Author: Eric Saeger

Kurt Deimer, And So It Begins (Bald Man Records)

From the fringes of arena-metal stardom comes this Cincinnati, Ohio-based actor (a die-on role in the 2018 soft reboot of Halloween), rocker (this album, his first) and filmmaker (the upcoming slasher flick Hellbilly Hollow), who specializes in a highly accessible sort of Buckcherry meets power-metal vibe with a southern-fried side of Widespread Panic. He’s made a few influential friends as a frontman, including Queensryche’s Geoff Tate, who guest-sings here on “Burn Together,” and, in strange bedfellow news, Bon Jovi lead guitarist Phil X, who co-wrote four of these songs, including the focus track “Hero,” which nicks Marilyn Manson’s early sound pretty heavily. As you go along with the record there’s nothing really wrong aside from a little scalar verisimilitude between the songs, which could have been solved with (all together now) some interesting samples, but nevertheless it’s got a lot of crunchy riffing if that’s your thing. He’ll open for Tesla at the Hampton Beach Casino Ballroom this Friday (June 6) and Saturday (June 7). A-

Avicii, Avicii Forever (Pinguettes/Universal Records)

The world lost Swedish EDM/electro genius Tim Bergling, aka Avicii, in 2018, but his tracks are permanently seared into the memory banks of club-goers worldwide, for instance the bouncing, trance-adjacent “Levels,” with its NHL hockey-rink-rinsing ambiance, and the infectiously urgent “Wake Me Up,” a country-tinged dance joint that you’d definitely recognize from having heard it somewhere (he made several successful attempts to fuse country and techno, this being his most successful, peaking at No. 4 on the U.S. dance chart). What we have here is a career compilation of sorts; all the aforementioned songs are found on this set, as well as the buzzing shock-treatment electro hit “Sunshine,” a collaboration with David Guetta that was his debut into elite DJ society. This guy was gone way too soon; luckily for most fans this one is one-stop shopping. A+

_PLAYLIST

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• We’re into the new June music releases now, guys, the albums of Friday, June 6, to be precise, and there’s a metric ton of new ones coming out, all scrambling around like feral puppies, doing little clown dances as they compete for your hard-earned dollars if you have any (and haven’t figured out how to use YouTubeToMP3 yet)! I’m pretty sick of all the mixtapes I burned for my car, but since I left the daily-grind workforce, my entire weekly commuting time is down to about 20 minutes, just back and forth from the Elm Street Market Basket when Petunia and I run out of waffles and assorted other health foods, so it’s all good, but maybe there’ll be something in this week’s list that won’t instantly put me in a sour mood, let’s go have a look and hope for the best. Ugh, not an enticing start for me, a new album titled I Forgive You from Cynthia Erivo, who won the role of Elphaba in Wicked for having ridiculously long and dangerous fingernails and having the most piercings in human history won tons of Grammys and Tonys and whatnot, which is fine, because at least the part of the Good Witch didn’t go to Amanda Seyfried, who left the TV show Big Love to make seriously bad movies, which is one thing she definitely excelled at in her post-teen years! This is Erivo’s second album, said to be a “reintroduction” to her world-class style, and I found that everything on it (at least what I heard, anyway) has an epic romantic-tearjerking quality to it, in which she makes Adele look like a complete amateur, there’s really no contest. She’ll be on a very limited tour in August; the closest venue to New England will be in Syracuse, N.Y.

• After a four-month rollout that’s driven his fans insane, famous hip-hop man Lil Wayne resurfaces this Friday with Tha Carter VI. He is known for being one of the greatest rappers of all time, the inspiration for such luminaries as Nicki Minaj, Kendrick Lamar and such, but there’s no consensus at the moment in online sewing circles like the HipHopHeads subreddit as to whether or not he’ll make any sense onstage, in interviews or anyplace else as he promotes this new one, owing to years of opiate abuse. His last one, Funeral, came out in 2020 and was met with “mixed to positive” reviews; there’s an advance sample of this one in which he sounds, as always, like a nasty version of Skee-Lo, not to influence the buying decision you’ve already made.

