Author: Eric Saeger

Modern Nature, Island of Noise (Bella Union Records)

Here continues the saga of U.K. songwriter Jack Cooper, with whom you may be familiar if you ever indulged in the band Ultimate Painting, a garage-pop band whose best moments came when they were trying to write songs that were a few cuts above Pavement in the listenability department (which is of course one of the lowest bars to manage in art history). These days he’s regarded with some renown as an expert multi-winds player and a composer, and this project boasts help from such “free music” luminaries as saxophonist Evan Parker, pianist Alexander Hawkins, bassist John Edwards and violinist Alison Cotton. Other avant-gardists of non-musical disciplines hopped on this thing as well (Booker-nominated poet Robin Robertson, illustrator Sophy Hollington, polymath Eugene Chadbourne and The Lark Ascending author Richard King). Why? Well, it’s a box set that includes a bunch of songs, their instrumental-only versions and a book. The songs do have their cogent moments — “Dunes” and “Bluster” are graceful, pretty and pensive; “Spell” reads like post-bop quietude — but even with all the goings-on going on, it does get a bit repetitive, probably mostly owing to Cooper’s obviously limited (and apparently untrained) vocal range. B

Slow Crush, Hush (Quiet Panic Records)

I roped myself into choosing this one to fill this space because it was touted as a “shoegaze” record. I suppose it is, in a way, but there’s quite a bit of neo-doom-metal going on here, which, if you want to stretch the definition, could fit I suppose. But I’ll not get pedantic; it’s good stuff for sure, and Isa Holliday’s voice is indubitably shoegaze, what with its distracted, unapproachable, heavily reverbed, sexy asexuality. The short version is that it’s a cross between My Bloody Valentine and Slowdive, but there’s more to it than that, especially given that the riffing tends to get rather animated, or at least compelling, in a slightly progressive way. “Gloom” is a kissin’ cousin to Io Echo’s “Shanghai Girls,” if you have any idea what that means; this isn’t simply a Jesus and Mary Chain copycat thing, put it that way, but it could have benefitted from a little of Io Echo’s majestic bombast. It’s structurally fine, though, definitely worth a listen. A-

PLAYLIST

• Jeepers, guys, it’s Dec. 10 already, where has the apocalypse gone? I don’t know, all I care about is getting back to four-day work weeks for the summer, and I am literally counting the days, like, I wish I could be put in a people-freezer unit and left alone until the last week of May. There’s no point to this winter stuff, there just isn’t, and speaking of frostbite and pointlessness, looky there folks, it’s an electronic musician from Canada, named Jamison Isaak, who goes by the stage name Teen Daze! He has a new album coming out on the 10th called Interior. Wikipedia says that since 2015 Isaak has “shifted from an electronic-driven style with elements of chillwave, house, and ambient to more of an indie pop sound, adding his own vocals.” In other words he has given up his dream of soundtracking independent films that nobody watches and will now compete directly with M83 and every other band that’s trying to revive 1980s-radio-pop, which of course means every other band in the world right now. And etc., but for now I’ll give this fellow the benefit of the doubt and go listen to his new single “Swimming.” Huh, this isn’t that bad at all, sort of Aphex Twin-ish robot-dance stuff but with a bright Tiesto color palette. In other words it’s like Orbital; it’s not ’80s-sounding, more like ’90s, so I’ll stop being a hater and just dig on this electronic music, maybe even do a sprightly happy dance with my Roomba.

• Even if you hate hip-hop — and a lot of you do, which I know for a fact — Rick Ross’ forthcoming new album Richer Than I’ve Ever Been does have its irresistible moments of grace, especially the tune “Pinned To The Cross,” whose beat floats through the air like a butterfly while Ross spits the usual platitudes about living the weird duality of being Black and rich: “Now I’m in a McLaren, still racing those commas / I’m watching for Karen, she watching bird watchers” (the latter bit referencing the New York lady who called the cops on a Black guy who was just trying to bird-watch in Central Park). It’s really accessible, this tune, which also features the “I Wrote a Love Song”-renowned indie singer Finn Matthews warbling along in falsetto.

