Author: Eric Saeger

E-Garbage, LLM (Dee Dee’s Picks Records)

Swiss artist & engineer Eric Nardini is more commonly known in techno circles under the pseudonym E-Garbage, which points to his penchant for the raw techno that he creates through the use of trash electronics, random objects, modular synthesis, and “the DIY ethos of the punk scene in Geneva” such as it is. The “recommended if you like” list includes Drexciya, Unit Moebius, Legowelt and Terrence Dixon, not that there’ll be a quiz later, but what it means is that you’ll encounter the usual periods of self-indulgent noise, much of it basically white, that you’re expected to relate to, and some IDM DJ stuff that’s rather pleasant, albeit not groundbreaking (as found in the track “Glitched Token E,” an unfocused joint that also fronts some pretty-much-breakbeats, a style I thought I’d never hear again, not that I mind it). “Stochastic Parrot E” is mildly industrial krautrock that at least sticks to its subject for a while. B — Eric W. Saeger

Best Ex, With A Smile (Iodine Recordings)

For being a married person, this quirk-pop indie lady sure sings about how much men suck, not that we don’t know that we do; with this she takes up post-riot-grrrl gauntlets against a lot of things, like inattentive boyfriends and the dudes who run the music business (I can’t imagine anyone being surprised to learn that those guys suck even worse than the average Joe). The overall sound here is Taylor Swift on a low-ish budget, but there are some arena-stomping Imagine Dragons-style moments if you stick around for the middle of the single “Tell Your Friends,” a tune about a breakup that’s led to zen moments in a car with the window open and blah blah blah, in other words no real lessons come of it, just B-grade disaffection. “I Promise To Ruin Your Life” lifts the basic recipe from Ingrid Michaelson’s “Be OK” and doubles down on the teen-pop attitude, not that I’m saying no one should do that. It’s catchy. A- — Eric W. Saeger

Playlist

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• Jane, stop this crazy thing, the next general-CD-release Friday can’t be Nov. 3, it just can’t! Great, that means it’s Thanksgiving in a few minutes, so now I have to figure out which family members and friends are still classified as “the non-crazy people” by my preferred crazy family members so I can invite them to Thanksgiving, that’s if I can even find creamed onions for a Thanksgiving side dish, does anyone even know if they stopped making those forever or what? But I’m getting ahead of myself, I need to just face one nightmare at a time, so I’ll put aside Thanksgiving for now and try to see if there’s anything in this pile of new album releases that won’t get my stomach roiling and lurching and dancing the macarena! Hm, here we go, we’ll start with The Struts, an English glam-rock band that’s from Derby, in Derbyshire, U.K., a “township” located due west of East Derby in East Derbyshire, U.K., if I know my British geography, which I don’t at all. I’m sure I’ll be fine with this band’s rock ’n’ roll, because glam rock is what everyone should be listening to now, and literally nothing else; after all, Slade was/is/whatever the greatest U.K. glam band in history, so maybe these guys just sort of absorbed some of Slade’s greatness just by being from the only island in the west where the owners of the place unironically wear crowns. Pretty Vicious is whatstheirface’s new album, and it features the title track, which was made by taking the interesting parts of Chris Isaak’s “Wicked Game,” throwing them in a randomizer and coating it in British glam that isn’t even close to being as interesting as Slade’s worst song. Other than that, I am genuinely excited about this album release.

• Ack, everybody duck, here it comes, right on too-soon-time, the flood of posthumous releases from Jimmy Buffett, the first of which is Equal Strain On All Parts! Look at you, getting ready to be mad at me for saying something mean, but surprise, I will honor Mister Cheeseburger’s memory by listening closely to whatever song his agent found in 1/2-inch tape reel form in Jimmy’s trash can, whatever tune the record company’s Men In Black will front as the single from this — wait, no, I’m told this is an actual, official album, one that was completed only two months ago, no rush, amirite? Anyhow, the single, “Bubble Up,” is a basic country-pop chillout that most listeners will think is a Willie Nelson song until the accordion comes in, which, point of order, doesn’t make it an actual zydeco song, but of course whichever “music journalist” hack reviews it for Nylon or Buzzfeed or whatnot will say it’s a zydeco song. I cannot do anything about that inevitable nonsense, but yes, I would if I could.

