Author: Eric Saeger

Anika, Change (Sacred Bones Records)
Collection of self-indulgent, googly-eyed runway-model-pop confections from a pan-European girl who apparently believes there’s a huge audience for the random superficial thinkies of a privileged former political journalist who — get this, you’ll never believe it — thinks the world is a little messed up at the moment. Behold what the Warhol/Bowie aesthetic has led us to in the ringtone era: a retro take on the overhead-speaker ambiance heard at overpriced clothing stores at the mall, which, I suppose, really did need a break from the usual soft-pedaled, blippy house-techno; I mean, if you want someone to pay $250 for a blouse that cost 30 cents to produce, your average customer would probably be more hypnotized if one of the songs from this absolutely unnecessary album were playing in the background. Take “Finger Pies,” for instance, in which Random Mononym croons her flatline-brained Nico imitation over a Velvet Underground loop that’s trying so hard to sound ’60s-artpop-authentic you almost feel obligated to dance to it for a second so it’ll shut up. Right, just what we need in a time of insane debt, plague and climate catastrophe: vacuous, tuneless retro garbage delivered by a fashion-victimized chick in gold lamé thigh-high boots. Utterly detestable. F

Cinema Cinema, CCXMDII (Nefarious Industries)
I know for a fact I’ve covered these guys before, but my crack team of unpaid pizza-gobbling interns can’t seem to find it, and I keep getting too distracted by internet nonsense to ever find it myself, so we’ll start from scratch with this sixth album from the experimental art-punk act, comprised of two cousin bros (one on guitar/voice, the other on drums) from Brooklyn. I know I liked what I heard from them before; these guys are hard-edgy and, of course, weird, as we hear on opening track “A Life Of Its Own,” an 18-minute thingie that’s totally Throbbing Lobster-esque, like Swans but with a New-Age slant — there’s a flute (or sample thereof) throughout, you see, not played very well but nevertheless redolent of a tranquil (if claustrophobia-triggering) forest. Elsewhere we have things like “Cloud 2,” a discombobulated noise jaunt that might make you think of an all-analog Battles; and “Crack Of Dawn,” which is pure crackpot-improv. It’s all very “meh” really. C+

PLAYLIST

• Friday the 20th is barreling down on us, tumbling head over heels, clutching fresh new rock ’n’ roll albums in its hands while it tries not to smash into a telephone pole and laughs at us for being bummed about the summer ending in like 20 seconds. Yep, before you know it, there’ll be plenty of things to hate: spiced pumpkin decorations at Hobby Lobby, co-workers lying about how much they love autumn, and everyone’s favorite: 4-foot Santas at Target, standing in piles of fake snow even while most people are still in their flip-flops and Rick & Morty T-shirts. There is nothing I can do about any of that, other than hold your hand and gently remind you that you’d promised yourself for the last 10 years that you’d move to Tallahassee, so it’s all your fault, but, along the way, cheer up and eat your watermelon-flavored Airheads while I tell you about the awesome new albums you can buy or pirate or whatever! I know you could use a laugh right now, what with lockdown talk making the rounds even as you prepare to make that dreaded trip to your closet to dig out your North Face jacket and snowshoes, so let’s discuss hipster-black-metal idiots Deafheaven and their new album, Infinite Granite! Wow, the new single “Great Mass Of Color” is a mixture of cut-rate Killers and government-issue shoegaze — hahahaha, I knew they’d drop the black-metal pretense sooner or later! The YouTube comments on this song are priceless: “Deafheaven but make it whirr but make it Morrissey”; “When your friend goes to college for a year and comes back home with a Flock Of Seagulls haircut and a tattoo of the infinity symbol,” stuff like that. So the results are in, folks: Ho ho ho, merrrry pumpkin spice, the people hate you, Deafheaven! They really, really hate you!

• What other unspeakable tortures lie in wait for me today — oh no, this is too funny, it’s Gestureland, another new album from former X-Files actor David Duchovny! My sides are splitting, guys, I’m telling you. What, did people actually buy his last few albums? Ahem, shall we investigate the new single, “Layin’ on the Tracks”? Hey, I don’t want to either, but duty calls. Ack, ack, the music is trite, absolutely dreadful, kind of like Neil Young but without the stupid screechy guitars. His voice is what you’d expect from him and his adenoids. Even if you’ve never played guitar before, I could teach you to play this song in 10 minutes and you’d break into a boss-level guitar solo out of sheer boredom. Why is this man doing this to himself, seriously?

• I don’t even wanna look, gang, what could possibly be next? No way, it’s semi-retired child star Debbie Gibson, with a new slab o’ vinyl, The Body Remembers! Ha ha, remember when she got into a slap-fight with other-former-child-star Tiffany in the Sy-Fy classic cinematic treasure Mega Python vs. Gatoroid? The only possible direction from there, of course, was down, so she’s been doing Hallmark movies, like 2018’s Wedding Of Dreams, which was about, oh, who cares, just bask in all the rich and delicious schadenfreude while I inflict the new single “One Step Closer” on my poor head-bone. Whoa, wait, she’s pretty hot in this video, and the song is sort of afterparty-techno, like Miss Kitty meets Janet Jackson. It’s OK!

