Release date: April 2nd (digital), August 7th (physical) Record label: Comedy Minus One Genre: Indie goddamn rock Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull track: Since Grazed
Eleventh Dream Day have carried on. They spawned from the 1980s indie underground in the surprisingly fertile musical hotbed of Louisville, Kentucky. They survived the nineties and its alt-rock major label gold rush, coming away with a tale of bureaucratic incompetence and mismanagement to rival any other unfortunate band that got caught up in those indifferent gears. They’ve weathered the requisite lineup shifts (in the time between their most recent studio album and Since Grazed, one of those former members, Matthew “Wink” O’Bannon, passed on from this life). They confused fans by continuing to evolve their sound over a decade into their career, finding a home in the rich experimental music scene of their adopted hometown of Chicago. They influenced and were influenced by many of their Thrill Jockey labelmates, such as bassist Doug McCombs’ other band, Tortoise. In the 2010s, Eleventh Dream Day’s output slowed down but their new songs refused to slow down with it—in actuality, they roared as loudly as the records from the band’s heyday. Although their amps were too cranked up for them to slot comfortably into an “elder statesman” role, the band at least appeared to have settled into a lane. But then Since Grazed happened.
Since Grazed is a double album, clocking in at around an hour in length, which makes it Eleventh Dream Day’s longest record to date. One would assume that this means that they went even heavier on the Crazy Horse-style extended guitar freakouts this time around. But that’s not what makes up the bulk of Since Grazed. The opening title track doesn’t greet the listener with blasts of feedback, but rather the muted strumming of an acoustic guitar. Lead singer Rick Rizzo doesn’t even begin his vocals until over a minute into the track, and the song only starts to take shape when the first chorus arrives a minute later. At this point, finally, “Since Grazed” takes off with incredible vocal harmonies, echoing drums, and a triumphant lead vocal from Rizzo. It’s expansive, it’s dramatic, it’s both like nothing I’ve ever heard from Eleventh Dream Day and instantly one of their best songs ever. And it’s an early sign that I needed to throw out my pre-conceived notions of the band in order to properly take in this album.
Like the title track, the other giants of Since Grazed take a similar deliberate, skyscraping shape. “Just Got Home (In Time to Say Goodbye)”, the longest song on the album, is an immortal ballad that features haunting vocal harmonies from drummer Janet Bean and hints at a very deep well of emotion underneath its relatively simple instrumental and Rizzo’s lyrics. When Rizzo sings, “Guess that I just missed you, but it’s so much more than that”, he makes it sound like he has a thousand other things he wants to say but isn’t sure how. The appropriately regal-sounding “Tyrian Purple” does it one better, slowly building to a breathtaking climax of Rizzo declaring “I want to feel the power, bathed in moonlight” backed by the full strength of the entire band. “Take Care”, which opens up the album’s second record, similarly takes its entire length to unfurl. It’s notably undergirded by a sense of urgency that’s ushered along by a tick-tocking riff and brisk acoustic strumming—the creation of the atmosphere is so effective that I almost didn’t notice the lack of any percussion until it came crashing in nearly five minutes into the song.
The final two minutes of “Take Care” are one of the handful of moments where the band lets loose some semblance of the Eleventh Dream Day of old. Since Grazed’s other two “rockers” are “A Case to Carry On” and “Yves Klein Blues”. The titular message of the former song functions as a thesis statement for the whole album, while the latter is a joyfully short fuzz-romp that could’ve shown up on a number of past Eleventh Dream Day albums. But some of Since Grazed’s most effective moments are the biggest departures from this sound. “Look Out Below” is tucked away at the bottom of Side Three, but it’s sneakily one of the best songs on the album. A tender acoustic ballad, the song is enhanced by excellent backing vocals from Bean and what sounds like some studio wizardry from piano/synth player Mark Greenberg. Album closer “Every Time This Day It Rains” is, despite its six-minute length, a fairly straightforward mid-tempo song about the weather and watching sandhill cranes fly over a field, among other things.
“Every Time This Day It Rains” is, like most of Since Grazed, carefully crafted to evoke simple beauty. It almost feels like a photo negative of their hard-charging earlier material, in that it captures something primal just like Prairie School Freakout and Lived to Tell, but takes a completely different route to do so. It doesn’t sound like their “experimental” middle period, either—there are no Tortoise-esque post-rock interludes here. As stretched-out as some of these songs are, they’re all tightly-structured and composed. I can’t help but be reminded of Comedy Minus One labelmates and fellow Chicagoans Mint Mile’s recent double LP statement of their own, Ambertron. While there are clear differences between that record and this one, both of them are widescreen statements by artists who had been working towards them their entire musical careers, even if we (and they) didn’t realize it. 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.
New Pressing Concerns, just in time for Bandcamp Friday! Today I talk about new albums from Stoner Control, 7-11 Jesus, and Herzog, as well as a reissue of Snowhore’s debut EP. It’s a smaller edition this time around, but I wanted to spotlight these four under-the-radar releases for the big Bandcamp holiday rather than holding on to them and adding more later. Several of the “also notables” are albums that intrigue me and I reserve the right to write about later—normally I’d hold them back until then, but since I’ll probably take a week or two off before I do another full one of these, I wanted to mention them.
Also out today (4/2) is Eleventh Dream Day’s Since Grazed—which I will have more to say about early next week (hopefully). Check it out in the meantime. And as always, be sure to consult previous editions of Pressing Concerns for hours upon hours of good new music. Look for a March 2021 playlist post sometime in the next two weeks.
Stoner Control – Sparkle Endlessly
Release date: March 19th Record label: Sound Judgement Genre: Power pop, pop punk Formats: Digital Pull track: Sparkle Endlessly
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. Before the record runs its course, they’ve done variations on their open-minded blend of catchy power-pop-punk that skew breezy, caffeinated, wistful, snotty—all the songs have distinct personalities that make listening to Sparkle Endlessly in full just about as rewarding as you can get with this kind of music.
Either a testament to their individual skills or how well they all work together, there’s no weak link throughout Sparkle Endlessly, regardless of who’s on vocals or credited as penning the song. Greenspan’s carefree, aurally sunglasses-clad talk-singing in “Learning to Swim” is the record’s first “wow” moment, while every second of the title track is immaculately executed, from the “Flagpole Sitta”-aping opening to the literal aping in the chorus. The starry-eyed “Only” sounds like Nick Thorburn fronting a jangle pop band, and it pairs nicely with the earnest charms of the album’s next track, “Open Ocean”. “Elevator World” is the (hypothetical) side two highlight, which dethrones Fountains of Wayne’s “Elevator Up” for the title of best power pop elevator-based song the moment Williams stretches the “go” in the “You gotta let me know / You gotta let me go” chorus into multiple-syllable territory.
Williams’ vocals sound like the midpoint between Mo Troper (who co-produced and contributed some guitar to the album) and Doug Martsch of Built to Spill, and Sparkle Endlessly does take the smart pop sensibilities of the former and works them out in a tight band setting like the best moments of the latter. I’m thinking of songs like “The Best Thing”, which starts off simply with Williams singing and playing alone, but then morphs into a soaring alt-rock number in its second half. The record closes with “Ctrl-F”, a garage rocker that contains some of the album’s sharpest lyrics and works as a send-off despite not really sounding like any of the songs that came before it. But that’s the story with Stoner Control on Sparkle Endlessly, an album that never stops finding ways to impress for its entire runtime. (Bandcamp link)
7-11 Jesus – Tree Dream
Release date: February 12th Record label: Self-released Genre: Shoegaze, noise rock Formats: CD, cassette, digital Pull track: Tried So Hard
Tree Dream is the self-recorded and self-released second album by the San Francisco-based in-the-red fuzz rock trio 7-11 Jesus. The band’s guitarist and singer, August Darula, has a weary but still emotive voice that’s sure to garner J. Mascis comparisons—J’s band is a clear influence on 7-11 Jesus, whose members all originally hail from Boston. Nü-shoegaze-grunge bands like Ovlov also come to mind throughout Tree Dream (they have a song called “Where’s My Dimi”, I feel obligated to point out). However, other than some moments in the Dino Jr. pastiche “Kill Your Friends”, 7-11 Jesus doesn’t really soar like the revved-up sonic blast-offs that characterize those bands—Tree Dream prefers to lumber. Most of the album lodges itself firmly in mid-tempo territory, hammered into place by the pounding of drummer Kieran Gill. Lyrically it’s hard to tell what’s going on over the squall, but “Tried So Hard” and its message of futility (“Things that I do won’t add up to very much”) pop up again and again throughout the record, and “Talk Show Host” isn’t the only song where a talk show host pops up.
The record subsequently ends up with a dark, Pacific Northwest vibe despite its California origins. The lurching instrumentals, Darula’s Sisyphean laments while attempting the Sisyphean task of singing over the guitar and Emma Jacobson’s bass—it all contributes to a lost and confused feeling that permeates Tree Dream, like the album title, which to me conjures up wandering around in the forest with increasing franticness, thinking “have I passed that tree before?” The album’s last two songs are a nice pallet cleanser after the wall of noise—“Death of a Son” is an oddly eerie synth interlude, and “Time to Die” plays Tree Dream out with a clear ringing piano and acoustic guitar. They’re both certainly curveballs, but I like the choice—it’s almost a thank you note from 7-11 Jesus for cranking it up and circling the drain with them for the majority of Tree Dream. (Bandcamp link)
Herzog – Fiction Writer
Release date: March 19th Record label: Exit Stencil Genre: Power pop Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull track: Today’s the Day
Herzog have been making their fuzzy garage rock out of Cleveland, Ohio for a decade now, and an entire year of that decade has been spent slowly rolling out Fiction Writer—the band released one song a month, finally completing the 12-song record in March. I’m not sure if this had been their plan all along, or if it was an adaption to the havoc COVID wreaked upon the process of putting out music, but listening to all these songs in the same place has confirmed to me that they’re all very much of a piece with each other and form something greater than the sum of their parts. Fiction Writer is a frequently roaring but multi-layered collection of meta-rock anthems that find Herzog both playing with and taking literally the album’s title and how it relates to themselves as a band. And they have a blast playing along with it, too.
Lead singer Nick Tolar’s clear, affable voice combined with the band’s populist (“subtlety-free”) music reminds me of Boston’s Hallelujah the Hills, and like with that band’s last album, Herzog now seem more inclined to look in the mirror and self-reflect as they transition from being a new, young band to a longer-running institution. “Shadows” is about songwriter Tony Vorell’s time working at Cleveland’s Beachland Ballroom (and features an unexpected but welcome pedal steel guitar interlude courtesy of Stephen “Tebbs” Karney), while the title track and “If You’re Alone, You’re in Our Band” are both songs about being in bands and the strength Herzog take from this relationship, albeit in very different ways. They still indulge in the garage rock numbers that garnered them semi-accurate Cloud Nothings and Weezer comparisons back in the day (see “I’m Being Replaced” and “Money”), and “Wrong Way”’s instrumental is a pure classic rock pastiche, but all of these songs have a similar aging musician/songwriter narrator, and it’s hard not to take the retro feel of the latter in particular as a deliberate extra layer of subtext. However, you don’t really need to connect the dots to appreciate Fiction Writer and its impressive assortment of hooky pop songs that just happen to do all of the above. (Bandcamp link)
Snowhore – Everything Tastes Bad (Reissue)
Release date: March 29th Record label: Devil Town Tapes Genre: Bedroom pop, lo-fi indie rock Formats: Cassette, digital Pull track: Laughing Waters
Everything Tastes Bad, the debut EP from Philadelphia’s Snowhore, initially received a limited, Bandcamp-only release in 2018, but a recent cassette reissue from Devil Town Tapes will hopefully see these songs reach a wider audience. The band is led by Veronica Isley, who is backed for the majority of Everything Tastes Bad by bassist Katee Della Monica (from the Rosy Overdrive-approved No Thank You) and drummer Greg Mendez. Most of these songs hover around the two-minute mark, and if you blink you might miss the short but effective snapshots that characterize Isley’s lyrical style. “Bad Friend” is a slice of brutality from the self-described “sensitive with a capital ‘s’” Isley, and even the upbeat opener “Laughing Waters” has a nostalgic sadness to its summer childhood imagery. At least “Gwynnie” closes the original version of Everything Tastes Bad with its head held high. The new reissue of the album comes with the previously-unreleased tunes “Sad Song” and “Maybe When I’m Older” added to the end of the release. Both of these are sparse, acoustic numbers reminiscent of Waxahatchee’s American Weekend—particularly the latter song, which is built off a delicately played riff that mirrors its lyrical question mark. The intimacy of these bonus tracks is an appealing alternate look at Isley’s songwriting, although songs like “Field of Dreams” do show that Snowhore can translate this weight to a full-band setting, and perhaps hint at future heights for the band. (Bandcamp link)
Today in Pressing Concerns, I highlight new releases from Personal Space, MJ Lenderman, Mo Troper, Fake Fruit, Really From and Nineteen Thirteen. Also coming out today (March 26th) is Chart for the Solution by Writhing Squares, an album that I wrote about earlier this week. For even more new music, be sure to check out previous editions of Pressing Concerns. I’m not sure when the next blog post will be, or what it will be–I do have a few albums earmarked to highlight in the coming weeks, and it’s about time for a new playlist too.
Personal Space – A Lifetime of Leisure
Release date: March 19th Record label: Good Eye Genre: Indie pop, chill math rock Formats: Digital Pull track: North Fork Wine
Brooklyn’s Personal Space ask more of the listener than your average chill indie guitar rock band—on A Lifetime of Leisure, they have quite a lot to say. The album’s ten tracks are populated with character sketches that look at various archetypes through the band’s leftist activist lens. Some of these are obvious—the chapeau-clad narrator of “Thinking Man” is a clear take on rise-and-grind Silicone Valley true believers, while it takes a bit of inferring to connect the (incredibly earworm-y) chorus of “North Fork Wine” to the failures of liberalism to which the song’s verses refer. “Ethical” media consumption, choices of wine, biting a Greek philosopher’s style—there’s nothing Personal Space can’t and won’t put under their analytical microscope. Even when the band gets more personal, it’s couched in similar language. “Overture” manages to be affecting and relatable in its portrayal of romantic uncertainty despite its talk of “standard issue reservations”, various European tourist destinations, and of course the titular transactional way of describing human connection.
Although I can’t really test this, I don’t think you need to fall on the same axes as Personal Space to enjoy A Lifetime of Leisure—if you aren’t paying attention to the lyrics, they’re just another ingredient in their oddly soothing brand of indie rock. Musically, the album is made up of languid pop songs that don’t neatly fall into jangle pop, psych-pop, or math rock boxes. I called The Shins “chill XTC” in a different post on this site, and I like that label here too—they have a new wave sensibility but without the nerviness of that band or, say, a Dismemberment Plan. The similarly-tough-to-pigeonhole Pinback also merits a mention. Ian MacKaye and G.W. Sok have their places in music, you know, but decades of bands raging against machines and the continuing death of the myth of “apolitical” culture have opened up new ground for Personal Space to explore on the same lyrical subjects.
