Author: Eric Saeger

Keith Hall, Made In Kalamazoo (Trios And Duos) (Zoom Out Records)

Sparsity, thy name is Made In Kalamazoo, and it has my endorsement for a few reasons. First, it’s nice that a jazz micro-combo led by a drummer starts its debut LP with an extended drum clinic; paradiddles and all sorts of other tricks simply rain from the speakers as something of a warm-up for the rest of what you’ll hear. Second, it’s a cozy, rather endearing statement of homecoming on Hall’s part; he played the New York jazz scene for nearly 10 years before coming back to his Michigan home base, which leads to a third positive here: Sax player Andrew Rathbun is outstanding, as is bassist Robert Hurst III. The recording is clear and pristine, but of course it has to be; this is as analog and stripped down as it gets, and these guys make great hay out of it. “Kzoo Brew” offers an extended bass/drums exercise that has a wonderful throwback feel, and the post-bop found in such pieces as “Douglass King Obama” remind me of Sonny Rollins’s Prestige Records-era output. Intimate and terrifically done. A+

Ianai, Sunir (Svart Records)

You know, every once in a while, we music journos trip over something that’s truly magical and have to chalk it up to fate, or the power of probability. This is one of those ultra-rare happenstances, an astonishing world music-tinged mega-release that will certainly please anyone who likes electronic New Age music, Enya more specifically. The whole thing is amazingly beautiful, evoking wind-swept deserts where a sexless mirage person is beckoning from atop a dune, singing and humming of hope and all that happy stuff. Influences include the native music of Scandinavia, Africa, Asia, Middle East and South America. Not much is known in the wider public about the performers but they’re apparently well-known throughout the music community, as he receives help from members of such bands as Massive Attack, Sisters of Mer-cy and Souvenir Season. Absolutely essential if New Age/yoga class chill is your thing. A+

Playlist

• Friday, June 10, will be the latest in an endless string of all-purpose summertime CD release Fridays, when albums come at us hot and heavy and, on very rare occasions, some are from actual artists who offer the world art rather than irritating nonsense. Speaking of that, have you ever noticed that it’s only country music stars who get married to each other and then get divorced for our entertainment? Just today I was reading a news story about Miranda Lambert dealing with her divorce from glorified used car salesman Blake Shelton last year or whenever it was, and it helped her write new songs for her new album, Palomino, which we talked about in this space a little while back. There are a bunch of those sad divorce stories in the country music world, but I’d like to see some regular non-country stars get married for the heck of it, like Eminem tyin’ the knot with Celine Dion, you know? Marriage stuff makes for great gossip in the country world, but you know who’s having none of that? Carrie Underwood, who’s still married to pro hockey player Mike Fisher! The moral is that love does last, people, even if you’re rich and constantly happy (as long as the nannies show up for work every day). Anyhow, that’s about all the wisdom I can impart on that subject, except to say that Underwood has a new album, Denim & Rhinestones, coming out on June 10, and it will feature a title track that’s pretty good if you like slightly Auto-Tuned female pop vocals and old Mr. Mister beats from 1985. A pleasant enough listen, not that there’s any real point to it.

• Vance Joy is an Australian indie-pop heartthrob whose 2018 full-length Nation Of Two was summarily dismissed by a Guardian writer as “an album of songs about relationships written, seemingly, from the perspective of someone who has learned about them from watching the romcoms Matthew McConaughey was starring in during his dark ages.” It’s hard for me to top that level of snark at the moment, only because I don’t really care about tuneage that’s only going to make it into the overhead speakers at Red Lobster and no farther than that, but I do have to deal with Joy’s new LP, In Our Own Sweet Time, so let’s get this out of the way before I just bag it and write about someone else. OK, so the single “Clarity” is the same sort of dishwasher-safe gruel described above, sounding more or less like Zero 7’s Jose Gonzalez trying to write a particularly pointless Ben Kweller song. There’s a Spanish horn part here that makes it almost bearable, and before that we have a rather animated rockout bit, so maybe it’ll be used as dance floor fodder in virtual bars when Mark Zuckerberg turns Facebook into “the Meta experience,” i.e. a glorified version of Second Life that will assuredly make social media more unbearable than it ever was.

• Uh-oh, guys, take cover, it’s a new album from Billy Howerdel, called What Normal Was. No, seriously, take cover, because this could be dangerously rockin’, as Howerdel is the guitarist from crazily overrated alt-rock outfit A Perfect Circle, the side project of Riff Raff look-alike Maynard James Keenan, of Tool! Yikes, let’s tread carefully, because this might be so awesome I’ll be zapped into dust. OK, I’m going in, guys. Right, the single, “Poison Flowers,” is a more goth version of any random Nine Inch Nails sort-of-ballad, which is fitting, because Howerdel’s band logo rips off Nine Inch Nails’. Awkward. Let’s move along.

• Lastly and leastly, it’s Cali pop-punk zeroes Joyce Manor, with their sixth album, 40 oz. to Fresno! The single, “Gotta Let It Go,” is such a Weezer ripoff that they should just change their band name to Wish We Were Weezer. Good lord, holy crow.

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).

