Author: Eric Saeger

Svvarms, Adaleena EP (Hilltop Records)

It would appear that this East Bay, San Francisco-based duo have designs on a more or less newfangled genre that might be best described as “yacht rock indie.” This isn’t to imply that a lot of indie bands haven’t tried their hands at chilly pop music that grandmothers might like, but this is pretty straightforward stuff, not a bunch of tunes that are by turns gloomy and awkwardly pretty. And besides, if there’s anything these guys would love for me to say about them, it’s that they’re yacht-rock-ish, you can just tell. Like Vampire Weekend on ketamine or Luke Temple with designs on classic radio, the tunes aren’t as kludgy as you might expect from a band that sounds heavily influenced by Wilco and Radiohead, not that I might not be wrong about that. Whatever, the bottom line is that there’s something mildly Simon and Garfunkel about them, but there’s nothing cringey about that aspect. Some good, unique experiments in sound really help to flesh this out. A

Randal Despommier, A Midsummer Odyssey (Sunnyside Records)

Barely-there jazz to peel grapes by. This album is composed of stripped-down rubs of the music of Swedish baritone saxophonist Lars Gullin, a child prodigy who, like so many mid-century jazz players, had something of a cursed life. His first stint as a bandleader ended after a car accident (nobody died, but it apparently prompted the band to quit or something; Gullin was a long-time methadone addict when he died in 1976, so, you know, it’s not too mysterious). Despommier heardGullin’s “Danny’s Dream” and found it quite epic, which takes us to this, a duo project between Despommier and guitarist Ben Monder in barely plugged mode. It’s very light stuff, and to be honest, at first blush (“Toka Voka Oka Boka”) it feels a bit too much like an academic exercise for my taste. That’s not to say the principals didn’t enjoy putting this together, but if I had the capabilities of these guys, I certainly wouldn’t have. B-

Playlist

• July 22 is our next general-release Friday, when the new CDs hit the streets, all of them hoping to get some love and props from all the young homies and coolios who flock to the record stores to get down to the rock music. My favorite is when you go into Barnes & Noble and all the homies and peeps are test-listening to all the new and ill and groovy rock music on test headphones, and once in a while some grandmother will put on a 1950s Jerry Lee Lewis album and start twerking like a boss right there, while the homies and coolios and skater punks and crazily pierced goth-industrial Draculas all look on and elbow each other, blissfully ignoring the fact that one day their own grandchildren will laugh at them behind their backs for listening to Bruno Mars and having a Hello Kitty tattoo on their butt, nice and safe and out of sight, where totally no bosses would ever see it and fire them. It comforts me to see that people still care about art, even though it peaked when Gallagher smashed his first watermelon on live TV in the 1980s, back when you’d tune into MTV and they’d say, “Hey folks, you’re watching MTV, and we’ve got Simple Minds!” OK, old joke? Perhaps, perhaps, but you young kids weren’t there, you never had to watch videos from Phil Collins and Spandau Ballet, so if I feel the need to make a rusty old joke, I’ve earned the right to it, OK where were we. Oh no, it’s Zooey Deschanel, a.k.a. The Queen Of All Druggie Moonbats, in her vanity rock ’n’ roll project with M. Ward, She & Him, but guess what, this isn’t going to be the duo’s normal level of horribleness, it’s 100 times worse, because this new album probably has a lot of obscure Brian Wilson cover songs on it, if the title, Melt Away: A Tribute To Brian Wilson, is any indication. Good grief, do I really have to do this? Trust me, I sure wouldn’t, if there were just one album being released on the July 22 by a band that at least five of you people had ever heard of, but no, sure, I’ll go listen to their stupid rub of “Wouldn’t It Be Nice,” but if I have to do that, it’s a drinking game, and you people have to participate in it. Rules: one shot if there’s a crummy Postal Service lo-fi techno part that sucks completely, and you have to drink the whole bottle if there’s ukulele. Ready? Ack, ack, this is awful, no Postal Service and no ukulele, but Zooey’s voice is worse than it’s ever been in history. Why does Zooey hate music so much, seriously?

