Author: Eric Saeger

Jackboy, Majorly Independent (1804 Records)

I do make a constant attempt to cover all musical genres in this space, and yeah, it’s made me a jack of all trades and master of — OK, not all that many, especially indie hip-hop records that sound like I’ve heard them before, a ton of times, and break no new ground. Like this one, which does, for its part, come with receipts: JackBoy — real name Pierre Delince — spent the first six years of his life in Haiti, then wound up in Florida, where he became part of Sniper Gang with Kodak Black, with whom he has (of course) beef nowadays. I won’t get into why I’m convinced this guy’s “fame” is largely generated by a bot swarm, nor will I bother rattling off a list of very similar-sounding artists, since you know the drill by now: smack talk and savings account fables delivered via “clipped cadences and pained operatics,” as one rap wiki observed (in a review snippet that could describe, well, nearly every rapper ever), while the beats explore basic trap, polite neo-crunk and whatnot, nothing too crazy. You see, folks, albums like this don’t want actual music reviews, they want sets of biographical drama bullets on the artist. My DMs and PMs are wide open if you disagree, but I can’t imagine anyone would. As is, sure, it’s tight and whatnot. And absolutely disposable. C+

Rusty Santos, High Reality (Lo Recordings)

This Los Angeles-based producer/musician has worked with tons of bands and artists, usually in the space occupied by purveyors of wetwork tuneage of pretty high quality: Chui Wann, Gang Gang Dance, Animal Collective (since you likely have no idea what those acts sound like, just think pretty layers, electronically tweaked/pinched vocal lines, things like that in general). By my count, High Reality is Santos’s sixth solo album, his forte a guitar/vocal thing with varying levels of roughness on the sample side. Opener “Dream In Stereo” is throwback Beck, for sure; it starts with a really woozy, wobbly sample that, it turns out, is a template for most of the songs that are aboard this thing. It’s kind of dated in that regard; in the press materials for this one he yammers about learning all kinds of stuff, which would be natural, given the collaborations in which he’s figured, but after many minutes of wobbling and slow-trilling and whatnot it feels like the work of a one-trick pony who should probably stick to remixing and things like that. B-

Playlist

• Aug. 12 is here, homies, here it comes, we may as well just call it September, fun-time’s over. But since the 12th is a Friday, there will at least be some new albums, if that’s any consolation (I know, I know), so let’s pull up the barnacle-covered lobster trap, toss the bewildered-looking starfish back in the water and see what albums wandered into my crafty little device for capturing albums before they can swim away and not have to face my mightily eloquent blah blah blah. We may as well start with movie soundtrack dude Danny Elfman, whose new album, Bigger Messier, consists of a bunch of remixes from his 2021 artist album, Big Mess. Right, so just to clear up one of the questions that always comes up about Danny Elfman: He is the uncle of actor Bodhi Elfman, who is married to actress Jenna Elfman, so they’re not siblings or whatever, he’s just — you know, whatever an uncle-in-law is called. Now, you also may not know that Elfman was in a really awful band called Oingo Boingo in the ’80s. They were like Devo but basically 200 percent less funny, but one interesting thing is that there’s been a lot of confusion around one particular actor who appeared in Oingo Bongo’s video for their really terrible single “Little Girls”: Tons of young people are clogging internet boards proclaiming that they’re convinced that the actor is indeed Peter Dinklage from Game Of Thrones. However, some smarty-pants on LinusTechTips.com set the entire internet straight in one post, so the question will never be posed again, ever, by anyone, because the internet is a perfect, self-maintained mechanism. To wit: “Peter Dinklage was 12 when that song was released, so it’s very unlikely that the person with a mustache who looks nothing like Peter Dinklage is him.” So there’s that; and remember, Elfman’s pretty dumb-looking; he played the parts of all the Oompa Loompas in the Willy Wonka movie that starred Johnny Depp, and, cutting to now, I wasn’t that impressed with anything I heard from the Big Mess album, like, it kind of wanted to be an edgy rock album but wasn’t interesting; however, the Squarepusher remix of “We Belong” turns the original tune, a morose, funereal droner, into a dubstep tour de force. It’s fine, but has nothing to do with the original. Let’s just leave that here.

• Yikes, look, folks, it’s Japanese stoner/psychedelic-metal masters Boris, with their new album Heavy Rocks 2022; this is probably awesome! The trio usually gets lumped in with Seattle’s plodding drone-meisters Sunn(((O))), mostly because they collaborated on a (rather unnecessary) record; you should ignore any such nonsense and go check them out if you’re into Jack White’s retro-hard-rock and that kind of thing. But wait, maybe I spoke too soon, because I haven’t even listened to the new advance tune “She Is Burning,” so for all I know they’re horrible now, let’s go check it out. OK, forget it, this is wicked cool, hyper-thrash hard-rock with dueling guitar riffs, why aren’t these guys 100 times bigger than they are now?

• Oh, how adorable, San Francisco borderline punk outfit OC’s have changed the spelling of their band name to Osees, just to make sure their fans won’t be able to find their new album, A Foul Form, on the internet (again). Isn’t that special? Too bad, because the title track is hardcore no-wave, thrashy, really bad-ass, love it.

• We’ll wrap it up with 1980s-famous synthpop duo Erasure, whose new LP, Day-Glo (Based On A True Story) is broken up into “chapters.” The tune “Chapter 2” is krautrock-ish roller-rink techno that immediately made me think of aughts-era Haujobb. I can deal 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).

JoVia Armstrong, Antidote Suite (Wild Kingdom Records)

The term Afrofuturism — referring to a “cultural aesthetic and philosophy of science and history that explores the intersection of African diaspora culture with science and technology” — was coined by culture critic Mark Dery, an on-again/off-again friend-acquaintance who’s been mad at me for like a year because I clumsily made fun of him on Twitter for his nerdy distaste for sports. Speaking of clumsy, the genre definition offered above — can’t we just say Afrofuturism is Black cyberpunk culture? no? — is a bit misleading as pertains to this album, which, if it’d come from anyone whose musical career hadn’t been borne of a, well, too-academics-driven approach to a life’s mission of spreading awareness about Black struggle in the Information Age, would be immediately classified as chilly, often beautiful but not earth-shakingly original soundscaping. Guests include bassist Isaiah Sharkey, guitarist Jeff Parker, vocalist Yaw Agyeman and rapper Teh’Ray Hale. There’d be no earthly reason for me not to recommend this to anyone; lots of interesting genre-mixing here. A+

Sator, Return of The Barbie-Q-Killers (Wild Kingdom Records)