• We’ll end this week’s musical water-boarding with Love Will Be Reborn, from Canada-pop lady Martha Wainwright! The title track isn’t bad, sort of Christine McVie/Fleetwood Mac-ish, if I’m being honest, not that I’m feeling so inclined.

Retro Playlist

Way back we go, once again to 2007, a year whose biggest events included Microsoft releasing Windows Vista and Office 2007. I’ll bet half of you readers are still using Office 2007, given that it didn’t require a subscription you had to buy and download from “the cloud” (I’m really, really sick of hearing about “the cloud,” aren’t you?). But let’s not wander too far; there were a few albums up for dissection that week, exactly 14 years ago, in these pages. The most notable one, an album I actually kept in my car’s cubby for a long time, was Bluefinger, from Black Francis of the Pixies, a band I dubbed “the ultimate anti-Fleetwood Mac, a jumbled train wreck of notes, pretty/unpretty voices and bar-band guitars that sucked in every unwary soul who got too close.” The best part of this rather good LP, I said, is “when he gives himself a do-over of the boys-choir chorus that Surfer Rosa’s ‘Where Is My Mind’ mismanaged, this on the new album’s ‘Angels Come to Comfort,’ whose out-of-nowhere fadeout is one of the most stirring things you’ll hear all year.” It really is a terrific song.

Elsewhere, there was Benelux-based DJ Sander Kleinenberg, with a two-CD set called This is Sander Kleinenberg. Ah, the good old days, when the house-techno record labels all had me on their lists, and I was up to my ears in sexy-cool beach music intended for velvet-rope clubs where all the fashion-model/scientist kids would drink until they danced and grope each other like lobsters in a supermarket tank. This wasn’t my favorite house album of all time: “By and large,” I said in an Exorcist voice, “fans are into his earlier releases for their funk, of which there’s plenty at the outset of the ‘Left’ half of this collection, but the tracks are all over the joint, sometimes getting bogged down in arrhythmic ambient bloviations that stay a little past their welcome.” I gave it a C+, which is my way of hinting that I probably Frisbeed the album out my car window at some point.

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).

Lex Leosis, Terracotta [EP] (self-released)

This female alternative hip-hopper is a long-board enthusiast from California by way of Canada, and her passive-aggressive flows have made her a real up and comer. Two of the songs (the Billie Eilish-ish “Won’t Wait” and the flighty-bassline-powered “Wanted”) were produced by Rainer Blanchaer (Drake, The Weeknd), who became a constant in her life during lockdown. If he’s into her, that should be plenty excuse for you to give this a shot. A

Wavves, Hideaway (Fat Possum Records)

Nathan Williams runs this San Diego indie band, a trio you’ve almost assuredly heard about before. The narrative he’d like us critics to front is that although he’s still the same kid who had an ecstacy-and-Valium-fueled meltdown at a 2009 Barcelona rock festival and had a remarkable streak of hooky beach-garage noise-pop broken by a too-glossy major-label attempt, he’s now old enough to have finally figured out that, oh gosh, just like anyone else ever born, he’s his own worst enemy. Did you enjoy that little Pitchfork-ish segue? I didn’t, so let’s see if the band sounds noise-grunge awesome, like in the old days, or kind of commercial emo, like in the more recent past. Gack, what the heck is this, “Sinking Feeling” is kind of twee, isn’t it? “Thru Hell” sounds like Hives after their moms forced them to get haircuts; “Honeycomb” sounds like commercial jungle meant to entice hipsters to eat Corn Flakes. Ack, ack, all set with this. C

PLAYLIST

• Even though it is a Friday the 13th, Aug. 13 is the next general-record-release Friday. I’m totally sure that bodes well for what awaits me when I check my list of things to review, and I won’t be disappointed. In fact, it is the only Friday the 13th of 2021, so I’ll probably get a double-whammy dose of awful, but, subject change, did you know that historians and folklore often have drunken brawls over whether the superstitious fear of Friday the 13th is actually based on the date of the Last Supper or the arrest of the Knights Templar in 1307? For me, I will attribute it to the release date of the new Willie Nile album The Day The Earth Stood Still, because I have to talk about it right now and I have no idea who he is. I don’t feel too bad about it, because the 73-year-old alt-folk singer-songwriter actually is pretty obscure, as well as being a philosophy major from Buffalo, New York. Please hold while I try to find an angle on this, if there even is one. OK, Wikipedia wants to Rickroll me into looking up some band called the Worry Dolls, but I won’t, let’s just say that his obscurity and six-year hiatus after getting sued or whatever in 1981 has made him into one of those “only cool, edgy musicians know about him,” being that Loudon Wainwright III, Roger McGuinn, and members of the Hooters and the Roches have helped him make albums. Stuff like that instantly brings out my cleverly hidden inner skeptic, but let’s have a go at “Blood On Your Hands,” which is guested by Steve Earle. It’s a boring old-school blues-rocker that someone like Jimmy Barnes would have thrown in the trash, meaning this Friday the 13th is probably just getting started being a Friday the 13th for me.

