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Grand Vapids is a force. A wave of sound propelling “gorgeously defined and thoughtfully executed guitar slow-pop”. Gordon Lamb – Flagpole

Forming in early 2014, Grand Vapids spent the course of a year recording its debut album Guarantees with producer and engineer Drew Vandenberg (of Montreal, Deerhunter, Kishi Bashi) at Chase Park Transduction in Athens, GA. On the album the sonic palette is wide. Withguitars that are laboriously crafted, a driving rhythm section, and synths that are densely layered and structured. The songs are at once intimate and expansive, exploring a fevered state of fear and wonder. The album was mastered by Joe Lambert (Wye Oak, Sharon Van Etten, Wild Nothing) in NYC. While Grand Vapids’ music could easily satiate the space between Yo La Tengo and Sonic Youth, there is a depth of feeling to these songs that moves beyond nostalgia and pushes the listener toward a state of mind where memory and wonderment intersect. It is a delicate and dense balance on a debut record that finds the band carving out its own musical identity.

“Billed as sludge pop and desert rock, Nashville’s Oginalii follows in the footsteps of other hallmark female indie trailblazers like Mitski and Sadie Dupuis by confronting rock ‘n’ roll patriarchy and toppling it. Fronted by Emma Hoeflinger (vocals) and Karalyne Winegamer (drums), the duo brings the goods with a slow-burning, brooding track in the form of “Substance Abuse”. Simultaneously ethereal and soaring while also embracing a hazy and mired grunge, the psych-rock soundscape that Oginalii manages to develop here is impressive by any measure. It’s all stapled together by the strong vocal show Hoeflinger puts on over its searing chorus. On the story behind “Substance Abuse”, Hoeflinger says: “‘Substance Abuse’ means a lot of things to us. We over consume constantly. Whether it’s Diet Coke or Jameson (my personal favorite), we let things take over ourselves and don’t stop to see what we’ve left behind. We are all guilty of it, but I think it’s good to accept our flaws and continually try to better ourselves as well as those around us. ‘Substance Abuse’ is about the constant denial of the inevitable come down we all feel. One minute you’re up and the next you’re just telling someone ‘I’m fine.’ We wanted it to give off that ebb and flow feeling. Our producer, Curtis Rousch, was instrumental in helping us get the sounds we really wanted out of ‘Substance Abuse’. I don’t think we ever would have gone as sonically trippy if he wasn’t there. The layering of weird guitar sounds and soft vocals made it just that, a trip.” Oginalii’s forthcoming EP, The Grey releases on October 20, 2017. The “Substance Abuse” single is up for sale on August 25, with a music video coming in the near future.” –PopMatters

What does it mean to be a post hunk? Is that just a clever phrase for a dad bod? Maybe. Or, if we’re referring to the post in a record collector’s sense, then perhaps John Pierce and Alex Teich want to step beyond not just the physical aspects of the stud, but the entire “look-good-to-get-ahead” mentality. Look around in any given dive bar, and you’ll see that the further underground you go, the more rigidly suave the uniform gets; they hang in the same circles, they hold the same casually cool facade, they nod their heads in the same statuesque stance. As a regular partner to man-about-town Yancey Ballard, Pierce has no doubt seen all these patterns on the wall; so while their current outfit Shouldies sidesteps simple punk trappings completely, Post Hunk attacks the norm from the inside. This carnival-crazy debut Celebrity Pets isn’t so much a game-changer, though, as a game in and of itself. With cheeky synths, fuming punk vocals, and perky two-minute tunes, Pierce invokes the wackier new wave hijinks of XTC and Split Enz; even the solemn ballad that opens the album “Late part1” thrusts you at once into the absurd: “I was born two hours ago / am I late?” Granted, that question also launches us straight into the perpetually incoming traffic of the social media era, another toy in Post Hunk’s playpen. “Two steps from irrelevance / life is right on time,” Pierce shouts on “Big Al on Campus,” with enough nonchalance to imply that he’s both in on and outside of the ongoing popularity contest. Why even bother, after all, when—as the title track suggests—a famous stranger’s adorable dog could attract more love and fans than the average human Watching Post Hunk cavort around the crux of our times is fun, sure. But a whole album of such antics would barely stand in an era where bands are now clamoring to tap their finger on the modern malaise. Fortunately, Celebrity Pets balances the duo’s manic satire with some equally strong pop tunes, like the Costello-esque lead single “Sleep.” Of course, even in these relatively calmer moments, Pierce’s keen eye on the crowd doesn’t falter; when he twists an old nursery rhyme into “first comes love, and now the hesitation,” I at least can immediately recall a thousand times that I almost reached out to someone and couldn’t, even before Facebook or Twitter. Could our carefully segmented social spheres hold us back from the marriage and the baby carriage? Or were some of us just stuck in a rut to begin with? All this and more adds up to a solid first outing, albeit one cut criminally short. Celebrity Petsalso doesn’t quite convey the quaint country side to Post Hunk’s exuberant live shows, where Pierce and Teich remind you that they’re really just sweet Southern boys at heart with ears for a good yarn. Granted, that may just mean that the zany duo’s infiltration of the status quo works best in the dives where those calcified cool circles actually congregate. But until that chance comes back around, Celebrity Pets nevertheless answers the basic question that comes with the name Post Hunk—so what does that mean?—with enough verve to convince you that they are, in fact, way better than hunks. Or dad bods, for that matter.