• Since this musical decade has no idea what it’s doing or what it even is, the latest knuckleball in the works is the new album from Cypress Hill & London Symphony Orchestra, titled Black Sunday Live At The Royal Albert Hall, because why not. What’s that? No, I’m serious, you can go to YouTube right now and hear this album’s version of “I Ain’t Goin’ Out Like That” before it drops on Friday. Spoiler, the 31-year-old song gets the symphonic treatment, and the band couldn’t sound more bored, but do with that information what you will.

• If you’re a boomer, you’ll recall the Doobie Brothers being one of your favorite pop-rock bands, but then they decided to let Michael McDonald take over the singing for “What a Fool Believes” and most people couldn’t believe how lame it was compared to their earlier hits. Be that as it may, the band’s new LP, Walk This Road, is on the way, and original singer Tom Johnston is back with them, but the (spoiler) blues-based title track features McDonald singing in his Airedale terrier voice, oh well, whatever.

• And finally it’s Pittsburgh’s own psychedelic-indie band Black Moth Super Rainbow with a new album, Soft New Magic Dream, featuring the single “Open the F—ing Fantasy,” an annoyingly catchy down-tempo thingamajig, its unintelligible vocals piped through a 1970s voice modulator for no reason whatsoever.

Featured Image: Kurt Deimer, And So It Begins (Bald Man Records) and Avicii, Avicii Forever (Pinguettes/Universal Records)

Smut, Tomorrow Comes Crashing (Bayonet Records)

From Cincinnati, Ohio, comes this pleasingly melodic but quite loud post-Riot grrrl outfit combining fat, shreddy guitars and top-drawer female singing toward an effort to concoct something that’s like an alternative-universe epic metal, if you will. The focus track, “Syd Sweeney,” could indeed be a fourth-wave feminist treatise for all I could tell from the barely discernible lyrics in its Blair Witch Project-like video, but the main riff has a noise part that’s really neat. Opening tune “Godhead” has a little shoegaze feel to it, but its urgency and decidedly non-androgynous attitude isn’t native to that genre; “Dead Air” is an even more complicated genre-mix, given its gauzy guitars and overly reverbed vocals giving way to pure grunge. This is all a major departure from their previous dream-pop approach; it’s more like a cross between Garbage and a grown-up Avril Lavigne, would be the shorthand. It’s pretty great really. A+ —Eric W. Saeger

Ryan Truesdell, Shades of Sound: Gil Evans Project Live at Jazz Standard, Vol. 2 (Outside in Music)

Truesdell, a winner of multiple Grammys, has a deep fascination with the work of Canadian-American pianist-composer Gil Evans; this is his second dive into the extensive catalog of Evans, who died in 1988 after having an influential hand in the evolution of free jazz, fusion and other associated sounds. Suffice it to say that if you like horns you’ll love this; some of New York’s finest jazz musicians are here, including trombonist Ryan Keberle, who’s been featured on this page, and sax player Donny McCaslin (ditto), both of whose frenetic ramblings are held in check by drummer Lewis Nash. Aside from “The Ballad Of The Sad Young Men,” there’s honestly not much space for the listener to relax here, not that anyone would want that in a vital jazz release; wildly talented singer Wendy Gilles is the frosting on the cake, elaborately decorating such things as the Big Band-evoking “Laughing At Life.” You don’t want to miss this, seriously. A+ —Eric W. Saeger

_PLAYLIST

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• Like a big stupid iceberg that’s about to harsh my mellow, here comes Friday, May 30, with all its new albums, I’m dinging the warning bell as hard as I can but you people just keep shopping, oblivious to the danger, sad-face emoji! This Friday sees the biggest haul of albums in quite a while, where on Earth were all these people around Christmastime when I was sucking wind trying to fill this space and all I had to talk about were nonsense albums. Boy, you should see this huge pile of new albums, everyone on Earth is trying to get a jump on the summertime makeout-music market, it’s overloaded with new stuff I have no interest in whatsoever, but wait, my stomach might be able to handle this new album from Garbage, titled Let All That We Imagine Be The Light, my wife likes them anyway, let me see what’s even going on here, get your Doritos and let’s do this, folks. This album is reported to be “thematically more optimistic and less socio-political” than their previous ones, which is actually a nice break; personally I couldn’t care less what some rock star thinks about Trump or whatnot, everyone has their minds made up about these things one way or another depending on their lamestream media of choice, let me go listen to the record’s opening track, “There’s No Future In Optimism.” Yikes, it sounds like Madonna for the first few bars, and then comes the familiar asphalt-burning post-punk vibe Garbage fans have known and loved since the Sphinx was being built, I’m sure they’ll approve. They’ll be at the Roadrunner in Boston on Sept. 18, start saving your DoorDash tips now, because tickets start at $100, yes, you read that right, can you believe how out of control tickets prices have gotten? I was just watching an old interview with Kurt Cobain where he was shocked that Madonna was charging $50 (this was back during the Grover Cleveland administration) and Nirvana was only charging $17. Crazy, isn’t it? And it’s bad, too, because according to a recent internet story that made the rounds for a day or so, regularly going to concerts adds years to your life, not that I believe it. Do you?

