Author: Eric Saeger

Jim Snidero, Strings (Savant Records)

Ha ha, the other week Kenny G got in a meme war with Pat Metheny, if you didn’t hear. Pop-jazz guitarist Metheny attacked the hilariously trite sax player for — I don’t know, something about he didn’t like him, and it went on from there. It was sort of like one of the Osmond brothers dissing the Brady Bunch Band, but the real takeaway is that listenable/commercial/accessible jazz isn’t something that’s worth dissing, even if it’s Kenny G. Take for example this album from alto sax guy Snidero, a recording that just welcomed its 20th anniversary with a CD re-release and first-time issuance in online digital formats. It’s a very clean, often gently swooping thing, with Snidero’s sax/piano/bass/drums band backed by six-odd guys on strings, all hammering out tunes that sound 1950s-ish, 1970s-ish and Leonard Bernstein-ish by turns. It’s a treasure, but the backstory is the thing here: The band was set to record the album in Brooklyn on 9/11, and some of them got stuck in traffic when the attacks happened. A+

Gone To Color, Gone To Color (self-released)

Well this one’s a keeper if you’re a Massive Attack/Zero 7 type of fan. Here you have an experimental rock/electronic-based pair of guys, a duo that originally formed in Cincinnati and are “currently coexisting in Atlanta and Washington, D.C.,” i.e. they collaborate remotely, a setup that’s allowed them to bring in some pretty impressive names, not that these exquisite beats really need any salvaging. Right off the top you have Luyas singer Jesse Stein floating her soprano all over the joint in a beachy joint (“The 606”) that might make you think of Massive Attack’s Martina Topley-Bird, and then, whoa, speak of the devil, Topley-Bird shows up next on the more snappy but still chilly “Dissolved.” “Redok” is a gorgeous-weird-gorgeous walk in the clouds, and then, who but Clinic singer Ade Blackburn pops in for the highly syncopated “Illusions.” You should see the list of contributors: Wilco’s Pat Sansone, Guster’s Luke Reynolds, Liars singer Angus Andrew — I’m left with who the heck even are these guys? Jeez Louise is this awesome. A+

PLAYLIST

• If you’re marking your calendar, Oct. 22 isn’t a holiday, because it’s the day after my birthday. However, it is a big day for some bands and ‘artistes’, as they have new albums coming out, and I will talk about them now, starting with San Francisco-based rock band Deerhoof, whose new album, Actually You Can, will be at the stores in a matter of hours, in case your little brother hasn’t used his elite hacker skills to pirate it for you already. As usual I have confused this boring indie band with all the other boring indie bands that have the word “deer” in their names, like Deerhunter and Deerfield, although Deerfield is actually kind of non-horrible if you like garage-country music, and who doesn’t. But anyway, Deerhoof, everyone. You know them from such forgettable Pavement-like garbage as “Fresh Born,” which — OK, you don’t know that one? OK, how about — oh, let’s just forget it, if you hate music, you’ll love Deerhoof, let’s leave it at that and try to get through this exercise in one piece. Their new single “Scarcity Is Manufactured” is already out there, so let’s check it out, whattaya say. Hmm, one part is like 1970s-era Yes but with Yoko Ono singing. I have no idea why anyone would want to listen to that, but that’s what it is, and I had no hand in its creation.

• In looking at Fun House, the new album from one-woman-band Hand Habits, I figured I’d try something different: get in touch with the artist (Meg Duffy) and have her write this little bit, so she could tell you herself whether or not this new album is awesome. But weirdly enough, she doesn’t go on her Twitter very much, and I wasn’t going to try to contact her on her very busy Facebook, so I guess I’ll have to do this myself. The single, “No Difference,” isn’t bad, like, imagine if the Beach Boys were actually just a girl and a few of her friends but nevertheless they still made mindless but catchy pop songs and sang “ba ba ba” a lot. I have no idea who would seriously love this, but that means nothing these days, literally nothing.

