Author: Eric Saeger

Fantastic Negrito, Have You Lost Your Mind Yet? (Cooking Vinyl)

In a sense, Xavier Amin Dphrepaulezz, a.k.a. Fantastic Negrito, reminds me of filmmaker Spike Lee, a Black man finding greatness in a white world. Like Lee, Negrito possesses an ultra-rare, universally accessible level of creativity that’s essential to getting his points across. We last left Negrito laying to waste every last Led Zeppelin wannabe with (to invoke Lee again) his musical answer to Do The Right Thing, 2018’s Please Don’t Be Dead, an LP that was a complete 180-degree turn from his Prince/roots-blues debut. Here, he nails the middle ground, strutting and owning his Blackness again, starting with the Stevie Wonder-on-rohypnol “Chocolate Samurai,” then (on the Tank-guested “I’m So Happy I Cry”) blasting a full 17-cannon broadside against Moby’s “Honey,” and no, I’m not imagining it. Even his Prince shtick returns, just because (“Searching for Captain Save a Hoe”). Just go buy this album, would you please? A+ — Eric W. Saeger

Bear Grillz, “Fire” (Dim Mak Records)

By its very nature, electronic dance music is a genre constantly in flux. By the same “progress-for-the-good-of-all” token, it’s rarely a violent uprising. But from the sound of this advance single from Bear Grillz’ upcoming EP, the entire genre may be under construction, or demolition, take your pick. The story here is that when Covid-19 shut down the world, Denver-based DJ/producer Grillz reached out on Twitter to any rapper willing to record a few syllables to be used on songs to come, and Salt Lake City native Atari answered (he sings and raps on two other tracks to be released later). I imagine most critics wouldn’t associate this with EDM at all, more like very aggressive dubstep; the main thrust is an Islamic call-to-prayer vocal over a menacing stun-guitar line, then build-up to chaotic drop, with a few lines laid down here and there. Maybe it’s official, then, that the lines of all electronic genres have blurred; I’m sure that’d be fine with fans who’ve grown quite tired of trying to keep up with designations-of-the-week.
A

Retro Playlist

Eric W. Saeger recommends a few songs worth another listen.

Millennials (adults aged 22 to 38) (um, 38 now?!) are about to inherit the world. The lovely starter kit God has chosen to bestow upon them includes such wonderful gifts as the coronavirus, a wild west internet filled with fake news and constant invasions from brigades of sockpuppet trolls, a failing climate, and “Past Shock,” a societal malady I coined in my book to describe the horrors that deeply tech-savvy younger people regularly experience when having to deal with outdated financial, political and other systems that are still rooted in backward, Industrial Age technology (or non-technology — why on earth should anyone have to show up in person at the Department of Motor Vehicles, ever?).

One of the culture wars raging nowadays is one in which “Zoomers” (a.k.a. “Generation Z,” i.e., the 21-and-unders) are blaming millennials for a lot of the world’s problems. It’s an unfair rap, really. Millennials have never gotten a break. Too many of them had to live with their parents because there were no jobs. Drowned in college debt, they abandoned all hope of ever owning homes. And why have children when the world’s literally on fire?

Even in the music world, they just can’t win. No fictional “Council of Millennial Tastemakers” ever voted for the “Millennial Whoop” to be identified as their core pop music sound. In fact, the “Millennial Whoop” — the same musical notes as in the children’s playground taunt “Nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah” — has been a go-to melody in pop forever. Wikipedia cites “Jungle Love” (1983) by Morris Day and the Time, and Lady Gaga’s “Poker Face,” but it’s been around a lot longer, in Cheap Trick’s “Surrender” (sneakily) and Queen’s “We Are The Champions” (blatantly) for starters.

Millennial-centric bands have done epic things with the Whoop, or at least its two dominant notes. It’s all over Kings of Leon’s “Use Somebody,” “Kings & Queens” by Thirty Seconds to Mars (I reviewed their 2009 LP This Is War here), and was even used by Green Day, whose “Oh Yeah” single lifts from Joan Jett’s “Do You Wanna Touch Me.”

Moral? We need to ease up on millennials already. They’ve done some cool things with their Whoop. Let them have that at least.

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. Email [email protected] for fastest response.

PLAYLIST

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• Bands, singers and various random art-frauds will release new records this Friday, Aug. 7, including mummified arena-rockers Deep Purple, whose new album’s title, Whoosh!, has an exclamation point at the end of it, just like this sentence, which automatically makes you read it harder! Before you ask, no, guitarist Richie Blackmore is not in this band anymore, and hasn’t been since 1983. All the other original members are here, except for organ player Jon Lord, who is deceased. The video for the new album’s tire-kicker single, “Man Alive,” starts out with an orchestral background while some astronaut dude walks around in slow motion against a background of stars exploding or galaxies being formed or whatever; it reminded me a lot of how much I hated the movie Ad Astra, for being pretentious, boring and nonsensical, much like this song’s intro. But then the 1980s-Purple hard rock kicks in with a rumbling riff, and Ian Gillan starts singing about a Life After People scenario in which a guy washes up on a beach, and then there’s some esoteric spoken word nonsense, and that’s really it. Maybe it’s a concept album, but if so, is the guy in the video supposed to be a gill-breathing Waterworld dude, or just some lonely castaway “last man on Earth” who gets to draw a moustache on the Mona Lisa just because he can and he’s bored? I’m sort of intrigued, aren’t you? No?