That is to say, despite its critical analysis-bait lyrics, A Lifetime of Leisure is less “exhausting” and more “commiseration and comfort for the exhausted”. Is the conservative cultural echo chamber featured in “Dad USA” worth seething over? Sure, and Personal Space give the song a little more bite than the rest, but they never give into the anger at the expense of completing the image. Has the flattening of the curve of time perpetrated by how we engage with social media caused societal ripple effects with which we haven’t adequately grappled? Sure, but like “A Document of Every Occasion” describes, sometimes we can’t really do anything about it, other than just kind of dissociate into whatever years-old memory is served up to us on a silver platter. It’s chill, man. I’m supine. (Bandcamp link)
MJ Lenderman – Ghost of Your Guitar Solo
Release date: March 26th Record label: Dear Life Genre: Alt-country Formats: CD, cassette, digital Pull track: Someone Get the Grill Out of the Rain
Asheville singer-songwriter Jake Lenderman plays in the dreamy indie rock band Wednesday, but under his own name he’s made an album of lo-fi, offbeat country-punk that falls somewhere between David Berman (a noted lyrical influence) and early Simon Joyner (particularly in the voice cracking of “Catholic Priest” and the singsong melody of “Gentleman’s Jack”). 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. Some of these songs come off as sketches, like the 70-second “Someone Get the Grill Out of the Rain”, which quickly presents its idea and doesn’t overstay its welcome, preferring to fly by like a twangy Guided by Voices or Magnetic Fields album track. Still, Lenderman gets out the line “Precious memories are the ones that suck” before the song ends—he’s not playing around.
Ghost of Your Guitar Solo is a short album, 25 minutes and anchored by two mostly-instrumental title tracks and a live version of one of the songs, but none of these potential padders really come off as filler. The first “Ghost of Your Guitar Solo” is a five-minute album opener that’s a bit of a red herring for the rest of the record but certainly lives up to its name, while the alternate version of “Gentleman’s Jack” offers up a livelier take on one of the album’s strongest moments. The second “Ghost of Your Guitar Solo” is really the only song here I could’ve done without, and even that one works as an interlude between the last track (the beautiful, groggily confused “Catholic Priest”) and the rest of the album. Perhaps Lenderman embraced brevity with Ghost of Your Guitar Solo as a change of pace after the last album released solely under his name, a 2019 self-titled record, clocked in at over an hour. The quality of these songs, however, leaves me wanting more and hoping we hear more from Lenderman soon. (Bandcamp link)
Mo Troper – Revolver
Release date: March 12th Record label: Self-released Genre: The Beatles Formats: Digital Pull track: Got to Get You into My Life
First of all, it was incredibly thoughtful of Mo Troper to choose my favorite Beatles album to cover in its entirety. As tempting as it would be to hear him plow through the White Album, instead we get to hear him tackle Revolver: the album that’s all hits, no misses. Well, except for “Yellow Submarine”. And the lyrics of “Taxman”, I guess. Anyway, the flipside is because Troper covered this album, and because his version of it is very good, now I have to figure out something new to say about the goddamn Beatles, or at least about their songs—so here goes. Revolver is a fit for Troper’s style in that it’s a collection of unmoored-from-time guitar pop songs that could’ve reasonably came from any decade of the post-rock-and-roll era. Where they differ, however, is in that Revolver is a foundational psychedelic rock document, whereas I’ve never really contemplated doing any hard drugs to Troper’s comparatively grounded music. And while there have been horns on his records before (“Dictator Out of Work” is a personal favorite), that still didn’t explain how he was going to tackle some of the album’s more baroque material on his own. So, how he approached the psychedelic and orchestral songs was what I was most curious about upon entry.
The droning sitars of “Love You To” and “Tomorrow Never Knows” become layered guitar workouts—they both end up sounding close to the non-album Beatles tune “Rain”, which Troper includes here as a bonus track. For the symphonic songs, “Eleanor Rigby” is played entirely on keyboard, while he goes the other way on “Got to Get You into My Life”, ending up with an even busier sound than the original. I do appreciate Troper’s innovations, and it’s also a treat to hear his versions of songs already firmly in his wheelhouse, like “I’m Only Sleeping” and “And Your Bird Can Sing”. However, my favorite moments on Mo Troper’s Revolver Presented by Mo Troper fall somewhere in between, like when he soars into the chorus of the aforementioned “Got to Get You Into My Life”, or his supremely fuzzed-out but otherwise mostly faithful take on “She Said She Said”. The album closes with a reverent but distinctly Troper version of “Rain”, which despite not appearing on the original Revolver is, to me, the album in a nutshell—Troper could have tried to stick to the Beatles versions as much as possible or made everything sound exactly like a Natural Beauty outtake, but he’s too fond of these songs to be content with either narrow view.
Also, all proceeds from this album are being donated to Defense Fund PDX and Austin Mutual Aid. (Bandcamp link)
Fake Fruit – Fake Fruit
Release date: March 5th Record label: Rocks in Your Head Genre: Post-punk Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull track: Old Skin
Oakland-based four-piece band Fake Fruit offer up an economical version of post-punk on their self-titled debut album. They cite Pink Flag-era Wire and Pylon as influences, and musically they capture the same wobbly punk sensibilities as those bands, as well as the newest generation of acts drawing from that well (“Milkman”’s vocal chant and tight groove could be the foundation of a Parquet Courts song). That’s all well and good, but where they really set themselves apart is in frontwoman Hannah D’Amato’s lead vocals and lyrical interjections. She has no problem twisting and contorting her words to fit the music, trading in repetition and wringing the most out of a line via changes in inflection, but she still manages to pack a load of meaning into the lyrics that remain. “Lying Legal Horror Lawyers” gleefully begins with D’Amato shouting “Let’s talk about men’s rights! Let’s talk about their plight!” and the titular phrase. It’s not a linear narrative, but it’s evocative and it’s not hard to figure out where D’Amato’s mind is at from there. Likewise, the eventual refrain “I stuck my neck out for you, I did / It was a swing and a miss” from “Swing and a Miss” tells you more about what’s going on in a pair of sentences than most lyricists would give you in a full-length song. Fake Fruit is at their best when the band serves up appropriately punchy music for D’Amato to do her thing over, like the 60-second runaway train of “Old Skin” and the kiss-off “Don’t Put It on Me”. (Bandcamp link)
Really From – Really From
Release date: March 12th Record label: Topshelf Genre: Emo-jazz, math rock Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital Pull track: Quirk
With their third, self-titled album, Boston’s Really From take a musical turn towards the expansive, opening up their unique blend of jazz, emo, and math rock in new ways but never letting this get in the way of their most cutting and focused lyrics to date. In the record’s first trio of songs, we get both the down-stroked alt-rock verses of “Yellow Fever” and the ambient floating of “Apartment Song”, but the mood-setting of the former and the punchiness of the latter both make sense in context. “Yellow Fever” in particular benefits from the dexterity, with co-lead vocalist Michi Tassey grappling with the anger and hurt with being fetishized as an Asian woman in the verses, only for Really From and Tassey to both take a step back in the chorus and reflect on the broader questions these experiences pose. Really From grapples with identity throughout its length—prominently in “Try Lingual”, which is about attempting to learn to speak the language one’s parents grew up speaking, and in other vocalist Chris Lee-Rodriguez’s harrowing acoustic closer “The House”, which is unflinching in its portrayal of familial racial dynamics growing up in a half-Puerto Rican and half-Chinese household.
Really From is about moments as much as anything else. It’s about when the freewheeling, jazzy body of “Quirk” gives way to Chris Lee-Rodriguez’s stark proclamation that “Your father did this, your mother did too / The fault’s not on them” with minimal musical accompaniment, or when Tassey hands the lead vocals over to Lee-Rodriguez right before the second and somehow even more powerful climax of “I’m From Here”. A band putting together something this musically adventurous always runs the risk of getting lost in the weeds, which would be a shame here given what’s going on underneath in Really From. Moments like those, however, showcase just how potent this band can be when it all comes together—and come together they do. (Bandcamp link)
Nineteen Thirteen – MCMXIII
Release date: February 26th Record label: Self-released Genre: Hard rock, noise rock Formats: CD, digital Pull track: Post Blue Collar Blues
Dayton, Ohio’s Nineteen Thirteen make dramatic heavy rock music that comes fully-formed on their debut EP, MCMXIII. Even though they employ traditional guitar-bass-drums instrumentation, their stated influences of Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Western film soundtracks are reflected in the sprawling song lengths and conceptual turn-of-the-century industrial class themes that tie the record’s four songs together. Both the band’s name and the title of the EP refer to the year of the Great Dayton Flood, and the immediate and prolonged aftermath of this natural disaster is where vocalist Brett Hill finds fertile writing ground. In album thesis statement “Post Blue Collar Blues”, the band surveys a mid-American wasteland, Hill growling “Oh, we’re a damnable lot / Raised in abandoned factory plots” over a doomy stomp. The clouds don’t part after that, with Nineteen Thirteen then serving up the nine-minute World War I horror story “Dog Fight”, and “Old Face on the Wall” looks inward to no less ominous of a result. Though a new group, the members of Nineteen Thirteen have cut their teeth in various heavy metal and hard rock bands for multiple decades at this point, and it shows on MCMXIII. The EP (which, at 26 minutes, is longer than the MJ Lenderman album from earlier in the list) confidentially offers up crushing riffs, eerie atmospheres, and exhilarating build-ups, often right next to each other. (Bandcamp link)
Release date: March 26th Record label: Trouble in Mind Genre: Space rock, psychedelic prog rock Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital Pull track: Geisterwaltz
If phrases like “space rock odyssey”, “modern prog rock double LP”, and “psychedelic saxophone” pique your interest, then this Pressing Concerns is for you. Chart for the Solution earns all these descriptors, and more, over its 71-minute interstellar voyage. Writhing Squares seem to be aware that, if they’re going to lay down an album that shoots for the moon (so to speak), then they’d better come prepared with a capable toolbox. That’s no problem for the Philadelphia duo, made up of Daniel Provenzan (vocals, bass, and percussion) and Kevin Nickles (vocals and all the other instruments, more or less), who have plenty of tricks up their collective sleeves. Chart for the Solution is a sonic battlefield of saxophones, clarinets, synth blasts, flutes, harmonica, and roaring vocals that doesn’t stop its turrets from firing for nearly the entirety of its two records.
We’re thrown right in the thick of it from the very beginning of the album. Opener “Rogue Moon” is, in its first half, a motorik welcoming into Chart for the Solution’s terror-dome that then resolves into ambient weightlessness for the second part of its 11-minute runtime. After that, we get into what I think of as the “otherworldly hit singles” portion of the album. “Geisterwaltz” has saxophone squalls punctuating a memorably psychedelic swirling riff. The brass on “Ganymede” is a bit friendlier—is there an E Street on any of the moons of Jupiter?—but its breakneck tempo and growling vocals turn it into a rather aggressive dancefloor number. “The Abyss Is Never Brighter” speeds by in under three minutes, led by distorted bass playing from Provenzano and a flute-based assault from Nickles. The latter theatrically savors the titular line and the rest of the song’s refrain, which sets up the album’s theme of apocalyptic concern—or, perhaps, a lack of concern.
Chart for the Solution is an album that probes the outer reaches, and it doesn’t flinch from giving the bad news to us mere mortals. “The Library” isn’t musically divergent from the songs before it, but it stands alone as a spoken word piece, with a narrator that sounds like some sort of cosmic horror nature documentarian. Under a tick-tocking rhythm section, he emotionlessly imparts “I suspect that the human species is about to be extinguished, but the Library will endure” (The “library” here is the Universe; like any good prog album, you have to learn some new terminology). “NFU” is on its surface pretty similar to the bite-sized warped garage-psych nuggets of the album’s first side, but Dan Balcer’s piercing harmonica helps the instrumental bubble over into one of the most overwhelming, cacophonic moments on Chart for the Solution. And then there’s “The Pillars”.
Like “Rogue Moon” before it, “The Pillars” uses synths to build towards its epic length, and like the opening track, it also devolves into formlessness in its second half. However, while “Rogue Moon” is frantic from the get-go, the 19-minute “Pillars” takes its sweet time getting there. Despite its absurd length (it apparently takes up all of the physical album’s Side Three), it’s one of the musically simpler songs on Chart for the Solution, letting the synths do most of the work. This opens up room for some of the most memorable vocal moments on the album. “The Earth was destined for fire! Salvation: a funeral pyre!” bellows Nickels from the middle of the brimstone fury, before the dread-inducing industrial soundtrack of the song’s second half kicks in.
The album ends with an eight-minute victory lap instrumental “Epilogue”, giving the listener time to reflect on what, exactly, they just went through. Making a direct comparison for where Writhing Squares have landed (or, not landed at all) with Chart for the Solution is pretty tricky. The most obvious one is classic progressive rock like King Crimson, but there’s also a post-punk aggression that for myriad reasons you just don’t usually hear on albums like this. Bands like Upper Wilds might have the same cosmic aural assault, Trouble in Mind labelmates Sunwatchers similarly pull brass and other jazz sensibilities into this kind of rock music, and the Terry Gross album from earlier this year operates in the same lofty stratosphere of ten-plus minute song lengths. But all of this rolled into one package? Writhing Squares are on their own planet. (Bandcamp link)
Pressing Concerns is back! This post caps off a busy week for Rosy Overdrive–I reviewed a playlist I originally made in 2019 on Monday, and on Wednesday I reviewed Shoot Out the Speed Cameras by John Sharkey III, which was initially slated to be included here before it became apparent that I was going too long on it. Three posts in one week! That probably won’t happen again anytime soon. Anyway, today I’m rounding up new albums by Gaadge, Mal Devisa, Russel the Leaf, and The Death of Pop, as well as new EPs by Friendship’s Dan Wriggins and En Garde.
Be sure to check out previous editions of Pressing Concerns for more new music. Consider this the first of a two-parter that will conclude around a week from now, when I’ll talk about a couple albums coming out on March 26th plus a handful of releases I didn’t end up having room for here.
Gaadge – Yeah?
Release date: March 19th Record label: Crafted Sounds Genre: Shoegaze, noise pop Formats: Cassette, CD, digital Pull track: Creeping Weeks
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania’s Gaadge are a swirly rock band that started as the project of Mitch DeLong, but has since evolved into a full-band effort. Their debut album, Yeah?, finds Gaage carefully crafting a wall of sound, only to kick it back down throughout the record. Their reverb-heavy sound nods to, among others, the revved-up hard-shoegaze of Ovlov and Swervedriver, the chaotic noise pop of The Spirit of the Beehive, and the tender lo-fi melodies of Guided by Voices and Alex G—often in the same song. The first (full-length) song “Creeping Weeks” starts with a dreamy intro and doesn’t transition to the mid-tempo rocker it eventually becomes until nearly two minutes into the track. They continue similarly with the relative restraint of “All You Can Absorb”, but then throw in “Do What Now”, which finds the band furiously playing over DeLong’s intoned vocals and landing somewhere pretty close to a punked-up My Bloody Valentine.
