Blood Pressure
Neo-Psychedelia, Noise Pop, Indie Rock, Chiptune, Powerviolence and more.
Isn’t this always the way; you are getting back from some time off work and just when you have the most on your plate in all areas of your life, that’s when you get sick. I get very defeatist when I come down with a cold or flu, but I’m pushing through and wanted to make sure I get a post up here since it has been a while.
As a result, here’s another hybrid post featuring some thoughts and a playlist on the new releases coming out today, and a bunch of reviews of what I’ve been spinning since I got back.
Oh, and here’s a picture of a dinosaur from Animal Kingdom.
The new Tanukichan EP sounds nice to me this morning. I dunno what it is about music that inches into modern shoegaze and dream pop territory, but most of it bores me. Tanukichan’s previous LP was an outlier, as I found it highly enjoyable.
“Music that I can’t put a finger on why it works despite featuring genres I’m tired of” seems to be a feature in today’s post.
Iji have appeared on two year-end lists of mine in the past (2015 and 2016) so I do need to check out their latest.
I’ve got thoughts on the new one from Regional Justice Center below.
Seeing a lot of talk about: Downhaul, Nina Ryser, Weak Signal and some others, so they’re on my list to get to as well.
The Tim Reaper / Kloke album is getting me in a real jungle/drum and bass mood, I have to say.
Icon legend:
⛏️ denotes picks of the week.
🌱 seedling denotes albums I liked, but may grow on me.
✨ means worth a look, if you like the genres listed in particular.
As always, please reach out on the hellsite, the better site, or better yet join the Rosy Overdrive Discord server where I can be found now and again. You can also find me in the corners of Rate Your Music scrounging for obscure emo, hardcore, indie-rock and pop-punk.
Don’t forget: if you’re reading this in your email it will be cut off. Read on the web for the full list of reviews!
⛏️ Dummy - Free Energy (2024)
Genre: Neo-Psychedelia, Noise Pop, Krautrock, Ambient Pop, Alternative Dance, Baggy, Space Rock Revival, Shoegaze, Indietronica
Bands that play this sound - basically Stereolab-core - often live or die by an unexplainable element. I have no idea why some bands hit and most don't, and couldn't begin to tell you why. I already have all of Stereolab's albums, do I need more? Even new albums from bands I've loved in the past like The Soundcarriers struggled to grab me this year.
So why does Dummy work for me? I dunno, but it sounds great, feels good. It's a pastiche of sounds you've heard before, but never dips too far in any direction (I'm so tired of the Shoegaze revival sound that I'm happy to hear they aren't going too far down that road.)
Not sure I need the Intro and the "Godspin" outro, but otherwise this was nice and I'll likely come back to it some more in the twilight of the summer weather.
Onsloow - Full Speed Anywhere Else (2024)
Genre: Indie Rock
This sophomore release (and first for Tiny Engines) from this indie rock and emo-pop band out of Norway comes with a RIYL list of bands including Alvvays, The Anniversary, Great Grandpa, Momma, and Slow Pulp. For what it's worth, nearly every pull-quote in the press kit includes Tigers Jaw as well. If that varied list of bands tells you anything, it's that the band is playing in varying, overlapping genres that are all adjacent to indie and emo in some way or another while wrapping it all up in a power-poppy hook-laden package.
And they're quite adept at it too. Lead-off track "Riding on Lies" is as fizzy and effervescent as the best acts in the genre. "Taxi" recalls a pinch of Guppy-era Charly Bliss, when their guitar-based crunch was just about perfect. "Brakes" brings Ahem to mind, another band who can really mix together power pop and energetic Superchunk-esque guitar rock well (alongside the emo riffing of the aforementioned Tigers Jaw). "Body Parts" bears considerable resemblance to Hard Feelings-era Future Teens too.
If there's any complaint, it's that the mathy emo riffs and steady jangle of slower songs like "You From Before", "Muscle Memory" or "Now I Get It" come off as a little faceless. Maybe this is just another me problem, not a you problem, but the band works best for me when energy level is kept high, and hooks are at the forefront. We'll see if those other songs open up for me over time.
⛏️ Hello Mary - Emita Ox (2024)
Genre: Indie Rock
Pretty sure I listened to and enjoyed Hello Mary last year, but that it narrowly avoided being on my list of favorites of the year. Here, they are continuing their exploration of capital "I" indie rock, with soft-loud dynamics, noise-pop guitar and emo-adjacent approach to melodies and song structures. It's a fine line between "you've heard this before and it's average" and "you've heard this before, and it still really works" but this is definitely the latter for me. Can imagine this will get a good amount of play from me this fall, in the car on drives, etc. since it has a lot of shifting tones and vibes to it. Very enjoyable.
✨ HarleyLikesMusic - 2.0 (2024)
Genre: Chiptune, IDM, Footwork
Really sick, noisy chiptune electronic music with footwork/dnb elements and some of that modern bass-drop wub-wub or (whatever you'd call it) aesthetic merged with the classic crunchiness of the chip/tracker genre. Reminds me of Ultrasyd circa Chipsters EP, which is a huge compliment imo. Cracked up when I realized what "That's a Ten" is sampling from (before I looked at the name of the song to be fair, lol.)
✨ Regional Justice Center - Freedom Sweet Freedom (2024)
Genre: Powerviolence, Hardcore
Have never heard much from Regional Justice Center, but saw a lot of press surrounding the release of their latest so I dove straight in on new release morning. Not a whole lot to say about the style of this - it alternates between hardcore breakdowns and faster blasts of classic powerviolence intensity. As dewtaylo wisely points out in their review on Rate Your Music, this is just a moshable hardcore album that speeds up here and there.
