, shall we), a multi-part indie rock movement that twists from shimmery soft rock to a swinging pop-punk showtune, and then spends its second half toggling between the two modes. Unlike a lot of prog-emo, Brian Porter’s vocals are actually good—not that they have to be, but the Brian Wilson influence certainly pops better if you hit all the right notes, like “The Romantic Egotist” does.
“Beat You to It”, Babe the Blue Ox From People (1996, RCA)
The first of a few “hey, look at this band I found!” entries on this list, Babe the Blue Ox is a weird one. They were (still are, I think) a Brooklyn band that were on Homestead at one point, and were just as likely to throw up a mess of jazz-and-math-rock as they were to deliver tuneful 90s college rock anthems that sound kind of like the Poster Children, if you remember them. “Beat You to It” is shimmery, mid-tempo indie rock, one of several shiny highlights on 1996’s People. At least, I think it was on People—their discography is available now only as a single compilation where all of the songs are ordered alphabetically (Jesus Christ).
“Ihop”, Pee From Now, More Charm and More Tender (1996, March)
So, this band is literally called “Pee”. I don’t know what’s up with that—in fact, I know very little about this band. They’re from San Francisco, their drummer also drummed in A Minor Forest, and they released Now, More Charm and More Tender—a chaotic 1990s time capsule of a record that darts between noisy, mathy rock and catchy, almost-twee indie pop rock. “Ihop” is in the latter camp, a great vocal-duet song featuring singer/guitarists Jim Stanley and Kelly Green swapping out over two minutes. The chorus is solid, but this is the rare “verses are the best part” pop song.
“Pelican Pete”, Supermilk From Four by Three (2021, Specialist Subject)
I was going to say that whoever “Pelican Pete” is, it sounds like some British bullshit, but apparently it’s a tourist gimmick in Minnesota, assuming that “Pelican Pete” is actually about a real thing. “Pelican Pete” is also a great song by Supermilk, which is the project of Doe’s Jake Popyura. Four by Three came out back in July, and Good Morning America thinks it’s the second best album of 2021—I’ve just now gotten to it, and it’s certainly a uniquely spirited mix of big shiny alt-rock, lean post-punk, and some quieter moments. “Pelican Pete” is a mid-tempo number, carried primarily by an emotional and melodic vocal from Popyura, but that between-verses riff is certainly pretty catchy too.
“Firetruck”, Floating Room From Shima (2021, Famous Class)
It took me a little while to get into Shima, the latest EP from Portland, Oregon’s Floating Room, but I’m fully on board now. While there are plenty of Rosy Overdrive favorites connected to Floating Room—Mo Troper on the record, Keegan Bradford of Camp Trash in the live band—it’s singer/songwriter Maya Stoner’s project, and she’s why Shima succeeds. These four songs manage to be both punky and ephemeral not unlike Alien Boy, another Portland band, and Stoner’s voice is a force that’s just at home helming the delicate indie rock of “Firetruck” as it is doing…what it’s doing in the last half of “Shimanchu”. Of course I chose the pretty arpeggios in “Firetruck” for the playlist, but I do also really like the song that makes me go “Ah, that’s why they’re touring with Citizen and Drug Church”.
“The Light Will Stay On”, The Walkabouts From Devil’s Road (1996, Virgin)
Now, here’s some fancy-pants rock music. The Walkabouts are “an alt-country band from Seattle”, and I imagine that’s mostly true throughout their surprisingly vast discography that I haven’t yet heard because I didn’t know this band existed until like a month ago. After hopping around from PopLlama to Sub Pop, Devil’s Road found them on a major label, and “The Light Will Stay On” at least sounds like they took advantage of it. It’s all lush and orchestral Americana, to be sure, with the strings and twangy riffs deployed in equal measure. It’s a little dark—not like 16 Horsepower or Handsome Family gothic country, exactly, but the bassline is pretty hypnotic, and Carla Torgerson’s vocals are stately, but at a distance.
“Brontosaurus”, They Might Be Giants From BOOK (2021, Idlewild)
Oh yes, this is classic They Might Be Giants. There’s the piano-and-horns propulsion, the “is this one of their kid songs?” title, the simple simple simple sing-song melody, some self-referential lines—oh, and that really deep, completely unexplainable undercurrent of sadness that I get every time I listen to “Brontosaurus”. Here are some of the rhymes with the title: “I joined the circus”, “They found it easy to ignore us”, and finally “Who would have believed skin could be so porous?” If you’re wondering about the last one, just listen to the song’s sucker-punch of a bridge for more context.
“Sakura”, Joncro From Richmond Station (2021)
Mississauga, Ontario’s Joncro claim an interesting mix of Jamaican music/reggae and noise rock/post-hardcore as influences. If that description intrigues you, I’d recommend listening to Richmond Station, as there are several songs, particularly in the record’s back half, that actually do back it up. “Sakura” doesn’t neatly fit among either of the two; it’s not nearly as Shellac-esque as opening track “Passa Passa”, for one, but it does sound heavy in a noise pop/shoegaze way, and Daniel G. Wilson’s vocals are hypnotic and catchy. Like “Passa Passa”, “Sakura” stretches out with a long instrumental outro, allowing the rest of the band (bassist Kieran Christie, drummer Matthew Mikuljan) to claim “no slouch” status as well.
“Heights”, Thank You Thank You From Next to Nothing (2021, Oof)
I think I’ve already referenced the Beach Boys a couple times so far in this post; one more can’t hurt, right? Tyler Bussey used to play in The World Is a Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid to Die and currently plays in Strange Ranger, both bands that have appeared on Rosy Overdrive before, and last January he released his first music as Thank You Thank You, a five-song EP. Next to Nothing is a nice debut from the Philadelphia-based Bussey, which reminds me of other Philly-based/Philly-connected acts like Another Michael, Russel the Leaf, and Jodi (not coincidentally, members from all of these acts appear on the EP, which I didn’t even know before writing that line down). In particular, the soft rock of “Heights” revels in 60s studio-pop influences, such as…you guessed it…
“You’ve Become a Habit”, Leo Nocentelli From Another Side (2021, Light in the Attic)
“You’ve Become a Habit” is a characteristic highlight from Another Side, the recently-unearthed folk record from Leo Nocentelli that made Rosy Overdrive’s Best Reissues of 2021 list. The record was recorded in New Orleans in 1971, and is very much in line with soul/funk-influenced singer-songwriters like Bill Withers that were popular concurrently. The soulfully sparse, acoustic “You’ve Become a Habit” finds the Meters guitarist inhabiting a narrator who “falls for a sex worker named Fancey”, and he tells the tale tenderly but without giving up his primary role as storyteller.
“Switter Beat”, Delay From Songs for Money (2021, Salinas)
Third verse, same as the first and the second—again, sort of. The third track on Songs for Money is, like the two before it, incredibly catchy power-pop-punk in under two minutes, and like “Shit Creek”, there’s a sense of urgency—in fact, “Switter Beat” probably has more urgency musically than “Shit Creek”, which mostly relied on its lyrics. The vocal melody for “Switter Beat”, particularly in the verses, sounds familiar in a good way—like Delay found some forgotten sixties pop song, revved it up, and used it for their crude, offensive Ohio lo-fi indie rock purposes.
“I Fire Myself”, Mary Timony From Mountains (2000, Matador)
Mary Timony’s Mountains is a weird record, especially for a solo debut. More talented writers than myself ruminated on this last January, when Matador released a 20th anniversary “please reconsider” edition of the album. I’m still not sure how much I like it—it probably could’ve been more than an honorable mention on my 2021 reissues list had I spent more time with it, but I didn’t—but “I Fire Myself” is one of the crystal-clearest “oh, I see what she’s going for” moments on Mountains, and it makes me want to hop fully on board. It’s certainly one of the best “piano and handclaps” songs I can think of, and if Timony’s vocals still sound like the 90s “slack-rocker” she was, maybe “I Fire Myself” suggests that that term might’ve been too dismissive then and now.
“Hope You’re Happy”, Gaunt From Kryptonite (1996, Thrill Jockey)
Gaunt is another Ohio band I didn’t know about until recently, but unlike Delay, they haven’t been active in a long time. They sort of broke up at the end of the 90s, lead singer/guitarist Jerry Wick was killed in a hit-and-run a few years later, and that was basically it for Columbus’ Gaunt. Still, they did quite a bit before then, releasing five records of high-energy garage-punk on Thrill Jockey, Amphetamine Reptile, and Warner Bros. Records in the 90s. Kryptonite is apparently their “mature” album because it has a couple slower songs, but “Hope You’re Happy” is all rush to my ears, a classic 90s underground pop-punk anthem that unfortunately wasn’t a career rocket launcher, though it was plenty good enough to be.
“Dust”, Varnaline From Man of Sin (1996, Zero Hour)
What is Varnaline? Well, Varnaline was Anders Parker, especially on Man of Sin, the then-Portland-based project’s debut. See, Parker (who still makes music under his own name today, and even released a record in 2021) wrote and played everything on this album, which is a must-listen for any fan of dusty, rickety alt-country. There are a few great fuzz-rockers like “No Decision No Disciple” and “The Hammer Goes Down”, but it’s the curious, almost interlude-esque quiet song “Dust” that caught my attention the most. The sub-two minute song is: Parker sounding lonesome but tuneful, simple acoustic guitar strumming, a lot of whirring in the background, and…what is that, a melodica? It sounds good, whatever it is.
“The Gin Mills”, The Sonora Pine From The Sonora Pine (1996, Quarterstick)
For a lot of people, Tara Jane O’Neil is best known as the bassist of cult Louisville post-hardcore band Rodan, but she didn’t go anyway after that group broke up in 1995. She’s still musically active, having released an ambient album and contributed to a tribute record for fellow Louisville musician Wink O’Bannon in 2021. But in the immediate aftermath of Rodan, there was The Sonora Pine, which released two records in the late 90s for Touch and Go imprint Quarterstick. Noisy, experimental, and frequently beautiful, the first of those two records features “The Gin Mills”, a slow-building, delicate trudge of a song that’s enhanced by Samara Lubelski’s violin.
“Apart of You”, Pile of Love From Pile of Love (2021)
Pile of Love is a power pop band made up of members of Drug Church, State Champs, and The Story So Far—all punk bands that I’ve definitely heard of before. So, yes, this does loosely fall into my “noisy punk/hardcore dudes making music inspired by Guided by Voices” microgenre of interest, but singer Morgan Foster sounds more like Chris Collingwood of Fountains of Wayne than anyone else, and the revved-up backing band sounds almost Swervedriver-esque. “Apart of You” is pure, happy, hooky alt-rock that could’ve come from a late 90s one-hit wonder, one of the ones that still have cult followings today.
“Strong”, Thalia Zedek From Been Here and Gone (2001, Thrill Jockey)
The 20th anniversary edition of Thalia Zedek’s 2001’s record Been Here and Gone (which was one of Rosy Overdrive’s favorite reissues of 2021) provided a welcome look back to the Massachusetts singer-songwriter’s first album on her own, the one that more or less set the tone for a rewarding solo career to follow. Album highlight “Strong” exemplifies much of what makes the record work: Zedek’s ragged but confident vocals, languid guitar playing that’s not exactly “slowcore” but it’s in the realm, and prominent featuring of David Michael Curry’s cello that lends the song (and album) a stately, towering feel.
“Still Playing Out”, Andrew Taylor and the Harmonizers From Andrew Taylor and the Harmonizers (2021, Bobo Integral)
“For This to Pass” is the chiming pop rock anthem from Andrew Taylor and the Harmonizers; with “Still Playing Out”, we get our ballad. Although the primary note many (myself included) seemed to get from Songs from Another Life was “wow, this band sounds a lot like Teenage Fanclub”, Taylor has developed his own distinct style of songwriting for those who care to look for it: a mix of bittersweet melodies delivered in his Scottish-accented vocals, a surprisingly liberal application of pedal steel flourishes, and lyrics that go back again and again to the well of time passing, examining how several different perspectives on this phenomena all lead to the same simple acceptance.
“Blackest Crow”, The Body and BIG|BRAVE From Leaving None But Small Birds (2021, Thrill Jockey)
The opening track to Leaving None But Small Birds, the collaborative album between experimental heavy bands The Body and BIG|BRAVE, sets the tone for the record—a surprising tone, but one that ultimately makes some sense. The nearly eight-minute “Blackest Crow” is a bleak but spirited piece of traditional folk-inspired music, and the two acts handle it quite well. It reminds me of The Ex incorporating Eastern European sounds into their noise punk, or what Lingua Ignota’s been doing lately, or even how the sparest Songs: Ohia records find a certain heaviness in the starkness. Robin Wattie’s vocals and lyrics commit fully to evoking their influences, and the violin accomplishes this to no less a degree.
“The Night Has No Eyes”, Chris Brokaw From Puritan (2021, 12XU)
Puritan came out on January 15th; nearly a year will have passed by the time this goes live. I highlighted “The Heart of Human Trafficking” back when the record came out, but I’ve kept coming back to its closing track again and again as the months have passed. Originally written by the late Karl Hendricks and recorded by Brokaw for a tribute album on his behalf in 2017, the latter’s weary reading of the song suits that of a songwriter who could find profundity in our shitty human experiences. “The night has no eyes / You could see anything in me that you want to see”—how’s that for a new year’s resolution? Time to stumble into 2022 in the dark, I suppose.
