Author: Eric Saeger

Ghostkeeper, Multidimensional Culture (Victory Pool Records)

I suppose I wasn’t prepared for how much a band said to combine “elements of ‘60s girl-group melodies, country music, ‘90s indie rock, African pop, and traditional Aboriginal pow wow music” would come off like the soundtrack band from a late 1970s no-budget hippie-horror film, but there it is. I mean, I like this record overall (which means nothing, really; it won’t be getting into my summer mix CD rotation, to be sure); it’s probably good for one’s soul to hear a dude singer pontificating over a retro soul beat that’s decorated in Mellotron keyboards right out of Donovan during his peak acid-trip era. This quartet is from Calgary, Canada, but it’s not like anything you might be imagining; in fact the scene there does seem to be heavy into psychedelica and such. To cut to the chase, this is like Woodstock vibe retrofitted for Generation iPhone. It’s not annoying at all, which is all that’s needed in this zeitgeist as far as I’m concerned. A

Devil Master, Ecstasies Of Never Ending Night (Relapse Records)

By now you know how much I enjoy bragging about the endless promo releases that land on this desk. It doesn’t take much to get my full attention (and while I’m at it, if you’re in a local band that has an official release and wants a review in this space, really, send a message to my Facebook, it’s the only reliable method), but, as you’ve seen, I do tend to go for albums that have some sort of horror angle, like this one. That said, normally I ignore albums that are just schlocky, but in this case the title and concept (real devil worship) just hit me with a Stupid Stick, and here we are. The title track opens up this one with ’60s surf guitar more or less, and then comes the Raging Speedhorn-style doom-thrashing and all the other stuff that’s made Relapse my by-far-favorite indie metal label. The balance forward is prototypical death metal with an early Mastodon edge, with un-ironic titles like “Golgotha’s Cruel Song.” Beelzebub music done right. A

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).

Curse Of Lono, People In Cars (Submarine Cat Records)

Well this is nice, even though I’m not big into Lou Reed. Now, that’s not to say it’s a whole lot like Lou Reed, but that’s the first tangible feel to the third LP from this London band, which, like so many U.K. collaborations, has an obvious fetish for the American South; there’s slide guitar on here, as well as a lot of really agreeable, quite pretty Americana vibe. I suppose I really need to elaborate on the Lou Reed reference, though, just to be clear; singer/bandleader Felix Bechtolsheimer’s voice evokes a dude serenading himself absently while noodling around with his bobblehead collection, in case you need an explainer. So it’s pleasant and unobtrusive in that way, and despite the indefatigably urban PR source that sent me this, it’s very, very accessible and should please fans of Wilco who wouldn’t mind a little more Amos Lee added to that core sound. Not a thing wrong here. A

Focus, “Aether”/”Sequinox” (Dissident Music)

I’m telling you, folks, I’m really trying to support good progressive-house music (and this stuff here isn’t just good, it’s great), but the assumed knowledge on the part of these Beatport-dependent artists (and their utterly incompetent PR flaks) is really getting on my last raw nerve. I’ve already been through two pages of Google trying to get the deets on exactly who this person or soundsystem is, but the only clue I remain left with is a count-’em 180-word blurb sheet that indicates this two-song upcoming-album-tease is the work of one guy who’s from somewhere in Florida, and that’s it. Is it something I’ve never heard before (and mind you, house DJ stuff was what kept me writing for the all-night-club-centric Miami New Times for about a year, like, I really do like it a lot when it’s done well)? No, it is not, but trust me when I say this is up there, meaning Above & Beyond/ Armand Van Helden-level. Beach vibes, lovely synth lines, sexy vocals, all the ingredients in place. Recommended of course, but man, this whole cult needs to lay down some entry-level carpet so that the genre ceases being so insular and unapproachable to newbies. Holy freaking crow. A+

PLAYLIST

• Uh-oh, it’s May 20 and you know what that means. I mean, I hope you do, because I don’t, all I know is that there will be new albums, and our purpose here is for me to try to hypnotize you so you’ll avoid the bad new albums and just buy the good ones, if there are any. Since my little Jedi mind trick never works anyway, let’s reverse-psychology this thing for once and kick things off with an album that I’d actually recommend, only because it is an album by farm-girl-turned-edgy-goth-queen Zola Jesus, and its title is Arkhon. I’ve talked about her before because I find her quite fascinating; her music combines electronic, industrial, classical and goth into a fricassee of weird, which has gotten her gigs doing her weird act at venues like urban museums and whatnot. She’s guested on songs by Orbital, M83 and Hollywood Vampires, so she’s like one of the coolest people ever born, but she spent a lot of her early life in North Dakota with literally no one around but her parents. I know, that’s how most people are living now anyway, but whatever, what I’m saying is she’s like a David Lynchian version of a ghost girl, and she causes trouble in the music industry whenever she can, so that makes her a good person no matter what this new single, “Lost,” might sound like. As is her habit, the video is a cinematic treasure, there she is, trudging around in the snow with a bunch of sticks, and there are all these weird mountains around, but it could be a scene from someplace that actually exists — yes, it does, the video was shot in Turkey, at Argos in Cappadocia. The music is really epic, a creepy industrial vibe, and she’s singing in a pretty chant style with the echo knob cranked all the way. So she puts down the bundle of sticks, picks up a torch and goes into this mountain cave, and she starts seeing visions of herself as some sort of Turkish goth goddess, and it makes no sense from there, but the song is really cool, kind of New Age-y but goth and spooky. You’ll probably dig it if there’s the slightest trace of cool in your DNA.

• Half the people who saw the movie The Eternals thought it was stupid and had no character development, and the other half were all like, “Cool, another excuse for me to wear my Captain America jammies!” I’m totally sick of Marvel movies and just wish they’d stop, but if you saw The Eternals, you got to see Harry Styles for two seconds, during one of those stupid mid-credits things at the end, you know, when your date really needs to use the bathroom but you can’t because maybe if you don’t wait for the credits to rattle off the 42,858 animators it took to make another one of Marvel’s glorified Popeye cartoons, you’ll miss extra footage. Anyway, Styles is also a boyband tin idol, and he has a new album on the way, called Harry’s House. Since Harry has a fondness for selling out, he loves him some ’80s music (for now), so the first single, “As It Was” commits petty theft against A-ha’s “Take On Me” and then, even with that brainless pop tune serving as its, ahem, template, becomes tedious and trite. OK.

