It is time to wrap up February, and the shortest month of the year ended up more than delivering the goods (read: good music) this time around. Plenty of brand new music from 2024 graces the two-hour playlist below, some from bands I’ve covered previously, some not, and we’ve also still got a few 2023 stragglers that made it across the date line. Read on!
Mt. Worry, Mint Mile, Liquid Mike, and True Green have two songs on the playlist this time.
Here is where you can listen to the playlist on various streaming services: Spotify, Tidal (missing one song), BNDCMPR. Be sure to check out previous playlist posts if you’ve enjoyed this one, or visit the site directory. If you’d like to support Rosy Overdrive, you can share this (or another) post, or donate here.
“Marigold”, Wagging
From My Own Private Rodeo (2024, Wagging)
Who knew there was great indie pop in Asheville, North Carolina? That’s where Wagging (guitarist/vocalist Alison Antaramian, bassist Mark Capon, and drummer/vocalist Newt Pal) hail from, and their debut album, My Own Private Rodeo, is an incredibly fun listen. If nothing else, it’s got “Marigold” on it, which has to be one of my favorite songs of the year so far. Harmonies are important for Wagging, and the ones found in the chorus of this song are second to none–of course, it helps that both Antaramian’s melodic guitar playing and hook-writing are both on point as well. Knowing that they’re capable of putting together songs like this, Wagging have been filed under “band to watch” for me now.
“Mouse Trap”, Liquid Mike
From Paul Bunyan’s Slingshot (2024)
“Given what you know, the American Dream is a Michigan hoax”–it sure is, Liquid Mike, it sure is. I’m not the only person to sing the praises of Paul Bunyan’s Slingshot, the fifth album from Marquette, Michigan’s Liquid Mike, but does it ever live up to the hype. There are songs on here that power pop bands would kill to write that Liquid Mike didn’t even release as singles, and the songs that were singles sound even better in context. The alt-rock wrecking ball “Mouse Trap” falls into the latter category; it’s a towering piece of guitar power that flexes even harder amongst the record’s poppier fare. It’s a transfixing combination of dead-serious cartoon violence imagery and dramatic pauses that rarely leaves my head quickly once it shows up there. Read more about Paul Bunyan’s Slingshot here.
“Going Nowhere”, Sonny Falls
From Sonny Falls (2024, Earth Libraries)
The upcoming fourth Sonny Falls album feels like an attempt to pack all the ambition of 2020 double LP All That Has Come Apart/Once Did Not Exist into ten tracks and thirty-five minutes. The songs on Sonny Falls don’t sound like anything but Sonny Falls songs, but every song on the album feels stretched and teased out in a new way, with bandleader Ryan Ensley spending a bit more time composing and arranging his sprawling writing instead of fully leaning into his street-raving side. That being said, when he wants to pull out one of the all-gas, no-brakes garage-y fuzz rock anthems that have marked his past, Ensley still very much “has it”; look no further than single “Going Nowhere” (“I wonder if I’m going nowhere / I heard that place is kinda cool,” he muses in the chorus). I’ll have more to say about Sonny Falls soon.
“Empty Island”, Mint Mile
From Roughrider (2024, Comedy Minus One)
On their second record, Chicago’s Mint Mile finally have their “tight”, forty-minute single long-player album, a different beast than their sprawling hourlong 2020 debut, Ambertron. Mint Mile inject Roughrider with plenty of energy, perhaps nowhere more noticeably than “Empty Island”, the band’s finest moment as “rockers” yet. They do justice to a song that has already established itself as an excellent fixture in the Mint Mile live experience (I’d been calling it “Reverse Vampire”, after its most immediately memorable lyric), with Corvair’s Heather Larimer sneaking in some vocals in the song’s second half, answering Tim Midyett as he confidently helms a piece of barnburning country rock. Read more about Roughrider here.