• Watch me perform critic magic with the following bon mot: Devendra Banhart & Noah Georgeson’s new album, Refuge, should just be considered a Devendra Banhart album, because Noah Georgeson is his constant producer. Of course, being that this is an ambient album comprised of slow techno loops and no vocals, I wouldn’t want it to be considered part of my legacy either, if I were Devendra Banhart, and I would definitely blame the really stupid video (big, gross snails crawling around on old Greek statues and generally being slimy and yucky) on Noah Georgeson. Thus, folks, the power of being a famous artist: If you have an urge to make a really pointless career move, always have someone else around to hold the bag.

• After releasing nine records, somewhere along the line this year, alternative-country singer-strummer Suzie Ungerleider got tired of calling herself Oh Susanna, mostly because one of her wine-mom friends finally got around to telling her that there’s a complicated racial history behind the song “Oh! Susanna.” So now she is Suzie Ungerleider, whether or not the critics will spell it right (some of them won’t, just to be jerks). In an act of quiet desperation, her new album is titled My Name Is Suzie Ungerleider, which will probably fix everything (it won’t). She’s originally from lovely, sparkly, rustic Northampton, Mass., but is now Canadian, but I will forgive her for that and listen to her new single, “Baby Blues.” I’ll try to be nice: The tune is sleepy, boring and hookless, and her voice is a cross between Dolly Parton and Lisa Loeb.

• Last but not least is British electronic musician Jungle, whose new album, Loving In Stereo, is coming out tomorrow. Despite his name, his style is electronic neo-soul, and the single “Talk About It” is actually really cool, like a Covid-mask-muffled amalgam of ’70s stuff like Bee Gees and Cornelius Brothers. You should check it out.

Retro Playlist

Exactly 14 years ago, this space was, if I recall, something of a catch-as-catch-can fricassee of random reviews. This was way before my stream-of-half-consciousness Playlist segment came into play, and come to think of it, some of this stuff may have ended up in one of the New Times newspapers or someplace else, but either way, let’s first revisit my magma-hot take on Humanity Hour 1, an album that had just streeted from legendary German hard-rockers Scorpions “(or is it just ‘Scorpions’ with no ‘the’, the original riddle of the Sphynx).” I was a bit fascinated with the fact that the band had fallen from the heavens by then; they were managed by Lieber & Krebs, who also handled Aerosmith and most of the other arena-rawk bands of the ’70s and ’80s, but suddenly here they were, “slumming it” on Universal Records. The results? Well, I noted, they were back. But “OK, not as super-far ‘back’ as [they were situated] when Michael Schenker had to cut elementary school classes so he could go into the studio and lay down the lead guitar heroics of ‘Speedy’s Coming,’ but … no, not as ‘back’ as the Animal Magnetism album either, you remember, with ‘The Zoo’ and all.” I’ll stop: basically they were back to doing tedious “No One Like You”-ish ballads, about 12 or so years after they’d become extinct. So I gave it a C+ grade (in principle it deserved lower, really).

That week I also riffed a bit on an album I rather liked, Victorious, from the Swedish band The Perishers. I loved basically everything I was sent from Nettwerk Records, and these guys were the types to spend “countless torturous nights writing their material, resulting in the sort of regal air that most indie bands try to fake through ‘experimental’ shock and awe.” Turned out to be their last album, much the pity. Sigh.

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).

Occurrence, I Have So Much Love To Give (Archie & Fox Records)

I usually don’t go for tunes that sound like Postal Service, with those cheesy 808-ish beats that are no more technologically fascinating than the first Donkey Kong video game. But in this case there’s a lot of layering at times, and it’s not always a Nintendo-fest either —‌ wait, let me start over, because the Figurine-ish title track that opens the album, with its Donkey Kong beat, a thing that to me always comes off as insincere anti-flamboyance, is the least appealing to me, and it does get a lot better. It’s the third album from an odd little crew of college grads with families and professional day-gigs that suck up 99.9 percent of their time, so the goal here isn’t to dump everything and open for Killers or whatnot. But that really wouldn’t be out of the question, being that they sound like a modern-day Blondie of sorts (singer Cat Hollyer is a dead ringer for Debbie Harry), and they do have a slight penchant for buzzy noise-rock (“The Preferred One,” which actually gets really pretty as it marches along). This one’s a grower, well worth your time. A —‌ Eric W. Saeger

Lauren Jenkins, Miles On Me Part 1 (self-released)

Texas-born and Carolina-raised, Jenkins has toured since she was 15, so I’m told. She’s still a small fry at the moment, having played a role in an Eric Roberts movie and clocked in on one or two other actress-things. There’s been a Today show appearance, and a lot of big magazines and newspapers, I’m told, have touted her as an artist to watch and such. The sound on this self-made album is top-drawer, like, I can tell by the drums, which sound big and splashy, totally radio quality. I know what you’re wondering, but I’ve tried to avoid that: Her music is basically Sheryl Crow-ish, and her voice sounds just like Sheryl Crow. There’s of course nothing wrong with that, on paper, but I’d venture to say that I’d prefer a Sheryl Crow soundalike to try something other than country-tinged Sheryl Crow radio-pop, savvy? I mean, the songs are fine, and other than Sheryl Crow’s music, I’ve never heard anything like this in my life. We cool? B-

