Author: Eric Saeger

Stella Cole, Stella Cole (Iron Lung Records)

Don’t be fooled by the disposable-template look of the album cover. The world is waiting pretty breathlessly for the follow-up to this Knoxville, Tenn., native’s next album, whenever it comes; for now we’ll have to make do with this, her self-titled debut, an exercise in Great American Songbook standards, oh, and a cover of Billie Eilish’s “My Future.” Would that more of this kind of thing showed up on my desk — I mean, it does, but usually from singers who don’t seem to get that singing songs made famous by people like Judy Garland and such requires more than a little flair, or at least a desire to tell a story, which Cole states was the next-level step at which she’d approached this album after spending too many years sweating over what her voice sounded like (all the necessary trill-drenched panache is present when she covers the Garland-originated “Meet Me in St. Louis”). At 26, Cole’s knack for online self-promotion gained her worldwide recognition; her devotees include Michael Buble, James Taylor and Meghan Trainor, which should definitely tell you something. The Eilish tune, since you’re curious, isn’t steeped in the same torchiness as the original, more like a story, as we discussed. A world-class debut. A+ —Eric W. Saeger

The Crystal Teardrop, The Crystal Teardrop Is Forming (Popclaw/Rise Above Records)

What’s old is new again, again, with this U.K.-based Jefferson Airplane-configured five-piece. You may (or may not, I don’t care which) remember the Paisley Underground of the 1990s, which tried to resurrect the groovy sounds of the late 1960s while retaining some semblance of current relevance, but in case you’d never heard of it (a few of the bands on the soundtrack to The Silence of the Lambs came from that scene, for reference), these guys were at least cool enough to name one of their bangly-jangly flower-power songs after one of the bands that thrived during that short-lived cultural blip (“The Rain Parade”). That really wasn’t necessary, given that this group aims for the rafters as far as authenticity: The totally analog recordings feature a guy on sitar, one on Mellotron and the singer Alexandra Rose’s vocals were captured through an old Leslie speaker, which lends it a nostalgically claustrophobic Byrds/Mamas And Papas sound. Catchy though the music occasionally is, we have here an obvious flash-in-the-pan that I’m sure the Nylon reviewer will find to be a nice, dishwasher-safe distraction from the turmoil of current events; maybe your great-grandfather will dig it, or something. B —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).

• Well here we are, gang, as I write this we are in the grip of a typical Third Winter, in New England, and guess what, spoiler, it’s freezing again! I had a heat-saving idea so we didn’t have to call the oil delivery guy again, what I did was take all our tax return stuff and put it in the ol’ pot-bellied stove and burn it, which was better than paying my taxes; after all, there’s no one at the IRS anymore to take my check and staple it neatly to their pile of Eric’s Tax Stuff and drop it in someone’s inbox and then go back to their desk and eat the ham sandwich they have every single day, while looking out the window, dreaming of freedom and birdies and super-polite sexytime with someone they work with who actually talked to them once a few years ago! I tore up the check and ordered Captain America #100 from eBay, for my comics collection, and stocked up on cans of beans, for the fast-approaching apocalypse! Anyway, while I shuffle the myriad pages of my giant doomsday prepper grocery list, we should probably talk about the Friday, April 11, batch of new music CDs, in this music CD column, everyone shut up and let me look at the list, oh! Oh! Look guys, it’s sludge-metal heroes Melvins with a new album, Thunderball, wait, why did the Melvins think they could name their new album after a copyrighted James Bond movie (actually I’m kidding, legally they can, they’d only maybe have lawyer problems if they renamed their band “Thunderball,” and besides, anyone who even remembers that there was once a James Bond movie called Thunderball is in a retirement home right now, where all they watch is reruns of Match Game ’77, so I think no one will complain either way), why did they do this? Oh who cares, it’s a Melvins album, let me do the rock journo thingie and listen to something from it. Here it is, a new tune called “Victory Of The Pyramids,” and wait, what are they even doing here, the video starts with crazily flashing images, aren’t the YouTube moderator-goblins supposed to warn people first? Like, suppose I’d just accidentally heard a Van Morrison tune and my stomach was already totally touch and go, I’d probably toss my cookies right now! And waitwhat, the song is awesome of course, but it’s punk-speed, someone tell me what’s going on here with all this crazy nonsense, between “fast Melvins” and “no IRS anymore” and ridiculously high prices for Captain America #100 in “Fine” grade condition, I’m lost, on this silly planet, with all you crazy people! But wait, breaking news, it slows down to normal Melvins speed after a few minutes; it’s doomy and Black Sabbath-y but not crazily insane like Korn. Right, OK, it’s mostly slow, please disperse, nothing to see here, let’s move on.

