Author: Eric Saeger

Jackboy, Majorly Independent (1804 Records)

I do make a constant attempt to cover all musical genres in this space, and yeah, it’s made me a jack of all trades and master of — OK, not all that many, especially indie hip-hop records that sound like I’ve heard them before, a ton of times, and break no new ground. Like this one, which does, for its part, come with receipts: JackBoy — real name Pierre Delince — spent the first six years of his life in Haiti, then wound up in Florida, where he became part of Sniper Gang with Kodak Black, with whom he has (of course) beef nowadays. I won’t get into why I’m convinced this guy’s “fame” is largely generated by a bot swarm, nor will I bother rattling off a list of very similar-sounding artists, since you know the drill by now: smack talk and savings account fables delivered via “clipped cadences and pained operatics,” as one rap wiki observed (in a review snippet that could describe, well, nearly every rapper ever), while the beats explore basic trap, polite neo-crunk and whatnot, nothing too crazy. You see, folks, albums like this don’t want actual music reviews, they want sets of biographical drama bullets on the artist. My DMs and PMs are wide open if you disagree, but I can’t imagine anyone would. As is, sure, it’s tight and whatnot. And absolutely disposable. C+

Rusty Santos, High Reality (Lo Recordings)

This Los Angeles-based producer/musician has worked with tons of bands and artists, usually in the space occupied by purveyors of wetwork tuneage of pretty high quality: Chui Wann, Gang Gang Dance, Animal Collective (since you likely have no idea what those acts sound like, just think pretty layers, electronically tweaked/pinched vocal lines, things like that in general). By my count, High Reality is Santos’s sixth solo album, his forte a guitar/vocal thing with varying levels of roughness on the sample side. Opener “Dream In Stereo” is throwback Beck, for sure; it starts with a really woozy, wobbly sample that, it turns out, is a template for most of the songs that are aboard this thing. It’s kind of dated in that regard; in the press materials for this one he yammers about learning all kinds of stuff, which would be natural, given the collaborations in which he’s figured, but after many minutes of wobbling and slow-trilling and whatnot it feels like the work of a one-trick pony who should probably stick to remixing and things like that. B-

Playlist

• Aug. 12 is here, homies, here it comes, we may as well just call it September, fun-time’s over. But since the 12th is a Friday, there will at least be some new albums, if that’s any consolation (I know, I know), so let’s pull up the barnacle-covered lobster trap, toss the bewildered-looking starfish back in the water and see what albums wandered into my crafty little device for capturing albums before they can swim away and not have to face my mightily eloquent blah blah blah. We may as well start with movie soundtrack dude Danny Elfman, whose new album, Bigger Messier, consists of a bunch of remixes from his 2021 artist album, Big Mess. Right, so just to clear up one of the questions that always comes up about Danny Elfman: He is the uncle of actor Bodhi Elfman, who is married to actress Jenna Elfman, so they’re not siblings or whatever, he’s just — you know, whatever an uncle-in-law is called. Now, you also may not know that Elfman was in a really awful band called Oingo Boingo in the ’80s. They were like Devo but basically 200 percent less funny, but one interesting thing is that there’s been a lot of confusion around one particular actor who appeared in Oingo Bongo’s video for their really terrible single “Little Girls”: Tons of young people are clogging internet boards proclaiming that they’re convinced that the actor is indeed Peter Dinklage from Game Of Thrones. However, some smarty-pants on LinusTechTips.com set the entire internet straight in one post, so the question will never be posed again, ever, by anyone, because the internet is a perfect, self-maintained mechanism. To wit: “Peter Dinklage was 12 when that song was released, so it’s very unlikely that the person with a mustache who looks nothing like Peter Dinklage is him.” So there’s that; and remember, Elfman’s pretty dumb-looking; he played the parts of all the Oompa Loompas in the Willy Wonka movie that starred Johnny Depp, and, cutting to now, I wasn’t that impressed with anything I heard from the Big Mess album, like, it kind of wanted to be an edgy rock album but wasn’t interesting; however, the Squarepusher remix of “We Belong” turns the original tune, a morose, funereal droner, into a dubstep tour de force. It’s fine, but has nothing to do with the original. Let’s just leave that here.