• Hamburger jokes ahoy, mates, looky there, it’s famous pudgy gastronome Jack White, with his latest effort to revive arena rock, the Entering Heaven Alive album! Say, did you know that this Stay-Puft guitar monkey took Meg’s last name when they got married? It’s true, his given last name was Gillis. Aren’t weird rock ’n’ roll facts interesting? I think so, because usually they’re a lot more interesting than the albums put out by weird rock ’n’ roll people, especially in the case of this guy, who hasn’t met a Led Zeppelin riff he didn’t want to steal, but like Steve Harvey once famously said, “Wait a minute!” because this is a folk album, not a Zep album with a chick singer! Teaser track “If I Die Tomorrow” is sort of like if Bowie’s “Major Tom” got super-glued to Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Free Bird.” No further comment.

• Alt-rock band Sports Team is from London, England, and their first album, Deep Down Happy, went to No. 1 in Scotland and no place else. Gulp, their second LP, includes the song “Cool It Kid,” a pub-rock holler-along tune that’s awful except for the chorus.

• Lastly we have Canadian alt-country The Sadies, a band composed of all guys. “All The Good,” the single from Colder Streams, their newest full-length, sounds like a 1960s Rolling Stones ballad, but with banjo, and thus concludes our descent into the abyss for this week.

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).

Lindsay Clark, Carpe Noctem (Audiosport Records)

This Portland, Oregon-based girl has released a good number of albums up to now, spotlighting her talent for writing post-Joni Mitchell-ish folky-poppy trifles. Remember, though, it’s current_year, so she does have a moonbat side, and the tunes tend to fixate on one section rather than stray off to become too complicated or interesting. Sigh, but whatever, Clark isn’t a kook, just your average girl in the world trying to find a half-workable relationship and such, just like you, and she’s not maudlin about it, which is a nice break from the real weirdos who come in here with kooky albums. On this one, she’s got some lovely acoustic guitar undergirdings that help keep stomachs settled; she uses a self-taught Nick Drake-ish fingerpicking style that’s a great fit for her musical aims. Co-conspirators here include members of such bands as Dolphin Midwives, Shook Twins and Paper Gates, variously playing violas, cellos, flutes and such. A

Al Foster, Reflections (Smoke Sessions Records)

OK, may I present my favorite jazz album so far this year. At age 79, Al Foster is a jazz-drumming icon, having played with jazz Herbie Hancock, Sonny Rollins and Joe Henderson to name three, but I mustn’t forget to mention his work with Miles Davis in the 1970s. Right, the ’70s wasn’t Davis’s fiercest decade for my money at least, but the overall sound was nice and bright, for what that’s worth. Anyway, that’s the sonic upshot on this one, pretty much, but it’s even nicer really: it’s current_year after all, which means hypervigilant mics picking up every last-sub-echo of this band, which is absolutely on fire from the get-go. Opener “T.S. Monk” finds Foster meeting the challenge of some blazing trumpet work from Nicholas Payton by tendering some absolutely filthy drums, after which a rework of Sonny Rollins’ “Pent-Up House” rushes in to ground old-time listeners. Really priceless, this. A+