• Irish musician Hilary Woods is a solo artist, previously the bass player of the vastly underrated jangle-grunge band JJ72, which dissolved in 2006 just to get on my nerves. Woods’ current trip is “nocturnal keyboard-based songs” largely inspired by “filmmakers, electronic artists, experimental noise, and folk music traditions.” In other words she’s kind of weird, as exemplified by her forthcoming new album Acts Of Light. This set of songs is based on “a fugue comprised of nine slow hypnotic dirges,” in other words it’s probably kind of weird, but let me go visit the YouTube machine and find out for sure. Ugh, yes, the tire-kicker single “Where The Bough Has Broken” is definitely weird, a miserable, morose ambient exercise that drags on forever, but don’t let that stop you.

• We’ll close with Little Bit Of Sun, the new full-length from Minnesota post-grunge trio Semisonic! I don’t mind the title track at all; it sounds like what would happen if Amos Lee tried to sound like Coldplay and Tom Petty at the same time. Good stuff. —Eric W. Saeger

Featured photo: E-Garbage, LLM (Dee Dee’s Picks Records) and Best Ex, With A Smile (Iodine Recordings)

Hugo’s Voyage, Inception (Frontiers Music)

No matter how popular they become, bands that start out as cover bands — i.e., bands that play other bands’ music — are, in general, at a hopeless disadvantage when they decide to make their own music. This is a tribute band whose specialty is playing nothing but Journey songs, which is as good an excuse as any to remind readers that I was going to be the Dave in the local Van Halen tribute band Diver Down, but the guitarist wanted me to stop sounding like Album Quality Dave and just be Lousy Live Version Dave, so it never happened. Matter of fact, if anyone knows whatever happened to New Hampshire’s favorite Pat Benatar tribute singer, Gail Savage, I’d be really curious to know about it; I asked around but apparently no one knows. Anyhow, if you like Journey, this album sounds exactly like the current version of that band, which, ironically replaced their original singer with a dude whom the band saw doing Journey covers on YouTube. Funny how things work out, isn’t it? No new ground broken at all here, of course, but the songs are, you know, just fine. A-

Rick Bogart, What A Wonderful World (Arabesque Records)

Glad to have been made aware of this February release just now; it’s up for a Grammy, not that I have any say in such things. It’s timely, regardless; no holiday albums have shown up in my mailbox this year as of yet, but this one would definitely work if you’re just trying to get in a holly-jolly mood. If you never would have guessed, this is a collection of Louis Armstrong classics led by rendered through a light, tinkly, Champagne-tinted lens, with a dual-edged nod toward modern New York City club-jazz and mid-sized New Orleans combos, although the former wins out by a mile in my view; it’d be well-placed backgrounding a wedding reception, holiday party or whatever. All the great tunes are here, from “Hello Dolly” to the title track to “A Kiss To Build A Dream On”; if you’ve ever owned a disk of Satchmo tunes, this will all be familiar territory. “Way Down Yonder In New Orleans” is a new one on me, not that I’m an Armstrong expert; I’m used to the Al Jolson version but this does the trick nicely (if politely) enough.