To wrap up 2021, Rosy Overdrive is looking back at some of its favorite reissues, compilations, and archival releases of the year. I’ve chosen sixteen to highlight here (as well as a few honorable mentions at the end); a few entries cover several albums’ worth of music. Because of the wide variety among these selections, this list (unlike 2021’s albums and EP lists) is unranked.
2nd Grade – Wish You Were Here Tour Revisited
Release date: June 25th Record label: Double Double Whammy Genre: Power pop Formats: Vinyl, cassette, digital
The majority of Wish You Were Here Tour Revisited was originally released in 2018, so I’m counting it under the “reissue” category for year-end purposes. Three years ago, when the original fourteen-song version of Wish You Were Here Tour came out, 2nd Grade was essentially just Peter Gill. Now a five-piece band, …Revisited beefs up eight of these songs, with tracks like “Favorite Song” and the title track growing from quiet guitar-and-vocals tunes to power pop stompers. The new versions are a treat, but the originals (Wish You Were Here Tour from 2018 is here in its entirety) have plenty to commend them as well, and some of the record’s strongest songs (“There’s Something I Should Tell You”, “Bad Idea”) only appear as Gill solo recordings.
The Antelopes (and The Class of ’76) – Breaking News
Release date: November 5th Record label: Floating Mill Genre: Post-punk, dance punk Formats: Cassette, CD, vinyl (single only), digital
London’s The Antelopes originally lasted for a single six-song recording session in 1981, and only two of those songs initially saw release. November’s Breaking News collects all the band’s recorded material, as well as a few bonus tracks from an Antelopes offshoot called The Class of ‘76. While their lone single painted the band as practitioners of dark, moody post-punk, the previously unreleased songs dabble in psychedelia, country, and groove-rock, and the inclusion of three songs from the Funkadelic-inspired rhythmic agitprop of The Class of ’76 is even further out of left field. Whether they sound more like Joy Division or Chic, though, The Antelopes and The Class of ’76 remain compelling. (Read more)
Dazy – MAXIMUMBLASTSUPERLOUD: The First 24 Songs
Release date: August 20th Record label: Convulse Genre: Power pop, fuzz rock Formats: Cassette, digital
Dazy is the solo project of Richmond musician James Goodson, which regularly transmitted singles and EPs of short, sweet, revved up power pop songs underneath a healthy amount of distortion from late 2020 to the first half of 2021. The two most substantial of those releases, The Crowded Mind and Revolving Door, caught Rosy Overdrive’s attention in April—they’re included in MAXIMUMBLASTSUPERLOUD, as well as all the other singles and some previously unreleased tunes. Nearly every one of these songs has a killer hook, and Goodson stakes out a familiar yet unique sound that’s a combination of Britpop and lo-fi, or somewhere between Green Day and Madchester.
Willie Dunn – Creation Never Sleeps, Creation Never Dies: The Willie Dunn Anthology
Release date: March 19th Record label: Light in the Attic Genre: Folk, singer-songwriter Formats: Vinyl, digital
Light in the Attic Records is no stranger to bringing Indigenous Canadian music to the spotlight, having reissued Willie Thrasher’s superb Spirit Child in 2015. Their work this year in making the work of the late Mi’kmaq folk singer Willie Dunn more accessible has been particularly rewarding. Several of his records became available digitally for the first time in 2021, and the crown jewel was the career-spanning Creation Never Sleeps, Creation Never Dies compilation. The intense, ten-minute “The Ballad of Crowfoot” that opens the anthology is one of the finest folk songs ever conceived, and the rest of the record only further proves that Dunn’s songbook rivals that of folk’s household names.
Kittyhawk – Mikey’s Favorite Songs (2012-2016)
Release date: February 26th Record label: Count Your Lucky Stars Genre: Indie emo rock Formats: Cassette, digital
Chicago’s Kittyhawk amassed a collection of songs over their initial four-year ride that rivals that of their proper LP output, and the Mikey’s Favorite Songs cassette helpfully compiles all of these in one place. Kittyhawk features members of several notable bands, but the compilation reveals a group with its own unique footprint, anchored by the voice of lead singer Kate Grube and an interest in classic pop songcraft. The five songs from their 2012 debut EP hangs together well, and the non-album tracks find the group stretching out a bit more to rewarding results. (Read more)
Leo Nocentelli – Another Side
Release date: November 19th Record label: Light in the Attic Genre: Folk, soul Formats: Vinyl, cassette, CD, digital
Another Side has a cinematic history. Recorded by Leo Nocentelli, he of the genre-defining funk act The Meters, in New Orleans in 1971, shelved for years and believed destroyed in Hurricane Katrina, rediscovered by chance and finally seeing release a half-century later. That’s all well and good, but what’s more remarkable is how fresh and great these ten songs sound, long-lost or no. It’s a folk record from a funk guitarist, and probably succeeds more because of this than in spite of it; the groove of “Riverfront” and the soulfulness of “You’ve Become a Habit to Me” add even more dimension to the album. It reminds me above anything else of those two big Bill Withers records (recorded at the virtually the same time as this album), and I don’t see why Another Side couldn’t have taken a place alongside those.
Pere Ubu – Pennsylvania / St. Arkansas
Release date: September 10th Record label: Fire Genre: Post-punk, art rock Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
The “Dark Americana” period of Pere Ubu is the band’s most underappreciated era, and the eternal all-night diners and endless highway expanses of Pennsylvania and St. Arkansas that emerged around the turn of the century are as good as anything else David Thomas and crew have cooked up over their long careers. These two records (along with the just-as-excellent Raygun Suitcase and some bonus material) were reissued as part of the Drive, He Said box set not too long ago, and I can’t necessarily recommend these over that package, but the new remixes and remasters do change things up, and are worth a listen even if you already know these songs well. St. Arkansas in particular ups the bass and the vocals, resulting in a claustrophobic, up-close listening experience.
R.E.M. – New Adventures in Hi-Fi (25th Anniversary Edition)
Release date: October 29th Record label: Craft Genre: Alternative rock Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
R.E.M.’s best album should come from the early 1980s—that is, after all, when they were the most consistently great. But they had to go and make a massive, bloated masterpiece that looms over everything else in the second half of the 90s. New Adventures in Hi-Fi does everything, blowing the band up to levels not previously attained but still seeming quiet and intimate when it wants to be. The bonus content was always destined to be a little disappointing compared to past R.E.M. reissues—since it was recorded during the Monster tour, there weren’t going to be many record-specific shows or B-sides from which to pull, but their cover of Richard and Linda Thompson’s “Wall of Death” and the creepy carnival organ live version of “Binky the Doormat” are worth it on their own.
Seam – Headsparks
Release date: September 24th Record label: Numero Group Genre: Shoegaze, slowcore Formats: Vinyl, digital
The debut record from Chapel Hill, North Carolina’s Seam might be the group’s noisiest album, but there’s still plenty of traces of the band that would go on to make some of the most beautiful Loud Indie Rock of the 1990s. Guitarist/vocalist Sooyoung Park may have still been shaking off his work with his previous band, the unfortunately-named Bitch Magnet, and soon-to-depart drummer Mac McCaughan (yes, that one) recalls his contributions derisively, but the trio (also featuring bassist Lexi Mitchell) put together some undeniable songs, such as the takeoff of “Pins & Needles”, confident mid-tempo numbers like “Decatur” and “King Rice”, and “New Year’s”, which their friends in Codeine have made something of an indie rock standard.
Snowhore – Everything Tastes Bad
Release date: March 29th Record label: Devil Town Tapes Genre: lo-fi indie rock, bedroom indie folk Formats: Cassette, digital
Everything Tastes Bad, the debut EP from Philadelphia’s Snowhore, initially received a limited, Bandcamp-only release in 2018, but a cassette reissue from Devil Town Tapes earlier this year saw these songs reach a wider platform. Most of these tracks are blink-and-you’ll-miss it, two-minute-or-less snapshots of singer-songwriter and bandleader Veronica Isley’s writing style, but are no less effective because of this. The reissue’s two sparse, acoustic bonus tracks are appealing in an American Weekend-era Waxahatchee way, but the rest of Everything Tastes Bad shows Snowhore can similarly translate their weight to full-band settings. (Read more)
The Stick Figures – Archeology
Release date: September 3rd Record label: Floating Mill Genre: Post-punk Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital
The aptly-titled Archeology is an expanded reissue of Tampa, Florida’s The Stick Figures only official release, a self-titled 1981 EP. All four of those songs are here, as well as unreleased studio and live recordings that combine to create a record’s worth of solid, inspired American first-wave post-punk. The Stick Figures incorporate the Pylon/B-52’s-esque dance-punk that was happening one state away in Athens, Georgia, as well as a straight-up funk rock influence as well, and run the gamut from clean college rock to scuzzy noise-punk. (Read more)
Tar – Jackson
Release date: September 1st Record label: Chunklet Genre: Noise rock, post-hardcore Formats: Vinyl (as part of box set and separately), digital
Chicago’s Tar were essential noise rockers of the genre’s explosive era—from 1989 to 1995, they put out six records (four LPs, two EPs) on Touch and Go and Amphetamine Reptile Records, arguably the two most important noise rock labels. Their Touch and Go albums have been available (at least digitally), but a box set for Chunklet Industries has made Tar’s first two albums and debut EP (as well as a bonus live album) available both physically and on streaming. Among these is 1991’s Jackson, the group’s sophomore album and quite possibly their career peak: their lean, punky version of noisy indie rock sounds incredible and energetic across all its eleven tracks.
Various – Cameroon Garage Funk
Release date: September 3rd Record label: Analog Africa Genre: Funk rock, Afrobeat, Afro-funk Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
Analog Africa’s most recent compilation is presented as a document of the vibrant 1970s music scene around the city of Yaoundé, the capital of the central-Atlantic African country of Cameroon. Most of Cameroon Garage Funk was supposedly recorded by one engineer using one microphone in a local church—however it was made, it sounds great for a fifty-year-old archival release from any country. There is, unsurprisingly, plenty of variety on Cameroon Garage Funk, but there are a few hallmarks of most of these songs: Afrobeat horns, rock and blues-y guitar solos, spirited vocals falling anywhere between “a smooth croon” and “delightfully ragged”, and above anything else, completely locked-in rhythm sections.
Winterhawk – Electric Warriors
Release date: October 22nd Record label: Don Giovanni Genre: Hard rock, heavy metal, rock and roll Formats: CD, digital
Some four decades or so later, reissues from Don Giovanni Records put a spotlight on the two albums from Native American rock group Winterhawk, 1979’s Electric Warriors and 1980’s Dog Soldier. They’re both worth a listen, but it’s the former that lands Winterhawk on this list and hopefully takes its place among the other canonical hard rock/heavy metal albums of its original era. Smooth tracks like “Dark Skin Lady” and “Restaurant” rival nearly anything of the sort Thin Lizzy put to tape, while “Black Whiskey” and “Prayer” display powerful emotional centers. Best of all is “Custer’s Dyin’”, a stomping number worth the price of admission alone.
Neil Young – Archives Vol. II (1972-1976)
Release date: March 5th Record label: Reprise Genre: Folk rock, country rock Formats: CD, digital
It’d be a fool’s errand to try to adequately explain Archives II in a couple of sentences. The 10-CD box set, which was technically released in a limited fashion at the end of 2020 but made available to the rest of us earlier this year, encompasses the four years that many (myself included) view as Neil Young’s most successful period. These recordings come from the aftermath of Harvest, when Young made his (in)famous Ditch Trilogy, the underrated Zuma, and the recently-unearthed Homegrown. If you’re streaming it, I recommend having the tracklist pulled up to see where one disc ends and another begins—buried in here are more full-album statements than most will make in a lifetime.
Thalia Zedek – Been Here and Gone
Release date: March 20th Record label: Thrill Jockey Genre: Indie rock, slowcore Formats: Vinyl, digital
Repressed and remastered for its 20th anniversary, 2001’s Been Here and Gone is a key point in Thalia Zedek’s music career. The ragged rock group she co-led for most of the 90s, Come (who also just reissued their second album, Don’t Ask Don’t Tell) had come to an end, and the singer-songwriter and ace guitarist responded by putting together a singular record that nevertheless ended up guiding what was to come in her future recordings. Been Here and Gone is a dense record, but a stately one as well, with the prominent use of David Michael Curry’s cello helping these songs roar and flow dramatically.
Rosy Overdrive’s last Pressing Concerns of 2021 looks at the new EP from Massage, as well as December full-length releases from Uncle Bengine & The Restraining Orders, Piel, and Joe Peppercorn.
If you’re looking for more new music, you can browse previous editions of Pressing Concerns or visit the site directory. Rosy Overdrive is in the midst of year-end list season, having done albums and EPs already, and hoping to have a reissue/compilation list up eventually. Even so, there’s a good chance this is the last post to go up in 2021, so thanks for reading and we’ll be back in 2022.