• Oh no, this can’t be happening, someone with more money than brain cells decided to do a documentary about Pavement, the band I literally detest most in the world; I never bought the line that they were “the slacker version of the Rolling Stones for the 1990s,” I just thought they were awful. But hey, that might not be you, and so there’s nothing I can do but report that the documentary, Pavements, has a soundtrack, performed by that awful band, and it comes out Friday. Spoiler, all the sample tuneage sounds like your drunk uncle playing bad chords on his Flying V guitar through a second-hand Peavey amp and making up random songs about existentialism or women who didn’t want anything to do with him when he was 15, are those guys really relevant anymore? (Reminder: Dr. David Thorpe totally agrees with me.)

• Also on Friday, garage rock revivalist Ty Segall releases his 17th album, Possession, featuring the title track, a palatable-enough ’70s-pop-rock thing that sounds like Joe Walsh if he could sing, doing understated boogie/whatnot.

• Lastly we have former pop diva of the month Miley Cyrus, with her new one, Something Beautiful. This is said to be a “visual album showcasing her love for fashion,” which I took to mean, you know, the videos would be visually interesting, but the video for the title track isn’t, it’s just Miley made up like a Hunger Games judge, singing torch-style, like she wants to be Amy Winehouse this month (fat chance), but at least she’s not trying to be Black Sabbath again, am I right gang? —Eric W. Saeger

Featured Image: Malphas, Tales from the Olden Realm (self-released/Bandcamp) & Ches Smith, Clone Row (self-released)

Sparks, MAD (Transgressive Records)

The press notes for this nearly 60-year-old band’s 26th album start with this: “If the world is a cafe, its ridiculous patrons babbling ridiculously all day long, then Ron Mael is the guy on his own in the corner that you don’t notice, quietly sipping his coffee.” From there it proceeds ad nauseum, painting the two Mael brothers (Sparks’s only constants over the decades) as geniuses of postmodern pop music and stagecraft, largely owing to their yin-and-yang hyper/reserved stage personas. To be embarrassingly honest, I came to them from the 1985 seriocomic vampire movie Fright Night, which I’ve seen approximately 2,825 times, a film whose soundtrack included their song “Armies Of The Night,” a technopop bauble that was so naïvely upbeat and European-sounding that I had no idea the brothers are American until, well, an hour ago (the band has gone to some lengths to make the world forget that song ever happened; it’s not mentioned on their Wikipedia page for one thing). This album, coming on the heels of their winning an AIM Outstanding Contribution to Music award, is mostly a mixed patchwork of subdued, not-really-danceable messaging but it does have its moments, for instance “Do Things My Own Way,” which is quite a bit like “Armies Of The Night” in its silly Pet Shop Boys-ish accessibility (translation: it’s fun). They do have their fans, obviously, who’ll be glad to know that they’ll be at Boston’s Berklee Performance Center on Sept. 11. B

Cautious Clay, The Hours: Morning (Concord Records)