Playlist

• Yay, the next crop of rock ‘n’ roll CDs comes out on Oct. 27, which is this year’s opening day for Halloween! As everyone knows, Halloween is the real start to the holiday season, which is backward, because Halloween should come after New Year’s Day, the worst of all the holidays unless you have someone brand new and special to watch the ball drop with. For everyone else, New Year’s is the most miserable time of the year, with all its pointlessness and beginner-level beer-chugging, so the best way to walk off the whole experience would be if Halloween came afterward, so that there’d be Dracula movies and snack-sized Reese’s Cups and skeletons around to help us forget the real-life horrors of the previous year! But no, Halloween is here, and there will be albums, I haven’t even checked the list yet, I’ll bet there’s a Christmas album in there from someone like Skee-Lo or Coldplay or someone else whose career is way past its sell-by date, let’s go have a look! Hm, nope, no holiday collections, but there it is, bazinga, a new album from everyone’s favorite acid-dropping Australians, King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, called The Silver Cord! It is psychedelic and trippy like always, what else were you expecting?

• Let’s see here, OK, History Books is the sixth studio album from New Jersey rockers The Gaslight Anthem, whose recent reformation after a seven-year hiatus only happened because one of the members was cajoled into it by none other than Bruce Springsteen, who, as it happens, guests on the video for the album’s title track. What this tells us is that Bruuuce is the gatekeeper to the entire New Jersey rock scene, but let’s leave it all be, because the song isn’t bad at all. It’s a loping affair that combines Goo Goo Dolls and Amos Lee; it’s OK if you like good songs, which many people don’t these days, of course.

• So, 1989 (Taylor’s Version) is the newest album from registered 4channer Taylor Swift, and her second this year. It’s simply a re-recording of her 2014 album, which she can get away with because only jerks really hate her, because jelly much? Luckily my attitude toward that corporate-manufactured diva is similar to the one Tommy Lee Jones exhibited in The Fugitive when Harrison Ford had him trapped in the sewer and was trying to convince him he didn’t commit any crimes, like, when some internet person tries to tell me that Taylor Swift will save democracy or bring balance to the universe or whatnot, I just hold my hands up in surrender and say, “I don’t care.” But that’s not to say that she’s a bad artist or doesn’t have great taste in future ex-boyfriends; if you have a 9-year-old daughter you’ll simply have to go buy this new CD of needlessly re-rubbed songs and play it in the car until you’re driven to rendering it useless by scratching the disk with your car key and telling your Precious Princess that your Amex is maxed out and you can’t afford another copy. Just trying to help.

• We’ll end with indie darlings The Mountain Goats, because even I have to admit they’re awesome, so I’m going to go out on a limb and assume that their new LP, Jenny from Thebes, will contain a song that I can stomach! Fans of this alt-rock outfit know that the original lineup consisted of only one person, frontman John Darnielle, until he started hiring all sorts of people to contribute to his albums, playing banjos and cellos and violins, and now Mountain Goats is sort of settled on a quartet setup. This record is said to be a rock opera, so I am already nervous that it will suck, but I shall nevertheless go see what the deal is with the new single, “Clean Slate.” Right, right, it’s Ben Folds-ish, poppy, danceable, the coda sounds like a cross between Springsteen and Calexico.

If you’re in a local band, now’s a great time to let me know about your EP, your single, whatever’s on your mind. Let me know how you’re holding yourself together without being able to play shows or jam with your homies. Send a recipe for keema matar. Message me on Twitter (@esaeger) or Facebook (eric.saeger.9).

Charlene Darling, La Porte (Disciples Records)

It’s been a while since the last time I was presented with an album from a quirk-pop Kate Bush wannabe, and here it is, and thankfully not drowning in desperado-romantic angst. But at least this Parisian-born, Brussels-based underground fixture sings off-key a lot, I’ll give it that! No, seriously, folks, if you like Air, Figurine and all that stuff, you’ll probably find a lot to like here, even if I can barely stand it. The key to making music like this is to spend a lot of time in your apartment playing at being existentially lost, as the video for “Tour s’efface” demonstrates; I saw something in the press release about a guy running tape loops for this lady’s group but didn’t hear anything notable in that regard, which is par for the course here. Despite all my disdain for this thing, Iggy Pop, of all people, liked it enough to play it on his BBC radio show. Urban sluggery and first world problems ahoy! C- —Eric W. Saeger