“My Pecadilloes”, True Green
From My Lost Decade (2024, Spacecase)
As True Green, singer-songwriter Dan Hornsby and multi-instrumentalist Tailer Ransom develop a distinct musical style, a busy, kitchen-sink pop attitude that reflects their confidence that Hornsby’s striking songwriting will shine even if they whip up an instrumental storm around it. And it does–the first half of My Lost Decade is one “statement song” after another, different stories in different genres held together by the writing of Hornsby (who is, by the way, also a novelist). The boisterous, cape-twirling pop rock of “My Pecadilloes” is a coming-in-hot tale of greed and throat-cutting that feels like a kid brother to Malkmus, Bejar, and Berman (the way that Hornsby sings “my advisor” is perhaps my single favorite musical moment of the year thus far). Read more about My Lost Decade here.
“Loud in Here”, Mt. Worry
From Die Happy (2024, Mountain of Worry)
A second Mt. Worry EP has arrived almost exactly a year after their first one, A Mountain of Fucking Worry. Die Happy is less than half the length of their last record, but it’s incredibly strong nonetheless, retaining the loose, “anything goes” energy of the Philadelphia/Chicago supergroup’s debut but while also feeling like the work of a more cohesive unit. Every song on Die Happy is a hit, but “Loud in Here” might be the biggest “hit” on here. It was my first favorite on the record, and it’s not hard to hear why–the song’s lead vocalist, Noah Roth, has been an excellent deliverer of pop melodies over several solo records now, and the bouncy but explosive power pop of this song is one of their strongest ones yet. Read more about Die Happy here.
“Sorry Darling”, Sorry Darling
From See This Through (2024)
One of my favorite albums of 2022 was Bigger Than Before by Ex-Vöid. It’s a mess of big hooks, harmonies, exuberance, and noisiness–I wish more indie rock tried to sound like it. “Sorry Darling” by Brooklyn’s Sorry Darling is the first song I’ve heard in a bit that really reminds me of that album–for one, guitarist/vocalist/songwriters Stephen Bailey and Liz Wagner Biro sing so well together that they do it for the entire song, and the instrumental is sprinting to keep up with them all the time as well. It’s choppy pop-punk power chords at first, but the classic rock-n-roll flares in the chorus are a welcome development, as is the ridiculous guitar soloing in between. They pulled it off, indeed.
“Addlepated”, Fake Canadian
From Fleeting Moments (2022, Daylight Headlight Section)
“Addlepated” is some excellent vocabulary rock (it means “confused or stupid; befuddled”, by the way). Fake Canadian are an “angular power pop” trio from Sacramento whose most recent release is a five-song EP from 2022 called Fleeting Moments. The band recorded it with Scott Evans of Kowloon Walled City, but it’s not exactly straight-up noise rock–they certainly have the clean, Albini-influenced “PRF-core” sound, but the record hews more toward Devo-y nerve-y post-punk/new wave or even a Thermals-ish power-pop-punk. It’s one of the more unique-sounding things I’ve heard in recent memory–to me, “Addlepated” is what a perfect pop song sounds like.
“Lake Pontchartrain”, Tim McNally
From On the Way to Pompeii (2024)
Philadelphia-based folk rock musician Tim McNally may be a somewhat under-the-radar singer-songwriter, but he writes with a confidence and a faith that whoever is paying attention will give these songs the close looks they deserve. Although sometimes dressed as an acoustic folk troubadour, McNally carries himself through On the Way to Pompeii with a rock and roll swagger, whether that means Springsteen-esque bombast or an interconnected intricacy reflecting of the more esoteric moments of Cooley and Hood. The record’s best song is “Lake Pontchartrain”, an absolutely gorgeous piece of orchestral guitar pop in which McNally’s protagonist’s entire journey unspools itself in a seedy ecstasy. It ends abruptly, an entire world snuffed out just as suddenly as it was alighted. Read more about On the Way to Pompeii here.