• Wait a second, some good local-ish news, as Methuen, Mass., band Cave In releases its newest LP, Heavy Pendulum, through the mighty Relapse Records label! The singer is kind of normal, kind of Alice in Chains-ish, but the music is doomy and maniacally heavy, think Crowbar and whatnot. Good for these guys.

• We’ll close up shop this week with another actual-good album, Raw Data Feel, from U.K. art-rock band Everything Everything! The song “Bad Friday” is pure genius, a fast-paced vocal thing that reads like a cross between Bone Thugs and Bruno Mars. You should go check this out this instant.

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).

Slow Crush, Hush (Quiet Panic Records)

Honestly, we may as well just forget genre-pigeonholing at this point; it’s as if all history has been forgotten, not that that’s the most horrible thing. This Belgian, female-fronted shoegaze band managed to latch onto an opening slot on tour with straight-ahead metal band Pelican, which, to me, is a ridiculous combination, but who knows, indie bands gotta do what they gotta do these days; pretty much all their money comes from shows now, so, oh well, carry on. My Bloody Valentine is probably the most common RIYL bullet point with these guys, although album-opener “Drown” is more along the lines of a Lana Del Rey bedroom warmup, but from there the proceedings do commence, with the apocalyptic “Blue,” which does have a mud-metal tint to it a la No Joy, Ringo Deathstarr and whatnot. “Swoon” is a speedier little joint; imagine an insanely sexy stab at a James Bond movie-title-theme that’s about five years ahead of its time. No new ground broken, but nothing wrong either. B+

HeatWave International, We Won’t Be Silent (Give/Take Records)

This goth-techno maxi-single — basically one tune and two remixes thereof — was presented to me as the work of a supergroup of sorts, one led by Baja, California,-based Mario Alberto Cabada, chief of the No Devotion Records imprint (and probably Give/Take Records as well, which put out this record). He’s obviously big into Depeche Mode and the zillion other bands that claim to be DM disciples but which always seem to sound a lot like this stuff, typical Metropolis Records gruel that evokes latter-day Gary Numan as interpreted by Germans, like BackAndToTheLeft and whatnot. I applaud the effort if not the result so much, and oh, I forgot to mention that the other “superstar” band members on board for this joint are sometime Ministry keyboard guy John Bechdel, Panoptica’s Roberto Mendoza, and Ant Banister from Sounds Like Winter. I’ve been under a rock as far as being aware of the latest and greatest latex-club bands, so it’s not wildly surprising that I’ve never heard of any of these guys, but either way, the song and its reiterations are neo-Bauhaus-y but, in the end, nothing I’d whole-heartedly recommend. B

PLAYLIST

• May 13 is the next traditional day for album releases, because it is a Friday. Yes, a Friday the 13^th in the Age of Apocalypse, I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait to see what will happen! Whatever else is in store, we’ll see the release of the album These Actions Cannot Be Undone from Gentle Sinners, a one-off project by singer James Graham of post-punk/indie rock band The Twilight Sad, and Aidan Moffat of Arab Strap. Both of those gentlemen are from Scotland, but I know what you’re thinking: What care I about The Twilight Sad? The answer is nothing at all, because I’ve never heard of them, but I’ve definitely heard of Arab Strap; they’re sort of a post-indie deconstructionist project, which is fancy-speak for “They’re kind of rad and creepy,” something like that. I haven’t particularly liked anything I’ve heard from Arab Strap, but the dude sings with a Scottish accent, as does James Graham, if I’m reading this promo sheet correctly. That’s sort of annoying, because any voice teacher will tell you that people’s accents tend to disappear when they’re singing, but I’ve told you that before already, so let’s dispense with the preliminaries and waddle over to YouTube, so I can be annoyed by whatever Gentle Sinners have put up as far as advance music for this album. There’s a bunch of songs to choose from, and I randomly selected “Face To Fire (After Nyman),” which starts with a typical AC/DC guitar line except it’s being played as a bagpipe sample (remember, they’re from Scotland). Then the muddy, no-wave guitar line comes in and the whole thing just starts getting worthless, like a cross between Violent Femmes and Melvins. Would you listen to something like that for an entire album? If so, why would you?

• But wait a minute, the whole slate isn’t stupid this week, because look over there, guys, it’s the Pride of Akron, Ohio, The Black Keys, with a new LP titled Dropout Boogie, here to save the day! You know this indie-rock band from hits like “Tighten Up,” which won a Best Rock Performance Grammy in 2011; with its megaphoned vocal and sloppy not-quite-muddy guitar, it was the perfect throwback-blues/Spoon-wannabe tune for the Molson beer commercial it soundtracked. That’s how things work these days: band makes halfway decent song; band gains street cred; band blows all their street cred by selling their song to some corporate guy with a duffel bag full of money; music bloggers pretend not to notice; band gets away with it. As for Dropout Boogie, the single is “Wild Child,” a ’70s-rock-radio-style tune that sounds too much like Joe Walsh’s “Funk #49” for my taste, which means my haters will think it’s the best thing since sliced olive loaf. Bon appétit.

• Sacré bleu, what in tarnation could possibly be next up, gang? Wait, I know, it’s someone I’ve never heard of, named Yves Jarvis, whose new album, The Zug, is here, on my hallowed docket! Can’t believe I have to do this stuff for you ingrates [incoherent grumbling] — OK, this human is actually Jean-Sébastien Yves Audet, a Canadian experimental musician who used to call himself Un Blonde. So, the single, “Bootstrap Jubilee,” is actually really cool, a gently hip 12-string loop bopping along underneath a breezy but sturdy vocal line. I looked into this a bit more, and he’s kind of like Donovan reincarnated for Generation Ringtone, definitely worth a check-in, folks.

