Author: Eric Saeger

10 Miles 2 Neptune, Change (self-released)

This New Hampshire-based fedora-pop duo features singer-songwriters Mike Birch of Derry and Merrimack’s Tammy Jann, who, for the last eight years, have co-run a Nashua-based songwriting group, I’m told, which I take to mean that they’re community-minded, which the state’s music community could always use, wouldn’t you say? Their songs are, as you’d expect, reminiscent of Joni Mitchell, Stephen Stills, all that stuff, you know, Bonnaroo-bait comprising ’60s rock, jam band stuff, and so on and so forth. “The duo’s challenge with their first CD release,” they tell us press people, “was to bring together Tammy’s lyrics and Mike’s music to create songs with an original sound and style.” I’d say that’s true; the songs are quite listenable, and if you’re, you know, a gentle soul who thinks Neil Young is way too heavy metal, you’ll probably like it. The production — which I only bring up because it’s really the only thing local musicians usually care about — is fine. A-

Rich Hinman, Memorial (Colorfield Records)

You know, if the only commercial CDs I received at this desk were all put out by studio hacks who were sick of being considered hacks by music journalism hacks, I’d be spending a lot more of my thesaurus.com time hunting for synonyms for upbeat-sounding adjectives instead of things like “humdrum” and “unlistenable.” Hinman’s pedal steel guitar has made appearances on recording sessions for songs by the likes of k.d. lang, Maren Morris and Amythyst Kiah, and I’m sure I’ve noticed his name on many other things, so I was a bit surprised that this is his first solo album. It’s trippy but kindhearted ambient stuff tilted in a Nel Cline direction; Hinman busies himself most of the time trying to make his pedal steel sound too breezily divine to be a pedal steel, put it that way, and there’s a lot of quirky, awkward but fascinating indie vibe along the way, found sounds turning into endless ringouts, plenty of cavitation, etc. Very listenable. A

Playlist

• Ack, it’s about to get really freezing out there, isn’t it, because the next batch of random CD releases will magically appear on Sept. 22, just two months before Thanksgiving, can you even believe it, folks! In order to avoid thinking about sliding down hopelessly slidey hills in my car, which will be happening any minute now, let’s subject-change to something that’s a zillion times more pleasant, namely sexy singing lady Kylie Minogue, whose new album, Tension, is on the way to the stores, or whatever places people visit to buy stuff and randomly clog the aisles in our super-smart Information Age! Yikes, this song is so sexy and hot, like what Britney was doing for about five minutes, euro-trash trance-pop for runway models to stare vacantly to, I still love this kind of thing. Speaking of velvet-rope hotness, I wonder if Kylie’s ever done a jam with Tiësto, let me go look. Nope, apparently not, but DJ Flyboy once did a mashup of Kylie’s “Confide in Me” and Jonas Blue/Tiësto’s “Ritual.” OK, you have no idea what I’m talking about, do you? That’s a shame!
  
• Unfashionably late-breaking: At this writing I’m hoping to attend a heavy metal rock ’n’ roll concert in Manchester at a place called Angel City Music Hall, a venue located within the Spider Bite building on Elm Street. An old public relations bro named Dave, who’s based in New York City, is helping to push the awesome, awesome New Orleans-based sludge-metal band Crowbar, who will be playing at Angel City on Saturday, Sept. 23, you should totally go!
  
• Whew, I’m glad to report that our culture hasn’t devolved to the point that if you go on Google and type “Lydia L” the first thing the all-knowing search engine suggests isn’t “Lydia Lunch,” but the name right under that is, as it should be, Lydia Loveless, the alt-country indie-rocker, whose new LP, Nothing’s Gonna Stand in My Way Again, is due out in a few hours or whatnot! The teaser track is “Sex And Money,” a strummy mid-tempo gloom-along whose melody sort of reminds me of REO Speedwagon’s “Ridin’ The Storm Out.” Other than that, it’s OK!
  