Impressive third album from Clay, real name Joshua Karpeh, a native Ohioan of Kru (Liberian) ethnicity, whose breezy indie/R&B sensibilities tend to read as a form of yacht rock; for example, if the Weeknd were more AOR-minded, “Father Time (10 am)” would be something you’d hear from him, and if that’s not clear enough, I could certainly suggest Seal as a similar artist (it’s really time for people everywhere to admit that nearly all of us have a favorite yacht-rock song, isn’t it?). The record label’s bots have been busily boosting that particular song on YouTube, although one oddly cynical human stumbled upon it and remarked that it sounds like Big Wreck, which is completely false; “Tokyo Lift (5 am)” is proof positive that this guy is aiming for Seal’s happily contented bedroom-pop space, but with a deeper (and quite a bit more resonant, honestly) vocal range, so I’d urge you to find out for yourself. It’s seriously listenable. He’ll be at The Sinclair in Cambridge, Mass., on Sept. 30. A

_PLAYLIST

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• Here come the new CDs of Friday, May 23, annoying everyone in sight with its springtime vibe and happy bunny rabbit face, don’t you just hate May? We all know where this is heading, soon enough it’s going to be hot and roasting with no end in sight, someone get these happy springtime bunnies off me before I love them and pet them, that’d be great. Ohh, what have we even got today, let’s see, we’ll start with a blast from the past, our old buddies from the U.K., Stereolab, who’ve been around since — gulp, holy crow — 1990, fun-time’s over, late-born Gen Xers, enjoy grandparenthood! Yes, you old fossils remember Stereolab, mostly from back in college when you had to explain to your dorm-mate why you thought they were awesome and played them one of the band’s motorik-driven milquetoast hits, then watched in horror as your dorm-mate fell asleep out of boredom, you remember those days, right? Well, we are gathered here today to see if Stereolab is still trying to revive their preferred sound, 1950s French mall-shopping music, and pass it off as something even vaguely relevant, let’s do the searchy thing in the YouTube box and see what’s on the band’s new album, Instant Holograms On Metal Film! Right, here’s something, a tune called “Aerial Troubles,” which begins with a pseudo-Sigur Ros part and then becomes — I don’t know what you would even call this, Supertramp as a lo-fi band? The boy-girl harmonizing is deliciously amateurish and off-key, what more could you ask for? Now may I go?

• Wait, I know, let’s try something interesting, wouldn’t that be novel? Chances are you’ve never heard of British post-rock band These New Puritans, an act solely operated by Jack and George Barnett, twin working-class brothers who taught themselves to play musical instruments. Their sound was once described by someone at Another Man as an attempt to blur “the distinction between rock, classical, electronic and experimental,” which sounds like half the bands on Earth at the present moment, but suppose we just belay the snark and check out their new album, Crooked Wing, and its single “A Season In Hell,” are y’all down for that? OK, this tune is quite nice, undergirded by military snare-drum patterns over which a slow-burning psychedelic trip starts to take shape, with some from-the-mountaintop effects on the vaguely Pink Floyd-ish singing. It’s all more vibe-focused than eventful, which (all together now) sounds like half the bands on Earth at the present moment, but the old-school organ does provide it with a lot of casual gravitas. It’s the kind of thing that’s too cool for American bands, let’s just say that.

• The good news continues, with a collaboration between Taj Mahal & Keb’ Mo’, titled Room On The Porch. If anyone still takes blues-guitar music seriously, this is about as important as it could possibly get, a meeting of the minds between two of the genre’s all-time masters, 82-year-old Mahal and 73-year-old Keb’ Mo’ (Kevin Moore). Given all that, we need to investigate how self-indulgent (or, conversely, how nauseatingly commercial) this is, so let’s. Nope, the title track is harmless and delightful, featuring the Randy Newman-like voice of Ruby Amanfu. There’s plenty of bluegrass vibe and a bottomless supply of innocent positivity, very nice.

• Lastly it’s grungy Britrock band Skunk Anansie (just so you know where you are, they covered The Stooges’ “Search and Destroy” for the soundtrack of the movie Sucker Punch), weighing in with the seventh studio LP in their 30-year history, The Painful Truth, featuring “Lost and Found,” a quiet-loud-quiet song that switches back and forth between dub/trip-hop and nu-metal. It’s neat, if self-indulgent.