Playlist

• Ack! Ack! Look at this, folks, just look at it, the next general-CD-release Friday is July 15, which means the summer is already half over! Let me count the weeks on my fingers here a second, wait — yep, before you know it, we’ll all stop saying “It’s freaking rooooasting” and replace it with “It’s freakin’ freeeezing,” because there are only two temperatures in New England, freezing and roasting. I can already feel my feet turning into whimsical frozen ice sculptures until next May, can’t you? But in the meantime, there is stuff to talk about right now, so we can live in the moment like adults, starting with Bleed Here Now, the latest full-length from sort-of-hard-rock-but-oh-whatever band And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead, or “Trail Of Dead” for short! They are from Austin, Texas, and the principal members are in their 50s now, boy, time does fly, doesn’t it? It’s like, being a professional music journalist; you’ll hear some band and think, “My stars, that’s boring, but they seem hip, I should probably pay attention if I ever expect anyone to respect my body of ‘work,’” but then two minutes later you’re watching cartoons and you forget the band’s name, and then 15-odd years go by and all you remember is that you don’t have any real interest in what the band is doing these days, but then you’re tasked with writing about that very band. Those are the shoes I’m in right now, knowing that I’ll have to go listen to some new song from these performing clowns but secretly hoping that if I keep typing extraneous peripheral nonsense I’ll run out of room and not have to go listen to the dumb song. Oh, well, so much for that, there’s room for a quick CSI of the teaser track “No Confidence,” a song that starts out, as always, like a cross between Flaming Lips and some actual rock band like Band Of Skulls, and then the song — ick, it sucks, basically like Superchunk with a low-tier guitar riff. Band Of Skulls is/was pretty good, by the way.

• Oh, how lovely, nothing I want to hear more right now than some psychedelic-Aughts-indie, will this millennium ever end? Because look, it’s New York City post-punk revivalists Interpol, with their seventh album, The Other Side Of Make-Believe. Great. You know, if the Martians are just watching Earth as a TV series, they’re going to skip all of the Aughts and the Teens and whatever this decade of demented horror is called and simply fast forward to when flying Jetsons cars don’t cost $92,000 (it’s true, reserve yours now at www.jetsonaero.com) and can actually fly for more than 20 minutes (also true). But I am not a Martian, unfortunately, and thus must help myself to a big tall glass of the new Interpol single “Toni,” a palatable, slightly pounding tune that wants to be as cool as Arcade Fire’s “Rebellion (Lies)” but has too much in common with Cardigans’ “Lovefool” for me to want to hear it again. Admirable effort, boring Aughts-indie band.

• And the hipster march continues, with Austin band Elf Power, which is part of the “Elephant 6 musical collective” that comprises, wow, look at that, a bunch of bands I don’t like: Of Montreal, Apples In Stereo, etc. I’m on a roll, with this new Elf Power album, Artificial Countrysides, the title track of which is a cross between very early Rolling Stones and Pavement. My DMs are open if you can think of anything worse.

• We’ll abandon this fast-sinking ship with Filipino-British singer-songwriter Beabadoobee’s new album, Beatopia, whose single, “Talk,” is muddy noise-pop for Hello Kitty culturists. I could listen to this again, sure.

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).

DoubleVee, Treat Her Strangely (self-released)

Picture a more-or-less-direct cross between Pavement and Dandy Warhols and you’d have Starlight Mints, a hipster-indie band from Oklahoma. Those guys called it an oeuvre in the mid-Aughts, maybe because they were no match for their fellow Oklahomans Flaming Lips, but some people would disagree, not that I care. Allan Vest was that band’s singer and, in 2015, married the former Barb Hendrickson, a musically like-minded soul, and here we are, with this band, which flirts with orchestral indie-pop, adding such instruments as viola, trumpet and trombone to Allan’s recipe, which was successful in the Mints’ heyday (some of the Mints’ songs wound up on TV shows like Malcolm in the Middle, Californication and Gossip Girl, most likely when forced quirkiness was in the script, but I don’t know). These tunes have a neo-New Wave feel, quite ’80s in fact, and a lot of them bear beats that feel pilfered, from such bands as Sisters of Mercy (“When Dawn Comes Tonight”), Duran Duran (“The Fever Is You”), and so forth. All it really did for me was intensify my yearning for the current ’80s-echo-boom to end already. Barb’s voice is no worthy match for Allan’s, for one thing; she comes off like some rando picked out of a Bowery Ballroom crowd. B-

Seasoning, The Condensation EP (self-released)