• I always get Teenage Fanclub mixed up with New Young Pony Club, mostly because I couldn’t care less about either of them! But don’t let that stop you from reading on: Nothing Lasts Forever, the band’s new full-length, floated a single a few months ago called “Foreign Land,” in which they come even closer to sounding like The Byrds than they ever did, which will please you or disgust you depending on your taste!
  
• And finally, let’s look at swamp-monster thrash-metal band Cannibal Corpse, and their latest “slab,” Chaos Horrific! To be completely honest with you, I’m more familiar with the literally thousands of bands that are said to sound like them — for instance whichever one did the Occlused In Occlusity album, which is so obscure that Google is asking me “what the blazes are you even babbling about,” — than I am with Cannibal Corpse itself! But sure, I’ll go listen to one of these new songs, “Summoned For Sacrifice.” It is “spider walking metal” as I call it, like the guitar just does a “boo-bee-dah-boo-DEE-boo-dum-bee” in mid-tempo cadence, it’s perfect musical ambiance for coming at your little brother with a tarantula walking on your arm, which of course you plan to drop in his lap so his bowl of Count Chocula goes flying. And the singer is doing the Cookie Monster thing instead of doing any sort of singing, because it’s really hard for tarantula-owning suburbanites to find actual singers for their garage bands.

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).

Mitski, The Land Is Inhospitable And So Are We (Dead Oceans Records)

Generally speaking, I’m late to the ball with this indie-piano-pop princess, who’s been making albums since 2012. In fact, I wasn’t aware that she’d opened for The Pixies a few years ago, which was what probably prompted Pitchfork Media to give her some reckless love with her 2018 album, Be The Cowboy. Thus she’s truly arrived, following up 2022’s Laurel Hell and its frozen Enya-meets-Goldfrapp timelessness with a new set of tunes bolstered by a choir and an orchestra in some places. She’s moonbatty here on “Bug Like An Angel,” but not to Bjork-level; she’s ultimately too polished and Tori Amos-like for that, but in that strummy track she’s also got some Aimee Mann steez going on. I hope you’re ready for (yet more) Pink Floyd-speed drudge-pop if you’ll be indulging this: In “Star,” she comes off like Lana Del Rey’s lonely, bookish sister, staring up at the sky with hope, brimming with grace, evincing elegance. Only thing to complain about is, as others have stated, the cover’s font, which is ludicrously bad, but aside from that, she has entered the most hallowed of halls, no question. A+

Lauren Calve, Shift (self-released)

So today I learned that “DMV” is an acronym that doesn’t only designate a local Department of Motor Vehicles, it’s also short for the area of the country that comprises “District of Columbia, Maryland and Virginia,” which is where this contemporary rock singer hails from. We can proceed briskly with this; as a rule of thumb, describing a female folk singer with the catchall “contemporary rock singer” generally clues people in to the distinct possibility that the tunes in question sound quite a bit like Sheryl Crow, which is very true in this instance, the album being a collection of inarguably well-written, slightly Americana/bluegrass-tinged songs guided by Tom Petty principles, and yes, she sounds like a more breezy Sheryl Crow during most of them. But she’s also informed by the ’90s-radio-pop I assume she grew up on; she’s obviously into Alanis, being that “Pretend to Forget” sounds like her for (the better) half of the song. Soccer-parent-rock with a jagged little edge; no harm done here. A-

