Author: Eric Saeger

Miguel Zenón & Luis Perdomo, El Arte del Bolero Vol. 3 (Miel Music)

Relevance check: The Hispanic and Latino community is a rapidly growing demographic in Manchester, N.H., making up approximately 13.5 to 14 percent of the city’s total population, or more than 15,000 residents, making it one of the largest and most vibrant multicultural communities in the state. Bolero and tango are two major components of the citizenry’s musical heritage, and this, the third full-length collection from sax player Zenón and pianist Perdomo, is, along with its unbridled romp into pure artistry, something of an archaeological expedition. These two have played together in Zenón’s quartet for 27 years, and the second volume in this series resulted in their winning a Grammy in 2024 for Best Latin Jazz Album; in other words there’s no questioning their qualifications, which here table sweeping, clever and above all romantic renderings of pieces like “El Día Que Me Quieras,” co-written by Argentinean music idol Carlos Gardel, renowned for defining the tango genre in the early 1900s. This wasn’t what I expected at all; it focuses on Latin music’s melodic patterning as opposed to its familiar percussion-driven vibe. A+

Anthony Moore with AKA & Friends, On Beacon Hill (Drag City Records)

There’s a renewed push for this November 2025-released album, so I leapt at the chance to get the vinyl version sent to me, not because I know Moore from SpongeBob SquarePants but because casual investigation showed that it was indeed unfairly overlooked and, in short, Something Important. At 77, Britisher Moore has a formidable CV, having collaborated with Pink Floyd (three co-writer credits on 1987’s A Momentary Lapse of Reason and “Wearing the Inside Out” on The Division Bell’) and Julian Lennon (on Help Yourself). The songs here are rerubs of tunes he’s recorded over the decades, including the single “World Service” from 1981 and other period pieces; thus it serves as both reminiscence and introduction, revealing the Floyd collaboratorship as logical: The songs are slow, saddish but not mawkish, i.e. there’s a psychedelic element at work, but fans of Nick Cave — especially his most morose records, like Ghosteen — will assuredly get a lot out of this. A-

_PLAYLIST

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• Friday, Aug. 21, what can you even say? Not only is it a day of new album releases for you, it marks many historic events in rock ’n’ roll history! For example, on Aug. 21, 1965, the Rolling Stones scored their first U.S. No. 1 album with Out of Our Heads, an album I’d never heard of until today, because I never cared! Let me look, OK, aside from “Heart Of Stone” and some other song I’m not familiar with, the album consisted of cover versions of old blues songs from people like Chuck Berry, Sam Cooke and waitwhat, Sonny Bono, from Sonny and Cher! Well, it actually makes sense, because back in those days, before the internet or cars or fire, Sonny Bono was a songwriter, not the sad television clown you all know him as, if you’re kind of old. OK, if you’re definitely old, but enough history filler, what you really want to know is what’s going on with Brandon Flowers, the singer from Killers, but there’s not much to tell, since he doesn’t get into beefs, because he is Mormon, who even knew. His third solo album is titled THRASHER, yes, in all caps, because whatever; it is a concept album serving as follow-up to the Killers’ 2021 album Pressure Machine. Like that one, this new one is a triptych of Flowers’ childhood growing up in Nephi, Utah, and is influenced by vintage artists like Johnny Cash, which explains the gospel-singalong-ish Grand Ole Opry vibe of leadoff single “Paradise.” He’ll be at Roadrunner in the snobby Brighton neighborhood of Boston on Sept. 23.
• Vermont native Grace Potter used to be in Grace Potter and the Nocturnals, but then she fell in love with her record producer, which caused her bandmate-husband Matt Burr to go “oh no you didn’t” and the band broke up, but before you start, she did end up marrying the producer guy. She is on her own these days, currently hawking her sixth album, Trespasser. The single “Love Me Not” is a rather interesting slow-rocker combining sounds remindful of both KT Tunstall (when she still had a few songwriting ideas) and Melissa Etheridge (because that’s who Potter usually sounds like, in other words half the songs you thought were Etheridge were actually done by this lady, and vice versa). Her 2026 tour will come very close to our state on Sept. 12 at River Ruckus in Haverhill, Mass.

