Author: Eric Saeger

Soen, Atlantis (Silver Lining Music)

With Trans-Siberian Orchestra’s traditional holiday tour coming soon, our thoughts turn of course not to Santa Claus and all that stuff but instead to progressive metal bands, like this Swedish one, which first hit the scene in 2004 as a “supergroup” consisting of former Opeth drummer Martin Lopez, ex-Testament bassist Steve Di Giorgio, Willowtree singer Joel Ekelöf and some dude named Joakim Platbarzdis on guitar. I don’t know if it’s still considered a supergroup, but they’re good, if you like epic prog-metal and whatnot, especially live albums from same, which is what this is. I don’t know how “live” this album actually is; if I’m reading this right, they just re-rubbed a bunch of their po-faced old stuff, opening the set with “Antagonist,” which is a lot more Scorpions than it is Megadeth. There’s a version of Slipknot’s “Snuff” added for variety, but most of the time it’s a mixture of different but usually depressing sci-fi-convention ambience. Is what it is. B+

Louis Armstrong, The Standard Oil Sessions (Dot Time Records)

Any list of the greatest jazz musicians of all time would automatically include Louis Armstrong, Jack Teagarden and Earl “Fatha” Hines. From 1948 through 1951, those three legends played as Louis Armstrong and His All Stars. Unfortunately they didn’t make many studio recordings, and most of the live recordings that have survived are in really bad shape. But on Jan. 20, 1950, Armstrong, Hines and Teagarden appeared in a San Francisco recording studio to record a number of songs for Standard Oil’s “Musical Map of America” program. Teagarden got to do his signature “Basin Street Blues” while Hines performed a show-stopping version of his “Boogie Woogie on St. Louis Blues.” But it was Armstrong who was in the spotlight throughout, in peak form vocally and especially on the trumpet, improvising completely different solos on “Muskrat Ramble,” “Panama,” “Struttin’ with Some Barbecue” and other signature numbers. “Classic” would almost be an insult; this is timeless stuff. A+

Playlist

• Great, here come the holidays, which means there’ll be barely anything for me to write about here in a couple of weeks, in this multiple award-winning column. But for now I am safe, because look at all these albums that you will be able to buy at Walmart or 7-Eleven or Petsmart, you know, anyplace that still sells albums! Look gang, can you even believe all these — oops, wait a minute, it’s Black Friday this week, and the next general-release date for albums is Nov. 25, so there’s no time to put out any new albums in time for the holidays, I’m in some hot water now, just great, holy catfish! Well, we’ll have to do something here, and you probably don’t want to hear about all the ins and outs of my last medical exam, so let’s ’ave a look at the new album by Stormzy, titled This Is What I Mean, coming out this Friday! This dude’s real name is Michael Ebenezer Kwadjo Omari Owuo Jr., and he is a British rapper, singer and songwriter who gained attention on the U.K. underground music scene through his Wicked Skengman series of freestyles over classic grime beats. Like everything else that’s grime-based, it was cool stuff, but what about this new record? I don’t know, let’s find out, shall we? The teaser single, “Hide & Seek,” is high-class stuff, kind of a cross between Seal and Drake, but with a humble, eminently British attitude that doesn’t rely on controversy or dissing someone else. Yes, folks, in other words it is doomed to eventual failure just because it’s good and decent and nice, you know how this goes by now.

• Marcus Paquin is a record producer/writer/multi-instrumentalist who has worked with Arcade Fire, The National, Stars, Raine Maida, Local Natives, basically any Canadian indie band that’s gotten on my nerves over the last 12 years. His new album is Our Love, and the single, “The Way Forward,” is likable enough, fronting your basic Bon Iver/Sigur Ros chill-tech-indie contrivances, but it’s OK. His vocals have a weird but not entirely unapproachable effect added in order to make them more awkward and anti-edgy, the sort of angle we’ve heard a million times by now, but there is indeed some epic-ness once you get to the chorus, where the vocal sound remains weird but actually works within the scheme of it. I dunno, an overproduced Gorillaz ballad would be similar; it’s not wildly addictive but a lot better than the recent things I’ve heard in this genre.