• Yikes, look, folks, it’s Japanese stoner/psychedelic-metal masters Boris, with their new album Heavy Rocks 2022; this is probably awesome! The trio usually gets lumped in with Seattle’s plodding drone-meisters Sunn(((O))), mostly because they collaborated on a (rather unnecessary) record; you should ignore any such nonsense and go check them out if you’re into Jack White’s retro-hard-rock and that kind of thing. But wait, maybe I spoke too soon, because I haven’t even listened to the new advance tune “She Is Burning,” so for all I know they’re horrible now, let’s go check it out. OK, forget it, this is wicked cool, hyper-thrash hard-rock with dueling guitar riffs, why aren’t these guys 100 times bigger than they are now?

• Oh, how adorable, San Francisco borderline punk outfit OC’s have changed the spelling of their band name to Osees, just to make sure their fans won’t be able to find their new album, A Foul Form, on the internet (again). Isn’t that special? Too bad, because the title track is hardcore no-wave, thrashy, really bad-ass, love it.

• We’ll wrap it up with 1980s-famous synthpop duo Erasure, whose new LP, Day-Glo (Based On A True Story) is broken up into “chapters.” The tune “Chapter 2” is krautrock-ish roller-rink techno that immediately made me think of aughts-era Haujobb. I can deal with it.

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

JoVia Armstrong, Antidote Suite (Wild Kingdom Records)

The term Afrofuturism — referring to a “cultural aesthetic and philosophy of science and history that explores the intersection of African diaspora culture with science and technology” — was coined by culture critic Mark Dery, an on-again/off-again friend-acquaintance who’s been mad at me for like a year because I clumsily made fun of him on Twitter for his nerdy distaste for sports. Speaking of clumsy, the genre definition offered above — can’t we just say Afrofuturism is Black cyberpunk culture? no? — is a bit misleading as pertains to this album, which, if it’d come from anyone whose musical career hadn’t been borne of a, well, too-academics-driven approach to a life’s mission of spreading awareness about Black struggle in the Information Age, would be immediately classified as chilly, often beautiful but not earth-shakingly original soundscaping. Guests include bassist Isaiah Sharkey, guitarist Jeff Parker, vocalist Yaw Agyeman and rapper Teh’Ray Hale. There’d be no earthly reason for me not to recommend this to anyone; lots of interesting genre-mixing here. A+

Sator, Return of The Barbie-Q-Killers (Wild Kingdom Records)

Here we go, just what I needed right now, an old-school punk band from Sweden. And I do mean old-school; they’ve been together since 1981, originally under the moniker Sator Codex, which points to the Throbbing Gristle/Cabaret Voltaire niche they cite as an influence. Other than that, the record collections of the members’ youth were pretty standard: Motorhead, Chuck Berry, Ramones, Clash and such. Doesn’t matter, though. There are 24-count-’em songs crammed into this release, with most of the songs clocking in at around two minutes, which put it at an A grade before I even listened to any of it. The music is a blur of Misfits/Ramones gloriousness, opening with a punkabilly-tinged “Get Out Of My Way”; a Lords Of The New Church-sounding “Shimmy Shake,” even an obvious nod to New York Dolls in “Pumps, Purse And A Pillbox Hat.” From my seat there’s nothing wrong with this album whatsoever. A+