• Extra-weird singing person Moses Sumney has a film and a third album on the way, called Live From Blackalachia! The little I listened to doesn’t sound to me like a live recording, but I will take his word for it because I wouldn’t want him to have beef with me, because I think he’s crazy. He has a wicked high falsetto voice on the teaser track “Bystanders (in space),” which is based on the tune “Bystanders,” from his 2020 album Græ. Imagine the Stranger Things theme song, except some androgynous crazy person is singing over it in a really high voice, that’s what this is.

• Last but not least, I have to deal with Neil Young again, because he and his band Neil Young & Crazy Horse are releasing a brand new album just now, called Barn. A stand-alone film with the same title will be released on Blu-ray and directed by Daryl Hannah, who, like Neil Young, is a celebrity activist. Anyway, like all celebrity activists, Neil Young is widely adored for making lots of tweets but never donating all his millions to Greenpeace or mutual aid Twitter funds, so, as always, I am not wildly enthused about having to sit through another musical rant from him, but I will, of course, so that you don’t have to. The latest single is “Heading West,” the lyrics of which would appear to be centered on his youth, when he lived near some train tracks or whatever. As always, the soggy guitar riff was engineered to sound like your little brother recording himself on a boombox playing “Smoke On The Water,” but that is why Neil Young is so beloved: He is terrible, and people love that.

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).

Naked Raygun, Over The Overlords (Wax Trax Records)

This Chicago post-punk band never struck me as “post” anything, just punk, but whatever; half the time, reviewers and music pundits just make stuff up when they want to sound smart. If you’re young and confused, this is a legendary band; two of the guys were in Steve Albini’s seminal no-wave band Big Black (drop everything you’re doing and go listen to one of their records), and their cult following includes Dave Grohl and Blink-182’s Matt Skiba. If you’re not young and confused, you may know these guys from their decently produced tuneage of old, so, this being their first album in over 30 years, you’d be expecting better production along the lines of Ramones when they worked with Phil Spector and all that, and you’d be right: this is still basic punk stuff but it sounds better. I love all of it, starting with “Go The Spoils,” a typical three-chord complaint into the hopeless abyss. Can you possibly put away the emo albums already and get a little fed up, kids? A

Josh Caterer, The Space Sessions (Pravda Records)

Oh, hooray, more from the frontman of Smoking Popes, the glorified fedora band that was basically like Barenaked Ladies but without the money. You can take it from right there, to be honest; either you like bovine American pub-rock or you don’t, and, as you should know if you’ve ever once read this column in your life, I sure as shootin’ don’t. I mean don’t get me wrong, Smoking Popes could be a little edgy, almost ska-like at times, but Caterer’s fetish for writing melodies that were completely “I know I’ve heard this before but I’m way too busy hate-reading my Facebook to Google it” was their Achilles heel. That’s heard here as well; the songs are solid, Caterer’s uninspiring tenor is more hearty and robust than usual (think Frank Black with a couple of voice lessons), but man, this has been done and more compellingly. There’s a retread version of the classic bum-out song “I Started A Joke” on here for some reason, and no, I don’t know why. B+

PLAYLIST

• As we move into the home stretch of 2021’s retail sweepstakes, our thoughts turn to the Christmas elves, who must load all the new albums into Santa’s sleigh, for delivery to all the Whos down in Whoville. Maybe you are a Who who plans to buy an album or three for your loved ones, and now’s a great time to do it, because a bunch of new albums will come out on Dec. 3, and you should probably buy some of them before the Impractical Jokers manage to get another gigantic cargo ship trapped in the Suez Canal and nobody gets anything for the holidays at all, except for maybe pine cones or old used tires. Echo is one of those new releases, a new album from Costa Mesa, California-based Of Mice & Men, a band that started out as a “metalcore/post-hardcore” troupe, and then, after getting the news from their parents that they wouldn’t be paying for their Vans slip-ons anymore, decided to make more melodic (but equally unlistenable) music, specifically nu-metal! The first single was “Fighting Gravity,” which evidenced that they’re going a little bit emo in the hope that some wrestler will pick one of their songs as an entrance theme, but this tune is all disjointed, running around like a drunk squirrel, a little Good Charlotte, then some screamo, then some Coheed & Cambria, and so on and so forth. If you’re going to give this to your monstrous high-schooler for the holidays, just tell them that it’s really horrible and in response they’ll probably listen to it at least once.

