Author: Eric Saeger

Satoko Fujii, Torrent (Libra Records)

In this, her ninth solo album, jazz pianist Fujii explores “new musical territory in a completely improvised concert performance.” Usually the thought of jazz improv has me running for the exits at full bore (years ago I somehow became the central repository for that stuff and it came by the wooden pallet-load every month, all kinds of off-the-cuff noise that eventually led to my forsaking it for a few years). but the New York Times touted her as “an improviser of rumbling intensity and generous restraint,” which is, as always, college-boy-speak for “she’s good,” so here we are, indulging in a record consisting of noodlings Fujii rattled off during a recent concert setup. It’s assuredly an “artist album” in that she sees the piano not merely as a keyboard set but as something to be tinkered with: In “Cut the Painter” she blends weird noises made on the inside of the piano with lyrical melodies played on the keyboard. Elsewhere she plucks piano strings and whatnot in between delivering fantastic runs, morose sentiments and the usual ingredients. It’s a masterful thing if you’re willing to go off the beaten track. A+

Alcatrazz, Take No Prisoners (Silver Lining Music)

Waitwhat, you’re doing a fly-by, what’s even going on here, which Alcatrazz is this? I mean, there are two versions of Alcatrazz making records nowadays, one with Graham Bonnet, the dude who sang “God Blessed Video” in the mid-80s, a tune that almost single-handedly makes the case for hair-metal’s not being a complete waste of time. But yeah, it’s a mess here, folks, this is the Alcatrazz without Bonnet, and ha ha, look at that album title, it would have been cooler if they’d named it “Place Album Title Here,” which I’m sure has been done. Other than those two strikes, this album comes to the plate with my full attention and — um. Hideously generic stuff here, Udo Dirkschneider meets Bruce Dickinson vocals, power metal riffs out of a cereal box, etc. The gals from ’80s-girl-metal band Girlschool visit for a feat on “Don’t Get Mad Get Even,” I know not why. C

Playlist

• Spoiler alert, new albums will “hit the streets” on June 2, another lovely Friday filled with music and whatever! There will be good albums, bad albums, rock albums, Scandinavian folk-thrash albums, super-derivative albums and everything in between. Like the recently canceled Dr. Seuss once said, “My hat is old, my teeth are gold, I have an album I like to hold,” but what sort of albums will I be holding this week? That’s the ongoing mystery, one album, two albums, red album, blue album, will any of them be good, or will I tear off my white plastic earbuds in frustration like I always do and throw back three fingers of cheap 12-year-old multi-malt scotch just to forget that my ears once made contact with those — those horrible notes? I do not know, Sam I Am, so let’s try one of these albums on for size, how about — oh no, you’ve got to be kidding me, it’s a new album from talentless post-Iron Maiden frauds Avenged Sevenfold, called Life Is But A Dream, can’t I just review some TikToks from funny pot-smoking longboarders instead? Ack, here they are, with some dumb new song called “Nobody,” and the video features a cartoon skeleton and his family chilling in some dumb graveyard whatsis, and the tune is slow and doomy, but of course it gets really stupid and unusable when the singing starts, because, well, you know, it’s A7F or however you say it. Ack, ack, the singing, it’s like that horrible monster Dr. Seuss once said, “I do not like this one so well, all he does is yell, yell, yell; I will not have this one about, when he comes in I put him out,” in other words it’s time to depart these premises, for some better music, hopefully, but then again, how could it not be?

• Huh, this shouldn’t be too bad, it’s the millennials’ answer to Elton John, Ben Folds, with a new album called What Matters Most! From what I’ve heard of Ben Folds, it’s mostly been very musical but not really, you know, catchy, or whatever the kids call it these days — you know, “good” or whatnot. The whole album is up for sampling on YouTube, but the first single is “Winslow Gardens,” hold my hand and let’s listen together. OK, let go of my hand so I can shut this off, it’s just a twee song with a little bit of orchestration and Ben’s big dumb piano. It’s like Ben Kweller, or, as people used to say, “The Brady Bunch Band.” People need to stop listening to spineless, pointless nonsense like this, seriously, how can they even stand it.