• I’m going to assume yep, Wikipedia says I’m right — that California hardcore punk band Death by Stereo named themselves after the line Corey Haim spoke in The Lost Boys after killing the vampire with the Jennifer Connelly hair. That is actually a point in their favor as far as I’m concerned, so I will keep an open mind as I toddle off to listen to “California Addiction,” the single from their forthcoming new album We’re All Dying Just in Time, their first official full-length since 2012’s Black Sheep of the American Dream. Wait, they’re supposed to be “hardcore punk,” but this just sounds like old Slayer, like the guitar riff is fast and kind of complicated, and the singer sounds like Tom Araya. You will like it if you like misidentified hardcore punk or Slayer. Does that help?

• U.K.-based psychedelic art-pop fellas Glass Animals actually made quite the splash in the U.S. with their 2016 album, How to Be a Human Being, appearing on Jimmy Kimmel Live to play the song “Life Itself,” which had a pretty cool tribal beat, an LMFAO-style hook, and a really stupid video. The title track from their new album, Dreamland, is quite different from “Life Itself” in that the singer sounds like Bon Iver; it’s light and pleasant, with trip-hop elements and a hook that makes it non-sucky.

• To close out the week, we have country singer Luke Bryan, who wrote Billy Currington’s 2007 single “Good Directions,” among other things, before striking out on his own and becoming too big for his britches. His latest LP, Born Here Live Here Die Here, has as its single the title track, an instant cowboy-hat classic hoedown-ballad whose lyrics start with “Bunch of buddies in John Deere hats, a little crazy but they got my back.”

Anyone need further explanation? Good.

Local bands seeking album or EP reviews can message me on Twitter (@esaeger) or Facebook (eric.saeger.9).

Boris, NO (self-released)

Already charter members of the cool kids club, the Japanese experimental bliss-metal trio are completely indie as of a year or so ago; this LP was released through the direct artist-to-consumer service Bandcamp. Not to get too inside-baseball with it, but that tells me they weren’t deliriously happy with Jack White’s Third Man Records imprint, but regardless, the band’s 27th album is up. As always a self-indulgent joint, NO’s obligato forked-finger-salute song-intro comes at the Motorhead-like speed-punk tune “Anti-Gone,” a welcome departure from album-opener “Genesis,” which treads a middle ground between Sunn(((O))) ringout-drone and singer-less Pelican riffing that had me wondering why I was bothering with the record. Don’t get me wrong, bandleader Wata still reigns as Japan’s answer to Iggy, but I was far more entranced by the absolutely spastic “Temple of Hatred,” the slow-mo black-metal dooming of “Zerkalo” and the Misfits-nicking “Fundamental Erorr” than that sad excuse for a leadoff track. Oh whatever, fine, it’s awesome, don’t mind me. A+

The Clientele, It’s Art Dad (Merge Records)

To hear Pitchfork tell it, this Monkees-twee band should have called it quits 10 years ago; it was a bit odd reading the ravings of the nerd who got assigned 2017’s Music for the Age of Miracles, who actually complained about that’s album’s overabundance of complacent cheeriness (I was like, now I’ve heard everything, literally). Forgive that segue, as there’s really not much to complain about here, particularly if your tastes run to Columbia House Record Club fodder from the 1960s, or if you ever wanted a more melodically astute Field Mice, but then again, this is composed of old tunes from the first half of the 1990s, which may mean that the band took such criticism to heart, one never knows. The crew does have, as alleged by critics, a dream-pop/shoegaze aspect, mostly due to the Alasdair MacLean’s Spacemen 3-level fetish for drowning his voice in reverb (sometimes he even plugs his microphone into a guitar amp for a modicum of extra weirdness), but other than that, it’s antique radio Britpop mellowness with quite a few hooks. A

Retro Playlist

Eric W. Saeger recommends a few of albums worth a second look.

At this point, it doesn’t feel like we’ll ever see another blockbuster movie in an actual movie theater. And that stinks, at least for me; the wife and I have accumulated around $200 worth of free movie passes at last count, once-valuable swag that feels like worthless Monopoly money now. It’s unfair. The loss of big-screen escapism isn’t only felt by “cinema” nerds; music fans feel the void as well. After all, soundtrack albums have been a big sell for many decades, starting with the very first one, Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1938. And deservedly so —‌ soundtrack albums allow us to relive awesome cinematic and theatrical experiences.