• But wait, there’s more doom metal, with Insatiable, the new album from Aussie band Divide and Dissolve! Composed of two women, the band doesn’t have a singer, but you’ll probably like them if you like Bell Witch or getting in car accidents.

• Pennsylvania “shoegaze/post-hardcore” band Superheaven releases its self-titled LP on Friday! “Cruel Times” is really cool, kind of like Stone Temple Pilots, a band that was never shoegaze, why are they saying they’re shoegaze? They’re not!

• Lastly this week I’d like to say that experimental indie/world music band Beirut’s new album is called Study Of Losses, and it includes the single “Guericke’s Unicorn,” a woozy and weird but very tolerable modern art-pop thing that sounds like Luke Temple trying to make circus music for cute dogs that like to swim. Just go listen to it, trust me. —Eric W. Saeger

Featured Image: Iron Lung, Adapting // Crawling (Iron Lung Records) & Mac Sabbath “Pair-a-Buns” (self-released)

Iron Lung, Adapting // Crawling (Iron Lung Records)

Holy catfish, fam, this is the craziest thing I’ve heard since — well, the last craziest thing I heard. Maybe if I’d read their bio I’d’ve been better prepared, but what’s done is done: This Nevada hardcore metal duo bonded over (please tell the kids to leave the room, that’d be great) a fascination with medical experiments from the 1800s and whatnot, so in that sense they’re perfectly qualified to push envelopes, which they do in the areas of both speed and unbridled ferocity. In a way, their lightning-fast Bad Brains/Larm approach could be said to be a Dillinger Escape Plan type of thing for the black metal crowd, that is to say it feels like they’re careening out of control for the most part, flailing away like Venom at three-times speed, but every once in a while they slam on the brakes to make a slow-doom point. The project is completely self-financed, too, which is all the more reason for you to give them a shot. A+ —Eric W. Saeger

Mac Sabbath “Pair-a-Buns” (self-released)

In completely insane news, I received a note from this Los Angeles-based Black Sabbath parody band’s PR person that they’ll be “coming to my area soon,” specifically to The Vault in New Bedford, Mass., on May 3, which may as well be Neptune for all the likelihood that I’d ever drive that far for a joke band, even if the fog is beginning to clear regarding who and what the band actually is and revealing a novelty act that just might blow up big (people loved RackaRacka’s Ronald McDonald Jackass-style videos, after all). A video for this went crazily viral on Twitter, but even before that, news outlets like the U.K.’s Daily Star were spilling plenty of ink over it. This (now old) flexi disc single contains a parody of Sabbath’s “Paranoid,” which the b tune and plays at about the same speed as proto-punkers The Dickies did in 1979, but these guys are serious about their anti-fast-food, anti-music-industry theatrics: The guys dress up like metalized versions of the old McDonaldland characters — an Ozzy-fied Ronald McDonald who plays the spatulas, “Slayer MacCheeze” on guitar and such, you get the gist — and put on a frenzied live show at any small club that’ll put up with them. This is priceless, guys. You know what, if you’re driving to this show, message me and I’ll join you; we’ll get in the door for free. 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).