The problem with fronting the same sort of lush, pretty Sunday-drive vibe as the Brooklyn indie-pop band Real Estate is that listeners might (and OK, this is a stretch, but I do require some modicum of an angle before I start typing up these things) expect the same verisimilitude that befell them during their 2020 album The Main Thing. But this guy, Brisbane-raised multi-instrumentalist/songwriter Lachlan Buckle, actually has more ideas in his head, I’d say. Where Real Estate tended to overdo the wholesome ’60s-pop jangle in TMT, Buckle and his cohorts wander off into slightly unexpected musical environs. All right, not by much, have it your way, but as a singer, Buckle has a more vintage Top 40-ish range, a quarter-whispered style that will remind people of Al Stewart during his “Time Passages” phase (trust me, you’ve heard it at the doctor’s office, I guarantee it) (and no, I don’t know if he ever had another hit after that). The blurb sheet also accuses Buckle of doing a Yo La Tengo thing, but I didn’t hear any evidence of that at all. Hipster music for nursing homes is the bullet description here, it’s not bad at all. A-

Playlist

• Uh-oh, gang, the next crop of new albums will hit the streets with its usual dull thud on July 8, just like every Friday! I suppose we should spend a minute or so on the new album from perennial Juno award winners Metric, whose members are from the Canadian city of Toronto, a nice place to visit if you’d ever be interested in seeing a rather basic American city but with people who actually like other people. This band has several claims to fame, including singer Emily Haines’s connection to the completely unlistenable Aughts-indie collective Broken Social Scene, and they’ve “contributed” a few songs to famous soundtracks, including Scott Pilgrim vs The World, although of course their biggest was “Eclipse (All Yours)” from the Twilight Saga: Eclipse soundtrack. As well, Haines has done a few cool things in the areas of house and opera-trance, like the tune “Glimmer” that she did with Delerium, and “Knock You Out” with Tiesto. And so I have mixed feelings about these Canadians; just because they’ve helped make a few tunes that were cool doesn’t excuse them from all the Broken Social Scene nonsense (Haines also collaborated on a song by Stars, by the way), and all that confusing stuff leaves me with no choice but to listen to the new single “All Comes Crashing” and judge their upcoming new LP Formentera on its own merits. I’m sure this will be fun. Huh, the video has one of those “flashing lights” warnings about suffering from “possible seizures,” which I appreciate knowing about in advance, because there’d be literally no worse way for me to lose my mind than to be listening to tuneless Canadian indie rock while getting a Clockwork Orange treatment for no reason. Well, this song’s OK, it’s got a nice messy Kills-like no-wave guitar part after they get through the Kesha-style bloop-pop formalities. I survived the flashing lights part, unless it actually did drive me insane and you people don’t actually exist, which would mean Canadian indie-rock bands don’t exist either; there’s a silver lining to everything, just saying.

• Well looky there folks, it’s a new Megadeth album, The Sick, The Dying, And The Dead, and it’s on the way right this minute! I was never a really big fan of Megadeth, like, I always though “Symphony Of Destruction” was a really lousy song with a super-stupid title. I do know bandleader Dave Mustaine was/is an epic-level jerk: he hates Metallica for firing him, and that’s normal, but then there was the time he yelled at my old band’s manager for telling him she was glad to see that he’d shown up sober for a show. That’s a nice thing to say to someone, isn’t it? No? Well, whatever, I’ll go listen to their new song, “The Dogs of Chernobyl,” only because I have to. OK, it’s really thrash-punky, like old Slayer except with Metallica vocals. It’s pretty cool if you liked Metallica’s $5.98 EP, kind of Samhain-ish/Misfits-ish, meaning it’s kind of out-of-date-ish but acceptable-ish. Bon appetit or whatnot.

• Yikes, it’s arena-pop act Journey, with a new album, called Freedom! Last I knew, this band, famous for “Don’t Stop Believin’,” a song about the Sopranos or whatever it was, was still not speaking to their original singer, Steve Perry, whom they replaced with some kid they found through a karaoke YouTube. That ridiculousness didn’t spell doom for the band; they had a decent AOR/yacht-rock song called “The Place In Your Heart” in 2005, don’t be so picky. The new single, “Don’t Give Up On Us,” is epic AOR, full of hormonal angst triggers for 50-somethings. I actually like it a lot.