Massage – Lane Lines
Release date: December 10th Record label: Mt.St.Mtn. Genre: Jangle pop, post-punk Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull track: In Gray & Blue (Haçienda Verison)
The four-song (six on the vinyl edition) Lane Lines EP is Massage’s second release of 2021, following June’s Still Life. That album’s release on Mt.St.Mtn. and Bobo Integral Records as well as the band’s West Coast headquarters placed Massage squarely among severalother modern jangle/guitar pop groups, although they claim a distinct subsection of the genre for themselves. Massage—led by guitarist/vocalists Alex Naidus and Andrew Romano— are on the more subdued, rainy side, calling to mind The Clientele and the more guitar-heavy side of 80s British post-punk. The four completed tracks on Lane Lines—one alternate version of a Still Life tune, two originals that “fell through the cracks” or otherwise didn’t make it onto a record, and a cover—reaffirm all this in fifteen minutes.
The “Haçienda Version” of “In Gray & Blue” that opens the EP earns the New Order-referencing descriptor, with unmistakably Peter Hook-influenced melodic bass running prominently throughout and a great New Romantic vocal. Although it isn’t as obvious, the new wave influence also runs through the best of the two exclusive-to-this-EP songs, the title track. “Lane Lines” is a builder, pacing forward confidently until letting loose with some of the EP’s purest pop in its final minute. Massage claim The Feelies quite a bit as an influence, and that one’s where I hear it the most. The last non-vinyl exclusive song is a cover of poet/folk singer Ivon Cutler’s 1967 song “I’m Going in a Field”, and the band slips into the requisite “pastoral” and “sunburnt psychedelia” mode deftly. One of the two demos on the vinyl edition of Lane Lines (“Without Your Love”) is slated to appear on Massage’s next record, but what’s here in completed form—to say nothing of the full-length record they released six months ago—will be more than sufficient for the time being. (Bandcamp link)
Uncle Bengine and the Restraining Orders – Write Home
Release date: December 17th Record label: Funny / Not Funny Genre: Alt-country, country rock Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull track: Bleeding Out
The first full-length record from Uncle Bengine and the Restraining Orders in around a decade was recorded in various locations and with various musicians over the last seven years, the one constant being Uncle Bengine himself—Harrisonburg, Virginia’s Ben Schlabach. Schlabach anchors the ten tracks of Write Home, an unhurried, casual alt-country record that’s no less deep because of it. The Restraining Orders’ loose mix of more traditional instrumentation (upright bass, violin, and pedal steel) with their garage rock sensibilities places the album in the “country punk” sphere of bands like State Champion and Lucero (as well as Tucker Riggleman & The Cheap Dates, another group with a Harrisonburg connection). The woozy “Walk Home” introduces Write Home with relatively little fanfare, sporting an acoustic-guitar/pedal-steel shuffle instrumental and the voice of Uncle Bengine, an everyman with an ever-so-slight Appalachian twang.
Write Home then goes into two of its strongest tracks: the harried travelogue of “Trucks”, whose isolated, pill-popping trucker main character belies its upbeat, propulsive music, and “King Bed”, an anxious spiraling ballad brought on by the narrator’s mystery illness. The second half of Write Home kicks off with “Bleeding Out”, where Schlabach’s raving speak-singing reminds me a bit of Micah Schnabel from Two Cow Garage—it’s the tightest moment on the record, a controlled rock-and-roll demolition triggered from Schlabach’s troubled ruminations. Most of the songs aren’t quite as openly dire, at least not musically—just a couple songs later, “Black Smoke” succeeds mostly resting on violin and vocal harmonies for the track to work. The other exception to this is closing track “Ghost Woods”, which cranks the amps high, but not high enough to distort Uncle Bengine’s parting message: “I hope I die in the trees”. Even without Schlabach’s declaration, the fiddle triumphantly breaking through the fuzz-rock guitar at the same time delivers much the same message. (Bandcamp link)
Piel – A.K.A. Ma
Release date: December 10th Record label: Birs Genre: Shoegaze, psychedelia Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital Pull track: Custodian
The latest record from Los Angeles’ Piel is 24 minutes and six songs long, but the five-piece band views A.K.A. Ma as an album rather than an EP. There’s certainly more than enough going on in these songs to where it feels like a full experience—what appears to be the group’s first album in a decade is a dense, busy record where sounds form layer on layer over singer Tiki Lewis’ vocals. The title of the record also comes from Lewis: it’s a tribute to her mother, who passed away in 2019 shortly before these songs were written; the band (Lewis, plus drummer Kenny Ramirez, bassist/guitarist Jonathan Burkes, and mult-instrumentalists Yegor Mytrofanov and Cisco DeLuna) handle the songs of A.K.A. Ma with an appropriate delicateness to match.
A.K.A. Ma opens with “Custodian”, a shimmery dance-rock tune that also might feature the record’s most profound lyric from Lewis, in which she embraces the responsibility and caretaking at the heart of its title (“I take what I need without greed”, she vows over the swirling instrumental). The driving “The New” is the other clear upbeat track on A.K.A. Ma, coming after two songs (“Lost in Translation” and “Reach for Me”) in which Piel reach for a slightly less overwhelming industrial throb, and the synth-hypnosis of “Easy As It Feels”. The latter is the closest Piel get to “dream pop” on A.K.A. Ma, especially when Lewis’ breathy spoke-sung vocals take the spotlight. Like the best moments of the record, it’s straightforward despite all the textures Piel have layered on top of its core. (Bandcamp link)
Joe Peppercorn – Darkening Stars
Release date: December 8th Record label: Anyway Genre: Pop rock, psychedelic pop Formats: Digital Pull track: Walked on the Moon
Joe Peppercorn has made three records (most recently 2012’s Somber Honey) as part of the Columbus, Ohio indie/folk rock band The Whiles, and more recently has gained some notoriety through something called “Sgt. Peppercorn’s Marathon”, a concert in which he and some other Columbus musicians play every Beatles song ever in one 14-hour sitting. Rosy Overdrive is no stranger to elaborate Beatles tributes, but today I want to talk about Peppercorn’s original music. Darkening Stars is Peppercorn’s proper solo debut, and it’s an earnest collection of guitar pop songs clearly made by an artist with “Beatlesque” influences, but one who aims beyond imitation as well.
Darkening Stars is, musically, a lush orchestral album with harpsichord and psychedelic flourishes that recall Peppercorn’s love of 60s and 70s pop, as well as certain strains of the 2000s—Elliott Smith is explicitly cited, and I hear plenty of Jon Brion-esque studio pop here too. Unlike a lot of similarly-minded music, there’s not so much “power” in this pop; Peppercorn prefers to float through these fifteen songs, which is appropriate for Darkening Stars’ dreamy, airy world of moons, ghosts, and, yes, a sky full of stars. The bittersweet triumph of opener “Walked on the Moon” is one of the only really upbeat songs on the record, but it’s far from the only track that finds beauty in both the familiar and the unknown, in both the well-trodden and the remote. (Bandcamp link)
2021 was a great EP year, by my estimation. Maybe it’s because the pandemic made EPs more practical vis-à-vis full-lengths to release than normal, maybe because I’m more in touch with smaller (and thus more likely to release EPs) bands than normal this year, but I liked a lot of EPs this year. I chose nine for the 2020 year-end list; I could’ve done fifty this time without running out of ones that I liked. I stuck with 25 because I don’t want to do another big big scope list after Rosy Overdrive’s 100 favorite albums of 2021 took so long, and the descriptions here are shorter than that list too. I wrote about the majority of these earlier in the year, anyway, so you can read more about them if you want.
I’d like to do one more new music round-up before the end of the year, and there will also be a “Best reissues/compilations of 2021” list at…some point. Maybe not ‘til January, but it’ll go up eventually.
25. Oscar Bait – Everything Louder Than Everything Else
Release date: October 1st Record label: Little Elephant Genre: Melodic hardcore, post-hardcore Formats: Vinyl, digital
Everything Louder Than Everything Else is just about everything one could want from a melodic post-hardcore record in 2021. For one, the EP rips through six catchy bursts of energy in less than ten minutes; for another, its tough exterior is backed with an introspective underneath, with lead singer Jim Howes pulling inspiration everywhere from professional sports to David Foster Wallace. Rippers like “Blitzer” and “This Is Water” are plenty enjoyable even without taking the microscope to Howes’ lyrics, but there is enough going on there to warrant a closer reading. (Read more)
24. Beauty Pill – Instant Night
Release date: December 3rd Record label: Northern Spy Genre: Electronic, experimental indie rock Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
Although Beauty Pill’s latest EP only contains two “full” songs, an instrumental, and a remix, it’s far from a throwaway release. The title track to Instant Night showed up as a standalone single right before the 2020 election last year, and it floats along just as ominously here as it did a year ago. The synth-funk of “You Need a Better Mind” is a world away from “Instant Night” musically, but Clark’s lyrics are not so much, perhaps a more personal take on the isolation and loneliness of the title track. (Read more)
23. My Idea – That’s My Idea
Release date: July 30th Record label: Hardly Art Genre: Indie pop, pop rock, synthpop Formats: Digital
Lily Konigsberg and Nate Amos have appeared on Rosy Overdrive plenty of times, and not infrequently together—Konigsberg has guested on Amos’ This Is Lorelei project several times, and Amos produced Konigsberg’s debut solo album—so it’s not surprising that My Idea, a new act formed by the two of them together, made the cut. That’s My Idea confidently cycles through the hallmarks of both of their output: jangly guitar pop in “I Can’t Dance” and “That’s My Idea”, spunky punk-pop in “Stay Away Still”, minimalist synthpop on “Birthday”. It’s a debut release in band name only.
22. J. Marinelli – Fjorden & Fjellet
Release date: June 4th Record label: Self-released Genre: Lo-fi pop rock Formats: Digital
The four song Fjordan & Fjellet EP is a sort of musical evolution for the Norway-based, West Virginia-originating J. Marinelli—the long-time live-to-tape “one-man punk band” recorded his instruments separately this time around, giving Marinelli freedom to add in more fleshed-out drum parts, some bass guitar, and plenty of handclaps. Nevertheless, these songs still sport Marinelli’s familiar Appalachian spin on Robert Pollard-esque lo-fi pop rock, with “Worker and Parasite” and “Where They’d Have Us” in particular coming off as pleasing yet curiously-written. (Read more)
21. Snow Ellet – Suburban Indie Rock Star
Release date: March 19th/August 13th Record label: Self-released/Wax Bodega Genre: Emo pop, power pop Formats: Cassette, digital
Snow Ellet and Suburban Indie Rock Star are definitely worthy of the very specific but very real hype they’ve gotten. The debut EP from the Chicagoland solo project plants its flag in the middle of indie rock and emo, and songs like the Oso-Oso-via-Madchester opener “To Some I’m Genius” or the starry-eyed bummer pop of reissued bonus track “Wine on the Carpet” are just executed incredibly. Along with the just-as-good non-album single “Cannonball”, Snow Ellet is an undeniable rising (suburban indie) pop rock star.
20. Noun – In the Shade
Release date: July 13th Record label: State Champion Genre: Indie rock, indie punk Formats: Vinyl, digital
Earlier this month, Screaming Females’ Marissa Paternoster released her solo debut Peace Meter—it’s an intriguing departure from her band, and perhaps I will talk about it more on Rosy Overdrive. In July, though, she released the three-song In the Shade EP as Noun, which hews much closer in sound to Screaming Females—and is just as good as her main group. The title track is Paternoster in classic “alt-rock banger” form, and the other two songs nail “dramatic tension” (“Heather”) and “hypnotic light-grooving” (“Speak to Me”).
19. Camp Trash – Downtiming
Release date: January 22nd Record label: Count Your Lucky Stars Genre: Emo power pop Formats: Vinyl, digital
Florida’s Camp Trash debuted in January with a four-song tour-de-force of bright Sunshine State emo. Downtiming confidently and casually positions itself among the long lineage of commercial “alternative rock”, evoking everything from Bleed American to the Clone High soundtrack to the effortless cool of the Gallagher brothers to The Get-Up Kids covering Superchunk to PureVolume pop punk to “Hey Jealousy” to Jade Lilitri and other “fifth wave emo” guitar pop bands. Did I forget anything? (Read more)
18. Molly O’Malley – Goodwill Toy
Release date: October 21st Record label: Mollywhop Record Shop Genre: Synthpop, dream pop Formats: Digital
Goodwill Toy dives fully into Molly 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, and either you’re up for it or you aren’t. O’Malley’s emotional, front-and-center voice helms pop anthems (“Princess Mia (Ybsntcht)” and bittersweet, subtler dramas (“Tangible”) alike, and though short, Goodwill Toy’s four songs hang together thematically and completely. (Read more)
17. Cub Scout Bowling Pins – Heaven Beats Iowa
Release date: January 22nd Record label: GBV, Inc. Genre: Lo-fi indie rock, power pop Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
Robert Pollard has seemingly finally found stability in the last half decade, focusing on his current iteration of Guided by Voices over his myriad side projects. Cub Scout Bowling Pins only goes further to prove Pollard’s happiness with his current group of collaborators—Heaven Beats Iowa is a collaboration between Pollard and the rest of the GBV lineup, resulting in a muddy, informal feel that buries Pollard’s (strong as ever) hooks lower in the mix, but never so low that they’re less effective. (Read more)
16. Sour Widows – Crossing Over
Release date: April 23rd Record label: Exploding in Sound Genre: Slowcore, folk rock Formats: Vinyl, digital
The latest EP from the Bay Area’s Sour Widows is a solid collection of four casually beautiful indie rock songs that push the record past twenty minutes without overstaying its welcome. Shades of folk rock, slowcore, and dream pop turn up throughout Crossing Over, though not slotting neatly into any one of those categories. One thing they do commit to is the harmonies between co-lead-singers Susanna Thomson and Maia Sinaiko, one of the most obvious reasons why these songs sound as great as they do.
