Photo of Heavens to Betsy in 2026 by Chloe Aftel
First Thought Fridays is a (mostly) weekly column offering quick-hit takes on some of the albums released this week (or at least semi-recently), serving up first impressions, favorite or least favorite songs, and whether or not they’re worth a second listen. Check back for more each Friday night or Saturday morning.
Short and sweet this week! We start things off with an exciting local release, but first a local release that’s not here: garage punk duo Bruiser Queen is unleashing a new EP called Out of the Woods, Into Oblivion with a show at Old Rock House on Saturday, October 17. Their Bandcamp page says the EP comes out today but as I type this at 10:23pm on Friday night, it’s not live there or on streaming services. Hopefully it drops tomorrow in time for the show! In the meantime, on to the other stuff I checked out this week…
Yuppy, Congratulations (self-released): St. Louis quartet Yuppy’s debut full-length was a decade in the making (and, as they related in a recent interview with St. Louis Magazine, has been locked and loaded for a year), but it was definitely worth the wait. Congratulations is a melting pot of influences, veering from the melodic post-hardcore of Turnstile to the spacious sound of Fontaines D.C. to the ominous groove of Interpol to the propulsive, mathematical crunch of Helmet, often all within the same song. But it’s miraculously not a mess—these songs just hang together perfectly, even as they leap from style to style never once losing the plot. My favorite tracks are “God Hand” and “Acid Stan” (the latter, to these ears, even sounds a bit like Belleville’s finest, Fragile Porcelain Mice), but there’s nary a weak track here. Catch the band debut the album on Satrurday, October 17 at the Golden Record, with support from Fleabane, Front Flip, and Holofoil. Will I Listen Again?: Yes.
Heavens to Betsy, baby’s gone (Kill Rock Stars): Before she was in Sleater-Kinney, Corin Tucker first cut her teeth as half of the duo Heavens to Betsy with her childhood friend, drummer/bassist Tracy Sawyer. The band was born in somewhat hilarious fashion—the two had played together for fun for years, but when Tucker headed off to college in 1991 and discovered the nascent riot grrrl scene, she started telling people she had a band and one day someone “called her bluff“ and offered a gig, giving the twosome the push to get serious fast. Within a year, they cut an 8-song demo with Bratmobile’s Molly Neuman, which was released by K Records. The band would release just one formal LP, 1994’s Calculated, before calling it quits.
While Calculated has remained available, the master tape of that original self-titled demo was thought lost, but was recently uncovered. baby’s gone takes that demo and adds eight more tracks from the These Monsters Are Real (1993) and Direction (1994) 7-inches to beef the runtime up to 39 minutes. You can already see the building blocks for what would become Sleater-Kinney—Tucker mostly keeps her voice at her “simmering rage” setting while only occasionally unleashing her full-gale vibrato, but her lyrics are incisive and filled with evocative imagery as ever. (The anti-capitalist “factory” paints a particularly powerful picture: “Our machines run good and clean/ But whose blood is the grease?”). The songs tend to move at a slower burn than what would come on early Sleater-Kinney releases, and the lo-fi recording and minimalist arrangements (two, three instruments at most) give it the vibe of early Guided by Voices, while the songs with bass like “Me & Her” have a bit of a Breeders/early Pixies feel.
baby’s gone is a fascinating artifact, a snapshot of a musical revolution, but more than that, it’s also a well-executed punch in the face of the patriarchy. Definitely worth a listen, both for its historical relevance and on its own merits. Favorite tracks: “ain’t never goin’ back,” “my secret,” “Me & Her” Will I Listen Again?: Yes.
Richard Thompson, Hippies, Thugs and Heroes (New West): It’s been nearly 60 years since Richard Thompson first came to prominence as a member of folk rockers, but he remains as restless as ever on this, his twentieth studio album. His rich, throaty voice (ever so slightly reminiscent of Pete Townshend’s) remains as strong as ever, and perfectly suited to the folk/rock/folk-rock material (all Thompson originals), whether he’s gently plucking out classicist medieval folk or cranking up his amps a bit (this is the guy who recorded “Shoot Out the Lights,” after all). Favorite songs: “Pauper’s Grave,” the tongue-in-cheek “Everybody’s Stealing,” and the elegiac album closer “Siren.” Will I Listen Again?: Yes.