PLAYLIST

• Oh noes, we’re into August already, somebody make it stop, or those precocious 13-year-olds who run the fish-and-chips takeout stand at York Beach are literally going to close up and go shopping for edgy backpacks for school! No, I say! I absolutely despise August, the month that’s just basically one giant Sunday, because you know that there’s not a lot of fun and laziness and whole-clam baskets remaining on the clock before dreariness and drudgery and snow set in and turn us all back into our true people-hating Gollum selves. But enough babbling, I must drop my growing desperation and get to business, because I am a buzzing chatbot in the entertainment matrix, and my assigned task is to tell you what albums to buy when they come out on Aug. 6. (The truth is that you shouldn’t buy any of them, really; if you really cared about yourself you’d only listen to old John Coltrane albums and four-hour classical streams through YouTube or whatever, but it’s your ears’ funeral). So let’s get busy, my corporate-enslaved darlings, let’s start with The Apple Drop, a new album from Brooklyn-based experimental-post-punk loons Liars! This trio is signed to Mute Records, which automatically spells awesomeness, of course, but in the case of the single “Sekwar,” your idea of awesomeness would need to be predicated on an ideal of Tom Waits leading 10 or so guys in a crazy but not unlistenable chant about cave gods or something. Some of you would actually like it a lot, is the scary thing, but that’s OK.

• Famous famous-person and unfunny comedienne Barbra Streisand is now a spritely 79 years old, so, like the giant grackle-monster Rodan, she must emerge from her cavern of Smaug gold and lay an album-egg, for the benefit of people who buy albums solely for the purpose of annoying themselves. This new album is called Release Me 2, but don’t get excited, ’90s-girl-group fans, I’ll bet that the “2” in the title refers to a sequel to some dumb album called Release Me. Yup, there it is, thanks Wikipedia, these are previously unreleased songs that would probably sound acoustically marvelous if the strains were bouncing off the walls of your great-uncle’s Marlboro-smelling wood-paneling. The first Release Me featured tracks recorded between her 1967 Simply Streisand and 2011 What Matters Most albums, but this one cast an even wider net (1962-2020), for instance a Babs version of Carole King’s “You Light Up My Life” that’s nasal-screamy and basically bad for you.

• Next we have country music human Chris Young’s Famous Friends, whose title track is based on an “ironic” trope, that his friends in Skunk County or wherever he’s from aren’t really famous, even though the song is ironically co-sung by famous person Kane Brown. It’s standard fare, like take any Toby Keith song, put it in the microwave for 20 minutes and serve. Nevertheless he played it at the ACM Awards, whatever that means.

• Our last thing to look at this week is Lingua Ignota, classically trained in the vein of Zola Jesus I assume, given that this thing here says she’s into industrial and noise rock. Sinner Get Ready is her newest upcoming album, and I’m sure I’ll love it, so off I go to the YouTubes to listen to the single “Pennsylvania Furnace.” Yikes, OK, look at this video, she’s in a sheer white angel dress, jump-cutting around in a field. Slow mournful craziness. Talk about gloomy, crazy and nutty, I shall pass on this, thanks.

Retro Playlist

I spun the dial on the Way-Back Machine as hard as I could, and look, it landed exactly 14 years ago this week, in 2007! I cared about a lot of different genres back then, including, well, every genre, even unbearable vintage wingnut-jazz. Like the newbie I was, while reviewing the Charles Mingus Sextet’s Cornell 1964 (a live album that had just been discovered at the time), I played it safe: “Jazz has unsubtle similarities to booze,” I babbled; “Miles Davis is brandy on ice in relation to the watered-down umbrella drinks of ’80s-era Ramsey Lewis and the egghead-banter martinis of Dave Brubeck.” Well no duh, I say to my 14-years-ago self. I was obviously trying to avoid the subject at hand, namely trying to review a too-hardcore post-bop record, but I did man up and hint to readers that this particular version of “Sophisticated Lady” was “disjointed.” In the end, though, hoping to keep Mingus fans happy (by the way, I don’t care about pleasing them or anyone else anymore), I added “[T]imid newcomers have sufficient opportunities to get acclimated, such as the readily accessible blues of ‘So Long Eric’ (referring to sax/flute/clarinet legend Eric Dolphy, who plays throughout this album).” If you’re still timid about records like this, my advice is to stay that way.

Also that crazily long-ago week, Euro-goth/industrial blockheads KMFDM had just released Tohuvabohu, which I found uninspired (“‘Super Power’ is the sort of jump-the-shark moment that makes longtime fans hustle for the exits”). As well, Aughts-indie bands were at their peak of being horrible (You Say Party We Say Die’s Lose All Time was Romeo Void for dummies), but I did actually like New Young Pony Club’s Fantastic Playroom, as their tunes were “party-girl singalongs over New Order guitars welded in place by matching synth lines,” so I said “most of this record is instantly likeable, putting between-craze Billboard pinups like Franz Ferdinand to shame” (like that’s a challenge).