• We’ll close with Cave World, the new LP from Swedish post-punk band Viagra Boys. The latest teaser track is “Punk Rock Loser,” which will make a great Bud Light commercial, since it’s a cross between Bloodhound Gang and Melvins (don’t worry, all that means is that it’s edgy but basically useless except as beer commercial background).

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).

Ghostkeeper, Multidimensional Culture (Victory Pool Records)

One usually doesn’t think of indigenous people as dancing jigs and playing fiddles, but the Métis people — Canadians with a mixed heritage of indigenous and European ancestry — are big on that. The husband-wife team of Ghostkeeper aims to put this culture on the map by infusing Métis music with ’70s freak-folk, proto-punk and various forms of psychedelica (this isn’t a case of cultural appropriation, if that’s any concern; they originally met in the Paddle Prairie Métis Settlement in Alberta). So, then, the album title is accurate in its way, but the music backs up the gauntlet that’s implicitly thrown. You can all but see the groovy 1960s liquid-light effects morphing into non-shapes behind opener “Doo Wop” as singer Shane rants Nick Cave-ish through a bullhorn, and it’s there that you quickly realize that these kids aren’t sheltered know-nothings; Trent Reznor would be proud of them, put it that way. As the record goes on, it’s impossible not to think of both Jerry Lee Lewis (“Finn”), screwy Aughts-indie (“Grassy Plains”) and even shoegaze (“Summer Child”). Well worth investigating. A

Darren McClure, Slow Up Speed Down (Audiobulb Records)

A soundscaper from Northern Ireland who now lives in Matsumoto, Japan, McClure uses found sounds (as in yeah, he’ll literally go outside and record stuff, or capture oddball digital bleeps and such from wherever, all toward an effort to fill out his compositions). His main intent, so I’m informed, is to “create music to zone out to and zone into, a balance of widescreen drones and more minimal, abstract ambience.” Out of that little word salad I’d say there’s some truth to it, but one really has to travel far through this record to find anything I’d call music. And that’s OK; no harm, no foul; McClure’s an experimentalist after all, and that’s what these tracks are. The title track, for instance, is 12 minutes of what I’d call Neptunian swamp vibe; there are War Of The Worlds-style alien hisses and such peeking out of a gently droning synth (I think) sample. This time out, he aims for slowness and immersion, incidental patterns that bespeak eternity without much noisy fuss. It’s hypnotic enough, sure. B

Playlist

• Happy Upcoming Fourth Of July, everyone. Here I am to give you some Christmas gift-giving ideas, because brand new albums will “hit the streets” on July 1! I’m sure all the 8-year-olds will be glad to hear that one of the new releases is from Imagine Dragons, the false metal band that would be Kiss if they weren’t awful. This glorified joke band will have a two-pronged assault of music on Friday, because Mercury: Act 2, which continues the aimlessness the band tabled in Mercury: Act 1, will street on the July 1, along with an 18-track double album comprising both Mercury “Acts,” so I hope you’ve been saving your allowance or your paper route money if you want to buy these new rock ’n’ roll records from this stupid band, because it’s going to be expensive. The first sampler tune I ran into in my halfhearted search for something to review was “Darkness,” which sounds more like a Conor Oberst campfire-indie sing-along than the sort of lightweight hard-rock piffle that put these guys on the map, but what makes this tune particularly bad is the high-pitched vocal that rounds out the hook part. It’s a joke, basically, one that I don’t find very amusing. Aside, has anyone over the age of 10 ever bought one of these guys’ albums?

• Burna Boy is Damini Ebunoluwa Ogulu, a Nigerian-born Afrobeat/dancehall guy, whose sixth album, Love Damani, is on the way! Here’s your fun trivia factoid regarding this super cool dude: In 2020, his album Twice as Tall was nominated for Best World Music Album at the 63rd Annual Grammy Awards, making him the first Nigerian with back-to-back nominations at the Grammys. His trip has been based in legitimacy from birth, being that his grandfather once managed Afrobeat superstar Fela Kuti, not that that should matter all that much, but it kind of does, sorry. Whatever, if you’ve ever liked Elephant Man or anything even close to that, you really need to check out the first single from this album, “Last Last,” because it’s pretty amazing, just take my word for it.

