Author: Eric Saeger

Dudes, Eternal Is The Fruit (Dudes Music)

OK, so I wasn’t even aware there was any such thing as a “Scandirock scene,” which is no surprise, given that I’ve never been to any of those countries. But it’s a thing, at least to those people, and a little digging reveals Norwegian glam-punk band Turbonegro as a leading light of this nonsense, fronting their classic hit “All My Friends Are Dead” as the sound’s gold standard (it’s like Kiss meets Anthrax, but emo, and with blazey guitar solos). These guys (Dudes) are heavy into that band and, they claim, The Hives, but this is a different kind of spazz-rock, like AC/DC welded to Animal Boy-era Ramones. I mean, these guys really want their minions to break stuff, as they bring a sense of eastern-European folk-metal into the mix but leave a Hives element in there to make it more or less dishwasher-safe. American bands should really be doing this kind of thing, given the dystopian circumstances, let’s be real. A

Florencia & the Feeling, Birthday (self-released)

Pop-funk fusion with four-part harmonies, hints of jazz, and Latin roots is the skinny on this one, released by a five-piece band led by singer-guitarist Florencia Rusiñol, who was raised in East Tennessee by Argentine parents who “instilled in her a love of Latin American music from an early age.” Comparison bands include Vulfpeck, Stevie Wonder and Steely Dan, the latter of which is definitely the closest as far as what I heard; there’s a lot of gently tendered, lazy syncopation over which Rusiñol practices her vaguely Natalie Merchant-ish mid-range-soprano, to no really thrilling effect, not that it’s bad or anything. The rub is that these jumpy songs were written while Rusiñol was working through a nasty breakup, which results in an odd combination of lines like “I can erase your pictures from the internet but not from my head” being sung over phoned-in Spyro Gyra semi-jazz. Best case, they wind up opening for some 70-year-old superstar in Las Vegas, is what I think. B

Playlist

• Friday, Feb. 17, is on the way, and so is a plethora of new music albums, which I only mention because I’ve never used the word “plethora” in the multiple-award-winning column prior to today! In hot news, Dallas, Texas-based alternative rock bros Secret Machines are releasing their fifth studio LP, The Moth, The Lizard, And The Secret Machines, this week, and it will probably be big in the U.K., because that’s where they’re really popular, which explains why you’ve never heard of them. Actually they’re more of a progressive-ish rock band, not wildly technical but just enough to impress Kerrang! writers, you know, how bands like Marillion used to get popular for being sort of like Genesis, like, not really progressive but not fun bands like Slade and all those guys. But here I am droning on about something I know nothing about, because, like you, I know these guys exist but for all I know they play nursery rhymes on kazoos. So the task at hand is to try to find out what they sound like, and we’ll do that right now by surfin’ over to YouTube to give a listen to the band’s new single, “There’s No Starting Over.” It’s really slow and draggy, but somewhat interesting. OK, you know what this song is, it’s something that was inspired by M83 when these fellas went on tour with them. Like, the tune is epic in some ways and just awkward and weird in others, and the synth layers give it a good amount of heft. Matter of fact, after it gets going it’s pretty good, with some big vocal layers, some noisy percussion and such and so, but the bottom line is that it’s totally like M83, kind of “Kim and Jesse”-ish. Nothing wrong with that, other than the fact that a lot of writers who are much meaner than me will write it off as derivative. Anyway, OK, very good, moving on.

• One pop diva I’ve never really paid any attention to is P!nk, mostly because she makes me think of lady wrestlers. Her new album is Trustfall, her first since 2019’s Hurts 2B Human, but she’s apparently pretty busy all the time, doing non-diva stuff like writing music; for example, she wrote the songs “I Walk Alone” and “Lie to Me” for Cher’s 2013 album Closer to the Truth, which I didn’t know, did you? Anyway, her new single “Never Gonna Not Dance Again” sees her entering the out-of-ideas phase of her career; the tune is a half-formed bubblegum radio bit that everyone will think is Kesha probably, and the hook sucks. Other than that I love it.