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).

Andrew Renfroe, Run In The Storm (self-released)

I’ve come to know dozens of rock guitarists quite intimately over the years. They’re odd, obsessed creatures, in a constant three-way battle with their instrument, their musical desires and their own abilities. I imagine that jazz players must take those conflicts to a whole other level, and when one becomes a master of their own destiny, it’s got to be a sweet thing. This guy’s from New York City, from where he released a Jazz Weekly-lauded EP last year (and no, I don’t know if I’ve literally ever received a jazz EP in all the piles that’ve washed into this office). This is a different sort of thing than I would have anticipated, as Renfroe isn’t just flashy but incredibly tasteful. Sound-wise it’s Weather Channel-ready but remarkably more advanced than that; his statements tend to be highly concise, short and sweet rather than prolonged, and his interplay with sax player Braxton Cook is pure melted butter. One to investigate if your pleasures run to tightly controlled, mellow progginess. A+

James DiGirolamo, Paper Boats (self-released)

This Nashville-based singer-songwriter has piles of notable experience as a session musician and touring sideman, having worked with Mindy Smith, Robby Hecht and the ever-awesome Peter Bradley Adams, along with lots of others. There’s a reason session guys are, you know, session guys, but DiGirolamo does have enough of a songwriting knack to please most soccer parents, his obvious target audience. His chosen niche is mainstream pop that encompasses the Paul McCartney to Simon and Garfunkel space, but he obviously picked up a pretty sweet Americana influence during his time with Adams (“Top Of The World”; elsewhere). Of course, none of that automatically spells smashing success just on face, but this is a decent effort. DiGirolamo’s relaxed tenor is pretty much like Robbie Williams fitted with a certain government-issue Bob Dylan nasality; song structures lean toward more modern anti-hook arrangements. He’s aware indie exists; “On Paper” sounds a bit like a Tin Pan notion of a Bon Iver rough draft, if you can imagine such a thing. B

PLAYLIST

• On July marches, to the 30th, when new albums will, like magic, appear in your stores or wherever you obtain music totally legally like the good upstanding citizen that you are. As all the pre-teens know, weird-haired Billie Eilish will release a new album called Happier Than Ever, and everyone will buy it no matter what I say in this space, so you and I would both probably be better served if I just talked about the feral hijinks of our three abandoned rescue cats, Patches, Rubysmooch and Babypuss, all of whom were lured out of their various drainpipe and rhubarb-plant landing spots because they sensed correctly that I’d overfeed them. But I won’t talk about that, since this is a music column and not the Cheezburger website, so let’s pretend that this new Billie Eilish album will make everyone on the internet forget to cancel her for making xenophobic remarks a few years ago or whatever it was. I can understand that people were permanently damaged by someone saying idiotic things when they were an idiot teenager or early-20something, because at that age, as we all know, humans are fully developed psychologically and have the manners of an Oxford graduate in Anthropology, and never do stuff like eat anything without properly arranged knives, forks and spoons as prescribed by Emily Post. Yes, never in my life have I ever heard a teenager say something that didn’t make me think to myself, “Boy, that’s an important socio-political point; I’m really going to need to marinate my brain in that one for a good while.” Anyway, the new single, “Your Power,” is proof that Eilish has grown up the rest of the way; it’s not a hyper-minimalist bloop-pop thing like all her other nonsense, it’s more like Bat For Lashes doing an Americana-tinged booze ballad. So everyone can just go back to stalking your ex on Facebook and leave Billie alone, because she’s never going to say or do anything stupid again, guaranteed, ever.

• Also ahead this week is proto-punk Alan Vega’s Alan Vega After Dark, which is a posthumous release. Formerly the more interesting half of the duo Suicide, he was 78 when he died in his sleep in 2016. By my count this is his third posthumous record, after two released by his attorney wife Liz Lamere. Suicide tended to cause a lot of violent incidents at the end of their shows; as Wikipedia notes, “They were among the first acts to use the phrase “punk music” in an advertisement for a concert in 1970.” And so he was awesome, like Iggy Pop, and this new album is composed of tunes cobbled together during a session with Pink Slip Daddy members Ben Vaughn, Barb Dwyer and Palmyra Delran. One of the songs, “Nothing Left,” is very, very much like Stooges-era Iggy, so I’d have to like it even if I didn’t, which I don’t.

• Didn’t I just mention a new album from Los Lobos, or am I insane? Native Sons is the new album, featuring the single “Love Special Delivery,” which is awesome, because it’s rockabilly and it has Tex-Mex horns. They should play that acoustic set at Tupelo again, bro.

• To close out the week we have See Me, the new record from R&B singing lady Leela James! The new single, “Put It On Me,” is totally ’70s soul-pop, with Four Tops-style orchestration and some super-deep singing. It’s official, she’s awesome.