• Holy crow, look, guys, it’s arena-pop sarcophagus-mummy Elton John, with a new album, The Lockdown Sessions, comin’ right up! As a seasoned newspaper reporter and former CIA double agent, I have deduced that the album’s title refers to a bunch of songs Elton recorded while the country was totally closed down owing to the coronabug. I further predict that guests on this album will include someone old, like Paul McCartney; someone young and boring but inexplicably popular, like Ed Sheeran; and some rising star who’s edgy, like any singer you’ve never heard of. Whatever, barf barf barf, the first single is a collaboration with singer/model Dua Lipa. It is a PNAU-remixed version of the old mummy-radio song “Cold Heart.” Ha ha, the video is a Teletubbies-like cartoon and it’s wicked stupid and lame. The remix is uneventful, not much different than the original snooze-rock version that won a dentist-office poll as being the worst part of going to the dentist, this by a 90-percent margin. Congrats, Elton, for being the stuff of nightmares!

• Finally, let’s look at Blue Bannisters, the new record from Lana Del Rey, who’s really only mesmerizing to you because she’d never date you in a million years unless you’re a professional unicorn polo player. Here’s a single, “Arcadia.” I’m sure this will basically be Goldfrapp but shrinkwrapped, let’s go: It’s a piano gloom ballad, with bad singing that certain people will say is good because otherwise they wouldn’t get paid. She’s quickly turning into a meme, you notice?

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).

Shakespeare & the Blues, Rhapsodic (Nouveau Electric Records)

This was presented to me as an example of avant trip-hop; I really didn’t hear much in the way of traditional trip-hop until “Wanton Phrases,” the third song on this full-length from a New Orleans trio comprising Cassie Watson Francillon on concert harp, Cam Smith on drums and electronics and Bryan Webre (Lost Bayou Ramblers and Michot’s Melody Makers) on bass and electronics. Anyway, that song is more of a Portishead trip, which was what I’d expected the whole set to be, but that’s where the “avant” comes in. These folks are big on jazz and start off the album with a bright, showery and very busy shoegaze-ish joint called “Past Is Prologue,” then proceed to reinvent early-years Yes with “Emerald Glowing Figure.” None of these people sing, which is usually a red flag to me, but there’s no denying that they have great chemistry and can concoct accordingly. “The Mechanics Of Distance” is really good, almost an organic idea of Aughts dubstep, Francillon’s harp fleshing it out to terrific effect. A+

Spencer Cullum, Coin Collection (Full Time Hobby Records)

This burgeoning pedal-steel legend is a semi-obscure commodity only because, you know, he’s a pedal steel guitarist. But he’s been around the block quite a bit, contributing to records from Deer Tick, Kesha, Miranda Lambert, Dolly Parton and of course his own duo, Steelism. Cullum has free rein to do whatever in this album, and that’s basically what you get, a lot of whatever. I’d been led to expect some prog-rock, and there’s a little of that, but this guy is more into krautrock and park-bench folk, so the stretch of antique techno that shows up on “Dieterich Buxtehude” (and thus thankfully provides a very welcome break from the mostly Beatles-in-Norwegian-Wood-mode self-indulgence) is missed the minute it’s gone. He’s got a girl singer who sucks, if that appeals to you, which it might of course; in other words what you get here is Sufjan Stevens with a few random attempts at Kraftwerk, some dissonant boy-girl duetting and, you know, some cool but not terribly complicated pedal steel runs. Enjoy, or whatnot. B

PLAYLIST

• All ahead flank, ye swabs, to Oct. 15, when we will spy new albums coming straight at us from somewhere on the starboard side, and some of you will ignore everything I say and actually purchase some of these albums, which will get you keel-hauled for disobeying my direct orders to avoid them like radioactive whales! No, I’m kidding, if that money’s burning a hole in your pocket, please spend it on rock ’n’ roll albums instead of shoving it in a big coffee can in your basement or donating it to the homeless, because buying bad albums is your constitutional right. You even have the right to be a little rascal and buy Coldplay’s new album, Music Of The Spheres, and there’s nothing I can do about it, but I’ll go through the dutiful motions regardless and go listen to the trailer. Ah, how cute, it steals from Flock Of Seagulls, and Gary Glitter and LMFAO. This is so awful, but I will blame it on their producer, Max Martin, who has been spread super-thin for years now, writing literally half the Billboard hits that the other two or three go-to guys didn’t (Katy Perry stuff, The Weeknd stuff, Taylor Swift stuff, all of it) (no, I’m not kidding, music is hopelessly commercialized, and the big record companies believe the public is too stupid to appreciate tunes that weren’t written by a small handful of songwriting hacks). This is all wrong in so many ways that I’m almost left speechless, but the punchline is that this is some sort of concept album, because the guys “wanted to create their own solar system” and put that into music. Are you with me so far? Do you understand how bad this is for music and art? No? OK, then, carry on.

