The band behind the fuzz are ready to rise, too: they’ve already warmed stages in the UK for their pumpkin-smashing forbears and signed to taste-making label Transgressive, all before the release of their debut album. Relatively speaking, it’s taken Rocket a hot minute to deliver “R is for Rocket”. After all, it was in high school that Alithea Tuttle and Cooper Ladomade added Baron Rinzler and Desi Scaglione to their in-crowd to become a quartet. (Tuttle and Scaglione have been dating since this time, too.)
As of 2021, the four had officially become Rocket the band. And now, in their twenties, it seems the band is mastering the art of growing together with patience. All this to say: “R is for Rocket” is a fantastically confident and truly complete debut. It’s not perfect, but there’s nothing missing either. We’ve had bands in this genre space start hesitant and bedroom-y before tip-toeing into bolder self-actualization, like Snail Mail or Momma or Cryogeyser—and maybe some of that endearingly DIY uncertainty would have been nice to see from Rocket. But if they ever reckoned with that awkward growing stage, it was never publicized. Instead, to make their debut album, they strutted into not one but two of rock music’s sought-after studios: 64 Sound and the Foo Fighters’ Studio 606, utilizing the latter’s thunderstorm drum sound and the former’s storehouse of vintage gear.
But rather than call in John Congleton or Chris Walla—or any of the go-to producers behind the big indie-rock statement albums of the last decade—to shepherd this process, Scaglione opted to wrangle the consoles. He made “R is for Rocket” sound big. His and Rinzler’s guitars whip up a hurricane, leaving only Tuttle’s bass to cling to. Their big pedalboard and bigger amps wail to the high heavens, reaching their extremes on “Wide Awake,” a track that’s less about the notes they’re playing than the mad-scientist way they go all Lee and Thurston with it.
out now via Transgressive Records/ Canvasback:
The Fat Angel Sings 