• According to this web thingie here, Anna B Savage is a London singer-songwriter whose songs are “stark, skeletal paintings of moods and reflection, using a palette of mainly voice and guitar. Most prominent is her voice — strong and sonorous, yet with a vulnerability that feels as if she’s in the same room as you.” What does this mean in actual words? Well, to me it means she’s more annoying and unintelligibly hyperbolic than Ani Difranco, meaning no, I don’t own any of her albums by choice. Her second album, in|FLUX, follows her 2021 debut, A Common Turn, and the title track is crummy Nintendo-techno with her creepy voice singing creepy words about sex. I really dislike it.

• And finally we have funny-looking Canadian folk-pop dude Ron Sexsmith, hawking his 17th full-length, The Vivian Line. In 2010, Paperny Entertainment made a documentary about this guy, called Love Shines, about his attempt to gain worldwide fame for an album that was produced by Bob Rock; apparently it didn’t work because this is the first I’ve heard of him. “Diamond Wave” is a good song, ’70s-radio-ish a la Jim Croce, something like that. It’s decent.

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).

Nervous Eaters, Monsters + Angels (Wicked Cool Records)

If you’re old enough to have been part of the Boston rock scene when the success of The Cars lured in all the drugged-out saps, um, I mean record company reps to check out every band in the city, or even if you just listened to a lot of WBCN FM back then, there was no way to avoid this local band’s most popular hit, “Loretta” (you know, the one that went “when I talk to Loretta, cool slacks and sweater”). This Steve Cataldo-led roots-punk quartet nailed down a major label deal with Elektra Records in 1980, and that was about it; the LP was widely dissed as “not very punk for a punk record,” but in retrospect, the New York Dolls’ vibe was roughly in the same ballpark. Anyhow, this album is their first record since a 1986 EP, and the push single seems to be “Hop Sing Said,” a mellow-ish mid-tempo tune that’s kind of Dinosaur Jr.-ish. “Wild Eyes” recalls early Stones, “Superman’s Hands” is oldschool jangle-pop; “Last Chance” is pure ’80s radio-bubblegum. At worst, the songs are good and it sounds like they had fun doing this. A

ASCO, “Lacrimosa” (CAOS Records)

You know, it’s a wonder these Beatport-begging techno DJs get any press outside of 5 Magazine, Traxsource and whatnot. I say that because there’s always very little information to be found about them, which would be fine with me if all the artists wanted to remain anonymous or semi-anonymous, but I don’t think they all do. That goes double for this guy, the search for whose biography wore me out after 10 minutes and now I don’t care anymore: Ooh, you’re such an edgelord, whoever you are! But that’s not to detract from this guy’s music, don’t get me wrong. He’s been cruising along quite well over the last few months with a couple of neo-disco tracks (“Born Slippy” and “Fortuna”), and now this, a future-rave-style rendition of one of the most famous classical choir pieces in history, a part of the Dies Irae sequence in the Roman Catholic requiem mass. A real orchestra and choir help out here; it’s half orchestral and half buzzy-beetle-noise-electro, with no recognizable drop. Not my kind of jam but times have, unfortunately, changed. A

Playlist

• We’ll see a whole bunch of hot new rock ’n’ roll albums hit the streets on Feb. 10, as we draw ever closer to kissing this winter goodbye, can you even believe how fast it’s gone? And look, bonus, it’s a new album from acid-dropping loons Brian Jonestown Massacre, called The Future Is Your Past. I’m actually pretty happy about that. I think the last music I heard from these guys was either 2016’s Third World Pyramid or more probably 2010’s Who Killed Sgt Pepper, but it’s all good. The band is still led by Anton Newcombe, whose hobbies include hiring/firing every musician he meets and making the Dandy Warhols feel uncomfortable, and this is his, um, I mean the band’s, 20th album, a milestone no one would ever have predicted. You never know what you’ll hear from this band; usually it’s noisy neo-psychedelica, and a quick run-through of the album’s title track is pretty much what you’d expect: slow, dank, jangly early-’60s acid-rock, sort of like Donovan, that kind of thing. At least there’s normal-ish singing on this tune, and there you go, that’s about it for the 411 on this one, because Anton couldn’t care less if he made any money from his music, and that’s why he’s rich.

