Rocket - R is for Rocket (2025)

Rocket have had a busy few years. The Los Angeles crew with friendships stretching back to their childhood formed in 2021, convening in an unmarked shed to put their debut EP to tape. Despite it being the first time Alithea Tuttle (vocals, bass), Baron Rinzler (Guitar), Cooper Ladomade (Drums) and Desi Scaglione (Guitar) had ever seriously approached the idea of a ‘band,’ they seemed to arrive fully formed with combustible, airtight songs.

R is for Rocket, the quartet’s remarkable debut album, is a joyride through sonic terrain that is gloriously loud, anthemic, bombastic and beautiful, with instantly captivating songs that achieve the rare feat of evoking nostalgia while sounding completely new. Tracks such as “One Million,” “Wide Awake,” “Crossing Fingers” and “The Choice” display Rocket’s dreamy intensity, with their thick blast of guitars and driving rhythms balanced by Tuttle’s sweetly hypnotic vocals and dynamic shifts that leave you weak in the knees. The band’s jagged, fuzzed-out sound has antecedents in ‘90s guitar bands like Sonic Youth and My Bloody Valentine, but Rocket are doing something uniquely their own with those touchstones. It’s no wonder they are widely considered one of the most promising guitar-forward bands of their generation.

While the album builds on the energy of their critically lauded Versions of You EP, R is for Rocket is also hugely evolutionary, elevating the band’s craft in major ways. By the time they began work on the album in early 2024, they’d been on a near constant touring schedule, spending countless hours on the road opening for their heroes Ride, Sunny Day Real Estate and Silversun Pickups, and writing in their modest studio – a back house in drummer Cooper Ladomade’s parents’ yard – both refining and expanding their sound.

“All of the touring led to the songs changing for the better,” says Tuttle, “because we got to play them for so many different kinds of audiences and hear what worked and what didn’t.” Whenever they got home from a tour, they were infused with new ideas for how to finish the in-progress tunes, and many were upgraded in major ways thanks to the time Rocket took to hone them. “Recording the second half of the album eight months after the first half gave us a lot of time to think about what we were doing,” says Scaglione. “We ended up re-recording three songs because we felt like we could just do better.”

With guitarist Desi Scaglione again at the helm as their producer, Rocket logged time at two Los Angeles studios that provided the perfect balance between those extremes. They tracked the heavier moments during sessions at the Foo Fighters’ Studio 606 in Northridge, where they could get the massive drum sound they wanted for tracks like “Crossing Fingers” and “Wide Awake,” and then the more introspective elements were recorded at 64 Sound in Highland Park, which offered an array of tasty vintage gear that was ideal for the quieter, more intimate tunes.

One of the key things they did differently from the EP was reimagining how to achieve the massive, thorny guitar sound they had in mind. “We’d normally reach for a Big Muff pedal to get a distorted tone,” Scaglione explains, “but this time we tried to only use cranked amps for any distorted and overdriven tones.” They experimented with double tracking drums on the song “Wide Awake” – an awesome and unexpected counterbalance to the more soaring, disembodied feeling of the melody. Says Rinzler: “It feels like a lucid dream. It’s hypnotic, with the guitar and melody playing off each other to create a drone of sound that feels inescapable. And then, underneath that, there is a bone-crushing double drum kit, and you can hear them slamming into each other like atoms in the Large Hadron Collider.” For the first time, the songs are adorned with flourishes of piano, a Farfisa combo organ and mellotron on the melancholic “Number One Fan.”

At the same time, they wanted to be sure the recordings would still have the visceral impact of their live shows, and Scaglione worked diligently to make sure they authentically captured that kind of sonic intensity by recording everything live. “The most satisfying part of making this album to me was completing it from start to finish on our own,” he says. “To make decisions that get you to the end goal by yourself is very rewarding, and in some ways therapeutic.”

Tuttle also found herself exploring new thematic ground in her lyrics, delving into romantic relationships and their challenges for the first time. “One Million,” for instance, is about wanting someone to meet you halfway but not knowing if they ever will. Tuttle says it connects with “the feeling of doing everything you can, going above and beyond for someone, knowing that you would wait a million years for them just to notice how important they are to you. It’s about learning to be okay with the fact that you might always love them more.” And “Crossing Fingers” tells the story of “falling so deep into a partnership with someone and bearing the weight of the fear of messing it all up.” And she calls “Number One Fan,” “shamelessly a love song, plain and simple.” Zooming out, Tuttle says: “After finishing the record and having a moment to reflect on the lyrics I can safely say that there is absolutely an overarching theme. The entire record is about relationships. Good or bad, romantic or not, friendships, family, and mainly the relationship to yourself. I think I came to it completely subconsciously but it’s so present and glaring when I listen back to the record. I think that life is really all about relationships and it’s what most of us spend almost all of our time thinking about.”

Ultimately, it is their relationships with each other - the profound friendships that have shifted and grown over the years – that are the most vital force behind their music, nourishing everything they do. “We all have a very deep understanding of each other as people first, and then also musically,” says Scaglione. “With being best friends comes an insane amount of trust in normal life but also in our creative decisions, and I think that allows us to work quickly. We all entertain each others’ musical ideas and try to see all of them through even if we don’t understand the end goal or final vision right away. The fact that we get to make music and share all of these experiences together is a truly special thing.”
credits
releases October 3, 2025

TRACKLIST

1. Rocket - The Choice
2. Rocket - Act Like Your Title
3. Rocket - Crossing Fingers
4. Rocket - One Million
5. Rocket - Another Second Chance
6. Rocket - Pretending
7. Rocket - Crazy
8. Rocket - Number One Fan
9. Rocket - Wide Awake
10. Rocket - R is for Rocket