• Well here we are, gang, as I write this we are in the grip of a typical Third Winter, in New England, and guess what, spoiler, it’s freezing again! I had a heat-saving idea so we didn’t have to call the oil delivery guy again, what I did was take all our tax return stuff and put it in the ol’ pot-bellied stove and burn it, which was better than paying my taxes; after all, there’s no one at the IRS anymore to take my check and staple it neatly to their pile of Eric’s Tax Stuff and drop it in someone’s inbox and then go back to their desk and eat the ham sandwich they have every single day, while looking out the window, dreaming of freedom and birdies and super-polite sexytime with someone they work with who actually talked to them once a few years ago! I tore up the check and ordered Captain America #100 from eBay, for my comics collection, and stocked up on cans of beans, for the fast-approaching apocalypse! Anyway, while I shuffle the myriad pages of my giant doomsday prepper grocery list, we should probably talk about the Friday, April 11, batch of new music CDs, in this music CD column, everyone shut up and let me look at the list, oh! Oh! Look guys, it’s sludge-metal heroes Melvins with a new album, Thunderball, wait, why did the Melvins think they could name their new album after a copyrighted James Bond movie (actually I’m kidding, legally they can, they’d only maybe have lawyer problems if they renamed their band “Thunderball,” and besides, anyone who even remembers that there was once a James Bond movie called Thunderball is in a retirement home right now, where all they watch is reruns of Match Game ’77, so I think no one will complain either way), why did they do this? Oh who cares, it’s a Melvins album, let me do the rock journo thingie and listen to something from it. Here it is, a new tune called “Victory Of The Pyramids,” and wait, what are they even doing here, the video starts with crazily flashing images, aren’t the YouTube moderator-goblins supposed to warn people first? Like, suppose I’d just accidentally heard a Van Morrison tune and my stomach was already totally touch and go, I’d probably toss my cookies right now! And waitwhat, the song is awesome of course, but it’s punk-speed, someone tell me what’s going on here with all this crazy nonsense, between “fast Melvins” and “no IRS anymore” and ridiculously high prices for Captain America #100 in “Fine” grade condition, I’m lost, on this silly planet, with all you crazy people! But wait, breaking news, it slows down to normal Melvins speed after a few minutes; it’s doomy and Black Sabbath-y but not crazily insane like Korn. Right, OK, it’s mostly slow, please disperse, nothing to see here, let’s move on.

• But wait, there’s more doom metal, with Insatiable, the new album from Aussie band Divide and Dissolve! Composed of two women, the band doesn’t have a singer, but you’ll probably like them if you like Bell Witch or getting in car accidents.

• Pennsylvania “shoegaze/post-hardcore” band Superheaven releases its self-titled LP on Friday! “Cruel Times” is really cool, kind of like Stone Temple Pilots, a band that was never shoegaze, why are they saying they’re shoegaze? They’re not!

• Lastly this week I’d like to say that experimental indie/world music band Beirut’s new album is called Study Of Losses, and it includes the single “Guericke’s Unicorn,” a woozy and weird but very tolerable modern art-pop thing that sounds like Luke Temple trying to make circus music for cute dogs that like to swim. Just go listen to it, trust me. —Eric W. Saeger

Featured Image: Iron Lung, Adapting // Crawling (Iron Lung Records) & Mac Sabbath “Pair-a-Buns” (self-released)

Ingrid Laubrock, Purposing the Air (Pyroclastic Records)

Her fully caffeinated handlers describe Laubrock as an “experimental saxophonist and composer interested in exploring the borders between musical realms and creating multi-layered, dense and often evocative sound worlds.” In this album the composer pairs single instrumentalists with lone vocalists to futz with the poetry of African-American poet/essayist Erica Hunt, whom I’d imagine might be a little taken aback (or totally not) by this LP, which, at 60-odd short compositions, is a Whitman’s sampler of modern alienation, its half-written/half-improvised passages offering seemingly random bite-sized chunks of psychic turmoil. There are sing-song thingies about kites, general observations on everyday items and such (I lost track), fleshed out musically by an acidic, often noisily played cello for the first 16 pieces (undergirding Fay Victor in noise-scat mode) and a much tamer but equally animated piano, played by Matt Mitchell for the next set, over which our old buddy Sara Serpa unleashes her inner songbird (as in actual bird, seemingly). If you want unapologetically urban ambiance, this is one-stop shopping. B+ —Eric W. Saeger

Art Nation, The Ascendance (Frontiers Music s.r.l.)