• Yo, it’s none other than Cowboy Junkies, a band that has played at our beloved Tupelo Music Hall. They have a new album, called Such Ferocious Beauty, which will surely be decent, given that it’s not Avenged Sevenwhatever, but at this writing I am not seeing anything about their visiting Tupelo; in fact, the closest they’ll come to us is The Danforth Music Hall in Toronto, Canada, which is somewhere near the North Pole if I recall correctly. This album is their first one in five years, and the single, “What I Lost,” has kind of a 1960s-meets-Fiona Apple vibe or something like that, mildly depressing and strummy, it’s acceptable.

• And lastly we have Foo Fighters, a band that I have a newfound respect for after seeing a video of their bandleader Dave Whoever serving giant pots of food to a bunch of homeless people. More people should do that, you know? But Here We Are is the new album, and the whole thing is on YouTube for the moment, but we’ll focus on the kickoff track, “Rescued.” It’s got a jagged Pretenders vibe when it starts, but then it turns into their five-zillionth variation on “There Goes My Hero.” Everyone drink!

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).

The Waymores, Greener Pastures (Chicken Ranch Records)

This one comes with a backstory that’s kind of encouraging for artists slogging away in more remote, less arts-centric areas of the country. We’re talking about throwback-country/bluegrass stuff here, the real deal, and this duo’s success came about when they released a two-song demo featuring Marty Robbins’ “Don’t Worry” and Buck Owens’ “Under Your Spell.” Their hayseed sound is so close to Tammy and George’s that it caught the ear of actor Howard Zinn, who passed it along to a music producer buddy, Shel Talmy, a 1960s fixture who’d done The Who, Bowie and The Kinks among others. All of a sudden there were heavyweight session players all over the pair’s orbit, and this record, their third full-length, comes as a result of all that. Dave Pearlman (who’s worked with Merle Haggard, Hoyt Axton and all those guys) is on steel guitar, creating a large proportion of the magic; the songs weave a tapestry of old-school country and pop that’s at times reminiscent of Linda Ronstadt, Bonnie Raitt, that kind of thing. Good for them. A+

Michael Dease, The Other Shoe: The Music of Gregg Hill (Origin Records)

There are jazz-heads who read this space, watching like lonely lost puppies, ever hoping I’ll finally get back to giving the genre some love, and the guilt does weigh mildly heavy, so let’s do this one, from Georgia trombonist Dease, whose previous 15-odd records as a bandleader were mostly on Posi-Tone Records, with guest shots scattered in his oeuvre with the Dizzy Gillespie All-Star Big Band and others. Here he pays tribute to equally fruitful Michigan-raised jazz composer Gregg Hill, who grew up on swing and big band stuff as a kid and went on to cobble 150 pieces starting at age 39 (see? It’s never too late, folks). All About Jazz called this one of the year’s best LPs to date, to which I can only rejoin with a meek “sure, why not,” given that I’ve been such a bad apple this year (again, my apologies). Dease has rearranged some of this stuff, which may have led to its being more mathematically interesting; “Wake Up Call” evokes Monk and leads to what sounds like a post-bop outing for the most part. Flashes of keyboard brilliance stand out, but Dease does hold down the melodic focal points. Nice blend of echo-bop, for lack of a better term. A+