It amuses me that in the RYM comment box there's a complaint about the rap moment, when there has always been an intriguing link between powerviolence/grind and rap (hell, SPAZZ had a Kool Keith drop on one of their records.)
All said, this is just an effective bit of heaviness that scratches an itch and gets out in under 14 minutes. Sometimes that is all I need.
Cursive - Devourer (2024)
Genre: Indie Rock, Post-Hardcore, Alternative Rock, Emo
I haven't kept up with Curisve since I saw them in 2012 while touring I Am Gemini. That album didn't entirely grab me, and it was a good show, but I never kept up with their releases beyond that despite being a favourite band of mine since College.
So, I can't accurately say that this is a "return to form" of sorts, because I didn't hear enough of Get Fixed or Vitriola to really know. But I can confidently say that this does sound like they are leaning back into the textures of The Ugly Organ. It's got their signature sound buoyed by cello, synth and trumpet accoutrements. I feel like they are too actively calling to mind that era of the band (including Happy Hollow) to ignore the comparisons.
And while this maybe isn't a great Cursive album, it's a good one. In some ways it's a straight down the middle recapture the glory days kind of album. Sounds right to my ears, the songs are all of a certain quality without having tracks that bottom out the record or spike so high the rest can't keep up.
Sure, it drags on a bit and doesn't have anything (lyrically or song-wise) that stands up to their classic work, but it's all... good! I'll take it.
Fig Dish - Feels Like the Very First Two Times (2024)
Genre: Alternative Rock
Fig Dish are a good example of my "their best album is a playlist" concept. That's What Love Songs Often Do and When Shove Goes Back to Push both have a couple dope alt-rock pop-grunge bangers on them, but they've long been a band that I remember as a hidden gem of the era, but then get a little bored or tired halfway through their albums.
Their new record... is actually an old one. An unreleased, never finished (until now) third album that was shelved as the band slowed down and splintered into various other projects. The press kit describes it as "Something pretty close to what that third Fig Dish album might have been, had it come into actual existence in the late ’90" so I have to assume they've put some extra work into re-collecting, re-structuring or re-mixing etc. here.
And again, the band has an album with some really solid alt-rock-power-pop highs ("Burn Bright for Now" continues their string of great opening songs) and some dated post-Grunge shrugs ("Science Goes Public.)
I have a soft spot for this kind of thing, so maybe I'm rating it a pinch higher than it deserves, but I enjoyed this as a curiosity above anything else. And hey, a couple more songs to add to that playlist I'll make of their best tunes someday down the road I guess.
Public Opinion - Painted on Smile (2024)
Genre: Alternative Rock, Pop Punk, Emo
Well rounded album of varying poppy punk songs. Sometimes they have a bit of an indie rock power pop thing going on ("Chicanery", "No Fruit at All") and sometimes they have a more straight forward punk rock vibe ("Hothead"). At times they also bring to mind the hardcore-adjacent soft music trend and other times they seem more like a Joyce Manor-esque melding of pop, indie and punk.
This feels a hair or two away from being something I truly am over the moon on, but the songs are mostly enjoyable if not entirely memorable. Definitely a band I'd be interested in hearing more from on the horizon to see where they take this sound from here. With a few more memorable anthemic tracks this band could be something that sticks to my brain.
⛏️ Lateduster - Five Easy Pieces (2002)
Genre: Post-Rock, Electronic, Turntable Music
Overlooked mood music, a kind of mix of post-rock and jazzy, noisy (sometimes) instrumental indie rock (see: Tortoise, The Sea and Cake, etc.) I'm pretty sure I discovered this when I was in my electronic music phase circa Rdio when I was diving into the Merck Records catalogue looking for more albums like Chigliak, Sinking or Pistachio Island. There's some elements of post-rock influenced emo bands like mid- to late-career The Appleseed Cast here as well ("Hospital No. 32").
✂ Shaker/Flicker, Grunting and Walking Around in a Circle
⛏️ Do Make Say Think - Goodbye Enemy Airship the Landlord Is Dead (2000)
Genre: Post-Rock, Jazz-Rock, Space Rock Revival, Slowcore
I have a frustrating relationship with post-rock. I was definitely a listener who got caught up in the great post-rock explosion of the early 00s, but I very quickly got fatigue from the ultimately predictable style of quiet-loud post-rock that blossomed out of the popularity of bands like Explosions in the Sky.
Maybe it is because I'm Canadian, but the Constellation strain of post-rock always seemed best to me. There's a texture and mystique to these records. I can picture the band playing when I listen to Explosions in the Sky, but these albums seem way more textured and mysterious. What even are some of the sounds here, you might think listening to a Constellation album.
Of course something like Lift Yr. Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven! blew my College-aged mind, but the only band that has had a lasting impact in my memory was Do Make Say Think. Maybe they were more digestible, taking what seemed like epics and squashing them into more manageable track lengths. And doing so, without sacrificing their ability to impress, or feel like journey's of themselves. It only takes three minutes and twenty one seconds of "The Landlord Is Dead" to explode, but it's earned and exciting without dragging its feet.
This is definitely top-loaded though: "When Day Chokes the Night", "Minmin" and "The Landlord Is Dead" are certified bangers. Closer "Goodbye Enemy Airship" as well is a genre highlight. The rest of them aren't merely just good - they're very good too - but those are some serious high points to stand up to.
That’s it, that’s all. Be excellent to one other.
Very comprehensive playlist as always! Some excellent tracks in there. Really looking forward to listening to all of the Dummy album - just gave a couple of tracks a listen and I'm all in.