“Passionate Sunday”, Dancer
From 10 Songs I Hate About You (2024, Meritorio)
My favorite thing on Dancer’s debut full-length, 10 Songs I Hate About You, is probably the closing track. “Passionate Sunday” is a buzzing indie-noise-pop tune that merges garish, whirring synths with gorgeous melodies in a way that reminds me of The Tenement Year-era Pere Ubu. “Passionate Sunday” features a minute of clattering noise before the band launch into the proper song, and the album version of the track ends with another two minutes of some bare guitar and piano with ambient studio noise in the background. Unfortunately, it has to end eventually. I’ll have more to say about 10 Songs I Hate About You soon.
“Leaving Me Behind”, Westall 66
From Staring at the Sun (2024, Slippery Slope)
Melbourne’s Westall 66 trades in the business of big, hooky, polished pop punk on their debut EP, Staring at the Sun–their opening statement offers up five songs incorporating widescreen heartland rock, loud and boisterous power pop, perennially out-of-style “orgcore”, and a pop punk earnestness. Just about every chorus on Staring at the Sun is power pop excellence, but “Leaving Me Behind” just might have my favorite refrain, with the lead singer riding the titular line out for all it’s worth after the enjoyable building-up the verses provide. Read more about Staring at the Sun here.
“Stick n Poke”, Mealworm
From Mealworm (2024, Mealworm)
Oh, man. I’ve heard a decent amount of Portland-based singer-songwriter Colleen Dow’s solo material and was quite into the most recent album from their band, Thank You, I’m Sorry–but the debut EP from their latest project, Mealworm, is the best thing front-to-back that I’ve heard from them yet. The self-titled Mealworm EP is brief–three songs, less than nine minutes–but it’s a heavy listen as Dow immerses themself fully in writing about people formerly in their life who’ve since passed away. “Stick n Poke” is my favorite song from mealworm; I love how the steady rhythm section (provided by drummer Abe Anderson and bassist Alex Heubel) sounds almost jaunty–as brisk as it is on its own, in context it adds a haziness to Dow’s lucid remembrances of someone who’s been dead for a year at this point.
“On the Northline”, Frontier Ruckus
From On the Northline (2024, Sitcom Universe)
I first came to the work of Michigan singer-songwriter Matthew Milia via his excellent 2021 solo album Keego Harbor, but he’s probably most well-known for fronting the long-running folk rock band Frontier Ruckus. On the Northline is the first Frontier Ruckus full-length I’ve heard (for longtime fans, it’s a triumphant return–their last one was in 2017) but I can tell you that it’s great–it sounds like Milia’s solo work, but folkier! That’s in no small part due to David W. Jones’ banjo, which duets nicely with Milia’s contemplative lyrics and delicate but confident melodies on my favorite song on the record, the title track. Of course, that opening acoustic guitar riff that Milia plays before beginning the song with his best Jason Lytle impression is also key, as is his mandolin playing, as Zachary Nichols’ trumpet shades. There’s a lot of good on On the Northline, but this is the one where it really all comes together.
“Baying of Dogs”, Guitar
From Casting Spells on Turtlehead (2024, Spared Flesh/Julia’s War)
Guitar (aka Portland, Oregon’s Saia Kuli) brings a louder, noisier sound to the project’s latest release, Casting Spells on Turtlehead, expanding on the lo-fi garage punk of its self titled debut EP. As it turns out, a more fleshed-out Guitar surprisingly fits right in with the current wave of omnivorous noise pop/shoegaze acts (like those also on his new label, Julia’s War). Casting Spells on Turtlehead has kind of a grab-bag feel–my personal favorite moment on the brief but packed EP is “Baying of Dogs”, which builds around a beautiful, melodic guitar riff that’s pure lo-fi basement pop, and it’s only towards the very end of the song that Kuli and his collaborators start to let the loud noises creep in. Read more about Casting Spells on Turtlehead here.
