Rozwell Kid

Fronted by the affable, spectacled Jordan Hudkins, Rozwell Kid write massive, gritty, excitable power-punk songs; they channel Blue Album guitar grandiosity and eternally-hummable melodies conveyed in ‘ooo”s, the likes of which would make Rivers Cuomo weak in his problematic knees. But when it came to writing Rozwell Kid’s new album, Precious Art, Jordan Hudkins found himself in the strange place of wondering who and what Rozwell Kid actually was. After more than two years on the road, the band – completed by guitarist Adam Meisterhans, bassist/vocalist Devin Donnelly and drummer Sean Hallock – hadn’t quite hit a dead end, but they needed to regroup, rethink and refind their identity.

All of those questions are thankfully answered by the twelve songs that make up Precious Art. It is a quintessential Rozwell Kid album and something entirely new at the same time. It’s teeming with understated nostalgia, but doesn’t get too lost in the past. Rather, it recalibrates the past, revisiting it with the added wisdom that comes with age. It’s quirky in the way that Rozwell Kid songs have always been quirky, but more than any other record the band has made, it sees Hudkins diving deep into the heart of human existence, telling universal truths based on his own personal memories and unexamined experiences.

“Nostalgia has always been part of my inspiration for songwriting,” admits Hudkins. “I’ve always seemed to pull from childhood memories and recontextualized them, where I kind of imagine it as a big 30 year-old kid wearing OshKosh B’Gosh overalls singing about these things they experienced or thought about as a kid.”

The result is an album that expands the strain of weird whimsy that’s always run through the band’s songs, but on which it’s increasingly difficult to ignore the more serious side of things. Nothing illustrates that more than the song “Booger.” Yes, it’s an amusing tale that revolves around the green stuff that comes out of your nose being smeared across the screen of your smartphone, but it’s also so much more than that – it’s a tender, touching and even tragic ode to lost love, that is filled with an audibly sad beauty.

This album also marks a new frontier in how the four members were able to write songs; having ample time in the studio allowed the band to be more experimental, and to collaborate in an entirely new way. But it’s remarkability is as much because of Hudkins’ insane ability to balance pathos and humor to turn the slightest, most oddball detail – whether that’s picking his nose, making Batman costumes or liking hummus – into works of, well, precious art.

Rodeo Boys

On their Don Giovanni debut, Home Movies, Rodeo Boys are upping the ante. Their music owes as much to the twang of country as it does to the fuzz of grunge, and it’s a winning combination.

Lead single “Sugar” sits somewhere between Bully and SPICE, a gritty slice of feedback-drenched rock ‘n’ roll that immediately makes it clear where Rodeo Boys’ passions lie–in loud, crunchy, catchy alt rock. “Dog Leg” plays out like a supersized take on classic rock, all roaring solos and guttural hooks, and epic closer “Tomboy Radio” is a proggy masterclass in dynamics.

Home Movies hardly lets up all through its 40 minutes, the space folk of “Hail Mary” allowing a couple minutes to breathe, but it all seems to zip by. Vocalist Tiff Hannay says Rodeo Boys’ goal as a queer blue-collar band is “to give a voice to young queer people in small towns,” and what a powerful voice it is.