Featured Image: Malphas, Tales from the Olden Realm (self-released/Bandcamp) & Ches Smith, Clone Row (self-released)

Malphas, Tales from the Olden Realm (self-released/Bandcamp)

From the murkiest depths of Michigan comes this sixth album from a one-man black metal band who calls himself Lord Moloch (you know how those guys like to roll by now I’m sure; it’s all fine by me). He’s been quite prolific in the manner of Bathory’s dear departed Quorthon, but he tends to tack in a more sword-and-sorcery direction; his raison d’être involves incorporating much slower tempos than Bathory toward an effort to put a more legitimate “epicness” into his “epic black metal.” His vocals sonically alternate between Quorthon’s spastic-demon squalling, your basic Cookie Monster and, well, David Byrne, to be honest, which isn’t as ridiculous as you might think. Lyrically, where Quorthon unleashed Hell’s hordes upon humanity, Moloch reads as more inspired by the art of Frank Frazetta and such, that is to say heavily muscled Conan-ish barbarians fighting crusades for such-and-so. Melodically it’s quite good; Moloch certainly isn’t shy about testing creative boundaries, as heard in his side project Vetust, which released a World War I-focused album titled 1914-1918 that I’d put up there with some of the most ferocious stuff coming out of Relapse Records. Tons of raw potential here. A —Eric W. Saeger

Ches Smith, Clone Row (self-released)

Eclecticism, thy name is Ches Smith, a San Diego-based drummer who’s spent his life concocting his own bizarre pan-jazz/world patchwork styles, incorporating such things as Haitian Voodoo music in order to produce all-but-unclassifiable records that read like Martian mash-ups. Wayne Coyne has nothing on this guy, which you’ll notice if you test drive any of these tunes, for example “Ready Beat,” where alternative-universe dubstep is combined with the sort of skittish, near-unintelligible guitar noodlings heard at the beginning of Yes’s “Close To The Edge.” This all isn’t to say he’s a lonely kook; after all, he’s collaborated with Nels Cline (granted, I’m at the point now where I automatically think “who hasn’t?” when I see that on an avant garde musician’s resumé), Vijay Iyer, Xiu Xiu and a cast of dozens of others who’ve been mentioned in this column. No, there is a very unique accessibility to this stuff if you’re up for a challenge; if I had a lot more leisure time I’d happily get to know this album more intimately. A —Eric W. Saeger

_PLAYLIST

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• May 16 is awash in new albums, I’m up to my neck in stuff to review: The height of the summer is in sight, when it will be roasting and singularly uncomfortable, and so all the rock stars and wannabes are pelting us rock journos with new albums to talk about, or so they hope, look at them all, begging for word-scraps from my table, thinking that if I mention their new records it will help them, when, little do they know, it probably won’t because, as you know, my tastes are eclectic even if some people think I’m a sellout to corporate record companies. Yes, the life of a brutally honest (and multiple award-winning) arts critic is a lonely one, which is how we like it; it sure beats having to pretend that Elbow, Wire and Skinny Puppy (whatever’s left of them) aren’t the only good bands out there, which would surely lead to my bonding with people, so let’s get started, by talking about the newest album from transgender art-popper Ezra Furman, Goodbye Small Head. To be honest, I haven’t paid a lot of attention to Furman over the last many years, probably because every time I turn around I’m getting spammed by her handlers, who want me to know about some local show she’s playing in Portsmouth’s Press Room (I’ve only been there once, for the record) or in Lowell, Mass. (you just missed her there in April at the Town and The City Festival) or whatever, I’ve honestly lost track. I’m told that she’s got a real punk edge to her stuff, so I shall now listen to something from this upcoming new album, on the YouTube box, for your edification. Right, at this writing the newest advance track is “Power of the Moon,” and it’s indeed decent, but not in the least punky, that is if by “punky” you mean something that sounds punk-rock-y, because this doesn’t, not that that means it’s bad. Well, it’s peripherally punky, awkward, jangly and frazzled, like if Clinic were trying to sound even more ’60s than they do in their most annoying moments, without the Doors-style organ in there (I really wish they wouldn’t do that). What does all this mean? It means I like it enough to recommend it to hipsters and nothing more.

