Pittsburgh, PA upstarts, Rex Tycoon, have released their new four-song EP, What’s Good, out now from the always-reliable Pop Wig Records. What’s Good is an 11-minute bite of sweet-and-salty rock ‘n roll. Emerging from the Pittsburgh punk and hardcore scene, Rex Tycoon exist somewhere at the intersection of Modern Lovers, The Velvet Underground, and Husker Du with a signature recipe that uses familiar ingredients to cook up something fresh.
Since 2020, Rex Tycoon have been releasing a steady stream of EPs and singles, fusing the rawness of punk with an equal affinity for clever songwriters like John Prine, David Berman, or Paul Westerberg. Converging from Erie, Rochester and Western Massachusetts, the group–vocalist/guitarist Austin Reesman, drummer Jared Stalker, guitarist Joey Tiberio, and bassist/vocalist Keith Tucker–met while attending college in downtown Pittsburgh and soon found themselves bonding over a mutual love of music, movies and recreational drugs. Over the next couple of years the four-piece honed their sound and played with like-minded rockers such as Webbed Wing, Dummy, Advertisement, Beauty, Jacky Boy, Only Sibling, Dog Date and more.
What’s Good offers the band’s most instantly endearing songwriting yet. The four home-recorded songs are bursting with personality, creating a perfect balance of slacker rock riffs, indelible talk-sing hooks, and razor sharp lyricism. Reeseman’s off-kilter melodies deliver his self-reflective ruminations, quirky character studies, and slice-of-life frustrations–always with a hint of a wink or a lopsided smile While everyone and their mother is drenched in reverbs, staring at their pedalboards, or switching to yet another alternate tuning, Rex Tycoon is staring you right in the face, strumming a blown-out D chord, and telling you what’s good.