Here we go, just what I needed right now, an old-school punk band from Sweden. And I do mean old-school; they’ve been together since 1981, originally under the moniker Sator Codex, which points to the Throbbing Gristle/Cabaret Voltaire niche they cite as an influence. Other than that, the record collections of the members’ youth were pretty standard: Motorhead, Chuck Berry, Ramones, Clash and such. Doesn’t matter, though. There are 24-count-’em songs crammed into this release, with most of the songs clocking in at around two minutes, which put it at an A grade before I even listened to any of it. The music is a blur of Misfits/Ramones gloriousness, opening with a punkabilly-tinged “Get Out Of My Way”; a Lords Of The New Church-sounding “Shimmy Shake,” even an obvious nod to New York Dolls in “Pumps, Purse And A Pillbox Hat.” From my seat there’s nothing wrong with this album whatsoever. A+

Playlist

• Gross, it’s freakin’ August already, it’s just going to be hot and insane out and then we’ll have those perfect September days with blue skies and a tinge of autumn in the air. So pleasant and nice, I hate it so much, but it’s on the way, and our first order of August business is to talk about the albums that’ll be in the stores and Pirate Bays and virus-slathered darkweb cubbies on Aug. 5. I usually try to get the least pleasant stuff out of the way first, and this week that’s definitely overrated Scottish club DJ Calvin Harris’s new album, Funk Wav Bounces Vol. 2. No, I’m not saying I mindfully loathe Harris; it’s just that when my journalistic beat was the velvet-rope techno-club scene, Harris was one of those tedious funk guys, and he bothered me the same way Steve Aoki did. Not enough progressive house in his mix, is what I mean; I really prefer progressive house over regurgitated Chicago-style house, which is too heavy on the disco (think Madonna’s “Vogue” for reference’s sake). OK, you’re staring at me wondering what I’m talking about, as if I even know; suffice to say that I’d rather listen to a deep house genius like King Britt than a lowbrow slob like Calvin Harris. And now that I’ve gotten that off my chest, you know what’ll happen next, I’m going to go listen to Harris’s new single “Potion” and it’ll actually be OK. But I doubt it; guest vocalists for this album include ridiculously overexposed lummoxes like Justin Timberlake, Halsey and Snoop Dogg, and — wait, here’s the video for “Potion.” It features corporate-pop diva Dua Lipa with Young Thug, and — yup, there it is breezy after-party music that’s too loud and in-your-face for an after-party. Yuck, it’s too disco-ey, possessed of basically no class. My God, my life would have been so much easier if I’d been born the type of imbecile who’d prefer this over Oscar G or whatever. No one should listen to this song, period. It’s got the vibe of the typical soundtrack to a 1970s porno movie. Barf barf barf.

• Uh-oh, look sharp everyone, it’s British sort-of-tech-metal heroes Kasabian, with The Alchemist’s Euphoria, their new album! If you’re wondering, yes (I just found this out for sure), they were named after Linda Kasabian, the former Charles Manson groupie, isn’t that special, and for the record, everything I’ve heard from them to date has been pretty cool. That brings us to the here and now, with a new song called “Scriptvre,” a noisy, trashy joint that’s a cross between Rage Against The Machine and Red Hot Chili Peppers’ “Give It Away.” Definitely something of a ’90s-rock-revival persuasion, which, let’s face it already, isn’t the worst thing that could happen, being that the current ’80s rebirth is well past its sell-by date.

• Blah blah blah what else — ah, here’s one, a new album titled All 4 Nothing, the second album from Lauv, a.k.a. Ari Staprans Leff, a San Francisco-born singer-songwriter! With a title as stupid as All 4 Nothing I’d expected the title track to dredge up memories of Marky Mark or something equally hideous, but it’s not quite that bad, that is unless the thought of an Auto-Tuned Peabo Bryson makes your stomach a bit unstable. Nothing to see here, folks, just a smooth bedroom beat, a millennial whoop thrown in to stupid-check Leff’s target audience, etc. It’s listenable.

• We’ll end with a new live album from ancient folk-pop mummy and dreadful singer Neil Young, Noise & Flowers, I can’t wait, can you? All I know right now is there’s a live version of the tune “From Hank To Hendrix” that’s pretty good if you can get past that wounded-possum voice of his, ack ack.

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).

NoSo, Stay Proud Of Me (Partisan Records)

Abby Hwong is L.A.-based non-binary Korean-American singer-guitarist NoSo, whose debut album — this one here — had a successful launch on Soundcloud. Seems to me they’re big into epic indie-techno like M83, but their trip is more of a songwriter thing, and what first struck me was Hwong’s vocal likeness to Sarah McLachlan. The songs are big and lush, pretty much yacht-rock but with a lot of blooping percolation running along the lowest deck; I know there’s been a big Kate Bush resurgence of late owing to Stranger Things, and that’s fortuitous for Hwong, who sets their sights on the usual targets that strike dread into the hearts of differented people trying to make peace with themselves: of course there’s a song called “Suburbia” here, steeped in mellow Goldfrapp steez. Beautiful stuff here, folks. A+ — Eric W. Saeger

Trashed Ambulance, Future Considerations (Thousand Islands Records)

Today I learned that when Barenaked Ladies recorded the theme song to the TV show The Big Bang Theory, there were actually several other verses in the song, and most people have never heard them. I’m not suggesting you run right to YouTube and start memorizing those lyrics; it’s certainly not required listening for die-hard fans, and the rest of the song isn’t that great anyway. This album — from an Alberta, Canada, punk crew that’s been around for eight years, if I’m reading their sloppy press materials correctly — is the same kind of stuff as that, geeky Hoobastank-splattered nerd-punk that couldn’t hurt a fly if it wanted to. But point of order, they’d probably prefer I leave names like the Barenakeds and They Might Be Giants out of it: They’re actually “inspired by the likes of Pulley, Face to Face, and The Flatliners,” names that I could have dug up with a little luck, but since you have no idea who those bands are, to save us all time, just expect a bunch of tunes in the vein of the Big Bang Theory theme song, and they’re mostly good. All set? B+