• Ah yes, Weezer, the voice of an awkward, horribly mistreated generation, they are releasing their 20th album this week, once again titled Weezer, but this time everyone will refer to it as The Gold Album. If you’re one of the band’s fans, you’ve likely already heard the initial single, “Shine Again,” featuring a decent doomy-grungy guitar line that rips off Lit’s “My Own Worst Enemy,” which is of course itself a ripoff of most Weezer songs; the second single was “We Might as Well Be Strangers,” featuring a guest spot from shoegaze-slacker band Wednesday. That song is unbelievably lifeless and sounds completely phoned in, but for all I know you will relate to its message of suburban misery or whatever the guy who looks like Rick Moranis is singing about. These guys will play at TD Garden in Boston on Sept. 27.

• We’ll stick a fork in this exercise with Mystery Jets, an indie-pop/post-punk band from Eel Pie Island, situated in the River Thames in London; the people of that island are constantly bombarded with noise because the island is in the flight path of lots of flights coming in and out of Heathrow Airport, which is essentially how they invented their band name. A Hole To See The Sky Through, the band’s seventh LP, includes the title track, which is really cool, like Yes in rockout mode, or Supertramp if they didn’t suck.

Featured Photo: Miguel Zenón & Luis Perdomo, El Arte del Bolero Vol. 3 and Anthony Moore with AKA & Friends, On Beacon Hill

Litvar, Being Here (self-released)

As anyone who’s ever tried to achieve it knows, going internet-viral in a positive way through a song or a TikTok isn’t nearly as easy as becoming infamous for doing or saying something so stupid that it goes viral simply for setting all humankind acringe simultaneously. Luck is a major factor in that nonsense; years ago I lost track of all the doomed-to-obscure songs I’d encountered that were so good they actually rewired my head, so nowadays I’ve just accepted the fact that some artists couldn’t buy a break for all the wintergreen Skoal in Alabama. Add this Connecticut-based Americana-meets-emo band to that tragic list: Four years ago these guys released a single, “No One Tastes Like You,” that combined the jangle of Tom Petty’s “American Girl” with Hoobastank’s face-punchiness, and amazingly no one’s heard about it. In this one, instead of throwing up their hands and going in a straightforward emo direction like most bands would have, they want to be Goo Goo Dolls-ish, which works half the time and not the rest. The songs are fine, but more layering and another couple of months futzing in the studio would have added more to the songs; this feels like a demo for label interest, which it may well be, and if that’s the case, then bravo. B–

Stare Away, In Absence (á La Carte Records)

Oh, how this New York City dude (Ben Nelson) wants it to be the ’80s again, not that anyone could blame him when there’s so much corporate-designed, 3D-printed suckage in the pop sphere. Problem for Nelson is that the goth-rock world has, for better or worse, a massive array of sounds to choose from nowadays and therefore doesn’t need a teardown-rebuild; it’s not enough to try sounding exactly like The Cure, which this record accomplishes during its first four songs, with quite a bit of verisimilitude over the first two, droning churners that are fast and kind of neat but start wearing out their welcome when it becomes obvious not a lot is going to happen. Then along comes the fifth entry, “Midnight Martyr” (oh come on already, goths, for once, try not to sound like you get all your ideas from early Aughts manga comics), in which Nelson remembers that he loves Depeche Mode too, oh, and Dead Or Alive’s “You Spin Me Round,” let’s go disco! At least his heart is in the right place, OK? B-