“Polycarp”, True Green
From My Lost Decade (2024, Spacecase)
On his debut album as True Green, Minneapolis’ Dan Hornsby quickly establishes himself as one of the most exciting singer-songwriters to debut this year. And yet, Hornsby doesn’t even sing my favorite song on My Lost Decade. Towards the end of the record, Alice Bolin, Hornsby’s wife, sings a song called “Polycarp”–it’s a beautiful piece of dream-y pop/folk rock, a song where every single lyric is deserving of an entire analysis of its own. After a record full of songs where Hornsby excels at situating us right in the middle of a certain character’s life, True Green just as effectively depict a complete unmooring (“You make me feel like a fishbowl in the ocean / I can’t tell the water from the glass” is the key lyric, although the line about the narrator’s split being like “breaking up the Beatles” is my favorite one). Read more about My Lost Decade here.
“Body Hate”, Mt. Worry
From Die Happy (2024, Mountain of Worry)
I wrote about the instant-gratification fest that is “Loud in Here” earlier in this blog post, but when it comes to Mt. Worry’s Die Happy, “Body Hate” is the one that I’ve grown to appreciate more and more every time I listen to the EP. I’m not even sure who’s singing on this one–I think it’s Rowan Roth (of Hell Trash) and Noah Roth together–but their dead-serious intonation of the line that gives the EP its title (“I will die happy or not at all”) works so well that it took me a while to really appreciate just how much the lumbering fuzz rock instrumental adds to it. Between that line as well as the song’s blunt force title, “Body Hate” is pretty clearly a heavy track–I’m not sure if calling something “cathartic” is a cliche by now, but this song earns the release it eventually provides. Read more about Die Happy here.
“Get Numb to It!”, Friko
From Where We’ve Been, Where We Go from Here (2024, ATO)
Chicago’s Friko are incredibly energetic and excited-sounding throughout Where We’ve Been, Where We Go from Here, their full-length debut, with Niko Kapetan and Bailey Minzenberger layering guitars, pianos, cellos, and violins in an overwhelming but never-not-tuneful way. My favorite song on the album, “Get Numb to It!”, comes in the record’s second half, and it’s an exhilarating rocker that signifies that the group have hardly run out of gas on the flipside. The inspired noise pop rave-up is a (still catchy on its own) build-up for its first half, and then Friko beat the title line down for all its worth in the second half (more than earning the quiet outro tacked on at the end). Read more about Where We’ve Been, Where We Go from Here here.
“Life in a Bag”, Cheekface
From It’s Sorted (2024)
This probably should’ve been on the January playlist, but time is an illusion and whatnot. Anyway, It’s Sorted is Cheekface at their grooviest–their fourth album still sounds very much like the same band that loves Talking Heads, Elvis Costello, and Television yet continues to be dogged by Cake comparisons, but there’s a more rhythmic and dancefloor-ready vibe that adds a new dimension to the Cheekface-isms of “Life in a Bag”. Vocalist Greg Katz still sounds likes Greg Katz, of course, but he’s also shifting his approach to meet the band’s new sound, juking, dodging, and stuttering his way through his lyrics (“I contain multitudes! I contain multiple dudes!”) like a millennial Max Headroom as necessary for the song to stay in the zone. Read more about It’s Sorted here.
“Observational Eros”, Beeef
(2024)
There’s a good band from Allston, Massachusetts called Beeef. It’s made up of guitarist/vocalist Perry Eaton, guitarist Josh Bolduc, bassist Daniel Schiffer, and Neil Patch, and their last album came out in 2019, predating this blog, so I’ve never written about them before. However, Beeef quietly released a single back in November that they said would be on their “upcoming third album”, and a second single from the as-of-yet unnamed, release date-less Beeef LP3 dropped last week. “Observational Eros” is five minutes of unimpeachable, unqualified guitar pop success–this kind of rolling, part jangle pop, part power pop, part ‘heartland’ rock type thing is incredible when done right, and Beeef make it feel like the breezy successes of Bull in the Shade were just yesterday with this one. It makes me very eager to hear what else the band have been cooking up these last five years.