Playlist

• Onward, my scamps, on we go, to May 26 and the albums that will sally forward thence; the moon will enter its first quarter phase the next day, May 27, bringing with it laments of regret from the record-buying world, as they give a listen to the things they purchased this Friday! O Fortuna, no store returns on CDs that have been opened, abandon all hope ye who blah blah blah, so let’s do some reconnoitering, so your money won’t be used on musical nothingburgers, I am here to help you! Ha ha, look what’s first on the docket, a new album from the Spinal Tap of techno, Sparks, titled The Girl Is Crying In Her Latte, I can hardly wait! No, you know what, Sparks isn’t like Spinal Tap, they’re more like ManOWar, that band that used to dress up like Conan the Barbarian, like they have this stubborn fan base that insists their limp tunes are the best ever, because good taste can’t be taught to people, but it doesn’t matter because they’re already a parody of themselves, which leaves them impervious to snark attacks from mayhemic jerks like me, whose sense of duty calls on us to remind people that Sparks and ManOWar are really stupid bands and that it’s OK to give up on that one friend who believes otherwise; not everyone can be saved, is what I mean, like some people who voted for Vermin Supreme for president weren’t being ironic, they literally believed he was going to give everyone a pony or whatever it was. OK, now that I’m almost out of room for this nonsense, it’s time to go listen to the title track from this new Sparks album, and — wait, Cate Blanchett is in the dumb video? Hellooooo nurse, heart-eyes emoji, I’ve had a crush on that lady forever, let’s see if she can change my mind about Sparks! Oh, for Pete’s sake, no, she can’t, the tune is their usual Devo-krautrock with Cate Blanchett standing still throughout the video and breaking into a boomer dance every 30 seconds, this is so stupid that I wouldn’t be surprised if the Stupid Stuff Society sends Sparks a cease-and-desist order. Why on earth would someone even do this?

• Moving on, it looks like all of today’s “artists” have names that rhyme with “snarks,” because here we are with a new LP from Nigerian R&B/indie-folk lady Arlo Parks, titled My Soft Machine! It’s her second album; 2021’s Collapsed In Sunbeams suffered from a lack of touring owing to Covid, but it did chart pretty well everywhere. So let’s check out the new single, “Pegasus,” which includes a guest appearance from Los Angeles-based indie-folkie Phoebe Bridgers. Well, well, the song is really nice, sort of a trip-hop-pop hybrid recalling Kate Bush in mellow mode but with some drum glitch and stuff like that. Nothing wrong there, let’s push our luck and move on.

• Next, it’s More Photographs (A Continuum), the latest album from Kevin Morby, a Texan who was formerly with the bands Woods and The Babies and is eight albums into his solo trip as of this one, which I assume is a bunch of remixes lifted from his 2022 LP, Photographs. The single, “This Is A Photograph II,” is like a cross between Wilco and ’70s disco, and there’s lots of edge to it, believe it or not. Cool stuff, I can deal with it.

• And finally, we have Canadian hard-indie band The Dirty Nil with a new full-length, called Free Rein To Passions! Teaser single “Nicer Guy” is an amalgam of Weezer and Foo Fighters, which shouldn’t be too hard to imagine, and it’s pretty decent overall, because the singer sounds angry but awkward. Wow, I wasn’t mean to any bands this week, was I? Wait, no, I was, to Sparks, never mind.

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).

Gridfailure and Interstitia, Sunyata Ontology (Pax Aeternum Records)

Imaginative collaborative album from North Carolina-based Interstitia (the noise-rock nym adopted by Graham Scala) and New York-based Gridfailure (a solo project from David Brenner, also of Diminishing). This is underground aggro ambient, if I’m going to try to put a finger on it; the aim is to evoke visions of “a disparate not-too-distant dystopian America, with military/espionage tactics, civil unrest, off-the-grid cults and militant factions, covert government police, the takeover of artificial intelligence, and the looming threat of nuclear catastrophe more realistic than ever.” As always, some of that isn’t reflected in the offerings here, but it does deliver a lot of grimy, spooky noise. Opener “Call Of The Black Hand” sounds like an electric shaver fitted with phase-shifter effects, which is in the ballpark; “Omega Agency” is more along the lines of Rhys Fulber’s Noise Unit project, meaning it’ll appeal to goths and people like that. Worth your while if you like apocalyptic underground-DJ tuneage. A-

Esther Rose, Safe To Run (New West records)

