Imagine starting a new creative endeavor and then being mentored by your heroes right off the bat. This was pretty much the case for Rocket, the Los Angeles quartet of 20-somethings who began making amped-up guitar music together in 2021. In the two years between their formation and their debut EP Versions Of You, Rocket started regularly playing local gigs, sharing bills with their friends in bands like Milly and the now-defunct Regrettes. Before long, Rocket were opening for some of the very same bands they’d grown up worshipping: Sunny Day Real Estate, Ride, Smashing Pumpkins. They hadn’t even put out a full-length album yet.
Rocket are vocalist/bassist Alithea Tuttle, guitarists Desi Scaglione and Baron Rinzler, and drummer Cooper Ladomade, and they’ll release their debut album R Is For Rocket this Friday. Though the band only formed four years ago, the members’ connections date back quite a bit further: They spent their high school years frequenting LA’s all-ages venues together. Tuttle has been in a romantic relationship with Scaglione since then, and she first met Ladomade when they were in preschool together. Tuttle, whose dreams of being a pro dancer were halted by a gnarly back injury in 2016, never envisioned being in a band. But during the height of the pandemic, she found herself writing lyrics and melodies to pair with Scaglione’s guitar riffs. They asked Rinzler and Ladomade to join the fold, and apparently, not much convincing was needed.
R Is For Rocket is not named after Ray Bradbury’s short story collection, but after the 1997 song by the largely forgotten post-hardcore band Radio Flyer. I see that reference as further testament to Rocket’s deep obsession with music from before their time — they’re the type of band who also cite Juliana Hatfield’s Only Everything and XTC’s Skylarking as sonic influences, who recently dressed as Devo in the music video for single “Another Second Chance,” and who regularly draw in YouTube comments from boomers expressing gratitude for taking them back to the good ol’ days. Nostalgia, sentimentality, and infallible personal bonds imbue R Is For Rocket right down to its cover, an excellent vintage skydiving photo of Tuttle’s father, who passed away from brain cancer just this past spring. The record is dedicated to him, a context that lends a welcome urgency to straightforward lyrics like “Remember all the times you waited for the end.”
R Is For Rocket is a record best played loud. Not only did Rocket’s tours with ’90s greats provide some useful career insight; the shows also gave the then-unknowns unique opportunities to test out their works-in-progress live in front of curious, but low-stakes audiences. Scaglione produced, engineered, and mixed the album, and insisted on recording it live in order to accurately capture the energy of those performances. Instead of getting that intense guitar distortion solely via Big Muff pedals, for example, they simply cranked up their amps or double-tracked their instruments, a method they also used for drums on songs like the driving, anxiety-ridden “Wide Awake.” You won’t find many quiet moments across R Is For Rocket, but it strikes a satisfying balance between loud and melodic, its mixes full of cathartic noise without compromising detail or vibrancy. It’s refreshing to hear a newer band so adamantly focused on making music that genuinely sounds good instead of simply trying to recreate a vibe — a curse to which too many aspiring ’90s revivalists fall victim.
As much as Rocket’s music clearly benefits from the foundational trust and rapport that comes with longtime best-friendship, Tuttle’s lyrics also grapple with a nagging internal monologue that’s plagued with the certainty that nothing is certain. On the emo-tinged ballad “Crossing Fingers,” she meditates on being in love with your high-school sweetheart, which is fine and dandy until you’re hit with the realization that all those years together don’t necessarily protect you from royally fucking things up if you get too comfortable: “You’re blindly optimistic/ And there’s no silver bow/ I’m savoring the past/ Crossing fingers to grow,” Tuttle sings, her gliding vocals contrasted against booming guitars.
Over the pop melodies of “Another Second Chance,” however, Tuttle acknowledges that sometimes a relationship’s fate lies in the other person’s hands, even when you’re trying to be their ideal partner. “What if you open me up and decide it’s never enough for you?” she asks, before repeating, “I wanna be the one that makes it out of your dreams!” Self-doubt is a recurring theme across R Is For Rocket, but Tuttle approaches it with a sense of empathy and accountability that prevents it from going too woeful: “I could guess it’s a mess I made/ And I’ll be here to wipe your tears/ So sorry that I let you off,” she sings on the closing title track, the group vocal harmonies in the coda acting like a mirror of their mutual admiration and support of each other. R Is For Rocket, as Tuttle tells it, is mostly about relationships — the relationships you share with others, but also how your relationship with yourself impacts them. It’s scary being honest and vulnerable. It’s scary to put yourself in a position where you could be let down, either by someone else or in some tragic self-destruction. But R Is For Rocket posits an scarier thought: How empty would you be if you never poured your heart out at all?
R Is For Rocket is out 10/3 via Transgressive/Canvasback.
