Kristian Montgomery and the Winterkill Band, Prophets of the Apocalypse (self-released)
When last we left Cape Cod-based bandleader Montgomery I was on the verge of anointing him the Tom Petty of New England, but that feels a little inadequate; local achievement is generally regarded by the public as almost meaningless in comparison to national success no matter the level of enthusiasm from hometown wags. I mean, he’s been nominated for some pretty notable awards, including a (nationally renowned) Josie and a Boston Music Award in 2021, which somehow led to his having beef with the committee owing to his disgust for their lack of recognition for blue-collar artists. He’s a rebel, this guy, and has a ton of working-class cred. In this EP he blends Petty with Florida Georgia Line in the timely blue-collar protest song “American Fire” and country-fies early Kings Of Leon in “Leaving Texas.” He’s a legitimate badass, folks; I literally had to troll him into letting me hear this record in advance, a very rare thing with hungry local bands. Please support this man. A+ —Eric W. Saeger
Adam Birnbaum, Preludes (self-released)
This one’s a year old now, but the fellow who’s helping to promote this world-class pianist is trying to break into the upper echelons of the music business, and he’s a nice guy, so here goes. This album spotlights a piano, upright bass and percussion trio taking on a formidable set of Johann Sebastian Bach’s compositions, along the way adding elements of jazz, Latin, swing and straight eighth-note, taking liberties with feel and improvisation. There are YouTube videos of these cool customers going at it, and it’s quite a sight; Matt Clohesy playing his bass after a showy, Jaco Pastorius fashion; percussionist Keita Ogawa looking quite comfortable and Birnbaum appearing as if he’d literally invented the piano he’s playing. “Prelude in Db Major” bops right along most ambitiously, all but stripped of its classical nature; “Prelude in C Major” retains much of the latter but does eventually settle into a light, piano-bar groove. Terrific stuff. A+
PLAYLIST
A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases
• At this writing, Genius.com tells me there are only two new music albums scheduled for traditional Friday release this week, on Dec. 27, two days after the big pagan holiday, whatever it’s called. No, I’m kidding, I know it’s called “Christmas,” but according to a popular meme that made the rounds this holiday season, Christians once actually tried to get rid of Christmas at one time, wouldn’t that have been a bummer? No, seriously, according to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts’ website, “In 1659, the Massachusetts Bay Colony enacted a law called Penalty for Keeping Christmas. The notion was that such ‘festivals as were superstitiously kept in other countries’ were a ‘great dishonor of God and offence of others.’ Anyone found celebrating Christmas by failing to work, ‘feasting, or any other way … shall pay for every such offence five shillings [This would be about $48 today].’” The Commonwealth eventually came to realize what a dumb idea that was, and by 1681 all the witch-burning pilgrims could watch the Grinch again, but even today some musical artists couldn’t care less if it was Christmas or National Possum Day or whatever, they insist on putting out albums. For example, there’s Jorge Rivera-Herrans, a mildly popular playwright, composer, lyricist and actor from Dorado, Puerto Rico. His new record, Epic: The Ithaca Saga, is a po-faced concept album that was released on Christmas; it includes a song called “God Games” that’s racked up more than six million views on YouTube. It comprises opera-based techno-driven nonsense that’s actually kind of brilliant in a technical sense, and a lot of people like it, so I suppose there’s a chance he’ll someday become some sort of male version of Enya for Greek mythology wonks. I mean, I fully expect never to hear anything from him again unless I’m at a sci-fi convention or somesuch, but weird things happen all the time.
• Also on Christmas, K-pop band 2NE1 released a 15-track album titled Welcome Back, which commemorates their ongoing (four years and counting) tour of the same name. Their bouncy, brainless Lady Gaga-style stuff borrows from all sorts of international styles and features a lot of sexytime butt-dancing and all the other stuff that’s been portending the collapse of Western civilization since 2005 or so.
• In normal album-release news, this Friday sees the release of the second album from Harshmxjb (real name Harsh Mishra), a musician from New Delhi, India. This feller is a typical underground culture-jammer, a 19-year-old who’s been exploiting the open-door policy of Spotify, Apple Music and all the other music sites, uploading hip-hop tunes like “Alone,” in which he sings off-key, like a brain-damaged Usher, over a melancholy, non-awful piano-driven beat (that song actually got some love on TikTok and YouTube).
• We’ll wrap up the week with an album that’s neither silly, performatively epic nor K-pop, a new one from singer Robbie Williams, whom you know from British boyband Take That, which was originally triangulated by conniving record company lizard-people as the U.K.’s answer to New Kids on the Block. That was a long time ago, of course; Williams has been a solo art-fraud since 1995, not that American audiences have paid much attention to him, but regardless, the new LP is Better Man (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack). Given that the movie is about Williams’ career, he was probably a good choice to soundtrack it; these things aren’t difficult to figure out.