Retro Playlist

Twelve years ago it was 2009, just saving you the math, being that math should be abolished. This time that year there were a couple of big things going on in the music world. One was the 40th anniversary of Woodstock, from which sprang a six-CD set called Woodstock: 40 Years on: Back to Yasgur’s Farm, which included 38 previously unreleased tunes “from such crazed drug-heads as the Grateful Dead, The Who, Tim Hardin, Jefferson Airplane and one-hit joke-band Country Joe & The Fish, who ended the Vietnam War.” But wait a minute, you know what else was in the news? That’s right, Michael Jackson had just died, so anyone who had survived the 2008 stock market crash with a car, a chicken coop to live in and $200 in Monopoly money had, at the time, “so many new Jacko releases that Amazon isn’t even bothering anymore to include song lists or explanatory blurbs in the listings, and all you can really do is hope you’re not accidentally buying old Wham! albums disguised as Thriller remixes.” I focused my Jacko-related coverage on an unidentified DVD called Moonwalking – The True Story of Michael Jackson, which may or may not have been a bunch of unauthorized shaky-cam bootlegs released by unemployed accountant-hobos who had simply taped a bunch of ET segments off their TV and spliced them together.

The two focus albums under review that week comprised a mixed bag. I appear to have rather liked Horehound from Dead Weather, the ’70s-hard-rock collaboration between hamburger addict Jack White and Kills singer Alison Mosshart, but looking back, I now know that the more that band released albums, the more I realized they weren’t really doing anything interesting, and have scribbled my thoughts accordingly once or twice since.

There was also Take Off Your Colours, an album from English punk-pop throwaways You Me At Six. The songs, I thought, were decidedly ‘meh,’ viz: “Though they’re too hooky and mature to be lumped in with all the hand-me-down Hoobastank chaff, they’re not 100 percent wheat either.” They sound exactly like every other emo band ever, which we now know has become mandatory for all of them.

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).

Simon Moullier Trio, Countdown (Fresh Sound New Talent Records)

Set of recitations of jazz classics from one of the hottest vibraphonists around, whether or not there’s supposed to be such a thing. To laypeople that means xylophone, but there actually is a difference: the bars of a xylophone are made of wood, whereas a vibraphone uses aluminum bars. You’re probably assuming these are old people playing this stuff, but nope, they look like any trio of twee nerds you’d immediately picture, which means that the vibes are still alive whether you want them or not. As any snobby jazzophile knows by now, my only go-to reference for vibes is Lionel Hampton, but I do like jazz classics (Coltrane’s “Nature Boy” and two Monk songs are here), which these guys treat in fine style. The trio thrums along agreeably, not trying anything funny; the effect is hypnotic, and despite the all-acoustic instrumentation, it does feel electronic. Best bit: Someone (I assume Moullier) often absently scats accompaniment with his voice in very sedating fashion (Charlie Parker’s “The Song Is You” most prominently). A — Eric W. Saeger

Falkner Evans, Invisible Words (Consolidated Artists Records)

Solo outing from the New York City-based jazz pianist, formerly of the Western swing band Asleep At The Wheel and a third cousin to author William Faulkner. The lonely zen of even being involved in the jazz world in the first place is distilled to its very essence here; the record is wholly dedicated to Evans’ wife, Linda, who died by suicide last year. Having been in a relationship for 16 years now, this isn’t pleasant for me to cover; I can vividly imagine what it was like for Evans in the aftermath, fleeing the couple’s Greenwich Village flat to re-gather his life at a relative’s house in Auburn, Mass. He might not have touched a piano again to date, but the relative had a beater in the basement, and suddenly there were three songs, and then a personal covenant, a record he had to complete. Needless to say, gentle, deeply thoughtful soliloquies comprise this album, capturing times spent together at their favorite library; etchings of her very image in sound. God, life is short, isn’t it? A+

PLAYLIST

• The July 23 new-CD-release day approacheth, and with it will come albums, one or two of which are made by artists you actually care about, while the rest will come from bands and singers whom you hope get eaten by Godzilla. I am in that same boat with you, praying for Godzilla, and meanwhile practicing my medieval-knight-speak by using words like “approacheth,” because I figure hey, if ’90s music can make a comeback, so can talking like King Arthur, right? OK, kids, let’s have you all sit down with your Archer lunch boxes and Coco Puffs-flavored vape-pens and have a look at this week’s reading of the cultural obituary column, which we’ll begin with a puzzled sideways glance at Downhill From Everywhere, the new album from ancient arena-pop artifact Jackson Browne! You of course know Browne from giant dentist-office hits like “Runnin’ On Empty,” “Rock Me On The Water,” and the absolutely detestable “Doctor My Eyes,” which is usually only heard at children’s dentist’s offices, because a 1997 Harvard study proved that the song’s sleepy, astonishingly unmelodic refrain was shown to coax 5-year-olds into abandoning any notion of escaping the waiting room and running away to become train-robbers. Like so many other hyper-privileged rock stars, Browne is a former Los Angeles Father of the Year, having dumped his second wife for Daryl Hannah, who once played a one-eyed psychopath in a movie that takes six hours to watch. But what of Downhill From Everywhere? I don’t know, but the title track has music on it, a mixture of Rolling Stones and Steely Dan, with lyrics that are basically a checklist of things Rob Reiner tweets to his parasocial public, such as that we need oceans for some reason and all that stuff. It’s totally woke, guys, it really is.