• We’ll pull up the stumps on this week’s nonsense with former Woods singer-guitarist Kevin Morby and his new LP, This Is A Photograph. The title track is a Woodstock-tinged folk-stomper, very fun, really cool stuff.

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).

Sue Jeffers, Up With the Masses (FBI Records)

I’m a bit late to the party with this full-length, but this veteran folkie’s messages are timeless until further notice; she eschews widening the typical (and oh-so-unconstructive) red-vs.-blue divide in favor of a far more positive worker-unification slant in the manner of Woody Guthrie. So, yeah, you can smell the patchouli from here, but she’s got the receipts, being that she’s old enough to have known what was going on in her former town of Kent, Ohio, when the tin soldiers and Nixon showed up to squash the Vietnam War protests. Yeah, she was there, right in the thick of all that, so she knows to tread a bit lightly when confronting the issues of our time. Over gentle acoustic strums and piano tinkling, Jeffers volunteers her Marianne Faithfull-ish warble for service in the Black Lives Matter cause (“Lives Stolen”) and protest chestnuts (a cover of Woody Guthrie’s “1913 Massacre”), but her best moment comes when she flexes a Bob Dylan-ish knack for working-person’s lyricism while calling for a general strike in her “Essentially Expendable,” where she proves that her generation is still plugged into all our grim realities. A

Christian Lee Hutson, Quitters (ANTI Records)

I’m sure it must be pretty weird to live in Los Angeles to begin with. Despite the fact that I know a few people from there who seem really nice and not so — I don’t know, self-serving, disposable and/or fame-hungry as I’ve caricatured in my head, I still picture L.A. as a place that’s even more impossible to conquer than New York City simply because normies expect less from its star-making machinery. Contrast that with this busking, Sufjan Stevens-ish songwriter’s experience of it, a place that’s got a soul in there somewhere, whether we northern Vikings can believe it or not, and its denizens are well aware of its temporariness: It’s “a place where everything in the end gets blown away and paved over with something new, where even the ocean and fires are always whispering, ‘One day we’ll take it all back.’” So these songs are pretty, banjo-and-dojo-lazing things, Americana with only the slightest West Coast tint, occasionally bursting into full big-production bombast. This guy’s really good, is what I mean. A

PLAYLIST

• Hey, man, if there’s anything that’ll get us through these hard times, it’s great rock ’n’ roll, you know? I’m still waiting for that very thing, but you never know what a fresh batch of new releases will bear, maybe there will be some keen and groovy and awesome and dope rock ’n’ roll in the barrel of new stuff coming out on May 6, and as always, I have every expectation that my mind will be blown, so I’m going to look at what’s coming our way, right now! Uh-oh, maybe I spoke too soon, because what to my wondering eyes should appear but none other than fluffy whitebread-twee silly-willies Belle and Sebastian, with their new album, A Bit Of Previous! Oy vey, they’re still a band, I can’t believe it, but I’m forcing myself to keep an open mind, because maybe this will sound unlike anything they’ve ever done before, and I won’t have to wash my ears out with Iggy Pop or Al Jolson after I subject myself to the new single, “Unnecessary Drama.” Huh, the song doesn’t start out like the usual dreck that made them famous; there’s someone playing a harmonica, and there’s some actual rock ’n’ roll going on — aaaand it’s awful, the chorus is something that belongs on an old episode of Gilmore Girls in which the whole town of Faerie Depot or whatever they call it is just cold rockin’ out and banging their heads around the town gazebo while a bunch of grandfathers bring down the hipster thunder, and there’s Rory Gilmore giving awkward glances at Sebastian Bach or whatever annoying boy she was dating in that show. Wait, maybe someone will smash a guitar and raise my pulse past clinically dead level — hm, nope. Nope. Thanks for nothing as always, Belle and Sebastian! (Serious question, does anyone still listen to awkward-’n’-quirky aughts-era twee for enjoyment anymore? Hasn’t it gone the way of Milli Vanilli and Chuck Berry by now? No?)

• Wait a second, whoa, this might be OK, it’s a new album from Sacramento, Calif., indie-rock band !!! (No, that’s their actual band name, one of the stupidest ones ever invented; it’s so stupid that every time someone writes about them, they have to add “[Chik Chik Chik]” so people will know who they’re talking about, isn’t that so aughts-indie?). No, funny story, the other week someone on Twitter asked the entire internet what they thought was the best bass line ever, and I tweeted that it was the bass line from !!!’s tune “Myth Takes,” and nobody hit Like on my tweet because no one on Twitter cares about music except when rappers get into “beefs.” Anyway, good lord, folks, YouTube can’t even find anything from this new !!! album, Let It Be Blue, because it probably crashes YouTube’s server whenever someone inputs “!!!” in the search thingie. Do you now see how stupid that band name is? OK, I tricked it, and am now listening to the single, “Storm Around The World.” It’s basically like Modest Mouse but more urban-asphalt-y, mid-tempo, mildly funky. It’s OK.

• Canadian pop-punkers Simple Plan are back, with their sixth album, Harder Than It Looks, and its single, “Congratulations,” which probably sounds like a Blink-182 B-side. Yup, it does, no need to sacrifice any further syllables on this.

• We’ll close the week with wine-indie Canadians Arcade Fire, whose new LP, WE, is here, just to annoy me. No, I’ll shut up, there are a couple of Arcade Fire songs I’ve liked, and this new single, “The Lightning I, II” is nice and bombastic and hormonal, a song that will work great while you chug Red Tail chardonnay and fill out your divorce papers or whatever people usually do when they listen to Arcade Fire.

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).