• Hey, man, what is this, an aughts-indie revival? Look there, gang, it’s New Jersey-based indie rockers Yo La Tengo, with their new album This Stupid World! I’ve owned a few Yo La Tengo albums over the years and have never really listened to any of them more than once; there’s synergy going on right now in this column, because this band uses roughly the same basic ingredients as Brian Jonestown Massacre — noise-pop, shoegaze, etc. — but the output is usually boring. At this writing the latest teaser tune is “Aselestine,” a lazy, sort-of-folk-ish song that’s sort of like Wilco meets Guster. I know, I probably should have posted a trigger warning before saying such a thing, but anyway, there you have it.

• Dutch dream-pop lady Annelotte de Graaf goes by the stage name Amber Arcades, and she’ll be releasing her fourth album, Barefoot On Diamond Road, in just a few hours! Interestingly, she holds a master’s degree in law, and worked as an assistant for war crimes tribunals at the United Nations; as of 2016 she held a position “assessing the claims of refugees granted asylum in the Netherlands who are seeking to have their families brought over.” The single, “Just Like Me,” is a weird little minimal techno joint that sounds like Aimee Mann after listening to way too much Aphex Twin.

• We’ll bag it for the week with the latest from Kelela! She is a former telemarketer from Washington, D.C., who got a spiffy record contract from the ever-trippy Warp Records, so she is now an alternative-R&B singer with a second album, Raven, out this week! She first hit the sort-of-big-time with 2005’s Hallucinogen, an EP that goes over all the disturby nonsense that happens during the beginning, middle and end stages of a relationship, except it’s all in reverse chronological order. Anyhow, this new album, which I’m required by law to take seriously because it’s on Warp Records, of course, is, artistically, intended as “a reaction to feeling alone as a black femme working within dance music,” which, granted, is probably pretty difficult, I mean, just look at what Steve Aoki gets away with just because he’s a white male. Whatever, she might get more love for this album if the rest of the songs aren’t like the title track, which is basically afterparty glitch-tech improv that makes no sense, but no one likes good music anymore, so who knows.

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).

Meg Baird, Furling (Drag City Records)

This singer and drummer is well-known in the indie/retro-folk scene, having helped to form the psychedelic rock supergroup Heron Oblivion after a several-album stint with Espers. The New Jersey-born, San Francisco-based hipster has other projects on her resumé, too, including three albums with her sister Laura as the Baird Sisters, and one with harpist Mary Lattimore, titled Ghost Forests, that reached No. 3 on the Billboard New Age chart. This one starts with “Ashes, Ashes,” an appropriately titled tune recalling Dark Side of the Moon-era Pink Floyd in its somber, piano-driven, slow-march-to-oblivion po-facedness; thankfully layered with cool things, it’s made quanta more fascinating through Baird’s use of ghostly, wordless warbling. “Star Hill Song” carries on similarly but on a more folk-pop bent; it’s here we first encounter her Joan Baez-ish soprano, a thing that’s about as folkie as it gets. This stuff is great Coachella bait, but it’s a lot more compelling that what one usually gets from that crowd. A+

Scott Crow, Of Everything and Nothing (Emergency Hearts Records)

