Indie rock loves a nostalgia cycle, and right now ’90s alt-rock is the sound du jour. Between your Mommas, your Blondshells and your Wishys – and that’s all without getting into the shoegaze revival – it seems like Smashing Pumpkins, The Breeders, My Bloody Valentine and maybe some Sonic Youth are the bands capturing Gen Z songwriters’ imaginations. It makes sense – the time just before we were born always feels the most romantic, and especially in 2025 it feels good to daydream about when mainstream rock felt promising and subversive. We’re not complaining, because the combination of big, distorted guitars and catchy, sugary vocals pretty much always sounds good.
This brings us to Los Angeles band Rocket, the latest in this wave of revivalists, who became NME Cover stars in 2024 as an unsigned band and made their Transgressive Records debut with the awesome, aggressive single ‘Take Your Aim’ at the start of this year. Their debut full-length album, ‘R Is For Rocket’, is a collection of great-sounding, big-chorus rock songs. The production is glossy yet biting, the drums are whacked hard, the guitars cranked up loud, the bass beefy. It’s ’90s worship done exactly how it should be done.
Of course, to stick the landing and avoid being merely ’90s landfill the songs have got to be good, and there are some really good songs on here. The highlight is second track ‘Act Like Your Title’, where jangly guitar and muscular bass weave around each other at a tempo relaxed enough to groove, before breaking into an infectious, distortion-laden chorus. The heavy and driving ‘Pretending’ is also great, with a chorus full of convincing attitude. Then there’s opener ‘The Choice’, the album’s most intriguing track; it’s trippy and psychedelic with its front-heavy bass, glimmering guitar textures and hardly changing dynamic, before closing with a minute-long instrumental rock-out.
Frontwoman Alithea Tuttle has a really striking voice, the kind which stays angelic above the fray rather than rolling around in the mud with the instruments. It tends to elevate these songs, especially when she layers backing vocals to bounce off the lead, as on the chorus of ‘Act Like Your Title’ and the intense, crescendoing outro of ‘Another Second Chance’. At times the sound gets a little too frictionless, making the album feel like it coasts between its high points. ‘R Is For Rocket’ isn’t a record that breaks new ground nor delivers constant hits; but it is a promising debut that does a damn good job at what it set out to do: solid songs, played loud.
Details
- Record label: Transgressive Records/Canvasback
- Release date: October 3, 2025