• Wait, ermagerd, looky over there, my little rascals, it’s an album on which we can just go to town and laugh our little tuchuses off, and bonus, it’s a holiday album! It’s 80-year-old pop-crooner Cliff Richard, who was once the most dreaded name in “rock ’n’ roll,” basically about as counter-culture as Lawrence Welk! Christmas With Cliff, his first holiday-themed album in 19 years, features 10 covers done by the only artist in the world to achieve Top 5 albums in eight consecutive decades! Includes classics like “Sleigh Ride,” “Joy to the World,” “Blue Christmas” and whatnot, as well as three original songs.

• We’ll finish this off and get to some serious drinking by talking about Glasgow-based goth-glam sextet Walt Disco and their new EP, Always Sickening, won’t that be terrific? There’s a cover of Stephanie Mills’ 1980 disco hit “Never Knew Love Like This Before,” but it’s super slow and weird, you’ll probably be like “I hate this,” just letting you know ahead of time. And there we are.

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).

Enuff Z’Nuff, Finer Than Sin (Frontiers Music)

Early holiday present for me; new albums from long-irrelevant (at least in the U.S.) hair-metal bands basically write their own reviews after about a minute, unless there’s some smidgeon of off-kilterness present (there never is). This is another band I really never listened to, mostly because of their stupid name, but trust me, I’ve listened to plenty of hair-metal bands (and was in one back when I was a simply irresistible babe), so when I say really dumb band names said all there was to say about a hair-metal album, it’s true. These guys formed in Chicago and were known for their obligato power ballad “Fly High Michelle” (um, wow, this isn’t all that bad) and an obligato dance-metal tune, “New Thing” (well well, ditto). So yeah, singer Donnie Vie is gone; bassist Chip Z’Nuff runs the show now, “Intoxicated” is the obligato power ballad, “Catastrophe” is a decent midtempo rocker. It’s not bad, really, this stuff. The takeaway for me is that these guys did have the potential to become a hair metal Cheap Trick. Too bad about that dumb name. A+

Long Mama, Poor Pretender (self-released)

This Milwaukee-based band has gathered a relatable-enough bunch of tunes together for their debut album, its inherent humanness coming courtesy of singer Kat Wodtke, whose voice traverses the wintry border that separates Dolores O’Riordan from Natalie Merchant (which means it’s pretty thin, which I’d never noticed before). Standard guitar-bass-drums setup here, one that you’d picture floating the background to a k.d. laing record or something like that, but there’s also engineer Erik Koskinen, who added lap steel, electric guitar, and Wurlitzer. Don’t let the Wilco comparisons lead you into this if you happen to see any; it’s really pretty basic Americana-indie-pop, very light on the indie, although there are some punk-ish passages here and there, which is as advertised. The tunes benefit quite a bit from Koskinen’s seemingly ubiquitous steel guitar, leaving me wondering why he’s not a permanent member. Picture a country-fied 10,000 Maniacs and you’d be about there. A+

Playlist

• Uh-oh, look what’s coming, it’s Friday, Nov. 18, only like 10 seconds left for your holiday shopping before all the corporate music-streaming platforms and rock stars starve and become skeletons, all because you had to be all like, “It’s too commercial, what care I if the dude from Coldplay can’t buy his weekly Maserati?” Always thinking of yourself, do you know it’s Christmas, don’t be such a Grinch, holy crow! I mean it’s definitely a festive day for me, because look over there, it’s one of the favorite punching bags of rock ’n’ roll critics all over the world! Yes, I’m talking about none other than Canadian false-metal muttonheads Nickelback, with an album titled Get Rollin’, how could they have thought of such an original thing? Ha ha, you want to know something awesome, upjoke.com has a collection of the best Nickelback jokes, ready? “Fire alarms should just play Nickelback: Anyone who stays in the building deserves what they get,” and, “I can’t get over how cruel some people are. I had some Nickelback tickets on the passenger seat of my car, and I popped into the shop for just five minutes. When I came back, someone had smashed the window and left two more.” Now that is some good old down-home hilarity, isn’t it folks, but uh-oh, there are five or six dudes looking at me all mad right now, and they have mullets and knockoff WWE championship wrestling belts, so I reckon I’d better get a move on, huh? OK, moving on, there’s a video here for the new single “These Days,” look at them, the fellas are walking into someone’s garage, and there’s a lava lamp, a random first-generation Atari system, and now they’re playing, and it’s kind of a neo-country half-ballad that’s just lame and emo-y. It’s like they’re trying to be some sort of boy-band for soccer moms? I don’t know. Anyway, the ’Back is back folks, Nickelback, everyone.