May Erlewine, Tiny Beautiful Things (Warner Records)

Some really gentle, very pretty stuff here engineered for comfortably settled womenfolk who enjoy sipping chai tea while gazing out the window at lazy rains. This Maggie Gyllenhaal lookalike is from Big Rapids, Michigan, and drew her inspiration for this full-length from the similarly titled book by Rumpus advice columnist Cheryl Strayed. Erlewine has the perfect voice for such a thing, wedged somewhere between Natalie Imbruglia and Jewel, and the songs fit like your favorite super-thick socks, laid-back but earning attention as they putter along. The instrumental bits are always pleasurable, with piano, dobro, acoustic guitar working pretty much perfectly together to form pieces that evoke Americana and AOR-pop at the same time. “Your Someone” is outstanding, fluttering along on silken wings and really blooming at the chorus; “He Knows” borders on Taylor Swift’s early days (when she wrote actual songs); “Could Have Been” flirts with Billie Holiday torch. I can’t find anything wrong with this album at all. A+

Meshuggah, Immutable (Atomic Fire Records)

Oh man, are these guys good, and that’s coming from someone who’s basically a newcomer to their greatness, given that I generally avoid thrash metal and missed out on their stuff for seven full albums (I’ve still got a lot of catching up to do). Immutable is their ninth full-length, and the draw is, as always, Tomas Haake, the drummer for this Swedish tech-metal juggernaut. Here it is, if you want some juxtaposition in order to grok the technical abilities at work here: Dillinger Escape Plan is first-grade math, Meshuggah is quantum calculus. If I were stuck on a desert island with only one record, this one would be in the running as my choice, since it would take a lot of listens simply to understand what’s going on here, which is, namely, very advanced syncopated patterns and polyrhythms, a lot like progressive jazz in a way, as others have noted. But the base of the recipe isn’t post-bop, it’s thrash-metal that has to be heard to be believed. If the above is all old news to you, the first Godzilla-playing-with-a-bunch-of-telephone-poles tune is “The Abysmal Eye,” taking the band’s patented approach that just never gets old. Astonishing. A+

PLAYLIST

• Ay caramba, it’s already the last week of April, and there will be new albums coming your way on the 29th! There’s so many of them for me to pick and choose from this week, so let’s start with 900-year-old bong-collector Willie Nelson, whose 900th album, A Beautiful Time, is winging its way in trucks to the five people who still buy CDs at full retail price! Funny coincidence, I asked a friend whom he thought would make a great president of the United States, and he said Willie Nelson, so maybe that really isn’t just a meme, what do you think? I’ll tell you what I think, I think it’s one of the dumbest ideas I ever heard, having a bong in every room of the White House, and would he offer the Pope cannabis gummies when he came by? I don’t like it, and I probably won’t like this upcoming album’s first single either, it’s called “I’ll Love You Till The Day I Die,” but I’m going to find out right now. So there’s a video for it, and he’s stacking some playing cards on some table in a honky-tonk bar or something, and the song is a typical country-and-western slow-burner, about some girl he once talked to for a few minutes, but that short conversation changed him forever. There is slow piano and thoughtful strumming, in case you couldn’t possibly picture what might be going on here.

• Grammy-winning country songstress Miranda Lambert is known as the other person to marry Blake Shelton, and the first person to place third in the USA Network’s Nashville Star talent show, but that placement was enough to make her into a famous singer, so keep your chins up, people who place third in things. Lambert’s ninth full-length, Palomino, features a tune called “Music City Queen,” and I was actually kind of interested to hear it, because 1980s weirdos The B-52’s are guests on that song, but naturally there’s no advance of that song yet, so it looks like I’m stuck listening to a different single, called “Strange,” which is just a normal tune. She kind of sounds like Dolly Parton when she’s singing on this tune; it’s a pedestrian joint with an unplugged guitar part, then a Reba McEntire part and so on. It’s OK!

• When it comes to stomping industrial-rock madness, I don’t think German band Rammstein is relevant anymore, what with KMFDM still putting out albums and whatnot; I haven’t heard anything from them in years, but supposedly they’re not industrial metal anyway, their style is actually “Neue Deutsche Härte,” which is German for “new German hardness,” a genre that mixes ‘Neue Deutsche Welle’ (whatever that is), alternative metal, groove metal and elements of electro-industrial and techno. Either way, I was never really crazy about them, but here they are, in front of my face, proffering a new album, called Zeit. The title track has a really disgusting video, and the tune is slow and bombastic, and of course they sing in German. It’s about pirates or something with muskets, I can’t understand anything they’re singing, so let’s move on to the next whatsis.

• Lastly we have British indie-rock outfit Bloc Party, with their sixth full-length, Alpha Games! This band is OK, with their jagged Gang Of Four-style guitars and soccer-hooligan vocals, as heard on almost-hit-singles like “Banquet” and “Helicopter”; you’ve probably been exposed to their tunes before at sports bars and beach arcades, but it probably went in one ear and out the other, like, you were like, “Is that The Police? Rancid maybe?” and decided you didn’t care. The new single, “Traps,” is appropriately spazzy; it’s sort of like “Rock Lobster” but more boneheaded. It’s 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).

Cypress Hill, Back In Black (Mnrk Records)

You have to admire the timing of this ’90s rap group’s latest release, given that the last Super Bowl halftime show was a showcase of that genre, and the rush will surely be on to revive the whole thing. And that’s OK with me, at least in the case of this crew, whose Latin-tinged cannabis anthem “Insane in the Brain” became a meme before there were memes (my favorite use of the song was its appearance in the movie Bulworth, if that matters to you). They released an album called Elephants on Acid a couple of years ago, in case you were too stoned to notice, but this LP brings them back to their OG roots. The songs aren’t total cartoons, which kind of detracts from the half-joke tunes I’d expected, but they’re definitely old-school, meant for sitting in a 1964 Lowrider and hoping there isn’t a cop within smelling distance. OK, there’s “Open Ya Mind,” which is more plugged into their sillier side, but the subject matter is serious, at least to them: Did you know that weed is still illegal in some parts of the U.S., which means some people will go to jail for it while others will make mad bank selling it? It’s true! B

Nazareth, Surviving The Law (Frontiers Music s.r.l.)