• Ha ha ha ha, I can’t believe it, it’s my ancient nemesis, The Darkness, with some stupid new album! The only reason these British numskulls ever got a record contract in the first place was that some record company executive became convinced by The Darkness’ manager that after several years of awful Strokes clone bands, what the public needed was a really bad Led Zeppelin imitation, which is exactly what The Darkness is. But somehow, even though we critics tried to stop you, people bought their albums, and things rapidly snowballed out of control, and the next thing you knew we had something even worse than The Darkness: Wolfmother! But we are here on business, specifically the new Darkness album Motorheart, so let’s get this out of the way as quickly as we can, by listening to the title track! Lol, lol, holy moley, I can’t stand it, first it sounds exactly like Spinal Tap, then Dillinger Escape Plan for 10 seconds, and then comes some horrible, lame riff, and the guy sings in this really stupid high-pitched falsetto. You have to hear this, it’s literally the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard in my life.

• Wait, a new album from old hippy-Latin-rock band Santana? Let me see if Carlos Santana is even still alive, because this could just be a tribute thing, like the Count Basie Orchestra, stand by. Huh, yes, he is. He’s only 74; I thought he was a lot older, because he literally played at the first Woodstock festival, back when electricity came from dinosaurs running on treadmills. The new full-length is Blessings And Miracles, and its single, “Move,” is basically a retrofitted version of his 1999 hit “Smooth.” It’s OK I suppose.

• We’ll finish all this nonsense with Lately, the new LP from Nashville country-folk-rock singer Lilly Hiatt! If this sounds exactly like Sheryl Crow we’re done for the day. Nope, just boring and kind of amateurish, so we’re still done.

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).

Crisix, The Pizza EP – Full Movie (Based on a true story) (Listenable Records)

Since the 1980s-underground days, Spain has been a top source of thrash metal, even if the output isn’t as consistently funny as Brazil’s, not to mention Chile’s. But these four guys are interested less in professional decorum than in instant relatability, and they get extra points for making this EP into a movie (speaking of that, what with lockdowns and whatnot, every band should be doing exactly that, a four-song video EP, rather than spending their hard-earned money on recording an extra six to 10 songs that are mostly filler). Musically this isn’t anything more innovative than a mashup of Meshuggah and Dillinger Escape Plan, with the singer spending most of his time practicing his above-average drunken-pirate roar. So, right, nothing all that new, but the tunes did sit well with me. The videos are pretty funny, a fantasy chronicling of the guitarist’s past life as a pizza delivery guy; at one point the guys remake the kitchen scene from Jurassic Park (“Raptors In The Kitchen”) and it’s hilarious. A

Crown Lands, White Buffalo (Spinefarm Records)

My first tweet after this thing landed in my lap still stands: Who the flark are these guys? I bit on this one for two reasons: (1) I don’t think I’ve written up a single Spinefarm Records release, despite 90 million of them being pitched to me; and (2) this band was said to be a prog band. I assumed this would be cheap and stupid, but holy crow, a lot of this stuff is a cross between late ’70s Rush and Led Zeppelin III. Yeah, the singer sounds like Geddy Lee sometimes and Robert Plant at others, but — wait for it, you’re gonna die, I swear — this is just two guys. Big sound, though, nothing like what I expected from a record label that seems to deal mainly with black-metal bands whose logos are written in impossible-to-read font. Anyway, the drummer plays tabla and bongos when they’re unplugged, which is deeply organic of course, but when the guy jumps back on the drums he pulls off a pretty decent Neil Peart. If you’re into revival-arena-rock, you simply must hear this stuff. A+

