Josiah Queen, Mt. Zion (Capitol Records)
Some weeks I take ’em as they come, and even though I reviewed the new Stryper album just a couple of weeks ago, another Christian rock album gets an ups today, the newest (it’s from last year but his people want me to talk about it, and I’m an easy mark today) from a 23-year-old Christian rocker from Florida who’s had two albums go platinum. I’m not religious at all but do have a weakness for Christian rock (I told you before about that live version of Brandon Lake’s “Resurrection Power” that’s so awesome I can barely stand it, even if I suspect it’s a ripoff of something decent from Creed, not that I’ve heard more than two Creed songs, the second of which only insulted my ears because I was accidentally watching wrestling). Before we proceed, I think this kid’s name is hilarious, like I’ll bet that in the 1970s half the garage bands in America thought about naming themselves “Josiah Queen” and may have even mocked up a logo, but musically this particular Josiah is big into Zach Bryan on the cool-breeze heartland-banjo-rock side and Mumfords and Kings of Leon on the arena-bombast side. It’s all awesome, and, I’m sure, like all Christian rock, blatantly stolen from different places, but hey man, the good kids do deserve their heroes, I suppose. Oh, and yup, my aforementioned home-dog Lake sings on here too (“Can’t Steal My Joy”). A
Kevin Sun, Kevin Sun I/Kevin Sun II (Endectomorph Music)
A lot of self-exploratory artistry for a bro to process here, in the form of two simultaneously released albums and you can just belay the snark about the economic sense of releasing two separate discs as opposed to a single two-disc digipak because I don’t want to hear it. In fact, this jazz saxophonist knows you were going to open your yap about it, and his excuse is that, and I quote, “it’s more like a pair of video games set in the same universe, each with its own style and cast of characters.” Regardless, we can cut him some slack, firstly because each disc has a different threesome backing the man (led by pianist Christian Li on the more reflective II and guitarist Max Light on far more animated I), and secondly because the guy’s a genius, pulling stunts like hammering a waltz into a busy 4/4 (Ryuichi Sakamoto’s “Chanson”) and wedding ever-increasing tension to ever widening thickness in the aptly titled “Hold Music.” One not to miss. A+
PLAYLIST
A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases
• Onward we trudge into the yawning black hole that is popular music in America this year (which I believe the Chinese have dubbed The Year Of The Xenomorph), as we look at the new CD releases of Friday, Sept. 18, from as sensible a distance as possible. Long list of new ones this week, which, to my delight, is indeed so big that I don’t have to bother sampling anything from Neil Young’s new album, Second Song, with his new band The Chrome Hearts, I’ll take the good news wherever I can get it these days; I assume it’s the usual bunch of messy, off-key-sung tunes featuring our gimmick-voiced hero grousing about Trump or AI or whatever he’s been mumbling about lately while not actually doing anything about all the nonsense, what would we do without rock stars making half-cocked sociopolitical statements, folks, I ask you. But more relevant to Generation X, the generation currently running the country from the C suite, we have a new album titled Apples For Isaac coming out from Liverpool, U.K.’s Echo & the Bunnymen, whom I’m still mad at because several years ago I had mooched passes to a show they were playing in Boston (I think it was at The Paradise club), and I drove there because my wife would rather get dental work than drive in Boston, and we got there a little late and hence they wouldn’t let us in, I assume because we missed one of the two songs they play that more than three people reading this could identify by name (before you start racking your brain, you’re thinking of “Killing Moon,” which you misidentified as being a Cure song the first 20 times you were exposed to it). Nevertheless I have never been mean to the band in these pages, unless you count the last paragraph, at least not that I can recall, and the singer and guitarist are still on the team, so I will give the new single “The Light That Surrounds You” a fair chance to impress me, let me move the barf bag closer to my Golden Sculpted Throne of Judgment, OK all set. Oh, what even is this, it sounds like Franz Ferdinand in trudgy-boring mode, why on Earth are they trying to be relevant in this century? If you were at their show at Boston’s Roadrunner club in June and they were playing this song, trust me, it was one of the times you were like “OK” and got in line at the bar for drinks, waiting for a song you actually know.
• Fans of hilariously overrated arena-rock superstars Queen have something to celebrate this week, as their drummer, Roger Taylor, drops new album Violence Insane In A Beautiful World. I assume he’s only putting it out because Queen is more or less done, given that the band’s guitarist, Brian May, is an astrophysicist (remember when he wrote a book about the planets or something-something, did I review that one here when his people sent it to me? If not, it was really boring and not at all Carl Sagan-like) who doesn’t care about rock ’n’ roll anymore, leaving Taylor to sink or swim on his own if he spent all the money he made during their almost-listenable era, meaning the coda of “Bohemian Rhapsody.” Taylor’s new LP’s opening track, “I See You Now,” is David Bowie-ish but super wimpy and maudlin; it might interest your great aunt if she hasn’t been kissed since 1985.
• Carly Rae Jepsen sang “Call Me Maybe,” remember those days? Her new album, Day And Night, has a single called “We Get By (Day and Night)” that’s pretty decent, sort of Goldfrapp-ish and urban, I do like it.
• And finally, “unplugged metal” flamenco-guitar duo Rodrigo y Gabriela grace us with their newest full-length, OurHome. I’ve never been a fan of show-offy novelty acts and tend to lump these guys in with Buckets The Drummer, like I’d be more entertained if they wore rubber horsie heads as they played, but as usual the title track delivers its hard-driving whatever-it-is as succinctly as ever, you know, that “inimitable” Metallica meets Gene Autry vibe.
Featured Photo: Josiah Queen, Mt. Zion and Kevin Sun, Kevin Sun I/Kevin Sun II