This Texan is becoming something of a Hunter S. Thompson of the alternative politics scene. A long-time anarchist author and activist in the anti-fascist, environmental and mutual aid movements, Crow presents here a mishmash some of his first musical recordings since 1992, a collection of recent collaborations, some of which feature guest appearances from other artists and producers recorded in 2016 and up through the present. He’s had several projects over the years, ranging from darkwave to noise rock, but this one opens with a surprisingly melodic New Wave/art-rock tune, “Stardust Supernova,” that recalls New Order’s late-’80s recipe. “Crown Slow 2.0” is a dirgey drone-a-thon that’s more in a Swans vein; the very pretty “R34L Falling Into Sleep” is super-refined krautrock if you ask me. Really impressive, nearly all of this, save for several remixes tabled by Portland, Oregon-based producer Televangel, whose technique is a bit messy-muddy for my tastes, even if many would probably hear a lot of Throbbing Lobster in them. A

Playlist

• It’s your boy here, takin’ a jaundiced look at the stinky batch of music CDs coming out on Feb. 3, regardless of whether or not they should! Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist John Frusciante is releasing two albums, but it’s complicated, ready? The albums are different versions of the same album, one for vinyl and the other for CD and digital. The former, . I : (pronounced ‘one’), spans seven tracks, while : II . (pronounced ‘two’) spans 10. OK, did you get all that? He wrote the music while he was listening to experimental artists like Oren Ambarchi, Klara Lewis and Ryoji Ikeda, and the melodic parts take inspiration from John Lennon, David Bowie, Iggy Pop, Jimi Hendrix and Brian Eno. I say all this only for the interest of RHCP fans, who wouldn’t care if the tunes were all inspired by the background music to Pac Man Cereal commercials (did you know that one of the Batmans, Christian Bale, was in one of those?), because as long as it’s RHCP, with the real Flea actually playing bass and the music is sort of like Frank Zappa but not actually funny at all, forget it, it’ll be a huge album for RHCP completists to buy and put away carefully without ever listening to. Just my luck, of course, there are no advance singles to listen to, but it’ll be ambient stuff, according to what I’m reading on the internet, and it’s likely there’ll be some jungle rinseouts, because he’s into that kind of thing these days, literally for no reason whatsoever.

• So you thought Shania Twain had given up singing goopy Top 40 songs and retired to some 50-acre horse farm to grow petunias and count hundred-dollar bills, did you? Well you’re wrong, those petunias and horsies cost a lot of hundred-dollar bills, so she’s putting out a new album this Friday, called Queen Of Me! Her 1990s heyday is over, so she’s been playing at Caesar’s Palace for mobsters and all those kinds of people, then she went through a horrible divorce with her producer, Mutt Lange, so the producer for this album is not Mutt Lange. But before I run out of room, let’s go take a listen to “Waking Up Dreaming,” since it’s probably the push single, given that it already has 2.5 million YouTube views from bots and people who accidentally landed on the video while searching for “We Will Rock You” or whatnot. The song starts off with a “Footloose”-style drumbeat, and then Shania starts singing, sounding kind of bored, for which I wouldn’t blame her, because as feisty and catchy she wants this song to be, it isn’t, it’s just kind of phoned-in and limp, which means she’ll probably sing it on some daytime TV show, causing IQ levels to drop worldwide, and that’s the only time you’ll ever hear it again, not that the song is completely worthless. OK, it is, but where would we be with hilariously disposable pop art, you tell me.

• British six-piece indie-rock band The Go! Team are releasing their newest full-length, Get Up Sequences Part Two, this week. The entire album is available to listen to on YouTube right now in one big lump without separation between song titles, and the first song is kind of dumb, like Flaming Lips but with a full brass band. I hate it, but your mileage may vary, lord help us.

• We’ll call it a column by checking out British pop songstress Ellie Goulding, whose new LP, Higher Than Heaven, has a single, called “Let It Die.” It’s an OK tune, like Avril Lavigne for soccer parents, not too energetic or listenable, just right for cranking in the minivan while you drop the kid off for practice, where the other kids will give you funny looks for being cringe.