I can hardly believe the hype that’s washing over the landscape with regard to the fourth rather pedestrian country-indie album from this New Orleans-based chanteuse; pound for pound, all the praise from Pitchfork Media and whatnot has reached the same level of ridiculousness — OK, in an indie sense — that Katy Perry’s first record rode in on. I mean it’s all fine and everything, a little bit ’90s-moonbat pop, a Natalie Merchant aftertaste and whatnot, wrapped in four-chord Joni Mitchell-ness and such. This isn’t to say it’s bad or anything — I wouldn’t dare at this point — but it’s not everything you may have heard it is. Lyrically it’s about running and staying in a literal-but-really-not sense, and in order to enhance that vibe she brings in Alynda Segarra (from Hurray for the Riff Raff) for a tune, in a move that the pressed-for-way-too-many-descriptors Pitchfork wonk saw as genius, being that both ladies make albums that “juggle the personal and the public so well.” Wheel reinvented? Um, no. But it’s nice, and all that stuff. B+

Playlist

• May 19 is a magical day, not just because it’s a Friday but also because many new rock ’n’ roll albums will be “unleashed” upon the unsuspecting masses, who will buy them in bulk just so the “artists” who made those albums won’t yell at them or whatever! Since it’s getting near barbecue season, when everyone needs good wholesome, dishwasher-safe, almost-sort-of-rockin’ tunes to listen to while the kids run around with Super Soakers until the dads flip out and yell, we should probably first talk about the new album from Dave Matthews Band, Walk Around The Moon! I’m sure the title track will be a terrific example of modern AOR radio rock, so let’s go listen, ah, here we are, it’s a live version! Well I’ll be horn-swaggled, it’s more like Blue Oyster Cult than the “serious version of Barenaked Ladies” twaddle he usually puts out. His voice is trashed, so maybe the vocal line is OK, but I can’t guarantee it

• Good lord, I’d almost forgotten the fact that quirk-folk superstar Sufjan Stevens even existed! Note to self, I really must either begin to care more about quirk-indie-electronica-folkies or stop pretending that I do! Whatever, as always, the fascinating thing about his new album (Reflections, which will be released in a few hours) is trying to guess which weird outfit Stevens will wear during his concerts. Will he be “owl boy,” “Good & Plenty-striped licorice boy,” or will he suit up in some sort of variation on the stupidness 1980s-era Elton John used to wear when he really wanted people to stay away from him? I don’t care, but maybe a quick distracted listen to the new single, “Ekstasis” will do the trick! Well, that’s interesting, the tune is a neoclassical piano piece with a few edgy, dissonant moves and whatnot, so if neoclassical piano music played by someone who dresses up like an owl is your jam, it’s your lucky day!

• Endlessly annoying 1960s songwriter Paul Simon is a million years old, and he was once the singing partner of Art Garfunkel before trying to become Jimmy Buffett or whatever that whole deal was. He was married to Carrie Fisher for a year, right after she played Princess Leia in Return of the Jedi, and once she calmed down from that whole experience, she realized that she’d married Paul Simon and pleaded insanity or whatever she did to get out of it. Simon’s new full-length is titled Seven Psalms, not to be confused with the Nick Cave album, which literally came out last year and hence Simon should have known to name his album something else, and he has not released a single as of this writing, just an album trailer on YouTube, obviously just to irritate me, and yes, it worked. Yes, there he is, hanging in the studio, singing some stuff. Yuck, whatever this teaser song is, it’s all serious and maudlin, with some lyrics about getting someone to forgive him. There is a string section and a choir and it pretty much sucks, let’s finish off this column before I lose my marbles.

• And finally, ack, some people have literally no shame, because here we go, folks, look, David Crosby from Crosby Stills Nash & Young just recently died, but without missing a beat, here comes Graham Nash, the most useless one out of the bunch, with a new album, called Now! If you still drive a 1962 Dodge Dart with peace signs on it, you know that Nash is the skinny English dude who wrote like only one song that the other guys could tolerate playing at Woodstock and whatever else, the ground-breaking ceremony for the Great Pyramid of Giza or whatever other hippie festivals those guys played during the Swingin’ Sixties. The single, “A Better Life,” is flower-power ukulele-folk, and I swear I’ve heard it before, but all the weakest songs on CSNY’s 4 Way Street were written by this guy, so it’s all a wash, whatevs.

