Year: 2024

George Strait, Cowboys And Dreamers (MCA Nashville Records)

At 72, Strait has been around a billion years, having been instrumental in pioneering “neotraditional country” music in the ’80s, a style that emphasizes what the instruments are doing, an approach that was a reaction to the blandness that had overcome country music after the urban cowboy fad. In that, you could call it an OG resurgence I suppose, being that artists like Strait, Toby Keith and Reba McEntire tend to dress in midcentury fashions and sing in a more traditional country style. Strait’s new LP doesn’t deviate from the neotraditional formula, but you’ll hear things you probably weren’t expecting, such as on opener “Three Drinks Behind,” in which his radio-announcer-style baritone warbles its obvious sentiments over mildly edgy guitar strumming and mandolin lines that fit like a glove. “The Little Things” is a mawkish love ballad, buoyed by (spoiler alert) dobro as Strait’s voice explores croaky mode. “MIA Down In MIA” is a curveball that’s obviously an amalgam of Jimmy Buffett’s lifetime catalog. Friendly, authentic stuff here. A+

Yes, Drama (MCA Nashville Records)

Continuing my quixotic efforts to educate Zoomer normies about classic arena-rock bands: The first thing to understand about Yes is that most people never really understood their trippy approach in the first place. I was at their Deep Purple-headlined show in Gilford a couple weeks ago and was psyched to see Yes opening their set with “Machine Messiah,” the opening tune from this album, which I’ve always liked even though original singer Jon Anderson was gone, replaced by Trevor Rabin, whose faux-soprano sounds exactly like Anderson’s. Like any prog-rock album, this one is musically complicated, but the math and the riffing are a lot more user-friendly than that of their earlier ones, serving as a very listenable (often hard-rock influenced) precursor to the commercial stuff they tabled in 90125 (whose big hit was “Owner Of A Lonely Heart”). Prior to this LP, Going For The One was a great one too, but Drama found the fellas in a less fluffy mood, perhaps even looking over their shoulders at Rush, who were doing the same kind of thing at the time. “Roundabout” isn’t the only thing this band ever accomplished, is what I’m getting at here, and this one is criminally overlooked. A+

_PLAYLIST

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• Sept. 6 will see the next Friday-load of CD releases from burnt-out rock stars, twerking bubblegum divas and assorted swindlers, so, all you pumpkin spice people, let’s just do this “oh no, it’s gonna be freezing in New England any minute now” thing, because I can hardly wait! Yay, I guess we can start with a few off-the-cuff riffs on Pink Floyd, a band that never really appealed to me aside from a select few random songs (“Sheep” and maybe “Run Like Hell,” as I’ve said before), because look at this, guys, it’s their guitar dude, David Gilmour, with a new album, Luck And Strange! I figured it’d be best if I spun the track “Between Two Points,” since Gilmour’s daughter Romany handles the singing on it, but wait a minute, I’ll not indulge you nepo-baby haters in this case, because I don’t mind her breathy soprano at all. She sounds a lot like famous British trance singer Justine Suissa; in fact she’s a dead ringer. As for the tune’s music, it’s a slow Pink Floyd-ish snoozer, with Gilmour in lazy-strummy mode, in line with most of the stuff he did with Floyd back in the olden days. It’s fine really.

• OK, very funny, I really don’t have any time for a good punking, what with trying to sell my new book, talk to my Twitter followers and respond to Friend-Of-The-Hippo Dan Szczesny’s enthusiastic Facebook personal messages about Korean all-girl speed-metal bands. But sure, for the sake of somesuch, let’s say you’re serious, that none other than observably untalented nepo-baby Paris Hilton is actually “releasing a new album called Infinite Icon” tomorrow and I have to talk about it. Now fess up, are you just telling me this to upset me, because it won’t work; I’m permanently upset enough over many things in this world these days, so my listening to this hyper-privileged dunce sing some (off-key) nonsense about her latest bad-choice boyfriend over some microwaved Kylie Minogue beat from 1993 or whatever she’s doing these days isn’t going to strain the camel’s back, who on Earth cares? I have to admit, I’d actually much prefer talking about Babymetal so that at least someone would be happy, but I’ve put it off long enough, let me go have a listen to “I’m Free,” because I have to. Oh how cute, it’s pure Ariana Grande ripoff-ism, beach-chill with not much going on other than ringtone-ready romance, but you want to know the worst part, of course you do, she sings through Auto-Tune through the whole stupid thing, and no, I’m not kidding. Rina Sawayama is the feat. guest, delivering a phoned-in vocal that’s nowhere near her best work, but at least everyone is happy, here in nepo land, can we move on from this please.

• Here we go again, another ’80s new wave band resurfacing from out of nowhere to have a go at the last few drops of glory that can be shlurped from the Gen X resurgence. I speak of course of British post-punkers The The, which is still singer/songwriter/sole-constant Matt Johnson’s baby; Ensoulment is this band’s first proper studio album in, holy cats, 24 years! “Cognitive Dissident” is the feature single, and it’s a pretty good one, combining INXS swagger with Ennio Morricone spaghetti sauce, it’s actually very cool. The closest the band’s new tour will come to you reader folks will be the Orpheum Theatre in Boston on Oct. 19.

• We’ll wrap up the week with Madrid, Spain-based indie band Hinds, whose new full-length, Viva Hinds, will feature three or four songs sung in Spanish! Several tunes have already made the rounds, including “Boom Boom Back,” which features a contribution from Beck; it’s a riot grrrl-flavored thing that’s like The Waitresses recycling a beat from Red Hot Chili Peppers, it is fine.