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).

keep calm stay home, A Theme For… (Give/Take Records)

I know how much a good percentage of my readership loves The Beatles, even if I don’t so much. I only bring it up because the artist in question here, London-based composer Oli Morgan, is the mastering engineer at legendary Abbey Road Studios, the 90-year-old space where The Beatles cut, you know, the Abbey Road album. That’s some cred, for sure, but Morgan hasn’t been using it to record bubblegum songs; he’s all about ambient soundscapes, using techniques he used while working for big shots like Elton John and Seal. This one took him long enough, and it’s only five songs clocking in at a total of 17 minutes, but it’s a quantum leap from the ambient stuff that ends up on this desk. The title track, for instance, has an advanced art-rock feel, starting with a History Channel-inspired let’s-explore-this-giant-underground-cavern feel before suddenly shifting into an IDM/noise-rock joint. “Unrest” is more droney, almost gothic in the way it resembles stuff I’ve heard from Noise Unit. Well worth your time if you need to get lost in really thick layers of melodically usable techno. A

Die Oberherren, Die By My Hand (Svart Records)

This LP is described as “the product of Joakim Knutsson’s dissatisfaction of a genre which has gone totally down the drain,” meaning goth rock, which means he may have never heard Front Line assembly and all that stuff, but you know the drill: any angry goth-rebel palomino is a pal-o-mine-o. It streets this week, this debut LP from a six-piece Swedish band that wants to appeal to “metalheads, synth aficionados, rockers and shoegazers” but that also believes goth peaked in the 1980s. The record lifts off with “The Horned One Stabs,” a tune that does remind us that bands like Sisters Of Mercy are sorely missed, and that’s no understatement; in other words the tune is basically what you’d hear if you took everything about SOM’s “Lucretia My Reflection” and rearranged the parts. “By The End Of The Shore” adds some Fields Of The Nephilim gloom-pop to the SOM trappings and voila, very enjoyable if in no way groundbreaking. They have my blessings, certainly. A

Playlist

• So yo, the next general-release date for music CDs is Jan. 27, just a couple more months of winter horror left to go. Aaand terrific, I don’t know any of the artists dropping new product this Friday, so I get to — OK, wait, here’s one, Truth Decay from none other than You Me at Six, the British five-piece band that’s sort of half-emo and half-Creed insofar as temperament. You may have seen them on Warped Tour or whatnot, playing alongside Fall Out Boy and all those guys; chances are — if you usually do things like attend keggers and have a glass muffler on your car — that you’ve probably subjected yourself to their sort-of-hit single “Bite My Tongue” on many an occasion, but let’s just forget that, because a new and improved YMAS is here, to drop some fresh hot tracks! One hot track that got dropped for all you homeslices a few months ago was “Deep Cuts,” in which our intrepid heroes dabble with a Red Hot Chili Peppers sound at the beginning and then remember they’re trying to be Panic! At The Disco and so on and so forth. There’s another song for you to preview out there as well, “Mixed Emotions (I Didn’t Know How To Tell You What I Was Going Through),” which isn’t all that bad, a little like Hoobastank trying to emulate Aerosmith. It’s OK, but the video’s pretty dumb.

• Still on a British music tip, Sam Smith is a singer-songwriter who won fame in 2012 by featuring on Disclosure’s breakthrough single “Latch,” which peaked at No. 11 on the U.K. Singles Chart, according to Wikipedia — in other words you probably have no idea who we’re talking about here but that’s OK. Ha ha, this genius released a tune in 2014 called “Stay With Me” that was pretty good, but only because it sounded like Tom Petty’s 1989 hit “I Won’t Back Down,” but the party ended early, when Petty himself noticed the similarities between the hooky parts of the two songs (namely that they’re exactly the same except for the lyrics) and promptly sued the little rascal and settled out of court. But hey, come on, everyone accidentally steals from Tom Petty, you know that, so let’s cut Smith some slack and waddle off to YouTube to listen to “Unholy,” the latest single from their new album, Gloria. This track features German singer and popular trans figure Kim Petras (who received international media coverage that touted her as the “world’s youngest transsexual”). It’s a U.K.-garage-and-King Tut-tinged diva extravaganza that’s kind of fascinating, not that there seems to be any point to it whatsoever, but, well, there you are.

