Current Joys' 'ROSEBUD' Is a Gloriously Overdriven Masterpiece of Pop Fragility
The useful fact about ROSEBUD is what it started as. Nick Rattigan — Current Joys, and also the drummer in Surf Curse — had roughly half an hour of slowcore songs, written during a hard stretch, and they stayed that way until Danny Dwyer, who records as never goodbye, got hold of them and reworked them alongside him with glitches, screams and heavy distortion. Rattigan’s verdict on his collaborator is not hedged: “the most beautiful producer in the world.”
The Sonic Breakdown
The Production & Mix
The Low-End: The record’s bottom is not a bass guitar so much as a pressure front — the distortion is loaded underneath the songs rather than smeared across the top, so the quiet material still reads as quiet right up to the moment it doesn’t.
The Spatial Dynamics: La Critique Selon Moi, scoring it 7.5, described “de superbes mélodies régulièrement balayées par des déflagrations noisy” — superb melodies regularly swept away by noisy blasts — and that is the whole architecture. Synthpop, folk and rock sit in the same ten tracks without any one of them taking the room.
Standout Performance
Dwyer, who doesn’t stay behind the desk: he turns up as a credited feature on “STAY (Feat. never goodbye),” the one place where producer and artist are audibly in the same frame.
Track Highlights
⚡ “HOLE” opens intimate and lets rough guitars grind down its own arpeggios; “CHAOS” is electropop fractured by distortion.
🌈 “blood on the stereo” is the bright pop relief, and “KNIGHT OF SWORDS” turns the amps back on.
Paste called it “an eclectic, maximalist blast of hazy pop hooks, overblown guitars, and artsy production with heart.” Certified great.