Nicki Bluhm, Avondale Drive (Compass Records)

Today I learned that even Idris Elba had to get his start somewhere, because I’m like 100 percent sure he’s the bartender in the video for Tracy Chapman’s 1995 hit “Give Me One Reason.” I was looking for RIYL-type comparisons for the subject at hand, the latest LP from a blues-soul lady who’s from Nashville by way of San Francisco of all places, and Chapman definitely is a similar artist, so, voila. So is Linda Ronstadt, while I’m at it, not that anyone will ever have Ronstadt’s unmatchable voice, but Bluhn does try in her way. Avondale Drive is Bluhm’s second album, a milestone that usually comes with a pocketful of bad luck, but in this case it’s steady-as-she-goes, especially for listeners who are looking for a more interesting singer than Sheryl Crow (email me for the full 100-page list). Her breezy, mildly boozy and catchy little tunes address such subjects as middle-aged dating (“Love to Spare”) and failed marriage (the waltz-timed “Juniper Woodsmoke”). Bonnie Raitt fans would probably be into this also. A

Kisskadee, Black Hole Era (Anxiety Blanket Records)

Hope Sandoval on fen-phen pretty much captures what this stuff is, a dreamy, quirky but fairly artistic LP from the Los Angeles multi-instrumentalist. This album is said to be redolent of a “maximalist” approach, which makes literally no sense to me; when she’s lilting in her helium-wombat voice whilst playing bare-bones acoustic guitar underneath, it’s more like some sort of lost soundtrack to a made-on-the-cheap independent film or a particularly disjointed scene from Euphoria, not that there’s anything inherently wrong with that, but come on, that’s minimalist, I don’t care how long such shibboleths are supposed to live these days. So it’s a coming-of-age record, then, obviously aimed at Zoomers who are beginning to realize they won’t be able to play Elden Ring as their full-time job, but that terrible news is delivered by this lady as gently as possible, despite its fetish for bizarre time signatures. It’s OK. A

Playlist

• Can you believe it, we’re basically into summer, folks, as the next general-release date for all the hot new rock ’n’ roll record albums is Friday, June 3. Bring on the beach, baby, I am 110 percent ready, and let’s just get right into it with Auto-Tuned cultural appropriator Post Malone, whose latest full-length, Twelve Carat Toothache, is shipping right now! OK, back up a few syllables, it’s not cool to accuse “Post” of cultural appropriation, just because he sounds like some sort of trap-hop also-ran or because rapper Lil B said he expects ole Posty to go full-on country music in a few years (which is probably going to happen for sure, if, as one Redditor put it, he doesn’t have to quit the rap game because he can barely even sing anymore), I mean let’s just be nice. But whatever, at least the guy is an expert on U.S. political history, like hey, man, he has a tattoo of U.S. president John F. Kennedy on his arm, which he got because Kennedy was “the only President to speak out against the crazy corruption stuff that’s going on in our government nowadays,” a non sequitur that totally ignores Dwight Eisenhower’s warning about the military industrial complex (that really happened, homies, look it up!). But OK, fine, he’s a rock star, not some pundit who’s going to go on Meet The Press pushing a book about Millard Fillmore, so let’s pretend he isn’t some sort of disposable bubblegum-rap charlatan and discuss his new single “Red Line.” It’s basically “Rockstar” wearing a glued-on beard and flirting with reggaeton (hey, that stuff still sells, I’m telling you!), all in all another step toward his launching a Vegas act in 2035 or whenever he gets tired of tatting himself silly.

• Since 1996, Athens, Georgia, country-rock band Drive-By Truckers has been wild about touring to any venue that’ll have them, including shows right here in New Hampshire at Meadowbrook in Gilford, New Hampshire (2018) and Club Casino in Hampton (2014). The band peaked in 2014 with their English Oceans album, which is generally considered a southern rock record that was marred only by some boring songwriting that was Patterson Hood’s fault. But we’re all friends here, right, so let’s have a look at their upcoming 14th LP, Welcome 2 Club XIII, and see if the new single will do well enough to allow these guys to just sit and chill and count their royalty checks instead of having to visit every mid-sized rock club from here to Copenhagen once again. Yeah, about that, the title track is kind of a joke song, like Barenaked Ladies meets Neil Young, the sort of bar-band oatmeal that’s been irrelevant since 1984 or whatnot. Have fun at the Ace of Spades bar in Sacramento again, guys!

• First there was KISS, the band that dressed up like sort-of-monsters, and then came Richmond, Virginia’s GWAR, a.k.a. “KISS For Idiots,” who dress up like actual monsters to detract from their mediocre metal nonsense! Their 15th album, The New Dark Ages, is only their second since the death of their singer “Oderus Urungus,” and it includes a tune called — well, never mind, I can’t repeat the title here, but it has the word “Liar” in it. It sounds like Rob Zombie around the time he had completely run out of ideas (I know, I know). Hey, did you know this band has its own brand of barbecue sauce? It’s true, and I’ll bet it’s totally awesome!

• We’ll end this week’s rundown with Outta Sight, the new LP from Canadian southern/blues rock band The Sheepdogs! Their trip aims to “land in the sweet spot in between Led Zeppelin and Crosby Stills & Nash,” but the single, “Find The Truth,” is more like a B-Side from 38 Special. Ah, you have no idea who that is, that’s OK, 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).

Ghostkeeper, Multidimensional Culture (Victory Pool Records)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

PLAYLIST

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

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

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

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

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

Slow Crush, Hush (Quiet Panic Records)

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

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

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

PLAYLIST

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

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

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

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

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

Sue Jeffers, Up With the Masses (FBI Records)

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

Christian Lee Hutson, Quitters (ANTI Records)

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

PLAYLIST

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

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

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

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

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