Playlist

• Gross, it’s freakin’ August already, it’s just going to be hot and insane out and then we’ll have those perfect September days with blue skies and a tinge of autumn in the air. So pleasant and nice, I hate it so much, but it’s on the way, and our first order of August business is to talk about the albums that’ll be in the stores and Pirate Bays and virus-slathered darkweb cubbies on Aug. 5. I usually try to get the least pleasant stuff out of the way first, and this week that’s definitely overrated Scottish club DJ Calvin Harris’s new album, Funk Wav Bounces Vol. 2. No, I’m not saying I mindfully loathe Harris; it’s just that when my journalistic beat was the velvet-rope techno-club scene, Harris was one of those tedious funk guys, and he bothered me the same way Steve Aoki did. Not enough progressive house in his mix, is what I mean; I really prefer progressive house over regurgitated Chicago-style house, which is too heavy on the disco (think Madonna’s “Vogue” for reference’s sake). OK, you’re staring at me wondering what I’m talking about, as if I even know; suffice to say that I’d rather listen to a deep house genius like King Britt than a lowbrow slob like Calvin Harris. And now that I’ve gotten that off my chest, you know what’ll happen next, I’m going to go listen to Harris’s new single “Potion” and it’ll actually be OK. But I doubt it; guest vocalists for this album include ridiculously overexposed lummoxes like Justin Timberlake, Halsey and Snoop Dogg, and — wait, here’s the video for “Potion.” It features corporate-pop diva Dua Lipa with Young Thug, and — yup, there it is breezy after-party music that’s too loud and in-your-face for an after-party. Yuck, it’s too disco-ey, possessed of basically no class. My God, my life would have been so much easier if I’d been born the type of imbecile who’d prefer this over Oscar G or whatever. No one should listen to this song, period. It’s got the vibe of the typical soundtrack to a 1970s porno movie. Barf barf barf.

• Uh-oh, look sharp everyone, it’s British sort-of-tech-metal heroes Kasabian, with The Alchemist’s Euphoria, their new album! If you’re wondering, yes (I just found this out for sure), they were named after Linda Kasabian, the former Charles Manson groupie, isn’t that special, and for the record, everything I’ve heard from them to date has been pretty cool. That brings us to the here and now, with a new song called “Scriptvre,” a noisy, trashy joint that’s a cross between Rage Against The Machine and Red Hot Chili Peppers’ “Give It Away.” Definitely something of a ’90s-rock-revival persuasion, which, let’s face it already, isn’t the worst thing that could happen, being that the current ’80s rebirth is well past its sell-by date.

• Blah blah blah what else — ah, here’s one, a new album titled All 4 Nothing, the second album from Lauv, a.k.a. Ari Staprans Leff, a San Francisco-born singer-songwriter! With a title as stupid as All 4 Nothing I’d expected the title track to dredge up memories of Marky Mark or something equally hideous, but it’s not quite that bad, that is unless the thought of an Auto-Tuned Peabo Bryson makes your stomach a bit unstable. Nothing to see here, folks, just a smooth bedroom beat, a millennial whoop thrown in to stupid-check Leff’s target audience, etc. It’s listenable.

• We’ll end with a new live album from ancient folk-pop mummy and dreadful singer Neil Young, Noise & Flowers, I can’t wait, can you? All I know right now is there’s a live version of the tune “From Hank To Hendrix” that’s pretty good if you can get past that wounded-possum voice of his, ack ack.

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).

NoSo, Stay Proud Of Me (Partisan Records)

Abby Hwong is L.A.-based non-binary Korean-American singer-guitarist NoSo, whose debut album — this one here — had a successful launch on Soundcloud. Seems to me they’re big into epic indie-techno like M83, but their trip is more of a songwriter thing, and what first struck me was Hwong’s vocal likeness to Sarah McLachlan. The songs are big and lush, pretty much yacht-rock but with a lot of blooping percolation running along the lowest deck; I know there’s been a big Kate Bush resurgence of late owing to Stranger Things, and that’s fortuitous for Hwong, who sets their sights on the usual targets that strike dread into the hearts of differented people trying to make peace with themselves: of course there’s a song called “Suburbia” here, steeped in mellow Goldfrapp steez. Beautiful stuff here, folks. A+ — Eric W. Saeger

Trashed Ambulance, Future Considerations (Thousand Islands Records)