• Maryland rapper Rico Nasty is interesting and, well, nasty, and definitely more punky. Her third studio album, Lethal, is on the way, featuring the single “TEETHSUCKER (YEA3X),” a supremely bratty track consisting of muddy Melvins-sounding guitars, some thankfully understated trap and enough over-the-top Joan Jett attitude that I won’t even bother researching her history of beefs, if one exists, because sometimes it doesn’t matter. She’s a badass, folks, just look at her nails.

• Also on Friday, the godfather of rap, Chuck D, releases Enemy Radio: Radio Armageddon, which includes the advance track “New Gens,” a call-out to Zoomers built atop an absolutely filthy noise-beat that I loved at first listen. How does that guy stay so awesome, someone please let me know this instant.

• Finally it’s British indie-rock kid Matt Maltese with his sixth LP, Hers. The lead single “Always Some MF” is a vehicle for his hilariously soft, languid voice; it’s something you’d picture playing from the boombox while you floated around in a raft on a frog pond. As always, he makes Bon Iver sound like Screaming Lord Sutch. —Eric W. Saeger

NOTE: Local (NH) bands seeking album or EP reviews can message me on Twitter/Bluesky (@esaeger) or Facebook (eric.saeger.9).

Featured Image: Malphas, Tales from the Olden Realm (self-released/Bandcamp) & Ches Smith, Clone Row (self-released)

Michael Younker, “So What!” (self-released)

Ack, if you ever need to count your blessings, you can start by being thankful that you aren’t the public relations person who was ordered to tell all us rock journos that this guy is trying to sound like ’70s arena-metal band Thin Lizzy. This advance single from the NYC-by-way-of-Detroit rocker’s upcoming EP sounds nothing like Thin Lizzy at all, but the cool part is that Younker admits he has no idea what Thin Lizzy sounds like to begin with. Now, local bands take note, that’s the kind of sloppiness I like to see, and it always guarantees extra style points, which in this case would have led to an A grade if the song were better than Younker’s single from last year, “Sweet Things,” which sounds like Gang Of Four after listening to wayyy too much ’80s-era Dickies-punk. This one, on the other hand, is awesome, yes, but it’s nevertheless disposable after an ’80s post-punk fashion, like a dangerously drunk Ace Frehley trying a little too hard. What am I even saying? Well, he’s done better, that’s what. B+

This Is It, Message (Libra Records)

The greatest trick a jazz band can pull off is making an improvisational record not sound improvisational, that is to say, not a mass of (more or less) unrehearsed, anything-goes, self-indulgent musical statements. Now, given that this trio’s focus artist, 60-year-old pianist Satoko Fujii, is accompanied here by her life partner (trumpeter Natsuki Tamura) and a world-class percussionist (Takashi Itani), as well as that this record is their third as a group, it’s safe to say that a lot of things that may not sound all that free-jazz-ish came about thanks to scribbled Post-Its the band peeked at during these recording sessions. To interested musicians who don’t know free jazz collaborations from a bunch of toddlers pounding Fisher-Price pianos at the day care center, this is a great intro. There’s mindless-sounding bonk-bonk-bonking here and there, yes, but not much of it at all, and that stuff comes off as preparatory rather than dogmatic; one thing this threesome is great at is settling into extended stretches of peaceful, curiosity-filled expressionism. It’s a very special album. A+

_PLAYLIST

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

NOTE: Local (NH) bands seeking album or EP reviews can message me on Twitter/Bluesky (@esaeger) or Facebook (eric.saeger.9).

• Here it is, I’m predicting that this year May 9 will fall on a Friday, and furthermore that there will be albums released that day, because it is a Friday! Whoa, this calendar thing on my computer here verifies it, look at all these albums, I’m definitely a psychic who should have my own reality show and an ultimate Karen haircut! I love that all these new albums will be coming out for your entertainment, I can’t wait to tell you guys all about them, so maybe we should start with, let’s see — WAIT, STOP, go read some other part of this newspaper, nothing to see here, especially not the new album from royally canceled hayloft-indie band Arcade Fire, how did this even get on the list! OK wait, don’t get mad, let me go read these guys’ Wikipedia and see if they got rid of Viagra Magoo or whatever his name is — OK, it says Win Butler (aka “DJ Windows 98,” remember the stunt he pulled at SXSW 2015?) is still with these Cursive-wannabes, probably because it was his stupid band in the first place, even though people accused him of sexual misconduct in a 2022 report by Pitchfork. Anyway, whatever, do we really need to go through with this, all right, fine, the new album is called Pink Elephant, and like many albums it has a title track. By the way, the “pink elephant” concept, according to one of the band’s stans on YouTube (in other words a bot or Butler himself in disguise), “suggests that when an individual intentionally tries to avoid thinking a certain thought or feeling a certain emotion, a paradoxical effect is produced: The attempted avoidance not only fails in its object [sic] but in fact causes the thought or emotion to occur more frequently.” I’ll leave the funny punchlines to you reader-people, but as far as the song goes, he sings like Neil Young on it, and the song is slow and boring and indie. Obviously that’s what all the Fire fans wanted to hear on this comeback album, Neil Young doing a feat on an extra-dreary Interpol song, let’s move on when your stomachs are all settled, that’d be great.