• Shrinkwrapped, inordinately famous country-pop star Blake Shelton will release album number who-cares this week, titled BodyLanguage! Shelton is now on three, count ’em, three different Hunger Games-style singing talent shows that are only watched by boomers and the billions and billions of record company-paid Twitter bots out there in fake-fandom land; all the shows are of course focused on finding singers who can do the the closest possible imitations of Adele or Adam Lambert, and if they fail to sound exactly like them they end up being sent back home to work on their karaoke skills for the entertainment of local drunks. Now that Shelton has found a new future-ex blonde missus in Gwen Stefani, he is gracing us, the little people, with the totally hot new single, the album’s title track, an OK song that sounds suspiciously like an amalgam of stolen pop songs from actual artists that were released over the last 30 years, but I can’t quite put my finger on what songs are being ripped off — wait, the hook is definitely from an old Human League song, that’s it. Let’s go, get this nonsense out of my sight this instant.

• If you like symphonic euro-metal and have been wondering where Angra’s singer Simone Simons has been, she’s the frontperson for Dutch band Epica these days, when she’s not busy working as a style influencer on her SwoonStyle blog. What all this adds up to is another band that would be Trans Siberian Orchestra right now if they’d only invented heavy metal and Christmas before those guys did, so let’s go look and listen to “Kingdom of Heaven Part 3” from the band’s new live album, Omega Alive! Ah, it’s Cannibal Corpse except with Simons’ opera-lady vocals, and there are flames and Flying V guitars and there’s a chandelier of contortionist hotties hanging from the ceiling. You know who’d like this is basically everyone, because it’s both super-classy and completely idiotic at the same time.

• Last but not least, it’s Chrome Sparks & Reo Cragun, with an EP called Void. Sparks is from Pittsburgh, Cragun is from Vancouver, Washington, and their collaboration mixes neo-soul with underground noise, as heard in the single “Blood,” which switches back and forth between Drake-ish chillout and floor-shaking cacophony. It’s interesting.

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).

Papercuts, Baxter’s Bliss EP (Psychic Friends Records)

Papercuts is the stage name of Jason Quever, San Francisco-based dream-pop guy who was last heard from in 2018 in the Slumberland Records-released full-length Parallel Universe Blues. He’s produced records from the likes of Beach House, Luna/Dean Wareham, and Sugar Candy Mountain, and between that and his very agreeable tuneage his resume is pretty formidable if your thing is tasteful, non-posturing indie. Like a lot of indie things that have appeared on my desk recently, it has light-headed singing, but steeped in obeisance more for Simon and Garfunkel soundscaping than the half-cocked Beach Boys stuff that was all the rage for what seemed like forever. “A Dull Boy,” the opening track of this five-song EP, is wide, lush and comforting, reminiscent of Clinic but with much less of an unstable edge. “Try Baxter’s Bliss” is even dreamier, tabling so much lazy beach vibe you can practically smell the vinyl from your childhood blow-up raft. The spell is broken somewhat when a cover of Leonard Cohen’s “The Partisan” appears, with its folksy examination of fascism, but you could still tan yourself to it. I’d recommend it, sure. A

Curtis Roach, The Joy Tape (self-released)