Playlist

• Hear ye, hear ye, and such-and-so, there are new music albums being released on Sept. 15, just like every other Friday! You know, folks, a lot of people ask me, “You’re so eclectic and scattershot with your award-winning music column and your book-writing, you must be super-busy. Are there, like, any bands you wish you had more time to investigate and get to know better?” To that I will honestly reply that I wish I had more time to listen to albums by Savannah, Georgia, sludge-metal band Baroness, because what little I’ve heard of them over the years has always been pretty cool. Of course, then again, I would also be keen on listening to Radiohead until I liked them, like all you coolios do, but I’ve read with great interest the rantings of former Boston Phoenix and Your Band Sucks writer Dr. David Thorpe, who’s tried valiantly but never liked anything Radiohead has ever done; usually he defaults to mocking Thom Yorke for having unnecessary alphabet characters in both of his names! But yes, I’ve heard Baroness before, after being lured into their trip by their awesome album covers, and, truth be told, I didn’t know they had a girl frontperson, and no, the fact that they’re named Baroness didn’t clue me in, smart aleck, who has time to keep up with all this stuff? But look at this, I’m already five years behind in my study of this cool band, because they replaced Summer Welch with Gina Gleason (formerly of Misstallica, the all-female Metallica tribute band) back in 2018, can you even believe it? Right, I know, who cares, the new Baroness LP is Stone, and it’s out this Friday, featuring the latest awesome cover art by the band’s leader (and only consistent member), John Dyer Baizley! I was first exposed to them in 2007, when their Red Album came out, and I was like “what even is this,” like it blended sort-of-progressive metal with some roots-emo sounds and added some pop elements as well. Anyhow, the new record features a single, “Last Word,” that continues the band’s tradition of being a Tool-like band that’s a hundred times better than Tool in mawkish-semi-ballad-mode; it’s actually very accessible for a neo-metal-pop tune, remindful of Isis and Bury Your Dead within the same song. If any of this is news to you, you need to get hip to this band, is what I’m saying.
  
• Yikes, another blast from my questionable past, it’s British neo-soul lady Corinne Bailey Rae, of all people, with a new album titled Black Rainbows! I haven’t heard anything from her since her 2006 self-titled album, believe it or not; her last four albums have actually charted quite high in the U.S., but I haven’t exactly been pelted with Corinne Bailey Rae news over the past few years, probably because her super-nice chill hasn’t led to any big singles here. “Peach Velvet Sky,” her new single, will probably be similarly underserved here; it’s a deeply soulful, really nice piano ballad, in which she dazzles with technical brilliance, meaning no one will get it, since she’s not singing about badonkadonks or whatnot.
  
• Oh, how cool, a new album from Diddy, called The Love Album: Off The Grid! You kids know who he is, right? Nope, not the guy who pretends to play drums for the Weeknd. OK, forget it, he was once a great and powerful rapper, you kids should totally check out the album trailer, featuring Diddy talking about how we’re in the “lev era,” you know, when everyone has private planes or whatever he’s babbling about.
  
• Lastly, it’s ancient dusty stoner mummy Willie Nelson, with an album called Bluegrass! The teaser single, “Still Is Still Moving To Me,” sounds like unplugged Outlaws. It’s not bad, for a song performed by a literal mummy!

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).

Dijahsb, Tasty Raps Vol. 2 [self-released]

This Toronto-based nonbinary rapper has a Polaris Music Prize to their credit, along with a rep for good dramedy, not Skee Lo-level or anything like that, but it’s indeed kind of uplifting hearing of this person’s trials and tribulations and how they’re handling them. Not that this is all frighteningly innovative, mind you; in this follow-up EP, they do a lot of pedestrian name-checking throughout, starting with the wishful-thinking exposé “I Fell Like Rihanna,” where they reference Usher and whatnot amid lines confessing to the end-stage-capitalist woes they’ve suffered through the years. One thing I was OK with was the principal’s constant use of woozy, warped-vinyl effects-age, a gimmick that does get redundant after a couple of songs, but as always it’s better than loud trap-drums (theirs are comparatively way down in the mix, praise Allah). Despite their look, the vocals aren’t tomboyish at all, more representative of the person doing the fronting, a lost soul who’s got a little way to go before they’re ready to show their true feelings, if that even matters these days. A-

Choke Chain, Mortality (Phage Tapes Records)