“Magical Lies”, En Attendant Ana
From Magical Lies (2024, Sub Pop)
En Attendant Ana’s third album, Principia, was one of my favorite records of last year, and cemented the Parisian band in my mind as a reliable source of good indie rock in perpetuity. Their first new release since then is Magical Lies, a three-song (well, two songs and an interlude) release for Sub Pop’s long-running Singles Club series. Both proper songs are quite good, but the title track is my favorite of the two–over four minutes, the band run through everything that makes them great, from the driver’s-seat exploratory bass guitar playing to the orchestral touches to, as always, frontperson Margaux Bouchaudon’s sublime delivery. If En Attendant Ana want to put out (at least) a single every year to remind us of how good they are, I wouldn’t object.
“Goodnight Sun”, Mister Goblin
From Frog Poems (2024, Spartan)
Okay, there’s a new Mister Goblin out today (the day I started writing this), let’s see if I want to put it on the playlist. [three minutes pass] Okay, we’re good here. “Goodnight Sun” is the first selection from Frog Poems, the upcoming fourth Mister Goblin full-length (and, I believe, the first Sam Goblin-led album to be put out by something other than Exploding in Sound). Not as immediate as “Holiday World” nor as sparse as “Six Flags America”, “Goodnight Sun” is an uneasy lullaby that makes me excited to hear where the project (which is now based in Florida) has gone next. Goblin’s exploration of melody and subtler climes continues on this song–the bright instrumental that kicks off the song is borderline jangly college rock, the verses are Mister Goblin at his “melancholic pop rock” best, and while the chorus still bursts out of the wall, everything about it (up to those stop-start J. Robbins moves in the final go-round) just feels a little more subdued.
“Always-Life Crisis”, Worse Off
From Over, Thinking (2024, All We Got!)
Over, Thinking, the debut album from New York duo Worse Off, is a sturdy and energetic collection of vintage, 90s-style pop punk. Over eleven songs and twenty-eight minutes, the band’s core duo of Jac Falk and Colin Jay range from catchy power pop to Worriers/Chumped-esque scrappy “indie punk” to speeding skate-punk, but the connecting threads are also Over, Thinking’s strongest assets–big hooks, melodic but punk-y vocals, and, uh, plenty of power chords. “Always-Life Crisis” is an excellent piece of radio-ready alt-rock with a massive chorus and verses that are stealthily just as catchy, with Falk living up to the grandiosity of the title in the all-over-the-map lyrics. Read more about Over, Thinking here.
“Untame the Tiger”, Mary Timony
From Untame the Tiger (2024, Merge)
Any rock musician who’s taken influence (directly or otherwise) from the multitude of great indie rock Mary Timony has created over the years should get out their pen and paper for her first solo album in fifteen years. Untame the Tiger is a record that shows that Timony is still better than most at creating something intricate, immediate, and shockingly deep, retaining the fun and catchiness of her power pop group Ex Hex but also allowing the prog undertones of Helium and her previous solo work plenty of free reign. Timony’s prog instincts are definitely intact in the way she’s constructed Untame the Tiger–the first third of the title track is an instrumental, atmospheric piece of prog-folk, but she then unleashes the biggest pop moment on the album in the rest of the song. This track (and the album as a whole) was colored by the dissolution of a long-term relationship, and lyrics like “What did I get for loving you? Nothing but pain” seem to reflect this, but the tone of the song, even down to its title, isn’t mournful. Read more about Untame the Tiger here.
“Automaticity”, J. Robbins
From Basilisk (2024, Dischord)
On his second solo album and first in five years, Jawbox frontperson J. Robbins sounds familiar in a most welcome way. Basilisk picks up about where his last one, Un-Becoming, left off, with Robbins writing art-punk anthems with both “maturity” and “edge” and a fearless awareness of the present. Robbins kicks off Basilisk with some hammering synths to begin “Automaticity”, but he does it in a way that makes it sound exactly like a vintage Robbins-led song, and when the band kick into gear, it’s a natural transition, slipping into a vintage Jawbox/90s Dischord sound–muscular, noisy post-punk/post-hardcore anchored by Robbins’ dynamic but smooth vocals–with ease. Read more about Basilisk here.