Playlist

• Well isn’t that special, it’s July 29 already, how can this even be happening? Before you know it the summer will be gone, I mean, why don’t I just put all my winter stuff in my car, like my snowshoes and parka and my emergency survival bug-out bag with bear repellent and extra rations of Fritos and Devil Dogs in case I slide off the road and need rescuing from some crazy enchanted remote witch-filled forest in deepest, darkest Meredith, New Hampshire. OK, fine, I’m riffing mindlessly, and trust me, you’d do the same thing if you were supposed to be writing about Beyoncé’s new album, Renaissance, which comes out on Friday the 29th. Everyone knows that the only reason a critic of eclectic art would even mention the new Beyoncé album at all would be to demonstrate that said critic hasn’t been hiding under a rock, much as I’d much prefer that to trying to talk about an album that will instantly inspire one of only two possible reactions in people: They’ll either instantly decide to buy it, or they’ll yell “LOATHE ENTIRELY” like the Grinch and hope they never have to hear it playing at the Food Court. I’m sort of stuck in the middle myself, like my days of humming along to sexually baffling pop music ended when I turned 10, but in the meantime I still have to see what’s going on with Bee’s new single, “Break My Soul,” a tune she, ahem, “wrote” with like five other people, including her husband, Jay-Z, who’s credited as “S. Carter.” You know, I’m way too much of a punk to take royalty seriously, especially fake-royal cultural icons du jour, but since there are probably five of you who’ll actually buy this album just to irritate me, I’ll give this stupid song a whirl, why not, maybe it consists of more than the usual three notes that can be played on a Fisher Price toy xylophone. Nope, there’s only two notes, but the beat is kind of ’60s-James Bond-y overall but nothing more innovative than a ripoff of Young MC’s “Bust A Move” from back when Fred Flintstone drove a brontosaurus crane. Regardless, the success of that song gave her the distinction of being the first woman to notch at least 20 top 10 titles as a solo artist and at least 10 top 10 tracks as a member of a group on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. Yay, super-lucky famous people, aaand we’re moving.

• Ack, ack, it’s Groundhog Day, it has to be, wasn’t I talking about some other “Elephant 6 musical collective”-affiliated band last week (Austin group Elf Power, if I recall correctly) (yes, that was it), and saying how much I dislike that stuff? Well, no matter, because Of Montreal are here with a new album, the first two words of the title being Freewave Lucifer, whatever that means, and I have to go listen to their new single, “Marijuana’s A Working Woman.” Bulletin: There are festive, childish watercolors in the video. Oh boy, it wants to be Flaming Lips meets The Shins or some such, unlistenable analog-ish console noise and a barely discernible hook. Holy crow, folks, people are still listening to this kind of thing?

• If you ever wondered where Billie Eilish got the idea to use barely-there techno bloops to build songs like “Bad Guy” around, it safe to say she was at one point really into the song “Alaska” by googly-eyed Maryland anti-diva Maggie Rogers, whose new LP Surrender will be out Friday. I like the teaser track “That’s Where I Am” a lot better than anything I’ve heard from Billie; her yodel-y singing goes well with the punk no-wave-ish groove. It’s cool, you’ll like it.

• Finally it’s American singer-songwriter and fiddle player Amanda Shires, who’s in the country supergroup The Highwomen. Her new full-length, Take It Like A Man, features a title track that’s torchy and depressing if you like that sort of thing.

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).

Svvarms, Adaleena EP (Hilltop Records)

It would appear that this East Bay, San Francisco-based duo have designs on a more or less newfangled genre that might be best described as “yacht rock indie.” This isn’t to imply that a lot of indie bands haven’t tried their hands at chilly pop music that grandmothers might like, but this is pretty straightforward stuff, not a bunch of tunes that are by turns gloomy and awkwardly pretty. And besides, if there’s anything these guys would love for me to say about them, it’s that they’re yacht-rock-ish, you can just tell. Like Vampire Weekend on ketamine or Luke Temple with designs on classic radio, the tunes aren’t as kludgy as you might expect from a band that sounds heavily influenced by Wilco and Radiohead, not that I might not be wrong about that. Whatever, the bottom line is that there’s something mildly Simon and Garfunkel about them, but there’s nothing cringey about that aspect. Some good, unique experiments in sound really help to flesh this out. A

Randal Despommier, A Midsummer Odyssey (Sunnyside Records)

Barely-there jazz to peel grapes by. This album is composed of stripped-down rubs of the music of Swedish baritone saxophonist Lars Gullin, a child prodigy who, like so many mid-century jazz players, had something of a cursed life. His first stint as a bandleader ended after a car accident (nobody died, but it apparently prompted the band to quit or something; Gullin was a long-time methadone addict when he died in 1976, so, you know, it’s not too mysterious). Despommier heardGullin’s “Danny’s Dream” and found it quite epic, which takes us to this, a duo project between Despommier and guitarist Ben Monder in barely plugged mode. It’s very light stuff, and to be honest, at first blush (“Toka Voka Oka Boka”) it feels a bit too much like an academic exercise for my taste. That’s not to say the principals didn’t enjoy putting this together, but if I had the capabilities of these guys, I certainly wouldn’t have. B-

Playlist

• July 22 is our next general-release Friday, when the new CDs hit the streets, all of them hoping to get some love and props from all the young homies and coolios who flock to the record stores to get down to the rock music. My favorite is when you go into Barnes & Noble and all the homies and peeps are test-listening to all the new and ill and groovy rock music on test headphones, and once in a while some grandmother will put on a 1950s Jerry Lee Lewis album and start twerking like a boss right there, while the homies and coolios and skater punks and crazily pierced goth-industrial Draculas all look on and elbow each other, blissfully ignoring the fact that one day their own grandchildren will laugh at them behind their backs for listening to Bruno Mars and having a Hello Kitty tattoo on their butt, nice and safe and out of sight, where totally no bosses would ever see it and fire them. It comforts me to see that people still care about art, even though it peaked when Gallagher smashed his first watermelon on live TV in the 1980s, back when you’d tune into MTV and they’d say, “Hey folks, you’re watching MTV, and we’ve got Simple Minds!” OK, old joke? Perhaps, perhaps, but you young kids weren’t there, you never had to watch videos from Phil Collins and Spandau Ballet, so if I feel the need to make a rusty old joke, I’ve earned the right to it, OK where were we. Oh no, it’s Zooey Deschanel, a.k.a. The Queen Of All Druggie Moonbats, in her vanity rock ’n’ roll project with M. Ward, She & Him, but guess what, this isn’t going to be the duo’s normal level of horribleness, it’s 100 times worse, because this new album probably has a lot of obscure Brian Wilson cover songs on it, if the title, Melt Away: A Tribute To Brian Wilson, is any indication. Good grief, do I really have to do this? Trust me, I sure wouldn’t, if there were just one album being released on the July 22 by a band that at least five of you people had ever heard of, but no, sure, I’ll go listen to their stupid rub of “Wouldn’t It Be Nice,” but if I have to do that, it’s a drinking game, and you people have to participate in it. Rules: one shot if there’s a crummy Postal Service lo-fi techno part that sucks completely, and you have to drink the whole bottle if there’s ukulele. Ready? Ack, ack, this is awful, no Postal Service and no ukulele, but Zooey’s voice is worse than it’s ever been in history. Why does Zooey hate music so much, seriously?