• Garage rock dude King Tuff is from our neighboring state of Vermont, where he makes garage rock records for the Sub Pop label. He looks like your average everyday popcorn seller at the local Comicon, all beard and unattractiveness, but that makes him more edgy than most, as who would want to be seen like that. He’s also the singer and guitarist of stoner-rockers Witch, and used to be in Ty Segall’s backing band The Muggers, if any of that means anything to you, but meanwhile the hot new beats he’s about to drop are compiled on a new album called Smalltown Stardust, the title track from which is sort of unplugged Nirvana meets Beck or something of that nature. The video is kind of neat, he’s hanging around this colorful Sesame Street kind of sidewalk playing a piano and fondling an actual rat. Yay randomness!

• And to end this week’s thing, let’s check out Electrophonic Chronic, the latest LP from U.S. garage rockers The Arcs. Led by Black Keys singer Dan Auerbach, the single “Keep On Dreamin’” is a cross between Flaming Lips and Wilco. It takes guts to be that lazily viable and relevant, you have to admit.

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).

We Are Scientists, Lobe (Masterswan Recordings)

You may remember this New York City-based indie-rock band first surfacing in 2005 with their debut LP With Love And Squalor, a sturdy record that did well for sounding like a cross between Killers and Tokyo Police Club (I know, there’s not a terribly wide difference there aside from the energy levels, which is what I really mean). I remember not being blown away by them, but they were fine, no problems. On this, their eighth full-length, they’ve thrown off the self-imposed adherence to Aughts-era “polite-noise” that made the whole decade so loathsome and have matured into something quite remarkable, a sort of neo-post-punk thing that — at least I’d think — will be genuinely adored by the 50-ish Gen Xers of their age group (I’m sure it’s refreshing not to act 10 years younger than they are). What do I mean? Well, opening tune “Operator Error” is a great one, like an evolved version of something Mr. Mister would have tossed up as a single. “Human Resources” is even more rich and delicious, evoking Tears For Fears 2.0, and such and so. This one deserves a lot more attention than it’ll get. Shame about that. A+

Dust Bowl Faeries, Carnival Dust (self-released)

These guys had me at “Hudson Valley, NY’s goth, rock, cabaret, vaudeville, and folk [band],” a combination of descriptors that the world needs much more of. As you’d expect, this quintet is visually appealing to cynical outcasts: guys dressed like beer-barrel polka-meisters; cute girls with plush antlers on their heads, but like someone (OK, everyone) once said, the proof is in the listening, and this six-song EP has all the necessary boxes checked, I assure you. Accordion-fueled oom-pa-pa in “Cuckoo”; Decemberists-tinged furry-pop in “Changeling”; a creepy campfire mumble-along (“Medicine Show”); vintage spooky-ghost-whistling in “The Old Ragdoll” — this bunch isn’t kidding around, especially in the video for “Lost in Time,” which rattles off every steampunk trope like it’s a test. Bandleader Ryder Cooder (apparently no relation to Ry) got Melora Creager of Rasputina to help produce this act’s first album and hasn’t looked back; if you’re a frequent attendee at spooky-cons, you’d better get on board fast. A+