Seems to me — mostly because I haven’t heard a lot of this kind of stuff — that melodic metal may be starting to move in an emo direction, that is unless this Swedish trio is startlingly original. Here we have the speed of Good Charlotte and the hormone-tugging angst of Trivium without the low end; I suppose the short version is Iron Maiden as its most highly evolved Pokemon character, if that makes any sense. The thing these guys do really well is bring the hooky, operatic melody without making it as indecipherable as those things can get; there’s almost no punk element to this tuneage but it’s quite powerfully done. And boy, the sound is pretty huge, which one wouldn’t expect from a trio, not that that can’t be explained by multi-tracking of course, but yeah, they shoot for the rafters. Past the obligato ballad (“Julia”) you’ll find songs like “Lightbringer,” which is like a cross between King Diamond and Pendulum, i.e. next-gen tech metal. High marks for sure. A+ —Eric W. Saeger

_PLAYLIST

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• Happy weekend, rock fans, it’s your weekly ray of musical sunshine and blind hope for humanity, back with another fresh Dumpster-load of albums from rock stars, nepo babies, comedy bands whose silly monkeyshines amuse unfunny people, and whatever else is in this list of new records coming out on April 11, don’t mind the stench, I hope you guys all brought clothespins for your noses! Jeezum crow, look at all these darned albums, durn burn it, this is gonna make a freakin’ mess! Since I probably should, I’ll launch the festivities by drinking five much-needed fingers of scotch and heading to the YouTube matrix to listen to something from Wisconsin-based soft-rocker Bon Iver’s (pronounced “BONE ee-VAIR” for you readers who couldn’t care less about mispronouncing his name and will continue to do so regardless, sticking to the New England-centric pronunciation “Bawn EYE-vah”) new album, SABLE fABLE, see what he did there, with those modern Latin alphabet letters [shocked face emoji]? No, I kid Bon Iver, his first record was done in total DIY fashion; he played a borrowed old Sears brand Silvertone guitar, which has become sort of a cult instrument among musicians, hilarious as that may seem. I don’t hate those things myself; my first guitar was a 12-string Silvertone, and its sound was pretty neat, so I won’t argue about it, but that doesn’t mean I approve of any Bon Iver music I’ve ever heard, because I don’t, but maybe this new record will change my mind about this crazily overrated dude, let’s go. So the album opens with “THINGS BEHIND THINGS BEHIND THINGS” (in which Mister Ivah continues his capitalization gimmick, which, to the average reader, is pretty rude, like getting yelled at on Facebook by someone who really, really wants you to LEAVE ELON MUSK ALONE). With all that capitalization stuff I assumed I’d be hearing a new Ivah-meister, maybe even packing a little aggro-metal attitude, but nope, it’s yet more sleepytime music for awkward millennials, just like during the Aughts, when Ivah-bro was relevant, when millennials hated music and music hated them back. I suppose the tune is nice if you ever wanted to hear Coldplay doing some unplugged twee-Americana hybridization, so if that interests you, by all means, go buy this album and stay away from me on my socials, that’d be great.

• Speaking of the Aughts, look who it is, guys, it’s OK Go, with a new album, And The Adjacent Possible! You rock fans all remember when this Chicago band filmed the most epic music video of all time for their yelly indie-pop song “This Too Shall Pass,” the one where they built a gigantic Rube Goldberg machine (you know, like the kids’ game Mousetrap, but a million times more elaborate) in a warehouse and it was awesome, right? Well, times change, so the video for the new single “A Stone Only Rolls Downhill” is a wickedly elaborate shoot that involved 64 smartphones; the tune is kind of like something you’d hear if Maroon 5 were kinda funky. They’ll be at the Royale in Boston on May 30.

• Ecstasy-gobbling Norwegian soundsystem Röyksopp releases True Electric on Friday; it looks like a bunch of re-rubs of their more explosive techno tunes. Fever Ray guests on a version of “What Else Is There” that’s basically a repeat of the Trentemöller remix you may have heard on the HBO show Entourage back when our planet was still managed by dinosaurs and giant dragonflies.

