Atlanta-based group 'Rosser' conjures a retro revue of pop music from the '60s to today
On WABE’s series “Speaking of Music,” we hear stories from local musicians in their own words. For this installment, we hear from Atlanta-based indie band Rosser, in the words of their lead singer and keyboardist, Leif Westermark. He described the band’s music almost like a retrospective revue of popular music from the 1960s to today. “It’s like a cowboy walking down a modern city, eating sushi. It can be strange sometimes, and that’s what I enjoy about it,” said Westermark.
Indeed, tracks from the band manage to conjure both semi-recent phenomena like Interpol and Franz Ferdinand; and beloved throwback oddities like Electric Light Orchestra and the Proclaimers. A patina of fuzzy synth carries through their music, effervescence for the ears, while the lyrics often tug subtly at the heartstrings. Featured track “Clear Sky,” ostensibly about skydiving, also communicates a bittersweet personal story. Westermark said, “Really, what it is, is a time of my life where I had fallen out of a relationship. I was pretty heartbroken and trying to figure out what I was doing with my life, and I took up skydiving as a way to figure myself out.” For him, the song mirrors “the ups and downs and the risks you have to take when you’re in a relationship, and the rewarding feeling that you get when, finally, your chute opens, and you can glide down safely on the ground.”
Another track, “Kudzu Beetle,” presents a bouncing, angular, Sparks-esque pop track with a lyrical concept that could have come straight from Vonnegut or the film “Brazil.” “I’m visually seeing a family… eating breakfast in the morning, doing their daily routine and drinking coffee, watching the news, and outside around them through the little window, over the sink, they see the world crumbling around them – meteors, fire starting, just apocalyptic things,” said Westermark. “Are you gonna allow this to disrupt you, or are you going to just carry on and eat that baloney sandwich?”
Westermark, a classically-minded musician trained in piano, violin and choral voice, described how his life in Atlanta was an unplanned blessing. “My dad had just come out of surgery, and I had my bag packed, and I had 500 bucks. I came down to Atlanta and was just hanging out with some college friends, and I ended up staying, found a job, and it became my home after I got with friends in the Atlanta Opera,” he said. When Westermark began singing with the Atlanta Opera Chorus himself, met more musicians and joined bands, he says, “The people here kind of kept me.”
New music by Rosser can be heard on their Bandcamp page, and their next live dates can be tracked on Instagram at @thebandrosser.
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