There is a tradition of grandiosity among this kind of deeply-layered, sensory-overload music, and Gaadge dip their toe into that with the six-minute psychedelic rock odyssey of “Thrill”, which doesn’t reinvent their sound so much as expand on it. As if a little nervous at their audacity, they bookend the song with two sub-two-minute breather songs written by bassist Nick Boston. It’s an odd choice, but both of them are actually pretty good in their own right, particularly “Murphy’s Law”, which starts off as one Yeah?’s more subdued moments until the band lets loose in the second half. The true “breathers” on the album might actually be the straightforward alt-rock of “Flipping Shit” and “Holy Formers”—songs that still work without (or, at least, with less of) the bells and whistles of some of Yeah?’s busier moments. All in all, I’m left with a strong first impression of Gaadge—they’re a band that’s already nailed a particular sound, but DeLong and company give the songs a solid foundation underneath and hint at a duality they could explore in the future. (Bandcamp link)
Dan Wriggins – Mr. Chill
Release date: March 12th Record label: Orindal Genre: Alt-country Formats: Cassette, digital Pull track: Mr. Chill
Dan Wriggins has gained modest notoriety as the lead singer for the Philadelphia “ambient country” group Friendship, who have made three strong albums over the past half-decade. The five-song Mr. Chill EP is Wriggins’ first solo release, and it’s drawn from the same recording sessions as his single “Dent / The Diner” earlier this year. Mr. Chill is not too far from his work with Friendship—that is, it continues the minimalist twang the band explored on 2019’s Dreamin’, and Wriggins’ distinctive warble is as front and center as ever. If anything, the EP is even sparser than his band. There’s no bass on the record, which means a good portion of Mr. Chill is filled out instrumentally by only Wriggins’ acoustic guitar and fellow Friendship member Michael Cormier’s steady drumming, with occasional organ and piano stabs, also by Wriggins.
“All Things Being Equal” is a classic Friendship-style number, with Wriggins stretching out his vocals for emotion and ample use of empty space to let the words hang out in the open. “Season” is even better, treading into darker territory and opting for “cold” rather than “chill”. Wriggins’ writing is as strong as it’s ever been, turning out several memorable lines over the EP’s 17 minutes. “I can tell you stuff I can’t tell anyone else / Because you don’t threaten to help” from the title track cuts like a knife, and “Everything’s a clue to a green detective” is a hell of a thesis from “Yellow Bricks”. The best example, however, is in “Lucinda on June Bug”. That’s Lucinda Williams—Wriggins explains that the titular phrase is meant to be read in “the way an egghead might say ‘Tolstoy on morality’ or something”. It’s a roundabout way to write about taking comfort in one’s favorite records in a personal rough patch (“Prince on crying doves” also gets a mention). The song then sums everything up with a take on a famous George Bush quote (“Read my salty lips: no new love”), and if that’s not an indication of the quality of songcraft here, I’m not sure what is. (Bandcamp link)
En Garde – Debtors
Release date: March 19th Record label: Count Your Lucky Stars Genre: Post-hardcore, emo, math rock Formats: Cassette, digital Pull track: Our Hands
I’ve talked about some stuff in Pressing Concerns that could be described as “emo-tinged”, and some albums that flirted with post-hardcore, but I’ve yet to dive in too deeply until Debtors. But by the midpoint of this five-song EP, when I got to the zippy math rock riff, tasteful screams, and stomping chorus of “Self Poortraits”, I was more than ready. The debut release from Akron, Ohio’s En Garde, a duo made up of vocalist/guitarist Ross Horvath and drummer Andy Hendricks, is nearly ten years in the making, having been tracked by Hop Along/Algernon Cadwallader’s Joe Reinhart in Philadelphia in 2012. Despite the long gestation period, Debtors thankfully does not sound too over-worked or labored-over. This isn’t to say the EP is slight or lightweight, either—just that En Garde stays remarkably consistent over the record’s five songs, making any chaff hard to identify.
There is a sort of biblical drama to the lyrics and feeling of Debtors that evokes cult heroes mewithoutYou, among others—titling your song “Cri de Coœur” and playing with that scorched-earth style will even give a lyric like “Boy scouts have never seen a knot like the one I have in my stomach” some serious heft. En Garde establish a few other recurring motifs throughout the EP—closing track “Tightropes” takes the math rock hints of “Self Poortraits” and stretches them out for the full length of the song, while both “Self Poortraits” and “Edentulism” feature odd, left-field, brief but remarkable instrumental breaks. It gives the whole thing the vibe of two collaborators throwing ideas at each other and creating something unique and lively, so it surprised me to learn it was Horvath and Hendricks’ first time working together. (Bandcamp link)
Mal Devisa – Wisdom Teeth
Release date: March 2nd Record label: MalDevisaArt Genre: Alt-soul-rock, hip-hop (among others) Formats: Digital Pull track: JD’s tune/The Spring
Wisdom Teeth arrived early this month with little fanfare, which seems to be Mal Devisa’s modus operandi at the moment. However, “little fanfare” doesn’t apply to the music within at all—there’s a bit of everything here. While Devisa is no stranger to genre-hopping (I’m thinking of “Raised in the Pit” and “You Are My Sunshine” coexisting on 2018’s Shade and the Little Creature), Wisdom Teeth is a particularly dynamic album, with forays into roaring rock, soul, hip-hop, synthpop, and jazz. Album opener “JD’s tune/The Spring” is a breathtaking dramatic guitar workout that recalls Double Double Whammy-era Mitski. Right after that, however, we get “Round Midnight/Pack for Free”, a noise pop song led by a simple, piercing riff as Devisa’s vocals fight for equal weight (“One ear doesn’t work. First attempt at Recording myself” reads the song’s Bandcamp description).
The road keeps twisting from there. “Melanin Like Sunrise” makes a musical reference that most readers of this blog will recognize and combines it with lo-fi beats and a verse by Amherst rapper Kyalo, and then Devisa herself spits in “Old Intro”. The jittery groove of “The Room Is Spinning/Rough” is hypnotic, and shockingly doesn’t even get to the main hook until around the song’s final minute. The strongest point of the album is a three track run in its second half, starting with the bass-and-keys soul number “Dangerous” and continuing into a straight cover of the jazz standard “You Go to My Head”. The third of the three, the triumphant “Skyline Arms/Reach Out”, with its lifting keys and some of Devisa’s best vocal work, would be an obvious closing song. Devisa doesn’t make it so easy, however, instead ending Wisdom Teeth with the ruminative, minimal bass-driven “I Could Tell” followed by eight minutes of a drum machine loop. It’s not an album that’s willing to slot itself neatly into one category, but Wisdom Teeth will give you a lot to enjoy over its runtime. (Bandcamp link)
Russel the Leaf – Then You’re Gunna Wanna
Release date: February 26th Record label: Self-released Genre: Psychedelic pop, power pop Formats: Cassette, digital Pull track: Classic Like King Kong
I have to touch on a couple things on Then You’re Gunna Wanna that lifted Philadelphia’s Russel the Leaf out of the “bands I’ve sort of heard of” pile straight onto this list. The first is sole member Evan M. Marré’s high, ageless voice, which reminds me of Michael Doherty from Another Michael, or Chris Farren. It’s not particularly en vogue to sing like this (unfortunately for me), but it works very well with the kind of music that’s featured on Then You’re Gunna Wanna, which brings me to point two. Marré is a producer, you see, and has accrued several personally eye-catching credits, including albums from the just-mentioned Another Michael and the mentioned-earlier-in-this-post Friendship. As Russel the Leaf, Marré trades in the type of busily beautiful baroque pop that’s frequently associated with producer-musician studio rats. Brian Wilson is an unabashed influence throughout Then You’re Gunna Wanna, and several of the songs also sound like they could’ve come out of a pissing match between Andy Partridge and Todd Rundgren. Marré 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. As strong an opener as “Sailin’ Away” is, Marré has the tunes to keep Then You’re Gunna Wanna from being top-heavy, with the pure pop of “Hey! (It’s Alright)” and “Classic Like King Kong”, the confident spooling out of “’Til I Hit the Ground”, and the two-minutes bag-of-tricks indulgence that is “California” highlighting the rest of the record. Like the best albums in this vein, Then You’re Gunna Wanna has grown on me significantly since I first heard it, and as of press time it’s still rising. (Bandcamp link)
The Death of Pop – Seconds
Release date: March 19th Record label: Hidden Bay/Discos De Kirlian Genre: Indie pop, psychedelic pop Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital Pull track: Fade Away
The Death of Pop, a London duo made up of brothers Oliver and Angus James, filter several decades’ worth of psychedelic music through their own lens on their latest album, Seconds. The record falls somewhere between a softer version of nü-shoegaze acts like Gleemer and post-Animal Collective 2010s hypnagogic dream pop, with similar shades of the Beach Boys and Emitt Rhodes. The Cleaners from Venus also appear to be a big influence, which, given how frequently I cite them in these Pressing Concerns pieces, seems to be a good move for bands who’d like to be covered on Rosy Overdrive. Where they differ is in songwriting—the Jameses don’t attempt to ape Martin Newell’s rural English pastoral vibes, instead using similar instrumentation to conjure up a busy, modern late-night-metropolitan feeling.
“Fade Away” sets the stage immediately with sparkling jangly guitar, lilting synths, and copious amounts of reverb. It’s chill, it’s easygoing, not afraid of the dreaded “soft rock” label, and you could easily slip some saxophone into it—and The Death of Pop do, seamlessly, on the album’s title track. “Once Good” sticks out among the album’s second half—here, The Death of Pop ask for your attention just a little more forcefully, with its self-conscious dance pop hook and its simple, effective lyrical plea. And if you like that, “Ready for Us” does it all again nearly as effectively. Not to let us be too content, Seconds does throw as a curveball towards the end—“First Day of Six” sports a driving tempo and fast, syncopated guitar playing unlike anything else on the album, but dressed in the same production as the rest of the record, it doesn’t come off as out of place. While the album might not convert any skeptics to this kind of music, the true believers could do far worse than the tightly-constructed and very well-executed Seconds. (Bandcamp link)
Release date: March 5th Record label: 12XU/Mistletone Genre: Gothic country folk Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull track: I Found Everyone This Way
Apparently it’s John Sharkey III Week at Rosy Overdrive—one of his bands, Dark Blue, was featured on a playlist post that went up Monday, and now I’m getting around to talking about Shoot Out the Cameras, the first album he’s made under his own name. If you’re familiar with Dark Blue’s full post-punk bombast (or, God forbid, his other band Clockcleaner’s noise-punk), then you might be surprised to hear that Shoot Out the Cameras is a sparse, largely acoustic folk record. Sharkey’s voice, however, is as unmistakable and affecting as ever. 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.
Like the bushfires in the hills outside his home in Canberra, Shoot Out the Cameras smolders. When Sharkey sings “Death is all around me, and I’m fine”, he’s making an observation over anything else—it lands like there’s no value placed on it one way or another. The headiness continues with the album’s twin seven-minute centerpieces, “Shooting Out the Speed Cameras” and “Pain Dance”. The former, with its droning feedback and Sharkey’s deliberate, chant-like vocals, is the album’s dizzying, harrowing peak, evoking the boiling dread caused by constant surveillance. The latter brings Shoot Out the Cameras down to Earth a bit with Sharkey’s return to melodic delivery and pretty acoustic guitar, but it still finds time for Crazy Horse-style soloing along the way.
I don’t want to overstate how dour Shoot Out the Cameras is. Yes, it does pull out of its difficult middle section with another song about death, but “You Don’t Have to Leave Me Flowers” comes off reassuring in its titular request. Likewise, the bombs dropping in “Tell Me Tell Me” don’t get in the way of the song’s tender balladry, and the under-the-moonlight, pre-rock-and-roll feel of “Picking Roses” isn’t hindered by the cemetery imagery and references to “crimson dunes”. In fact, the hopefulness that runs through Shoot Out the Cameras isn’t in spite of its subject matter, but rather because of how Sharkey approaches it. As dispassionate as he is when he actually sings “Death is all around me, and I’m fine”, it’s not hard to read the sentiment as both defiant and calming throughout the record.
The latter reading is how the album drifts off, with the closing “Show Me the Way Through the Valley”, and it’s a testament to Shoot Out the Cameras that when Mary Lattimore’s harp shows up in the song, the instrument feels right at home. As strong as Sharkey’s voice is on most of the album, here he opts for a near-whisper as he ties together images and thoughts from across the record—the land in ruins, life growing cold, fleeting, shallow human emotions in response to all of it. Like the sepia tones of “Picking Roses”, it’s no accident that Sharkey ends the journey in the metaphorical valley that so many gospel-tinged folk and country songs before it have evoked. This is the key for placing Shoot Out the Cameras in the context of Sharkey’s body of work. It’s a traditional, universal, elemental album that strikes new ground for Sharkey by unearthing the old. (Bandcamp link)
I’m in between new music posts at the moment now, so I thought I’d use this downtiming to dip back into my playlist archive and talk about some music I otherwise wouldn’t get to today. This time, I’ve chosen one from roughly two years ago: March 2019. I even looked up some fun facts for the occasion: The Lori Loughlin scandal broke that month, Beto O’Rourke announced he was running for president, Billie Eilish released her first album, and Dick Dale, Nipsey Hussle, and Scott Walker all passed away. I don’t think there was a global pandemic that month but my memory’s pretty foggy on that.
The majority of songs from this playlist comes from one of two camps: new stuff from the first couple months of 2019 (there’s nothing from 2018 here at all, I’d already left that year in the dust) and albums that were new to me from 1994, which I’d chosen to be my “anniversary year” (25th) for the first part of 2019. I think I must’ve made it at the beginning of the month, because most of the new music is from February. State Champion, Dark Blue, Spielbergs, Killdozer, Xiu Xiu, Swervedriver, Flesh Lights, and Lambchop are this playlist’s double dippers.
Next time I do one of these, I will go further back. We’re talking 2015, 2016. I got cold feet this time because…well, all will be explained in the future. Before that, though, I want to cover some new, fresh music, so look for some album reviews before the end of this month.
“Sunbathing I”, State Champion From Fantasy Error (2015, Sophomore Lounge)
I have been known to outsource the incredibly important task of starting and ending a playlist to others before—here I have bookended the list with both of State Champion’s “Sunbathing” songs from the start and finish of 2015’s Fantasy Error. Picking a favorite State Champion album would be like choosing a favorite child (actually even harder than that one, which is my cat) but this song and its cousin go a long way towards helping Fantasy Error’s case. The final minute (“Wondering where you tanlines led tonight/And are you gonna color them in this time?”) is where the goosebumps are.
“Waterford Crystals”, Dark Blue From Victory Is Rated (2019, 12XU)
Oh, I’m happy to get to talk about Dark Blue a bit here, who released one of my favorite albums of 2019 with Victory Is Rated. I’m not entirely sure how to describe their sound—maybe “Britpop-informed Philadelphia post-punk” would put us somewhere in the ballpark, although I certainly am not happy with it. How about this: “Waterford Crystals” sounds like what one might expect a song called “Waterford Crystals” to sound like: intricate yet expansive, towering and glacial, totally overwhelming. Lead singer John Sharkey III’s baritone gives the song even more class, but there’s still a certain darker edge to “Waterford Crystals” that I can’t quite pinpoint.
