See also: Tia Rosa / Soup Activists / Pleasant Mob
Inscrutable makes a big play for Best New Label of 2024 with these four maiden releases, all pushed out into the world in a steady stream since April time. Run by former Lumpy Records/Rotten Apple mastermind, Martin Meyer, there's an expected concession made towards the more lo-fi, DIY and sideways thinking, but the output this time round is decidedly more melodic-forward. It's as if Meyer has looked towards what's happening in San Fran right now (and where he would have found Famous Mammals lurking) and started hoovering up similar sounds being transmitted from less coveted spots in the US. The thinking is solid and his findings equally on the money. The aforementioned Famous Mammals are already well known around these parts, and the record here is a vinyl reissue of their debut tape, a straight-out-the-gate smart-arse channeling of Swell Maps sideways style. Instant adoration. Soup Activists and Pleasant Mob jangle and sashay in ways that remind me of varying degrees of Hidden Cameras, The Pastels, The Smashing Times and (a more stroppy) Stroppies. I get the impression these now indiepop classicists might have once been egg punk provocateurs. So of course, more instant adoration. Tia Rosa is perhaps an outlier among the outliers, less jangle, more drum machine led weirdo electronic-pop, equal parts sneer and seduction, something you'd expect to find hidden in the back catalogue of Les Disques du Crepuscule and coming out of the the midwest. What all four acts share is a usually fairly rare command of style, all convincing, all committed, the new representation of the latest re-gen of the US underground.