_PLAYLIST

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• And on we trudge to the new CD releases of Friday, Aug. 14, what am I even doing, I’ve only been to the beach once this summer, what about you? I’m kind of surprised I haven’t been alerted to any upcoming new holiday albums yet, but there’s still time, 134 days to be specific, until Christmas, will there even be one this year, or will we be randomly bombing the Zagros mountains totally winning the war in wherever-it-is again that week? It’s too early to tell, but what I do know is that we have albums to discuss, starting with Comes In Waves, the 24th album from one of America’s most well-known nepo babies, Carly Simon, daughter of Richard, co-founder of publishing giant Simon & Schuster, don’t you love how giant piles of money can make someone into a famous singer even though their voice sounds like an ostrich yelling for saltines? No, I do have to hand it to her, though; even though Carly is at the stage of her career when most of her formaldehyde-pickled A-list peers are doing all-duet albums with people like Engelbert Humperdinck and Ed Sheeran and Pope Leo XIV and actual Santa Claus, this album is just another one in which she palms off a bunch of songs she actually wrote or bought or whatever she usually does, like the only guest feat is from Andreas Vollenweider, a Swiss guy who won a Grammy for playing the harp at yoga conferences or whatever his deal is. But all snark aside, I always liked some of her songs, “Haven’t Got Time for the Pain” in particular, and she’s still a very good songwriter, evidenced by the new single “Howl,” sounding as 1970s-radio as ever aside from Carly’s voice, which is about 80 percent gone, like she sounds like a female Willie Nelson, not that she doesn’t have every excuse for that.
• Cool, let’s keep it going with something else that doesn’t actually suck for once, the new one from Pasadena, California, folktronica lady Phoebe Bridgers! The record is called Lost Weekend, and it showcases the multiple Grammy winner at the top of her game; she started out with Brooklyn-based avant-rock band Sloppy Jane before hatting out on her own, which led to feats on tracks from Taylor Swift, The Killers, Kid Cudi and others. So yeah, folktronica, indietronica and guitar-tronica tuneage usually rubs me the right way, and that goes for the sample track from this one, “Lost Boys,” a joint that combines Fleetwood Mac and acoustic-mode Taylor Swift, powered by a chorus that’s so lush and wide it almost makes me want to say nice normal things. She’ll be at TD Garden in Boston on Oct. 6.

• Aaand so much for this week’s streak of decent songs, but your mileage may vary with regard to You Say I Romanticize, the new LP from Sweeping Promises, a female post-punk duo originally from Boston and now based in Kansas. This new album features a song called “Cocoon,” which will make you think of early Cars, Lydia Lunch, New Order and Gang Of Four all at the same time, or at least it did to me. It’s grungy and slovenly and angular enough, which is nice, but there’s a Pavement element that turned me off. They’ll be at Deep Cuts (formerly Carroll’s) in Medford, Mass., on Nov. 6.

• We’ll put a bow on this week’s mixed bag with Australian chanteuse Grace Cummings, whose influences include Irish folk music, Townes Van Zandt, Bob Dylan and Lucinda Williams in case you’re curious (I’m sure none of this stuff sounds like any of those people, that’s what always happens). Bloodhorse is the album, the push single is “I’m Not Crazy,” just imagine Lana Del Rey trying krautrock on for size and you’ll know whether you can stand it or not, I certainly can’t.

Featured Photo: Litvar, Being Here and Stare Away, In Absence

Ian Sweet, Shiverstruck (Polyvinyl Records)

I get it, the Chappell Roan copycatting will continue until morale improves, or something to that effect, but stay tuned, because this Los Angeles-based indie singer hasn’t quite settled on a sound, it looks like. She (real name Jillian Medford) started out by making interesting records; her first album, Shapeshifter, was an amalgam of Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Raveonettes and a few other good things, and Stereogum loved it, and then she went in a Mazzy Star direction in 2021 with Show Me How You Disappear, which I suppose is a relatively similar sound to the Roan worship we hear on focus single “Wild Heart,” but admittedly it isn’t without some of the Jay Som-with-a-pulse ideas she’s tried before. What does that word salad mean? Well, think Karen O meets Roan, and with regard to the latter, she’s put together some seriously angsty atmospherics that are so vibrant they’ll probably fool many people into thinking it is Roan. This all isn’t to say it’s not good stuff; there’s nothing wrong with being doubly derivative. Either way, she’ll be at The Press Room in Portsmouth on Oct. 15. B

Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra, Ellington Masterworks (MCG Jazz Records)

Huge-sounding collection of Ellington obscurities tendered by this (depending on the day) 17-member Washington, D.C.-based outfit. That’s refreshing, given that usually such homages are larded with well-known chestnuts like “Prelude to a Kiss” and of course “Sophisticated Lady.” So this one’s a more or less chronologically arranged set of (verified) rarities (the band had around a thousand tunes to choose from that Ellington had written during his half century of work), beginning with 1940’s “The Flaming Sword,” a number derived from “Panama” (no, not the Van Halen song), a thumping, Latin-infused swing joint that recalls (obviously) Benny Goodman. Clocking in at over 12 minutes, 1948’s “Tattooed Bride” rises from a slow-burn to take the listener on what feels like a speedboat ride over busy waves, “built into a W-shape” with irregular phrasing. I noticed that some of the individual songs, though obscure, have inspired academics to give them the full wonk treatment; there are no poor choices here. A+

_PLAYLIST

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• Aug. 7 is this Friday, which means new CD releases, which means we have stuff to talk about, as long as there are some new CDs coming out! It just so happens that there are, but first, you’ve seen me talk before about my favorite joke band, Mac Sabbath, the Los Angeles-based outfit the Village Voice called “Hieronymus Bosch meets My Little Pony,” which isn’t something I’d have written, but I haven’t contributed to the Voice family of newspapers for many years now, if there even is one anymore. No, in case you forgot (recommended), this band — comprising Ronald Osbourne, Slayer MacCheeze, Grimalice and Catburglar — plays Black Sabbath covers dressed up as Ronald McDonald, the Hamburglar and whatnot, but they futz with the lyrics, turning them into political screeds disguised as rants about fast food. I think it’s hysterical; Ronald McDonald has seen other dark parodists through the years, like YouTube’s RakkaRakka guys, who portray Ronald as a demented homicidal lunatic, I suppose you’d have to see it to appreciate it. Anyway, I was pleased to hear that this band is on tour and will be in Worcester, Mass., at The Palladium on Dec. 9, I might actually go to it myself. Now, turning to (only slightly) less comedic news, widely hailed California indie-folk band The Mountain Goats are back this week, with their count-em 24th LP, Days, which is said to be a not-very-serious look back at previous cultural tropes through the last few decades, for example the lead single “Charlie Sheen Reaches Out to the Feds,” an examination of Sheen’s “tiger blood” period. The tune is a thrumming, no-wave-ish tune that sounds like something Pavement might do if they were trying to be punky and weren’t one of the worst bands in history, I like it just fine.
• OK what’s this, I’ve never heard of The Anchoress, have you? Of course you haven’t, she’s popular with edgy people in England, so nobody in this country knows she even exists. Possessed of a Ph.D. in literature and queer theory, her real name is Catherine Davies; she wrote a book about epic poetry titled Whitman’s Queer Children, and when she’s not doing stuff like that, she’s producing her own indie-pop albums, like her new one, As We Once Were! You might like the single “Throw Over Your Man” if you like Kate Bush and/or Florence + The Machine; I like them myself and admire that this lady is trying to sound cool, but as with most New Music Express-approved bands from the U.K., the song really goes nowhere. And now you know why you’ve never heard of her.

• Oh yay, here we go again, another album from filmmaker John Carpenter, who directed such films as The Thing and Halloween. In case you missed it, this is a regular thing: Once every year, this film-directing man puts out an album mostly made of synth cheese that might have been relevant in 1981, and no one’s been able to stop him (if you want to know what I’ve had to endure from this guy for the last few albums, most of the amateurish three-chord music in his films was written by him). And so, like Charlie Brown running to kick the football Lucy’s going to yank away, I’ll go listen to something called “Lord of the Underground” from his new album, Cathedral! Yikes, it’s ’80s monster metal, like slow King Diamond, but no singing, just some evil choral stuff! Does anyone buy his records?