• As you know, Blake Shelton is famous for looking like the guy who played Dr. Bones McCoy on the last few Star Trek movies drunk-marrying random rock star ladies making distressingly commercial country-pop songs, so I assume that his new album, For Recreational Use Only, will not consist of covers of devil-metal songs, just trust my psychic abilities. Ah, here we are, the single is called “Let Him In Anyway,” Ugh, it’s like an indie-infused pop-country ballad you’d hear at Applebee’s, like he’s been listening to a lot of Snow Patrol or something, and yup, there it is, he’s singing in a forced southern accent, which, as we discussed the other week, is really dumb and fake.

• San Francisco-based slacker-indie band Counting Crows is of course responsible for “Mr. Jones,” one of the worst songs in human history, but their two other semi-hits are OK. The band’s new LP, Butter Miracle The Complete Sweets, is their first since 2014’s Somewhere Under Wonderland; it opens with the tune “Tall Grass,” a goofy, droopy weird-beard ballad with ’70s instruments like flutes. It’s worthless.

• Speaking of droopy and ’70s-sounding, we’ll wrap up the week with Los Angeles art-popper Deradoorian’s new album, Ready For Heaven, and its goofy, maudlin single, “Set Me Free,” which is like a sexytime montage song for a really bad B-movie from 1971, like Werewolves On Wheels, have you ever seen it, good, I’d hoped not

Featured Image: Michael Younker, “So What!” and This Is It, Message

Hexenhaus, Awakening (Roar Records)

As a genre, “tech-metal” is one in which I lost interest after the second or third Pendulum album, I forget which, not because it was bad but because it’s so confoundedly perfect all the time. To me, Pendulum got it right the first time, unlike Tool and Linkin Park (the latter of whom has been the subject of endless Facebook-message debate between friend-of-the-Hippo Dan Szczesny and myself; he thinks Linkin’s new singer is the bee’s knees, whereas to me she sounds like a particularly feisty America’s Got Talent contestant) et al. (while we’re at it, I’ve always thought A Perfect Circle kind of sucked, but that’s a whole other tedious discussion). And yadda yadda, that brings us to this Swedish five-piece, which has gotten love in the usual metal-fanboy Euro-trash circles (Kerrang, Metal Forces and such) for their more thrashy flavor of robo-metal. So. Whichever Dokken-looking dude writes their songs knows some beginner music theory; intro track “Shadows Of Sleep” doofs around with a spooky augmented arpeggio before windmilling a power-metallish Raging Speedhorn riff, after which “Awakening” tinkers with the idea of Iron Maiden calling out early Slayer (and, later, Anthrax, which is basically the formula throughout). It’s fine, sure, no complaints. A —Eric W. Saeger

Erin LeCount, I Am Digital, I Am Divine (Good As Gold Records)

The husky vocal timbre of Lady Gaga and Florence Welch has obviously had a massive influence on several quasi-pop divas who’ve emerged recently, from Dua Lipa to Lorde to Zola Jesus, the latter of whom would be my pick to offer as a soundalike to this 22-year-old U.K. resident. Like Zola, LeCount drowns her progressive-minded post-goth-pop in ethereal, Christian-begging vibe, instantly branding her as a “reclusive genius” in the manner of Chappell Roan, that is if you believe all the hype, which I don’t, but really, if I weren’t a painfully obvious cynic I’d hope that no one would want to read anything I type (don’t say it). On the other hand I’m always willing to play along with the public relations hucksters who sell us fairy tales (remember when Billie Eilish was reportedly discovered singing near a Dumpster or whatever it was?), so let’s: This girl recorded this EP in her gardening shed, they say, all by herself, adding brilliant layers of sampled harp, mandolin and other things to brighten her already glimmering pop gems, all of which are really well-written. Whatever the case, this is essential if you’re a fan of Florence And The Machine and similar products. A+ —Eric W. Saeger