Holy crow, Scottish arena-metal dudes Nazareth, who are like one million years old, now hold the distinction of having the coolest album cover in history (the one for Hair Of The Dog, which is just endlessly fascinating) and the worst (this one). I was just Twittering with a few folks who agreed with me that the fadeout solo to HOTD’s “Changin’ Times” is the greatest solo ever, but that was back when this band was actually Nazareth. The only surviving original member is, as is always the case, the bass player, Pete Agnew; crazed-banshee-voiced singer Dan McCafferty died a couple of years ago and has been replaced by Carl Sentence, who sounds like a cross between Paul Stanley and David Whatsisface from Whitesnake. The guitar sound, courtesy of long-time new guy Jimmy Murrison, is blissfully heavy, and as for the tunes, they’re OK: Opener “Strange Days” is rote hair-metal; “You Gotta Pass It Around” wants to grow up to be Zep’s “When The Levee Breaks”; “Runaway” reminds us that band Fastway was once kind of awesome; “Better Leave It Out” pickpockets Living Colour’s “Cult Of Personality.” Above average stuff, all hail Naz (RIP). A-

PLAYLIST

• April 22 is a Friday, which means a bunch of new albums will be out, for your perusal, enjoyment and, mostly, general disappointment. But that’s being cynical, and I won’t be that today, because the summer is all but here, and when it comes I will be content, eating clams and french fries and random Doritos by the seashore, just looking at all the peeps and judging. But there is news in the world of rock ’n’ roll, because the quirky, half-cocked Australian psychedelic rock scene that was spearheaded by King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard has another contender you’ve probably never heard of, namely the Psychedelic Porn Crumpets! Let’s welcome these Crumpets to our pages with our traditional first question, folks, ready: Just how bad is this band anyway? Well, I don’t know yet, but if they’re anything like King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, we can expect a band with the brains of Black Lips, the sloppiness of the guy who sings the “Rock ’n’ Roll McDonald’s” song from the documentary Supersize Me, and a lot of sub-Flaming Lips pseudo-psychedelic nonsense. But I’m getting ahead of myself, not that I don’t want this part to be over already, so let’s put this new album, Night Gnomes, on the barbie, like an Australian shrimp, and see if I can stand more than 10 seconds of whatever these guys are doing, what do you say? They’re influenced by Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, and The Beatles, which would normally herald a depleted-soil disaster if a bunch of millennials were trying to do it, but no, the single “Bubblegum Infinity” is pretty cool indeed, a grungy, high-octane cross between Oasis and early Soundgarden, kind of. Welcome to the pages of The Hippo, Psychedelic Porn Crumpets, I’m glad to have you aboard, but do keep in mind that it’ll be all downhill from here.

• I never really liked Bon Iver at all, but too bad for me, because here’s a new album from Bon Iver’s drummer and second-banana singer, S. Carey! His singing has been compared to — I hope you’re sitting down, folks — Beach Boy singer Brian Wilson, so I am sitting here with a barf bag nearby, ready to listen to the 42,000th hipster singer to ruin Beach Boys music for posterity. No, let’s not be like that, for all I know, this guy’s new album, Break Me Open, will amaze me; maybe it will dazzle me with totally not-awkward existentialism as experienced by overeducated dunces and enthrall me with its acumen. Here’s one of the songs, the title track, are you ready? OK, it’s sad and floaty and chill, and Carey sings like the Beach Boys of course. It is morose and sad, a tune that should be playing in the background as your girlfriend drives off in her 3-foot-long electric vehicle, looking at you sadly but determinedly, never to see you again. Brings a tear to my eye, folks, let’s move on.

• Right, then, here’s another Australian, a dream-pop singing girl called Hatchie, with her latest album, Giving The World Away. The single is called “Quicksand,” and it’s kind of nice, especially if you like Echosmith, because she sounds exactly like Sydney Sierota during the hook. I would call it influencer-technopop; it’s dreamy and catchy, meaning most people would like it, which of course makes me very suspicious.

• We’ll wrap up this week with Skinty Fia, the third LP from Irish post-punk band Fontaines D.C.! If you’re one of the five people who actually still watch the Tonight show, you saw these guys perform “Boys in the Better Land,” in 2019, but as for the here and now, the band’s new single “Jackie Down The Line” is a cross between Violent Femmes and Blur in mellow mode, meaning I have no use for it whatsoever.

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).

Julieta Eugenio, Jump (Greenleaf Music)

Sorry, but the first thing that jumped out at me is how huge this Argentinian jazz up-and-comer’s tenor sax is. That thing is huge, like she could probably use it as a decoy in order to use the carpool lane. But I digress already, which isn’t fair, because lest we forget, the music’s the thing in jazz, and what a masterful collection this is, single-handedly helmed by nowadays-New Yorker Eugenio, accompanied by an upright bassist guy and a drummer. That may look a bit sparse on paper, but Eugenio fills all the space with divine runs and passages, like a kid trying to cover an entire page with their favorite crayon, rub rub rub. The CSI mostly reveals various shades of utterly charming post-bop of course, some neo-swing (“Snowbirds”), and a ballad that isn’t too obligato (“For You”). She got her master’s degree at Aaron Copland School, if that makes any difference to you, but this is far from any sort of trite academic exercise. A+

Roland & Albert & The Orb, Roland & Albert Meet The Orb Upcountry in Uganda (Orbscure Recordings / Cooking Vinyl)

Well, what a stop-the-presses moment this is, folks. If you and I were just being casual and you asked me what the weirdest band in the world is, chances are very good that I’d say it’s London afterparty club act The Orb, unless — OK, no, The Books are weirder, but they’re broken up. And that’s all moot anyway because of this project, which finds the Orb guys futzing with an EP’s worth of traditional blues and Ugandan rhythms originally recorded by (spoiler alert, these guys are obscure) Roland & Albert. I know, I know, who cares, but I’m telling you, these beats are completely addictive, right from the EP’s leadoff track “Squirrels In Jumpsuits,” whose mellow, urban vibe is driven by plinky guitar, ’70s synth and — because it’s The Orb, a constant stream of random dialog. It’s stuff that even I could fall asleep to on a plane, which says something, because all I think about on planes is, you know, gravity’s effect on large metal objects. Curiosity-seekers will thank me for this. A+