• And finally it’s Canadian indie band Kiwi Jr. with their fourth album, Blowin’ Up, whose title track sounds like They Might Be Giants covering a Cars song, it’s OK.

Featured Photo: Ian Sweet, Shiverstruck and Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra, Ellington Masterworks.

The Durutti Column, Renascent (London Records)

Here’s a band name you’ll want to keep handy in your brain if you often find yourself conversing with fans of artsy post-punk in the vein of this crew’s former Factory Records label-mates Joy Division, et al. Largely regarded as a solo vehicle for the classical-flavored noodlings of brilliant guitarist Vini Reilly (who’s alternately been called the Van Gogh and the Jeff Beck of post-punk, among other appropriately breathless outbursts of praise; he’s collaborated with Morrissey among others), the group is legendary among old-school British New Wavers and such, but, like Wire, they somehow never achieved the household-name status one would have expected. It’s been 14 years since the trio’s last album, 46 since their first, and Reilly’s ability has been affected by three strokes he suffered in 2010 and 2011, but this record is nevertheless a next logical step, a mature-minded collection filled with plenty of lush, bright, sweeping, epic, Orbital-like passages. Shame that the Great Unhelpful Algorithm that rules over us all has made Reilly basically invisible, but now you know, so please get to listening to him. A+

David Occhipinti, Looking Glass (Elastic Recordings)

The recipient of two Chalmers Arts Fellowships and a few Juno nominations, this Canadian composer/guitarist is said to have developed a genre-bending approach to his writing that “gestures toward several styles without comfortably settling into any.” Lots of other fifty-cent words in this one-sheet that sure look smart, and there are indeed some mildly surprising moments here and there, but to my ears this is a form of neo-classical that’s remindful of deservedly acclaimed soundtrackers like Thomas Newman (The Shawshank Redemption, Road To Perdition, etc.). The compositions can get pretty snooty, such as when mezzo soprano Alex Hetherington steps in to lay down some church-y Christa Ludwig epic-ness, but Occhipinti is an unconventional thinker, so it isn’t unusual to hear things (guitars, most prominently) that feel more like curveballs than classical obeisance; “The Frumious Bandersnatch,” his paean to Lewis Carroll, finds him emulating a bloopy synth with (I think) his guitar. A highly advanced classical tinkerer, let’s say. A

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A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• Yep, this Friday is July 31, all that’s left of the summer is August, when the sun starts going down early and everyone starts in with how much they looove pumpkin spice, which is of course a Stockholm syndrome reaction to the fast-approaching ridiculousness of frostbite weather, like, everyone’s like “fall is my favorite season, don’t you love pumpkin spice and apples,” even though apples are hilariously common in New England, like they’re on half the trees and no one eats them because who even wants to, and pumpkin spice just tastes like fresh-squeezed allergy juice from concentrate. Toward all this horror, the unkindest cut of all came in early June, when I happened upon a giant Starbucks pumpkin spice display at Giant Box Store, which totally floored me, what on Earth are you people even doing, and furthermore, I — oh forget it, I need to get back to the business of this literal award-winning column, and oh just great, look what I have to deal with first, a new album from Wicked actress Ariana Grande, titled petal (in lowercase, not that you’ll find it stylized like that in any other publication other than Nylon), I can hardly wait to hear her new rock ’n’ roll song, for the twerking children! Yikes, what a mess, the advance music on YouTube is a shambles, just 20 seconds of the title track, and then a song that’s also claimed to be “petal” but isn’t, it’s actually called “in the moment” (lowercased again because yadda yadda) and it is gentle and Wicked-y and cultural appropriation-y for all the twerking children, who never heard a Mariah Carey or Beyoncé song before, don’t you wonder what passive-aggressive diva fights Ariana had with Elphaba behind the scenes of Wicked, I’ll bet there are stories to be told!
• The subject of my next live-reaction will be Virginia rapper-singer Shaboozey, who won some Billboard Music Awards (I’d assume because someone paid for those “honors” but who knows, right?) and a Grammy for his collaboration with Jelly Roll on “Amen.” His forthcoming new album, The Outlaw Cherie Lee & Other Western Tales, is largely being ignored on Reddit groups like r/Popheads except for a handful of breathlessly enthusiastic, totally obvious bots, but we will take this album seriously, because it is a country-hip-hop concept album, with videos, in which Shaboozey totally rips off the vibe of Sinners shows off his signature move of channeling Johnny Cash and Lil Nas X. Fine with me, the teaser stuff has a DMX flavor to it, I’d never complain about that, it is gritty and mean, it might be a good album, someone let me know!