15. Oblivz – Uplifts
Release date: April 5th Record label: Self-released Genre: Synthpop Formats: Cassette,digital
Oblivz’s Charlie Wilmoth and Andrew Slater are more well-known (to me at least) for their guitar pop band Fox Japan, but their new project veers headfirst into electronic territory. Slater’s guitar still interjects along Uplifts’ four tracks, but its neighbors are drum machines and synths this time. Fox Japan’s dark humor still marks these songs, particularly in “Only the Weak Survive” and “Two Is Impossible”, and the treadmill pop of “Time Cop” is proof that Wilmoth and Slater are as good at nailing synthpop hooks as they are power pop. (Read more)
14. Enumclaw – Jimbo Demo
Release date: April 30th Record label: Suite A/Youth Riot Genre: Alt-rock, shoegaze Formats: CD, cassette, digital
The one release from Tacoma, Washington’s Enumclaw thus far is a captivating record of ever-so-slightly-crooked Pacific Northwest indie rock that both hints at the band’s full potential and works quite well on its own. The five songs on Jimbo Demo are all incredibly catchy (particularly opening track “Cents” and single “Fast N All”), and there’s depth underneath: lead singer Aramis Johnson’s vocals give these songs melancholy, sometimes even dark sides, and Nathan Cornell’s prominent bass pops throughout.
13. 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, CD, digital
Empire! Empire! (I Was a Lonely Estate) and Parting’s Keith Latinen seems to try to lower the stakes of his new solo project Mt. Oriander’s debut EP with its title (referencing that he wanted to release a full-length record before today’s craziness got in the way), but This Is Not the Way I Wanted You to Find Out needs no such shunting. These five songs place Latinen’s clean, melodic vocals even more front-and-center than his past bands, sounding like a mix between palpably heavy full-band slowcore and Latinen’s Midwest emo background. It’s a subtle record from him, but a career highlight nevertheless. (Read more)
12. Dan Wriggins – Still Is: Dan Wriggins Sings Utah Phillips
Release date: May 7th Record label: Orindal Genre: Folk Formats: Digital
Friendship’s Dan Wriggins recorded (most of) Still Is at the same time as his debut solo EP, Mr. Chill, though at the time he wasn’t sure if these songs—all covers of folk singer and labor activist Utah Phillips—would ever see the light of day, until they surfaced as a digital Bandcamp-only release. One doesn’t have to be familiar with Utah Phillips’ work to appreciate Still Is—that’s a testament both to Phillips’ original songs and how Wriggins performs them. Some of these songs are bluntly, blisteringly political, and others are just as affecting on the personal level—as the title of the EP suggests, Phillips’ songs are no less powerful or relevant today. (Read more)
11. This Is Lorelei – Bad Forever
Release date: April 2nd Record label: Wharf Cat Genre: Pop punk Formats: Digital
Amidst the torrent of Nate Amos’ prolific 2021, Bad Forever stands out in particular. The nine-song release finds Amos with the guitars cranked up, in full pop punk mode—it is (yet another) left turn for This Is Lorelei, but it’s not a world away from the hooky guitar pop Amos typically makes. Bad Forever is sloppier and, in a sense, trashier than the (relatively) more restrained, measured previous work of This Is Lorelei, and Amos (with the help of the Greek chorus of Palberta) sounds like he’s teetering on the edge of something throughout the album’s frenetic pace. (Read more)
10. Mannequin Pussy – Perfect
Release date: May 21st Record label: Epitaph Genre: Punk rock, indie rock, hardcore punk Formats: Vinyl, digital
I’ve been a casual Mannequin Pussy fan for awhile now, appreciating if not “getting” their rather fervent following, but I’m fully on board with the Philadelphia band’s latest. Perfect is more or less exactly what I’ve wanted from this band: it’s a nearly 50/50 mix of exciting hardcore-influenced tracks and stately, capital E-emotional indie rock, both of which are executed about as well as one could hope. Based on the rest of this list, it’s unsurprising that the latter are more up my alley (see: “Control”, “To Lose You”), but the more, ah, confrontational Colins “Bear” Regisford-sung “Pigs Is Pigs” is just as good.
9. (T-T)b – Suporma
Release date: April 16th Record label: Acrobat Unstable Genre: Pop punk, emo, 90s indie rock Formats: Cassette, digital
(T-T)b is a chiptune and video game soundtrack instrumentation-incorporating “bitpunk” band named after an emoji who make music on the emo label Acrobat Unstable. Whatever you expected them to sound like after that description, you’re probably wrong—Suporma is, I think, a slacker-rock record more than anything else. From the triumphant chorus of opening track “I Don’t Wanna Die” and the chugging, “When I Come Around”-esque guitar chords on “Daisy”, (T-T)b utilize their bleeps the way another band might use “traditional” synths or even horns, and it works on Suporma just as well as any of those embellishments might.
8. Meat Wave – Volcano Park
Release date: June 11th Record label: Many Hats/Big Scary Monsters Genre: Post-hardcore, noise rock, punk rock Formats: Vinyl, digital
The first multi-song release from Meat Wave in four years is a heartening sign that the Chicago band are alive, well, and making some of the best music of their career. Volcano Park is surprisingly musically dynamic, while at the same time being an incredibly thematically cohesive set of songs—the rage of their past work is still there, but the mask slips to reveal a frantic, existential core over these six songs. Threads of individual commodification and wear and tear run through Volcano Park, before closing track “Fire Dreams” burns it all down. (Read more)
7. Snakeskin – Heart Orb Bone
Release date: July 13th Record label: State Champion Genre: Indie rock Formats: Vinyl, digital
The first new music from New Jersey’s Snakeskin since 2018 is a three-song, 12-minute picture disc in which the band sounds as polished and clear-eyed as ever. “T.V.” and the title track are irresistible widescreen, grand-scale indie rock, deploying chopper-takeoff power chords and sparkly melodic guitar leads as well as dramatic, nostalgia-tinged lyrics from lead singer Shanna Polley. Although overshadowed by the other two songs, acoustic closer “Happening” succeeds well at something else entirely.
6. Options – On the Draw
Release date: June 11th Record label: Self-released Genre: Bedroom pop, pop punk, indie rock Formats: Digital
Options’ Seth Engel has probably engineered a record by your favorite Chicago band, but he’s also found time to build a robust discography of his own. The nine-song, 18-minute “mixtape” On the Draw (which is an EP because I said so) is a pretty sharp departure the chilly, slowcore-and-emo-indie-rock of the last two Options records, 2020’s Window’s Open and Wind’s Gonna Blow. Recorded at home instead of Engel’s studio domain, On the Draw embraces a lo-fi pop sound that speeds through a fun selection of brief auto-tuned melodies and zippy power chords, particularly nailing the sub-two minute closing tracks “Hoper” and “Run Wild”.
5. Canandaigua – Slight Return
Release date: August 6th Record label: Baja Dracula Genre: Folk rock, alt-country Formats: Digital
Slight Return is the most substantial release yet from Raul Zahir De Leon’s Canandaigua solo project. The EP’s six tracks show off De Leon’s compelling, off-kilter interpretation of Americana that jumps from ragged electric rock to more traditional folk/country sounds—it’s ramshackle, but intentionally so. SlightReturn’s elemental lyrics describe love, sadness, toil, and friendship in a way that declines to date these songs, even as modern anxieties and struggles creep in around the edges. De Leon tackles some weighty topics, like confronting difficult societal truths and the fallibility of the Americana canon over sharp, swelling country-rock instrumentals. (Read more)
4. MJ Lenderman – Knockin’
Release date: August 20th Record label: Dear Life Genre: Lo-fi folk, alt-country Formats: Digital
Knockin’, the third release under the MJ Lenderman name in 2021, is the sound of the Asheville musician getting comfortable with his distinct style of alt-country—no bells and whistles, just five full-fleshed out Lenderman songs. Instead of losing the spontaneous magic of March’s Ghost of Your Guitar Solo, tracks like the country groove of “TV Dinners”, the tender wrestling rumination “TLC Cage Match”, and the Daniel Johnston-esque “Happiness” only serve to affirm that Lenderman can write a hell of a song. Few in music had a 2021 that even approached that of MJ Lenderman. (Read more)
3. Cashmere Washington – The Shape of Things to Come
Release date: September 17th Record label: Fish People Birds/Black Ram Genre: Emo-indie-rock, R&B Formats: Cassette, digital
The formal debut from Midland, Michigan’s Thomas Dunn II is an EP that’s been accurately called “post emo” (by their tape label) and “bedroom punk/hip-hop” (by Dunn). The Shape of Things to Come isn’t the first release to meld emo-adjacent rock and rap, but it distinguishes itself by committing to a lo-fi, fuzzy sound anchored by Dunn’s guitar playing, even in songs like “Last Year” where the hip-hop influence is particularly felt. If Cashmere Washington’s next releases (more EPs are forthcoming, per Dunn) live up to the promise that The Shape of Things to Come demonstrates, then perhaps it’ll just be the beginning. (Read more)
2. Olivia’s World – Tuff 2B Tender
Release date: April 23rd Record label: Lost Sound Tapes Genre: Twee pop Formats: Cassette, digital
Olivia’s World bandleader Alice Rezende’s songwriting is bursting with big ideas, and the group goes big musically to back them up. The Queensland-based four-piece paints Tuff 2B Tender with a layered, full-band sound that does justice to both ends of the EP’s title. Opening track “Debutante” gradually turns into a wall of sound featuring ringing piano and cascading guitars, “Hell-Bent” is a romp that features Rezende’s best stream of consciousness lyrics, and the pastoral fantasy of “Grassland” ends Tuff 2B Tender by finding comfort and strength in discovering and inventing new worlds—appropriate for a “twee” act that doesn’t just stick to that genre’s signature guileless indie pop. (Read more)
1. Dan Wriggins – Mr. Chill
Release date: March 12th Record label: Orindal Genre: Alt-country Formats: Cassette, digital
Stripping down the “ambient country” of his main band Friendship even further, Mr. Chill is comprised of five sparse tracks that feature only Dan Wriggins’ acoustic guitar, occasional organ and piano stabs, and fellow Friendship member Michael Cormier’s steady drumming. Wriggins’ distinctive warble and strong songwriting shines on Mr. Chill just as much as it does on his work with the underrated Friendship—the title track and “Lucinda on June Bug” are some of the fullest, sharpest songs Wriggins has penned to date, and the less immediate ones (particularly the dark “Season”) reveal themselves just as confidently with time. (Read more)
2021 is winding down. Music blogs sleep, their cookie-cutter year-end-lists hung as “do not disturb” signs until at least mid-January. Rosy Overdrive published its own Favorite Albums of 2021 list earlier this week (EPs forthcoming), but that’s no reason to ignore the brave few who have released new music in December (plus an October record I missed). Today, Pressing Concerns talks about new albums from Aeon Station and Shrimp Olympics, and new EPs from Beauty Pill and Ok Cowgirl.
Release date: December 10th Record label: Sub Pop Genre: Big old indie/alt-rock Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital Pull track: Queens
There is a mountain of context to go along with Observatory, Kevin Whelan’s debut album as Aeon Station. To state the obvious: this is not the fourth Wrens album the indie rock world had been promised for over a decade now, give or take. Observatory deserves to be considered beyond the murky, hotly-debated, acrimonious circumstances that led to The Wrens dissolving on the doorstep of finishing that record, leading to Whelan to take what he had written and make a record of his own. But this has to be one of hardest records to divorce from context ever—reminders of Whelan’s (sigh) former band hang all over Observatory, and I don’t just mean the obvious “The House That Guilt Built” and “This Is Not What You Had Planned” references in “Everything at Once”.
For instance, what’s the bigger callback in lead single “Queens”—is it the anxious and accusatory lyrics that could very well be about the slow and painful demise of The Wrens, or is it the driving, explosive indie rock music that soundtracks said lyrics? Yet “Queens” stands tall as an incredible song, and the rest of the record is not far behind it in terms of quality, so it’s more than worthwhile to take Aeon Station as Aeon Station. It seems odd to say that Observatory is a “straightforward” record; it’s still very much in the same 2000-era maximalist indie rock vein of The Wrens’ magnum opus The Meadowlands, but (and maybe it’s just because I know it’s all Whelan this time), the album feels less like an immaculately-executed bells-and-whistles-fest and more like something from that genre’s singular, singer-songwriter-led division.