• Mega Bog is Erin Birgy, a Pacific Northwest avant-pop chick who’s been compared to Bowie, Tim Buckley, Sea And Cake, Joni Mitchell, Steely Dan and a few dozen others. Not sure why she isn’t also compared to Ludwig von Beethoven and whatever, mallard duck calls, you know, anything that makes sounds, but that’s what happens when music critics have no idea what they’re doing and resort to babbling incoherent, obfuscatory crazyspeak, all just so that readers will think they’re in good hands. Whatever, let’s go see if “Station To Station,” the single from her new album, Life and Another, is awesome or awful. Huh, it’s a formula that involves Kate Bush, ’90s-Nintendo-techno and trip-hop, I guess. It sort of — OK, it sucks, is what it does. Anyhow.

• Everyone gather around, it’s mega-old folk-rock mollusk David Crosby. For Free is his new album, and I think everyone reading this should help make the album’s title come true by not buying it and allowing the “record company” to toss the 10 copies they actually manufactured into the dumpster (no way am I previewing any of those dumb songs, so don’t give me those droopy doggie eyes. Nuh uh.).

• Our parting shot this week is California skate-punk band Descendents, with 9th & Walnut, their eighth full-length. “Nightage” is a fine-enough Ramones-style song. Sorry, what? Yes, it took them 50 years to release eight albums. Ahem.

Retro Playlist

Ten years ago this week, room-temperature-IQ Wilco-wannabe TV-dramedy-backgrounders Fountains of Wayne release their fifth nice obedient album Sky Full of Holes. Since you forgot about it three seconds after you read it, I’ll remind you that I said the single “Someone’s Gonna Break Your Heart,” “is a typical example of this easily forgotten outfit’s nonsense, because it sounds like a few extras from Scrubs playing Rock Band to an old Oasis B-side.” Mind you, that was my trying to be as kind as possible, so keep that in mind if you’re going to drag me on social media.

Wait, I take that back; I’m keen on any reason for quitting social media forever and communicating by fax, so do have at it.

But that album wasn’t the big news that week. There were two feature reviews, the first being Days To Recall, from Justin Hines, who was at the time a staple on PBS pledge drives. He was born with Larsen Syndrome, and he’s still around, making music that’s “honky-soulful in the manner of Amos Lee or Jeff Buckley,” his voice no more technically remarkable than your average American Idol fifth runner-up, but he’s pretty special when he rocks out with his “obedient, gospel-tinged blues-rock.”

The other marquee contestant was Australian singer Abbe May, whose Design Desire LP didn’t fare so well. Falsely “touted this as a White Stripes-style blues-rock assault,” it probably would have rated a lot higher if the engineer hadn’t given the impression that he’d just “woken up from an all-nighter with Salem.” It received a rare C+ grade from me (I rarely ever rate things that low, because my mission isn’t to destroy struggling artists), mostly because the reverb on her voice sounded absolutely awful.

So take note, local bands, either produce your records yourself or hire an engineer who isn’t a complete twit.

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).

Assorted Orchids, Assorted Orchids (Whale Watch Records)

Debut album from Boston-based folkie T. McWilliams, whose target audience is the weird-beard acoustic-guitar set that lumps together such debatably disparate acts as Mississippi John Hurt and Nick Drake. He’s lived in a lot of places, including Los Angeles, New York City, Shanghai and Scotland, which would explain the boho feel of these pieces, but it’s nevertheless not a fluffy record at all. There’s real precision in play when McWilliams is plucking his steel and nylon strings and applying his delicate croak to such vivid lyrics as “I entered the garden of scarlet chrysanthemums opening wide” (“The Mighty Kingdom”), and sure, we’ve heard that kind of thing before, but McWilliams’ layering is often divine: It’s not often that one hears incidental finger-picked arpeggios used so decisively that one gets the sense that they’re listening to high-end guitar-tronica, not just another contender for Nick Drake’s throne (not that you’d want to miss this if Drake’s your thing, certainly). Brilliant stuff. A- — Eric W. Saeger

Styx, Crash Of The Crown (UME Records)

If we’re gonna be real about this legendary Chicago arena-rock band, the default diss has always been that they’re a lite version of Yes. But you know what, they do try, and always have, and shut up anyway, because they didn’t have Bill Bruford or Chris Squire, and neither does your band, so chill. I was surprised to see so many other reviewers pointing out that original keyboardist Dennis DeYoung (the guy who sang “Mr. Roboto,” “Come Sail Away” and all the original hits) is gone, being that it’s been 21 years already, but they have their word quotas to fill, and besides, they’re still a fun band to see live. This is their 17th album, and actually quite the inspired effort. Once you get to the middle of the second tune (“The Monster”) you can’t help noticing that this thing is something of an homage to Yes’s Close To The Edge: woozy, busy keyboards; similar level of riffing; epic-gentle vocal harmonies, and hold it, the drummer is doing some very cool stuff. They’re still kickin’, folks. A+