• Lastly it’s the posthumous album from Flaming Lips fixture Nell Smith, Anxious. The title track is a pretty little twee-ish mid-tempo thing; the only thing wrong with it is the occasional tremolo effect on her voice (probably Wayne Coyne’s dumb idea). —Eric W. Saeger

Featured Image: Ingrid Laubrock, Purposing the Air (Pyroclastic Records) & Art Nation, The Ascendance (Frontiers Music s.r.l.)

Michael Rudd, Going to the Mountain (Invisible Road Records)

Although one would naturally assume that Bob Dylan viewed Townes Van Zandt as a competitor, the two were quite respectful of each other; like the Stones and The Beatles, one couldn’t exist without the other. Thus we could wax hyperbolic and say that there are only two types of roots-folk fans in the world, and this K-8 school principal, an Albuquerque resident who left New Jersey to concentrate on writing, lumps into the “darker please” category, preferring muddy examinations of slovenly desperation to Dylan’s more laissez-faire, metaphor-stuffed acquiescence. Rudd’s second album begins with “Before The Demon Came,” and immediately comparisons to Eels and Tom Waits spring to mind, along with the usual suspects, T. Bone Burnett and such. In that, the tuneage is more appropriate for an American civilization that’s creaking awkwardly around on its last legs; sung in a baritone that’s both weary and indestructible, Rudd weaves a tapestry comprising dream fugues (“Going To The Mountain”), quiet soul-searching (“End Of Days”) and spidery unplugged honky-tonk (“Walk My Way”). Boy, would I like to hear local folkies lean into this approach. A+ — Eric W. Saeger

Carriers, Every Time I Feel Afraid (self-released)

This band’s leader/frontperson is Curt Kiser, formerly of indie rockers Pomegranates; in this project his focus is fixed in the direction of War On Drugs (for reference, old people should think David Essex fronting Pink Floyd). There’s a similar airy quality to these songs, and in fact Kiser’s infatuation with WOD is a little off-putting: The title track is a little too close to WOD’s “Suffering” for my comfort, not that that should necessarily dissuade you from checking this out, and besides, a little melodic helium does fit our zeitgeist a lot better than that of Bon Iver and such, especially given that the Aughts-indie period has finally been consigned to the recycle-bin of history where it belonged on Day 1. What am I even saying, you ask? I mean that it’s melodically pure if derivative in spots; where WOD’s “Under The Pressure” is more Joy Division-ish, Kiser selects A-ha’s “Take On Me” as his spirit animal for the push track, “Motion.” Hey, either way, at least I don’t have to stomach more Sigur Ros verisimilitude, put it that way, which is always a good thing. B — Eric W. Saeger

_PLAYLIST

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• Hooray, the most pointless month of the calendar is over, good old March, goodbye forever, hasta la vista, arrivadertch, but oh goodie, here comes March’s annoying little brother, April, the month when we all hit Target at 7 a.m. the morning after Easter just to stock up on Reese’s peanut butter eggs at 50 percent off, what else are you supposed to do in April other than start a really inadvisable romantic relationship now that the alcoholic bars are serving their gourmet cheeseburgers outside, when there isn’t a “freak” (in other words normal for April) snowstorm? Well, OK, there’s always that other thing you can do, go to Strawberries or Rockit Records or Bradlees or K-Mart or Amazon to buy bad albums, but you can do that every week, when Friday strikes, with its Easter basket-load of new albums! Just look at this one, streeting this Friday, April 4, a collaborative album between Elton John and Brandi Carlile, titled Who Believes in Angels! Now hopefully, Elton, who recently celebrated his 3,000th birthday at his vampire pyramid-castle, had some vague idea of who Brandi Carlile is when he was doing these recordings and didn’t think she was actually Lorde or Madonna or Brenda Lee, who can even keep up with all this nonsense, you know? In case you’re also a mega-old vampire who doesn’t know who she is: Carlile’s a famous folk-rocker who wrote a bunch of tunes for Tanya Tucker, so maybe Elton’s handlers told him she was actually Alison Krauss (of frequent Robert Plant-collaboration fame) to get him on board, but either way, I’m sure the circumstances of their collaboration are bizarre indeed, but belay all that, folks, let’s go listen to the title track of this collaborative collaboration between the 3,000-year-old mummy-vampire and Carlile, whom some of us professional rock journalists refer to as “No, Not Bonnie Raitt, The Newer One.” Yikes, you should see the video for this song, they’re trying to revive Elton’s most famous antics, the stage set in the video revolves around his Captain Fantastic-era optics, you know, when he was into high nonsense-art a la Hieronymus Bosch (but nice!), and then we move to the song, which is in the same vein as “Candle in the Wind,” Elton’s famous ode to Princess Diana. What am I saying? Well, basically I’m saying that there was no need for this mutually collaborative collaboration-a-thon to ever happen, but I’m sure there are some 80-year-old National Enquirer readers who’ll love it, and Elton looks really good for someone who’s been preserved in a Dracula coffin with ancient tanna leaves since Carter was president.