Today I learned that TikTok view counts can be a little — OK a lot — deceiving. See, when you land on a TikTok video, it counts that first play as a “hit” and then every replay that follows, if any (once a TikTok video plays, it’ll go right back to the start and play again). I can’t remember a time when I watched one of those 5- to 15-minute clips just once, especially if they were funny, so, again, TikTok hit counts are deceptive, including the eleventy-billion views this laid-back Detroit rapper racked up for his 15-second “Bored In The House” clip, which became one of the big coronavirus mini-anthems in 2020 and subsequently led to a cooperation with Tyga, who knew a fast buck when he smelled it and partnered with Roach for a three-minute version. Cut to now, with Roach fully branded as a blissfully phlegmatic-sounding emcee with, ahem, anxiety. Oh, it’s all good, I don’t have a problem with this record; there are clamorous beats everywhere, woofer-blasting thumpings and whatnot, and his nasal what-me-worry flow is totally inviting. Brands gotta brand and all. A-

PLAYLIST

• Heyyy, it’s Thanksgiving, ya turkeys. Ha ha, I’ve always wanted to write that! I doubt there will be a lot of new albums for me to insult, I mean briefly critique, here, but I shall go look, in the name of duty and humanity. Many people will be spending Thanksgiving at home, so maybe the record companies are putting out some albums and I can put an end to this mindless riffing and get to some business here. Ack, nope, there are only three albums on my radar for Nov. 26. That seems kind of stupid to me, like, wouldn’t you think Black Friday would be a great day for new albums? No? Well I would. You know, go to the mall, eat a fancy pretzel, get some coffee that doesn’t taste like the rat poison you have during the morning commute and buy some albums. No? Well, what if one of the albums was called Ascension Codes, and it came from a band called Cynic? That’s reason enough to go to the mall and get triggered by all the people who are/aren’t wearing face-bandanas, isn’t it? What’s that you’re asking? No, I’ve never heard of them either, but we need to start somewhere on this album-less album-release Friday, so let’s slog over to see what Wikipedia has to say about this band, shall we? Hm, they’re from Miami, and they are a progressive metal band, which I never would have guessed from the album title, which totally sounds like some egghead catch-phrase that only astronauts ever use when they start heading back to earth, not that I care either way (you don’t either, right? Good). So anyway, one of the songs from his album is called “Mythical Serpents,” and it’s actually not that bad, for a band that uses heavy metal guitars to make fusion music. It’s complicated and rather cool, like imagine 1980s-era Return To Forever except with nothing but heavy metal guitars and a few Cookie Monster growls — wait, there’s some actual singing, the guy sounds kind of like the Smashing Pumpkins singer, which isn’t something I’ve ever heard before. Maybe there is hope for this egghead-metal band and their fusion-metal and their stupid astronaut album title, go hear it for yourself.

• Shows you how lame Deep Purple’s public relations people are, they never even told me about Whoosh, their 21st album, last year. I feel besmirched, because I would have been happy to give it the thorough trashing it probably deserves, but it’s too late, and I only talk about new things in this space, and one new thing is their latest album, Turning To Crime! Yow, look guys, it’s an album of nothing but cover songs, probably all from bands whose members are even older than the guys in Deep Purple, if it’s even possible to be that old. Like, the single is Love’s “7 And 7 Is,” a song that was probably really groovy to listen to if you were driving an Austin Powers Shagmobile in 1966. But Deep Purple gave it a jolly good try, so their version isn’t hilarious, just mildly amusing.

• Hard-rock-metal whatevers Black Label Society‘s new LP, Doom Crew Inc., is on the way! Spoiler alert: Zakk Wylde still sings like Ozzy, and the single “Set You Free” sounds like a filler track from when Ozzy really became boring. So psyched!

• Last stop, kiddies, let’s have a quick look at NOËP’s new EP, No Man Is An Island! NOËP is an Estonian, Andres Kõpper, and his new single is “Kids,” featuring singer Emily Roberts, who, like everyone else on Earth, sounds exactly like Lorde. The song has an LMFAO vibe, but it’s not very fun, but by all means be my guest.

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).