“Bite Back”, The Raccoons
From Someday (2024, Self Aware)
Sarah Blumenthal and Josh Robbins sure do love a standalone two-song release. Blumenthal’s band Alright and Robbins’ group Late Bloomer have both put them out in the past couple of years, both via the label they co-own, Self Aware Records. And now we have a new Self Aware band called The Raccoons–which, after a Scooby-Doo-style unmasking, I have discovered are just Robbins and Blumenthal again, but dressed as the Ramones this time. The Raccoons’ sharp, under-two-minutes pop punk is a little different from the duo’s looser work elsewhere, but it turns out that they’re naturals at it. “Bite Back”, my favorite of the two tracks, manages to be incredibly catchy but also very tired-sounding–although when Blumenthal joins Robbins in the chorus, I believe that they’re about to do what the song suggests.
“Slinky”, J. McFarlane’s Reality Guest
From Whoopee (2024, Night School/Felt Sense)
J. McFarlane’s Reality Guest are a Melbourne-based duo who are new to me–founding member Julia McFarlane put out a full-length back in 2019, and Whoopee is the project’s sophomore album and first with new contributor Thomas Kernot. It’s a good and enthralling pop record, and “Slinky” captures just about everything great that the Reality Guest do on it. Taking us back to the world of semi-electronic, omnivorous late-90s indie pop music, “Slinky” lives up to its name, taking a trip hop beat, dream pop vocals, and all sorts of surprising but well-fitting interjections and making a fascinating piece of psychedelia with them.
“Poison”, MOP
From Secrets (2024, Smoking Room)
Smoking Room’s been putting out some quality music as of late between Graham Hunt, Still Ruins, and now Secrets, the third record from Oaklan’s MOP (Moira Brown, Erik Haight, Mikey Rivera, and Samuelito Cruz). A record of screeching but quite hooky fuzz-power-pop-punk where every song bleeds into the next one, Secrets is really easy to put on and have a great time, and final track “Poison” is the payoff that the album didn’t need but is certainly welcome nonetheless. Brown practically spits out the opening line before the band launch into a whirlwind garage rock tune that self-deconstructs excitingly in under two minutes.
“Train Full of Gasoline”, Ducks Ltd.
From Harm’s Way (2024, Carpark/Royal Mountain)
The second album from Toronto duo Ducks Ltd. feels very much in line with the more “pure pop” end of classic Flying Nun bands, always seeming to be chasing the perfect hook, although Harm’s Way sets itself apart with its caffeinated peppiness. Ducks Ltd. (singer/guitarist Tom McGreevy and guitarist Evan Lewis) are at their most immediately enjoyable when they just put the foot fully on the gas–I’m not sure if I’ve heard something more invigorating than “Train Full of Gasoline” yet this year (other than a couple of other candidates from Harm’s Way, of course). Read more about Harm’s Way here.
“Pacer”, Liquid Mike
From Paul Bunyan’s Slingshot (2024)
Whenever I listen to “Pacer” by Liquid Mike, I’m convinced that it’s their best song. There are plenty of songs on Paul Bunyan’s Slingshot that make me feel this way, mind you–but when it came time to choose which songs from the record made this playlist, I just couldn’t get “Pacer” out of my head. Its intro is instantly memorable, a bright and shiny jangly riff that then explodes into six-string-fireworks–especially in the chorus, in which the band pull off a little bit of call-and-response to push the song over the line. Is “Pacer” better than “Town Ease”? “AM”? “Drug Dealer”? This is a good conundrum that Liquid Mike have set up for us. Read more about Paul Bunyan’s Slingshot here.