The tension in the scene-setting “Leaves” sounds more like Will Sheff leading Okkervil River in an indie rock opera than anything else, and the snowy “Everything at Once”, musically at least, delivers itself in a shiny, timeless pop rock package. And Observatory’s quiet songs, of which there are several, are even more remarkable—the sparse, whispered “Move” and the delicate “Empty Rooms”, while certainly not “demo quality”, are confident in a structure that does show a little bit of a skeleton. Another song that fits this bill is closing track “Alpine Drive”, and while it would be very music-writer-on-easy-mode of me to dissect a few eyebrow-raising-in-context lines (“Everything can be replaced except for your time / So I’m coming back to you and I’ll take back what’s mine”), the most rewarding path to my ears is appreciating the song for what it is: an understated but triumphant closing track that fits Observatory well. (Bandcamp link)
Beauty Pill – Instant Night
Release date: December 3rd Record label: Northern Spy Genre: Electronic, experimental indie rock Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital Pull track: Instant Night
Even though it’s been over half a decade since the last “proper” full-length Beauty Pill album, the last two years have seen a steady stream of new music from the Chad Clark-led band. There was the formal release of their soundtrack album Sorry You’re Here, last year’s Please Advise EP, and a Bandcamp-only companion piece to that EP earlier this year. The title track to Instant Night was a part of this stream, appearing as a standalone single last October, right before the 2020 election, and one doesn’t need confirmation from Clark to understand the timing. The percussionless “Instant Night” floats along ominously in a way befitting its title, as Erin Nelson’s clear vocals breathlessly catalog the shadow overhead: “Look around, it was day, it was day…now it’s night,” she reports, wide-eyed.
Oh, right, there are three more songs on this EP too. The other “normal” Beauty Pill song on Instant Night (if there is such a thing) is the Clark-sung synth-funk of “You Need a Better Mind”. Clark came up with this one after messing around with a Roland TB-303, a Japanese synth that sounds like a bizarre mockery of a bass guitar. It’s a world away from “Instant Night”…or is it? In the EP’s title track, Beauty Pill assert that “scared is alright”; when “You Need a Better Mind” follows up its titular declaration with “that’s okay, I do too”, it’s not exactly comforting, but it’s trying to do something about the loneliness at the heart of the song. These two songs are accompanied on Instant Night only by a short-ish instrumental and a remixed version of “You Need a Better Mind”, but what’s here is enough. More than. (Bandcamp link)
OK Cowgirl – Not My First Rodeo
Release date: December 8th Record label: Self-released Genre: Dream pop indie rock Formats: Digital Pull track: Across the Room
Brooklyn’s Ok Cowgirl make self-described “dream rock”, which is an apt descriptor for the five songs on their debut EP, Not My First Rodeo. The four-piece band land on the “atmospheric” and “hazy” side of indie rock, reverb-y but too rooted in rock band structure to fall neatly into “dream pop”. “Shoegaze” isn’t quite it, either; singer/songwriter Leah Lavigne’s vocals are too clear in the mix for that, the bandleader’s lyrics seemingly just as important as the melodies in which they are delivered. Lavigne is a wistful pop songwriter, with her full vocals the clear star of opening two tracks “Unlost” and “Her Eyes”— though the band rave up in the last half of the former and chime in the instrumental of the latter, she won’t be overshadowed.
Even though Ok Cowgirl comes off more often than not as melancholic, there’s no hiding the infatuation at the heart of “Her Eyes”, which is about Lavigne’s “first all-consuming queer crush”. It all comes together quite successfully, but Not My First Rodeo’s best moments might be when the band deviate from their formula. “Across the Room”, the EP’s lone unqualified “rocker”, is frantic and wide-eyed, a bolt of emotion brought on by seeing a former partner “in passing” and the subsequent flooding back of an entire lifetime. The slow-building, synth-aided closing breakup song “Roadtrip (Till the End of Time)” really does seem to traverse the country over its four minutes, and though it takes a different path, it’s just as intriguing and promising as “Across the Room”. (Bandcamp link)
Shrimp Olympics – Silk Lizard
Release date: October 29th Record label: Bumpy Genre: Psychedelic pop, lo-fi pop Formats: Cassette, digital Pull track: Be My Girl (Mercury)
Minneapolis’ Shrimp Olympics is the solo project of singer-songwriter Austin Lombardo, whose affinity for lo-fi psychedelic pop music is on display throughout his latest record, October’s Silk Lizard. Home-recorded guitar pop wizards like Martin Newell and (especially) R. Stevie Moore are the easiest influences to grab onto here, but Lombardo dips his toes into everything from psychedelic country-rock to dreamy jazz-rock throughout Silk Lizard. Early highlights “Does She Still” and “Angel at Gunpoint” are the Shrimp Olympics version of Beatlesy pop rock run through Lombardo’s chosen filters, before “Athena #3” bursts in sounding like a less-metal Ty Segall single.
Songs like the fuzzy, distorted stomp of “Water Moccasin” and the rusty rock and roll of “I’d Rather Be a Woman Than a Man” are pure psychedelic southern rock, and multi-part proggy suites like “High Magick” and “Iguana in Nirvana” are just, well, pure psychedelia. It’s all a lot to take in, but Lombardo brings a lot of energy to these songs, and it’s worth diving into Silk Lizard. And even if some of the more out-there moments are off-putting at first, Lombardo can still do a no-frills pop song: “Be My Girl (Mercury)” is, both in title and structure, the record’s most Cleaners from Venus moment, the lead guitar for once settling confidently into one mode for the track’s length (in this case: “jangle”). (Bandcamp link)
Hello, readers! This is it–the final twenty-five records in Rosy Overdrive’s 100 favorites of the year. More context can be found in the first post if needed, but let me just say: these albums are all phenomenal. I loved more records this year than any other in a long time, and these 25 I loved the most of all. Any of the top fifteen or so of these could’ve been a top-three album in most years, for me. So, without any further ado:
Release date: July 16th Record label: Sitcom Universe Genre: Alt-country, singer-songwriter Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
Despite a substantial discography between his band Frontier Ruckus and a solo career, Keego Harbor was the first album of Detroit’s Matthew Milia I’d heard—but it will not be the last. The album is an exploration of suburban Michigan, specifically the titular small town where Milia grew up. Keego Harbor is a parade of hyper-specific scenes and relics which, of course, have their mirror images beyond the outskirts of the Detroit metropolitan area. Dairy Queen, Ford Tauruses, I-75, and Tim Allen’s Home Improvement, among others, all feature across Keego Harbor’s ten tracks. Keego Harbor is more than a simple collection of images from Milia’s past—they’re just one feature of this album’s charms. If one has a hard time picking up on how the Keego Harbor of which Milia sings is more than just “the third-smallest town in Michigan by area”, his description of a mid-thirties life adrift that recurs throughout the record resonates beyond his hometown. (Read more)
24. Low – Hey What
Release date: September 10th Record label: Sub Pop Genre: Experimental rock, industrial Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital
I suppose I’m in the right demographic to long for the slowcore Low of the 90s and the lush orchestral Low of the turn of the century, and to bellyache about how they lost me when they started using “loops and shit”. That hasn’t really happened though—I liked Double Negative, and with HEY WHAT, I’m genuinely excited at where the Duluth, Minnesota band is now and where they might be headed. Producer BJ Burton once again makes his mark on these songs, but rather than deconstructing them, it feels like his aural corruption is fighting against a more “traditional” Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker sound. Songs like opening track “White Horses”, lead single “Days Like These”, and massive closer “The Price You Pay (It Must Be Wearing Off)” find Parker/Sparhawk’s harmonies and icily divine melodies standing tall—at least before the storm comes.
23. ME REX – Megabear
Release date: June 18th Record label: Big Scary Monsters Genre: Indie pop, folktronica Formats: Vinyl, digital
So the thing about Megabear is it’s a fifty-two track, thirty-two minute album that’s made up of 30-60 second mini-songs that are designed to all bleed into each other and be listened to in any order. Shuffling Megabear via the streaming services on which most of you listen to music doesn’t quite capture what it’s supposed to sound like (they have a website where it works better), but it’s a compelling and successful risk taken for the London band. Lead singer Myles McCabe returns to a few lyrical motifs throughout Megabear, singing declarations like “I want a river to run through me / Carve out a valley, deep, deep, deep / Make me shallow, make me empty, make me clean,” over simple piano chords, or indie pop synths, or some combination of the two. I had heard and enjoyed some of ME REX’s pre-Megabear releases, but this is where they all take a step forward as a band, and already their “normal” songs sound like they’ve benefited from this as well.
22. Fishboy – Waitsgiving
Release date: April 2nd Record label: Lauren Genre: Power pop, twee pop, folk rock Formats: Vinyl, digital
Waitsgiving, the latest album from Denton, Texas’ Fishboy, is an intricate, detailed work of indie rock storytelling that weaves a cohesive and unique narrative across ten songs, forty years, and three generations of characters. Bandleader Eric Michener and the band gleefully marry their instrumentals (which sit somewhere between Elephant Six orchestral pop and folk punk) to a record-long narrative whose complexity and grandiosity is normally reserved for progressive rock operas. Taking all of Waitsgiving in at once, it’s refreshing to hear a band just go for it like Fishboy have done here—and it works both because Waitsgiving has the songs to back up their conceptual moon-shot, and because the album’s message of art for art’s sake rings true coming from the long-running band. If there’s anything to take from Waitsgiving, it’s that these songs would be just as valuable if we weren’t hearing them. (Read more)
21. Torment & Glory – We Left a Note with an Apology
Release date: August 27th Record label: Sargent House Genre: Blown-out folk, singer-songwriter Formats: Vinyl, digital
The first solo record from Brian Cook (he of sludge metal band SUMAC and mathcore legends Botch) originated from an experience he had hearing a dust-covered record player attempting to play a beat-up copy of Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska, resulting in “a wall of fuzz distortion” with glimpses of The Boss’ sparsest moments peaking through the haze; the seed for We Left a Note with an Apology was subsequently planted. Distortion and feedback shade the record, but these are folk songs first and foremost, not drone pieces with incidental vocals. Cook’s songs are full of quiet triumphs, like the bittersweet power of the titular instrument in “The Kick Drum”, the bright future hidden in the shabby apartment of “Bolyston and Pike”, or the “petty victory” of shoplifting cigarettes in “No Big Crime”. (Read more)
20. Russel the Leaf – Then You’re Gunna Wanna
Release date: February 26th Record label: Self-released Genre: Psychedelic pop, power pop Formats: Cassette, digital
Russel the Leaf’s sole member Evan M. Marré is a Philadelphia-based producer who’s amassed an impressive list of credits, including albums from Remember Sports, Friendship, and Another Michael. On his own, Marré trades in the type of busily beautiful baroque pop that’s frequently associated with producer-musician studio rats. He invites Beach Boys comparisons right from the start with the nautical croon of “Sailin’ Away”, and the strings and vocal theatrics of “Skipping School” giddily continue them. Then You’re Gunna Wanna does anything but lose steam from then on, trotting out perfect pop songs like “Classic Like King Kong” and “Hey! (It’s Alright)” and indulging in full-on studio-bag-of-tricks mode with “California”. It’s an album that reveals even more of its charms with each listen. (Read more)
19. Tucker Riggleman & The Cheap Dates – Alive and Dying Fast
Release date: January 29th Record label: WarHen Records Genre: Alt-country, roots rock Formats: Vinyl, digital
Tucker Riggleman has been working the Appalachian DIY circuit for the past decade or so, playing in bands such as the fuzz-rockers Bishops and The Demon Beat, as well as making music under his own name. Alive and Dying Fast is the debut full-length of his new band The Cheap Dates, and they aren’t afraid to slow things down a bit in order to accentuate and compliment some of Riggleman’s strongest songwriting to date. Despite his evolved writing and under-the-belt experience, Riggleman paints himself as a man very much still in the middle of it all throughout the record. Over the course of Alive and Dying Fast, Riggleman chases his vitamins with beer, clings to his music idols (Paul Westerberg in “Void”, the obvious in “Robert Smith Tattoo”), swears to unnamed skeptics that he’s really an artist, shouts, and wonders when and if that “big break” is going to come—all we can do is experience it with him in the moment. (Read more)
18. Chime School – Chime School
Release date: November 5th Record label: Slumberland Genre: Jangle pop Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
Chime School, the solo project of San Francisco’s Andy Pastalaniec, is certainly aptly named—the chiming sounds of classic jangly rock are all over his self-titled debut record. Chime School’s first record evokes the delicate balance of nostalgia and bittersweet emotions in which the best of the genre trades, and Pastalaniec (who had been mostly notable as a drummer up until now) does so while keeping his foot almost entirely on the gas. Chime School sports a driving tempo that puts it much closer to the “peppy” than “melancholic” end of the jangle pop spectrum. Exuberant melodic guitar riffs, brisk arpeggios, toe-tapping drumbeats—even the slower songs on Chime School feel upbeat. Pastalaniec references driving and motorcycles throughout the record, which is befitting for the what’s essentially the audio equivalent of feeling the wind through one’s hair. (Read more)
17. St. Lenox – Ten Songs of Worship and Praise for Our Tumultuous Times
Release date: June 11th Record label: Don Giovanni/Anyway Genre: Indie pop Formats: Vinyl, digital
St. Lenox’s fourth album, Ten Songs of Worship and Praise for Our Tumultuous Times, is a self-described “progressive, queer, spiritual record” made by a man who admits he is not particularly religious in several of its songs. Andrew Choi, the man behind St. Lenox, ends up creating an honest portrayal of religion and how we interact with it because of his more even-keeled perspective. Album opener “Deliverance” finds Choi confronting mortality in his middle age and admitting that he now may be open to these discussions—and the rest of the record is a headfirst dive into it all. Choi sympathizes with his Korean immigrant parents’ views on religion in “The Gospel of Hope”, traces his experience back to his childhood Lutheran church with “Bethesda”, and turns to both the galactic and molecular with “Superkamiokande”. An individual’s relationship with religion is never as static as some pretend; it’s influenced and altered by the people around them, society, and their own personal growth. Ten Songs of Worship and Praise… is a singular album that reflects this from Choi’s perspective. (Read more)