And there I went again, obediently surfing to an advance link for an album professing to be influenced by the likes of Skinny Puppy, Front Line Assembly, Leæther Strip and all that other seriously dark techno, but at least this time I wasn’t as disappointed as I’ve been so many times before. This Milwaukee-based producer (real name Mark Trueman) is big into beats that are dystopian and unforgiving, and the good thing is that he doesn’t refry every sound in the industrial playbook. It’s not cartoonishly spazzy like Combichrist’s first album or anything like that, but its truly doomy atmospherics will, I think, appeal to the sensibilities of the goth crowd. Includes Trueman’s take on black-metal vocals (a la Deafheaven, amazingly enough, isn’t as common an ingredient in modern industrial as you might expect); the overall effect recalls the work of Terrorfakt, if that rings any bells at all. A+

Playlist

• On Sept. 8 The Chemical Brothers will release a new album, called For That Beautiful Feeling, and I will look forward to it, or something! No, you remember the Chemical Brothers and all those raves you went to at the abandoned warehouses, and the time — uh, yeah, I’d better not tell that story, just forget it, but you remember their old hits, like “Galvanize” and “Block Rockin’ Beats,” I’m sure. Actually, I knew I’d arrived as an official music journalist when the Chemical Brothers’ “people” begged me to write about the remastered version of the album that had the crab on it, and I talked about it here in these very pages, you remember that, right? I liked that album. In the meantime, I’ve been out of the velvet-rope music scene for around 10 years now, and every once in a while someone will send me a ne techno/house/trance album, and they’ll be all like “Hey man, this is a quantum leap forward from where the genre was back in the days of Aphex Twin,” you know, when gentlemen would settle romantic-triangle disputes with dueling pistols at 10 paces, you know, in the good old days. Of course, every single time, like clockwork, the music was nothing new, especially when Britney Spears and all the other Vegas diva singing ladies were all about hiring house and trance producers to make their songs sound 15 years out of date, but the MTV guys were all like “Can you even believe how technologically advanced this stuff is, kids?” and I’d just sit there drinking pink umbrella drinks and trying to ignore the fact that they knew not what they were talking about. But it’s all good, never mind all that, let’s go check in on this album, oh look, the whole thing is available on YouTube, saddle up, folks. Hm, there’s a song called “All Of A Sudden,” which refries 2004-era Tiesto. That’s fine by me, just saying; in fact I think there should be more of that. I’m not going to listen to the whole album, because if that tune is representative of it, it’s throwback stuff. Maybe some skater kids will hear it by accident and it will improve their lives, or at least their artistic sensibilities, it’s all good in my book.

• Irish singer, songwriter and musical-whatever person Róisín Murphy used to be half of the duo Moloko along with British musician Mark Brydon. There’s a slim but real chance that you’ve heard her vocals elsewhere, such as the time she contributed them to David Byrne and Fatboy Slim’s project Here Lies Love, or, even less likely, Crookers’ album Tons of Friends. And such and so, but her new solo album is Hit Parade, which features the new tune “CooCool,” a trip-hop ditty that’s undergirded by an old Wallflowers organ sample or whatever it is. It’s listenable despite the fact that it never really goes anywhere, not that that’s an original approach in the current zeitgeist.

• Relatively obscure Richmond, Virginia, college-radio band Sparklehorse has basically been defunct for over 12 years, since the death of bandleader Mark Linkous, but fans who’ve been awaiting their final LP, Bird Machine, will finally see it released just hours from now. The single, “Evening Star Supercharger,” is a Wilco-ish/George Harrison-ish pop trifle, artistically worthless but OK.

• And lastly, it’s British neo-beatnik Angus Fairbairn, with a new album of sax-jazz and spoken-word stuff, Come With Fierce Grace. One of the tunes, “Greek Honey Slick,” is a skronk-noise exercise with lots of honking sax, no singing nor any point to it, but I’m sure this fellow enjoyed making 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).