Blonder, Knoxville House (Cool world Records)

At this writing, this debut record from Long Island native Constantine Anastasakis isn’t due out until February 2022, so there’s obviously an initiative to get the buzz going as quickly as possible before reviewers realize how much it sucks and tell people like you about it. I mean, Pitchfork Media will probably love it, as it conjures images of Pavement reborn as a half-synth-powered cyborg, and basically every song has a woozy, discombobulated feel to it, everything wandering in and out of pitch like a vinyl album that was left on top of a radiator for a few hours. Think of it this way: Brian Eno and Manchester Orchestra reinterpreted by the dumbest college student you’ve ever known, mixed into a hybrid no one would have ever asked for, except the melodies aren’t all that bad. Better than Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. accomplished, which is simultaneously the closest stuff to this, and yes, the faintest possible praise I can muster at the moment. D

Salt Ashes, Killing My Mind (Radikal Records)

The stage name of Brighton, U.K., singer Veiga Sanchez, Salt Ashes is diva pop with a good amount of retro house, tunes that are form-fitted for velvet rope clubs but could also work as soundtrack for a beachside Tilt-A-Whirl. “Love, Love,” the touchstone single, is pure Mariah Carey meets Janet Jackson, which is about where her voice fits. Unsurprisingly, she digs ’80s floor-filler stuff, checking off Giorgio Moroder, The Knife and Fleetwood Mac as influences; she’s been a dance-music player since her 2016 self-titled debut album, which was produced by the late Daniel Fridholm (a.k.a. Cruelty). Her lyrics deal with a laundry list of things that aren’t wildly unique to today’s young women: unrequited love, sex, anxiety, relationships, mental health, sexual harassment and such. The LP kicks off with a foggy, steam-driven, goth-infused electro-dance joint, “Lucy,” which is more Kylie Minogue than anything else. “Mad Girl” is ’80s as heck, down to the busy organic synths; “I’m Not Scared To Die’ covers the obligato ballad entry with aplomb enough. B

PLAYLIST

• Nov. 19 is here, and with it some new rock ’n’ roll albums. Some will be good and some will be bad, depending on one’s individual tastes or lack thereof. I’m looking at a rather large list of new albums, and I’m sure there will be something that won’t make me power-guzzle a six-pack of Pepto Bismol, but you never know. We can be nice and casual this week, because there is a plethora of albums to choose from, starting with Phantom Island, from a band called Smile, a project from Björn Yttling (Peter Bjorn and John) and Joakim Åhlund of the Teddybears. I think this will probably be safe for me to check out, because the Teddybears are awesome, so I’ll take my chances on the latest single at this writing, “Call My Name.” This song features vocals from mononymed Swedish singer-songwriter Robyn, who isn’t a very good singer, but the tune is a low-key, piquant, very pleasant blend of ABBA and Miss Kittin, very 1970s-radio if you can get past Robyn’s not-very-great voice. There’s a snowy, upbeat feel to it, which is just what the doctor ordered if you need something smooth and cocoa-y to wrap your ears around as we descend into the frozen North Pole of yet another New England winter.

• Well, that wasn’t so bad, was it. Hmm, dum de dum, why don’t we — wait, hold everything, here we go, a new album from Elbow, called Flying Dream 1, why didn’t someone tell me about this before? Elbow is one of the few indie bands in the world that still tinkles my jingle bells; they are from Bury in Greater Manchester, England. If past is prologue here, this will probably be awesome; their previous stuff has been like a cross between We Were Promised Jetpacks and VNV Nation, and — wait, I did a fly-by, didn’t I; you haven’t the foggiest idea what that even means. Unfortunately I do, so I’ll try to translate. Picture a stuffy literature professor starting a mildly aggressive rock band but never doing anything really punky, sort of like a British version of Bruce Springsteen except the singer doesn’t suck and it’s mostly mellow-ish, and the tunes are really catchy and cool. That’s Elbow, at least up until this moment, when I’m about to find out if their single “Six Words” is any good. OK, it is, it’s a mellow, almost Coldplay-ish tune comprising a synth arpeggio but without being annoying like Coldplay. It’s awesome, mildly mawkish but ultimately upbeat and very pretty. I so totally love these guys.