PLAYLIST

• The next general-release date for music albums and assorted rock ’n’ roll whatnots is Oct. 8, so let’s just dive into this pool of fail by starting with Good Morning It’s Now Tomorrow, the new album from Matt Maltese, an English singer-songwriter whose style “blends elements from indie-pop, indie-rock and chamber-pop,” in other words: he’s still trying to figure out what he’s doing, despite the fact that he’s already put out two albums, two EPs and a bunch of singles. No, I kid Matt Maltese, it’s not like chamber-pop isn’t just another way of saying shoegaze, an essential building block of all “indie-pop and indie-rock,” and whatever, he’s kind of popular in the U.K., which means he could basically put out a recording of himself and his dog eating boxes of cereal and all that’d happen is New Music Express would call it “essential listening.” OK, I’ve procrastinated enough, it’s time for me to drag myself kicking and screaming to YouTube to listen to this human’s new single, “Shoe.” Huh, in the video he’s buried up to his neck in sand, which I can relate to, as I am always buried up to my neck in bad albums. Oh how cute, it’s kind of like Beck meets Sufjan Stevens, but with no good music. Lol, you should hear his falsetto high notes. This is terrible, please toss this in the trash and bring me something edible, waiter.

• Next we have punk-protest-folk-whatever guy Billy Bragg, with his latest, The Million Things That Never Happened. Bragg’s most notable, sort-of-recent-ish moment came in 1998, when Woody Guthrie’s daughter asked Bragg to take some of Woody’s unrecorded lyrics and make music out of them, so naturally, instead of doing it himself, he collaborated with Wilco and Natalie Merchant and turned it into a giant cluster of people who weren’t good fits for the project, which released the albums Mermaid Avenue in 1998 and Mermaid Avenue Vol. II in 2000. Am I missing anything? Wait, ha ha, one time, when Bragg was in edgy-protest-music-dude mode, he dissed famous Popeye The Sailor lookalike Phil Collins for not being an actual political activist rock star guy: “Phil Collins might write a song about the homeless, but if he doesn’t have the action to go with it, he’s just exploiting that for a subject.” In other words, Bragg discovered grifting, and that makes him important, because, as everyone knows, rock ’n’ roll celebrities would totally save the world if people would just let them, am I right? So the single, “Ten Mysterious Photos That Can’t Be Explained,” is jangly and kinda dumb, like unplugged Clash but with an even higher level of blockhead-Cockney accent (think Ian Drury’s “Sex And Drugs And Rock & Roll” but boring and pointless). We all set here?

• Speaking of bands that don’t exactly know what they’re doing, look folks, it’s Toronto jazz-hip-hop-techno incels BadBadNotGood, with a new album, called Talk Memory! They’ve collaborated with the likes of Mick Jenkins, Kendrick Lamar and Ghostface Killah, and have also won or been in the running for snobby awards like Liberas, Junos and Polarises, but now my interest is piqued and I’ll stop the resumé riffing and go listen to the single, “Sending Signals.” Wow, this is nerdy, some proggy riffing led by the bass player, an eloquent but unlistenable mash of notes. Have fun with this, America.

• Let’s close with All Day Gentle Hold, the new LP from upstate-ish New York-based synthpop Porches. “Lately,” the single, is kind of like if Soft Moon had a decent sound engineer, and if that totally loses you, be thankful; there’s no need to bother with this.

RETRO PLAYLIST

Ten years back we go, when the new albums included Ashes & Fire from somewhat likeable Neil Young wannabe Ryan Adams, who back then was suffering from Ménière’s Disease, an ear problem that affects hearing and balance. At that point, fans thought Adams was done; he’d quit music a couple of years previous and married Mandy Moore. “The first few songs,” I said, trying to stay awake, “are slow folk-rock and/or Dave Matthews-ish, and they are not horrible, altogether sort of like Amos Lee’s last album.”

Another thing that happened that week was a show in New Hampshire, at the Flying Monkey in Plymouth. You remember live shows, right? No? Well, you do remember ’80s fashion-techno dude Howard Jones, right? Also no? Well, he was the one coming to the Flying Monkey. “He sang a song called ‘Things Can Only Get Better’ during the Reagan era,” I reminded you, “not knowing that things were going to get a whole lot worse.” Mind you, I said that in 2010. If I had known the 2020s were going to be this bad, I would have long moved to Iceland by 2011.

Per usual, there were two focus albums to discuss. The one I was actually psyched to hear was HanDover from darkwave overlords Skinny Puppy. Turned out it was basically a solo album from singer Nivek Ogre. It was OK, I though: “It’s sick, yes, but not completely off-putting, even while ‘Icktums’ explores what VNV Nation might sound like if they used hospital machines to make their sound.”