• Dum-dee-dum-dee doo, heaven help us all, what’s next, ah, it’s trans Latina experimental composer/DJ Arca with her ninth album in 12 years, XXXXX! Her last one, 2021’s Kick IIIII, was Aphex Twin-like, so maybe this one is decent too. OK maybe not, the song samples consist of stuttering robo-noises with nary an actual beat to be found among them, but it’s not my place to question anyone’s taste.

• We’ll wrap up this remarkably forgettable week with Austin, Texas, indie band Shearwater, which came into being when two of the guys from Okkervil River left the band to play even wimpier music. The New World, the band’s 20th album, includes the single “Daydream Unbeliever,” which actually gets kind of heavy after a Bela Fleck-ish opening bit. I hate the guy’s voice, but your mileage may vary.

Featured Photo: The Durutti Column, Renascent and David Occhipinti, Looking Glass.

New England Jazz Collaborative, Tributaries (Amherst College Press)

Well, that’s a scary little jumble of words, isn’t it, the “New England Jazz Collaborative?” It portends a listen that’s rendered somnambulistic and amateurish through the intervention of academic purists, but don’t let that fool you; far from being an uninteresting exercise for wonks, this set of six new works for jazz orchestra by four modern composers explores several different subgenres that make the record crackle with excitement and innovation. The lead single, “Ol’ Liminal,” combines Benny Goodman full-orchestra swing with noir-detective raunch — think the Peter Gunn theme — and then heads straight for Alpha Centauri, launching a fireworks display of hilariously cool melody. “Another Brighter Day” switches gears to bright, midnight-at-the-urban-mecca joy, with classical elements blending with straight Yellowjackets-style progressive steez. This is a composer-driven collective and it shows; in interviews the sound designers indicate that they can hardly believe their luck in being involved with such an overabundance of talented players. This is one you absolutely do not want to miss. A+ —Eric W. Saeger

Sharon Katz & The Peace Train, Desert Air (self-released)

While it’s still summer and you’re in the mood to sway in the beach breeze to musical trifles, this outfit will be performing July 27 through July 31 at The Power of Music Conference at Star Island (one of the Isles of Shoals, 7 miles off the coast of Rye, N.H.). A white guitarist, singer and musical therapist, Katz is from South Africa’s now-renamed Nelson Mandela Bay and has always been something of a missionary; as a teenager during the apartheid era she’d sneak out to the “Blacks only” townships by hiding under blankets in the back seat of her friend’s car, which eventually led to her forming the country’s seminal 500-voice multiracial/multicultural band and youth choir in 1992, performing at all of Mandela’s special events after his election. The music on this record is carefree, absolutely no-contact and no-stress, reminiscent of Sade in some ways and Maryanne Faithfull in others, but altogether twice as gentle, so if you’re attending that event, leave the glow sticks at home. A

