Rocketship

Since the early 1990s, Dustin Reske has sustained a high standard of sweet, highly melodic indie pop under the Rocketship banner as the project’s singer and guitarist. The 1996 release A Certain Smile, A Certain Sadness stands as a definitive expression of mid-’90s indie pop’s wistful yet happily adventurous spirit, blending gentle melodies with noisy passages, space-age pop organ textures, stacked jangling guitars, and plaintive vocals. Following an interval of unexpected detours that included the ambient 1998 album Garden of Delights and repeated lineup shifts, plus an extended period of inactivity from Reske, the band resurfaced in the mid-2010s with music that both revisited its earlier character and charted fresh directions, a balance made explicit on the 2019 album Thanks to You.

Reske launched Rocketship in Sacramento, California, after hearing Felt’s organ-rich “Song for William S. Harvey,” assembling the initial lineup with bassist Verna Brock, keyboardist Heidi Barney, and drummer Jim Rivas. Two singles appeared on the influential Bus Stop imprint—“Hey, Hey Girl” in 1994 and “Honey, I Need You” in 1995—before the group delivered the widely praised A Certain Smile, A Certain Sadness on Slumberland in 1996. The original members parted ways shortly thereafter, leaving Reske to steer Rocketship essentially as a solo endeavor supported by a changing roster of players. Additional singles emerged, among them a split release with Henry’s Dress, before the ambient-leaning 12-inch Garden of Delights surfaced on Drive-In Records in 1998.

Over the ensuing years the project issued recordings only intermittently, including a 2003 split 12-inch EP with Trace on Omnibus Records and the self-released 2006 album Here Comes...Rocketship. Reske then stepped away from music to concentrate on community activism and the founding of an eco-oriented lawn-care business in Portland. By the mid-2010s he resumed issuing tracks digitally, contributed a song to a split single with Pia Fraus, supervised the reissue of A Certain Smile, A Certain Sadness, and enlisted vocalist Ellen Osborn, who soon became central to the band’s sound. Together with Osborn, drummer Adam Bayer, bassist Angie Fritz, and returning original drummer Jim Rivas, Reske completed a long-delayed third album. Thanks to You, which recalls the classic Rocketship aesthetic while incorporating electronic, disco, and dream-pop elements, appeared on Darla Records in late 2019.