• So I saw that Richard Dawson has a new album coming out called The Ruby Cord this Friday, and then I was like, wait, is he even alive anymore or is he hosting some bizarre version of Family Feud in heaven for the entertainment of all the angels and whatever. OK, I found a video trailer for something that will be on this album apparently, something called “The Hermit,” which is billed as “the trailer for the film,” which means that there will be a movie featuring this dude I guess — Wait a freakin’ minute homies, that isn’t Richard Dawson, it looks more like Ricky Gervais, help me, Hippo readers, I don’t know what I’m even looking at. He’s sleeping in some bed, and the music is sort of like an unplugged Red Hot Chili Peppers B-side but there’s no singing and — wait, some YouTube review says that the opening track for this album is 41 minutes long, I’ll be taking a hard pass there, like, if it’s all like this boring snippet I’d rather eat a bowl of crickets. Another few commentators on YouTube are warning that this dude is into some sort of weird evolutionary theory and he’s sort of insane. Let’s leave this all right here and get out while we can, whattaya say?

• Boy howdy, if there’s anyone who knows how to put out two or three albums every year just to get on my nerves with their bad singing and prehistoric hippie iconography, it’s Neil Young & Crazy Horse, and it’s time for a new one, World Record! Short and sweet: New single “Break The Chain” is like a basic Tom Petty song except the guitar has heavy distortion on it, and, you know, that voice. Aaaand we’re moving.

• Finally, let’s listen to “Denimclad Baboons,” from Röyksopp’s new album, Profound Mysteries III. It’s (spoiler alert) krautrock with some mid-Aughts-house and ’70s-radio-pop vibe. I pronounce it “Fine, whatever.”

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).

Hellsingland Underground, Endless Optimism (Sound Pollution Records)

So the deal with this album is it’s the latest from a bunch of old Swedish rock ’n’ roll guys who don’t care if you make fun of them for being old. They’ve done a ton of albums and have finally gotten tired of loud guitars, so they “decided to add more piano, synthesizers and atmosphere instead.” Admirable, isn’t it? And they wrote their press blurb sheet themselves, which is cool. Like, after a lot of blah blah blah, it says here, “We also fired our drummer Patrik Jansson, but found a new one in Johan Gröndal. He is fantastic.” So, yeah, I like these guys personally, and they admit to hating Mötley Crue, which means they’re normal, but is the music any good? Actually yes, yes it is, especially if you’re into Starz, Bowie, things like that, arena-rock tempered with honky tonk and such. They have my full blessings. A

Spell, Tragic Magic (Sound Pollution Records)

The core of this Vancouver, Canada-based throwback-prog-metal act is just two guys, guitarist Cam Mesmer and drummer Al Lester, although they’re supported here by an array of temps who should probably go permanent if they want this to be a serious project, just my two cents. Influenced by such bands as Pink Floyd, Black Sabbath, Blue Oyster Cult, Rush and (purportedly) old-school Mercyful Fate, which is slightly hard to pinpoint here, but Triumph and Rush-style stuff isn’t. Some pretty different riffing here, odd time signatures, really good engineering values and all that; in fact this might have made something of a splash back in the days when a slightly occult-ish vibe was desirable. But it does get a little hokey when they’re phoning in some obvious filler (“Ultraviolet” for example, despite its being something of an apparent push track). But anyway, there you are, something that blows away bands like The Darkness without being too obvious about it. A

Playlist

• Ho ho ho, kiddies, there’s nothing like a little early holiday cheer, which will (hopefully) be provided this week by a bunch of new albums that are officially due out on Friday, Nov. 11! The biggest news this week is something for our mainstream rock fans out there, a new album from living fossil man Bruce Springsteen, called Only The Strong Survive! Here’s a fun fact: Did you know that Bruuuce’s guitarist Steven Van Zandt (also known as Little Steven or Miami Steve or That No-Neck Dude From The Sopranos) is from Winthrop, Massachusetts? See, you learn something new every week just by checking in here! Ack, ack, whatever, furball, here we go, another full length album of rock ’n’ roll from Bruuuce and his boyeez, I can’t wait to get disappointed by the latest rock music single from this working-class hero dude who could buy a few Hilton hotels out of the loose change in his couch, let’s go see what the hubbub is all about this time (which will hopefully be better than last time, lol, remember how much people hated that last album?). But wait a minute, folks, this first single, “Do I Love You,” is pretty cool overall, especially if you’re old and often enjoy 1960s girl groups like the Supremes. Ha ha, look at Bruuuce, getting’ down with the rock and soul, just cold partying while three sets of Josie And The Pussycats dancers rock out and dance to the brass and xylophone. I’m totally inspired, I have to admit, Bruuuce has finally given up the whole “political rock” nonsense, put down his guitar and accepted his role as a really white version of James Brown and plus girl dancers! Buy buy buy!