_PLAYLIST

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• Look out below and whatnot, new albums are getting airdropped onto our heads this Friday, July 24, I give up, waitwhat, the summer’s already half over, I may as well try to find my Ren & Stimpy chullo hat and noisy swishy snow pants in my nonsense-filled closet, unless Petunia threw them out because smelly, why am I living in the insane Siberian wilderness of New Hampshire again? But whatever, as long as it’s still summer, it’s actually warm in the permafrosted nation of Canada, which we can thank for all their wildfires, which turned our lovely New Hampshire skies the same color of sickly yellow as the planet Venus, remember when the Russians sent a probe there and it melted within 10 minutes, accomplishing nothing more than sending back photos of molten rocks and a barf-yellow sky? But I digress because whatever, one of Canada’s greatest exports is of course Shania Twain, the criminally gorgeous woman with the singularly mediocre voice who was the ’90s girl-AOR version of Adele, when Western civilization was almost palatable and single 30-something women hadn’t yet abandoned all hope that men would ever understand anything that wasn’t cryptocurrency, sports or Roblox. Come on, you remember, she gave us such hits as “You’re Still The One” and “Man I Feel Like a Woman” and people had normal jobs instead of driving an Uber 96 hours a week for Jeff Bezos or whatever’s even going on now? Well, she’s back again, with an album titled Little Miss Twain, ready to lip-sync something from it on the Today show for the entertainment of the five remaining nursing homes in Idaho that still have it on the teevee, let’s go find something from this album and talk about it and drink heavily, not necessarily in that order! How do you like that, she’s gone in an even more country music direction this album, despite the fact that she grew up in the blue-collar high-unemployment-cursed city of Windsor, Ontario, but whatever, the first single from this album is the title track, which features country legend Tanya Tucker, a much better singer than Shania, but then again who isn’t, wait, I get it, there’s a line in this sleepy country ballad where the ladies sing “according to my mother I’m the next Tanya Tucker,” I see what they did there. I don’t know, you might like this song if you have ducks and chickens living on your property, let’s move on.

• Yay, if you can’t deal with Shania’s classy je nes sais quoi, you can always just settle for London rave queen Charli xcx’s occasional twerking, which at least she doesn’t overdo, because come on already, it’s 2026. Her new LP Music Fashion Film features the single “Rock Music,” which is actually neat if you like four-chord electro-punk (who doesn’t?) and can stomach a little AutoTune (it’s acceptable in this case).

• It’s never been cool to slag off New York City indie-rockers The Strokes as a sucky band, but only because they usually aren’t. Their forthcoming seventh album is called Reality Awaits; it starts with the tune “Psycho Sh-t,” which consists of equal parts New Order and Yo La Tengo, it works nicely enough, same as always.

• We’ll wrap things up with now-73-year-old Robyn Hitchcock, whom you might remember from his biggest tune, 1988’s “Balloon Man,” you remember, the video was a stop-motion thing with a can of baked beans and some fruit and it sounded like The Monkees, OK, just forget it, no one knows that song, his new album The Confuser has a single, “My Dead Astronaut,” that’s kind of a joke song, it’s stupid, but he’ll be speaking and signing books in Boston at Porter Square Books on July 27.

Featured Photo: New England Jazz Collaborative, Tributaries and Sharon Katz & The Peace Train, Desert Air

Shonen Knife, Let’s Knife Re-Cut (Summit Records)

Full-scale re-rub of the Japanese trio’s 1992 Let’s Knife LP, which Rolling Stone Japan placed at No. 37 on its list of the “100 Greatest Japanese Rock Albums of All Time” in 2007. No idea why they did this; they could have left this album alone and simply rattled off a new collection of Ramones/Black Flag-flavored punk tunes, but instead it just serves to show that they’ve, you know, gotten a lot older. We can start at the start with “Riding On The Rocket,” which has its original raw energy surgically removed and replaced with a version that’s so lifeless it’ll make you think of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Of course, that might have been the point of doing it; the updated version of “Get The Wow” sounds like a tune that should have made it onto the first Go-Go’s album. It’s still Shonen Knife, but jeez. They’ll be in Durham, N.H., with Men At Work and Toad The Wet Sprocket at the Whittemore Center on July 28. A

Electric Six, I Shall Exterminate Everything Around Me That Restricts Me from Being the Master (red vinyl remaster) (Metropolis Records)