• Hamburger jokes ahoy, mates, looky there, it’s famous pudgy gastronome Jack White, with his latest effort to revive arena rock, the Entering Heaven Alive album! Say, did you know that this Stay-Puft guitar monkey took Meg’s last name when they got married? It’s true, his given last name was Gillis. Aren’t weird rock ’n’ roll facts interesting? I think so, because usually they’re a lot more interesting than the albums put out by weird rock ’n’ roll people, especially in the case of this guy, who hasn’t met a Led Zeppelin riff he didn’t want to steal, but like Steve Harvey once famously said, “Wait a minute!” because this is a folk album, not a Zep album with a chick singer! Teaser track “If I Die Tomorrow” is sort of like if Bowie’s “Major Tom” got super-glued to Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Free Bird.” No further comment.

• Alt-rock band Sports Team is from London, England, and their first album, Deep Down Happy, went to No. 1 in Scotland and no place else. Gulp, their second LP, includes the song “Cool It Kid,” a pub-rock holler-along tune that’s awful except for the chorus.

• Lastly we have Canadian alt-country The Sadies, a band composed of all guys. “All The Good,” the single from Colder Streams, their newest full-length, sounds like a 1960s Rolling Stones ballad, but with banjo, and thus concludes our descent into the abyss for this week.

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).

Lindsay Clark, Carpe Noctem (Audiosport Records)

This Portland, Oregon-based girl has released a good number of albums up to now, spotlighting her talent for writing post-Joni Mitchell-ish folky-poppy trifles. Remember, though, it’s current_year, so she does have a moonbat side, and the tunes tend to fixate on one section rather than stray off to become too complicated or interesting. Sigh, but whatever, Clark isn’t a kook, just your average girl in the world trying to find a half-workable relationship and such, just like you, and she’s not maudlin about it, which is a nice break from the real weirdos who come in here with kooky albums. On this one, she’s got some lovely acoustic guitar undergirdings that help keep stomachs settled; she uses a self-taught Nick Drake-ish fingerpicking style that’s a great fit for her musical aims. Co-conspirators here include members of such bands as Dolphin Midwives, Shook Twins and Paper Gates, variously playing violas, cellos, flutes and such. A

Al Foster, Reflections (Smoke Sessions Records)

OK, may I present my favorite jazz album so far this year. At age 79, Al Foster is a jazz-drumming icon, having played with jazz Herbie Hancock, Sonny Rollins and Joe Henderson to name three, but I mustn’t forget to mention his work with Miles Davis in the 1970s. Right, the ’70s wasn’t Davis’s fiercest decade for my money at least, but the overall sound was nice and bright, for what that’s worth. Anyway, that’s the sonic upshot on this one, pretty much, but it’s even nicer really: it’s current_year after all, which means hypervigilant mics picking up every last-sub-echo of this band, which is absolutely on fire from the get-go. Opener “T.S. Monk” finds Foster meeting the challenge of some blazing trumpet work from Nicholas Payton by tendering some absolutely filthy drums, after which a rework of Sonny Rollins’ “Pent-Up House” rushes in to ground old-time listeners. Really priceless, this. A+

Playlist

• Ack! Ack! Look at this, folks, just look at it, the next general-CD-release Friday is July 15, which means the summer is already half over! Let me count the weeks on my fingers here a second, wait — yep, before you know it, we’ll all stop saying “It’s freaking rooooasting” and replace it with “It’s freakin’ freeeezing,” because there are only two temperatures in New England, freezing and roasting. I can already feel my feet turning into whimsical frozen ice sculptures until next May, can’t you? But in the meantime, there is stuff to talk about right now, so we can live in the moment like adults, starting with Bleed Here Now, the latest full-length from sort-of-hard-rock-but-oh-whatever band And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead, or “Trail Of Dead” for short! They are from Austin, Texas, and the principal members are in their 50s now, boy, time does fly, doesn’t it? It’s like, being a professional music journalist; you’ll hear some band and think, “My stars, that’s boring, but they seem hip, I should probably pay attention if I ever expect anyone to respect my body of ‘work,’” but then two minutes later you’re watching cartoons and you forget the band’s name, and then 15-odd years go by and all you remember is that you don’t have any real interest in what the band is doing these days, but then you’re tasked with writing about that very band. Those are the shoes I’m in right now, knowing that I’ll have to go listen to some new song from these performing clowns but secretly hoping that if I keep typing extraneous peripheral nonsense I’ll run out of room and not have to go listen to the dumb song. Oh, well, so much for that, there’s room for a quick CSI of the teaser track “No Confidence,” a song that starts out, as always, like a cross between Flaming Lips and some actual rock band like Band Of Skulls, and then the song — ick, it sucks, basically like Superchunk with a low-tier guitar riff. Band Of Skulls is/was pretty good, by the way.

• Oh, how lovely, nothing I want to hear more right now than some psychedelic-Aughts-indie, will this millennium ever end? Because look, it’s New York City post-punk revivalists Interpol, with their seventh album, The Other Side Of Make-Believe. Great. You know, if the Martians are just watching Earth as a TV series, they’re going to skip all of the Aughts and the Teens and whatever this decade of demented horror is called and simply fast forward to when flying Jetsons cars don’t cost $92,000 (it’s true, reserve yours now at www.jetsonaero.com) and can actually fly for more than 20 minutes (also true). But I am not a Martian, unfortunately, and thus must help myself to a big tall glass of the new Interpol single “Toni,” a palatable, slightly pounding tune that wants to be as cool as Arcade Fire’s “Rebellion (Lies)” but has too much in common with Cardigans’ “Lovefool” for me to want to hear it again. Admirable effort, boring Aughts-indie band.

• And the hipster march continues, with Austin band Elf Power, which is part of the “Elephant 6 musical collective” that comprises, wow, look at that, a bunch of bands I don’t like: Of Montreal, Apples In Stereo, etc. I’m on a roll, with this new Elf Power album, Artificial Countrysides, the title track of which is a cross between very early Rolling Stones and Pavement. My DMs are open if you can think of anything worse.

• We’ll abandon this fast-sinking ship with Filipino-British singer-songwriter Beabadoobee’s new album, Beatopia, whose single, “Talk,” is muddy noise-pop for Hello Kitty culturists. I could listen to this again, sure.

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).