Iogi, We Can Be Friends (Raw Tapes Records)

It’s been a while since the last time I was presented with an album from a quirk-pop Kate Bush wannabe, and here it is, and thankfully not drowning in desperado-romantic angst. But at least this Parisian-born, Brussels-based underground fixture sings off-key a lot, I’ll give it that! No, seriously, folks, if you like Air, Figurine and all that stuff, you’ll probably find a lot to like here, even if I can barely stand it. The key to making music like this is to spend a lot of time in your apartment playing at being existentially lost, as the video for “Tour s’efface” demonstrates; I saw something in the press release about a guy running tape loops for this lady’s group but didn’t hear anything notable in that regard, which is par for the course here. Despite all my disdain for this thing, Iggy Pop, of all people, liked it enough to play it on his BBC radio show. Urban sluggery and first world problems ahoy! C- —Eric W. Saeger

Playlist

• Oct. 20 is our next new-CD-release Friday, and, much as I don’t want to, yes, I will be normal today and speak first about the only album that matters to Billboard magazine and the mainstream audience it hypnotizes, The Rolling Stones’ new one, Hackney Diamonds! OK, I mentioned it, may I be excused now? Right, I guess not. Let’s just say that I never cared about the Stones and never will; the only songs I used to like were “The Last Time” and one other, I forget, but it doesn’t matter, if I want to hear Stones songs all I have to do is go to Dollar Tree and wait around a few minutes, basking in the despair of that end-stage-capitalist vibe you can only get at a dollar store. Personally I’d much rather hang around at Discount Madness in Pelham because they play 1950s songs all day, and it’s fun to hear the retirees walking around casually whistling along to tunes about jalopies and sock hops, songs that really marked the end of rock ’n’ roll’s usefulness. I mean, after that, pop rock was just about hair and “trousers” and really nothing else; the Stones were basically Black Sabbath to Led Zeppelin’s more pliable Beatles, and both ’60s bands had super-boring drummers. That’s all I have on all this tediousness for the moment, so, as far as the new album, the single, “Angry,” has a video that features this generation’s Marilyn Monroe, Sydney Sweeney belly dancing to the song, which has some good AC/DC energy but is still mindlessly Stones-ish. I don’t hate it, no, now may I please go?
• The Streets is one of the stage names under which British alternative hip-hop/garage dude Mike Skinner releases records. His forthcoming new LP, The Darker The Shadow The Brighter The Light, features the single “We All Need An Enemy,” a Cockney-accent-drawled chill-trap number that’s actually quite listenable; in it, Skinner waxes apathetic about people finding love in hate groups and other necessary evils. I was impressed.
• Bombay Bicycle Club is an English indie-rock trio named after a now-defunct chain of Indian restaurants in North London! In 2009 they released their first album, I Had The Blues But I Shook Them Loose, a fairly thrashy affair that was all about post-punk, and the hilariously loquacious wonk at Pitchfork Media found stuff in it to complain about, and then they went low-key folk in 2010 with their Flaws LP, which was silly of them to do, then they tried stadium-indie on for size in 2014 with the album So Long See You Tomorrow, which was electronic pop, and that takes us to now, with their newest, My Big Day. I hate to take just one song to talk about when discussing the latest album from a band that’s never really even known what kind of band it’s supposed to be, especially given that it’s my understanding that this album is a genre-mishmash according to my fellow music-journalist hacks, but I’ll go out on a limb and give a listen to the title track, because I am a daredevil, don’t try this at home, folks!
  Right, so it’s a quirky whisper-electro joint powered by a fake electric piano sample that really accomplishes nothing, but that’s the charm of that kind of thing, isn’t it?
• We’ll wrap things up for the week with Blink-182, which is one of those emo-rock/power-pop bands whose success baffles most people over 45; at the moment their main selling point is that their drummer is Mrs. Kourtney Kardashian, which is sure to change after her next mimosa vacation in the Maldives, but that’s OK! One More Time is the band’s new full-length, the title track from which is a strummy nerd-pop ballad. It sounds like Lit trying to be Simon & Garfunkel, all set with this. —Eric W. Saeger

