Richmond’s Roseneath is a band that one simply can’t wrap their head around. In a good way! Diving in with our first taste being 2022’s Shine and we for sure thought we had them figured out. Cut to the following year and the bigger, bolder full-length dropped last year (2023’s Nowhere Safe) and it seemed as if they were the kind of the band on the cusp of being the next Indie Alt darlings with songs like “Noisy” and “Over It” having echoes of Turnover’s Peripheral Vision. But along comes Better Days with four songs of Electro Rawk bliss and we’re kind of dumbfounded but delighted at the swerve presented here.
Yes, kids, you read that right: Electro Rawk. “Bleed For You” is like a mix of “Axel F” and something that Robert Alfons would conjure as TR/ST but then Jason Roberts up vocally and it’s like “Oh yeah, this is Roseneath!” But different. And again, in a good way. The press release for Better Days had a laundry list of some of our most favorite classic and modern Electronic-related Pop artists and while we may have initially been all “Wait, what?!?!”, we can safely state that Roseneath weren’t too far off in those comparisons.
“Video Games” especially is kind of an amalgamation of Depeche Mode old school and Drab Majesty new school plus a gaggle of bleep and boops (That’s a technical term, by the way) straight out of your most favorite arcade game of the ’80’s or ’90’s. The title track is something that’d easily fit on any one of Roberts and Jason George’s previous outings but then “Safe Where” comes out of that like the song playing over the closing credits to some neon-soaked coming of age or vampire tale of the ’80’s or coming of age vampire tale (Think License To Drive or Once Bitten) and you, too, will be convinced of Roseneath’s Electro Rawk prowess..
Better Days drops on May 31st. You can do all the pre-savin’ and pre-orderin’ now when you head here and then head here to stay on top of all things Roseneath across the interwebs.