“Distant Star”, Spielbergs From This Is Not the End (2019, By the Time It Gets Dark)
Norway’s Spielbergs burst onto the scene (well, my personal scene) around this time with the really exciting This Is Not the End, which I thoroughly enjoyed, but I kind of lost track of them after that. Looks like they made an EP in late 2019, I think I listened to it once or twice and it didn’t stick with me the same way. Perhaps I should go back to it. “Distant Star”, though, is just a perfectly executed indie rock-punk intersection—I still regularly catch the chorus in my head, which is strong enough to enter the lyrics into the pantheon of great songs built around “We could be…”
“Knuckles the Dog Who Helps People”, Killdozer From Uncompromising War on Art Under the Dictatorship of the Proletariat (1994, Touch and Go)
2019 was the year I was fully baptized into the church of Killdozer. I remember hearing or reading someone (who I, unfortunately, can’t remember) say about them “They’re funny, but they’re not joking”, and this, their signature song, is probably as good an exemplar as any of this. Fitting their sludge into a classic ascending chord progression and adding triumphant guitar solos turns this into the Killdozer version of cheese, but no amount of smirk-worthy lines prevents “Knuckles the Dog Who Helps People” from being a rousing and somehow even a little bit touching sing-a-long. Should note that there is some non-subtle ableism in this song—for the purposes of parodying schlock and inspiration porn rather than punching down, to be sure, but regardless of intent I’m sure it hits different for different folks.
“Caring Is Creepy”, The Shins From Oh, Inverted World (2001, Sub Pop)
The Shins get lumped in with the 2000s indie folk rock boom (you can thank Zach Braff and that perfectly fine song I don’t really need to hear ever again for that) but they really hew closer to styles more my speed than your average cool-soundtrack-stuffer. They were a sincere guitar pop band that were in the right place with the right slant at the right time, which rarely happens. I’ve called them, and in particular Oh, Inverted World, “chill XTC” on multiple occasions (XTC, despite not being on this playlist, will still be mentioned here later on). Despite this I’d never given them a full listen until around the time this playlist was made. As I expected, it was pretty good, and “Caring Is Creepy” is the kind of lilting new wave that in a more just world would’ve been their breakout. I mean, they still did alright for themselves.
“Pumpkin Attack on Mommy and Daddy”, Xiu Xiu From Girl with Basket of Fruit (2019, Polyvinyl)
To people who don’t like Xiu Xiu—I get it. Hell, I’m not even sure if I’m a fan, even though there are multiple songs from their then-new Girl with Basket of Fruit on here. I’d be deeply concerned if Jamie Stewart was some kind of landscape-uniting lowest-common-denominator figure. But I don’t think I need to jump onto any kind of bandwagon to like “Pumpkin Attack on Mommy and Daddy”—funny, creepy, kinetic: what more could you want? Like Dan Bejar guiding me into yacht rock territory, I’m not sure if I would’ve got on board with this kind of thing without Stewart as the vessel, and it’s still kind of a sore thumb on here, but two years later I can still hang. By the way: this is what popular music sounds like now, no?
“Dylan Thomas”, Better Oblivion Community Center From Better Oblivion Community Center (2019, Dead Oceans)
The last time around on a playlist archive post I talked about how Phoebe Bridgers usually has one song per record/project that blows me away, and, well, here we are at the one from Better Oblivion Community Center. Actually, “Dylan Thomas” is an even better song than “Me & My Dog”; while that one does its build-up perfectly, here Bridgers and Connor Oberst make something immortal for the entire 3:30. It’s whip-smart as hell, knifing me line after line and completely justifying its lofty political and cinematic shadings (not to mention the invocation of the titular poet). Nobody is clamoring for me to crown 2019’s song of the year in the midst of a blog post in March 2021 that no one will read, but I’m calling it now—it was “Dylan Thomas”.
“Karma Wants to Call a Truce”, Flesh Lights From Never See Snow (2019, ATHRecords)
The unfortunately-named Flesh Lights rip through a hooky, populist strain of garage punk that I will always consume eagerly when well-written, and 2019’s Never See Snow very much fits the bill. “Karma Wants to Call a Truce” is, of course, one of the best song titles here—serving not even as the chorus of the song, but rather as its climax. It’s a jubilant number, lyrically trying to adopt a glass-half-full approach while still planting foot firmly on the ground, all the while exercising its rights as a power trio with chiming guitar and furiously melodic bass plucking.
“Spiked Flower”, Swervedriver From Future Ruins (2019, Dangerbird)
I like Future Ruins a good deal, although I remember the fan reception being kind of negative. Sorry they didn’t just re-record “Son of Mustang Ford” twelve times, I guess. “Spiked Flower” is pretty far removed from the muscular shoegaze of Raise or Mezcal Head, to be sure—it’s pure fuzz pop. Adam Franklin’s vocals, still not quite “clear”, shine through on the insistent “Why don’t you talk to me?” chorus, right before digging into that main hooky guitar riff and letting it do the rest of the work.
“You Need a Visa”, Really From From Verse (2017, Topshelf)
Indie-emo-jazz-math-punk-junk band Really From are, as of my writing this, gearing up to release their third album, and I’m excited to give it a listen when it comes out. In March 2019, however, I was still stuck on their sophomore album, Verse (initially released under the name People Like You, causing me some confusion for a couple months). I listened to it when it came out, I remember, but I think it took me coming back to it a year and change later for me to decide I was into it. “You Need a Visa” is such a nice, stately opener, with (for the most part) clean, confidently simple vocals gliding over prominent trumpet (yes!) and noodly, mathy guitar (yes yes!).
“Fade My Mind”, TK Echo From TK Echo EP (2019, Dischord)
One of my favorite microtrends is “DC era Dischord/post-hardcore bands that clearly have listened to a lot of XTC”. It’s mostly just the Dismemberment Plan and Q and Not U, and it’s the latter one that’s the string connecting us to TK Echo in 2019. Chris Richards, before he broke bad and became a music critic, played guitar and sang for the excellent Q, Not U for its seven year duration, and the new wavey subtext of his old band is just, well, text here. “Fade My Mind”’s got the hooks, and it’s got the beat.
“Oh, What a Disappointment”, Lambchop From I Hope You’re Sitting Down (1994, Merge)
How often is it that you can go all the way back to a band’s rarely-discussed first album and find that it’s just as strong as their later-career commercial and critical pinnacles? Well, one can certainly do that with Lambchop. After I Hope You’re Sitting Down, Lambchop would begin the long process of refining their sound until they reached the (excellent) chamber pop LPs of the early 2000s, but their debut still stands in all its garish, beautiful, excessive glory. There is nothing I love more than a band that makes you work hard to get to a real emotional core, and even when you get there it’s confusing, corrupted, distorted—still very potent, but nothing easy about it. It’s clear that something disturbing has happened in “Oh, What a Disappointment”, but the narrator (narrators?), other characters, motivations, timelines…like much of I Hope You’re Sitting Down, it’s just out of reach.
“Sunshine Rock”, Bob Mould From Sunshine Rock (2019, Merge)
Sunshine Rock is funnier in hindsight—it’s still strong as a celebration of Bob Mould’s career and life in general, but it now also serves as the setup to the punchline of Mould following it up with his most pissed-off sounding album to date. “Sunshine Rock”, the song, is as much of a song about being happy as its album’s reputation suggests, but it is also a song about wanting to be (and wanting to stay) happy—“Please don’t leave me in total darkness” and “There is no second chance” are its “Please don’t take my sunshine away”.
“Celebrity Lifestyle”, Swans From The Great Annihilator (1994, Young God)
The Great Annihilator is probably my favorite Swans album by default. It’s been awhile since I’ve listened to it fully, but I remember it marrying what I liked about their neofolk work with the edge of their industrial era without being too A) snoozy or B) grating. I am not exactly a Gira lifer (not even getting into what he has been accused of, which this blog post isn’t remotely qualified to address but I would feel weird not mentioning). Considering I’m going through playlists made years ago for my own personal purposes, we’ll probably run into more awkwardness in the future, but this is the only Swans song, I think. As for the song itself—”Celebrity Lifestyle”, with its relatively conventional structure and Hollywood-invoking setting, provides a more interesting background for your typical seething Gira-isms than normal. It’s practically their “Beverly Hills”, no?
“Touch Me Fall”, Indigo Girls From Swamp Ophelia (1994, Sony)
The Indigo Girls rock. I am being completely serious; they are going to get a major critical reevaluation at some point (this is GameStop stock—get in now). And Swamp Ophelia is, track for track, their crowning achievement. If you don’t believe me, just jump into “Touch Me Fall”—a six-minute, multi-section orchestral-folk-rock-prog-opera hybrid beast that manages to sound like a power ballad, a symphony, and classic Indigo Girls all in the same song. This isn’t even mentioning the drum-centric breakdown towards a minute left of the number that both makes you go “wait, who am I listening to?” and then resolves effortlessly into the central hook. If, say, Fiona Apple or Annie Vincent made this it’d be on every year-end list you could aggregate.
“Come for Me”, Sunflower Bean From King of the Dudes EP (2019, Mom+Pop)
A decade earlier and a continent away Sunflower Bean might’ve gotten caught in the landfill indie gold rush, but I think that they are better off rising now, where they can proudly wave their classic hard rock & glam influences without any kind of baggage. “Come for Me” introduces some Nile Rodgers-y disco guitar into the mix, which may have been the final ingredient in making the ultimate amber-ready Sunflower Bean Song. Its sexually-charged bar-fight lyrics are the polar opposite of the closest modern musical comparison I can conjure for them, the Thin Lizzy collectivism of Sheer Mag, but that’s certainly not an issue. Sometimes you jump up on the table with your bullhorn and manifesto in hand, but sometimes you just want to see who’s got the guts to knock you down.
“Everybody Disappear”, Eerie Family From Eerie Family (2019, Alien Snatch)
The punk-to-darkwave pipeline lives on! At least I think that’s what’s going on here—I’m not too familiar with the duo behind Eerie Family or their predecessor band The Hex Dispensers. They’re from Taylor, Texas—how cool is that? I’d never heard of a band being from there before, although upon further research apparently Greg Ginn (and therefore SST) lives there now. “Everybody Disappear” is, despite its dour clothes, an excellent pop song, all spare synths, dark handclaps, and marimbas (perhaps played on a skeleton’s ribcage?) and Alex Cuervo deadpanning his “oh-ohs” while Alyse Mervosh intones the titular line over and over in the background.
“Clockout”, Devo From Duty Now for the Future (1979, Warner Bros.)
The second straight Rosy Overdrive playlist to feature a song from Devo’s second album, but in this case it’s an original rather than a David Nance cover. “Clockout” is Devo at their wildest, with that recurring drumroll accompanied by Gerard Casale really hamming it up singing the song’s title being a moment of abandon that the band didn’t always allow themselves. Still, it’s Devo we’re talking about here—the verses are all careening stops-and-starts, vaguely uncomfortable suit-and-tie lyrics, and of course the immortal line “I’m afraid the future’s gonna be maintenance-free”.
“Juicy”, The Notorious B.I.G. From Ready to Die (1994, Bad Boy)
It was all a dream, I used to read Word Up magazine. I should put a nineties hip-hop song in the middle of all of these playlists, but unfortunately this one and the Tribe song in the last playlist are more of the exception than the rule. Anyway, I heard Ready to Die in full around March 2019, which probably would’ve constituted my first non-passive experience listening to Biggie. I can’t really wade into the debate of where that album ranks among its peers, but I can say that “Juicy” is as good as anything I’ve heard from the genre. The whole thing sounds great, the hook by Total is an all-time, and you can hear the myth being made in real time.
“Over the Falls”, Exasperation From Paradise (2019, Postlude Paradox)
The San Diego post-punk-garage-rockers Exasperation released Paradise in 2019, which was as solid as it was overlooked. The whole thing is worth a listen, but “Over the Falls” here is the pop-friendly album highlight to my ears. The majority of the song is pretty subtle in its charms—the steady rhythm section, the swirling guitar—but the song’s stomping chorus is anything but. “’Cause I’ve got no control / Over the falls in a wooden barrel” is shout-along-worthy, landing somewhere in the vicinity of the effortless cool of Dinosaur Jr.’s hooks and the barking of The Fall.
“Gates of Heaven”, Killdozer From Twelve Point Buck (1989, Touch and Go)
Another Killdozer number, this one taking place (where else?) at the Pearly Gates. The poor recently-deceased man that “Gates of Heaven” follows, Jesús, is a typical Killdozer character—lonely, drunk—who couldn’t even muster up a fight against his “William Holden” death. In “Gates of Heaven”, Michael Gerald’s growl is accompanied by what could only be described as Killdozer’s version of “bouncy”—this particular blast of guitar is positively jaunty. Butch Vig’s production on Twelve Point Buck is supposedly what led him to produce Nirvana’s Nevermind—I can’t find a source that confirms this directly, but it is generally agreed to be the album that put him on the map as a producer, so I’m just going to say that Killdozer deserve royalties from “Smells Like Teen Spirit”, or at least “In Bloom”.
“Propane”, The Wrens From Silver (1994, Grass)
Silver, The Wrens’ first album, is…completely fine. It’s a too-long, disjointed, Pixies-worshipping unstable journey that nevertheless shows plenty of traces of the band that would go on to make a minor (Secaucus) and a major (The Meadowlands) masterpiece over the next decade. The brief, 80-second opening track “Propane” doesn’t really give away what the listener is in for over the following 68 minutes of that album, though. Effectively a prelude (I guess an interlude in this context), “Propane” lays out its best absurd Alternative Nation imagery over minimal guitar strumming—nine bibles to rest your head on, throwing down marbles in a field of stray boys, you know, the usual.
“The Lonely Crowd Fades in the Air”, Swervedriver From Future Ruins (2019, Dangerbird)
As solid a pop song “Spiked Flower” is, “The Lonely Crowd Fades in the Air” might be the better all-around cut from Future Ruins on the playlist. It has some fairly simple but still effective guitar heroics going on, and it kicks up some dust with its propulsion like some of the classic Swervedriver numbers. It sounds exactly like a song called “The Lonely Crowd Fades in the Air” should sound like: a rusty spaceship sadly hovering over the ruins to come, a song aware of the danger of the future and what we’ll lose along the way.
“Mother”, Tallies From Tallies (2019, Kanine/Hand Drawn Dracula)
Sparkly, shiny, jangly dream pop that recalls a peppier Sundays and the more guitar-heavy end of classic 4AD. The Toronto band dropped their self-titled debut album, which contains “Mother”, a little over two years ago and haven’t released anything since—hopefully they’re still around and working on LP2. At least we have “Mother” in the meantime. Sarah Cogan’s lead vocal is a lot clearer than, say, your typical Elizabeth Fraser-led tune, but the song similarly puts a good deal of emphasis on inflection, particularly in the “It’s not safe! It’s not safe!” bit at the end. The song’s lyrics are about Cogan’s growing appreciation for her relationship with (as the title implies) her mother, which is a nice change of subject and probably unique on this playlist.