• DOGGOD also comes out on Friday; it’s the third album from L.A. Witch, an all-girl garage band that launched when the singer’s boyfriend forbade her from playing with male musicians, and instead of dumping him on the spot she decided to go with it, because boyfriends don’t just grow on trees, you know. “The Lines” is a cool ’80s-goth-dance thingie, evincing the band’s love for The Gun Club (and by extension X-Ray Spex, but don’t tell them that). It’s fine, sure.

• And yadda yadda, here’s another one, The Ophelias, with their new LP, Spring Grove! Oh, it’s not the California psychedelic band, it’s the Ohio indie band, what are we even doing right now? The single, “Salome,” is a grungy filthy indie-grinding mess with a really catchy groove, I approve of these people, whoever they are.
• We’ll put this week to bed with New York noise-poppers Sleigh Bells, who are selling a new album, Bunky Becky Birthday Boy! The single, “Bunky Pop,” is like a Nintendo-ized ripoff of Outkast’s “Hey Ya,” and yes, it’s as artistically important as it looks. — Eric W. Saeger

Idle Heirs, Life Is Violence (Relapse Records)

Relapse continues to be one of the two or three (tops) metal-focused record labels I actually appreciate getting new stuff from, and the debut LP from this Kansas City crew is yet another spine-crunching assault, if you’ll pardon the metal-centric hyperbole. The “RIYL” (“Recommended If You Like”) list, so they told me, includes Deftones, Mogwai and Cult of Luna (in all honesty I was pleased that anyone knew Cult Of Luna even existed) and that’s right on target. I’d also add Isis as a more-or-less-soundalike, not that this record is as, I don’t know, polite as those guys; what I refer to is the raw intensity. We start with “Loose Tooth,” which lifts off with one of those balladic-acoustic patterns, with Coalesce singer Sean Ingram floating in mellow mode for a bit, and then the thing just explodes as Ingram lets out a Crowbar-worthy yowl that seems to go on forever (it sort of made me chuckle insanely, thinking about the last time a tooth was bothering the heck out of me). Anyway, it’s all overhead-speaker ambiance for Hell, as promised, not for the squeamish. A+

Roi Turbo, Bazooka [EP] (Maison Arts)

Fun act here, comprising two brothers named McCarthy, who grew up in Cape Town, South Africa, with music-loving parents and abandoned their drum lessons for autodidactic strategies (Conor played along to Bloc Party records; Ben learned via YouTube). I liked ’em already just based on that, but what’s even more hilarious and exhilarating is the underlying gay-disco-but-not-quite-gay-disco vibe of “Super Hands” on this five-songer. It’s pretty relentless, really, semi-seriously dabbling with Afrobeat and subsonic Aughts-era house cavitation; it made me think of YouTube’s Hulett Brothers, you know, the guys who do the trick shots with ping-pong balls and whatnot. These are party jams for sure, mildly gritty, slightly Ed Banger-ish instrumentals guaranteed to get heads a-bobbin’, for example “Dystopia,” with its faux-yacht-techno steez, which is punctuated with monkey sounds and ’70s-pop sweetness. They’ll be (very appropriately) supporting Empire Of The Sun at The Music Hall in Boston on May 24. A+