PLAYLIST

• April 15 is this Friday, I hope you will not be arrested for doing anything untoward with your tax documents. It is also a day for new albums, like the newest one from indie-rock fixture Kurt Vile, a guy I’ve been meaning to look into a little bit, and now I have no choice, because at this writing there isn’t too much else for me to talk about in the way of new releases. His influences range from the unassailable (Neil Young, Tom Petty, Dinosaur Jr.) to the unbearable (Pavement); all I really know about him is that he helped launch the band The War On Drugs in 2008, and they are still around, floating Guster-ish tunes that I have no interest in whatsoever. That doesn’t bode well for the proceedings at hand, I know, but life is always full of surprises, so I will surf over to YouTube to check out “Hey Like a Child,” a song from his new album, (watch my moves), and yes, the album title is stylized precisely like that, because tiresome gimmicks are an important ingredient in good rock ’n’ roll. Here, you’re near a phone or a computer, let’s listen to this song together. Hmm, it’s sort of Bob Dylan-ish I suppose, but he uses a weird “wobbly guitar” technique when he strums, which isn’t something I’ve heard before. That’s kind of cool, and the song is OK, if you like music that basically drones on without any ambition and has no drop or “cool part.” OK, that was enriching.

• Drum-playing human Evan J Cartwright had a good thing going with Canadian experimental-pop band U.S. Girls, whose specialty is quirky but mellow disco/soul-indie. He also had a pretty good thing going with the similarly girl-commanded quirk-folk band Weather Station, but he apparently got tired of being in good bands and has struck out on his own to release his first solo album, Bit By Bit. Ha ha, I actually like the first single, “And You’ve Got Nobuddy,” because the video has him just sitting down playing his drums, but there are no drums in the song, just a sleepy guitar, and his mouth moves along to the words, which are perfect for your favorite Generation Z doomer to laugh-and-cry-at-the-same-time to, viz: “I always had it in my mind that life was kidding this whole time.” I hope this strange little man gets his music on an episode of Euphoria someday, because it’d be fitting, and I’m sure he’d call it a successful career right afterward and, with any luck, never darken my door with his joke songs ever again.

• OK, hold it, no, here’s an actual band folks, look, it’s Cancer Bats, with a new album called Psychic Jailbreak, I can hardly wait to talk about an album made by an actual band that does something more than joke songs and ringtones for dairy farmers! I’d say something critic-ish like “You’d have to have been living under a rock to have never heard of Cancer Bats before,” but that wouldn’t be fair; I’m probably the only person in New Hampshire who knows that the band is a semi-cool southern-rock/sludge metal outfit. But now you know, so let’s lend an ear to the album’s title track. Hmm, it’s got some doom-metal parts, and the singer basically just yells, and then it rips off Alice in Chains’ “Would.” Yes, this is the best thing on board so far this week.

• No, don’t leave yet, I have to tell you about Los Angeles-based singing girl Primer, whose new album Incubator is already getting press attention, because I’m about to pay attention to it now! The single, “Warning,” is really cool, an ’80s-tinged chillout with really nice syncopation courtesy of a tabla sample, or so it sounds. Her voice is kind of low and really listenable. (I’m glad there was one thing I could actually recommend out of this week’s really stinky barrel of fish.)

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).

Jizzy Pearl’s Love Hate, Hell CA (Golden Robot Records)

I must have missed when this Hollywood hard rock band was making waves in Europe and elsewhere, like, apparently in 1990 they won Record Of The Year in readers’ polls put forth by magazines Kerrang and Metal Hammer. That of course doesn’t bode well for the here and now, this electronic zeitgeist wherein every song seems to have a trip-hop part, a noise part, a Mario Bros. soundtrack part, and then everyone goes back to not knowing the band even exists. OK, I’m riffing, but I’m so far behind on this column you’ll just have to deal, and whatever, we’re talking about a street-metal band that still sounds like Skid Row (anyone remember them? Anyone?) as we hear in album opener “One Hot Minute.” These guys are aware that Greta Van Fleet are huge right now, solely on the strength of ripping off 50-year-old Led Zeppelin songs, so they’ve “graced” us with “Acid Babe,” a vaguely “Black Dog” joint that would have fit on Zep’s Physical Graffiti LP, which still remains the most celebrated album of phoned-in swill in history. Fine for what it is, this CD would make a fine drink coaster if it isn’t your thing. B+

Chelsea Jade, Soft Spot (Carpark Records)

Over to the bloop-bling side of things, we find this South African-born singer-songwriter and record producer, who’s now based in Los Angeles, making yet more tuneage for the ritzier fashion shops at the local mall. Like I talk about in this week’s other review, it doesn’t take a lot of detective work to figure out the current zeitgeist, one born of now-decades of basically no musical education in public schools, which has basically left most younger listeners tilting their heads quizzically at the goings-on in the golden age of electronic music and just accepting the vibe as worthwhile. There’s nothing disagreeable here, don’t get me wrong; I appreciate the power of Jade’s wispy voice. But there’s nothing fascinating either, just subdued reggaeton and snap-dance, its intensity set to almost-none, and of course a lot of Billie Eilish-style stopping and starting, which is already well past its sell-by date. B

PLAYLIST

• On April 8 you will see a plethora of new albums in your Spotify, and now it can henceforth never be said that I’ve never used the word “plethora” in this award-winning column, please make a note of it. The summer draws closer, folks, it draws, and so the folks at the big record companies are gearing up for the big summer push, releasing new albums you can listen to while knowing you are completely safe from Covid, which is, as we speak, holding a national conference on what sort of insane mutation it’ll take so that the winter months are pretty much like the last 20 minutes of the film Contagion, I can hardly wait. But in the meantime, we have albums for your pleasure, if not for the aesthetic sense of any rational person, and so we will start with former relevant person Jack White, whose appetite for Big Macs rivals only that of the Hamburglar, who may actually be related to him as far as this reporter knows. Fear Of The Dawn is his new album, and I was rightly surprised to find that the title track is the most awesome tune I’ve heard from him since back when he was relevant and not a Hamburglar. It’s a buzzing mixture of Big Black no-wave and the 1960s acid-rock vibe of Norman Greenbaum’s “Spirit in the Sky,” I’m not kidding, you should check this out. If any Jack White song sounded like it really, really belonged on the soundtrack to one of those sequels to The Purge, it’s this one. It’s very cool, and if White were here in front of me right now I’d give him a Wendy’s Baconator as a richly deserved reward.