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).

Julian Loida, “Giverny” (Gratitude Sound)

Preview title track from the album of the same name, which will be out in a couple of weeks. Art wonks will recognize Giverny as the small town outside of Paris where Claude Monet lived and worked, a place and feel that jazz/ambient percussionist/composer Loida tries to conjure through talkative piano lines, some well-placed string breaks, vocal chanting and a generally peaceful feel. Loida’s one of the good ones, his work spanning genres; he collaborates with dancers to compose scores for their performances and has partnered with visual artists and musicians from all walks. His eclectic geniality has extended into the area of community service as well: For more than two years Loida ran the Children’s Program for Shelter Music Boston, “bringing music and trauma-informed educational programming to children and families experiencing homelessness and financial insecurity in Greater Boston.” The full-length LP will be one to look forward to for certain. A

Champlin Williams Friestedt, Carrie (Sound Pollution Records)

OK, so this is a throwback-AOR supergroup of sorts, featuring Toto singer Joseph Williams, Chicago singer (for 25 years!) Bill Champlin and Swedish guitarist-producer Peter Friestedt, who released two LA Project albums that Billboard magazine, naturally, liked. Now before you confuse the title track with the old hair-metal Europe ballad, it’s not, it’s more of a happy-ass yacht-rock joint, co-written by Grammy Award-winning songwriter Randy Goodrum and features Champlin duetting with the another guy who fronted Chicago, Jason Scheff. Boy, I’ll bet there was some awkward vibes in the recording studio when they tried to fit those two egos into the booth, but it’s a very nice song, if 30 years past its sell-by date (I expected to hear Jack Paar’s “Man In Motion” song from St. Elmo’s Fire in followup just to complete the mummified feel). “The Last Unbroken Heart” pickpockets the ding-donging electric piano sound from ’80s Whitney Houston for the LP’s worst, most mawkish moments, and so it goes throughout, music to eat lobster with granny and grampy by. A

Playlist

• May 12 is on the way, bringing with it albums galore, ye, albums as far as the eye can see, like the classic biographical children’s tale One Fish Two Fish, except with albums, and I’m so excited to see if there’s anything good in this big pile! Looky there, it’s Alison Goldfrapp, who used to be in a band called Goldfrapp that featured the singing of one Alison Goldfrapp, so apparently she quit her own band to start a new one with herself? I don’t know, and let’s not dive into the Wikipedia over something so dumb (OK, I did, Goldfrapp is a duo with some keyboard player dude, I hope he’s not super-mad at her for making it obvious that she thinks he’s worthless in front of the entire planet), let’s just have a look at her new album, The Love Invention, because that’s what’s on the flames for us to talk about and blah blah blah. I have one of her albums — oops, I mean just a plain Goldfrapp album, and listened to it a few times, but it never really stuck. It was easy-time techno, which I can always deal with, but it wasn’t super-sexy or all that melodic — OK, it kind of sucked, not trying to be mean or anything, but I’ll do the dutiful and pick a random song from this new album, because the whole thing is available on YouTube right now! “So Hard So Hot” uses the same dreadful kind of keyboard sound Paul McCartney used on “Wonderful Christmastime,” so that’s a big minus right off the jump. Eh, then it smooths out and turns into a decent afterparty deep-house tune. Nothing really innovative, just decent enough technopop.

• British alt-rock/darkwave trio Esben and the Witch is named after a Danish children’s book, and let’s see, what else does Wikipedia know about them — hm, nothing really, just that they got together at some point and decided to play rock ’n’ roll songs together, which is how bands form, in case you weren’t sure. Their song “Marching Song” was used on TV shows like Beavis and Butt-head and Ringer, and so on. Hold Sacred, the band’s new LP, includes songs, one of which is “The Well.” The singer kind of sounds like Siouxsie Sioux, but not as much as Florence Welch does. The song’s kind of droopy and sad, with lots of reverb, it’s OK I guess.