Playlist

• You have got to be kidding me. The next general-CD-release date is already Jan. 20? How did that even happen? I mean, I don’t have a problem if this dumb winter wants to fly me right out the window and land me in a nice greasy beach Snack Shack staring down the barrel of a fried seafood platter, let’s do this. I’m already ready, since I hate everything about skiing and/or generally slipping on ice like a funny dancing clown on my way back into the house to gulp quarts of hot cocoa and try to find something decent on Netflix (there isn’t, and I should really just cancel my subscription right this minute, seeing as how I’m all set forever with gross serial killer mysteries with Finnish voice overdubs and people acting all nice and European and normal). Yessiree Bob, get me out of this insane frozen tundra post haste and serve me clams, fast-forward this crazy thing, but for now we shall suffer through these frozen winds, freshly blown onto our faces from Canadian igloos, and go check out some of these albums. I think we should start with British synthpop girls Ladytron, because the last I heard from them they were sort of a one-trick (albeit sexy, mind you) goth-tinged synthpop band that did little to differentiate themselves from mid-aughts euro-club acts like Miss Kittin and all that. With “Misery Remember Me,” the single to their new one, Time’s Arrow, though, I’m hearing a definite shift to traditional shoegaze — crank the reverb and the emotional unavailability, bake at 300 and serve. The beat is quite nice; now let’s see if I can find something I can actually mock.

• According to Wikipedia, Dave Rowntree is, let’s see, an English musician, politician, solicitor, composer and animator. Wait, did I take wrong turn at somewhere, oh OK, never mind, he’s the drummer from famous oi/pub band Blur, meaning Rowntree got his political campaign seed money by way of royalties from the ridiculously overrated Madchester, uh, classic, “Parklife” (think of a song that’d be in the buds of a gang of football hooligans who’re chasing Mr. Bean around a sleepy British burg and you’re there). But ours is not to tool on Blur’s oeuvre or find fault with British politics (if they have any). Nay, we’re tasked with looking at Rowntree’s debut solo album, Radio Songs, and trying to justify its ever being made. OK, listening to rope-in single “Devil’s Island,” I have nothing in the way of good news. There’s a kind of dumb synth line, ably made worse by an off-time clicking noise, and Rowntree talk-sings like the guy from Psychedelic Furs. It would probably be listenable if you were having a few “pints” at a pub in Lancashire On Whatever, but American audiences will listen to it and simply say, “Oh, a new Elvis Costello song I think,” and that’s why America rocks.

• Oh great, another album from Guided by Voices I have to deal with, it’ll never end, friends. This one’s called La La Land, and as always, it will consist of the last 20-odd songs that came to hilariously over-prolific songwriter Robert Pollard whilst he was in the water closet. You know the drill, it’s like King Gizzard, this guy puts out an album every three months, and the single from this one is “Queen of Spaces,” made of an acoustic guitar arpeggio that’s OK, then he sings and it sounds like he’s eating a Twinkie while he’s warbling like a half-sober Tom Waits. OK.

• Lastly we have July Talk, with their new LP, Remember Never Before. The rollout single is “After This,” an ’80s-tinted dance-chill number that will make you think of A-Ha, as if you didn’t already have enough difficulties to deal with.

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).

Heroes and Monsters, Heroes and Monsters (Frontiers Music srl)

You get why this is a stupidly named band, right, like, I don’t have to explain that there’s a really great band called Of Monsters And Men already, and Lana del Rey has a song called “Gods & Monsters,” right? (Am I being pedantic, I’m really trying to change, folks). But belay all that nonsense, because we’re talking about our friends at Frontiers Records, meaning it’s time for our periodic reminder to local Iron Maiden- and Judas Priest-soundalike bands that they’re one of the last companies that might give you an actual record contract if you’re nice, just tell them I sent you. Anyway, the rundown: Canadian supergroup-ish three-piece hard-rock band here (has there ever been a Canadian hard-rock that’s been able to find a fourth guy?): the singer was in Kiss guitarist Bruce Kulick’s band, the multi-instrumentalist was in Slash with Myles Kennedy and whatnot, and they sound quite a bit like Skid Row (you remember them, right? No, that was Cinderella. What? No, that was Tigertailz. Sorry? No, that was Poison. Etc.). The tuneage has some Savatage-ish power-metal to it, and the singer has a little Metallica to him. It is definitely OK. B

David Crosby, Live at the Capitol Theatre (BMG Records)