“Geosmin”, White Orchid
From Pith (2024, Archibald)
Pith appears to be the second EP from Chicago trio White Orchid, following last year’s The Bedrot Tapes, and this record is on the adventurous side of punk rock–there’s a bit of fuzzed-up garage punk, sharp post-punk, and there’s even a straight-up screamo track on there. My favorite song on Pith is the opening track, “Geosmin”, which is a surging piece of anthemic rock music featuring vocals (provided by Noreen Buscher) than range between low sung-spoken post-punk and the soaring chorus. The band excel at pushing this song along–Buscher’s bass also shines, but guitarist Bodhi Lopez and drummer Niko Palomo are also working hard.
“Publicidad”, Poster Fantasi
From Persona (2024)
Poster Fantasi are a Ramones-y garage punk group out of Bahía Blanca, Argentina; the four-song Persona EP appears to be their second release, following a 2023 self-titled EP. I believe the members are Gera on guitar and vocals, Trini on bass and vocals, and Ariel Giramondo on drums–whomever’s behind “Publicidad”, though, they know how to write a hell of a power pop hook. Power chords and dueling vocals introduce the song–my Spanish isn’t really good enough to make sense of the lyrics, but they sound cool as hell, especially when the “hoo hoo hoo” backing vocals kick in in the song’s second half.
“Lady Sam”, Mavis the Dog
From White Plastic Chairs (2024, Mavis the Dog)
Am I more predisposed to like trebly, lo-fi, basement-recorded guitar pop than most? Yes. That doesn’t mean any such album I come across is a lock to get on this blog, though–you have to write a song as good as “Lady Sam” to do that. Mavis the Dog is a Philadelphia musician named Scott Olsen–looking at their Bandcamp page, it looks like they played a show with Tobin Sprout in in 2021, which seems about right. I was actually shocked to see that “Lady Sam” is three minutes long when putting this playlist together, as it feels like such a snippet of a song, a brief dispatch from a world of amazing melodies and previously unseen colors and balloons that don’t pollute the environment when you release them and whatnot.
“Hole in My Head”, Laura Jane Grace
From Hole in My Head (2024, Polyvinyl)
I don’t really go into Laura Jane Grace records with much expectations these days–not because Grace’s work has been bad as of late (in fact, I’ve liked most of it), but more because I really haven’t been sure what to expect from her since Against Me! sort-of-quietly-broke-up during the pandemic. Hole in My Head is a brief record, and while not every song has immediately stuck with me, the majority of it feels worthwhile–I’d tentatively put it above Stay Alive but below Bought to Rot. Grace has always been good for an almost-disturbingly-driven-sounding punk ripper, and the title track of Hole in My Head is one of the several moments on the record where she obliges. There’s a little bit more going on in this one than the chorus, but that “head head head head head” part is what I’m going to remember most.
“Milk”, Itasca
From Imitation of War (2024, Paradise of Bachelors)
On their first album in five years, Los Angeles’ Itasca color their sprawling folk rock with ample use of psychedelic electric guitars. “Milk”, the opening track on Imitation of War, goes a long way towards defining and establishing Itasca’s version of psychedelic rock. The song’s spindly, rippling electric guitar lines sound like they’re being played from up high on some nearby bluff or cliff. The main guitar riff sounds like molasses-slow Meat Puppets, and the song also recalls desert rockers The Gun Outfit (in which Itasca bandleader Kayla Cohen currently plays bass, and the band’s Daniel Swire drums on Imitation of War, as well). Read more about Imitation of War here.
“Interpretive Overlook”, Mint Mile
From Roughrider (2024, Comedy Minus One)
“Interpretive Overlook” first showed up as a non-album single a few years ago; I believe it was in 2020, not long after the release of the first Mint Mile album, Ambertron. It definitely felt like it could stand on its own at the time, but I’m glad it found a proper home on Roughrider–it’s one of my favorite songs on that album, and one of my favorites by Mint Mile, period. “Interpretive Outlook” is shockingly bare-feeling in a way that takes us all the way back to “Mountain Lion”, the first Mint Mile song on the first Mint Mile EP, but it’s recorded with a confidence that lacks any of the “feeling out” of that era of the band. The song’s musical clarity is contrasted with an inconclusive dwelling on differing perspectives and vantage points in the lyrics, its final line (“This place so old…it needs something new”) as certain as it is vague. Read more about Roughrider here.