“Sundrops”, Kristin Hersh From Hips and Makers (1994, 4AD/Sire)
Rosy Overdrive has given Throwing Muses love in the past but this is the first Hersh solo song to appear on one of these—and what a song it is. Hersh has incorporated the acoustic atmospheres of Hips and Makers so seamlessly into her repertoire that it’s easy to miss how the album was probably a bit of a shock to fans at the time. It’s a great album, a career highlight—Hersh excelled at musical evocation more than most of her peers with Throwing Muses, and nothing is lost in translation here. “Sundrops” rocks as much as an acoustic-guitar-and-cello number can possibly rock, with Hersh’s frantic strumming and Jane Scarpantoni’s one-person orchestra accompaniment more than compensating for lack of plug-ins.
“Bad Friend”, Spielbergs From This Is Not the End (2019, By the Time It Gets Dark)
The second Spielbergs song on here isn’t the unabashed anthem that “Distant Star” is, at least not by comparison. It’s certainly as catchy, and that chorus is just as big and loud, but the fuck-off subject matter and the way Spielbergs bury the verses give it the album-track feel. It’s less evocative of taking on the world head-on and more about just taking back one small slice of it for yourself. “Bad Friend” shows that the band doesn’t take on any emotion half-assed, though. After the “I don’t wanna be part of your future” bridge builds up and then explodes, you come away knowing the Spielbergs don’t just love fireworks—this band is fireworks.
“Couldn’t I Just Tell You”, Todd Rundgren From Something/Anything? (1972, Bearsville)
“Couldn’t I Just Tell You” is the Todd Rundgren song that always makes me say “why don’t all Todd Rundgren songs sound like this?” This would probably be on my classic power pop anthem shortlist if I were the kind of nerd to make that kind of list—Rundgren ripping through the verses only to pull back just enough to let the airy chorus stand tall is more than enough to wreck anybody who’s ever bought a used Raspberries LP, to say nothing of that blissful studio fuckery at the end of the bridge (around 2:30). I probably heard Game Theory’s cover of this song before the original—unsurprisingly, it’s also great, but I have to give Rundgren the advantage here despite my biases.
“Soaky in the Pooper”, Lambchop From I Hope You’re Sitting Down (1994, Merge)
I can think of no better “Lambchop in a nutshell” moment than crafting a beautiful, affecting, masterpiece of a song and then titling it “Soaky in the Pooper”. Part of me is still annoyed at how it makes it harder for me to get people into Lambchop, but, you know, you do gotta hand it to ‘em. And if the song’s title is what prevents “Soaky in the Pooper” from ever being reduced to Spotify mood playlist fodder or a schlocky adult contemporary cover, then it’s more than served its purpose. The song isn’t background music—the trumpets and harp soundtrack some of Kurt Warner’s most brilliant and upsetting lyrics, in which someone dies from (presumably) a drug overdose in a vividly-described bathroom. Fair warning about this one.
“Living Waters”, Silver Jews From Starlite Walker (1994, Drag City)
“Living Waters” got the nod here over a couple of technically-better songs from Starlite Walker (I’m thinking of “New Orleans” and especially “Trains Across the Sea”) because of how giddy and infectious it is. Maybe on its own it might cause a skeptic to wonder “what’s the big deal?”, but to me it’s part and parcel of what drew me and kept me with the Silver Jews. It’s going from “When they turn on the chair, something added to the air forever” to the car horn sound effect in “Honk If You’re Lonely” in the same album. Being able to pull off both is indicative of David Berman’s unique appeal, the one that made me want to (lightly) roast how many music writers were excitedly profiling Berman when he came back while at the same time eagerly reading every one of those profiles. Oh, right, “Living Waters”. I know Berman felt smothered under the shadow of Stephen Malkmus and Pavement around this time, and with good reason since he was better than Pavement, but Malkmus could really bring out the best of Berman’s songwriting, as he does here prominently.
“Beeker St.”, Flesh Lights From Never See Snow (2019, ATHRecords)
The hits keep coming for Flesh Lights with “Beeker St.”, which is even more of a classic power trio anthem than “Karma Wants to Call a Truce” was. “Beeker St.” never lets up on the gas for its entire two minutes and thirty seconds, pulling no punches with its cascading downhill guitar and bass flourishes that didn’t have to be nearly as noticeably satisfying as they are for the song to work. Max Vandever’s vocals are cleanly melodic but a little weary, conjuring up fellow Austinite Rhett Miller fronting a sped-up, punked-up version of his normal band.
“Water Wings”, Superchunk From Foolish (1994, Merge)
I was a Superchunk fan for quite some time before I was fully on board with Foolish. I’d heard it a few times, but in my mind I’ve always kind of thought of them as a singles band, and there’s no “Hyper Enough” or “Precision Auto” on Foolish. Needless to say I was wrong—I swung hard for that album in 2019 between revisiting it for its 25th anniversary and getting really into the Acoustic Foolish album that would come out a few months later. “Water Wings” is not the best song from the album, but it is one that went from “couldn’t pick it out of a lineup” to “prime example of Superchunk at their mid-90s peak” over time.
“I Won’t Try That Hard”, Diva Sweetly From In the Living Room (2019, Seal Mountain)
Oh, very nice. The Diva Sweetly album is really fun; I’m glad I get to highlight it here briefly. “I Won’t Try That Hard” is a frantic two-minute carousel of a pop-punk song with some tactically-deployed hooky synths. In the Living Room has plenty of sugar-rush moments like this, with the gang vocals and Rentals-esque keys, but they also spread out a little with some more mid-tempo, turn-of-the-century emo tunes. Like a lot of bands on this playlist, it would be nice to hear from them again soon. Until that moment, though, I’m gonna enjoy raging against my own perceived failures and personal dead ends, like “I Won’t Try That Hard” does.
“Let’s Save Tony Orlando’s House”, Yo La Tengo From And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out (2000,Matador)
Here for no reason in particular, other than I was still in the process of inching closer and closer to becoming a Yo La Tengo fan after years of them being the big 90s indie rock band that I “didn’t get” (I’m working through this with Stereolab now). “Let’s Save Tony Orlando’s House” is a great exemplar of the Big Quiet Late Night Drive Yo La Tengo Album, And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out. A shuffling drumbeat, simple organ chords, and Georgia Hubley’s dreamy vocals help the song plod confidently along. Lyrically, “Let’s Save Tony Orlando’s House” (apparently named after a Simpsons gag) does nothing to lessen Yo La Tengo’s reputation as “indie rock for record collectors, by record collectors”, with its bizarre narrative featuring Frankie Valli and the titular Orlando containing several references and allusions to the bandleaders’ respective careers.
“Let Me Tell You a New Story”, Dark Blue From Victory Is Rated (2019, 12XU)
The second Dark Blue song on this playlist is in the same world as the first one, although “Let Me Tell You a New Story” introduces a shimmery, hooky guitar arpeggio and John Sharkey III stretches out his vocal range a little more to great effect. The triumphant chorus, featuring a confident “Days go by” and “Veins run dry” rhyme, is positively anthemic, featuring trumpet played by none other than fellow Philadelphian Kurt Vile. The simple yet effective lyrics of “Let Me Tell You a New Story” remind me of the songwriting from Sharkey III’s just-released solo album, which I think I will have more to say about on Rosy Overdrive soon.
“Normal Love”, Xiu Xiu From Girl with a Basket of Fruit (2019, Polyvinyl)
Bad news for people who don’t like Xiu Xiu: we’ve got another Xiu Xiu song here. Somehow I didn’t even know that Oxbow’s Eugene Robinson was the other vocalist on “Normal Love” until I looked it up just now, but as soon as I read his name I immediately thought “Duh! Of course! Who else could that be!” Anyway, this song is the classic Xiu Xiu ballad, minimalist piano and bass setting the stage for all sorts of uncomfortable Jamie Stewart-isms (and Robinson-isms this time!) to crawl creepily over it.
“Sunbathing II”, State Champion From Fantasy Error (2015, Sophomore Lounge)
Maybe one of these days I’ll talk about a State Champion song from their most recent album, although by that point they’ll probably (hopefully?) have something new out. Anyway, today is not that day, but it is the day for “Sunbathing II”, which is a slower, lazier (not in execution but in what it evokes) sequel to the first “Sunbathing” that kicked this whole thing off. None of the emotional impact of the other “Sunbathing” is lost here, not even after the Sparklehorse-esque static interruption about a minute-and-a-half into it. Lot of gems here, but “My backyard is bringing me down / And my front one is freaking me out” is the line that sticks out to me at the moment; just one of many, and nobody does it better than State Champion.
I present to you: the third brand new monthly Rosy Overdrive playlist, and the site’s fourth playlist overall. 2021 is in full swing in terms of new music, which is where the majority of these songs come from. My foray into 1991 (which started last month) continues—it’s been on the backburner a bit, but a few songs from then surface here as well.
Lydia Loveless, The Boys with the Perpetual Nervousness, Yasmin Williams, and Mister Goblin earn the incredibly prestigious honor of having two songs on the playlist this time around. There are three Hold Steady songs on here, because I’m not getting paid for this and I can do what I want.
Weather permitting, I will have an archival playlist that I made roughly two years ago written up a week or so after this post’s publication, and then some album/EP write-ups later this month. I’ve also got a few songs already marked down for the March 2021 playlist—that will be fun.
“Specificity (Or What Have You)”, Terry Gross From Soft Opening (2021, Thrill Jockey)
For some reason naming themselves after the NPR host, the band Terry Gross is an offshoot from the long-running krautrock/post-rock power trio Trans Am. TA’s guitarist Phil Manley leads this group—he and two fellow recording engineers, Donny Newenhouse and Phil Becker, created Soft Opening in the Bay Area recording studio they co-own. The amusingly-titled “Specificity (Or What Have You)” is the only one of the album’s three (!!) songs under twelve minutes, which unsurprisingly makes it the most easily digestible of the record’s vastly expansive yet accessible psychedelic space rock. The propulsive rhythm section checks the bursts of guitar freakouts, melodic vocals and an actually catchy chorus balance out the long instrumental breaks.
“The Shining But Tropical”, Wild Pink From A Billion Little Lights (2021, Royal Mountain)
This song’s been out for awhile now, but I had to hear it in the context of February’s A Billion Little Lights to fully appreciate it. Wild Pink continues delving into shiny, polished heartland rock with their new album—a development that initially put me off of 2018’s Yolk in the Fur after being a big fan of their self-titled debut. While I’m still conflicted about that album, this new record quickly grabbed my attention after putting it on more or less as an afterthought. Either frontman John Ross and crew have grown more comfortable in these shoes, or I’ve grown more open to Indie Rock Superheroes Wild Pink with time—whatever is the case, “The Shining But Tropical” is an excellent gliding pop rock anthem that justifies Ross’ citation of Sagan’s Cosmos as inspiration. I had no idea that Julia Steiner from Ratboys sings the backing vocals on this song until researching for this, but she’s the best part of the whole damn thing—that second verse is positively goosebump-inducing, and every indie singer-songwriter with pop ambitions should be taking notes.
“The First One”, Kittyhawk From Mikey’s Favorite Songs (2021, Count Your Lucky Stars)
I wrote about Mikey’s Favorite Songs, the compilation of Kittyhawk’s non-LP material, last month. I recommend you check out the whole thing, but I’ve included “The First One” here, which in my review I referred to as “straightforwardly sweet”, “infectious”, and “correctly-titled”. There are some pleasing back-and-forth vocals going on here. I can very vividly picture the new apartment in the song, boxes half-unpacked, wires and cables strewn about just so we can set up the record player and listen to something while we go through the rest of the stuff, staying up late because no routines exist yet, everything lying ahead of us
“Lover’s Spat”, Lydia Loveless From Boy Crazy and Single(s) (2017, Bloodshot)
I have a few “break glass in case of emergency” albums that I’ve never heard but know I’ll enjoy when I do. There’s still a Yo La Tengo album I haven’t listened to, a Low album, that album that Ted Leo and Aimee Mann did together….Anyway, I finally listened to the Lydia Loveless comp after being a fan of her proper albums for awhile now. And now here I am in 2021, enjoying “Lover’s Spat”, AKA the Jeffrey Dahmer song. Originally from 2013’s Boy Crazy EP, I’m not entirely sure if Loveless intended the song to be literally from the perspective of the serial killer, a metaphor for a relationship fight, or if it’s completely autobiographical and there’s just an alarming level of coincidences between Dahmer and Loveless. My fact checker has not gotten back to me yet RE: whether or not she was pursuing a business degree at OSU as of press time.
“Can’t You See?”, The Boys with the PerpetualNervousness From Songs from Another Life (2021, Bobo Integral)
In my review of Songs from Another Life, I referred to “Can’t You See?” as an “under-two-minute plea” with “urgent” undertones. I also complimented how it immediately grabs the listener with its Teenage Fanclub-revering jangle-pop chorus—the song is effectively one 90-second-long hook.
“Lanyards”, The Hold Steady From Open Door Policy (2021, Positive Jams)
Coming after two songs that take some time to fully appreciate, “Lanyards” was the first “oh shit, the Hold Steady are back” moment in Open Door Policy for me. It’s not the easy way to get there, either. It’s not a party of a song, but rather a mid-tempo number ornamented with Franz Nicolay’s piano playing that explodes in the chorus. Craig Finn’s wistful talk-singing feels like a natural progression from his solo work, and he plays his lyrical hand very well here, letting the atmosphere and the words speak for themselves here. The words are more than enough, mind you—“Lanyards” is a bleary world of hospital bracelets, doctors, failed acting careers, and the western edge of the (continental) United States.
“Sunshowers”, Yasmin Williams From Urban Driftwood (2021, Spinster)
In my review of Urban Driftwood, I noted my appreciation for how “the quiet picking of ‘Sunshowers’ gives way, about a minute in, to a giddily melodic riff and adds on from there”. The way Williams is able to clearly delineate the introduction of “Sunshowers” from the central part of the song and then clearly call back to both of them over the track’s four minutes is edge-of-the-seat-worthy, and doing it entirely with one instrument is a nice change of pace for the playlist if I do say so myself.
“Seeing Shapes”, Teen Creeps From Forever (2021, [PIAS]/Sentimental)
Belgian’s Teen Creeps cite Superchunk and Dinosaur Jr. as influences, and “Seeing Shapes” delivers as a paean to scrappy, 90’s underdog indie rock—aware of punk rock but not punk, emotional but not emo, a guitar jam first and foremost but burying pop sensibilities under the squall. While musically the J. Mascis guitar hero effects are easy to pinpoint, lyrically “Seeing Shapes” remind of another member of Dino Jr.—Lou Barlow and his Sebadoh. “Seeing Shapes” is an ugly, self-effacing, vaguely uncomfortable number: “Look into my eyes before you leave me for someone better / I’m a mess inside but at least it’s been that way forever” is absolutely brutal. I wouldn’t want to be miles near anyone involved in whatever relationship is being described here, but it makes for good theater.
“100,000 Fireflies”, The Magnetic Fields From Distant Plastic Trees (1991, PoPuP)
Here we have the first classic Magnetic Fields song. Distant Plastic Trees is far from Stephin Merritt’s best work, but this song’s reputation is well-earned. “I have a mandolin / I play it all night long / It makes me want to kill myself” is one of the greatest opening lines of all time, but “You won’t be happy with me / But give me one more chance / You won’t be happy anyway” is the sound of 69 Love Songs (and, really, Merritt’s whole career) germinating. I’m not sure how Susan Anway’s vocals are viewed by Fields-heads, and I don’t love either of the albums she fronts enough to have a strong position on whether she helps or hurts the songs, but it is hard for me to imagine any voice suiting the twinkling plastic instrumentation of “100,000 Fireflies” as well as hers do. Not even Mac McCaughan. The quiet “Josephine” from the same album is just as good as this song, but didn’t fit quite as well on the playlist, if you’re looking for a deep cut.