• Not bad, I haven’t even thought about uncorking the Pepto Bismol during this exercise at all! I’ll tell you, gang, this may be my lucky — oh no, it can’t be. Do you hear those booming tyrannosaurus footsteps, coming for me, to ruin my day? Yes, look, it’s the hilariously overrated Sting, smashing buildings as he strides toward me, holding out some awful new album! The LP is called The Bridge, and it has a single, called “Rushing Water.” Oh jeez, oh jeez, this sounds like like every boring elevator-music song this egomaniacal Matrix-clown has ever foisted onto listeners of dentist-office-rock, basically a souped-up version of “Every Breath You Take” except with some rap-speed lyrics. Don’t worry, you’ll probably only hear this once, either on Jimmy Kimmel or The Today Show; it’s definitely not interesting enough to warrant anything more “hip” than that.

• We’ll wrap up this week’s business with 30, the new album from Adele, whose hobbies include publicly sucking up to Beyonce and being this decade’s Celine Dion. “Easy On Me” is a depressing but powerful pop ballad as always, and she does some high-pitched professional singing. As if you couldn’t guess, it is a song that will be loved by 20-somethings who don’t trust their boyfriends, and with good reason.

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).

Delv!s, Walk Alone Tracks (Because Music)

Three-song EP from Belgian singer-songwriter Niels Delvaux, meant as a teaser for a full-length LP that’s due out in early 2022. All the promotional materials I received on this release were in broken English; I’m sure the PR guy — a top-level pro with whom I’ve dealt for like a million years now — had some nasty back-and-forth with the artiste and came away swearing a lot, but my concern here is, of course, to find something innovative somewhere in this neo-soul record. First, I had to get past the fact that the title track opener is so dangerously close to Albert Hammond’s 1973 radio hit “It Never Rains In Southern California” that if you hummed it into Siri, even she would suggest suing Delvaux for copyright infringement, and second, there’s nothing “neo” about this soul. Oh whatever, it gets kind of rub-a-dubby, which worked; it should have been a reggae song in the first place. Same for “Rebelman,” which is basically “Stir It Up” in a fake moustache. It’s lo-fi and pleasant enough; let’s just leave it at that. B-

East Forest, A Soundtrack For The Psychedelic Practitioner, VOL. I (Aquilo Records)

Odd coincidence, if you look at today’s Playlist section, I mentioned Jon Hopkins, a soundcaper who collaborated with guru and American spiritual teacher Ram Dass. This guy, East Forest, whose real name is Trevor Oswalt, released a similar album in 2019, appropriately titled Ram Dass, which featured Dass’s last teachings. Prior to that, Forest’s (also 2019-released) Music For Mushrooms: A Soundtrack For The Psychedelic Practitioner, made headlines by hitting No. 1 on the iTunes New Age chart and being included as a go-to listen in the “psychedelic-assisted therapy and research movement.” You know me by now, so you know that all this business is flooding my head with wiseass comments about people dressed for Himalayan expeditions riding on the backs of yaks, but it is what it is, and besides, there’s a movement these days pushing psychedelics as a way to relieve people’s psychic ills through chemistry, so I say whatever floats your boat, being that pretty much everyone is dealing with massive amounts of existential angst these days. Anyway, this is a collection of floaty/glittery background pieces for TED Talks (“Cloud Gaze”), and sometimes they get weird (“Slip Slope (Octopus Spaghetti Pants)”). Think freakiest-possible Tangerine Dream and you’re there; it’s listenable enough. B