Beth Bombara, It All Goes Up (Black Mesa Records)

This Missouri-based singer-songwriter’s trip tacks to a yodely Sarah MacLachlan-by-way-of-Christine McVie angle: really pretty Americana-tinged songs with a mature, astute, well-settled vibe that will surprise you if you’re inquisitive enough to seek her out (with so many choices out there, I’m trying to save you some time here). If she’d appeared in the ’60s, begging the same audience as Joni and Carole and whatnot, you’d know her name like the back of your hand, but it’s current-year and all that, so unfortunately you’re left with hacks like me trying to nudge you in her direction. As you can see, unlike so many critics who try to show off their knowledge of one-off SXSW obscurities, I do aim for the more general audience this would appeal to, although in the meantime there’s some subtlety afoot that’s assuredly indie, mostly taking the form of Wilco-infused, murkily rendered guitar arpeggios, which I’m a sucker for (who isn’t?). Well worth a listen. A+

Jonathan Scales Fourchestra, Re-Potted (self-released)

Some of you already know that I’m pretty particular about my island-vacation vibe, like I absolutely cannot stand Jimmy Buffett, and so on. No, if you’ve ever gotten to a club or two in Costa Rica or whatever, you know that steel pan drums, timbales and all that stuff are omnipresent, at least in the places where the more adventurous tourists dare to tread (doffs cap). So this is that vibe in stripped-down form: Scales handling the steel pan drums, E-Lon JD on bass and Maison Guidry on the drum kit. I haven’t name-checked Weather Report’s Night Passage album in (hopefully) a couple of months, but the feel here is exactly that, sans a sax and Joe Zawinul of course, but in order to bring it into current-year, there’s some Eminem-style rapping during the closer track “Gravitropism,” and it fits perfectly. JD’s bass is busier than Mother Teresa making the rounds at Leper Triage Central; it carries this release to a major extent. A+

Playlist

• Oh, no, please tell me it’s not happening already, it can’t be September already, but it is, the list of new CD releases for Friday, Sept. 1, is right there, staring me in the face! Let’s start with The Pretenders, led as always by Chrissie Hynde, who, last we knew, had fallen victim to some cancel culture stuff that we can skip for now, being that it barely made a dent in her rep (she basically ignored it, which is precisely what you’re supposed to do if you find yourself getting yelled at by a ridiculously large number of people online), and besides, I’ve totally forgotten what it was all about; I mean, I’m no right-wing dude at all, I assure you, but if you’re keeping a complete chronological history of it all, you’re trying too hard; at this point no good will ever come from it. Either way, Chrissie is my goddess. Did you know she did some stuff with The Damned back in the early Mesozoic Era? OK, where were we, oh yes, the band’s new album is called Relentless, and it is their 12th, which does seem something of a low number, wouldn’t you say? Chrissie and her — I mean, the band’s guitarist, James Walbourne, wrote all the songs by collaborating remotely, which has become more and more of a thing, not just with bands but with workplaces in general. The whole album is available to listen to now on YouTube (you know what to do if you want to rip it to your MP3 player, right friends? Don’t do it, though), but for our purposes we’ll check out the leadoff single “Let The Sun Come In.” Ack, it’s a slow-ish rocker that sounds like a team-up between Chrissie and something like Hall & Oates. I am not prepared for this. Someone say it isn’t so.

• British dreampop band Slowdive named themselves after a Siouxsie and The Banshees song, a practice I’ve always thought was, like, really stupid, but I can’t have everything go my way I guess. The band’s 1993 album Souvlaki is widely considered to be one of the greatest shoegaze albums of all time, but that brings us to now, and their fast-approaching new full-length, Everything Is Alive, so we’ll just see about all this “Slowdive is awesome” jibber-jabber, now, won’t we. Come to think of it, I don’t think I’ve properly covered a shoegaze album in months now, mostly because no new ones have come out as far as I know. So the new single, “Skin In The Game,” is certainly My Bloody Valentine-ish in its way, very ’80s, for instance the dude singer takes a whispering-for-the-sake-of whispering vocal approach, blah blah blah, but wait, there are art rock guitars, which is mildly interesting. The only thing I can definitely predict is that there surely must be far better songs on this album, that’s really it.