Today I learned that when Barenaked Ladies recorded the theme song to the TV show The Big Bang Theory, there were actually several other verses in the song, and most people have never heard them. I’m not suggesting you run right to YouTube and start memorizing those lyrics; it’s certainly not required listening for die-hard fans, and the rest of the song isn’t that great anyway. This album — from an Alberta, Canada, punk crew that’s been around for eight years, if I’m reading their sloppy press materials correctly — is the same kind of stuff as that, geeky Hoobastank-splattered nerd-punk that couldn’t hurt a fly if it wanted to. But point of order, they’d probably prefer I leave names like the Barenakeds and They Might Be Giants out of it: They’re actually “inspired by the likes of Pulley, Face to Face, and The Flatliners,” names that I could have dug up with a little luck, but since you have no idea who those bands are, to save us all time, just expect a bunch of tunes in the vein of the Big Bang Theory theme song, and they’re mostly good. All set? B+

Playlist

• Well isn’t that special, it’s July 29 already, how can this even be happening? Before you know it the summer will be gone, I mean, why don’t I just put all my winter stuff in my car, like my snowshoes and parka and my emergency survival bug-out bag with bear repellent and extra rations of Fritos and Devil Dogs in case I slide off the road and need rescuing from some crazy enchanted remote witch-filled forest in deepest, darkest Meredith, New Hampshire. OK, fine, I’m riffing mindlessly, and trust me, you’d do the same thing if you were supposed to be writing about Beyoncé’s new album, Renaissance, which comes out on Friday the 29th. Everyone knows that the only reason a critic of eclectic art would even mention the new Beyoncé album at all would be to demonstrate that said critic hasn’t been hiding under a rock, much as I’d much prefer that to trying to talk about an album that will instantly inspire one of only two possible reactions in people: They’ll either instantly decide to buy it, or they’ll yell “LOATHE ENTIRELY” like the Grinch and hope they never have to hear it playing at the Food Court. I’m sort of stuck in the middle myself, like my days of humming along to sexually baffling pop music ended when I turned 10, but in the meantime I still have to see what’s going on with Bee’s new single, “Break My Soul,” a tune she, ahem, “wrote” with like five other people, including her husband, Jay-Z, who’s credited as “S. Carter.” You know, I’m way too much of a punk to take royalty seriously, especially fake-royal cultural icons du jour, but since there are probably five of you who’ll actually buy this album just to irritate me, I’ll give this stupid song a whirl, why not, maybe it consists of more than the usual three notes that can be played on a Fisher Price toy xylophone. Nope, there’s only two notes, but the beat is kind of ’60s-James Bond-y overall but nothing more innovative than a ripoff of Young MC’s “Bust A Move” from back when Fred Flintstone drove a brontosaurus crane. Regardless, the success of that song gave her the distinction of being the first woman to notch at least 20 top 10 titles as a solo artist and at least 10 top 10 tracks as a member of a group on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. Yay, super-lucky famous people, aaand we’re moving.

• Ack, ack, it’s Groundhog Day, it has to be, wasn’t I talking about some other “Elephant 6 musical collective”-affiliated band last week (Austin group Elf Power, if I recall correctly) (yes, that was it), and saying how much I dislike that stuff? Well, no matter, because Of Montreal are here with a new album, the first two words of the title being Freewave Lucifer, whatever that means, and I have to go listen to their new single, “Marijuana’s A Working Woman.” Bulletin: There are festive, childish watercolors in the video. Oh boy, it wants to be Flaming Lips meets The Shins or some such, unlistenable analog-ish console noise and a barely discernible hook. Holy crow, folks, people are still listening to this kind of thing?

• If you ever wondered where Billie Eilish got the idea to use barely-there techno bloops to build songs like “Bad Guy” around, it safe to say she was at one point really into the song “Alaska” by googly-eyed Maryland anti-diva Maggie Rogers, whose new LP Surrender will be out Friday. I like the teaser track “That’s Where I Am” a lot better than anything I’ve heard from Billie; her yodel-y singing goes well with the punk no-wave-ish groove. It’s cool, you’ll like it.

• Finally it’s American singer-songwriter and fiddle player Amanda Shires, who’s in the country supergroup The Highwomen. Her new full-length, Take It Like A Man, features a title track that’s torchy and depressing if you like that sort of thing.

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).

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).