Yes, this founding member of both the Byrds and Crosby, Stills & Nash is still kicking around, sharing bong hits with random people and doing whatever else he does, if anything. Point of order, the Capitol Theatre in this case is in Port Chester, N.Y., not the movie theater in Arlington, Mass., but I’m not here to tease the 81-year-old alpha hippie. In fact, he’s still a decent enough songwriter, although there aren’t any songs from his last album, 2021’s For Free, in this live package. This one mostly consists of oldies recited by Crosby and the three 20-somethings (known as The Lighthouse Band) he has backing him up these days: “Deja Vu,” “Woodstock” and “Guinnevere” are here, all delivered with that old magic that involved those world-stopping silences in between phrases. He sounds pretty good vocally, and he’s still quite the acoustic guitar picker, but what may be most notable about this is that it’s his first live solo LP. A+

Playlist

• OK, super, we should have plenty of albums to talk about this week, because we’re clear of the holidays, meaning that all the bands and semi-talented “artistes” should be back to making a bunch of tunes so we can all gather around and hold hands and try to keep from laughing at all the awful music-clowns, who’ve been busy as little Santa elves, making albums for our merriment and snark. Now, try to be nice this time, guys, we wouldn’t want to — oh no, there’s barely anything in the current “you should review this” list on Metacritic, just two things coming out on Friday the 13th of January (yep, that’s how this year’s starting out, with a Friday the 13th right off the jump), and one of ’em’s a metal album! Terrific, I should have just stayed in bed until it’s warm out, you know, like, who needs this anyway? OK whatever, the metal album, here it is, it’s the new one from Obituary, called Dying Of Everything, is that edgy or what, folks? This band has been around since 1984, and they are from Tampa, Florida. The test-drive track on the band’s Bandcamp is “The Wrong Time,” and it’s like a cross between Leviathan-era Mastodon and Wasp. Funnily enough, that isn’t the worst combination ever, OK let’s move on.

• Margo Price is an American outlaw-country/Americana singer-songwriter and producer based in Nashville, Tennessee, and I know that for a fact because that’s what Google says, pretty much verbatim. The Fader thinks she’s going to be a huge star, whatever; and she was nominated for a Best New Artist Grammy in 2019. Her new album, Strays, is on the way, and hopefully you’ll like it, I guess. Right, so now let’s descend on this nice little innocent album like a pack of Dementors and find every fault with it and mention nothing nice about it, unless I change my mind after a few bars. OK, here’s a single, called “Been To The Mountain,” listen to that, she sounds a little like Cyndi Lauper or Gwen Stefani, I guess, and the tune is kind of Sheryl Crow-ish, straight-ahead bar-band rock. She does a little rap-skit thing in the middle that sounds like Transvision Vamp, if you remember them. Nothing much going on here, but it’s not all that bad.

• Hold it, I found more albums. That’s right, I tied a picnic knapsack full of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to the end of a hobo stick and departed my Metacritic bubble, and will you look at this, folks, it’s former HIM frontman Ville Valo, more commonly known as VV, with some new record called Neon Noir! We’re back in business, baby, let’s rock our ears and see if my lunch will stay down for a full song from this dude, whattaya say? Wow, the single, “Loveletting,” has a little bit of a She Wants Revenge flavor, but it’s also kind of hooky, like Eric Carmen used to be in the 1970s, and there’s definitely a goth edge to it. I have no problem with this tune at all, seriously. With regard to his 2023 tour, he’ll be appearing at Big Night Live in Boston, but not until April 2.

• Lastly, it’s Gaz Coombes, the frontman for Supergrass, with a new solo album called Turn the Car Around! Wow, this guy’s into the cabaret stuff, it looks like; he probably really digs Dresden Dolls and all that stuff, at least to go by the single “Don’t Say It’s Over.” There’s Austin Powers-style organ in there, and he favors disposable mid-Aughts hipster-pop vocals a la Dale Earnhardt Jr Jr. The song would be OK without the stupid organ, but on a scale of 1 to 10 in horribleness, it’s only around a 3, which improves on most of the music put out between 2002 and 2010, so bravo.

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).