• Aside from weird devil-metal bands with band logos that are completely unreadable, the only bands that are allowed to become famous in Sweden are electro-pop bands, everyone knows that. Why, look at this duo over here, Icona Pop, composed of — oh forget it, I’m not going to try typing these weird Swedish names, whoever they are, they’re about to release their new album, Club Romantech, in just a few minutes, literally! Huh, look at that, they’re on Ultra Records, the old house/trance label that has all the big Armand van Helden-clone DJs and whatnot, this is going to be good, let’s vitit YouTube and see! Yup, the single “Where Do We Go From Here” is mindless dance fun, not too strange, just dancey and sexy, you’d like this.

• Finally let’s look at Northampton, Mass., indie-rockers Speedy Ortiz’s new LP, Rabbit Rabbit. Huh, the single, “Plus One,” is ’90s riot-grrrl-grunge but with an interesting time signature. These people are OK!

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).

Mariion Christiian, “Still Water” / “The Weight of Things” (EMG Records)

You’d file this new EP somewhere between Above & Beyond and Tiesto, and yes, it’s that good. Christian is known as a veteran producer who has a way with melodies that “articulate emotions in a way that words simply cannot,” which was evident on his 2022 “Bleu EP,” but it does come into sharper focus on this new release, where you’re never quite sure where the beat’s going to shift to next, but it’s singularly pleasant. The Los Angeles-based producer is big on brevity at this point, obviously; he’s more into afterparty vibe as opposed to club bangers and such. “Still Water” has a 1980s feel to it, but it’s steeped in the sort of bright, sparkly stuff you may have raved to back in the day; “The Weight of Things” is more on the Aphex Twin/Orbital side, soaring with soprano samples and a shuffling rhythm that’s pretty irresistible really. He’s been known to doof around with sub-tribal stuff reminiscent of Tangerine Dream; it’ll be interesting to see what he does next. A+

Will Butler + Sister Squares, Will Butler + Sister Squares (Merge Records)

This Butler isn’t the one who basically ruined Arcade Fire by getting in very hot water by racking up some sexual harassment charges. That’s Win, not Will; Will is Win’s younger brother, who’s teamed up here with Sister Squares, a group of four peeps with backgrounds in classical music, Broadway (Sara Dobbs had a run as Anybodys in West Side Story), choreography and such, and one of them is Will’s wife. This album opens with a mopey intro, then launches into “Stop Talking,” which could pass for an unreleased, too electro-sounding single by the Tubes (please tell me someone out there remembers those guys). “Willows” is jangly cowboy-hat indie, tuneful in its way; “Me And My Friends” has some goth-stompiness to it; “Arrow Of Time” is a campy nod to Flaming Lips, and so on and so forth. This really isn’t bad at all, and seeing that Arcade Fire is sinking fast, with bands dropping out of their tours, it’s a smart move on Butler’s part, not for nothin’. A-

Playlist

• On to the new CD releases for Aug. 25, folks, up and at ’em, let’s do this, don’t give me that face, and now for a special message. If you’re a Facebook Friend of mine, you know that I’m trying to get on Fritz Wetherbee’s show on WMUR TV’s New Hampshire Chronicle, a show in which Fritz, between costume changes to adjust the color and raw awesomeness of his bow tie du jour, talks to you, the audience who’s sitting there eating leftover KFC, about how this or that super-small town in our beloved Granite State was once visited by Gen. George Washington, whoever that is, and someone who was probably French once invented a device to milk goats or whatnot and got rich, which led to his being tried and hung as a warlock. Anyway, I expect I’ll get a message from Fritz any day now, begging me to come on, and I want to be musically prepared with the right tunes for my visit, so that he won’t freak out that I don’t only listen to scratchy 1920s Ray Noble records and kick me off his show! No, I seriously do want to be the next Fritz; if Fritz ever decides he has had it, I would be glad to take over his show.