• Oh no, I’m writing this on a Tuesday, which means a new Guided by Voices album is coming out! This month’s eyeroll-inducing self-indulgence from pathologically prolific songwriter Robert Pollard is yet another full-length album, Tremblers And Goggles By Rank. My having to discuss a new GBV album really has become sort of a meme found only in this paper, and the only reason I’m going to bother listening to “Unproductive Funk,” the single from this new album, is that I adhere to the tenets of due diligence and chronicing the growth of rock ’n’ roll artists who’ve given so much to society, all of which actually means “I’m sure that this song will be as limp and uneventful as the last 500 Guided By Voices songs, but that wouldn’t be nice for me to say, so let’s get this over with already.” I assume that with a title like “Unproductive Funk,” there will be some funk in the recipe, but it’ll be super-lame. OK, nope, I’m listening to it now, and it’s basically like a cross between Gang Of Four (the “funk” part, I’m assuming) and Starz (the ’70s-throwback “unproductive” part). There was no good reason Pollard made this record, but when did that ever stop him?

• In closing, let’s talk about Electrified Brain, the new album from Virginia-based crossover-thrash band Municipal Waste! I’ll listen to the title track so you don’t have to, because I care. Huh, it’s pretty much like early Slayer, some of you might actually like it, who knows. The end.

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).

Chastity Brown, Sing to the Walls (Red House Records)

The long and short of this album is that it’s like Adele but with approximately 564 times more soul. Like everyone else’s, Brown’s world slowed to a crawl when Covid hit, and as a bonus she got to watch the horror of the Minneapolis riots unfold from her place in the city (we probably all have a story or two from those days, don’t we, when we were all still trying to get an understanding of exactly what Covid is, and suddenly there’d be something afoot right on our doorstep that scared us silly?). As a Black woman, she’s got plenty of anger to burn from those days (and these days, for that matter), but the songs here are Americana-steeped easy listening neo-soul for the most part, slow pensive beats combining with seriously good songwriting to make for a really comforting, Roberta Flack-ish vibe. Nothing wrong with this record from my seat; I’d recommend it for fans of both Adele and Amy Winehouse. A+

Todd Marcus Orchestra, In the Valley (Stricker Street Records)

Ack, my envy’s really acting up thanks to this one. I started listening to this, the nine-piece jazz group’s first album since 2015’s Blues For Tahrir, without having first read the blab sheet and was tooling around with something else I had to do, so the goodly amount of dissonance had me grimacing a little; if you’ve read this column for basically any amount of time, you’re aware that I prefer my jazz the way I like my coffee, bold but not too obtrusive. Turns out, though, that clarinetist/bandleader Marcus is a frequent visitor to Egypt, the one place I’ve always wanted to see and probably never will now that Covid’s all but officially endemic. Anyway, Marcus’ dad is Egyptian, and like I said, he’s been there a lot, darn him, and the previous album was largely inspired by the 2011 Arab Spring movement, whereas this one focuses more on the history and nuances of the country. Hence you’ll hear quite a few turns that sound cobra-charmer-ish (the closing title track especially), but don’t turn up your nose yet; there’s plenty of nicely written straightforwardness in the form of modern jazz, post-bop, etc. A niche product that’ll enchant certain ears, obviously. A