The other spotlight LP that week was one I’ve mentioned a million times, laptop-jazz ninja Mocean Worker’s Candygram For Mowo, which adeptly combined 1930s-’40s swing with underground hip-hop. I’ll say it again, this is an incredible party record, if anyone has a party ever again.

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).

Ian Jones, The Evergreens (Thin Silver Records)

The other week I took a trip up north, to maraud (I don’t just simply “browse”) an estate sale. Tired of all the CDs in my car, I tried to find a radio station. Something popped up, a really good rock-ish song, on a Christian rock station, WANH 88.3 FM in Meredith. I was awed by the tuneage, because none of it was bad (Brandon Lake’s “Come Out Of That Grave,” an epic mix of Kings of Leon/Killers, was really good). I say all this because mellow rock can be OK even if your taste in rock tends to be bad for you, like mine. So I submit this EP, made by a Seattle songwriter with a gift for evoking mellow-mode Eagles and things like that. It’s quite inviting, especially when Jones trots out his Conor Oberst imitation in the strummy “Liars Criminals Beggars and Thieves.” A

Aakash Mittal, Nocturne (self-released)

In India, Calcutta is now known as Kolkata. It’s not a place I’d picture as being particularly still, especially at night, and that exact vibe — or at least its musical sounds — is what saxophonist Mittal attempts to capture on this album. His accomplices in the trio are guitarist Miles Okazaki and percussionist Rajna Swaminathan, who plays the instruments that bring the greatest degree of realism, the mridangam and kanjira. The setting may be an Indian city of 4.5 million residents, but the volume raises and lowers itself to incoherent buzzings like any other hyperactive metropolis. My impression is that it’s mostly improvisational (“Nocturne III” being an obvious exception; there was definitely quite a bit of planning there), aiming for feel more than melody, but the latter can indeed be found here and there. Matter of fact, if your workday involves some subway time, you could be listening to a lot less interesting things. A

PLAYLIST

• It’s a new week of music releases, all coming out on Oct. 1, for your musical pleasure and/or disappointment! Looking at the formidable list of new albums, my attention — such as it is these days — was immediately drawn to True Love, the fourth album from Texas-based pop duo Hovvdy! I’ve never heard of these people, and in fact the only reason I even got into the weeds with them was that they use two v’s in their name, like Pitchfork-beloved rock band Wavves. No, I know Hovvdy is stylizing the two-v thing in a different way, but I like how they’re doing it more than the way Wavves does it. See how music-critiquing works, folks? Whatever, I shall endeavor to see if this is at all interesting henceforth, as the title track is available for advance order (you wish, Hovvdy) or pirate-listening right now, on my computer! Huh, this sounds like Ben Kweller except listenable, sort of an Americana vibe, Simon & Garfunkel-ish, like a non-annoying Radiohead doing a chill-down. I can deal with this more or less.

• Any band that was once drunk enough to name their band Illuminati Hotties has my unwavering support, which will totally remain unwavering until I hear some bad music from them, which I’m fully prepared for, as I have a handy barf-bag right next to my badass-looking gamer chair, right here! Wikipedia, which is always on the cutting edge of super-hip words, tells me the band is “a vehicle for the songwriting of producer, mixer, and audio engineer Sarah Tudzin.” Well, that’s certainly less obfuscatory than saying “get ready for some cool grooves from a super-weird chick,” which is what you actually get here, on the band’s new album, Let Me Do One More! There is a single, called “Mmmoooaaaaayaya,” and it starts out with a Primus riff reminiscent of the guitar theme from South Park, and in the video Sarah comes out wearing nothing but a black sports bra. It’s pretty cool, and then she starts making fun of stupid men who try to pick up girls by using stupid pickup lines or whatnot, and then it gets louder, and pea soup starts falling from somewhere up above, and soon enough Sarah’s making fun of the Democratic National Committee while getting pea soup all over her. Is it edgy? Yes, but it does not solve world peace, so in my expert opinion it is simply a rock ’n’ roll song, not the answer to mankind’s prayers.

• Hoo boy, what could possibly be next. Whoa, wait, look, it’s industrial-metal band Ministry, one of the few bands on this planet I can actually stand, and they have a new album, Moral Hygiene, coming to your music store, if those even exist anymore! Ha ha, remember when Ministry released the song “Antifa” a couple of years ago, and it made people angry? What’s that? No, not the time people got angry over all those millions of other things, this was a different thing. Let’s just drop it and go watch the video for their new song, “Good Trouble,” shall we? Ha ha, it’s so badass, look, there’s their singer, Papa Al Satan, with American flag sunglasses, and random video clips of riots and burning stuff. The tune is a mega-heavy grinding cacophony of metallic mayhem, it’s awesome, haven’t these guys broken up like five times now?