PLAYLIST

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• And lo, unto the masses the lord (or someone pretending to be Him) commanded from his brunch table, “Let there be new albums dumped unto those peeps on March 28,” and thus it will be, this Friday, because I have no say in the matter! Yes, it’s another new release Friday, as we await “second winter” after a bunch of 60-degree days, but I’m ready for it! Why, you ask? Because I stored a turkey in our freezer in January, back when Market Basket was charging negative ten cents a pound for them or whatnot, so when this year’s Second Winter’s cruel frost sets in, I am going to be eating Second Thanksgiving Dinner, in my house, and then an entire blueberry pie, and then Petunia and I are going to go Christmas caroling in our neighborhood, dressed like Grinches, for the amusement of all the little children! Important note, I saved last year’s Detroit Lions’ Thanksgiving Day game on DVR, so I could watch it on Second Thanksgiving, so please don’t message me to tell me what the final score was, that’d be great, I just want to enjoy Second Winter in style, snoring on the couch! But where were we, oh yes, albums, and look at this, guys, the first thing to hit my radar is none other than Based On A True Story, the first album in 20 years from insane slapping person Will Smith! Wow, so that explains why he keeps coming up in “my socials” and by extension why my Twitter is full of slapping jokes! I was like, “Why is everyone suddenly making fun of the stupidest moment in the history of awards ceremonies, isn’t that old news,” but this explains it: The guy actually thinks we forgot about that incident with Chris Rock, my third favorite comedian after Doug Stanhope and Elon Musk! Well I’ll tell you, I haven’t forgotten, but I suppose there’s always the possibility that his new duet with Big Sean, “Beautiful Scars feat. OBanga,” will be so awesome and underground-hip-hoppy that I’ll be like, “Maybe Chris Rock actually deserved it for all his rotten ‘literally being a funny person’ antics, can’t we just pretend it’s 1990 again?” Nah, it’s awful; as you know, Big Sean peaked with Detroit 2, this is just corporate-hip-hop nonsense, with Auto-Tune, because of course there’s Auto-Tune. Some online person just said something about “Will should do a diss track of Jada Pinkett Smith and have Chris Rock spit some lines.” Ha ha, wouldn’t that be funny, OK, let’s move on from this horror, I’d love that.

• Mumford & Sons, they’re still relevant, aren’t they, or are we already past believing any good music came out in the 2010s? Well, doesn’t matter, the Mumfords’ new album, Rushmere, is getting uploaded to your Spotifys as we speak, and it will include the title track, which is another one of those urgent-sounding galloping-horsie indie-meets-bluegrass tunes those guys specialize in, so yes, it’s cool, if hilariously redundant. You know, they really need to make up their minds about what to do next while they figure out which Vegas theater will give them a residency after their inevitable Grand Ole Opry phase (ack, did that sound cynical, I can never tell).

• Speaking of horsies, there’s pop-metal band The Darkness again, with a new album, called Dreams On Toast, featuring their horsie-voice singer, Whatsisname! The new tune, “I Hate Myself,” sounds like 1970s-era Sweet but super-boring, has anyone ever actually cared about this band, like really seriously, pinkie swear?
• In closing this column, I’d like to say that Deafheaven is still around, as they have a new album coming out momentarily, Lonely People With Power! “Heathen” starts off sounding like Sigur Ros, and then they do their usual black-metal nonsense. I don’t actually hate it, make of that what you will.

Diane Coll, I Am Fire (Happy Fish Records)

Musically, Coll, a professional couples therapist from Atlanta, Georgia, is a true DIY warrior, having released three full-length albums since 2022 along with several EPs and singles, the latter of which this is, a three-songer released in honor of International Women’s Day (March 8). Coll’s muse for these songs is the goddess Kali, “destroyer of ignorance and liberator of the ego; a benevolent and unapologetic warrior who takes on the torment caused by those who operate from their own ignorance and the need to dominate others.” Sounds like my gender for sure, yes, and if you want to know (or don’t, it’s all good), I’m considering wrapping up my trilogy of internet-culture-focused nonfiction books with one about how women are subliminally oppressed on social media. Anyhow, to the music, tally-ho: In short, I’m very impressed. “Starting a Fire” is a brilliant deep-house-rooted exercise, its beat consisting of AM radio patter and a synth that becomes more menacing by the moment while Coll incants various warnings and calls for “accelerated action,” which was the theme of this year’s IWD observance. “Timeline Shift” is yoga-class soundtracking, reminiscent of Anugama, if you have any idea who that is; “Je Suis Feu” ends the set with a polyrhythmic tribal dance-along that’s both hypnotic and, well, catchy. Very nicely done, great-sounding stuff. A+