DoubleVee, Treat Her Strangely (self-released)

Picture a more-or-less-direct cross between Pavement and Dandy Warhols and you’d have Starlight Mints, a hipster-indie band from Oklahoma. Those guys called it an oeuvre in the mid-Aughts, maybe because they were no match for their fellow Oklahomans Flaming Lips, but some people would disagree, not that I care. Allan Vest was that band’s singer and, in 2015, married the former Barb Hendrickson, a musically like-minded soul, and here we are, with this band, which flirts with orchestral indie-pop, adding such instruments as viola, trumpet and trombone to Allan’s recipe, which was successful in the Mints’ heyday (some of the Mints’ songs wound up on TV shows like Malcolm in the Middle, Californication and Gossip Girl, most likely when forced quirkiness was in the script, but I don’t know). These tunes have a neo-New Wave feel, quite ’80s in fact, and a lot of them bear beats that feel pilfered, from such bands as Sisters of Mercy (“When Dawn Comes Tonight”), Duran Duran (“The Fever Is You”), and so forth. All it really did for me was intensify my yearning for the current ’80s-echo-boom to end already. Barb’s voice is no worthy match for Allan’s, for one thing; she comes off like some rando picked out of a Bowery Ballroom crowd. B-

Seasoning, The Condensation EP (self-released)

The problem with fronting the same sort of lush, pretty Sunday-drive vibe as the Brooklyn indie-pop band Real Estate is that listeners might (and OK, this is a stretch, but I do require some modicum of an angle before I start typing up these things) expect the same verisimilitude that befell them during their 2020 album The Main Thing. But this guy, Brisbane-raised multi-instrumentalist/songwriter Lachlan Buckle, actually has more ideas in his head, I’d say. Where Real Estate tended to overdo the wholesome ’60s-pop jangle in TMT, Buckle and his cohorts wander off into slightly unexpected musical environs. All right, not by much, have it your way, but as a singer, Buckle has a more vintage Top 40-ish range, a quarter-whispered style that will remind people of Al Stewart during his “Time Passages” phase (trust me, you’ve heard it at the doctor’s office, I guarantee it) (and no, I don’t know if he ever had another hit after that). The blurb sheet also accuses Buckle of doing a Yo La Tengo thing, but I didn’t hear any evidence of that at all. Hipster music for nursing homes is the bullet description here, it’s not bad at all. A-

Playlist

• Uh-oh, gang, the next crop of new albums will hit the streets with its usual dull thud on July 8, just like every Friday! I suppose we should spend a minute or so on the new album from perennial Juno award winners Metric, whose members are from the Canadian city of Toronto, a nice place to visit if you’d ever be interested in seeing a rather basic American city but with people who actually like other people. This band has several claims to fame, including singer Emily Haines’s connection to the completely unlistenable Aughts-indie collective Broken Social Scene, and they’ve “contributed” a few songs to famous soundtracks, including Scott Pilgrim vs The World, although of course their biggest was “Eclipse (All Yours)” from the Twilight Saga: Eclipse soundtrack. As well, Haines has done a few cool things in the areas of house and opera-trance, like the tune “Glimmer” that she did with Delerium, and “Knock You Out” with Tiesto. And so I have mixed feelings about these Canadians; just because they’ve helped make a few tunes that were cool doesn’t excuse them from all the Broken Social Scene nonsense (Haines also collaborated on a song by Stars, by the way), and all that confusing stuff leaves me with no choice but to listen to the new single “All Comes Crashing” and judge their upcoming new LP Formentera on its own merits. I’m sure this will be fun. Huh, the video has one of those “flashing lights” warnings about suffering from “possible seizures,” which I appreciate knowing about in advance, because there’d be literally no worse way for me to lose my mind than to be listening to tuneless Canadian indie rock while getting a Clockwork Orange treatment for no reason. Well, this song’s OK, it’s got a nice messy Kills-like no-wave guitar part after they get through the Kesha-style bloop-pop formalities. I survived the flashing lights part, unless it actually did drive me insane and you people don’t actually exist, which would mean Canadian indie-rock bands don’t exist either; there’s a silver lining to everything, just saying.

• Well looky there folks, it’s a new Megadeth album, The Sick, The Dying, And The Dead, and it’s on the way right this minute! I was never a really big fan of Megadeth, like, I always though “Symphony Of Destruction” was a really lousy song with a super-stupid title. I do know bandleader Dave Mustaine was/is an epic-level jerk: he hates Metallica for firing him, and that’s normal, but then there was the time he yelled at my old band’s manager for telling him she was glad to see that he’d shown up sober for a show. That’s a nice thing to say to someone, isn’t it? No? Well, whatever, I’ll go listen to their new song, “The Dogs of Chernobyl,” only because I have to. OK, it’s really thrash-punky, like old Slayer except with Metallica vocals. It’s pretty cool if you liked Metallica’s $5.98 EP, kind of Samhain-ish/Misfits-ish, meaning it’s kind of out-of-date-ish but acceptable-ish. Bon appetit or whatnot.

• Yikes, it’s arena-pop act Journey, with a new album, called Freedom! Last I knew, this band, famous for “Don’t Stop Believin’,” a song about the Sopranos or whatever it was, was still not speaking to their original singer, Steve Perry, whom they replaced with some kid they found through a karaoke YouTube. That ridiculousness didn’t spell doom for the band; they had a decent AOR/yacht-rock song called “The Place In Your Heart” in 2005, don’t be so picky. The new single, “Don’t Give Up On Us,” is epic AOR, full of hormonal angst triggers for 50-somethings. I actually like it a lot.

• We’ll close with Cave World, the new LP from Swedish post-punk band Viagra Boys. The latest teaser track is “Punk Rock Loser,” which will make a great Bud Light commercial, since it’s a cross between Bloodhound Gang and Melvins (don’t worry, all that means is that it’s edgy but basically useless except as beer commercial background).

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).