• Gold Panda is the stage name of English electronic record producer and songwriter Derwin Schlecker, who loves making weird electro music in genres that have short or non-existent shelf-lives, like “post dubstep” and “micro-house,” don’t you love it when techno dudes just make up a genre that might loosely describe their beats, which usually just come from random loops that came out of their playing with their ProTools or whatever for 10 seconds? But wait a minute, hold up homies, forget everything I just said because I’m listening to “The Corner” from the new Gold Panda album The Work, and it’s pretty usable and kind of neat or groovy or whatever they say nowadays. The beat is a trippy ’70s sample, sounds like, and the dude’s voice is a dead ringer for the singer from Pet Shop Boys.

• British singer Louis Tomlinson originally rose to fame as a member of the English-Irish boy band One Direction. Faith In the Future is his new album; “Bigger Than Me” is its tire-kicker single, basically Hoobastank without any training wheels (or originality for that matter, but it’s OK).

• We’ll end with certified weird person Jimmy Edgar, a conceptual artist and sound designer from Detroit, Michigan. This dude is influenced by minimalism, Yves Klein and Immaterialism, the doctrine that material things do not exist. Would that that were actually correct and this guy’s new album, Liquids Heaven, weren’t staring me in the face right now, but here it is, so let’s get this over with. Right, right, so the first “single” is “Slip n Slide,” a tattered electro mess with a lot of wub-wub vibe. Starts out kind of dumb but then becomes workable enough. If you like weird cyborg-pop patter this would be the place.

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).

Brothertiger, Brothertiger (Satanic Panic Records)

If you were around in the late ’80s, you probably heard your share of corporate metrosexual chill-techno music by Tears For Fears, Scritti Politti, Spandau Ballet and all that junk, usually at the most inopportune times, like when you were stuck someplace where it was being played loud enough for you to hear it. No, I kid this kidder, because you could do a lot worse these days than this kind of thing, Perry Como makeout tunes for the generation who thought John Waters was the greatest filmmaker of all time. This guy — the mononymed Jagos, who’s done four other LPs with this project — has really nailed the vibe; there’s pretty, slick synth-cheese all over the place, as well as the staple fake-bell sounds that signified ’80s-pop more than basically anything else if you think about it. It’s all well done, the vocal lines smooth and low-slung. There’s no reason for this kind of music to exist in current-year, but it is what it is. A

Amanda McCarthy, “Lifeline” (single) (self-released)

When last we left this New Hampshire-based country-pop singer-songwriter, she’d released her 14-song debut LP Road Trip, which, now that I’m re-listening to it for the first time in forever, actually has almost a Christian-pop feel to it, but that’s probably mostly owed to my listening to a lot of church-rock nowadays for some reason. Anyway, she’s in Nashville or thereabouts now, shooting for the bigs, and to make it in the bigs, one needs big-sounding – and, yes, I hate this word as much as anyone — production. This song does have that, let’s get that out of the way; it’s got as much a Tegan and Sara feel as it does a slight Faith Hill twang to it. It’s a very catchy rock-ballad-ish tune, one she “tried to write for years,” so she says”… my brain kept coming back to this song.” Good thing it did. There’s nothing amiss here. A

