The Bollard Bulletin for July 14, 2025
Local Music Monday: The LinkedIn jangle pop of City Planners
Local Music Monday
City Planners is a jangle-pop quartet comprised of singer and synth player Becky Brosnan (Senior Scientist and Project Manager at WSP), guitarist and co-vocalist Katie Gallegos (Director, Curriculum and Training at CIEE), guitarist Steve Soloway (Manager, Fraud Prevention at Blackhawk Network), bassist Dave Ragsdale (Project Manager/Master Plumber at Revision Energy) and drummer Zac Hansen (apparently not on LinkedIn nor the hardcore-punk drummer from Mouth Washington and Going2Hell, who goes by Zach Hansen).
Why identify (most of) these musicians by the bios on their LinkedIn profiles? Because understanding that this is a band of grown-ups with real jobs, family obligations, mortgages, retirement accounts and the like is key to appreciating their music.
A colleague in lefty journalism circles, former Maine Beacon reporter Dan Neumann, tipped me off to the group’s debut album, Plastic and Metal, this spring. “In a world where most bands flame out in their 20s, this Portland-based basement pop band is proof that creativity doesn’t expire, it evolves,” he wrote. “They’re a five-piece, female-fronted indie rock band with an average age of 45, balancing family life, day jobs, and a deep love of songwriting. Influenced by post punk and synth pop, it's hooky, jangly and sincere and I think their record would resonate with your readers and reflect Maine’s vibrant DIY spirit.”
I agree. Plastic and Metal is “hooky, jangly and sincere,” and a good reminder that DIY music is not the sole provenance of penniless street punks. The fact that white-collar professionals are also blowing off their adult responsibilities to make indie rock ’n’ roll is inspiring, and the band’s perspective is interesting in that it reveals the struggles of people who, by all outward appearances, aren’t struggling.
“Smile lines around the mouth / The letters start to pour out / Show the world it’s all fine / A classic car, a bottle of wine,” goes “Doing Fine.” But all is not fine in a corporate culture built on debt and powered by the imperative to keep climbing the ladder and acquiring the symbols of success: “Now that we have the means it seems there is no end.”
From “Up Against It”: “Your debts are due / For your advanced degree in administration / You’ve launched a brave new career / It’s all just a panic of paperwork.”
There’s a curious nihilism to the song “Pendulum” that betrays its chorus: “Time is a pendulum / Take heart in swings / It will come back and better than ever before.” That’s nice, but the song starts by asking, “How is anybody any better than a fetid flea on a rat singing, ‘Ashes, ashes’?” and later reminds us that “Eons in the future we will be a tiny sliver of nuclear waste, plastic and metal / Stranded in our geologic destiny while the earth just spins around.” So wait — should I or should I not cash in my 401(k) and backpack through Europe this summer? (Just kidding — like most of you, I have no savings.)
Perhaps City Planners is creating a new sub-genre: LinkedIn Rock — music for brown-nosers who secretly despise the rat race because they know it’s all a pointless sham. Best not to invite anyone from HR to the next gig, just in case…
Highlights
Cool triple-bill tonight at Blue Portland Maine (650 Congress St., Portland) featuring alt-folk acts Kinship and Sweet Petunia from Boston and indie-rockers The Clearwater Swimmers at 8 p.m. Tix: $15 (21+).
The documentary film 7 Walks With Mark Brown follows the paleobotanist through Normandy on a quest for plants that would have been found in an ancient garden, with a healthy dose of economic critique sprinkled in: “Capitalism leads to death and our extinction,” Brown observes. It shows at SPACE (538 Congress St., Portland) at 7 p.m. Tix: $10.