Ghostkeeper, Multidimensional Culture (Victory Pool Records)

One usually doesn’t think of indigenous people as dancing jigs and playing fiddles, but the Métis people — Canadians with a mixed heritage of indigenous and European ancestry — are big on that. The husband-wife team of Ghostkeeper aims to put this culture on the map by infusing Métis music with ’70s freak-folk, proto-punk and various forms of psychedelica (this isn’t a case of cultural appropriation, if that’s any concern; they originally met in the Paddle Prairie Métis Settlement in Alberta). So, then, the album title is accurate in its way, but the music backs up the gauntlet that’s implicitly thrown. You can all but see the groovy 1960s liquid-light effects morphing into non-shapes behind opener “Doo Wop” as singer Shane rants Nick Cave-ish through a bullhorn, and it’s there that you quickly realize that these kids aren’t sheltered know-nothings; Trent Reznor would be proud of them, put it that way. As the record goes on, it’s impossible not to think of both Jerry Lee Lewis (“Finn”), screwy Aughts-indie (“Grassy Plains”) and even shoegaze (“Summer Child”). Well worth investigating. A

Darren McClure, Slow Up Speed Down (Audiobulb Records)

A soundscaper from Northern Ireland who now lives in Matsumoto, Japan, McClure uses found sounds (as in yeah, he’ll literally go outside and record stuff, or capture oddball digital bleeps and such from wherever, all toward an effort to fill out his compositions). His main intent, so I’m informed, is to “create music to zone out to and zone into, a balance of widescreen drones and more minimal, abstract ambience.” Out of that little word salad I’d say there’s some truth to it, but one really has to travel far through this record to find anything I’d call music. And that’s OK; no harm, no foul; McClure’s an experimentalist after all, and that’s what these tracks are. The title track, for instance, is 12 minutes of what I’d call Neptunian swamp vibe; there are War Of The Worlds-style alien hisses and such peeking out of a gently droning synth (I think) sample. This time out, he aims for slowness and immersion, incidental patterns that bespeak eternity without much noisy fuss. It’s hypnotic enough, sure. B

Playlist

• Happy Upcoming Fourth Of July, everyone. Here I am to give you some Christmas gift-giving ideas, because brand new albums will “hit the streets” on July 1! I’m sure all the 8-year-olds will be glad to hear that one of the new releases is from Imagine Dragons, the false metal band that would be Kiss if they weren’t awful. This glorified joke band will have a two-pronged assault of music on Friday, because Mercury: Act 2, which continues the aimlessness the band tabled in Mercury: Act 1, will street on the July 1, along with an 18-track double album comprising both Mercury “Acts,” so I hope you’ve been saving your allowance or your paper route money if you want to buy these new rock ’n’ roll records from this stupid band, because it’s going to be expensive. The first sampler tune I ran into in my halfhearted search for something to review was “Darkness,” which sounds more like a Conor Oberst campfire-indie sing-along than the sort of lightweight hard-rock piffle that put these guys on the map, but what makes this tune particularly bad is the high-pitched vocal that rounds out the hook part. It’s a joke, basically, one that I don’t find very amusing. Aside, has anyone over the age of 10 ever bought one of these guys’ albums?

• Burna Boy is Damini Ebunoluwa Ogulu, a Nigerian-born Afrobeat/dancehall guy, whose sixth album, Love Damani, is on the way! Here’s your fun trivia factoid regarding this super cool dude: In 2020, his album Twice as Tall was nominated for Best World Music Album at the 63rd Annual Grammy Awards, making him the first Nigerian with back-to-back nominations at the Grammys. His trip has been based in legitimacy from birth, being that his grandfather once managed Afrobeat superstar Fela Kuti, not that that should matter all that much, but it kind of does, sorry. Whatever, if you’ve ever liked Elephant Man or anything even close to that, you really need to check out the first single from this album, “Last Last,” because it’s pretty amazing, just take my word for it.

• Oh no, I’m writing this on a Tuesday, which means a new Guided by Voices album is coming out! This month’s eyeroll-inducing self-indulgence from pathologically prolific songwriter Robert Pollard is yet another full-length album, Tremblers And Goggles By Rank. My having to discuss a new GBV album really has become sort of a meme found only in this paper, and the only reason I’m going to bother listening to “Unproductive Funk,” the single from this new album, is that I adhere to the tenets of due diligence and chronicing the growth of rock ’n’ roll artists who’ve given so much to society, all of which actually means “I’m sure that this song will be as limp and uneventful as the last 500 Guided By Voices songs, but that wouldn’t be nice for me to say, so let’s get this over with already.” I assume that with a title like “Unproductive Funk,” there will be some funk in the recipe, but it’ll be super-lame. OK, nope, I’m listening to it now, and it’s basically like a cross between Gang Of Four (the “funk” part, I’m assuming) and Starz (the ’70s-throwback “unproductive” part). There was no good reason Pollard made this record, but when did that ever stop him?

• In closing, let’s talk about Electrified Brain, the new album from Virginia-based crossover-thrash band Municipal Waste! I’ll listen to the title track so you don’t have to, because I care. Huh, it’s pretty much like early Slayer, some of you might actually like it, who knows. The end.

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).

Chastity Brown, Sing to the Walls (Red House Records)

The long and short of this album is that it’s like Adele but with approximately 564 times more soul. Like everyone else’s, Brown’s world slowed to a crawl when Covid hit, and as a bonus she got to watch the horror of the Minneapolis riots unfold from her place in the city (we probably all have a story or two from those days, don’t we, when we were all still trying to get an understanding of exactly what Covid is, and suddenly there’d be something afoot right on our doorstep that scared us silly?). As a Black woman, she’s got plenty of anger to burn from those days (and these days, for that matter), but the songs here are Americana-steeped easy listening neo-soul for the most part, slow pensive beats combining with seriously good songwriting to make for a really comforting, Roberta Flack-ish vibe. Nothing wrong with this record from my seat; I’d recommend it for fans of both Adele and Amy Winehouse. A+

Todd Marcus Orchestra, In the Valley (Stricker Street Records)

Ack, my envy’s really acting up thanks to this one. I started listening to this, the nine-piece jazz group’s first album since 2015’s Blues For Tahrir, without having first read the blab sheet and was tooling around with something else I had to do, so the goodly amount of dissonance had me grimacing a little; if you’ve read this column for basically any amount of time, you’re aware that I prefer my jazz the way I like my coffee, bold but not too obtrusive. Turns out, though, that clarinetist/bandleader Marcus is a frequent visitor to Egypt, the one place I’ve always wanted to see and probably never will now that Covid’s all but officially endemic. Anyway, Marcus’ dad is Egyptian, and like I said, he’s been there a lot, darn him, and the previous album was largely inspired by the 2011 Arab Spring movement, whereas this one focuses more on the history and nuances of the country. Hence you’ll hear quite a few turns that sound cobra-charmer-ish (the closing title track especially), but don’t turn up your nose yet; there’s plenty of nicely written straightforwardness in the form of modern jazz, post-bop, etc. A niche product that’ll enchant certain ears, obviously. A