Playlist

• Like Zippy The Pinhead always says: Yow, look at all the new CDs that are coming out! Yup, it’s a huge pile of new albums due out on Friday, Nov. 4, and the worst, I mean first, one is Aughts-indie stalwarts Phoenix, with their new album, Alpha Zulu! You know, back when I first started writing this column — before the Best Of New Hampshire CD Reviews award and the other one, I forget which it was — I was really intimidated by Phoenix and their musical meatloaf of Kaiser Chiefs and whatever else, like, it was kind of heavy but also kind of awkward and badly done, which was all the rage back then, so I had to watch what I said about them because I was afraid some 98-pound hipster with skinny jeans and a flavor-saver patch under his lips would tell my editor to fire me because I just wasn’t sufficiently plugged into the zeitgeist. Of course, the happy ending came years later, when music journalists who’d suffered under the whip of utterly incompetent Brooklyn scenesters who pretended to like bands like Pavement and Air — you know, the really bad stuff — finally decided enough was enough and that it was OK for us writers with a bare modicum of taste to admit that we couldn’t stand any of those bands. It was kind of organic for me, like, I had gotten to the point where I just couldn’t take it anymore and had started dragging some of them (ha ha, remember Snow Patrol, how they couldn’t quite write a song that Gin Blossoms wouldn’t laugh at? Write those weak, unsellable B-sides, Snow Patrol! Write!). OK, and whatever, I’ll go listen to this dumb Phoenix album so that you don’t have to. I assume they’ve improved by now, seeing as how they’ve had what, 15 years to think about all the damage they’d done to rock ’n’ roll? I have no expectations at the moment, I just hope it isn’t completely unlistenable, whatever it is — ah, there it is, the title track. Oh jeez, they’ve gone the Yo La Tengo/Chk Chk Chk route but (and you’ll never believe this) less interesting. Kind of mellow, a sneaky little hook in there halfway through the song, vibe with no purpose other than ordering avocado toast or something. Anyway, there you go, Phoenix, everyone.

• For whatever reason, some of you are really big into Queens Of The Stone Age and buy all their albums, and for that, they thank you, and you’ll want to know about Tropical Gothclub, the new solo album from QOTSA multi-instrumentalist Dean Fertita, streeting this Friday! This fellow also played with Dead Weather, so he’s supposedly seen Jack White eat an entire bag of Wendy’s hamburgers in one sitting, a story he can tell his grandchildren. I expect this will be a set of stoner-rock songs, given Fertita’s liking for stoner rock, but let’s do a quick CSI just to be sure. So the first single, “Wheels Within Wheels,” is, you guessed it, basically a QOTSA song, but with a more boneheaded, King Gizzard-ish psychedelic angle. Good lord, it’s noisy and pointless, I’m unimpressed but will admit it’s better than a lot of the trash out there.

• What in tarnation is the Ezra Collective, fam? I don’t know, I have no idea, let me Google it. Ah, OK, I get it, they’re a jazz band of some sort; their 2019 instrumental single “Quest for Coin” was premiered as a “Hottest Record in The World” on BBC Radio 1’s Annie Mac show. Where I’m Meant To Be, the new album, features the single “Life Goes On,” a weird but irresistible thingamajig combining breakbeat, ska and Fela Kuti. Simply too cool.

• We’ll wrap up this nonsense with Swedish folk-rock girls First Aid Kit’s new LP, Palomino! Not much to say other than if you ever wanted to hear a slightly depressing version of ABBA, you’ll love this. Great 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).

Nelson, A Nelson Family Christmas (UME Records)

So glad to get the first holiday record of the season into the books, and this one is actually nice, if you like being in a good mood in front of a crackling fire, or eating Hobo Beans out of a can under the Interstate 93 overpass or whatever you’ll be doing this season. No, you’re not seeing things, this is indeed Matthew and Gunnar Nelson, the twin sons of Ricky Nelson, the same photogenic pair of boys who graced the post-hair-metal world with the marginal hits “(Can’t Live Without Your) Love and Affection” and “After the Rain,” the latter of which is the only one I remember at all, it was actually OK. This is a decent holiday album, no knuckleballs or weirdness, and it includes jangly, poppy, rather pretty versions of everything from “Jingle Bells” to “Joy To The World” to (really the only Christmas song I can stand anymore) “Holly Jolly Christmas.” Solid, nice, nothing wrong here. A

Peggy Lee, Norma Deloris Egstrom from Jamestown, North Dakota [50th Anniversary Deluxe Edition] (Capitol Records)

Odd little vintage curio here, the 50th anniversary release of the jazz-pop singer’s final album for Capitol Records, released in 1972. For the most part the tunes were bum-outs about love and loss and everything in between, including “Just for a Thrill,” “Superstar,” “The More I See You,” “I’ll Be Seeing You,” all made fascinating by her unique, somewhat low-throated warble. “Love Song,” a gently finger-picked number, was the biggest song on board; released as a 45-rpm single, it was a minor hit, spending four weeks on the Billboard Easy Listening chart and peaking at No. 34 in October 1972. It was also Lee’s last single for Capitol, nearly three decades after she released her first on the label. This set includes a 23-page booklet, annotated by Iván Santiago, featuring new interviews with Tom Catalano, Artie Butler and Brian Panella, as well as previously unseen photos from the 1972 recording session. A

Playlist

• It’s Halloween, baby, and new albums will hit the streets this Friday, Oct. 28!