If you’re in a local band, now’s a great time to let me know about your EP, your single, whatever’s on your mind. Let me know how you’re holding yourself together without being able to play shows or jam with your homies. Send a recipe for keema matar. Message me on Twitter (@esaeger) or Facebook (eric.saeger.9).

Diamond Dogs, About the Hardest Nut to Crack (Wild Kingdom Records)

I don’t get too many rootsy honky-tonk-punk records in here, but point of order, they’re always welcome. Formed way back in 1991, this Swedish rock group attempts to revive the soul of borderline Stiv Bators/New York Dolls-style pre-punk, not the least melodic thing you’ve ever heard, but certainly awash in attitude. “Blight The Life” is all that and more in the form of purebred bluegrass punkabilly, and by that I mean of the purest original Hank Williams Sr. sort, the type of mayhemic cowpunch-rock that evokes an odd combination of barns and chickens and imminent danger from carelessly flung slam-dancers; similarly, “Wring It Out” is a hilariously anachronistic cross between the Stones and Black Crowes, which isn’t to imply that there’s anything wrong with it. If you need a legitimacy check, the band’s OG posturing earned them a brief moment of fame on MTV’s Headbanger’s Ball in 1993 when one of their tunes somehow snuck into the show. A

The Nervous Eaters, “Kelly’s Sixteen” (Wicked Cool Records)

I didn’t hate this band all that much back when I was even younger than you are today, when idiotic soul-sucking working-class assembly-line jobs were depressingly plentiful (you unemployed kids living in your moms’ basements really need to count your blessings) and WBCN was the Boston radio station to listen to if you wanted people to think you were cool. This local-to-Boston band was a one-hit local-radio wonder (unless I’m missing something) whose big single, “Loretta,” was produced by Ric Ocasek of The Cars in the early ’80s; the tune was, like most Boston rock was in that halcyon era, ’50s-tinged, mildly punkish and sublimely tuneless, but there were a lot worse bands to “experience” at the Rathskellar and whatnot, and so the Eaters made their mark, not that anything ever came of it. And so, yadda yadda, here’s a new single by them, a corporate-punk-speed snoozer that sounds somewhat Gang Of Four-ish and Buzzcocks-ish at first, and then, right when you think a giant-ass hook-fadeout is coming, it just flops and expires. Nothing changes, folks, remember that. C