PLAYLIST

• July 16 is the next all-important date for album releases, only I’m not supposed to call them “albums” anymore, because otherwise I’m a boomer. What that means is that I’m simply going to have to keep calling them albums, because the level of senility in my current boomer state allows me, by law, to act in accordance with my own desires, whether it be calling mixtapes “albums” or throwing a fit at the 7-Eleven if someone’s ahead of me in line buying a million lottery tickets. In other words I can start howling at the ceiling and eating a copy of the newest issue of Teen Vogue magazine until the awkward 20-something clerk comes over and asks me if I’m OK, and nothing will happen other than that because I am a boomer who loves hitting pause on the DVR machine so I can read the hundred-billion warnings on every pharmaceutical ad, and I remember when albums were called albums, and music was awesome, like the mellow tunes of Pat Boone and Spanky & Our Gang! I remember Donny and Marie Osmond too, all you 4chan trolls, secretly making fun of my words! Well, let’s see you make fun of all the edgy and groovy words I’m going to use in my first review this week, as I discuss Hideaway, the new album from skinny San Diego hipster trio Wavves! This is their seventh mixtape — oh wait, they call their records “albums,” not mixtapes, silly me, does anyone have a box of prunes I could borrow, for my digestive health? Whatever, I’ve heard a few of their things, but if I recall, their songs are only slightly more compelling than Grizzly Bear, but I may be wrong, because I’m so totally old and crazy! The band’s last record, You’re Welcome, climbed to No. 95 on the Billboard charts, not that that’s much of an achievement, now that there are only 98 people left in the U.S. who still actually buy albums, but congratulations, guys! Wow, check that out, I wasn’t expecting the title track to be jagged and grungy, but it’s definitely cool, sort of like Nevermind-era Nirvana but without Kurt Cobain’s raw/edgy voice. Spoiler alert, what’ll happen here is a bunch of people will read some stupid review in Nylon or whatnot and start to believe Wavves is awesome, and then they’ll hear actual grunge songs from the ’90s and realize they were lied to, because all the writers at Nylon are corporate-paid hacks, and then we’ll see that long-overdue ’90s music revival, while I sit here eating bowls of pudding and pharmaceuticals and cackling like a witch at all of — what was I saying again?

• Canadian indie quartet The Zolas releases Come Back To Life on Friday! It’s taken them five years to put this album out, their first since 2016’s Swooner, so it’s probably awesome! Nope, it isn’t. The title single is like Grizzly Bear trying to sing through kazoos. My stomach is lurching, it really is.

• Oh great, a new Barenaked Ladies album! Boy, how did music ever survive this long without a new mixtape or cassette or whatever from the millionth band to repackage Peter, Paul and Mary and resell it to the ’90s-college-rock crowd? Right, the new LP is Detour de Force, whose single is “New Disaster,” an ornate tapestry of 1980s Police-ripoff stuff. Moving on.

• Finally, it’s John Mayer, with his latest LP, Sob Rock! Teaser single “Last Train Home” rips off everything to do with Blue Oyster Cult’s “Shooting Shark,” but Mayer will get away with it, because anyone who’s old enough to recognize “Shooting Shark” is either in a rest home or babbling erroneous nonsense about mixtapes in this newspaper.

Retro Playlist

Reminiscing back almost-exactly-whatever eight years ago to 2013, the first order of business was giving a quick exam to Gypsy-punkers Gogol Bordello’s then-spanking-new LP, Pura Vida Conspiracy, their seventh. The album’s single, “Lost Innocent World,” is “a rather subdued version of their usual ‘oi oi oi’ spazzings, not that lead singer Eugene Hütz doesn’t sound the same as always, specifically what Serj Tankian would sound like if he were sort of fun.”

That and a few other review-snippets aside, I was forced by job description to deal with an entire album from Kentucky band Seabird, called Troubled Days. I think I disposed of it rather fairly and adroitly, to wit: “More clean-teen mall-indie for the overhead speakers at TGI Fridays. The intentions of these two Kentuckians couldn’t be more obvious; maybe a ‘big time’ Budweiser commercial spot featuring one of their tunes and they’d call it a rock star career, whether it be one of their more Strokes-like tunes or maybe even one of the debatable curveballs, the tricks to which generally involve mildly interesting guitar sounds more than anything else.” In other words you’ve heard this kind of nonsense a billion times at restaurants, and we can start wrapping up here.

The other “attraction,” for lack of a secret code word with which I could handily signify my displeasure to you, was Eric & Magill’s Baggage and Clothes. “Nerd-indie of a sort that deepens the immersive feel of Animal Collective’s trip,” I yawned, spit spraying everywhere, “this accomplished by incorporating a different, more mellow notion of swirly layering and a few elements of Simon and Garfunkel’s mawkish solitude.” (If it’s any consolation to any E&M band members who might be reading, I wouldn’t have ever thought of you again if it hadn’t been for this little stroll down memory lane.)

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).