In the meantime I’m trying to find some music to talk about in this week’s column, some dulcet tunes that’ll prove to Fritz that I should be the new Fritz, on TV, talking about goat witches and etc., so hey, everyone, remember to help spread the hashtag #MakeSaegerTheNewFritz whenever you post to your favorite social media hellscape.

OK, I did take a gander at the new releases coming out on the 25th, and there was nothing about driving around with Petunia in a Model T, but wouldn’t you know it, there’s a new album coming out that day from old-time American bluegrass/string-band throwbacks Old Crow Medicine Show! Titled Jubilee, it features the song “Miles Away,” a folksy bluegrass-gasm that perfectly fits all the song’s video’s scenery of random wooden bridges in places that remind me of Spofford Lake, N.H., which would be a great place for Fritz and me to visit when we shoot our first episode of the show, driving around in an original vintage Stanley Steamer, just waving at the locals who’ve never seen an automobile before. Remember to use that hashtag, folks, let’s make this happen, I’m 100 percent serious about this.

• Let’s see, what else have we here — blah blah blah, whatever — OK, wait, Fritz will dig this, I’m sure he used to get crazy to Alice Cooper albums on eight-track back in the days, when he was in college with all the wacky weed and such, and look, gang, Alice has a new album coming out right now, called Road! The first single is titled “I’m Alice,” and it sounds a little like “Elected,” but then again, what Alice Cooper song doesn’t? There’s some fiddle in there too, and if I’m chosen to become the new Fritz, it will be the theme song for my New Hampshire Chronicle segments, the first of which will cover my investigation of the town of Stewartstown, N.H., which is so close to Canada that you can practically taste the maple-flavored poutine!

• Fritz would probably like North Carolina band Hiss Golden Messenger, because it too is indie-folk and country. The quintet’s new LP, Jump For Joy, wields the single “Shinbone,” a mellow, woozy track that sounds like a drunk Tom Petty.

• Lastly, it’s B-52s singer Cindy Wilson, with an album called Realms. The single, “Midnight,” is Berlin-ish ’80s-krautrock-dance. It’s OK, and don’t forget the hashtag #MakeSaegerTheNewFritz, 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).

Bluphoria, Bluphoria (Edgeout Records/UMe)

I’m late to the ball by a couple of months on this one, the debut LP from this northern California-based alt-rock band, whose guitarist/frontman Reign LaFreniere is a Black dude who grew up on stuff like Hendrix, Dylan, James Brown, Pink Floyd and whatnot; he’s all about retaking the hard-ish-rock genre back to its roots, and for that he should be thanked, sort of, I suppose. Produced by Mark Needham (Imagine Dragons, Mt. Joy, The 1975, others), it’s a mixed bag of throwback-bar-band-microwaving. Opener “Set Me Up” is blatantly ’80s, a kissin’ cousin to Greg Kihn’s “The Break Up Song” with a Lenny Kravitz buzz to it (not reaching for the handiest reference there, either, it just is); “Believe in Love” is a cross between dance-floor Prince and the main theme from Footloose. Harmless, idiotic fun throughout. The closest they’ll come to New Hampshire during their current tour is the Middle East Upstairs in Cambridge, Mass., on Nov. 9. B

James Rivera’s Metal Wave, New Wave Gone Metal (Massacre Records)