Playlist

• Yay, Oct. 13 is a Friday the Thirteenth, I’m sure all the new albums coming out that day will jibe with the occasion in a manner most apropos! But first things first, fam, wait till I tell you about my visit to Manchvegas’ new rock club, Angel City Music Hall, the other week! It takes a lot to get me out of my trash-pile, um, I mean my ultra-modern, totally organized office, but when my PR friends the Brenners in New York City told me that Crowbar was coming to play their crazy sludge-metal tuneage right here in da city, I was like “I’m your huckleberry!” So I contacted a couple of bros to go see them, like our local rock ’n’ roll mastermind Otto Kinzel of Dust Prophet and friend of the Hippo Dan Szczesny, but they made up excuses, so I went by myself. The band was deafeningly loud, which was nice, and the lady who runs the place calls people “Hon,” which is also nice.
• OK, I don’t know if you people remember that techno soundsystem called Justice, and how they named one of their albums “†” (you know, like, “cross”) just to be a pain to everyone who had to write an article about them and hunt down that particular ASCII character. If you do, you also remember that they tried to make the super-noisy Ed Banger sound happen, which it did for little while, but — oh for pete’s sake, I’m going totally off-track, whatever, there’s a band that started up around the same time as “†”, called †††, a darkwave/dream-pop/witch-house project often referred to as Crosses by journos who hate hunting for ASCII characters, and guess who’s in it, that’s right, it’s Deftones singer Chino Moreno and his buddy Shaun Lopez, from the band Far! I’m sure you’ve heard about them if you’re a ‘Tones-head, amirite, but this is news to me, so in order to catch up to all you hippies I’m going to go listen to a single from their new album, Goodnight, God Bless, I Love U, Delete, called “Invisible Hand.” So it starts off with some sort of glitchy-ish techno beat, and then the Deftones guy suddenly starts jumping up and down all hip-hop style, yelling and ranting about something, and then there’s a barrage of angry Death Grips-inspired haunted-house-metal. I don’t really hear anything compelling going on here, but feel free to pretend to find something redeemable about it.
• Oh no, come on, not another Canadian indie band, I’m really not in the mood! OK, it’s Metric, so there’s an outside chance that this might be salvageable, even though the singer is involved with Broken Social Scene, I don’t really know right now. The band’s new album, Formentera II, features the single “Who Would You Be For Me,” a sort of ’90s cowboy-goth-tinged chill-pop jam that’s not unlistenable, it’s OK.
• We’ll wrap up the week with Australian/South African singing man Troye Sivan, who portrayed young Wolverine in X-Men Origins: Wolverine. OK, so Something To Give Each Other, his new full-length, includes the single “Rush,” a house-chilldown whose video features Sivan smoking weed out of a banana and singing gently through his Auto-Tune. Yay, Auto-Tune, what would we do with it!

If you’re in a local band, now’s a great time to let me know about your EP, your single, whatever’s on your mind. Let me know how you’re holding yourself together without being able to play shows or jam with your homies. Send a recipe for keema matar. Message me on Twitter (@esaeger) or Facebook (eric.saeger.9).

Wolves in the Throne Room, Crypt of Ancestral Knowledge (Relapse Records)

I remember this Olympia, WA trio from way back; the name impressed me but the music — a mixture of various disparate Bathory/Boris/Neurosis thingamajigs microwaved to extreme-metal-ish perfection for the benefit of beginner indie-metal stans — didn’t. 20 years on, this is more of the same, music that’d be perfect for gore-horror-movie man-to-ghoul transformation sequences, you know, waves of raucous, tortured monster-yelling buoyed by (place name of earl-Aughts-era Epitaph Records band here) guitar spazzing and such and so, nothing you haven’t heard before but (more or less) epic toward a bargain-bin fashion, intended to impress the easily impressed. I’ve never liked this kind of stuff, but if demon-caterwauling, pre-Sunn(((O))) noise-thrash and etc is your bag, don’t let me stop you, not that I ever have, to my eternal chagrin. By the way, “Initiates of the White Hart” starts off with a mandolin, not that that explains anything, and “Crown of Stone” is like Enya on downers. A —Eric W. Saeger

Elm Street, The Great Tribulation (Massacre Records)

Well, what a nice surprise this is. Seems like 90 percent of the jazz albums I’ve been getting for review lately have been breezy dark-coffee-house exercises (luckily there’s been a lull in singer-oriented Big Book projects; not that I don’t like hearing the 4,749th interpretation of “Nature Boy,” there’s just no need for it in current_year), but this one, the debut EP from the Manhattan School Of Music pianist, is deeply ritzy ambiance, stuff you’d expect to hear at a snobby wedding reception for which all the stops have been pulled. The difference comes by way of the fact that Fujiwara is supported by a four-piece string section, along with a vibes person and a pretty chill drummer; as well, our heroine tables a pretty dazzling, dextrous version of Scott Joplin’s “Maple Leaf Rag,” and, in a really courageous effort, offers a retrofitted version of a Japanese children’s song from her earlier life (“Hotaru Koi”). This is well worth the trip, folks. A+