• After the death of best drummer of all time Neil Peart, the progressive-rock trio Rush was pretty much done. But there are still two guys left, one of whom is the band’s original guitarist, Alex Lifeson, who will release a new self-titled album with the band Envy Of None, a quartet that also features Coney Hatch’s Andy Curran, Alfio Annibalini and Maiah Wynne. Whatever, there are rumors of a “Rush reunion,” which would be like a Wright brothers reunion with just the two guys who ran out of way during the first plane’s takeoff at Kitty Hawk, but they could probably hire one of those guys who plays drums to Rush songs on YouTube; I mean after all, that’s how Journey ended up hiring their Steve Perry-soundalike singer, from some online video. But anyway, gang, sorry, I digress, let’s just go to the internet and listen to the first single from this silly album, “Look Inside.” Hm, it’s kind of noise-rock-ish, but there’s a girl humming something or other, so it sounds a lot like early M83, except kind of metallic. I’ll let this one pass, it’s acceptable.

• Canadian dude Orville Peck is sort of like the Deadmau5 of cowboy music, like, he wears a crazy fringed mask that he never takes off, so no one knows what he looks like. In fact, all Wikipedia knows is that he was “born in the Southern Hemisphere” (actually it’s safe to say that in reality he’s Daniel Pitout, drummer of the Canadian punk band Nü Sensae, because that’s the person who owns his songs according to ASCAP, and plus he has the same tattoos), but who cares, his new LP Bronco is coming out this week, led by the single “Daytona Sand,” a pretty hilarious song that’s like Elvis meets the Lone Ranger, you should download it or something.

• Lastly, we’ll do the new Calexico album, El Mirador, because when isn’t there a new Calexico album? The title track starts with an ambitious-enough cha-cha rhythm but then turns into the usual Yo La Tengo oatmeal; I’m not impressed.

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).

Various Artists, Black Lives: From Generation to Generation (Jammin’colorS Records)

The Belgium-based Jammin’colorS label is run by its chef/cook/bottle-washer, Stefany Calambert, whose husband, bassist Reggie Washington, helped out on the writing end in this collection of songs, which aims to present “Black music as a source of moral truth and potent weaponry against the scourge of racism.” The Belgian government directly contributed to the creation of this hefty double album, so Calambert was able to gather an amazingly diverse herd of artists that includes Oliver Lake, Marvin Sewell and a chorus line of others. It’s strikingly produced and deeply urban, all of it: Stephanie McKay’s playful, electric-piano-and-la-la-la driven “Phenomenon” checking off the ’80s-jazz-pop tick; Andy Milne & Unison’s dreamy, soprano-scatted “Togged To The Bricks”; Cheick Tidiane Seck’s tribal-rhythmic “Sanga Bo” adding some Fela Kuti texture; even some opera-diva high-wire stuff from Alicia Hall Moran, getting plenty of help from Washington and DJ Grazzhoppa (“Walk”). An honest, depthlessly immersive experience throughout; it may not solve anything but it sure does try. A

Graeme James, Seasons (Nettwerk Records)

In the busking space, you’ve got your golden-throated guys like Peter Bradley Adams, and you’ve got your po-faced Art Garfunkel types. This New Zealander would fall into the latter category, a serious balladeer who plays a million instruments in these smooth, sometimes mildly rocky tunes. Let’s see, here you’ll hear him play mandolin, double bass, fiddle, guitar, banjo and bass ukulele, among other things, a cornucopia of sound that’s equal to the task of supporting his voice, which is similarly all over the place, ranging from floaty Bon Iver to vanilla Sufjan Stevens to clear-throated sea shanty slinger to the aforementioned Garfunkel (“Death Defying Acts”). The song that’s so far received the most attention (including some love from Rolling Stone) from this album is a song about a terrifying adventure aboard an old ship (let’s all agree that humanity will never have enough of those), that being “The Voyage of the James Caird.” A-

PLAYLIST

• The next batch of new albums scheduled for release will get here on April 1, i.e. April Fools’ Day, which is, of course, most apropos, because this week we start with badly tattooed Red Hot Chili Peppers, whose new album, Unlimited Love, is first to be put into the Snark-O-Scope™ for a thorough and proper evaluation! But before we do that, let’s go over it again: I don’t like this band, and, um, well, I never really did. If the ’90s were the ’60s, RHCP would have been the Rolling Stones to Pearl Jam’s Beatles, if you’re down for some rather trite juxtaposition, and I have no idea how that happened, how RHCP got so popular. But people of all ages love ’em, they just love ’em. A couple years ago I was given a single pass for the RHCP show at TD Garden, and since it was snowing and it was only one pass and I don’t like RHCP to begin with, I gave it to a friend, who drove down from New Hampshire, through the snow, to see the show. He loved it, which I wouldn’t have, because I don’t like a single one of their songs, literally none. The only thing that pumps me up about the old ’Chili Peppers is being given this new opportunity to trash their funk-ska nonsense in public, and since I’m salivating at that prospect, I’ll toddle off to YouTube right now, to listen to the new song “Black Summer.” OK, the video starts with Anthony Howeveryouspellit dressed like the Karate Kid, and the song is mellow, with their usual drippy guitar sound (it would be so cool if they’d learn that their Peavey amplifiers actually have things like distortion knobs and stuff and thus don’t necessarily have to sound like the sort of 1-foot-tall amp that’s normally played at kids’ birthday parties, so lame!). Anyway, on the tune drags, with Anthony making rapper hand movements even though he doesn’t rap, and then there’s some psychedelic ’70s vibe that’s just annoying and then some Austin Powers 1960s-pop vibe that also just made me depressed. What does this all mean? Well, it means that a lot of people will like it, just to tick me off.