• Finally we have million-year-old prog-rock band Yes, with their newest LP, The Quest! Given that bass player and bandleader Chris Squire died a few years ago, I don’t think any band should call itself Yes, but whatever, sort-of-original guitarist Steve Howe is here, as is Geoff Downes and Alan White, but, spoiler, Jon Anderson still hates everybody and isn’t here. Starter single “The Ice Bridge” is pretty much like Rush gone New Age. Pretty silly, probably some leftover nonsense from their Close To The Edge album, but you might like 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).

Chet Doxas, You Can’t Take It With You (Whirlwind Recordings)

Minimally accessible but solid jazz album, a straightforward mixture of progressively minded post-bop loaded with curveballs, the 12th full-length from Doxas, a New York-by-way-of-Montreal saxophone guy. A guy who has some pretty cool friends, I should elaborate; the professed theme here is inspiration, most specifically thoughts that came up while Doxas was on tour in Europe with the band Riverside and wound up sitting in a van “with the cool kids,” Carla Bley and Steve Swallow. Bley asked him why he didn’t just form a trio, et voila, it was done, so this is Doxas with pianist Ethan Iverson and drummer Thomas Morgan. The title track is as nice and friendly as it gets, and then comes the first of many self-indulgent moments in “Lodestar,” dedicated to Lester Young, one of far too many legendary saxophonists whose genius wasn’t enough to keep him from succumbing to self-destruction. Noisy noodling on “Cheryl and George”; some spazzy bumblebee-ness on “Soapbox.” Not something I’d recommend to anyone other than someone who really wanted to see inside Doxas’s head. B-

David Duchovny, Gestureland (Westbound Kyd Records)

No, you shut up, we’re doing this and that’s final. Yes, it’s the guy from The X-Files, and this is his third album. I’ll cut him some slack because he’s not one of the mega-famous Hollywood Vampires guys; he’s just a schmo with enough money and leisure time to make an album with some guys who probably help him clean up after pool parties. No, I kid, he’s still the man to all us alien-goth heads, and hey, the first song is almost OK, like Neil Young but with Mulder singing, and holy crow is the guitar solo awful, whichever one of these guys did this is a terrible human being. Ah, then there’s a mellow bit, “Holding Patterns,” boasting a guitar melody you’d imagine your uncle writing during off-hours from his accounting job. It’s kind of Tom Petty-ish I suppose — wait, “Chapter And Verse” is a monstrosity, maybe inspired by early Traffic from the 1960s. Good lord, I can’t take another minute of this. D

PLAYLIST

• Here it comes, Sept. 24, with a freshly baked basket of new album releases, some of which might actually be good — I haven’t even looked yet, because I am afraid to. When I check my Metacritic list, the “gig” acts are all in bold print, while the small fry are all non-bolded. I think it should be the other way around. Smaller acts should be bolded and more established bands should be in really small print, to give the smaller releases a chance to make a few bucks instead of all the money going to Eric Clapton’s mansion, or the Hollywood Vampires clubhouse, where the money is instantly converted to gold coins and sealed in a vault that’s guarded by a dragon that knows all the Beatles and Rolling Stones guys and just lets them scoop out piles of gold coins to buy a random Walmart or whatever for no reason at all. Anyway, I’m looking at the list and — um, guys? Why on earth is Flux, the new album from crazed shock-metal chick Poppy, not bolded? What, did they think I wouldn’t see that there was an actual cool album in the list just because it was in normal font? Poppy is a local Boston girl and had a sneak appearance a few months ago on the Grammys or whatever it was, and she makes Billie Eilish look like Marie Osmond. Talk about edgy; the only band she rips off as far as I’ve noticed so far is Meshuggah, meaning she makes music for breaking stuff, or at least she did until now. She was a bubblegummer at first, then she just wanted to freak people out, and now she’s back to bubble-pop, to go by the title track of this album. It’s basically Avril Lavigne but obviously influenced by A Perfect Circle. It’s pretty disposable, and it will definitely alienate all the fans that liked her gore-metal phase. Girl really needs to make up her mind.