“On and On”, The Fragiles From On and On (2021, Living Lost)
In my review of On and On, I referred to the title track as a “five-minute slow burn”. While there are perhaps more straightforward pop songs on that album (see “Kaleidoscope” or “Armistice Day”), “On and On” is the song that I continually find myself most transfixed by. The song is anchored by a simple, cycling guitar riff that puts the song in psych-pop territory, while the lo-fi production and busy drum work give it a sharper edge as well. It’s the perfect soundtrack to watch satellites float across the sky and consider space and time, as the song’s lyrics suggest.
“Excursions”, A Tribe Called Quest From The Low End Theory (1991, Zomba)
The Low End Theory is good because of how effortlessly it folds jazz into hip-hop, so what better song to pull from it than “Excursions”—the song that explains how hip-hop is pulling from the same cloth as jazz? All over an upright bass, too, which unfortunately didn’t catch on in hip-hop to the degree I would’ve preferred it to. “Excursions” is also a pretty good exemplar of how Q-Tip AKA The Abstract earned his reputation as the philosophical one of the recognizable 90’s MCs—not that others couldn’t have pulled off something as simultaneously verbose and down-to-earth as “Excursions”, but this is how Tip and Quest thought they should start off their biggest album.
“Some Nerve”, Sweet Soul From So Far No Further (2021, New Morality Zine/Extinction Burst)
“Some Nerve” is a short and sweet slice of melodic punk rock. Nearly the whole two-minute thing is the chorus, all power chords and “whoa-ohs”, with the main hook appearing both in vocal and lead guitar form. Sweet Soul even make time for some brief melodic bass playing. I’d easily recommend the rest of So Far No Further to you if this sounds up your alley—it’s ten songs of this band’s heavier brand of pop punk in 23 minutes. Frontman Taylor Soul, rather than hamming it up and singing in the nasally whine characteristic of this kind of music, instead brings forward an understated, nearly emotionless vocal, giving the whole thing a vaguely sinister undercurrent (just an undercurrent, mind you—it’s still fun music).
“Mr. Chill”, Dan Wriggins From Mr. Chill (2021, Orindal)
I saw Dan Wriggins’ band, Friendship, play this song live in 2019 before all the Unpleasantness went down. I remember liking it, and being disappointed it didn’t show up on their album that came out later that year, Dreamin’. It’s now finally seen the light of day, as the title track for Wriggins’ debut solo EP that comes out mid-March. Friendship’s Michael Cormier adds some quiet barroom piano and percussion to “Mr. Chill”, which Wriggins says he wrote while working for a tree care company. The laid-back music of the song accompanies lyrics that stare down the abyss of routine threatening to dull everything valuable and meaningful in this world. It has a great punchline, too.
“Unpleasant Breakfast”, The Hold Steady From Open Door Policy (2021, Positive Jams)
“Unpleasant Breakfast” is, for a Hold Steady song, weird as hell. Craig Finn is still doing his Craig Finn thing, and the Springsteen horns are, while not exactly a band staple, nothing new either—but this is about where the similarities end. The song starts building around, of all things, a shuffling drum machine beat, and a good deal of “Unpleasant Breakfast” is accompanied by an absurd “whoooo”ing siren sound (which, as someone moderately tapped into the Hold Steady fan community, I can tell you was easily the most controversial part of Open Door Policy). About four minutes into the five-minute number they break out into the “normal” bombastic, Franz Nicolay piano-led Hold Steady, as if to say “yes, we could’ve done the song that way if we wanted to, but where’s the fun in that?” Appropriate for a song rejecting “the romance in these ghosts”, which I assume has to do with nostalgia.
“The Perfect Idiot”, Fievel Is Glauque From God’s Trashmen Sent to Right the Mess (2021, La Loi)
Belgian kitchen-sink pop band Fievel Is Glauque cover a lot of ground on God’s Trashmen Sent to Right the Mess—frantic orchestral pop, chill bedroom lounge, straight-up jazz numbers. Album opener “The Perfect Idiot” is a short burst of bossa nova-informed indie pop, with metronome percussion accompanying Ma Clément’s sweet vocal. Despite its brevity and surface simplicity, Fievel Is Glauque cram quite a bit of instrumental injections into “The Perfect Idiot”, presumably both from co-bandleader Zach Phillips and the laundry list of collaborators listed on the album’s Bandcamp page.
“I Gotta Getaway”, Wake Up From Tigers Can’t Be Choosers (2021, Maggot Chic)
Tigers Can’t Be Choosers came out in February, but apparently it’s several years older than that—recorded by Wake Up in 2012-2013 but ultimately shelved before finally seeing the light of day in the midst of quarantine. None of this really makes much difference to me, who’d never heard of this band at all until a couple of weeks ago, so it just comes off like an album of new 90’s indie rock-influenced music. Obviously, there are quite a few bands out there inviting Pavement comparisons in the year of our Lord 2021, but “I Gotta Getaway” hooked me immediately. With “Church on White”-style Malkmus vocals and a There’s Nothing Wrong with Love guileless pop sensibility, “I Gotta Getaway” is an extremely likeable single even before that starry-eyed chorus kicks in.
“At Least”, Mister Goblin From Four People in an Elevator and One of Them Is theDevil (2021, Exploding in Sound)
I didn’t really touch on “At Least” in my Four People in an Elevator and One of Them Is the Devil review, even though it’s maybe my favorite song from that album. Like an increasing number of Mister Goblin songs, it starts off as a fairly subtle downbeat number before exploding in sound in the latter half of the track. Although the hospital climax of the song is thrilling (it’s a release, sure, but I’m not sure if “cathartic” is the right word) it’s how it gets there that really makes “At Least”. While I don’t understand exactly how every line of the lyric fits in with each other, I don’t really need to in order to get into the headspace of the song’s narrator. It’s a song about regret and repentance, full of brutal self-laceration (“I know that I can’t cut it, but I can’t quit”… “Just don’t work too hard / Not on my account”). “At Least” is a plea, not even for forgiveness, just for an acknowledgement that the narrator is trying to atone—and for me it is unclear if anything is resolved by the end of the song’s near-five-minute runtime.
“Fortune”, Dog Faced Hermans From Mental Blocks for All Ages (1991, Konkurrel)
I’ve been a fan of Dutch agit-punks The Ex for awhile now, but I’m only now getting around to one of the bands most frequently associated with them. Dog Faced Hermans and The Ex are linked together most prominently by guitarist Andy Moor, a founding member of the former and thirty-year member of the latter, but the musical similarities are present as well. “Fortune” is classic aural guerilla, an anything-but-easy listen led by a pummeling rhythm section and insistent horn section. The similarities stop with vocalist Marion Coutts, whose dramatic, operatic performance is a far cry from G.W. Sok’s carnival barking, but is no less effective. An artist who just happened to dabble in music in addition to several other fields, Coutts invites comparisons to Sue Tompkins of Life Without Buildings, a band who seems just now to be getting its moment in the sun. While Coutts’ rather accomplished musical background fails to make this a 1:1 comparison, Dog Faced Hermans conjure up a similar aura of a happy accident of a band that we’re lucky to witness come together.
“Skyline Top Removal”, Styrofoam Winos From Styrofoam Winos (2021, Sophomore Lounge)
In my Styrofoam Winos review, I said that “Skyline Top Removal” “marries the record’s brightest and most pleasing music with its most striking images and biting lyrics (‘It was built on the backs of the underpaid….but isn’t it minimal? Isn’t it great?’, chiefly, not to mention the song title itself) to make a modern southern-urban classic.” Lou Turner, the Wino at the helm for this song, deftly shifts from singing the song’s two distinct hooks to delivering a more conversational talk-singing style in the verses to really sell the potent energy of “Skyline Top Removal”.
“Rose Tinted Glass”, The Boys with the PerpetualNervousness From Songs from Another Life (2021, Bobo Integral)
Continuing the Teenage Fanclub-indebted jangle pop bliss of “Can’t You See?” earlier in this playlist, “Rose Tinted Glass” is a similarly brief track, which as the title suggests is a bittersweet, melancholy reminiscence of a past long gone—a feeling that this style of music is particularly good at capturing. Although The Boys with the Perpetual Nervousness ultimately resolve to look forward by the end of “Rose Tinted Glass”, the exact details of the song are less important than the images it conjures. Sitting on the floor tuning a guitar, an unspecified “you”, the titular glass—in the hands of TBWTPN’s chiming guitars, it’s all a pure evocation.
“Witness to Your Secrets”, The Cakekitchen From Time Flowing Backwards (1991, Homestead)
The Cakekitchen was New Zealander Graeme Jeffries’ third notable band after Nocturnal Projections and This Kind of Punishment, and the first that didn’t also feature his brother Peter, who pursued a solo career in the 1990s before more or less retiring from music. The Cakekitchen released two albums in 1991—the album that this song is from, which is a compilation of sorts, and a more proper LP called World of Sand. Time Flowing Backwards is effectively a U.S. reissue of their debut EP, where “Witness to Your Secrets” was originally released, plus some bonus tracks. This song is a departure from the dark, noisy post-punk that characterized Jeffries’ 80s work and suggested a brighter future that was more in line with the kind of music for which Flying Nun Records was becoming renowned. Although the deeper cuts from Time Flowing Backwards revealed trace elements of Jeffries’ past work, with “Witness to Your Secrets” he and the rest of the band put together a gorgeous, reasonably-polished guitar pop ballad that could’ve easily been an indie rock standard.
“Houses into Homes”, Katie Ellen From Cowgirl Blues (2017, Lauren)
I struggled with isolating an individual song from Anika Pyle’s recent solo album, Wild River, for this playlist, but my enjoyment of that record caused me to look back on her previous bands a bit and led me to this song from Katie Ellen’s Cowgirl Blues. I didn’t remember this song upon revisiting, which is odd because A) I recall listening to Cowgirl Blues a lot when it came out and B) it rules. So consider “Houses into Homes” a dual-purpose song here—both as a reminder that Wild River is still good and you should listen to it, but also as a great song in its own right. It’s a pop punk ripper of a song that deploys its ace “Meet me in the courtyard, darling” hook just the right amount of times in its two minutes, and covers the impressive breadth of a relationship and its aftermath in relatively few words.
“Spy Vs. Spy”, Smart Went Crazy From Now We’re Even (1996, Dischord)
Now We’re Even, which turned 25 last month, doesn’t reach the heights of the following year’s Con Art, to say nothing of Chad Clark’s 21st century work with Beauty Pill. Divorced from that lineage and taken as a mid-90s Dischord Records muscular post-punk album, however, I’d consider it above average, and there are glimmers—which leads us to “Spy Vs. Spy”. On the surface it’s a fairly straightforward mid-tempo moody-rocker, but with plenty of subtle moments that stick out—a brief but memorable performance by Hilary Soldati’s cello, Clark’s increasingly theatrical vocal performance in the second half of the song, and an unexpected shining moment from the bass guitar towards the end—indicating that something was already fully-formed here.
“Good Luck Come Back”, Caithlin De Marrais From What Will You Do Then? (2021, Skeletal Lightning)
I think the last we’d heard from Caithlin De Marrais was in 2017, when her underrated band Rainer Maria released the underrated S/T, which found the emo trio embracing a smoldering, harder-rocking sound. What Will You Do Then?, then, is De Marrais’ chance to explore a different avenue—sparse, dreamy, often dark synthpop. Album opener “Good Luck Come Back” is certainly sparse; while De Marrais contributes memorable bass playing and synths interjections to a beat provided by fellow Rainer Maria member Kaia Fisher, the two still leave plenty of empty space for De Marrais’ heartbreaking lyrics to hang over the listener. It also doesn’t skimp on the “pop” side of synthpop, either—when De Marrais and Annie Nero hit “Do you feel alone?” it takes the song to the next level.
“The Day My Baby Gave Me a Surprize”, David Nance From Duty Now for the Future (2021, Self-released)
It was incredibly generous of Nebraska lo-fi negative boogie-er David Nance to cover Devo’s second album in its entirety last month. Apparently Nance is no stranger to these projects (he’s also got versions of Berlin and Beatles for Sale in his archives) it caught me by surprize as the first one to come out since I’ve been aware of his music. Duty Now for the Future makes a hell of a lot of sense of him, too—Nance often comes off as a more expansive, prairie-fied version of Devo’s Midwestern rust punk. “The Day My Baby Gave Me a Surprize” filters one of the more straightforward songs from the album through bluesy basement fuzz and country feedback, creating a new wave-tinged garage rock raver.
“Anything You Want”, Spoon From Girls Can Tell (2001, Merge)
I’ve been making these playlists, mostly for myself, for over five years now, and scrolling through my personal archives I was surprised to find I’d selected at least one song from every Spoon album except for this one and the divisive Hot Thoughts. While I’ve come around to Hot Thoughts somewhat, the lack of anything from Girls Can Tell is what we call an “egregious oversight”. That album, which turned 20 last month, is the one that solidified the “Spoon sound”, the uncanny valley Texas-Kinks-piano-rock that somehow turned them into the one indie rock band of the 2000s that earned the “cool” label through their music rather than their critical or cultural clout. And it’s the album that kickstarted their case for being the band of that entire decade, which would be rock solid if they’d just released Transference a couple weeks earlier. I haven’t really said anything about “Anything You Want” yet, but it’s a great Spoon song, maybe the great Spoon song—the simplest organ riff, a simple guitar riff, Britt Daniel rambling about something that doesn’t really need to be examined but can be, and just enough variation over two minutes to make the entire thing memorable.
“All I Know”, Lydia Loveless From Boy Crazy and Single(s) (2017, Bloodshot)
Another cut originally from the Boy Crazy EP—the opening track this time. While not quite dealing in subject matter as striking as “Lover’s Spat”, “All I Know” is a very well-written alt-country pop song about certain universal inconvenient feelings, and about losing the fight between yourself and them for control of where you’re eventually gonna end up. “How many times have I lied awake at night / Wishing you were here to start a fight” is a good an opening line as any in Loveless’ work, and I can particularly relate to deciding that time and distance are going to solve all one’s problems and then getting immediately frustrated that a nine-hour flight didn’t do the trick.
“Soho Square”, The Crowd Scene From South Circular (2020, Self-released)
While I didn’t really talk about “Soho Square” in my South Circular review, quite a few points of comparison I brought up for the album as a whole—Aimee Mann, Jon Brion, Brendan Benson—apply here. One thing I didn’t bring up in my review that I ought’ve is Anne Rogers’ sublime Neko Case-esque backing vocals, only briefly surfacing in the chorus of this song but making the most of their moment. Lyrically “Soho Square” feels like perhaps a more personal spin on “all the lonely people”, and I detect some Andy Partridge in the song’s more anxious moments.