We’ll go over And I Have Been, The latest full-length from U.K. singer-songwriter Benjamin Clementine first. He is billed as being “one of the great singer-songwriters of his generation, and the future sound of London,” although critics have had a hard time placing his music in any one genre. After listening to the new single “Genesis,” I’d categorize him as a trip-hop-infused Nick Cage, not that his voice is all that annoying but yeah, it kind of is. The song kind of rips off “House Of The Rising Sun,” and it looks like he’s dancing with his mom in the video, which is weird, but whatever.

• Canadian electro-pop band Dragonette is now a solo act consisting of singer Martina Sorbara, the daughter of a former Member of Provincial Parliament and Minister of Finance in Ontario. Now gather ’round, kids, this little story isn’t going to be about nepotism in rock ’n’ roll or government or whatever, it’s actually a sad tale of love gone horribly wrong, because Sorbara was originally married to the band’s bass player, Dan Kurtz, but that didn’t pan out so much, like maybe he said something inappropriate during some fundraising banquet for the Canadian Prime Minister or he used a salad fork instead of an actual normal fork to eat his royal poutine when the Pope or Finland’s Chancellor came to visit the Canadian White House or whatever they have in the frozen hinterlands of our “neighbors to the north.” And such and so, but the title track of this album, “Twennies,” is OK if you usually like mall-techno, it’s got sort of like an aughts-era Miss Kittin-style house groove, pretty harmless and unoriginal but it’s alright overall, bedroom vibe and all that, decent enough hook, etc.

• Yikes, it’s yet another album from Australian psychedlic-stoner freaks King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard! It wouldn’t be a normal week without a new album from these guys, you know? Ha ha, I can’t stand it, this is their literal fifth album of 2022, their 23rd overall, and it’s titled Changes. Boy, you have to admit, it’s a pretty smart gimmick, the whole idea of being in a band and putting out a bunch of albums, what madness is this, amirite? OK, whatever, it’s Halloween, so let’s go to the YouTube and find a video for one of these new songs and, like Frankenfurter said on The Rocky Horror Picture Show, see what’s on the slab! Ah, here’s one of their new rock ’n’ roll songs, “Oce V,” and uh-oh, look at this video, our boys are in Italy or some other country, whatever, and it looks and sounds like some goofy B movie from like 1971, like dig the funky beat! LOL, these guys are such stoners, if they had a time machine, they’d probably go back to the Jurassic age just so they could watch a velociraptor hatch out of an egg and put a little baseball cap on it, because randomness is so cool.

• We’ll end this week’s rundown with another Canadian indie musician, namely Dan Mangan, whose new album, Being Somewhere, is in the books as of this Friday! He’s done soundtracks scored for feature films (Hector and the Search for Happiness for one), as well as music for things you may have seen on Netflix and AMC. The first single is “All Roads,” which has the same kind of vibe as Modest Mouse’s “Interstate 8,” you know, quirky and half-plugged-guitar-y but not as stupid as Figurine or any of that garbage. Pretty boring, that’s it, folks, nothing much to see here, truth be told.

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).

Peel Dream Magazine, Pad (Slumberland Records)
With its Postal Service-vs.-the very worst parts of Spoon-sounding tunes, this dude’s first album, 2020’s Agitprop Alterna, should have sunk straight to the bottom of the ocean, never to be heard again, but lest we forget, people have absolutely dreadful taste these days, so here he is again — and by “he,” I’m referring to Joseph Stevens, the driving force behind this project, which, as of this album, has turned toward a more cleanly engineered pop direction. Anything’s better than the stuff on Agitprop, up to and including the Belle & Sebastian stylings of the tune “Pictionary,” which is what you’d hear if Donovan were still around and big into twee. But it’s not all that, ahem, good: The title track is pointless and awkwardly confident, dragging a really horrible-sounding keyboard and a flute into the mix, but that’s this guy’s jam. Boy, he loves him some Stereolab, you can tell, but the funniest part is that he fancies this thing as a concept album in the vein of Nilsson’s The Point. Pfft, he wishes. He’ll be at Lilypad in Boston on Nov. 1. D