PLAYLIST

• No turning back now, gang, we’re looking at the slate of new albums coming out Nov. 12, there’s no escape, winter is here. It’s the favorite time of the year for people who enjoy scraping frost off car windshields when they’re already late for work or whatever, so congratulations if speed-scraping is your jam. But whatever, look, it’s British dude Jon Hopkins with his new album, Music For Psychedelic Therapy, a record that will be in stores on the 12th. Hopkins used to play keyboards for technopop lady Imogen Heap, which of course you already know if you’re one of the five people who actually ever read the insert of an Imogen Heap CD. But that’s neither here nor there, and besides, Hopkins has been making his own records for 19 years now and deserves your respect, so let the strains of lead single “Sit Around The Fire” play. It is a sleepy ambient song for yoga classes, but there’s a lot of talking over it, by — I assume — Ram Dass, an American spiritual teacher, who was more commonly known as Baba Ram Dass! While all the cloudy happy music is going on, you’ll hear messages of love and contentment and awakening and other impossible nonsense from this fellow Ram Dass! OK!

• San Francisco indie-rock duo The Dodos, comprising Meric Long and Logan Kroeber, will release its 8th album, Grizzly Peak, this week! One of the guys is “a student of West African Ewe drumming and intricate blues fingerpicking guitar,’ while the other “hails from a background in heavy metal bands.” I’ve heard of these guys before and may have even talked about them in the past, but I don’t remember, so I’ll pretend that I’ve never heard their music before instead of going with my first guess, that I’ve heard them before and they bored me into a semiconscious state from which I may have never recovered. OK, OK, just forget it, I’m so toxic right now, let’s just get this over with and find out what these guys are even doing, to cement their rock ’n’ roll legacy. I’m now listening to the band’s new single, “The Surface,” and my stars, listen to how quirky it is! Acoustic guitar strumming, a singer with bad adenoids, then they sort of rock out a little on acoustic guitar. Think Simon and Garfunkel except redundant and unnecessary; that is to say, Vampire Weekend meets the Everly Brothers or some such. I predict that this album will not conquer the world, but I was wrong about something a few years ago, so who knows.

• Oh great, it’s Damon Albarn, the frontman of oi-pop band Blur, with a solo album, called The Nearer The Fountain More Pure The Stream Flows, and it’s on its way right now! Wow, what a ripoff, it’s not bouncy or punky or crazy like Blur’s “Song 2,” it’s like really mellow Coldplay. Who knew that the guy who sang “Song 2” could sound like Chris Martin, you know? This is like lullaby music for Zoomers, but since no Zoomers know who this guy is, they’ll never have the pleasure. I don’t even know why he did this, good lord, let’s just do one more here and call it a column.

• Finally, we have Sonic Youth co-founder Lee Ranaldo with his 14th album, In Virus Times. There’s just an excerpt available now, a video where he’s drawing weird pictures while a pretty decent acoustic guitar arpeggio does stuff. And then he’s whistling, because there hasn’t been a good whistle song since the theme to The Andy Griffith Show. Oh, I get it, he’s selling prints of his weird drawings; they look like they were done using a Spirograph. So arty!

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).

Alice Longyu Gao, High Dragon And Universe (self-released)

The current electronic music scene, this Chinese-born DJ is reported to have said, is “designed by heterosexual white men to guarantee their success.” I have no doubt that’s true; Gao wasn’t able to release this debut EP until she’d been at it for five years, even though she started out with a bang (her second DJ gig was the launch party for A$AP Mob’s VLONE streetwear line). Based in New York and L.A. these days, she’s a cross between a fashion plate and a fake-12-year-old Twitter goofball; she wastes no time mindlessly getting up in your grill with opening bling brag “100 Boyfriends,” evoking a combination of Da Brat and Missy Elliot as processed through a grime-o-meter set to “bust your eardrums” on the bass-throb end. Past that utter mindlessness, she does have some pop sensibilities (I mean come on, that’s where this would be going anyway), but for now she’s focused on club stuff, heavy on the hearing-test panoplies. Good luck to her, I suppose. B

Toth, Death EP (Northern Spy Records)