• BC Camplight is the stage name of New Jersey-based singer-songwriter Brian Christinzio, who lived in Philadelphia, Pa., for a while, where he lived in an abandoned church, then moved to the U.K., where he got his act together, and then the po-po in England banned him from the country for some reason. He’s been on the straight and narrow since then; maybe you heard his 2015 single “Just Because I Love You” (not to be confused with the Anita Baker song, of course), a Smoky Robinson-meets-Brian Wilson sort of bedroom-soul tune that did OK with critics but, like basically everything else he’s done, didn’t really make him much money in record sales. That brings us to the here and now and his new album, The Last Rotation Of Earth, due out Friday. The title track is sort of like what would happen if Jr Jr could write good songs, or at least ones that would have a snowball’s chance of getting on commercial radio without annoying people. It has an enthusiastic piano line, over which Christinzo lays some subdued Beck-like college-rock vocals to decent effect.

• We’ll call it a column with Wilderness Within You, the new album from Parker Millsap, who is actually not related to Ronnie Milsap, so just stop that right now. The title track features Gillian Welch (who probably only showed up because she thought this guy’s related to Ronnie Milsap). The tune is really nice, steeped in unplugged bluegrass finder-picking, you might like it.

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

Bobcat Goldthwait, Soldier for Christ (PGF Records)

So, an album featuring ’80s/’90s/whatever comedian Bobcat Goldthwait performing a standup set recorded last year at Lincoln Lodge in Chicago. Like Gallagher with his watermelon-smashing Sledge-O-Matic (which has been outdone by approximately 367,000 YouTube prank videos last time I looked), Goldthwait has had a shtick going back decades, mildly funny jokes delivered in a hiccupping, “what kind of drugs is he on” voice. Reading this record’s informational one-sheet, I saw that Goldthwait has put away the cocaine and has a kid now, which gave me horrible flashbacks of Chris Rock’s most recent comedy special. Yet, I persisted. Jokes include making fun of a guy in a wheelchair for dissing Biden; the intrinsic sadness of Mylar Spongebob balloons; and trusting the government for the first time ever, upon hearing last year’s announcement that UFOs are real. It’s OK for what it is, this LP; there wasn’t much that tickled me any harder than those Jimmy JJ Walker commercials on MeTV where he’s trying to scam old people out of their Medicare. B

Fights, Scampirock (Lie Laga Records)

OK, OK, I give up, the genre of “Scandirock” is happening, and, owing to its roots being, you know, rooted in the Hives’s approach to melodic hardcore, it’s protected from on high by the prince of melodical dumbness, in other words this is even harder to hate than Finnish folk-metal. We talked about the Oslo, Norway-based Scandirock band Dudes a couple of months ago, but this fivesome is a lot more raw, and definitely more unhinged. I mean, you have to put a listen to opening track “Good Morning Neil Armstrong” on your bucket list, as the riff is up there with the Yngwie Malmsteem hammer-on madness that shot Alcatrazz’ single “God Blessed Video” into the stratosphere in the ’80s. But wait, there’s more, the vocal is sung in a scratchy-throated math-metal style I wasn’t expecting; in fact it’s probably the coolest rock tune I’ve heard in years. Buy buy buy. A+

Playlist

• Here it comes, gang, it’s already May 5, and you know what that means! Well, nothing really, unless it’s your birthday month, because you won’t really have any reason to go to the beach until June, but we can work with what we’ve got I suppose.