_PLAYLIST

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

NOTE: Local (NH) bands seeking album or EP reviews can message me on Twitter/Bluesky (@esaeger) or Facebook (eric.saeger.9).

• Yikes, folks, tons of new albums are coming our way this Friday, May 2, and with any luck there’ll be a couple that don’t instantly upset my tummy-tum! We’ll start in Canada’s Manitoba province, specifically the little town of Portage la Prairie, with their idea of a punk band, Propagandhi! The foursome were originally a skate-punk band, then they dabbled with heavy metal, so knowing all that, I assume they sound like Good Charlotte nowadays, but more well-behaved, because Canadian! But let’s not just blindly assume, let me go live-review whatever they’re passing off as a single from their fast-approaching new album, At Peace, because it wouldn’t be fair to tell all you nice folks that Portage la Prairie, Manitoba (teeming with a population of 13,000, less than New Hampshire’s sleepy retirement community of Pelham) wouldn’t know the Ramones from a barbershop quartet, not unless I had hard evidence. So let’s go, fly to the YouTubes, my flying monkeys, and give a listen to the title track, I can hardly wait to get my hands on these little hockey-playing so-and-sos and their — wait a second, flying monkeys, forget it, bring it in, this isn’t bad, for a band from Canadian Pelham! It starts out with a messy, crummy solo guitar line that’s obviously a parody of the guitar doodle that opens Yes’s “Roundabout,” nothing wrong with that at all, good comedy is really hard to find in today’s punk scene. So then it kicks into a triple-speed punk-metal thing with plain vanilla emo vocals spitting lyrics about why it doesn’t pay to be a peacenik these days, which reminds me, aren’t we at war with Canada nowadays, I just haven’t had time to keep up with Buzzfeed?

• By far the most well-known Suzanne Vega song is “Luka,” a haunting tune about child abuse that cemented Vega’s reputation as a pop-rocker who specialized in folk-oriented lyrics, and yes, you could say that it’s all toward a Gordon Lightfoot fashion. Fun Fact 1: in the original 1980s video for “Luka,” the part of the titular character was played by the guy who grew up to portray Jackie Aprile Jr. in The Sopranos. Fun Fact 2: Vega’s hideously famous a capella “doo doo doo doo” vocal in the original version of her 1987 song “Tom’s Diner” earned her the title of “the mother of MP3s” when DNA’s techno remix of the song served as the test subject for formulating MP3 compression. But whatever, you guys don’t care about all that science-y stuff, so let’s see what she’s doing now, with her new album, Flying With Angels, that’d be great. The single, a mellow folk-rocker titled “Speakers’ Corner,” begins with some Aimee Mann-style formalities before settling on a very nice hook. She’s still got it, ladies and germs.

• In the beginning, Car Seat Headrest was a lo-fi solo project by Leesburg, Virginia, slacker Will Toledo, who played trombone in his high school’s marching band. Now it’s an indie quartet whose new album, The Scholars, streets on Friday. The push single, “Gethsemane,” is a mid-tempo dance-punker obviously inspired by Chk Chk Chk’s better moments. I like it, personally.

• And lastly it’s rootin’ tootin’ country-rock singing man Eric Church, with his eighth album, Evangeline vs. The Machine! The single, “Hands of Time,” isn’t annoying in any Rascal Flatts/Big & Rich manner, because it’s mellow and kind of pretty in its way, but the cowboy accent is forced, just like most country music. That’s annoying to people who know about singing, because accents don’t really manifest when someone sings in English, just to tell you Something You Should Know. —Eric W. Saeger

Featured Image: Hexenhaus, Awakening & Erin LeCount, I Am Digital, I Am Divine