16. The Hold Steady – Open Door Policy
Release date: February 19th Record label: Positive Jams/Thirty Tigers Genre: The Hold Steady Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
On the heels of the success of their half-album, half-singles-comp Thrashing Thru the Passion in 2019, Open Door Policy, is The Hold Steady’s first attempt to create an entire LP’s worth of songs that work together in seven years. The band’s eighth record noticeably contains a lower volume of unapologetic sing-along choruses than their mid-2000s work and Passion, but with Craig Finn and company sounding as sharp as ever, Open Door Policy comes off as a welcome convergence of Finn’s most recent and best solo album (2019’s I Need a New War) with the Hold Steady’s full band power. The run from “Lanyards” to “Heavy Covenant” rivals any stretch from the band’s “golden” period, and they do it by nailing left turns (“Unpleasant Breakfast”), very clear callbacks (“Family Farm”), and in-betweeners (“Heavy Covenant”) alike. Nearing two decades together, they’re still working with a similar roadmap, but aren’t afraid to annotate it and try some new routes. (Read more)
15. Palberta – Palberta5000
Release date: January 22nd Record label: Wharf Cat Records Genre: Post-punk, experimental punk Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
After trading in deconstructed rock music for the majority of their relatively brief career, Palberta subsequently zagged with their most inviting collection of songs to date. Palberta5000 is a positively accessible album that doesn’t lose the base components of a Palberta—hearing the band spin their scrappy post-punk into winning hooks and pop gold is like watching Sully land on the Hudson a dozen times in a row. Palberta5000 is still a fairly topsy-turvey album, though—“Big Bad Want” rides a single line and riff for four minutes in some sort of bizarre endurance test, and they even flirt with some multi-suite prog-pop a la Guided by Voices in the last couple of songs on the record. Whether it’s those outer reaches or the more straightforward moments (like the 90-second “Summer Sun”), the songs on Palberta5000 aren’t easy to forget. (Read more)
14. Personal Space – A Lifetime of Leisure
Release date: March 19th Record label: Good Eye Genre: Indie pop, chill math rock Formats: Digital
Brooklyn’s Personal Space ask more of the listener than your average chill indie guitar rock band. A Lifetime of Leisure’s ten tracks are populated with character sketches that look at various archetypes through the band’s leftist activist lens. . “Ethical” media consumption, choices of wine, biting a Greek philosopher’s style—there’s nothing Personal Space can’t and won’t connect to the political. One doesn’t need to always be on the same ideological page as the band to enjoy A Lifetime of Leisure, however—the lyrics are just another ingredient in their languid guitar pop songs that triangulate the likes of XTC, Pinback, and the Dismemberment Plan. Despite its firm political convictions, A Lifetime of Leisure is less “exhausting” and more “commiseration and comfort for the exhausted”. As they say on one of the record’s best tracks: “It’s chill, man. I’m supine.” (Read more)
13. Rosali – No Medium
Release date: May 7th Record label: Spinster Genre: Folk rock, country rock Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
The third album from Philadelphia’s Rosali Middleman is a Folk Rock record—in that it genuinely sounds like a rock band playing these songs, rather than a “roots” music group that just happens to utilize traditional rock instrumentation. The David Nance Group, her backing band for No Medium, ends up being a spirited choice, as they help turn the record into her sharpest yet. The album contains its share of rock-and-roll fireworks, such as the careening riff in “Bones” and Middleman’s lead guitar in “Pour Over Ice”, but the slower moments on No Medium are just as impactful—“Tender Heart” and “All This Lightning” capture very different moments in interpersonal relationships, but land their punches with equal weight. With No Medium, Middleman has made an album that grapples with some fairly universal themes in a confident and affirming way that works precisely because of how personally evocative she makes these songs. (Read more)
12. Mo Troper – Dilettante
Release date: October 15th Record label: Self-released/Bobo Integral Genre: Power pop Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
With Dilettante, Portland, Oregon’s power pop czar Mo 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. Troper’s fourth record is almost entirely played and sung by himself alone, and it’s a little fuzzier compared to his last couple of proper records—it’s not, for instance, the tightly-controlled, polished venom of 2017’s Exposure and Response or the tribute to a more ornate era of guitar pop that was last year’s Natural Beauty. Still, Troper is a pop star above everything else, and Dilettante finds his songwriting as sharp as ever. Hooks abound in monsters like “The Expendables Ride Again”, “Better Than That”, and “Winged Commander”, and the smaller, in-the-cracks tracks have plenty to recommend as well (see “Sugar and Cream”, coming soon to a musical near you). (Read more)
11. Downhaul – PROOF
Release date: May 21st Record label: Refresh Genre: Emo, alt-rock Formats: Vinyl, digital
Downhaul’s PROOF is an album carefully crafted to give off a serious, smoldering listening experience for the entirety of its ten tracks. Lead vocalist Gordon Phillips’ baritone guitar leads an instrumental controlled burn that’s grounded by his own stoic drawl. The fifth overall release and second full-length from the Richmond band probes thematic depths from the harrowing seven-minute opening track “Bury”, and PROOF continues to decline to pull its punches from there. The specter of collapsed relationships, both romantic and otherwise, hovers over PROOF, like when Phillips laments his failures in holding onto friendships in “Circulation”. Closing track “About Leaving” is more clear-eyed, and the song’s music is the lone callback to the band’s earlier alt-country days, right up to its cathartic twangy guitar solo. It’s a suitable way to end a record that examines the power of personal baggage and the equally powerful pulling force of time. (Read more)
10. Idle Ray – Idle Ray
Release date: May 7th Record label: Life Like Tapes/Half-Broken Music Genre: Power pop Formats: Vinyl, digital
After a very good trilogy of albums released under his own name throughout the back half of the 2010s, Michigan’s Fred Thomas has been quietly releasing singles and demos as Idle Ray over the past two years. The payoff, the project’s self-titled debut, is a cohesive dozen songs that stand up against any of his past work. Even though Idle Ray comes under what’s ostensibly a band name, these songs were mostly recorded by Thomas alone on 4-track, and finds the songwriter embracing lo-fi pop rock that shades lyrics about isolation, fractured and fading friendships, and interpersonal interaction-triggered anxiety. Songs like “Polaroid” and “Coat of Many Colors” work out these emotions, perhaps exacerbated by the pandemic but coming from somewhere deeper within Thomas, with the aid of some of the most straightforward, catchy pop music I’ve enjoyed this year.(Read more)
9. Stoner Control – Sparkle Endlessly
Release date: March 19th Record label: Sound Judgement Genre: Power pop, pop punk Formats: CD,digital
Portland’s Stoner Control are a real power trio. Guitarist Charley Williams, bassist Sam Greenspan, and drummer Michael Cathcart all contribute vocals and songwriting to the hooky, shiny, and appropriately-titled Sparkle Endlessly, which sees the band confidently plows through ten remarkably well-written guitar pop songs in thirty minutes and change. No matter who’s on vocals or credited as penning the song, Sparkle Endlessly is stubbornly consistent—Greenspan’s carefree, aurally sunglasses-clad talk-singing in “Learning to Swim” is the record’s first “wow” moment, while Williams guides the title track through four minutes of power-pop-punk perfection. Stoner Control have the smart pop sensibilities of album co-producer and fellow year-end-list-maker Mo Troper, as well as the musical chops to flesh these songs out and find new ways to impress along the way. (Read more)
8. Guided by Voices – Earth Man Blues
Release date: April 30th Record label: GBV, Inc. Genre: Power pop, post-punk Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
Guided by Voices have presented Earth Man Blues as a cohesive rock opera of sorts, which would seem to contradict the album’s initial description as a “collage of rejected songs”–but with an end result that’s this strong and hangs together this well, I don’t feel particularly inclined to question Robert Pollard and company. There are stretches on the album (like the one-two punch of “Margaret Middle School” into “I Bet Hippy”) where Pollard is clearly reaching for an overarching story, and it works as a catalyst for an exciting run of songs if nothing else. The album has a looseness to it that reminds me of my favorite of the recent Guided by Voices albums, August by Cake, but while that record’s grab-bag quality was a matter of its transitional circumstances, Earth Man Blues earns its dexterity by being the product of a band that’s only grown more comfortable and in tune with each other—disparate tracks like “Lights Out in Memphis (Egypt)” and “How Can a Plumb Be Perfected?” stand proudly side-by-side. (Read more)
7. Charlotte Cornfield – Highs in the Minuses
Release date: October 29th Record label: Double Double Whammy/Polyvinyl Genre: Folk rock, indie folk Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
Just from a songwriting perspective, there’s very little from this year that I’d take above Highs in the Minuses. Charlotte Cornfield puts forward some of the best storytelling in music in 2021 throughout the new record’s eleven songs—the clear-eyed adolescent reminiscing in “Blame Myself”, a Canadian’s Brooklyn experience in “Out of the Country”, and the bleak and doomed relationship at the heart of “Drunk for You” are all distinctively memorable song narratives served well by Cornfield’s rollicking but pensive folk rock. Even the songs wherein Cornfield tackles more universal subjects—inescapable news stories in “Headlines”, debilitating anxiety in “Destroy Me”—are just as strong and subsequently potent (debilitating anxiety is a universal subject, right?).
6. Upper Wilds – Venus
Release date: July 23th Record label: Thrill Jockey Genre: Space rock, noise rock, noise pop Formats: Vinyl, digital
In 2018, New York’s Upper Wilds released the science fiction interplanetary colonialist concept album Mars, featuring a muscular, bombastic power-trio sound to match its galactic ambition. How to follow that up? If you’re guitarist/vocalist Dan Friel, it’s with a record of love songs named after the second planet from the sun and the Roman goddess of love. Friel, bassist Jason Binnick, and drummer Jeff Ottenbacher still find excuses to take the record into the cosmos—“Love Song #7” is about the secret marriage of two astronauts before a mission together, and “Love Song #6” centers around a couple who survived the Heaven’s Gate “UFO religion” cult—but Venus is just as likely to find inspiration in Friel’s immediate (“Love Song #3”) and extended (“Love Song #2”) family. All this in the context of Upper Wilds’ most musically straightforward record yet —it’s an album almost entirely comprised of giddy, in-the-red melodic rock songs. (Read more)
5. Yasmin Williams – Urban Driftwood
Release date: January 29th Record label: SPINSTER Genre: Fingerstyle acoustic guitar Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
Despite being the only entirely instrumental album on this list, Yasmin Williams’ sophomore record is full of songs that communicate their ideas, themes, and throughlines just as well as any of the other records here do. Urban Driftwood is full of memorable moments—the quiet picking on opening track “Sunshowers” that gives way to an ecstatic riff, the arresting, tap-heavy main motif of “Swift Breeze”, Taryn Wood’s cello accompaniment in “Adrift”. Almost the entire album solely features Williams’ guitar playing; the few collaborations (Wood’s cello, Amadou Kouyate’s djembe and cadjembe in the title track) are wisely chosen and only serve to enhance what’s put forth by Williams, who plays like she knows she can carry the entire album herself. Urban Driftwood is the arrival of a talent whose next steps I’m more than ready to follow. (Read more)
4. Mister Goblin – Four People in an Elevator and One of Them Is the Devil
Release date: February 19th Record label: Exploding in Sound Genre: Post-hardcore, indie folk pop Formats: Cassette, digital
Mister Goblin—both on his own and as part of the cult post-hardcore band Two Inch Astronaut— has honed in on a recognizable sound, led by his clear melodic voice combined with thorny guitar and a punch evoking fellow D.C.-area bands like Shudder to Think. The first two Mister Goblin releases (2018’s Final Boy EP and 2019’s Is Path Warm?) found the Goblin probing depths beyond punk rock, and the excellent Four People in an Elevator and One of Them Is the Devil feels like the musician’s fullest realization yet of these new components. Lead single “Six Flags America” takes its trip to the amusement park acoustically, accompanied by tasteful cello playing, and “Cardboard Box” features a mortally wounded bird that ends its life on its own terms in the parking lot of a wildlife rescue over a mid-tempo drum machine beat. At 29 minutes, Four People in an Elevator… is a no-filler record by a songwriter who has quietly but surely become one of the most dependable in indie rock. (Read more)
3. Eleventh Dream Day – Since Grazed
Release date: April 2nd (digital), August 7th (physical) Record label: Comedy Minus One Genre: Indie goddamn rock Formats: Vinyl, digital
Eleventh Dream Day have carried on through more than three decades of lineup shifts, label drama, and relocating from Louisville to their current home of Chicago. The band’s most recent records had suggested that they had finally settled into a lane of Crazy Horse-inspired guitar freakout rock and roll—but then Since Grazed happened. It’s a double album, clocking in at around an hour in length, making it the band’s longest album to date. It’s filled not with extended guitar soloing and garage rock jams, but with expansive, skyscraping, deliberately-sculpted songs like the sweeping title track and the immortal ballad “Just Got Home (In Time to Say Goodbye)”. It shouldn’t be a surprise that Eleventh Dream Day have turned in something as strong as Since Grazed after thirty years of musical vitality, but that they did it by expanding and reshaping their sound is remarkable in its own right. (Read more)
2. Remember Sports – Like a Stone
Release date: April 23rd Record label: Father/Daughter Genre: Pop punk, indie punk, “emo-adjacent” Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital
Like a Stone is a big leap forward from a band that was already good enough to not even need one to keep me interested. In one sense, it’s a world away from the sloppy indie punk that put them on my (and most of their fans’) radar, but on the other hand the traces are still there, whether they’re sharpening that sound to give it a stronger bite (“Pinky Ring”) or refining it into a slick, multi-part two minute pop song (“Like a Stone”). The songs that land the furthest from the band’s previous work are no less potent: “Materialistic” finds Remember Sports showing up all those Philly emo bands at their own game, the seven-minute indie pop shuffle of “Out Loud” is like nothing the band has done before but doesn’t feel out of place on the record at all, and closing Like a Stone with a country-rock singalong (“Odds Are”) somehow makes even more sense. Lead singer Carmen Perry and the band behind her both bring their best to the table of Like a Stone, one hell of a leveling-up record.