Playlist

• This Friday, June 24, is the next date for new CD releases, and wow, look at this, folks, it’s Closure/Continuation, the new album from British prog-rock band Porcupine Tree! It’s funny this came up now; a few weeks ago I was on the phone with an old bandmate of mine, and he said he totally loves this band and was planning to drop $400 to see them play someplace, I forget where. If you’re interested, I myself wouldn’t pay $400 to see any band, ever, unless there was a working time machine involved and I could see Al Jolson play at some club around 1931 or so, but my homie loves Porcupine Tree so much that he’s going to pay $400 and he’s going to this show by himself because no one else would do something that crazy. But to each his own, and just to reassure myself that I wasn’t a fool for not spending $400 to see these guys, I looked into their oeuvre on YouTube, and sure enough, their big-ish 2009 single, “Time Flies,” is indeed very cool, providing instant proof, at least to me, that the dearly departed Minus The Bear stole some ideas from them. Anyhow, this band has been around since 1987; they broke up for 10 years between 2010 and 2021, so this is a reunion album of sorts that features all the original members except for bassist Colin Edward. The most recent single at this writing is “Of The New Day,” a chill song with a decidedly mature edge reminiscent of Disco Biscuits but without the goofy funk samples. To be honest it mostly reminds me of the local band Vital Might, not that you’ve heard of them, or Disco Biscuits either, for that matter. Little bit of Pink Floyd going on with this band, before I forget to mention it.

• Well, here’s a blast from the past; it’s surf-rocker Jack Johnson, with his eighth LP, Meet The Moonlight, his first since 2017’s All the Light Above It Too. Johnson’s a pretty cool guy as guys come, always pretty happy (who wouldn’t be if they spent a lot of time surfing in Hawaii and elsewhere?), known to support and donate to such causes as Amnesty International, things like that; his most popular single was 2010’s “You And Your Heart,” a likable-enough unplugged Bonnaroo-begging campfire-indie sing-along that you’ve surely heard at one time or another. As for the new record, the leadoff single is the title track, a — spoiler alert — mellow surf-folk tune that’s a little bit Red Hot Chili Peppers and a little bit Beck, nothing groundbreaking but nothing to sneeze at either.

• Huh, look at this, my little 4chan trolls, it’s a new album from punkish Russian chick-rocker Regina Spektor, called Home Before And After! I’m sure there’ll be something fun on here; remember when she did the theme song to Orange Is The New Black, and it was kind of awesome? I mean I’m sure I’ll like the new single, “Becoming All Alone,” let’s go see. OK, it’s a poppy ballad-ish tune that’s reminiscent of 1970s radio-pop lady Maria Muldaur. Nice and catchy, this, but it’s not punky, so forget everything I said in the first part of this blurb.

• We’ll wrap this week up with Canadian “post-hardcore” crazies Alexisonfire, whose new LP, Otherness, will be here before you can say, “I sure hope this doesn’t sound like Good Charlotte, please don’t be another band that sounds like Good Charlotte.” OK, it doesn’t, it really is some sort of attempt to make “post-hardcore” music if you ask me, like it’s very yell-y but it’s also kind of doom-metalish. It’s neat, like if Imagine Dragons were an actual rock ’n’ roll band with “Anarchy” T-shirts and stuff instead of, well, whatever you’d call Imagine Dragons

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).

Ironflame, Where Madness Dwells (High Roller Records)

As you may have noticed, I’ve ignored all the bleating from our Baby Iron Maiden Band desk for months now, but my luck ran out today when this one refused to be denied. It’s the fourth full-length from the straight-up project led by Ohio’s Andrew D’Cagna, who, as you probably don’t know, is still involved with the bands Brimstone Coven and Icarus Witch (in case you thought he was some boring old normie, he says he’s got a black metal thing going at the moment as well). D’Cagna apparently liked Maiden’s Number Of The Beast album a lot, as we hear on “Everlasting Fire,” which is too much like that aforementioned LP’s title track to chalk it up to coincidence. But wait, he loves him some late-’80s power metal too, as the Savatage-ish “Under The Spell” attests; that one’s a more energetic headbanger. It goes on uneventfully from there (trust me when I say I looked for something that proved he really did want to add some “fun” parts), a dreary yowling metal moaner played in a minor key, etc., etc. B-

John Carpenter, Firestarter Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (Sacred Bones Records)