• The guys in English reggae/ska band The Specials are all one million years old, but they still like to kick out the jams, or whatever I’m supposed to call it nowadays in order to fake that I’m young and can only speak in short-shelf-life crutch phrases. Yes, the same band that brought you “A Message To You Rudy” may be older than Neanderthal bones, but they know that protest music is important, especially in these final years of human existence. The band’s new LP, Protest Songs 1924-2012, is exactly what it looks like, a collection of old protest songs that tried to inspire people to Do Stuff to fight oppression and make our world a better place (no, there are no Justin Bieber songs on here). One of the covers is a drummy, rattley version of the Staple Singers’ 1965 tune “Freedom Highway.” It is not bad for a band whose members are so old they used to keep trilobites as pets.

• Oh how lovely, another album from an actor who probably should have stuck to acting instead of barfing random albums into my to-do list. This time it’s Caleb Landry Jones, with his second full-length, Gadzooks Vol. 1, which probably means I’ll have to deal with a Vol. 2 at some point. No, ha ha, I’ll just ignore it next time, but for now, sure, why not, let’s see if the guy who played Banshee in X-Men: First Class sings like a dachsund and whether or not the reviewers who gave his last stupid album an average rating of 7.5 were paid to do it. Hmm, this single looks interesting, “The Loon.” Oh geez, come on, it starts off with one of those French café accordions, so of course in the video he’s dressing up like a stupid clown, and then the song starts ripping off Pink Floyd’s “Brain Damage.” We can mark this one as done, yes?

• Finally, it’s New York post-hardcore band Quicksand, with their latest album, Distant Populations! Album-opener “Inversion” is pretty cool, like early Mastodon but with Jane’s Addiction’s singer, you might like 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).

Barry Altschul’s 3Dom Factor, Long Tall Sunshine (Not Two Records)

Jazz drummer Altschul is staring down the barrel of 80 years of age in 2023. Before the great Covid rain delay, he’d been (and assuredly still is) considering wrapping up the touring period of his career, the prime of which happened during the 1960s, when he worked with such legends as Paul Bley and Chick Corea and gained some fame out of it. So we come to the fourth album of his experimental sax-bass-drums trio, following 2017’s Live In Krakow, which, like this one, finds the band noodling around with five of Altschul’s originals, again in a live setting but this time recorded in a location no one seems to remember (“somewhere in Europe,” read the liner notes). The first 19-odd minutes, encompassing two songs, are a skronk-and-rattle clinic, a sure-sounds-like-improv frontal assault that spazzes and subsides over and over, until it ends with sax guy Jon Irabagon spitting and slurping on his instrument in a display of (so some think) contempt for jazz wonks. “Irina” is a well-behaved beatnik-post-bop ballad, fit for power-guzzling gin; “Martin’s Stew” is a workout that’s terrifying in its power. Not for beginner listeners, put it that way. A

Armored Saint, Symbol of Salvation Live (Metal Blade Records)

I’m probably the least qualified music journo to be discussing this vaunted Los Angeles metal band. One of my old bandmates and I met them once and hung out on their tour bus. It was a bit awkward; there were no girls with them, and they were so bored we finally had to make an excuse to leave. Anyway, I found their music singularly unexciting, vanilla indie-metal thingamajigs falling midway between Savatage and Iron Maiden (that’s a pretty small niche, if you don’t know), so really, the most notable thing for me with regard to this record is that the band is largely the same as it’s been for 38 or so years, save for their original guitarist, who died in 1990, the year before Symbol of Salvation — the album performed live on this LP — came out. Like the other live album mentioned this week, the (European or U.S.) venue isn’t stated, but it sounds somewhat large. The songs are jaw-droppingly generic, some cookie-cutter Judas Priest here, a little Accept-ish rough-housing there. Anyway, a new Armored Saint live album, everyone. B

