Pressing Concerns: JPW & Dad Weed – Amassed Like a Rat King
Release date: April 22nd
Record label: Fort Lowell
Genre: Power pop, psychedelic pop, college rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Pull Track: Everybody’s Talking (Again)
Some of you may already be familiar with Jason P. Woodbury due to his work as a writer and interviewer for the great blog Aquarium Drunkard (among other places). Like many other music writers (i.e. Sam Sodomsky with The Bird Calls, Winston Cook-Wilson with Office Culture), Woodbury also makes music himself–he released an album called Something Happening / Always Happening in 2022 via Fort Lowell Records. Last year, the Phoenix-based Woodbury linked up with another Arizonian musician, Zach Toporek, who makes music under the name Dad Weed, and the two released a collaborative EP called Two Against Nurture. That record turned out to just be the start, as the duo have made an entire album together called Amassed Like a Rat King (credited to JPW & Dad Weed–who needs to come up with fancy side project names, anyway?). That album title is honestly pretty metal, but that couldn’t be further away from the music the two of them make here–recalling power pop, jangle pop, and college rock of the 1960s through the 1980s and lightly baked by the southwestern sun, JPW & Dad Weed’s first album together is a comfortable but undeniably hooky guitar pop LP.
Woodbury and Toporek couldn’t ease us more smoothly into the world of Amassed Like a Rat King if they tried–the opening title track is almost impossibly laid-back, an excellent chugging bass guitar setting the stage for a hazy, lazy desert pop introduction. “It’s Happening” is a little more lively and even a little bit nervous (in a Lowe/Crenshaw/Costello sense) at times, but the duo don’t forget to nail the power pop chorus. The no-bullshit, all-business jangle-power pop of “Everybody’s Talking (Again)” crosses the economy of Dazy with the southwestern vibes of Dust Star and the most recent Young Guv album. The quiet, lo-fi “Far Off Road” indulges the stranger sides of JPW and Dad Weed, and though they get back to power pop soon enough (check the floppy rock and roll of “Frightening” right afterwards), they return to the odd well for the alleyway country of “Not Sure What I’m Looking At” and the Segall-ish psychedelia of “Figure of Speech”–not to mention the record’s final two songs, both of which opt for minimalist instrumentation and simple drum machine beats. By the second half of Amassed Like a Rat King, the gap between songs like this and stuff like “Straight Lines” (a more obvious but nonetheless meandering pop song) starts to blur together, and the album starts to feel more and more like a friendly drive through the desert with some friends. It’s a party on the road, and oblivion on both sides of you. (Bandcamp link)