“Cheap”, Grazia
From In Poor Taste (2024, Feel It)
I wrote about an absurd number of records from Cincinnati garage rock imprint Feel It Records last year–after (mercifully) not releasing any albums or EPs in December and January, the first 2024 record from Feel It is here, and it’s a brief but mighty one. Heather Dunlop and Lindsay Corstorphine are Grazia, a London-based garage/post-punk duo whose debut record, the four-song In Poor Taste EP, shows a lot of promise. “Cheap”, my favorite song from the EP, marries stoic, dry post-punk vocals with an excited, punchy garage rock instrumental–I hear some new wave-y synths and even some cowbell in here. “God, it pays to look this cheap,” is a hell of an opening statement, too.
“Work Out Right”, Otherworldly Things
From Heavy Dream Cycle (2024, Magic Door)
Otherworldly Things is a New York band led by songwriter, guitarist, and vocalist Jim Browne; it also features Guided by Voices’ in-house producer and unofficial sixth member Travis Harrison on drums, and current GBV drummer Kevin March released Heavy Dream Cycle on his Magic Door imprint. If you were to guess that it’s a record full of power pop and psychedelic pop–two classic Guided by Voices-core genres–you’d be right, although it reminds me a bit more of pure lo-fi power pop acts like Daily Worker. The 90-second singalong “Work Out Right” is my favorite track on the EP, and it actually reminds me most of bands like Connections, Smug Brothers, and other such undersung creators of jangly but hefty guitar pop. Read more about Heavy Dream Cycle here.
“Dicen Dicen”, Comparto Info.
From Carlos (2023, Dame Chance)
I think this Comparto Info. album is really good. Carlos actually came out last year, but I’m only just hearing it now, and the whole thing is a superb collection of lo-fi 90s style Spanish-language indie rock (and definitely deserves a wider release, if anybody with the means to do so is reading this). Bandleader Gabriel Benavente Benítez is originally from Mexico City but currently lives in Portland, Oregon, and this record shows that the musician is equally at home in the Pacific Northwest. I’m not sure what the best song on Carlos is, but lately I’ve found myself drawn to one of the quieter tracks on the record, the acoustic-based “Dicen Dicen”. For most of the song it’s just Benítez and a spirited six-string, although it does sound like there are some snippets of electric guitar running through it as well.
“Laverne”, Rick Rude
From Laverne (2024, Midnight Werewolf/Best Brother)
Despite six years passing since their last record, 2018’s Verb for Dreaming, New Hampshire’s Rick Rude sound as great as ever on Laverne, their third full-length album. The group are still balancing the poppy and noisy sides of 90s indie rock in a pleasingly Built to Spill-esque way–they’re approaching catchy power pop one minute and whipping up a barrage of guitars the next. Jordan Holtz sings lead on the record’s title track, and she more than holds her own against the rest of the band’s noise to deliver four minutes of frequently messy but on-the-whole hooky fuzz-pop. It starts off with a ton of energy, slows down into something more reminiscent of Holtz’s solo work, and then roars to a big finish. Read more about Laverne here.
“Me and Meander”, Kowtow Popof
From A Punk’s Garden of Versus (2023, Wampus)
One of the albums I listened to for my 1993 listening project was Songs from the Pointless Forest, the debut record from long-running college rock/power pop act Kowtow Popof. As it turns out, the D.C.-based Popof is not only still active, but actually released an entire album last year, which I went and investigated some time after I wound down my “older” listening. Leaping forward in time, Popof has a weathered sound on A Punk’s Garden of Versus–the 60s and Costello influences are still there, but have clearly been honed into something new. “Me and Meander” is properly titled, a meandering piece of psychedelic folk rock that one could quite easily get lost in. Kowtow Popof likely knows the benefits of doing just that.
Rosy Overdrive 