Boy, this has become a tradition in this space, hasn’t it, another soundtrack from horror filmmaker Carpenter, who redefined the meaning of “bad movie soundtracks” with the eternally dated-sounding music he contributed to such 80s classics as Halloween and The Fog. But I’ll admit, this has more going for it than the last few Carpenter-backgrounding records we talked about (and if you can remember what those were, I congratulate you for being blessed with a memory like Krazy glue). Don’t get me wrong, there’s still stupid stuff here, like the Rockman-plugged guitar on ther title theme, which is right out of “Danger Zone” from the original Top Gun’s soundtrack, but this time it looks as if Carpenter really wanted to have the creeps set in. There are Omen-like monk-choir things but they’re not at all overdone, the melodies actually have some heft, and, best of all, there’s a welcome paucity of that old Casio keyboard he used to love. I haven’t seen the movie and don’t plan to, but at least I can spoil that the soundtrack is fine. A

Playlist

• Yikes, folks, we’re staring down the barrel of June 17, which, like every Friday, is a perfect Friday for new releases, hopefully good ones! So let’s start with British art-punk/math-rock/indie-rock trio Foals and their seventh album, Life is Yours, just to get it out of the way, because there’s nothing I look forward to messing up each week more than trying to grok the intentions of a band that wants to fall under every category except schottisches played on kazoo and trumpet. No, I’m kidding, for all I know I’ll like this record as much as I have the last few Al Jolson albums. By the by, 1930s Jolson records are really all I’ve really listened to in the car for the last two weeks. When he messes with the lyrics of “Is It True What They Say About Dixie” and changes it to “Is it true what they say about Swanee,” it lights up my heart, reminding me that our species was in fact pretty neat at one short point in history, unlike now. Right. OK, what was I talking about again, oh, yes, Foals. OK, OK, right, these guys, the ones who did “Mountain At My Gates.” That was actually a really good song, like, if you heard it at a sports bar, you’d know it wasn’t the typical sleepy rawk fare you’d hear in such a place; in fact there’s a good chance you’d kind of bob your head along to it while you chew your cheeseburger. What does this mean? It means the hipster press probably didn’t like it, because it’s an actual good song, you know how this goes by now. Right, where were we, OK, the new single “2am.” I see, they’re trying to revive the Black Eyed Peas or LMFAO, whatever, because the beat is bloopy and crunchy, it’s a cross between The Weeknd and some tedious Aughts indie band like Shins or something. People will like this a lot but I really don’t. And yes, I’m being that difficult on purpose, I’m finally admitting it to the world right here, today.

• Dum de dum, how bad will it get this week, gang, how freaking bad could it possibly — wait, what do we have here, it’s Ugly Season, the new album from indie-popper Perfume Genius, real-named Michael Hadreas, whose most popular tune so far has been 2020’s “On The Floor,” a Wham!-style bump-and-grind disco thing. The new album features songs Hadreas wrote for “The Sun Still Burns Here,” an immersive dance project with choreographer Kate Wallich, a show that played in a few American cities in 2019. One of those songs, “Eye In The Wall,” is an unnerving, understated techno thing with wub-wub bits and other weird things. It’s OK.

• Brooklyn, N.Y.-based rapper/singer/actor Joey Bada$$ has done it all: gotten arrested for breaking some poor security guard’s nose; started a really stupid and apparently never-ending Twitter beef with Troy Ave, and landed a role in a cable TV series, Power Book III: Raising Kanan on the Starz network. His new LP, 2000, is coming out imminently and will feature a bunch of songs that are only available in snippet form at this writing, stuff that was inspired by Tupac and all Bada$$’s other rather conventional influences, including an R&B tune that’s chill and sexy enough.

• We’ll wrap up this week with Farm To Table, the second album from indie-rock/jazz-rap dude Bartees Strange, who was born in Britain and forced to grow up in Mustang, Oklahoma, where the population is about 85 percent white, which made for a decidedly miserable experience for Strange, who’s Black. His debut LP, Live Forever, received universal acclaim for its odd mix of influences, which appear again here in the gorgeous new single “Heavy Heart,” a rap-decorated mixture of Hootie and The Blowfish and Coldplay. You should really give this a listen, folks.

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