1. Telethon – Swim Out Past the Breakers
Release date: August 20th Record label: Take This to Heart Genre: Power pop, pop punk Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
Swim Out Past the Breakers covers so much ground and stuffs so much into its 48 minutes that it’s easy to get lost in the indie rock star-studded, hook-heavy terrain. Seeing all the featured musicians on Telethon’s fifth album made me raise my eyebrows, but it all hangs together as a whole work made by one band—Telethon are the true stars of Swim Out Past the Breakers, and they more than deliver throughout the record’s sixteen songs. They play an all-out, earnest brand of power-pop-punk that calls up everything from Jeff Rosenstockian punk operas, beautiful mid-tempo heartland emo, and plenty of 90s alt-rock appreciation (I still stand by my Counting Crows comp to single “Positively Clark Street”). Vocalist and lyricist Kevin Tully reminds me more than a bit of a young, pop punk misfit John K. Samson, and much of the charm in Swim Out Past the Breakers comes from the way he can be everything to suave to insistent while still recognizably Tully. Everything comes together on this record—B- or C-string songs on Swim Out Past the Breakers would be the centerpiece on almost any other record from this year.
My favorite album of 2021 is titled after an Everclear lyric. God help us all. (Read more)
Hello! Welcome, and thank you either once again or for the first time for reading. Today (Tuesday, December 7th), Rosy Overdrive’s Top 50 albums of 2021 are finally revealed. There’s a longer year-end preamble from one of yesterday’s posts (which highlighted albums 51 through 100), but do you really need it to understand what’s going on here?
Release date: July 30th Record label: Living Lost Genre: Garage rock, lo-fi rock Formats: Vinyl, digital
For the fourth record under the Psychic Flowers name, the ever-prolific David Settle has taken what had been his “loosest” project and turned in what feels like his cleanest, shiniest album yet. Ramshackle fuzz-pop is still the basis of For the Undertow’s sound, but the assistance of drummer Leo Suarez on the majority of these songs and a cleaner sound is unmistakable—putting the record squarely in between the lo-fi pop of The Cleaners from Venus/early Guided by Voices that had been Settle’s previous main influence and a new strain of heavier, Goner/In the Red Records sound. Straight-ahead rippers like opening track “Coming to Collect”, the bouncy acoustic fuzz of “For the Record”, and the pensive “Gloves to Grand Air” all benefit from the jolt of energy coursing through For the Undertow. (Read more)
49. Editrix – Tell Me I’m Bad
Release date: February 5th Record label: Exploding in Sound Genre: Avant-jazz-math-pop-junk, post-punk, chillwave(?) Formats: Vinyl, digital
Tell Me I’m Bad was the first of what would become four records released by Wendy Eisenberg in 2021—Editrix is Eisenberg’s jazz- and avant-garde-influenced indie rock power trio in which they play guitar alongside drummer Josh Daniel and bassist Steve Cameron. Tell Me I’m Bad deals in chaotic yet catchy guitar squalls and a kinetic rhythm section that does not get in the way of Eisenberg’s strong vocal hooks and memorable lyrics. There are moments—such as the one-liner drop and subsequent instrumental rave-up of “Instant”—that remind me of a zippier Grifters, and turns like when “Sinner” morphs into a bizarro marching number in its second half backs up the band’s stated prog influence. Tell Me I’m Bad is like a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle—full of jagged edges, rewarding in the long run, and greater than the sum of its parts. (Read more)
48. Guided by Voices – It’s Not Them. It Couldn’t Be Them. It Is Them!
Release date: October 22nd Record label: GBV, Inc. Genre: Power pop, post-punk, orchestral pop Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
Even the “lesser” of the two Guided by Voices albums from 2021 has plenty to offer. While I think any reader of Rosy Overdrive can pick up on the fact that “replacement-level Robert Pollard album” on its own is probably enough for me to be into any given GBV record, It’s Not Them. It Couldn’t Be Them. It Is Them! does have something of a distinct identity stacked against the last couple of releases this lineup has put out. It’s destined to be known as the “symphonic” one, featuring some of the most ambitious non-rock-band-instrument arrangements that guitarist Doug Gillard has ever prepared for the band. But, as usual, it’s the songs that slot INTICBTIIT this high, whether they prominently feature strings and horns (“High in the Rain”, “Spanish Coin”) or stick to the typical offbeat Pollard power pop foundation (“Dance of Gurus”, “I Share a Rhythm”).
47. We Are the Union – Ordinary Life
Release date: June 4th Record label: Bad Time Genre: Ska punk, pop punk Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
The announcement of ska-punks We Are The Union’s fifth album dovetailed as vocalist Reade Wolcott’s public coming-out as a trans woman, and while Wolcott’s experience of realizing and coming to terms with being trans features prominently throughout Ordinary Life, the record also deals with romantic uncertainty and doesn’t always follow a direct autobiographical path. Songs like “Morbid Obsessions” and “Boys Will Be Girls” clearly celebrate where Wolcott has ended up, but don’t try to pave over the frequently rough path she took to get where she is now. Wolcott’s lyrics hop from first- to second- to third- person throughout the record, and songs like opening track “Pasadena” could have several meanings besides. The confident, perfunctory resolution of closing track “December”, in which Wolcott’s old self is finally “dead”, feels earned after a record that’s always fun to listen to, but is not “easy listening”.
46. Kiwi Jr. – Cooler Returns
Release date: January 22nd Record label: Sub Pop Genre: Jangle pop, 90s indie rock Formats: Vinyl, cassette, CD, digital
It’s a pleasant surprise that Kiwi Jr. returned with their sophomore LP a mere year after the blast that was Football Money. They feel ever-so-slightly less eager to please on Cooler Returns—they don’t slow down the tempo too much or abandon hooky choruses, but mellowing out just a bit is a subtle but nonetheless bold move. An emphasis on bass and more acoustic parts leads to a surprising point of comparison for me—early Spoon, before they ended up as the unflappable groovers they would end up becoming. It’d be far too dramatic to say that Kiwi Jr. have strangled the jangle pop band of Football Money with Cooler Returns, but what they have made is a distinct and rewarding follow-up to a debut that merited one. (Read more)
45. The Boys with the Perpetual Nervousness – Songs from Another Life
Release date: February 5th Record label: Bobo Integral Genre: Jangle pop Formats: Vinyl, digital
Songs from Another Life’s all-too-short runtime is stuffed to the brim with jangling guitars, beautiful vocal melodies, and bright, shiny numbers with titles like “Waking Up in the Sunshine” and “Summer” that still somehow have a melancholy cloud hanging over them. The Teenage Fanclub comparisons are unavoidable, right down to the Scottish accent of Andrew Taylor, one half of the duo behind TBWTPN. But the songs crafted by Taylor (who just released an excellent solo album) and his counterpart Gonzalo Marcos do draw from elsewhere in the guitar pop lineage, and these songs are too well-crafted to dismiss regardless. TBWTPN work very hard to wring genuinely affecting emotional material from these well-worn tools, and Songs from Another Life’s best moments (the contemplative “Rose Tinted Glass”, the pleading “Can’t You See”) are completely transcendent. (Read more)
44. Laura Stevenson – Laura Stevenson
Release date: August 6th Record label: Don Giovanni Genre: Folk rock, indie folk Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
Let us not take Laura Stevenson for granted. While I’ve never exactly been a super-fan, I’ve known I could count on Stevenson for a solid folk/alt-rock album for years now, and her self-titled sixth record stands out even among her consistent discography. There’s a bit of everything that Stevenson does well on Laura Stevenson—opening track and lead single “State” evokes the tension and anger of Throwing Muses, “Sandstorm” is the catchy pop rock hummer, and delicate indie folk surfaces on “Moving Cars” and “After Those Who Mean It”. The record’s mid-tempo centerpiece, “Continental Divide”, like the record itself, succeeds by not sticking to one “Laura Stevenson style”.
43. Proper Nouns – Feel Free
Release date: April 23rd Record label: Self-released Genre: Power pop Formats: Vinyl, cassette, digital
The first album from Baltimore’s Proper Nouns is an espresso shot of a record, featuring fourteen jaunty rock songs informed by classic guitar pop bands like Ted Leo and the Pharmacists and Game Theory as well as bandleader Spencer Compton’s left-wing political pontifications. Compton leads the rest of the power trio (bassist Jon Birkholz and drummer Joe Martin) both through motor-mouth rave-ups like “Terror by the Book” and dangerously catchy mid-tempo pop-rock cruisers like “Redeeming Qualities”. Compton has a lot to say—the hypocrisy and betrayal behind the heart of “Emma” require a lengthy explanation on its own—but it bears repeating that Proper Nouns remain devoted to pure pop throughout it all, even on stranger numbers like the mathy “Nowhereland”, totaling to a strong and promising debut.
42. Harmony Woods – Graceful Rage
Release date: March 12th Record label: Skeletal Lightning Genre: Emo, alt-rock, folk rock Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
The third album from Harmony Woods, the project of Philadelphia’s Sofia Verbilla, is an incredible-sounding record that takes a long, unflinching look at the aftermath of a traumatic relationship throughout its eight songs. Produced by Bartees Strange, Graceful Rage adorns Verbilla’s complicated, contemplative lyrics with flourishes of Kate Rears’ cello, Brian Turnmire’s horns, and a shiny exterior that alternatively builds everything up (like in the scene-setting opener “Good Luck Rd.”) or burns it all down (the pop-punk scorcher “God’s Gift to Women”, which is Verbilla’s hardest lean into the rage portion of Graceful Rage). After tackling difficult emotions for the entirety of Graceful Rage, Verbilla saves her most definitive statements for the album closer “I Can’t”; namely, “You will never hurt me again” and “I can’t forgive you”. Too well-polished to deny but too emotionally hard-hitting to take in casually—every pop songwriter wants to make an album like Graceful Rage, but very few have the courage to even try, much less put enough of themselves into it to make it work.
41. Nightshift – Zöe
Release date: February 26th Record label: Trouble in Mind Genre: Post-punk, no wave indie pop Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital
For their second album, Glasgow’s Nightshift have fashioned together an inviting collection of minimalist indie rock songs by taking a No New York-esque attitude to melodic, utilitarian pop structures that recall Young Marble Giants or Marine Girls. Zöe is an album where many instrumental and vocal parts come unadorned, placed front and center for the listener to take in, and Nightshift offer up hypnotically catchy guitar riffs and repetitive vocals hooks from opener “Piece Together” on out. Despite the amount of empty space on Zöe, there are plenty of inspired instrumental choices—the liberal clarinet that first appears on early highlight “Spray Paint the Bridge” for example, and later helps accent the spoken-word musings of “Make Kin”. The record ends up feeling both ethereal and grounded; it’s not afraid to assert itself as “art”, but it doesn’t hide what makes it worth appreciating either. (Read more)
40. The World Is a Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid to Die – Illusory Walls
Release date: October 8th Record label: Epitaph Genre: Post-rock, emo, math rock Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
Although Always Foreign is my favorite The World Is a Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid to Die album, I neither expected nor wanted the currently-five-piece emo band to pump out 11-song, 42-minute albums for however long they can stay together. Illusory Walls’ breadth does not disappoint; while it seems like that’s mainly “just” due to the two closing tracks at first, considering that “Infinite Josh” and “Fewer Afraid” make up an LP’s length together, that’s remarkable on its own. And the rest of Illusory Walls is heavy in its own way, too—much has been made (both positive and negative) of the band’s prog-metal turn on their fourth album. I like it, but even skeptics would do well to look beyond that and into David Bello’s vocals: his personal lyrics on the two quieter “Blank” tracks and, yes, the two colossal tracks at the end are some of his best yet.