In “am I the only one who thinks the ’80s rebirth has overstayed its welcome” news, this is a project from former Helstar singer Rivera, 10 New Wave tunes re-rubbed as hair-metal versions, and the only really interesting thing about this, to me anyway, is the fact that no one’s done it before, unless they have, not that I want to find out. OK, strike that, be nice Saeger, the concept does work in some of the tries, for instance the rub of Bauhaus’s “Bela Lugosi’s Dead”; I always thought the original version was kind of lumpy and dumb, and some Ozzy-style guitar definitely breathes new life into it, even if Rivera’s campy vocals border on Weird Al level. Wasn’t a big fan of the version of The Ramones’ “Pet Sematary,” being that the original track was fine; same goes for the Cure’s “Love Song.” The band’s take on Tears For Fears’ “Everybody Wants To Rule The World” is so well-deservedly awful toward a Mercyful Fate manner that it’s the best on board. A hearty “meh” to this. B-

Playlist

• I haven’t trawled through this week’s list of new CD releases that can only be found on the top-secret list we professional music journos consult when we put on our nappy fez hats and begin writing our edgy newspaper columns (psst, Amazon.com is the most reliable place, really, but we always tell readers we use Metacritic, just so you’ll think we’re actual wizards), so I don’t yet know what rock ’n’ roll albums are coming out this Friday, Aug. 18. There’s a reason for my telling you all this; it’s because I predict that a holiday album will be in the list, being that Christmas is so close (anyone have some liquid nitrogen I could spray on myself to get a little relief from all the insane heat?), so let’s have at it, let’s look at the list and see who’s going to be the first dumb band/artiste to take the plunge this year and try to impress us rock journos with their polite renditions of “O Holy Night” and whatever, even though, ironically enough, said band/artiste is most famous for “having beefs” and/or getting arrested and publicly canceled for some totally Christmas-y act of sexual depravity or etc., let me go take a gander here, dum de dum — Ack! Ack! I win, and I’m not kidding, I hadn’t looked at the list yet: It’s actress/singer Renee Rapp, who plays Leighton Murray in the HBO Max series The Sex Lives of College Girls, with an album called Snow Angel! The title track has a happy-gloom-chill feel to it, like Lana Del Rey, except Rapp’s singing is more gimmicky/interesting than that, sort of yodel-y. OK, it’s not a hardcore Christmas tune, but it is definitely Christmas-minded, toward a calculated, corporate fashion, because the lyrics don’t include words like “Christmas tree” or “Kringle,” but there are references to frozen noses and boyfriends, so tough noogies, guys, I’m calling it, I win, so let’s hop on Yukon Cornelius’ North Pole sleigh and go be Christmas-y and independent together! Wahoooo!

• Oh, look, the guys in the garage-punk band originally named Orinoka Crash Suite have changed the band’s name again, this time to Osees! Actually, I’m a day late and a dollar short or something, because their new album, Intercepted Message, is their fourth one released under the new moniker, isn’t it the best when bands change their names and you have to spend a good 10 percent of your column explaining that to your readers instead of describing their music? I sure do, and I probably went over this whole sordid story the last time I talked about them in this space, but we’re almost out of room for talking about this new LP, so what say we take a listen to the new single, “Stunner!” OK, it’s a cross between Flaming Lips and Primus, more or less, “boasting” a bunch of whirring space-guitar-noise and vocals that are in the Captain Beefheart realm, which means — oh, whatever, I’m not going to try to get pedagogic about this nonsense, it’s a joke song, whatever, let’s move this along.

• The three dudes from The Xcerts are originally from Scotland, but now they want to be called a British band because they moved to England. Kind of sad, isn’t it? They were around 13 years old when they first formed the band, and their upcoming fourth LP is Learning How To Live And Let Go. One of the tunes, “Blame,” has some art-rock guitar to it, but the vocals are pretty Weezer-ish, if your stomach could tolerate something of that ilk.

• We’ll call it a wrap with New York City-based rocker Margaret Glaspy, whose new album, Echo The Diamond, is on the way, spearheaded by the single “Act Natural,” which features Glaspy doing a Kate Havnevik warble over a rudimentary guitar riff. Not much to say about this one really.

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).