Luke Marzec, Something Out of Nothing, Side A (Swift Half Records)

Technically, this odd bird submits this as the “first half of his debut album,” which might play in Poughkeepsie but not with me; nevertheless I’ll play along and not tell you it’s an EP; let’s just proceed. Marzec’s a multi-instrumentalist Londoner who led a bunch of classical and jazz bands during his high school days, nowadays he’s a reformed music-academic who put out several other EPs prior to this release. He’s a terminally hip white kid whose gravelly singing voice evokes Satchmo and Little Richard, which screams “cultural appropriation” if you’re nasty, but you’d better be dissing Jamie Lidell too if you’re going to do that, not that this is the proper place to get into that. So what we have here is a jambalaya consisting of funk (“I Can’t Get You Out Of My Mind” is pure James Brown-ness), deep soul and random jazz phrasings that sound antiquated in all the right ways. Given that he’s racked up well over a million Spotify listens (and really knows what he’s doing) he’s certainly one to watch. A

_PLAYLIST

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• Our country’s next “New CD Release Friday” is March 21, isn’t that the wackiest thing you’ve heard all week? We’ll get into it, but before I forget, everyone’s favorite local historian Fritz Wetherbee officially retired from his New Hampshire Chronicle post at WMUR TV, and so I am once again asking you, my loyal readers, to demand that the station hire me as his replacement and keep the tradition going! Hassle them on Facebook and MySpace or whatever, that’d be great!

But rather than delve into that any longer than my editors would want me to, it’s probably best to chat about the fact that Selena Gomez and Benny Blanco are releasing an album this Friday called I Said I Love You First! Those two are married, in case you didn’t know, and between Selena’s $1.3 billion fortune and Benny’s measly $50 million emergency fund, it’s safe to say that they’re able to afford to eat eggs every Sunday, in case you were worried about them. Where does this all lead us, fam? Well, where else: directly into the bizarre alternate universe of Bieberland. You see, Justin Bieber used to go steady with Selena, and they broke up (probably because he is insane) and last month the Biebs unfollowed former collaborator Blanco on Instagram, but not because he was envious of Blanco’s dating his ex, or so Bieber nation claims. That leaves only other two possibilities: Either he was hacked (in January he claimed he got hacked and the hacker unfollowed Biebs’s wife, Hailey) or Biebs is insane. You see, he (or the hacker) also unfollowed a bunch of other vacuous pop-culture celebrities, including Drake (who hasn’t?) and The Weeknd. Whatever, the title track from those two lovey-doveys’ new album is a chilled-down reggaeton thingamajig, featuring Selena singing like Lady Gaga like always. It’s cool, if anyone actually cares about this!

• You guys all know that English band The Horrors tabled the most disappointing sophomore album in rock history, but they’re back! Night Life, the band’s new LP, features the single “More Than Life,” a decidedly Depeche Mode-sounding thing. It’s very kyewl. They’re back!

• Louisville, Kentucky’s My Morning Jacket is also back, with Is, their new album! The single, “Time Waited,” sounds like Spandau Ballet trying to be Lynyrd Skynyrd, and if you have no idea what that might sound like, count your blessings.

• Aaand lastly it’s dream-poppers Japanese Breakfast with their new LP, For Melancholy Brunettes (& Sad Women)! The single, “Mega Circuit,” is really mellow for a dreampop tune, kind of like Lana Del Rey meets Wilson Phillips. They’ll be at The Music Hall in Boston on May 7.

Featured Photo: Diane Coll album I Am Fire and Luke Marzec album Something Out of Nothing, Side A.