Born in the 1990s Detroit scene that also saw the emergence of bands like the White Stripes, these guys are often considered a “gay disco” band owing to their upbeat, high-energy tuneage and theatrics. If it matters to you, and it shouldn’t, the members all identify as straight but supportive of the LGBTQ community; they’re a go-to band for bros and others who hold such-themed events. This was their fourth album, released in 2007, and it was and is a blast, distilling their fun-filled essence and cementing the band’s reputation as a borderline joke band that can really play (“Down at McDonnelzzz” is a classic among their food-obsessed songs; as one YouTuber commented, “I got this song banned before due to ‘over-requesting’. 6:30 AM, trippin’ nuts, getting Egg McMuffins, and this song on the radio, I can die happy”). The bullet version of their legacy would read “Come for the hard garage rock, stay for the Danceteria madness.” Absolutely relentless record, now with bonus tracks and downloadable stuff and ruby red vinyl. A+

_PLAYLIST

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• July 17’s list of new album releases is in my hands, everybody start drinking and I’ll try to make it as painless as possible! Now, something that’d technically be proper to talk about this month owing to this column’s focus on — you know, famous people playing/singing music and whatnot — was the planned concert series for America’s 250th anniversary, which took place in several U.S. cities, including Los Angeles, California, and Philadelphia, a city in Hell. As everyone knows, the main event was originally planned to be held at the National Mall in Washington, D.C., but since all anyone does these days is argue about politics on Facebook, it got canceled and replaced with a giant thunderstorm, so I tried to find something about that whole 250th kerfuffle that wasn’t horrible, or at least not politically radioactive, and I finally did find something, specifically the appearance of opera-singing tenor dude Christopher Macchio, whose specialty is blending non-operatic genres with, you know, opera, at the Freedom 250 rally performance in D.C. on June 24. He has only made two albums and probably couldn’t care less if SpongeBob SquarePants was our president, but either way he is a great singing human. He hasn’t made an album since 2020, a Christmas album, on which he sang a rendition of my least favorite Christmas jingle, “O Holy Night,” which most singers only sing in order to show that they have lungs made of Kevlar and could probably impress Simon Cowell on his stupid talent shows, in other words it’s the “My Heart Will Go On” of holiday jingles. Will he make another album? I don’t know, but there’s definitely one coming out Friday from trip-hop pioneer Tricky, titled Different When It’s Silent! He was a member of Massive Attack when they were The Wild Bunch, and even though his last appearance on a proper Massive Attack album was 32 years ago, no one can ever utter his name without mentioning Massive Attack somewhere within the same breath. What does this mean? It means he is too cool for school, so let’s see what he’s up to, on this new album! Yep, “I’m Yours” is a great little tune, starting with its 1960s guitar line, over which Tricky lays his usual helium vocals, and then it becomes a loud-ass no-wave thing, he’s still got it, or whatever the kids say nowadays.

• But does rapping man Ne-Yo still have it, he of “I Wish” fame, from 70 years ago? The answer is a definite no if you only like him for his flows about being short or whatever, as he has been going in a more cowboy-hat direction since last year’s “Simple Things,” how do you feel about rappers going country? Highway 79 is the new album, and “Miss Tundra” the single, a chill R&B-tinted cowboy song about a girl with large glutes, don’t you love how nothing ever changes?

• British indie rock band Kasabian has still got it, even though they’ve gone in a more wimpy direction since their early days, remember when “Club Foot” was on the mixtapes of everyone who felt the need to hide their taste for old-school heavy metal, that was a good one. Their latest LP, Act III, finds them trying to become New Order harder than ever, at least as far as the single “Great Pretender” is concerned; it has the same vibe as the old Modern English song “Melt With You,” which will please people who remember that dreadful period of cultural history.

• We’ll call it a week with boomy-voiced rapper Rick Ross and his new LP, Set In Stone! It is the usual fare: Sell stuff on black markets, avoid the po-po, and then buy some Benzes. Reddit’s r/hiphopheads group, which never met any pointless thing that didn’t start fights among the regulars, is mostly angry that the album cover is AI-generated; as far as that business goes, I do not care.

Featured Photo: Shonen Knife, Let’s Knife Re-Cut and Electric Six, I Shall Exterminate Everything Around Me That Restricts Me from Being the Master