Playlist

• Like every Friday, Oct. 6 will be a day on which new albums are released in a giant gust, there’s no place left to hide, let’s go look at the — wait, folks, wait, I can’t believe it, guess who’s got an album coming out, you’ll simply die: It’s none other than 1980s boy-man-toddler Rick Astley, I’m not kidding you! Astley is from the U.K., because no one else would have him, and his claim to fame is being the subject of the “RickRoll” internet meme that was first discovered in a newly unearthed Babylonian tomb from 12,000 BC, but it never gets old, am I right, folks? It’s the prank where you post something to everyone on your social media space and tell them to click a link in order to find out more information, but what happens instead is you’re sent to a YouTube of Astley, looking like a preteen, singing his one hit, in a super-serious man-voice, the famous awful song “Never Gonna Give You Up!” Ha ha, OK, Billboard announcement page, fun time’s over, if you think I’m actually going to search YouTube for a link to a “new” Rick Astley song, nudge-wink, from a totally fake album called Are We There Yet and then suddenly find myself watching Doogie Howser singing “Never Gonna Give You Up,” um, no, I’ll have you know I’m not that dumb! OK fine, I’m going, let’s see what this is, this quote-unquote, air-quotes, “new Rick Astley song,” which is called (I’m serious, folks) “Never Gonna Stop.” Huh, hold the phone, guys, it’s not anywhere near as stupid as you’re imagining, it’s bonk-bonk piano-soul, and Astley is singing sort of like Bill Withers, I would actually listen to this song if I didn’t have exactly 2,593 other CDs in my car.
• The Rural Alberta Advantage is a Canadian indie trio, but other than that, they’re OK! Their new album, The Rise & The Fall, includes a single titled “Conductors” that is really quite muscular, a loping strummer that evokes Kings Of Leon and even a little bit of old-school emo.
• My wife is from Texas, so it’s always hilarious when I troll her yankee-style. For example, she worked super-hard for years to lose her southern drawl, so every couple of weeks I start talking in an Alabama trucker accent, like the “Git ’Er Done” guy, Larry The Cable Guy, and after an hour or so, she starts to slip and talk about eating grits and whatnot in a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader accent, it’s so funny, you’d have to be there, but another prank I like pulling is when we’re watching TV and I go off to write my book or this column or check in on my social media friends, I change the channel to CMT, because Reba McEntire’s sitcom is always on it, I don’t think they have any other shows, and before you know it there she is, drawling like Reba. Endless laughs that never get old, fam, but in this case it’s relevant, because a new Reba album is coming at us fast, titled Not That Fancy! Now just let me go and — wait, the entire world has been rickrolled by Reba, because from what I’m seeing this isn’t an album, it’s some dumb audiobook, written by a bored ghostwriter, I’m sure, so forget it, false alarm, at least I didn’t have to go listen to some new Reba song.
• • We’ll put this week in the books with Dogstar, because their new album, Somewhere Between The Power Lines And Palm Trees, has such a long, space-filling name that I’ll finally have time to catch up on Amy Diaz’s film reviews and see if one single movie that has come out in the last three years is worth watching, I seriously doubt it! Anyway, Dogstar’s new single, “Breach,” is a grindy ’90s-rock shepherd’s pie of Marilyn Manson, Weezer and — wait, the bass player is actual Keanu Reeves, you people need to tell me these things before I start riffing! This is actually cool! —Eric W. Saeger

If you’re in a local band, now’s a great time to let me know about your EP, your single, whatever’s on your mind. Let me know how you’re holding yourself together without being able to play shows or jam with your homies. Send a recipe for keema matar. Message me on Twitter (@esaeger) or Facebook (eric.saeger.9).