Playlist

• This Friday, June 24, is the next date for new CD releases, and wow, look at this, folks, it’s Closure/Continuation, the new album from British prog-rock band Porcupine Tree! It’s funny this came up now; a few weeks ago I was on the phone with an old bandmate of mine, and he said he totally loves this band and was planning to drop $400 to see them play someplace, I forget where. If you’re interested, I myself wouldn’t pay $400 to see any band, ever, unless there was a working time machine involved and I could see Al Jolson play at some club around 1931 or so, but my homie loves Porcupine Tree so much that he’s going to pay $400 and he’s going to this show by himself because no one else would do something that crazy. But to each his own, and just to reassure myself that I wasn’t a fool for not spending $400 to see these guys, I looked into their oeuvre on YouTube, and sure enough, their big-ish 2009 single, “Time Flies,” is indeed very cool, providing instant proof, at least to me, that the dearly departed Minus The Bear stole some ideas from them. Anyhow, this band has been around since 1987; they broke up for 10 years between 2010 and 2021, so this is a reunion album of sorts that features all the original members except for bassist Colin Edward. The most recent single at this writing is “Of The New Day,” a chill song with a decidedly mature edge reminiscent of Disco Biscuits but without the goofy funk samples. To be honest it mostly reminds me of the local band Vital Might, not that you’ve heard of them, or Disco Biscuits either, for that matter. Little bit of Pink Floyd going on with this band, before I forget to mention it.

• Well, here’s a blast from the past; it’s surf-rocker Jack Johnson, with his eighth LP, Meet The Moonlight, his first since 2017’s All the Light Above It Too. Johnson’s a pretty cool guy as guys come, always pretty happy (who wouldn’t be if they spent a lot of time surfing in Hawaii and elsewhere?), known to support and donate to such causes as Amnesty International, things like that; his most popular single was 2010’s “You And Your Heart,” a likable-enough unplugged Bonnaroo-begging campfire-indie sing-along that you’ve surely heard at one time or another. As for the new record, the leadoff single is the title track, a — spoiler alert — mellow surf-folk tune that’s a little bit Red Hot Chili Peppers and a little bit Beck, nothing groundbreaking but nothing to sneeze at either.

• Huh, look at this, my little 4chan trolls, it’s a new album from punkish Russian chick-rocker Regina Spektor, called Home Before And After! I’m sure there’ll be something fun on here; remember when she did the theme song to Orange Is The New Black, and it was kind of awesome? I mean I’m sure I’ll like the new single, “Becoming All Alone,” let’s go see. OK, it’s a poppy ballad-ish tune that’s reminiscent of 1970s radio-pop lady Maria Muldaur. Nice and catchy, this, but it’s not punky, so forget everything I said in the first part of this blurb.

• We’ll wrap this week up with Canadian “post-hardcore” crazies Alexisonfire, whose new LP, Otherness, will be here before you can say, “I sure hope this doesn’t sound like Good Charlotte, please don’t be another band that sounds like Good Charlotte.” OK, it doesn’t, it really is some sort of attempt to make “post-hardcore” music if you ask me, like it’s very yell-y but it’s also kind of doom-metalish. It’s neat, like if Imagine Dragons were an actual rock ’n’ roll band with “Anarchy” T-shirts and stuff instead of, well, whatever you’d call Imagine Dragons

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).

Ironflame, Where Madness Dwells (High Roller Records)

As you may have noticed, I’ve ignored all the bleating from our Baby Iron Maiden Band desk for months now, but my luck ran out today when this one refused to be denied. It’s the fourth full-length from the straight-up project led by Ohio’s Andrew D’Cagna, who, as you probably don’t know, is still involved with the bands Brimstone Coven and Icarus Witch (in case you thought he was some boring old normie, he says he’s got a black metal thing going at the moment as well). D’Cagna apparently liked Maiden’s Number Of The Beast album a lot, as we hear on “Everlasting Fire,” which is too much like that aforementioned LP’s title track to chalk it up to coincidence. But wait, he loves him some late-’80s power metal too, as the Savatage-ish “Under The Spell” attests; that one’s a more energetic headbanger. It goes on uneventfully from there (trust me when I say I looked for something that proved he really did want to add some “fun” parts), a dreary yowling metal moaner played in a minor key, etc., etc. B-

John Carpenter, Firestarter Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (Sacred Bones Records)

Boy, this has become a tradition in this space, hasn’t it, another soundtrack from horror filmmaker Carpenter, who redefined the meaning of “bad movie soundtracks” with the eternally dated-sounding music he contributed to such 80s classics as Halloween and The Fog. But I’ll admit, this has more going for it than the last few Carpenter-backgrounding records we talked about (and if you can remember what those were, I congratulate you for being blessed with a memory like Krazy glue). Don’t get me wrong, there’s still stupid stuff here, like the Rockman-plugged guitar on ther title theme, which is right out of “Danger Zone” from the original Top Gun’s soundtrack, but this time it looks as if Carpenter really wanted to have the creeps set in. There are Omen-like monk-choir things but they’re not at all overdone, the melodies actually have some heft, and, best of all, there’s a welcome paucity of that old Casio keyboard he used to love. I haven’t seen the movie and don’t plan to, but at least I can spoil that the soundtrack is fine. A

Playlist

• Yikes, folks, we’re staring down the barrel of June 17, which, like every Friday, is a perfect Friday for new releases, hopefully good ones! So let’s start with British art-punk/math-rock/indie-rock trio Foals and their seventh album, Life is Yours, just to get it out of the way, because there’s nothing I look forward to messing up each week more than trying to grok the intentions of a band that wants to fall under every category except schottisches played on kazoo and trumpet. No, I’m kidding, for all I know I’ll like this record as much as I have the last few Al Jolson albums. By the by, 1930s Jolson records are really all I’ve really listened to in the car for the last two weeks. When he messes with the lyrics of “Is It True What They Say About Dixie” and changes it to “Is it true what they say about Swanee,” it lights up my heart, reminding me that our species was in fact pretty neat at one short point in history, unlike now. Right. OK, what was I talking about again, oh, yes, Foals. OK, OK, right, these guys, the ones who did “Mountain At My Gates.” That was actually a really good song, like, if you heard it at a sports bar, you’d know it wasn’t the typical sleepy rawk fare you’d hear in such a place; in fact there’s a good chance you’d kind of bob your head along to it while you chew your cheeseburger. What does this mean? It means the hipster press probably didn’t like it, because it’s an actual good song, you know how this goes by now. Right, where were we, OK, the new single “2am.” I see, they’re trying to revive the Black Eyed Peas or LMFAO, whatever, because the beat is bloopy and crunchy, it’s a cross between The Weeknd and some tedious Aughts indie band like Shins or something. People will like this a lot but I really don’t. And yes, I’m being that difficult on purpose, I’m finally admitting it to the world right here, today.