“Nothing Without You”, Cloud Nothings From The Shadow I Remember (2021, Carpark)
The second song on this playlist in which a male-fronted indie rock band recruits a female singer from a Chicago-based group to help out on vocals, “Nothing Without You” is a highlight from Cloud Nothings’ return-to-a-form-that-they-never-really-left-so-they-didn’t-actually-need-a-return The Shadow I Remember. Rather than just harmonizing with Dylan Baldi, Macie Stewart from Ohmme takes the reins to the chorus hook all by herself, and it works out very well—there are a half-dozen songs from the album that would’ve slotted just fine here, but “Nothing Without You” has just that little extra juice. Bizarre Tamagotchi game not required, but it’s not like you’ve got anything better to do.
“Forty One Days”, Boozoo Chavis From Boozoo Chavis (1991, Elektra/Nonesuch)
I’ve always found zydeco music incredibly fun and revival-worthy, and as an NRBQ fan I’m familiar with who Boozoo Chavis is due to their 1989 song “Boozoo, That’s Who”, but 1991’s Boozoo Chavis is the first time I’ve really listened to Chavis’ music. The man could teach modern contract negotiators a thing or two about holding out—frustrated with not receiving money from his 1954 debut single, “Paper in My Shoe”, he recorded nearly nothing for the next three decades before friends, family, and fans lured him out of semi-retirement in the late 80s for a brief (he passed away in 2001) but surprisingly prolific recording career. The album “Forty One Days” comes from was Chavis’ major-label debut, and was produced by NRBQ’s Terry Adams. It’s a classic zydeco number if I’ve ever heard one, featuring a blues lyric that’s brightened up by the fast tempo and joyous accordion playing, as well as an amusing spoken intro by Chavis himself.
“Adrift”, Yasmin Williams feat. Taryn Wood From Urban Driftwood (2021, Spinster)
In my Urban Driftwood review, I wrote that “’Adrift’, featuring cello accompaniment from Taryn Wood, builds into a swirling number that intertwines both instruments, but its slower tempo also allows Wood’s and Williams’s playing to shine individually.” Over the song’s four-plus minute runtime, it’s possible to get lost in the dual string instruments’ interplay and feel like drifting off into the sea as the title implies. However, the interplay between Woods and Williams leads to an ebb and flow suggesting that their version of “drifting” is anything but a passive, monotonous affair.
“Family Farm”, The Hold Steady From Open Door Policy (2021, Positive Jams)
We’ve reached the third Hold Steady song on this playlist, and the most “Hold Steady” Hold Steady song to hold steady on this playlist. With triumphant horns and ringing piano, “Family Farm” has everything you’d expect musically except for the anthemic chorus, settling for a mostly-instrumental refrain instead. Meanwhile, Craig Finn throws some compelling images out—the titular “Family Farm” is not literal but due to an unreliable narrator it’s unclear exactly what it is, a nurse listens to Van Halen on shitty cell phone speakers, and the woman praying before taking a shot of god-knows-what is a reminder that all your funny Hold Steady parody lyrics will never be able to out-Finn the man himself.
“Blue (In A Major)”, LULA From Cabin Fever Dreamin’ (2020, Safe Suburban Home)
A late addition to the playlist, the Swedish-Australian garage rockers of LULA gleefully blast through the hooky “Blue (In a Major)” and do their best to lodge it into your head the whole two-and-a-half-minute runtime. Their strongest weapons are the half-sneering, Thermals-esque vocals of frontman Jake Farrugia (the Australian) and a surprising incorporation of a guiro throughout the song. It’s both my favorite song from and an accurate representative of Cabin Fever Dreamin’, which came out a few months ago but just got a cassette re-release from Safe Suburban Home if that’s your thing.
“Tall Order”, Nature’s Neighbor (2021, Tai Duo Music)
When I’m paring down these playlists to a “brief, manageable” two hours, seven-minute numbers are usually first on the chopping block, so the appearance of “Tall Order” here alone is a testament to its quality. If I’m reading the song’s Bandcamp description right, this song was recorded during the sessions for Nature’s Neighbor’s next full length album, Otherside, but is a standalone single rather than a preview of that record. If there’s any song on here that would stand up on its own it’s “Tall Order”, a dense, multi-movement suite of a song that builds electronic beats, piano, synths, and more traditional rock instrumentation all on top of each other, pulls it all away, and builds it up again across its runtime.
“Cover Song”, Mister Goblin From Four People in an Elevator and One of Them Is theDevil (2021, Exploding in Sound)
“Fuck it, never mind” is the key lyric from “Cover Song”, an acoustic late-album highlight from Four People in an Elevator and One of Them Is the Devil. The song is one part tender recollection of an unidentified individual that gets swallowed up in service of the safe, the familiar, the known. In this case, that means covering a song that “everybody likes”, your Freebirds, Blackbirds, and In My Lives, as Mr. Goblin intones over the song’s bridge.
“I’ve Got Some Friends”, Akron/Family From Love Is Simple (2007, Young God)
Despite the fact that you’re reading a music blog at this very moment, it’s not the 2000s anymore. While I have no intentions of glorifying that age of indie/alternative/underground/whatever music, I would like to question the degree to which that era has been discarded for “90’s revivalism”—as if the former, precariously-propped up by nascent institutions that have largely flamed or fizzled out, was ever on the same footing as the major-label bloat of the latter. This is to say—Akron/Family were never really “that band” for me, but if you lived through that decade or through its aftershocks, you have a few “that band”s, and I know A/F was “that band” for a lot of people. It is also to say: rest in peace, Miles Seaton. Even if I didn’t think the obvious choice for this playlist, “Don’t Be Afraid, You’re Already Dead”, was too on-the-nose for the occasion, I think I would still want to highlight “I’ve Got Some Friends” in its delirious, absurdly joyful glory.
In the fifth installment of Pressing Concerns, I highlight new albums by Mister Goblin, Nightshift, The Hold Steady, and Styrofoam Winos, and also discuss a compilation cassette of Kittyhawk’s non-LP material and the 25th anniversary reissue and remaster of Bailter Space’s Wammo.
Be sure to check out previous editions of Pressing Concerns for more good new music from the past two (or so) months. After doing three of these posts for three consecutive weeks (and each longer than the last), this column will probably be taking a week or two off. Nothing I’m certain I’m going to cover releases until March 19th, so in theory it could be until then, but don’t be surprised if it comes back a bit earlier. In the meantime, look out for a playlist post or two in the coming weeks—one of what I’m listening to at the moment and another that’s a time capsule/archival playlist.
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 Pull track: At Least
Over a decade or so of making music with suburban D.C.’s Two Inch Astronaut and on his own as Mister Goblin, Sam Goblin has honed in on a recognizable sound, led by his golden, effortlessly melodic voice combined with thorny guitar and rhythm sections reminiscent of several bands from the local Dischord Records roster. Since making Mister Goblin his primary outlet, however, he’s increasingly mixed in different elements into his music—acoustic instrumentation, some drum machines here and there—while still keeping a foot in the post-hardcore department. The excellent Four People in an Elevator and One of Them Is the Devil feels like the Goblin’s fullest realization yet of these new components.
There has always been a theatrical streak to the bands and projects fronted by Sam Goblin (not unlike another D.C.-area band, Shudder to Think). Two Inch Astronaut’s “Play to No One” added a positively musical-worthy sensibility to the decidedly unglamorous life of empty basement shows, and Four People in an Elevator… makes this undercurrent delightfully explicit with “Hook in the Eye”. The song is a character sketch about a wannabe actor who rationalizes his job as a predatory telephone scammer by acting as if it’s all one grand performance, and its proclamation of “This is my theater, your landline my stage” lends an absurd gravity to trying to trick an 80-year old grandparent into handing over the keys to their bank account.
Despite being a step forward, “Hook in the Eye” eventually does revolve into a classic Two Inch Astronaut-esque torching outro, which puts it closer to Sam Goblin’s origins than the majority of …Elevator… The entirely acoustic “Cover Song” sets itself up in “Play to No One” country but, rather than proudly wear its chip on its shoulder, it quietly looks out upon and contemplates a “tedious apocalypse” soundtracked by “Sweet Home Alabama” and “Freebird”. The mortally wounded bird of “Cardboard Box” ends its life (and the album) on its own terms over programmed beats and string accents. And I haven’t even covered two of the strongest songwriting flexes in “Six Flags America” (which I’ve already written about) and “At Least” (which I will write about soon). Coming in at less than a half hour in length and only available physically as a cassette, Four People… could’ve easily come across as a stopgap or lower-stakes release, but this album is the real deal. Sam Goblin has put together a collection of songs with appeal well beyond that of the underground alt-rock circuit without abandoning the strongest aspects of his past successes. (Bandcamp link)
Nightshift – Zöe
Release date: February 26th Record label: Trouble in Mind Genre: Post-punk, no wave indie pop Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital Pull track: Outta Space
For their second album, Glasgow’s Nightshift have fashioned together an inviting collection of minimalist indie rock songs from unlikely sources. Zöe pulls from lofty places both musically and conceptually, but still leaves the gates wide open for the listener. Nightshift cite the abrasion of “No New York/early Sonic Youth/This Heat” as the starting point for the band, but they’ve strayed quite a bit aways from point A in their two years of existence. That footprint is still there, but they’ve molded these tools into the melodic, utilitarian pop structures harkening to Young Marble Giants or Marine Girls. The transition reminds me of last year’s releases by Magik Markers, although Nightshift’s songs come across as more deliberate and calculated than 2020’s compromised experimentation did.
Zöe is an album where many, many instrumental and vocal parts come unadorned, placed front and center for the listener to take in. The pressure is on to take full advantage of this prime real estate, and in this Nightshift deliver—hooks pervade the waters of Zöe. “There’s no air in outer space, there’s no air in outer space” floats over tick-ticking rhythms and easily into my head over and over again, while the cycling guitar riffs from the album’s first two songs are as memorable as the accompanying hypnotic recitations of the songs’ titles. Despite the amount of empty space on Zöe, there are plenty of inspired instrumental choices—the liberal clarinet on early highlight “Spray Paint the Bridge” helps the song bend but not break in its second half, and later helps accent the spoken-word musings of “Make Kin” (which is also the album’s “rave up” song, in my view).
Though Zöe hits right out of the gate with three ace variations on their concoction of influences, the most ear-catching number comes at the start of the record’s second half: the 7-minute “Power Cut”, which casually stretches out to twice the average Zöe song length like it’s nothing. The steady, buzzing synths and rhythmic backbone steer “Power Cut” nearly into krautrock territory, despite not deviating too far from the rest of the album. If the more insular nature of Zöe’s last couple of songs initially feels kind of slight in comparison, this is more a reflection on the instantaneous (ahem) power of “Power Cut” rather than a weak ending. The aptly-titled confusing swirl of “Romantic Mud” particularly revealed itself to me with repeated listens, and the shuffling title track feels like a logical deconstruction of the album’s earlier accessible bits. The ethereal yet grounded Zöe is a sculpture of an album that doesn’t hide what makes it worth appreciating. (Bandcamp link)
Kittyhawk – Mikey’s Favorite Songs (2012-2016)
Release date: February 26th Record label: Count Your Lucky Stars Genre: Indie emo rock Formats: Cassette, digital Pull track: The First One
Chicago’s Kittyhawk—like any good emo-tinged DIY indie rock band from the past decade—amassed a collection of songs over their initial four-year ride which rivals that of their proper LP output. And Count Your Lucky Stars—like any good DIY label in the service of emo-tinged DIY indie rock—has helpfully compiled all thirteen of them in one place, the Mikey’s Favorite Songs cassette. The band’s lineup connects them to such notable names as Pet Symmetry, Dowsing, and Into It. Over It., but Mikey’s Favorite Songs reveals a band with its own unique footprint, anchored by the voice of frontwoman Kate Grube and an interest in classic pop songcraft.
The tape’s first five songs comprise their 2012 debut EP, which makes it clear that Kittyhawk had hit on something right out of the gate. It kicks off with the most straightforwardly sweet song here, the infectious (and correctly-titled) “The First One”. The rest of the EP puts up the other core tent poles of their sound, with the moody dual vocals of “Older/Wiser” (Guitarist/vocalist Erik Czaja cites the underappreciated Rainer Maria as an influence for this one, and I certainly hear it) and the dramatic rocker “He Travels in a Suit”. The rest of the compilation is built from various-artist compilation appearances, splits, and singles. It doesn’t hang together in the same way that the Kittyhawk EP songs do (unsurprisingly, as these songs weren’t meant to), but it does find the band stretching out a bit more to rewarding results. The songs become a little more complex despite still being recognizably Kittyhawk—“The Green” liberally piles on to its steady, driving drumbeat for two minutes, while the various sprawling, intricate parts of “The Daily Dodger” can make one’s head spin in a good way. And I will always have a soft spot for “Soft Serve”, my introduction to Kittyhawk via the Sundae Bloody Sundae split single.
It’s always going to be a bit odd to hear a Christmas song smack dab in the middle of Mikey’s Favorite Songs, but the tape’s primary purpose is making Kittyhawk’s stray recordings easier for us all to access, and given that I will now be happy to add their fuzz-pop version of “Silver Bells” into my future holiday rotation, it succeeds on this front. The other cover, a heartbreakingly slow version of The Supremes’ “You Keep Me Hanging On”, actually does work as an album closer—if for no other reason than I’m not sure how you’d follow it. Kittyhawk are, as I understand it, back together after a three-year pause, and perhaps we will get new material out of their second act. Whatever the future holds, the material on Mikey’s Favorite Songs reveals a past that’s worth a good, long look back. (Bandcamp link)
The Hold Steady – Open Door Policy
Release date: February 19th Record label: Positive Jams/Thirty Tigers Genre: The Hold Steady Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital Pull track: Lanyards
I could go on for four times the length of this entire post about my relationship with The Hold Steady, Craig Finn, and its many peaks and valleys over the last decade or so, but I will try to keep most of this about the new album itself. By way of introduction I will say that after nearly disintegrating with the twin “mixed reception” records Heaven Is Whenever (underrated) and Teeth Dreams (no comment) in the first half of the 2010s, their return to form in the decade’s latter half has been a relief to people like me—“Entitlement Crew” in 2017 turned trepidation into anticipation for new Hold Steady music, and the half-album, half-singles-comp Thrashing Thru the Passion fully delivered in 2019.
Open Door Policy, then, is the band’s first attempt to create an entire LP’s worth of songs that work together in seven years, and after Passion proved them capable of flexing the right muscles, ODP is their bid to try evolution once more. The band seems to have learned after Teeth Dreams that it would be unwise to try to bury the most unique and important part of their music (Craig Finn’s speak-singing lyrics); Open Door Policy thusly begins with much higher floor than that record. Instead, the most notable departure seems to be the lower ratio of unapologetic sing-along choruses than their mid-2000s work and Passion. The worst-case scenario for this Hold Understated would be the weakest moments in Finn’s solo albums: well-written but musically generic. Thankfully, though, it’s more analogous to the highlights of those records—in fact, it could be seen as a convergence of Finn’s most recent and best solo album (2019’s I Need a New War, which contained more tuneful moments than the two previous ones) with the Hold Steady’s full band power.