39. Blunt Bangs – Proper Smoker
Release date: September 17th Record label: Ernest Jenning Record Co. Genre: Power pop, alt-rock Formats: Vinyl, digital
Reggie Youngblood made a name for himself in the 2000s Jacksonville post-punk revival band Black Kids. Christian “Smokey” DeRoeck was part of the early, freak-folk days of Woods and most recently surfaced in the Silver Jews-indebted alt-country band Little Gold. Together, the two make…Teenage Fanclub-esque power pop? That’s right–from the moment opening track “She’s Gone” busts out its descending-chord structure, melodic guitar solos, and breezy vocal harmonies, there’s no mistaking where Blunt Bangs’ head is at on Proper Smoker. Even though the band made it clear that they’re intentionally shooting for 90s jangly power pop, bits of their other music output seep through occasionally: a bit of DeRoeck’s country rock on his songs, some Superchunk-esque college rock that befits their adopted home of Athens, Georgia. But it’s always tuneful, and always a blast. (Read more)
38. Ross Ingram – Sell the Tape Machine
Release date: May 3th Record label: Hogar Genre: Folk-tronica Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
Ross Ingram is a producer and engineer at his own Brainville Recording Studio, where he partially recorded his first solo full-length, Sell the Tape Machine (as well as his band EEP’s Winter Skin, which appeared in Part Two of this list). It’s hard not to pick up on subtle sonic flourishes throughout the album and attribute it to his studio background. However, Sell the Tape Machine has a surprisingly songwriting-forward approach, with Ingram’s vocals and lyrics coming through crystal-clear at center stage. Lyrically, Sell the Tape Machine is all over the place, as Ingram maps his own internal ups and downs—his moments of confidence often feel fragile and tenuous, and his moments of despair are offset by tenderness a few lines later. What’s impressive about Sell the Tape Machine isn’t just that it’s “confessional” songwriting, but that Ingram builds something around this foundation that enhances the initiating emotions. (Read more)
37. Erin McKeown – Kiss Off Kiss
Release date: September 24th Record label: TVP Genre: Pop punk, folk rock, power pop, folk punk Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
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, 2021’s strongest offering to the genre of “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 no stone is left unturned: the passionless sexual experience of “Go Along / Get Along”, the immediate aftermath of a jilted hookup in “Today / Sex”, the “how’s your new one, by the way” finger-pointer of “Is / He Does / He”. Although there are a few slower tracks, Kiss Off Kiss isn’t a wallower—it drags triumph out of McKeown’s situation.
36. Cloud Nothings – The Shadow I Remember
Release date: February 26th Record label: Carpark Genre: Alt-rock, noise rock, power pop Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital
Even though its recording actually predates 2020’s Bandcamp-exclusive The Black Hole Understands, The Shadow I Remember has as much in common with that record’s shiny power pop than it does with that of the band’s last “proper” release, 2018’s pummeling Last Building Burning. Singles “Am I Something” and “Nothing Without You” may be a little rough around the edges, but they’re pop songs first and foremost, and “Nara” is downright gentle. Still, The Shadow I Remember never comes off as “easy listening”, and moments like the frantic verses of “Only Light” and the 90-second sprint of “It’s Love” lean into the “recorded by Steve Albini” of it all. After ten years and nearly as many great records, it’s heartening that Cloud Nothings show no signs of slowing down—in terms of album quality, at least.
35. Kitner – Shake the Spins
Release date: October 1st Record label: Relief Map Genre: Emo-indie-rock Formats: Vinyl, digital
If the phrase “Omaha indie music scene” means anything to you, then you are already primed to understand and appreciate Kitner’s style of emotional heartland indie rock. Songs like “Junebug” and “Orient Heights” will be familiar in the warmest and best way—Conor Maier, the lead singer of the Boston band, sounds the most like Conor Oberst’s warbling voice on these quiet-to-dramatic tracks. Like any good new emo band, though, Kitner look beyond just one “sound”—in addition to Bright Eyes, the band’s more rocking numbers recall everything from The Get-Up Kids (“Suddenly”) to Dinosaur Jr. and The Hold Steady (“Malden, MA”). Shake the Spins also sounds great—many of its songs rely on acoustic-to-full-band transitions and the dynamic shifts that come with it, and the band (plus engineer Ryan Stack) give these songs the readings they deserve. (Read more)
34. Cicala – Cicala
Release date: January 8th Record label: Acrobat Unstable Genre: Alt-country, “post-country” Formats: Digital
South Carolina’s Cicala make sharp alt-country-tinged indie rock that’s very up my alley, something I ascertained about eight seconds into the rootsy earnestness of opening track “Truck Stop”. Bandleader Quinn Cicala’s characters and narrators frequently find themselves alternating between driving somewhere and stopping at some kind of liminal space, making grand proclamations and life decisions somewhere in the turns, only to eventually come back to Earth, resolving that their denouement will come in the next few miles, or at the next rest stop. Cicala proves they can write a winning song in several guises—whether it’s the careening garage rock of “Red Rocks”, the mid-tempo farm emo of “Intervention”, or the world-weary “Will”. They label themselves as “post-country”—a movement I can get behind. (Read more)
33. Dinosaur Jr. – Sweep It into Space
Release date: April 23rd Record label: Jagjaguwar Genre: Indie rock, alt-rock Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
The new Dinosaur Jr. album sounds like the band decided to make a whole record out of the hooky alt-rock singles from their “reunion” albums (You know: “Over It”, “Tiny”, “Almost Ready” etc.), and while I’ve enjoyed some of the more “out there” moments from those recent albums, just throwing out a dozen classic Dinosaur Jr. pop songs elevates Sweep It into Space above most of their considerable discography. Five albums into what could’ve just been a nostalgia-fest, the second J. Mascis-Lou Barlow Dino Jr. run should be taken seriously as a force rivaling their initial time together. Although Mascis makes it sound like he could do songs like the acoustic-rocking “I Ran Away” and the bouncy “Hide Another Round” in his sleep, I don’t want to take his consistency for granted. Nor should Mascis’ songwriting distract from Barlow’s “Garden”, which might be the best song he’s has ever contributed to his most famous band.
32. John Murry – The Stars Are God’s Bullet Holes
Release date: June 25th Record label: Submarine Cat Genre: Folk rock, alt-rock, singer-songwriter Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
2017’s A Short History of Decay was one of my favorite records of that year, a sometimes darkly-humorous, sometimes just-plain-dark personal southern Gothic reckoning from the Mississippi-born, Ireland-based John Murry. The Stars Are God’s Bullet Holes is a bit rougher around the edges than A Short History of Decay, and it finds some freedom in that roughness. It’s still recognizably Murry, but songs like the fuzz-heavy title track and “Time and a Rifle” have almost a tossed-off, garage-rocking feel to them, likely at least partially due to legendary producer John Parish. Murry is still unmistakably the center of The Stars Are God’s Bullet Holes—Murry’s hope, or at the very least, a desire for a better future in which hope can thrive, hides beneath the album’s cloudy surface. As Murry affirms in a quite affecting cover of Duran Duran’s “Ordinary World”: “I will learn to survive”. (Read more)
31. Fust – Evil Joy
Release date: May 28th Record label: Dear Life Genre: Country-folk Formats: Cassette, CD,digital
The debut album from Durham, North Carolina’s Fust is a record of gentle, deliberate, and clear Americana/folk rock that evokes the work of troubadours like Richard Buckner and Bill Callahan. Fust bandleader Aaron Dowdy spins memorable songs out of little more than a wearily melodic vocal and relatively sparse instrumentation, which follow the album’s narrative tracing the emotional ups and downs of a deteriorating relationship. Song titles like “The Last Days”, “The Day That You Went Away”, and “When the Trial Ends” all nod to the album’s main throughline, and though the album is mostly in the past tense, Dowdy’s narrator is still reckoning with matters that don’t seem wholly resolved throughout Evil Joy. It’s not until Fust ride off into the wild blue yonder on album closer “Wyoming County” that Evil Joy finally gives us a hint of finality. (Read more)
30. Anika Pyle – Wild River
Release date: February 12th Record label: June/Quote Unquote Genre: Indie folk, synthpop, spoken word Formats: Vinyl, digital
Anika Pyle spent the majority of the 2010s fronting emo-tinged DIY punk bands Chumped and Katie Ellen. Her first record on her own, however, is not the “Anika Pyle solo album” that a casual Chumped or Katie Ellen listener might conjure up in their head. It’s a sparse album, built from minimal synths, quiet acoustic guitar, and Pyle’s words—which are as likely to be spoken as they are to be sung. Although this turn didn’t totally come out of nowhere, Wild River confronts the listener head-on with this dimension of Pyle’s songwriting, and she uses this new music vocabulary to command your full attention. Poetry pieces, heavy recurring themes, and an unflinching account of a very real loss make Wild River nothing short of active listening. This is not to say that individual songs from the album could never stand on their own, but the heft of tracks like “Orange Flowers” is sharply enhanced by Pyle’s contextualizing spoken words. (Read more)
29. Writhing Squares – Chart for the Solution
Release date: March 26th Record label: Trouble in Mind Genre: Space rock, psychedelic prog rock Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
If phrases like “space rock odyssey”, “modern prog rock double LP”, and “psychedelic saxophone” pique your interest, then Chart for the Solution is for you. The Philadelphia duo Writhing Squares earn all these descriptors, and more, over their latest 71-minute sprint of a record. Some of the more “out there” moments include the motorik opener “Rogue Moon” and the cosmic horror spoken word piece “The Library”, but Writhing Squares also trade in mirror-universe skewed pop songs like “Geisterwaltz” and “Ganymede”. The album’s brass instrumentation, post-punk aggression, cosmic aural assault, and unabashed recalling of King Crimson and other classic progressive rock bands all help to put Chart for the Solution on its own planet. (Read more).
28. John Sharkey III – Shoot Out the Cameras
Release date: March 5th Record label: 12XU/Mistletone Genre: Gothic country folk Formats: Vinyl, digital
If you’re familiar with the icy post-punk bombast of John Sharkey III’s current band Dark Blue, then you might be surprised to hear that his solo debut is a sparse, largely acoustic folk record. Sharkey’s voice, however, is as unmistakable and affecting as ever on Shoot Out the Cameras. Recorded after Sharkey relocated to Australia from his native Philadelphia, his rich baritone anchors an album inspired by the wildfires visible ambiently in the distance, discord in both his adopted home and birth nation, and the country music passed down to him at a young age from his mother and grandmother. The record takes the listener to morbid and harrowing extremes in songs like “Death Is All Around” and “Pain Dance”, but there’s a defiant hopefulness that rears its head throughout Shoot Out the Cameras. It’s a traditional, universal, elemental album that strikes new ground for Sharkey by unearthing the old. (Read more)
27. Lilly Hiatt – Lately
Release date: October 15th Record label: New West Genre: Alt-country, country rock Formats: Cassette, digital
Last March, right around the beginning of pandemic times, Lilly Hiatt released Walking Proof, which hinted at worlds beyond her (very solid) brand of alt-country, and was one of my favorite records of 2020. A year and a half later found Hiatt returning with a follow-up palpably shaped by the ensuing times. October’s Lately is a stripped-down, mid-tempo-heavy roots rock collection that finds Hiatt embracing an earned subtlety. The record’s mostly single-word titles (“Simple”, “Been”, “Stop”) further the humble feel of Lately—these songs began being written “as a means of keeping sane”, according to Hiatt. Like the album art suggests, Lately ends up being a snapshot of a tumultuous time, but the record’s grappling with confusion and with the emotional wildfire that is an isolated imagination will prevent Lately from ever feeling dated.
26. MJ Lenderman – Ghost of Your Guitar Solo
Release date: March 26th Record label: Dear Life Genre: Alt-country Formats: CD, cassette, digital
Asheville singer-songwriter Jake Lenderman plays in the dreamy indie rock band Wednesday (who released a solid album in its own right this year), but under his own name he’s made an album of lo-fi, offbeat country-punk that falls somewhere between David Berman’s more off-the-cuff moments and early Simon Joyner. Lenderman is an intriguing songwriter, finding fertile ground in the sight of Jack Nicholson sitting courtside at a Lakers game or the bizarre feeling of shame caused by seeing a friend or lover’s mother sleeping. Ghost of Your Guitar Solo is a short album (clocking in at around 25 minutes) and is anchored by two mostly-instrumental title tracks and a live version of one of the songs, which end up only enhancing the record’s ramshackle charm. Along with August’s Knockin’ EP, 2021 truly was Lenderman’s year. (Read more)
Rosy Overdrive 