PLAYLIST

• The next general CD release date for most album releases is Friday, Sept. 17, so let’s dive right into the deep end of this week’s foul-smelling bushel of new music albums, starting with Moor Mother’s Black Encyclopedia Of The Air! Yes, there are albums coming out from much bigger names, but this album sounds like it might actually be interesting, unless it’s some black metal band from Finland, so let’s find out. Nope, Moor Mother’s real name is Camae Ayewa, she’s from Aberdeen, Maryland, and is one half of the Black Quantum Futurism crew, along with Rasheedah Phillips; she also helps lead the group Irreversible Entanglements. She’s a musician, poet and activist, and her last album, Circuit City (released in 2020), dealt with “housing inequality, private ownership and institutional racism.” Given all that, I assumed this new record is super cool off the bat, but for due diligence’s sake I went and listened to the teaser track, “Obsidian.” Very much intended for hyper-urban tastes, it features edgy Alabama-based rapper Pink Siifu canoodling with Ayewa, their voices drenched with Death Grips and Oz-Munchkin effects, over a glitch-noise beat. It’s cool and largely inaccessible for normies, let’s just leave it at that and continue.

• Lindsey Buckingham is of course the original genius guitarist for arena-pop superstar band Fleetwood Mac! He has created many many yuge and tremendous hits for people who don’t buy albums unless all their friends like them, but he did have a moment of ignominy in 1979, when he took over all control of the Tusk album, but no one else in the band really cared because they all hated each other anyway. The result, as we all know, was Fleetwood Mac’s worst album ever, and Buckingham has been busily making up for it ever since, even now, when he refuses to have anything else to do with the band. His new album is self-titled and features the single “I Don’t Mind,” which is pretty cool, quite the indie vibe, although it doesn’t really deliver much of a hook. His guitar emulates a mandolin, just like back when Jimmy Carter was president, in case that affects your buying decision. By the way, guess what, he was just here in the area recently, on Sept. 12, at the Music Hall in Portsmouth, so this is all a little late, but it’s his fault for going on tour before his new album was out. So tough cookies, Lindsey Buckingham, maybe work with me here next time.

• I’ve always loved everything about Melissa Etheridge except for her music, so it’s been a slightly strained relationship, given that her job is to make good music, not make people think about heavy stuff. But because she’s kind of an activist, she does make me think about heavy stuff, so I’ll listen to the title track from her new One Way Out album, because, oh, I don’t know, just because, whatever. Say what, looks like this is an old song she never got around to recording until now. It’s got a grunge-rock edge, like, imagine if Pearl Jam wore generic T-shirts with bald eagles on them and had Melissa Etheridge as their singer, this is what it’d sound like.

• We’ll end all this horror with Local Valley, the new album from José González, whom I really only know from his time singing for mildly trip-hoppy band Zero 7. The album opener “Swing” is of course mellow and only half-there, an upbeat beach lullaby to drink pina coladas by, pretty nice escapism.

RETRO PLAYLIST

Let’s go back to 13 years ago this week, when I was still all aflutter over shoegaze heroes Raveonettes, who were releasing four free digital EPs over the course of the coming months. The one they were releasing that week included re-dos of songs like “Dead Sound” (as an 80KIDZ remix, not that a remix was necessary, because the song is fine without one), the rather sucky “Aly Walk With Me” (Nic Endo redid that one) and “Lust,” as remixed by Trentemøeller. It was a nice gesture of them, and I’ll leave it at that.

The featured albums that week included Seattle emcee Common Market’s Tobacco Road, in which emcee RA Scion “gleefully expends terawatts of energy trying to put the Seattle hip-hop scene on the map,” oddly enough by being as townie as he could, that is to say most of his callouts were in-jokes. I failed to see the need for it: “Scion, in his shoulder-shrugging Lupe Fiasco voice and baseball-card-in-the-bike-spokes flow, gives an opaque shout-out to the Virginia Tech killer, scolds his townie brethren in code, then bawls for his lost Kentucky boyhood, not necessarily in that order of sequence or importance.” Blue Scholar beat guy Sabzi was on board with this high-end but a little too ’90s record, “whittling out rinky-dink gospel/blues/jazz samples and whatnot.” If this is all new news, you didn’t miss much.

There was good news, though, in the form of goth-losers-turned-steampunk-winners Abney Park’s Lost Horizons. If we ever have geek conventions again, you’ll definitely want to check these guys out: “moderately grindy industrial with fiddle and a Loreena McKennitt chick doing the enchanted fairy thing.” Closing track “Post Apocalypse Punk” is “the most interesting slice of this pie, with its layer of steam-engine clatter and whatever other appropriate samples they could drum up.” HG Wells would wince at this noise, but it’s still a lot of fun.

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).