The opening sequence of the album is a big commander of attention, but not in typical Hold Steady fashion. We get two conceptual numbers—opener “The Feelers” is no “Stuck Between Stations” or “Constructive Summer”, while the dark “Spices” harkens back to Separation Sunday, but not to any of that album’s most immediately accessible parts. I respect these and appreciate the color it adds to Open Door Policy, but it wouldn’t work if they didn’t let loose and run up the score with new classic Hold Steady moves in the album’s center—and they do. 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.
With that out of their system, the band ends Open Door Policy with some more puzzles to sort out. “Me & Magdalena” contains some of Craig Finn’s best storytelling on the album, and I’m still trying to sort out how “Hanover Camera” and “Riptown” fit in with both that song and the earlier tracks. And those are the twin pillars of The Hold Steady—Finn leaving lyrical breadcrumbs that make the listener want to go back, and the rest of the band making it feel anything but academic or laborious to do so. Nearing two decades together, they’re still working with the same roadmap, but aren’t afraid to annotate it, circling new routes and marking out all the diners that serve gross toast. (Bandcamp link)
Styrofoam Winos – Styrofoam Winos
Release date: February 12th Record label: Sophomore Lounge Genre: Alt-country, indie folk Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull track: Skyline Top Removal
A supergroup of sorts, Nashville’s Styrofoam Winos have been notably cosigned by Rosy Overdrive favorite Simon Joyner (who has also written favorably of member Lou Turner’s solo work). Featuring three songwriters with notable discographies of their own—Turner, Joe Kenkel, and Trevor Nikrant—Styrofoam Winos has a lot to pack into its 40 minutes, and it certainly sounds like it. Just in the first three songs, they rip through the country-fried egg punk of “Stuck in a Museum”, the charming southern folk duet of “In Your Room”, and the plaintive, Tweedy-esque “Once”. Most impressively is “Skyline Top Removal”, which marries the record’s brightest and most pleasing music with its most striking images and biting lyrics (“It was built on the backs of the underpaid….but isn’t it minimal? Isn’t it great?”, chiefly, not to mention the song title itself) to make a modern southern-urban classic.
Styrofoam Winos floats away after that, the instrumental “Open Mic” giving way to a final trio of songs that make good use of the group’s subtler tendencies. The light strumming and caught-in-a-moment reflections of “Maybe More” shine the brightest for me, while album closer “Wrong Season’s Length” builds around mundane observation with strings and piano to remind me of another Nashville mainstay, Lambchop. Even though I find myself gravitating towards these quieter numbers on average, Styrofoam Winos stick out due to their ability to nail both those and, say, the fuzzy “School in the Morning” in the same breath. (Bandcamp link)
Bailter Space – Wammo (25th Anniversary Reissue)
Release date: February 12th Record label: Matador Genre: Shoegaze, noise pop Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull track: Colours
New Zealand’s Bailter Space will—due to their place of birth, time on the Flying Nun label, and some personnel overlap—forever be associated with the scrappy jangle pop of Dunedin Sound bands like The Chills, The Bats, and The Clean, but they have always drawn from heavier musical influences than those bands generally did. Dating back to their proto-Bailter Space band, Gordons, in the 1980s, they’ve filled their albums with various concentrations of noise rock and reverb. 1995’s Wammo, reissued this month by Matador Records as part of their “Revisionist History” series, is their most accessible effort of their initial run, their rightfully most-revered single LP and their nearest brush with indie rock immortality. The fuzz-drenched production is still there, but underneath lie several excellent pop songs. The starry-eyed “Splat” and the wistful “Glimmer” could’ve been vintage shoegaze anthems a la Ride, while “At Five We Drive” recalls Sonic Youth circa their populist 1990 peak just as the actual Sonic Youth were retreating into experimentation and opacity. The defiant “Voltage” near the end of the album indicated their deconstructive streak hadn’t been completely buried, but they follow this with the exuberant 6-minute romp of “D Thing”, recalling a slightly shier version of Eleventh Dream Day’s Neil Young-influenced freak-outs. Wammo does not have the indie rock footprint of some of the other albums in Matador’s reissue series like Alien Lanes or Electr-o-Pura, but I take their point wholeheartedly that what Bailter Space accomplished with this album deserves to be celebrated 25 years down the line. (Bandcamp link)
We are back again! In this fourth, mid-February installment of Pressing Concerns, I highlight the third album from Virginia’s The Crowd Scene, the first solo record from Anika Pyle (Katie Ellen/Chumped), the second album from janglers The Boys with the Perpetual Nervousness, the reissue of 90’s queercore band Longstocking’s discography, and a new release from the lo-fi pop stylings of The Fragiles. You aren’t gonna want to miss any of these albums, folks. You’ll want to be sitting down for this. You’re going to be on the edge of –oh, just read these.
If you can’t get enough of album roundup posts, be sure to check out previous Pressing Concerns entries. I’m hoping that the next edition goes out roughly a week from when this one goes live, so watch this space!
The Crowd Scene – South Circular
Release date: December 11th Record label: Self-released Genre: Power pop, orchestral pop Formats: CD, digital Pull track: Soho Square
Virginia-by-way-of-England band The Crowd Scene certainly work at their own pace. Their debut album, Turn Left at Greenland, was released in 1998, and their sophomore effort followed merely a decade later. With this in mind, I think Rosy Overdrive can be forgiven for being a couple months late to December 2020’s South Circular, their third LP. Led by the duo of Grahame Davies and Anne Rogers, South Circular clearly takes influence from the lush orchestral pop of the early Rock era, but the time period it takes me back to above all else is the early 2000s, when troubadours like Brendan Benson and Elliott Smith could find success by marrying their smartly-penned tunes with cherry-picked pop production and instrumentation from decades past and present.
The album starts with the airy, minimalist “Mistake I Had to Make” that’s reminiscent of the lounge-pop of Ivy or even a trimmed Stereolab, but this is either a red herring or an example of The Crowd Scene’s dexterity depending on your point of view. By the halfway mark, they’ve already run through the twang of “Too Late to Send Letters”, the bright hues of “Soho Square”, and the closest thing South Circular has to a straight-up rocker in the extended guitar soloing of “Records You Love the Most”. Davies’ clear and ageless lead vocals throughout the record remind me of Jon Brion’s solo work, while the languid “You Can Always Come Home” would fit right at home on an album by one of Brion’s frequent collaborators, Aimee Mann. The around-the-fire, reflective acoustic closer “Brotherhood of the Leaky Boot” sounds like something off of Paul McCartney’s latest album, which South Circular actually predates by a week. Time is a funny thing. The Crowd Scene has shown throughout their career that they don’t allow themselves to be controlled by it, and with South Circular they’ve put together a collection of ten strong songs that will help them weather it. (Bandcamp link)
Anika Pyle – Wild River
Release date: February 12th Record label: June/Quote Unquote Genre: Indie folk, synthpop, spoken word Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull track: Emerald City
Anika Pyle spent the majority of the 2010s fronting emo-tinged DIY punk bands Chumped and Katie Ellen, far from household names but revered in certain circles and widely influential in several scenes, particularly in her current stomping grounds of Philadelphia. That someone as musically active as Pyle has finally made her first solo album isn’t surprising, especially as it’s inching up on four years since the last full-length she was involved with (Katie Ellen’s sole LP). Wild River, 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—often spoken, but even when sung landing as evocative and arresting as her poetry does.
This didn’t exactly come out of nowhere—Katie Ellen was just as likely to break out the acoustics and slow the tempo down as they were to rip like Chumped, but that seemed like such a natural progression for Pyle that I didn’t notice it too much. With Wild River, however, we’re confronted with this dimension of Pyle’s songwriting head-on. The album’s musical palette is, to me, reminiscent of Allison Crutchfield, another pop punker who made the transition to solo album by embracing a similar toolbox. Lyrically and thematically, however, comparisons to Wild River fall flat—it is a deeply personal record that could only have been made by Pyle herself.
Turning down the amps on one’s music and “pivoting to synthpop” conjure images of trying to make a finished product that’s more widely palatable for mass consumption, potent if successfully threaded but at its worst merely wallpaper to blend into the background of a mood playlist or melodrama. Wild River is no such compromise—Anika Pyle uses her new music vocabulary to command your full attention. Spoken word pieces, 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 it can’t stand on their own—“Emerald City” and “Haiku for Everything You Loved and Miss” are, in their own way, confident, modern pop songs. It is to say that as powerful as “Orange Flowers” is by itself, hearing it immediately after “Mexican Restaurant Where I Last Saw My Father” stirs up emotion that musicians rarely attempt to stir, let alone succeed in doing. “The significance of letting a grown man cry” carries that much more heft. It is to say that “Look up, you dummy” and “Life is a funny haha” become more than just single lines as you carry them with you throughout Wild River. It’s music that will make you appreciate a piece of pie—like, really appreciate—and there’s nothing stronger than that. (Bandcamp link)
The Boys with the Perpetual Nervousness – Songs from Another Life
Release date: February 5th Record label: Bobo Integral Genre: Jangle pop Formats: Vinyl, digital Pull track: Can’t You See?
When Teenage Fanclub put out their breakthrough Bandwagonesque in 1991, it was so widely anointed a spiritual sequel to Big Star’s three-album run in the 1970s that Big Star itself acknowledged this fact in a reissue’s liner notes. While the Fannies have thankfully stayed together long after their initial rise, this has nevertheless not prevented The Boys with the Perpetual Nervousness from submitting their bid to become third-generation torchbearers. And what a bid it is—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 Taylor and his counterpart, Gonzalo Marcos, know better than to stake their reputation on one act (of course, so did TFC look elsewhere than Big Star to draw from their sound). They cite both other mile markers in their jangle pop lineage (The Beach Boys, The Byrds, R.E.M.) as well as offshoots from it (Dinosaur Jr., Weezer, Fountains of Wayne)—and the synth accents of the album’s final two songs suggest that they’re no Luddites on principle. TBWTPN work very hard to wring genuinely affecting emotional material from these well-worn tools, and their best moments are completely transcendent. The under-two-minute plea of “Can’t You See?” is instantly memorable, and the way they subtly shift from “urgent” to “contemplative” for the following track (“Rose Tinted Glass”) without fundamentally changing up their sound is deft indeed. There’s very little not to like about Songs from Another Life. (Bandcamp link)
Longstocking – Once Upon a Time Called Now and Singles & Demos: 1994-1998
Release date: February 5th Record label: Jealous Butcher Genre: Queercore, riot grrl Formats: Vinyl/digital (Once Upon a Time Called Now), digital (Singles & Demos) Pull track: Jehu on a Rollercoaster
The first reissue I’m covering in Pressing Concerns is a monster. Los Angeles’s Longstocking released one album (1997’s Once Upon a Time Called Now) and a handful of singles before disintegrating as the century turned. Some members of the band, mainly lead vocalist and primary songwriter Tamala Poljak, later showed up in other bands afterwards, but during their brief, obscure run, Longstocking put together a reappraisal-worthy body of work. Jealous Butcher Records has risen to the task, putting out a remastered reissue of their sole LP, and appending a digital compilation of the rest of their recordings (Singles & Demos: 1994-1998) for good measure—all of which presents a picture of a band that achieved plenty in a short period of time.
The most immediately striking thing about Once Upon a Time Called Now is just how good it sounds. Musically and vocally, this could’ve been a major label release, sounding just as close to The Breeders as Bratmobile, if not closer. This is a function of recording and producing choices, of course, but also the songs themselves. Barely half a minute into “Jehu on a Rollercoaster”, they pull out all the stops on the chorus: plenty of “ooh”s, vocal harmonies, guitar-stab underscores. This is the first indication of what exactly Longstocking are capable of, but not the last—“Goddess, Pt. 4” is coming up, its “you look like a goddess, Shakespeare wrote about you in his sonnets” refrain being, if anything, the polar opposite of holier-than-thou punk posturing. If that alone wasn’t enough to put them in the pantheon of queercore royalty, Poljack kicks it over the finish line with the ripping alt-rock of “Not a Jerk”. Once Upon a Time Called Now is a half-hour all-killer, no-filler statement, and I’d recommend it to anyone who cares about punk or indie rock music. Singles & Demos: 1994-1998 is more optional listening—the early versions of the songs that would end up on the LP are interesting, but don’t merit many repeat spins for me. The compilation’s originals, however, contain quite a few gems. While not as cohesive or polished as the studio album, songs like the swinging “Rocking Chair” and the busy “Chance to Laugh” are as well-written as anything on Once Upon a Time, and you could fashion a nearly-as-worthy collection of songs from the recording dump presented.
Riot grrl is on track to become reissued and repackaged just about as much as the original wave of punk rock has suffered through, as it arrives at its mid-life crisis of large-scale reunion tours and being namedropped by celebrities for cool points. Longstocking’s discography, however, in all its original glory, is a breath of fresh air from all that burgeoning cultural baggage. Once Upon a Time Called Now serves as a reminder of everything good and powerful that triggered the gold rush around the scene in the first place, as well as proving just how important a second glance with the benefit of time can be to understanding and appreciating an album. Once Upon a Time Called Now planted itself a ways off from MOR mainstream palatability, but was still a little too glossy for a movement that, even among the wider landscape of punk rock, stood out for its disinterest in concessions. The great trash compactor of time has crushed all these once-binding genres and scene dividers together. Longstocking, regardless of when and where they were, made a strong collection of songs that stand up against any rock music coming out over two decades later. (Album Bandcamp link) (Singles compilation Bandcamp link)
The Fragiles – On and On
Release date: February 12th Record label: Living Lost Genre: Fuzz rock, lo-fi rock Formats: Cassette, digital Pull track: Kaleidoscope
David Settle continues to keep busy. Last year he released two albums as Psychic Flowers (which ended up on my best of 2020 list) as well as another solid record from the longer-running Big Heet. This time it’s The Fragiles’ (mostly Settle, with a couple drum credits and a lead guitar credit) turn to drop an album with On and On, which continues the pop songwriting Psychic Flowers explored but also allows itself to stretch out a bit more than that project’s ramshackle nature. It’s all still very lo-fi, 8-tracked and all that, but that doesn’t constrain Settle’s dynamic ambitions—see opening with the five-minute, slow burn (for this kind of music, at least) of a title track before letting loose with fuzzy power pop of “Kaleidoscope”, a lead single if I’ve ever heard one.
One of the clearest influences on The Fragiles is Martin Newell, with On and On coming off as a scuzzier Cleaners from Venus on several occasions. The pastoral “Garden of Cleaners” is the lyrically explicit tribute, but to my ears “Armistice Day” (which shares a title with a Cleaners song) is the real dead ringer, the way it builds around a simple, catchy riff and then spends the rest of the song alternatively riding it out and trying to knock it off balance. This will only get you so far, however—if there’s a comparison point for the lumbering “Success Is…” on one of Newell’s albums, I haven’t heard it. Since time seems to be the unofficial theme of this post, I’m pleased that the album brings it all together again at the end with “Hourglass”, which calls back to the previously-mentioned “Kaleidoscope” and trades in the kind of beautiful existentialism of The Chills and Flying Nun Records—two more shadows cast over this album. Whatever the moniker, it’s another worthy effort from Settle and his collaborators. (Bandcamp link)
Rosy Overdrive 