Really, another Brooklyn hipster who sounds like Bon Iver? I am really about out of words to describe this kind of stuff, and I’m not seeing any reviews that nail it in a sonic sense (Aquarium Drunkard’s reviewer went with “a Beach Boys session produced by Brian Eno,” which was close enough I suppose. I mean, I have no idea how anyone can even take this stuff seriously anymore, really truly). I dunno, to me, this is Grizzly Bear with a heavy infusion of Vampire Weekend getaway-indie, not that there’s anything interesting going on as far as syncopation or percussion. But the more I listen to it, the more I have to admit it’s next-gen, in a way, at least toward the end of evoking images of sipping umbrella drinks in a sleepy cabana; the overall vibe is José González but with a little personality. The theme is alcoholism, a disease with which singer Alex Toth has had his bouts and which claimed a relative, an event that inspired this five-songer, not that anyone would have the foggiest idea that that’s what this fluff is about. B

PLAYLIST

• On to the winter months and the yearly misery time, it’s November, and there will be new music albums coming out, on the 5th! Soon enough we’ll get the worst of it, like when you’re already running late and you go outside to start the car but it’s completely frozen in a block of ice, like a woolly mammoth with all-weather tires, and you’re scraping like the dickens with an empty CD case or whatever, but it’s basically Krazy Glue. Hey, man, I told you months ago to move to Georgia, yet here you are, so let’s just get to the business at hand, making ultra-jillionaire Diana Ross a few more dollars by helping to sell her new album, Thank You, which is coming to the stores as we speak. Pretty sure she put out an album last year, so the only reason she would want to put out another one so soon is that she must be starting her own NASA, like her fellow gazillionaires, and she needs people to buy this album in order to buy a few candy machines for her Diana-NASA cafeteria. Wait, no, this is the same dumb album that was supposed to come out in August, the one where I said the title track was a “shapeless, formless blob of Foxwoods glitz-pop.” Whatever, this time for sure, I assume!

• Aimee Mann was once a Gen-X It Girl, the Boston-based singing lady from ’Til Tuesday, and then she turned herself into a meme by becoming Jules Shear’s groupie, and it was super funny, but these days, she’s out on her own, making albums. I know one Hippo reader who like totally loves Aimee Mann; I won’t try to explain that, but I respect it. Her Christmas album was pretty good, the one from 2006 or whenever it was. Let’s see, what else, she won Best Songwriter or whatever in a few contests that were basically run by big-ass record companies that had to somehow promote artistes like Aimee Mann, I do know that, and, like anyone else who’s old, I remember making out with someone at a club while her big song “Voices Carry” was playing. And that’s all my brain has on this subject, so let’s ’ave a look at her fast-approaching new album, Queens Of The Summer Hotel, and its single, “Suicide Is Murder.” It’s a kooky piano ballad, with disturbing lyrics I won’t get into here. Hm, she looks like a librarian in the video. I think the guy in the video is a semi-famous actor, like someone who lasted like three episodes on The Walking Dead, but I could be wrong, which I’m allowed, as I haven’t misreported anything for at least a week I think.

• Oh, boy, what a week, what could possibly be next. Ah, it’s indie-rock singer Penelope Isles, with an album called Which Way To Happy. I asked Google who she is, and Google was all like, “I don’t know, would you rather talk about Thanksgiving decorating ideas instead?” But after some digging — which I really wasn’t interested in doing — come to find out “Penelope Isles” is just the stage name of goofy Twitter girl Lily Wolter, from England. Wait what, she only has 88 followers. Why am I doing this, again? Whatever, my “Important Notes For Professional Music Critics” feed, a.k.a. Metacritic.com, thinks she’s important, so I’ll traipse over and listen to “Sailing Still,” her new single. It’s basically a pre-shoegaze thing, with giant Chris Isaak guitars, and she’s singing like Carole King on Rohypnol. All set with this, let’s finish this week up.

• We’ll close the week with Voyage, the new album from Swedish ’70s-pop band ABBA! Ha ha, these ridiculously famous circus clowns came to hate each other so much they haven’t done an album in 40 years. The new single, “I Still Have Faith In You,” is a giant yelly power ballad for blue-haired grandmothers, you might love it, I don’t know.

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).