Zooey Celeste, Restless Thoughts (ATO Records)

Meanwhile on the planet XT-431, we have here a collection of tunes from this southern California-based dude, who’s busily trying to craft his own chill-techno trip, revolving around a genre he’s dubbed “astral-pop,” which his PR people cleverly promote as a “soundtrack for nocturnal driving and an immediate conduit for lasting transcendence.” I myself meditate once a week, usually, and this stuff wouldn’t interfere with the practice’s process of trying to become a witness to one’s own passing thoughts, but it’s not as TM as he might like to think. OK, there were probably a lot of drugs involved, let’s just say that, but I could be wrong; a lot of the imagery comes from a novel he wrote a while back, the feel of which, he professes, is “somewhere between Quentin Tarantino and the Bhagavad Gita.” Oh, I almost forgot, the music is gently woven tech-pop of the Goldfrapp sort by way of 1960s Donovan, all of it made uniquely magnetic because Celeste sounds a lot like the Cure’s Robert Smith. A lot of people would be down with this, absolutely. A

Arina Fujiwara, Neon (self-produced)

Well, what a nice surprise this is. Seems like 90 percent of the jazz albums I’ve been getting for review lately have been breezy dark-coffee-house exercises (luckily there’s been a lull in singer-oriented Big Book projects; not that I don’t like hearing the 4,749th interpretation of “Nature Boy,” there’s just no need for it in current_year), but this one, the debut EP from the Manhattan School Of Music pianist, is deeply ritzy ambiance, stuff you’d expect to hear at a snobby wedding reception for which all the stops have been pulled. The difference comes by way of the fact that Fujiwara is supported by a four-piece string section, along with a vibes person and a pretty chill drummer; as well, our heroine tables a pretty dazzling, dextrous version of Scott Joplin’s “Maple Leaf Rag,” and, in a really courageous effort, offers a retrofitted version of a Japanese children’s song from her earlier life (“Hotaru Koi”). This is well worth the trip, folks. A+

Playlist

• On Friday, Sept. 29, we’ll see a new LP from hilariously overrated singing person Ed Sheeran, called Autumn Variations! I’ve always thought that his fans just feel sorry for him because he is a ginger neckbeard, but what do I know; I mean, I did see the video where he went on a stupid talk show and “proved” his claim that every pop song in the world is an old Beatles song, I forget which one, and he accomplished that by pulling out his guitar and asking the audience to give him a song title, and then he “proved” it had the same chords as “Let It Be” or whatever by slowwwly and sneakily changing the chords to fit his insane theory. Your mileage may vary, of course, who cares, but that brings us to his latest song advance, “A Beautiful Game.” It is a piano-pop song that is pretty and oafishly show-stopping, just like every Zoomer-targeted pop song being put out today, and I’ll at least admit that it isn’t a variation on “Let It Be.” No, indeed; cleverly, it rips off Joan Osborne’s “One Of Us” at the beginning and U2’s “Beautiful Day” as things “progress.” What a talented human, that ginger neckbeard, wouldn’t you say?
• Naturally I always confuse Blonde Redhead with Concrete Blonde, who wouldn’t? Sit Down For Dinner is the former’s new LP, and the latest single, “Before,” is very gentle and mellow and chill, evoking Fleetwood Mac stealing from REM. It’s not bad.
• Finally, let’s have a laugh at the expense of former Pitchfork darlings Animal Collective, whose new full-length, Isn’t It Now, is on the trucks, headed to the malls and all that happy stuff. I have not kept track of this band, because why would anyone do that anyway, but I do give them credit for totally owning the “tuneless fractal-indie” space for those 10 minutes, remember those days? The single, “Soul Capturer,” sounds like Vampire Weekend trying to be Mungo Jerry. Does anyone seriously have any deep love for music like this, like at all?

If you’re in a local band, now’s a great time to let me know about your EP, your single, whatever’s on your mind. Let me know how you’re holding yourself together without being able to play shows or jam with your homies. Send a recipe for keema matar. Message me on Twitter (@esaeger) or Facebook (eric.saeger.9).