Ben Harper, Bloodline Maintenance (Chrysalis Records)
Yeah, I missed the first waltz with this LP, Harper’s 15th overall, when it streeted in July, but the 140-gram vinyl pressing just came out as of this writing, so, you know, sue me. The three-time Grammy Award winner’s forte is an oddball mixture of blues, folk, soul, reggae and rock, if this is all news to you, although his attendance at a Bob Marley show when Harper was 9 years old was his real “OK, this is what I need to do with my life” moment. Can’t tell that right off the bat from this one, though; it launches with a nicely done 2-minute Bone Thugs-begging vocal harmony routine in opening song “Below Sea Level,” and then it’s on to some Jamie Liddell-ish asphalt-soul in “We Need To Talk About It.” “Where Did We Go Wrong” is pure Fifth Dimension ’70s-pop straight out of Burt Sugarman’s Midnight Special TV show; “More Than Love” works an Otis Redding vibe. Still no reggae by that point, but the Leadbelly/Led Zeppelin mud-folk of “Knew The Day Was Comin’” makes up for that. Solid, lots of knuckleballs. A

Playlist

• Well, will you look at that, the next Friday for new album releases is this coming one, Oct. 21, and guess what day that is. No, seriously, you’ll die: It’s my birthday, guys, which will be celebrated by welcoming the newly crowned King Charles of England and Wales and Wolveringhampshire or whatever to our home, for tea and crumpets and a masked ball! Either that or a Netflix monster movie and takeout from Panda Express, I haven’t decided, but either way I won’t have to do anything on my wife’s “honey do” list that day; in fact, maybe if the King gets here on time for once I’ll borrow one of his jingle-hatted knave-clowns to fix the stairway banister and have him stop every once in a while to juggle some flaming aerosol cans or whatever those guys do for their royal paychecks. But whatever, it’s my birthday, so hopefully there will be a good album or two out of this week’s dump, and we will talk about it here. OK, let’s look at the list — yikes, I suppose I should mention Midnights, the upcoming new album from glorified Kellie Pickler wannabe Taylor Swift, in case there are any 11-year-old girls reading this week’s column, even though it’s written by an “icky boy.” So the title track from this new Tay-Tay album is a sleepy ballad that sounds a little like Kellie Pickler doing a cover of the old Kiss song “Beth.” It’s an OK song, which leads me to believe she didn’t actually write it, and the video shows her dancing and doing other stuff when she was like 16 it looks like, before she started dating Jake Gyllenhal and whoever. OK, I’m feeling a little queasy, may I be excused now?
• Boy, I can’t wait to open my next birthday present, an advance preview of Direction Of The Heart, the new LP from ’80s synthpop pioneers Simple Minds, who are still led by singer Jim Kerr and guitarist Charlie Burchill, just like when they started in 1977, formaldehyde does have its uses, doesn’t it gang? I’m sure you’ve heard their biggest (and I believe only) hit single, “Don’t You (Forget About Me),” if you were ever trapped at your aunt’s house and there were a John Hughes movie marathon, because that was the closing song from The Breakfast Club, the movie where rich high school girl Molly Ringwald had her Pikachu backpack stolen by a thug (played by some actor, Judd something, who cares) and in return she gave him a cubic zirconia ear-stud if he promised never to talk to her in the school halls ever again. But I digress, we’ve got Simple Minds here, folks, or at least I do, and I can’t wait to hear this band’s version of “Vision Thing,” because — wait, this isn’t a cover version of the old Sisters Of Mercy tune, it’s a new song, and it sounds totally ’80s, believe it or not. It’s not very interesting but your aunt won’t care, let’s move on to my next “present.”
• You know what’s the best birthday song is that Stevie Wonder tune, “Happy Birthday to Ya!” I love that one, but you know what’s probably not going to be a great song to commemorate my birthday is “Yellow,” from Tegan and Sara’s upcoming new album, Crybaby! Why do I assume that? Because I’ve never really liked any song I’ve ever heard by Tegan and Sara, but for argument’s sake, let’s say I go listen to it now and I like it. OK, that’s what I’m doing right now, and it’s cutely annoying, awkwardly ’90s-chick-poppy, sort of pretty but nothing I’d ever want to hear again. OK, one left to go and I’m going to spend the rest of my birthday chugging Jagermeister.
• Lastly, it’s North Carolina-based indie rockers Archers of Loaf, with their latest full-length, Reason In Decline! The single, “In the Surface Noise,” is kind of early U2-ish but the singer sounds like he has adenoids, he should probably consult a physician about that. — Eric W. Saeger

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).