• In spite of their German-sounding name, Warmduscher is a British garage/post-punk band. Wikipedia says that a “Warmduscher” basically refers to someone who’s a wimp, like, at English “pubs,” the beer-gargling “punters” tease their “mates” with that term, in the hope that someone will start a huge bar fight that will need to be broken up by the “bobbies.” Any-whatever, the new album, At The Hot Spot, is on the way, in the “lorries” right now, headed to the “record shoppes,” where you can buy it with your shillings and tuppence, and it will feature a song called “Wild Flowers,” a stream-of-consciousness rant spoken by one of the “lads,” who “prattles” on and on about all the stuff he hates in everyday life. There’s a wah-wah pedal on the guitar, not that that sound will be coming back from the grave for widespread use anytime soon, or at least I hope.

• You have to admire a band whose cover art is inspired by those old Garbage Pail Kids stickers, so props are due for Toronto four-man power-pop band PUP, whose new LP The Unraveling Of Puptheband is on the way! The push track, “Robot Writes A Love Song,” is a pretty well-rounded amalgam of Weezer and Violent Femmes, if that sounds like something anyone out there would be the slightest bit interested in.

• Finally, let’s check in with Canadian singer Lights, and her new album PEP, with its single “Salt and Vinegar.” This is basically next-gen Taylor Swift bubble-pop, made tolerable by some nifty samples; it’s brainless but not hateful.

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).

Raveena, Asha’s Awakening (Warner Records)

Another Missy Elliott wannabe heard from, more or less, although this diva is more prone to tabling reggaeton and such than Ariana Grande-ish Disney-spazz when she’s in gyration mode. With regard to her reggaeton, her singing on “Rush” has the same fluttery fragility as The Jets’ “Crush on You,” if you remember that one, and “Secret” borders on same, but the beat there is more a general-purpose Shakira thing than anything else. “Mystery” is different, though, a rather straightforward R&B tune with a pretty remarkable amount of bubbly femininity. I wouldn’t want to be trapped in a car driving around with nothing but this album for a few hours, but it’s pleasant enough. And mind you, the LP revolves around a conceptual theme regarding an alien princess “who, through a fantastic journey across the centuries, learns about love and loss, healing and destruction.” So anyhow, that. The closest her tour will bring her to New Hampshire will be on June 15, at Brighton Music Hall in Allston, Mass. A-

Dave Douglas, Secular Psalms (Greenleaf Music)

Quite the Da Vinci Code-tinged curveball here from jazz trumpeter Douglas, who was commissioned by the city of Gent, Belgium, to score music for the city’s 600th anniversary celebration of the creation of a 24-part polyptych (multi-paneled painting) titled “The Adoration Of The Mystic Lamb.” There’s an interesting backstory of course, revolving around the 2012 discovery that the altarpiece had been overpainted around AD 1550, and a couple of pieces are apparently missing, and such and so, all of which served to inspire Douglas and his sextet to work with such components as Latin Mass chanting, medieval folk songs and the work of composers of the period. As well, the band plays unconventional instruments such as a lute and a serpent (a huge, meandering ancestor of the tuba), which takes us to the first track, “Arrival,” a bizarre piece that evokes a William Peter Blatty fever dream. There’s relatively normal stuff as well, some readily accessible modern jazz and such, but chanting and such things do appear from time to time. Like its subject, a unique, rare artwork. A

PLAYLIST

• Onward we slog, my stouthearted ones, to March 25, when the new albums will magically appear in your Spotify, begging for just a little space in your non-existent attention span. Pitchfork will have to talk about these albums, as will YouTube’s resident clue-mosquito “musicologist” Anthony Fantano, a.k.a. “Needle Drop.” As always, in between making up nonsense words in an effort to overanalyze simple rock ’n’ roll songs, Fantana will make super-funny comments and perform two-second skits dressed up as a butler or Haystacks Calhoun or whomever he assumes will entertain his audience of 11-year-olds that day. And once he’s done confusing the young’ns, he’ll either toddle off to say something completely idiotic on some political podcast run by college freshmen who’ve never actually read any political books, or he’ll go shopping for more funny costumes in order to better entertain his fans, who apparently don’t have ears attached to their own heads, so there’s no way they can judge all that awful music for themselves. Needle Drop will definitely ignore the new Cowboy Junkies album, Songs Of The Recollection, because he is fake-edgy and only likes songs he could play his stupid bass to, but you know this album will be OK, because the ole Junkies have always made it a point to make a stop in New Hampshire when they tour, which is pretty cool of them. This year they’ll be at Portsmouth Music Hall on April 12, and the alternative country-folk veterans will surely play a few numbers from this new LP, a collection of cover tunes. There’s a boozy/pretty version of David Bowie’s “Five Years” on board; singer Margo Timmins sounds particularly Melissa Etheridge-ish on it.

• Speaking of Bowie, there’s a new album coming from British pop-punkers Placebo, who benefited greatly when Bowie took them on tour with him in 1996. It’s all well and good by me that they’ve had success; I suppose the world could always use a band that sounds like a weak version of Killers, but such analyses are beyond the scope of this newspaper article, as I’m supposed to discuss this new album, Never Let Me Go, and move on to the next thing. Fine, then, one of the tunes, “Surrounded By Spies,” has the same rhythm as “Cry Little Sister” from the soundtrack to The Lost Boys, like it’s music for dancing slowly and weirdly around a roaring campfire and making googly eyes at people, except the vocals sound like Pet Shop Boys. I have no idea what these guys think they’re even doing these days, but anyway, that.

• What else, what else, what else, oh look, it’s Toronto hardcore punk band F–ed Up, with a new album, called Do All Words Can Do. The title track really is old-school, which is cool, like, it’s really fast and crazed, and it sounds like it was recorded on a boombox and whatnot, but the only reason I even brought this up was that you bands out there really need to stop having swears in your names, because 99 times out of 100 you’ll be ignored by respectable newspapers like this one, because young children would accidentally read it and have questions. It just isn’t done, you see. If you’re looking for a way to make me listen to your music, I’d much rather that you brag about how awesome your band is instead of behaving like a 10-year-old, that’d be great. This has been a public service message; the more you know.

• Let’s wrap up the week with Australian all-girl indie-rock trio Camp Cope, whose new full-length, Running With The Hurricane, is heading your way in trucks right this minute! The title track is really good, evoking Florence & The Machine in a Woodstock frame of mind, you’ll like it, I promise.

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).