Other albums of note out this week:
• Taylor Swift’s The Life Of A Showgirl
• Agriculture’s The Spiritual Sound
• Upchuck’s I’m Nice Now
• Stay Inside’s Lunger
• Waylon Jennings’ Songbird
• Bryson Tiller’s Solace
• RXKNephew, MVW, & ChaseTheMoney’s Whole Lotta RXK
• Alex Orange Drink’s Future 86
• Snooper’s Worldwide
• Gully Boys’ Gully Boys
• Thrice’s Horizons/West
• AFI’s Silver Bleeds the Black Sun…
• Glimmer’s Get Weak
• Prewn’s System
• Molly Nilsson’s Amateur
• Creative Writing’s Baby Did This
• Deaf Havana’s We’re Never Getting Out
• SOLENCE’s ANGELS CALLING
• Drink The Sea’s Drink The Sea II
• Dolo Tonight’s DVD Rental Store
• Jolé’s Notes From An Open Book
• Moon Panda’s Dumb Luck
• Pain Magazine’s Violent God
• Say She She’s Cut & Rewind
• Blue Lake’s The Animal
• Heathe’s Control Your Soul’s Desire For Freedom
• Haerts’ Laguna Road
• Carter Faith’s Cherry Valley
• Nicki Bluhm’s Rancho Deluxe
• Richard Ashcroft’s Lovin’ You
• The Dwarfs Of East Agouza’s Sasquatch Landslide
• Gatlin’s The Eldest Daughter
• Idlewild’s Idlewild
• Ann Annie’s El Prado
• Worthitpurchase’s Worthitpurchase
• Powell’s We Do Recover
• The Hello Crows’ The Hello Crows
• Volk Soup’s 10p Jazz
• Lovejoy’s One Simple Trick
• Ash’s Ad Astra
• Pynch’s Beautiful Noise
• INJI’s A Turk Walks Into A Bar
• P.E.’s Oh!
• Long Fling’s Long Fling
• Rachael Yamagata’s Starlit Alchemy
• Kinlaw & Franco Franco’s Faith Elsewhere
• Noah Floersch’s Francis Aquarius
• Social Cinema’s Don’t Get Lost
• Will Anderson’s How Little Love Is / How Worth Everything
• Alpha Male Tea Party’s Reptilian Brain
• AUTHOR & PUNISHER’s Nocturnal Birding
• Arthur Buck’s Arthur Buck 2
• The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus’ X’s For Eyes
• Cory Marks’ SORRY FOR NOTHING VOLUME 2
• Ribbon Skirt’s PENSACOLA EP
• The Midnight’s Syndicate
• Mayday Parade’s Sad
• My Morning Jacket’s Z (20th Anniversary Deluxe Edition)
• FearDorian & osquinn’s Before You Press Play
• vegas water taxi’s Long Time Caller EP
• Weirs’ Diamond Grove
• Supergrass’ Road To Ruen 20th Anniversary Edition
• Wode’s Uncrossing The Keys
• Alice Cohen’s Archaeology
• Princess Nokia’s Girls
• Jamie Woon’s 3, 10, Why, When
• S. Carey’s Watercress EP
• Klein’s Sleep With A Cane Mixtape
• Xay Cole’s Lucy Birthday Black Hole
• Fight From Within’s Talk Is Cheap
• Bendik Giske’s Bendik Giske, Remixed EP
• Sparks’ MADDER! EP
• Phil Adé’s philip
• Tusks’ Gold – The Remixes EP
• Kelly Moran’s Don’t Trust Mirrors
• Thomas Day’s kids EP
• Johnny Clarke’s African Roots
• Naima Bock’s Live In Toulon EP
• JOHNNYSWIM’s When The War Is Over (Deluxe)
• Matisyahu’s Ancient Child
• Kristene DiMarco’s MEMORADUM EP
• Vitamin String Quartet’s VSQ Performs Billie Eilish
• Why Bother’s Case Studies
• Michael Schenker Group’s Don’t Sell Your Soul
• Mask’s Aggressive Contempt
• Glean’s Worlds Apart
• Natalie Grant’s Christmas
• Call Super’s A Rhythm Protects One
• Malibu’s Vanities
• Peel Dream Magazine’s Taurus
• Ole 60’s Smokestack Town
• Merzbow, Bernocchi, Cavalera’s Nocturnal Rainforest
• Real Bad Man & Genevieve Artadi’s Everything Is Under Control
• Ryan Woods’ Godboy
• Orbit Culture’s Death Above Life
• Michael Schenker Group’s Don’t Sell Your Soul
• Nala Sinephro’s The Smashing Machine Score
• Jackzebra’s Hunched Jack Mixtape
• Oasis’ (What’s The Story) Morning Glory? 30th Anniversary Deluxe
• Coheed And Cambria’s The Father Of Make Believe: The New Entities Edition
• John Carpenter’s Halloween Ends: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (Expanded Edition)
• Wild Pink’s Dulling The Horns (Deluxe Edition)
• CxM’s Hype Vibes Mini Album
• teethin’s Greed Between The Lines EP
• JayDon’s Me, My Songs, & I EP
• Lindsay Ell’s fence sitter EP
• INK’s BIG BUSKIN’ EP
• Lex Leosis’ i’m a little sensitive EP