• Dum de dum, how bad will it get this week, gang, how freaking bad could it possibly — wait, what do we have here, it’s Ugly Season, the new album from indie-popper Perfume Genius, real-named Michael Hadreas, whose most popular tune so far has been 2020’s “On The Floor,” a Wham!-style bump-and-grind disco thing. The new album features songs Hadreas wrote for “The Sun Still Burns Here,” an immersive dance project with choreographer Kate Wallich, a show that played in a few American cities in 2019. One of those songs, “Eye In The Wall,” is an unnerving, understated techno thing with wub-wub bits and other weird things. It’s OK.

• Brooklyn, N.Y.-based rapper/singer/actor Joey Bada$$ has done it all: gotten arrested for breaking some poor security guard’s nose; started a really stupid and apparently never-ending Twitter beef with Troy Ave, and landed a role in a cable TV series, Power Book III: Raising Kanan on the Starz network. His new LP, 2000, is coming out imminently and will feature a bunch of songs that are only available in snippet form at this writing, stuff that was inspired by Tupac and all Bada$$’s other rather conventional influences, including an R&B tune that’s chill and sexy enough.

• We’ll wrap up this week with Farm To Table, the second album from indie-rock/jazz-rap dude Bartees Strange, who was born in Britain and forced to grow up in Mustang, Oklahoma, where the population is about 85 percent white, which made for a decidedly miserable experience for Strange, who’s Black. His debut LP, Live Forever, received universal acclaim for its odd mix of influences, which appear again here in the gorgeous new single “Heavy Heart,” a rap-decorated mixture of Hootie and The Blowfish and Coldplay. You should really give this a listen, folks.

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).

Keith Hall, Made In Kalamazoo (Trios And Duos) (Zoom Out Records)

Sparsity, thy name is Made In Kalamazoo, and it has my endorsement for a few reasons. First, it’s nice that a jazz micro-combo led by a drummer starts its debut LP with an extended drum clinic; paradiddles and all sorts of other tricks simply rain from the speakers as something of a warm-up for the rest of what you’ll hear. Second, it’s a cozy, rather endearing statement of homecoming on Hall’s part; he played the New York jazz scene for nearly 10 years before coming back to his Michigan home base, which leads to a third positive here: Sax player Andrew Rathbun is outstanding, as is bassist Robert Hurst III. The recording is clear and pristine, but of course it has to be; this is as analog and stripped down as it gets, and these guys make great hay out of it. “Kzoo Brew” offers an extended bass/drums exercise that has a wonderful throwback feel, and the post-bop found in such pieces as “Douglass King Obama” remind me of Sonny Rollins’s Prestige Records-era output. Intimate and terrifically done. A+

Ianai, Sunir (Svart Records)

You know, every once in a while, we music journos trip over something that’s truly magical and have to chalk it up to fate, or the power of probability. This is one of those ultra-rare happenstances, an astonishing world music-tinged mega-release that will certainly please anyone who likes electronic New Age music, Enya more specifically. The whole thing is amazingly beautiful, evoking wind-swept deserts where a sexless mirage person is beckoning from atop a dune, singing and humming of hope and all that happy stuff. Influences include the native music of Scandinavia, Africa, Asia, Middle East and South America. Not much is known in the wider public about the performers but they’re apparently well-known throughout the music community, as he receives help from members of such bands as Massive Attack, Sisters of Mer-cy and Souvenir Season. Absolutely essential if New Age/yoga class chill is your thing. A+

Playlist

• Friday, June 10, will be the latest in an endless string of all-purpose summertime CD release Fridays, when albums come at us hot and heavy and, on very rare occasions, some are from actual artists who offer the world art rather than irritating nonsense. Speaking of that, have you ever noticed that it’s only country music stars who get married to each other and then get divorced for our entertainment? Just today I was reading a news story about Miranda Lambert dealing with her divorce from glorified used car salesman Blake Shelton last year or whenever it was, and it helped her write new songs for her new album, Palomino, which we talked about in this space a little while back. There are a bunch of those sad divorce stories in the country music world, but I’d like to see some regular non-country stars get married for the heck of it, like Eminem tyin’ the knot with Celine Dion, you know? Marriage stuff makes for great gossip in the country world, but you know who’s having none of that? Carrie Underwood, who’s still married to pro hockey player Mike Fisher! The moral is that love does last, people, even if you’re rich and constantly happy (as long as the nannies show up for work every day). Anyhow, that’s about all the wisdom I can impart on that subject, except to say that Underwood has a new album, Denim & Rhinestones, coming out on June 10, and it will feature a title track that’s pretty good if you like slightly Auto-Tuned female pop vocals and old Mr. Mister beats from 1985. A pleasant enough listen, not that there’s any real point to it.

• Vance Joy is an Australian indie-pop heartthrob whose 2018 full-length Nation Of Two was summarily dismissed by a Guardian writer as “an album of songs about relationships written, seemingly, from the perspective of someone who has learned about them from watching the romcoms Matthew McConaughey was starring in during his dark ages.” It’s hard for me to top that level of snark at the moment, only because I don’t really care about tuneage that’s only going to make it into the overhead speakers at Red Lobster and no farther than that, but I do have to deal with Joy’s new LP, In Our Own Sweet Time, so let’s get this out of the way before I just bag it and write about someone else. OK, so the single “Clarity” is the same sort of dishwasher-safe gruel described above, sounding more or less like Zero 7’s Jose Gonzalez trying to write a particularly pointless Ben Kweller song. There’s a Spanish horn part here that makes it almost bearable, and before that we have a rather animated rockout bit, so maybe it’ll be used as dance floor fodder in virtual bars when Mark Zuckerberg turns Facebook into “the Meta experience,” i.e. a glorified version of Second Life that will assuredly make social media more unbearable than it ever was.

• Uh-oh, guys, take cover, it’s a new album from Billy Howerdel, called What Normal Was. No, seriously, take cover, because this could be dangerously rockin’, as Howerdel is the guitarist from crazily overrated alt-rock outfit A Perfect Circle, the side project of Riff Raff look-alike Maynard James Keenan, of Tool! Yikes, let’s tread carefully, because this might be so awesome I’ll be zapped into dust. OK, I’m going in, guys. Right, the single, “Poison Flowers,” is a more goth version of any random Nine Inch Nails sort-of-ballad, which is fitting, because Howerdel’s band logo rips off Nine Inch Nails’. Awkward. Let’s move along.

• Lastly and leastly, it’s Cali pop-punk zeroes Joyce Manor, with their sixth album, 40 oz. to Fresno! The single, “Gotta Let It Go,” is such a Weezer ripoff that they should just change their band name to Wish We Were Weezer. Good lord, holy crow.

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).