Ed Sheeran, – (which will eventually become known as Subtract, but for now, let’s just all pretend that this neckbearded indie-pop fraud will be super-famous forever and currently isn’t so drunk with cred that he thinks he can get away with a dumb, unpronounceable album title every year without some permanently annoyed rock critic pointing out how dumb it is)! I’ve never been able to tell that dude from that ginger prince in Britain, whatever his name, but there is no escape this time, because if I’m ever going to get this column off to my editing queens I’m going to have to stop stalling and go listen to something from this idiotically titled album. OK! The single, “Eyes Closed,” is the sort of Weeknd/Bruno Mars-style confection you’d hear if you hung around in the electronics section of Target for too long; it uses a chicken-plucking guitar-or-whatnot in order to attract listeners who don’t really like music, and then it’s millennial whoop-ish oatmeal burnishing the slightest possible variation on the same junk you’ve been hearing on bubblegum-radio for how many years now? 70? Oh, what am I even doing, let’s move it along, I don’t know how people can listen to this stuff without going completely daft. Talk about Groundhog Day, OMG.

• Yes, yes, but hark, the really stupid album names continue this week, courtesy of the Jonas Brothers, whose new album is titled The Album, no, I’m serious. Hold it, one of those Jonases is married to a British princess if I’m not mistaken. No, Wikipedia says I got it wrong, he’s actually married to a Westeros princess, the girl who was on the HBO show about dragons where all the good guys met pointless, gratuitously disgusting comeuppances, the adult CGI cartoon that was based on those books by that dude with the really stupid bosun’s mate hat, or maybe it’s a cab driver’s hat, who knows or cares. You know, somewhere in these boxes I have a specially signed CD of the Jonases’ first album, back when their record company was trying to make sure every critic in the country was talking about them. I’ll have to remember to list it for sale on Amazon at some point as a super-collectible item or something, but anyway, let’s all just calm down and talk about this new stupidly titled album. Look how grown up those boys look, my stars, and how they look so haunted after all those years of being yelled at by record company lackeys when they just wanted to play Donkey Kong, tsk tsk. The opening song is called “Sucker” (I won’t say it) and OMG it’s like that Ed Sheeran song I just talked about except the beat is more bloopy, and whichever Jonas is singing like Bo Diddley meets Prince and it’s even more bubblegummy. Ha ha, all the YouTube comments are from bots, it’s so obvious.

• The Lemon Twigs are two singing brothers from Long Island and they have a rich mommy. Thus far they’ve sort of wavered between indie, emo and glam, which might be a good direction, depending on what the new single from their upcoming album, Everything Harmony, sounds like. Ack, gag me, it’s 1960s twee, like the Young Rascals, get this trash out of my face this instant.

• We’ll end this exercise with LA Priest, whom I’ve heard about before, but there’s no Wikipedia page for him, just one for his old band, Late of the Pier. Whatever, his new space-pop LP, Fase Luna, features the tune “It’s You,” Ack, gag me, it sounds like Beck trying to be Mungo Jerry, we’re done here.

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).

T3nors, Naked Soul (Frontiers Records)

Had a weird little exchange the other day, on either Facebook or Twitter, I forget, where this one guy was saying that every album put out by Frontiers Records sounds the same as all the others. I can’t say I concur with that, only because basically all indie labels tend to sign bands that fall into that same trap, like, you won’t hear a Metal Blade-released LP that has much character past Slayer, for example. This one’s somewhat unique in that it features three successful AOR-style singers, Kent Hilli of Perfect Plan along, with Robbie LaBlanc and Toby Hitchock, both of whom have been in bands that specialized in Whitesnake/Jefferson Starship rawk. Spoiler, the result is a bunch of Toto-style radio nuggets with a few Scorpions-ish moments here and there, which is code for “this band has no sense of humor at all and is completely unaware that it’s not 1985 anymore.” That doesn’t mean it’s bad, it just means that wiseasses like me have no patience for it. B

Dust Prophet, One Last Look Upon The Sky (self-released)

Local-to-Manchester, N.H., guy Otto Kinzel continues to prove himself to be a fiercely independent warrior in the worst industry in the world, the music business. Right on time, a new album from guitarist/singer/label-runner/floor-mopper Kinzel, bass player/keyboardist Sarah Wappler and drummer Tyler MacPherson has landed, aimed at expanding on the apocalyptic verism they tabled in a teaser single a little while back, accomplishing that by pouring on classical lit-goth imagery from John Milton, Flannery O’Connor and such. Wappler kicks things off in style with a ghostly contrapuntal piano line serving as an intro, which leads us into “When The Axe Falls,” easily the best thing I’ve ever heard from Kinzel, a doom-speed Metallica joint made more delightfully indie by some guitar rawness. Riff-wise, “Dear Mrs. Budd” evokes next-level Obsessed, featuring a waltz-time bit that’s instantly memorable. New Hampshire, you really need to help these people get to their rightful place in the underground metal hierarchy, I’m serious. A+

Playlist

• Here we go, my precious trolls, just like every Friday, April 28 will be a day on which new rock ’n’ roll albums will appear magically, in your Spotify, because that’s how things are done, in these United States! The first thing that jumped out at me in this week’s list was an album titled Signs of Life, from Neil Gaiman, the human who wrote Sandman and all those other Lovecraft-meets-X-Men books and comics or whatever his trip is, I’ve never really gotten into any of that stuff. But wait, why would an esteemed author make an album when he doesn’t have to? In this case I’ll bet it’s because he’s sick of watching his wife, Amanda Palmer of the Dresden Dolls, make all the albums in the family. I would definitely do that too, like, if Petunia were an author of romance novels, I’d definitely drop the nonfiction book about social media that I’m working on right now and write a book about smooches and sexytimes just to keep her on her toes and get a nice sweet $2,000 advance from Harlequin Romance And Sexytime Book Co. and spend it on a used copy of Spider-Man No. 3 or whatever, as opposed to a signed copy of Sandman No. 1 or whatnot, you feel me? Anyway, folks, Gaiman is not a one-man band, so his music album needed actual musicians, and so he hired a group of instrument-playing slackers he knows, who call themselves the FourPlay String Quartet (see what they did there?), and those people play on this (probably completely pointless) album. I’ll now meander over to the YouTube box and listen to one of the tunes, “Bloody Sunrise,” which I selected because it looks like there’s a hot vampire girl in the video. Yup, it’s a cute vampire girl, and she’s singing a quirky comedy number about crawling out of her coffin and hanging around with bats and owls and trying to get a boyfriend, and oops, there’s the string quartet, and the vampire girl sings decently enough, like a third-place finisher on The Voice, something like that. There’s a random TV in the graveyard, and every once in a while Neil Gaiman (I think) appears on the TV and starts harmonizing with the vampire girl. This would be something for the Neil Gaiman completist on your holiday shopping list, because why wouldn’t they want to see proof that Neil Gaiman once did something incredibly dumb?

• If you’re like me at all, you’d given up on Canadian art-rock bands after the first one you ever heard, but you actually held a little hope for Braids, whose new LP, Euphoric Recall, has a very worthwhile little single, “Evolution.” Overall, it evokes an understated-electro version of Lisa Loeb’s “Stay,” something that Sia would definitely do. It’s a good one.

• Believe it or not, there are bands in Cincinnati, Ohio, friends, and one of them, The National, recorded a single that former President Barack Obama named as one of his favorite songs of 2017, namely “The System Only Dreams in Total Darkness,” which was indeed jagged, slightly aggressive and cool overall. The band’s new album, First Two Pages of Frankenstein, leads off with the song “Eucalyptus,” an art-rock thingamajig that combines the sounds of late-’80s Wire and Guster to create a slightly cowboy-ish atmosphere. It’s perfectly fine.

• Lastly it’s Canadian folk-rockers Great Lake Swimmers, with their new album, Uncertain Country! They’ve released albums on the Nettwerk Records label, which is code for “they’re consistently good.” The new single “Moonlight, Stay Above” is way too Bon Iver-y for my tastes, but other than that is shimmery and peaceful and blah blah blah.

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).