I’ve only bought two, ever. The first one was the soundtrack to the 1987 vampire film The Lost Boys. Around 75 percent of the songs are still awesome: Lou Gramm’s “Lost In The Shadows” (in which the guys bomb around trails on motorcycles), saxophone hack Tim Cappello’s “I Still Believe” (the bit with the beach concert), the two Jimmy Barnes tunes, even Roger Daltry’s cover of Elton John’s “Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me” (if you can make it to the end, you’ll be treated to a solo guitar playing the riff to “Saturday Night’s Alright For Fighting,” which is so cool it makes me sweat just thinking of it).

The other one was a film score. I’m not big into scores, although The Hunt For Red October and The Usual Suspects had some great moments. My software-tech friends were all into The Lion King soundtrack in the early ’90s, which really made me worry for humanity. But yeah, I did buy one, the soundtrack CD to Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. Yeah, yeah, I know, “hurr durr, Jar Jar sucks,” but the version of the main theme on that album was and is the best one ever, loud, unabashed and relentless, a reckoning. The battle droid war theme is cool; the music to the “there’s always a bigger fish” scene is awesome, and so are several other pieces.

Now, as for “Duel Of The Fates” (the “Darth Maul vs. the two Jedi dudes” battle), I didn’t really like it. Too contrived. Like, why not just have the choir singing “Look! It’s the Devil!”

(I’m anticipating hate mail for that last part, but don’t do it: You’ll only become more like me if you allow the Dark Side to grow in you.)

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. Email [email protected] for fastest response.

PLAYLIST

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• The next traditional CD release day is July 31, when, among several others, the new album from Creeper, called Sex Death & The Infinite Void, wings its way into the stores and Soundclouds. I wasn’t aware of the Southampton, England-based band, but I’d heard of AFI and Alkaline Trio, two bands they are usually compared to, which means we are dealing with some sort of emo concoction here. But — and here’s where you really need to stop paying attention — the boys of Creeper consider themselves a “horror punk” band, which means that they are not only emo but scary emo, which is actually an oxymoron, because there’s nothing scary about emo except when your little brother is playing it cranked to 11 and your mom won’t let you throw him and his stupid emo CD out the window. Oh, let’s just get this over with, because I’m still trying to find something decent on Netflix and have already wasted at least two hours by selecting a movie that looks cool but then, after I start it, I find out it has subtitles, because it was made in Turkey or Zanzibar, don’t you totally hate that? This new Creeper album has a single called “Annabelle,” and it isn’t “horror punk” or anything of the sort, it’s more like My Chemical Romance, in other words “listenable emo that isn’t completely awful.” Actually it’s more like old Cheap Trick than regular stupid emo, so maybe these guys are actually OK, but to be honest, my stomach is feeling really fragile from my last 10-hour binge of stuffing my face with random food as a way to cope with coronavirus boredom, like there’s no way my body could deal with a “decent emo” record while also trying to figure out what to do with some Saku takeout and Ruffles cheddar and sour cream chips and Stonewall Kitchen blackberry jam on Ezekiel sprouted grain bread, which can only be bought, apparently, at Whole Foods. Yes, I’m fragile right now, sorry.

• The band Land of Talk is an indie band from Montreal, so I automatically hate them, but they have a girl singer, so maybe they aren’t awful, I just don’t know yet. The band’s new LP, Indistinct Conversations, has an annoying title, but other than that, I don’t know if the music itself is annoying, because for that, I will need to visit YouTube and see what the song “Compelled” is about. So the first two parts of the song are mellow, ’90s-ish and not terribly annoying, but there is of course, haha, nothing hooky, and then it goes into some messy chillout part that made me run for the bathroom. (Really man, does every indie band in Montreal suck this badly? Serious question for the floor. My God, my God.)

• Steve Howe, the guitarist from arena-prog band Yes, may be 73, but he still makes albums, because he just must, you know? His 21st album, Love Is, contains a song called “The Headlands.” It starts off like some awful old Motels tune, but then he plugs in his guitar gizmos and it suddenly becomes rather awesome, and he does some solos, but after three minutes there’s no singing, so I gave up on it.

• Our last target-bot this week is the new Fontaines DC LP, A Hero’s Death! The video for the title track stars tertiary Game of Thrones mandarin-dude Aidan Gillen as Conan O’Brien, while the singer babbles some stream-of-consciousness nonsense in a Cockney accent over art-punk guitars. It is OK. — Eric W. Saeger

Local bands seeking album or EP reviews can message me on Twitter (@esaeger) or Facebook (eric.saeger.9).

Limousine Beach, Stealin’ Wine + 2 (Tee Pee Records)

More than any other record company that sends me stuff, the Tee Pee imprint is the most like a box of chocolates, at least as far as the noisiness goes. They’ve released LPs from Warlocks, High on Fire and Brian Jonestown Massacre, to name a few, and that’s a pretty diverse spread if you think about it. As for this little three-songer (and I do mean little, clocking in at six minutes total), it’s something fresh, at least as far as its throwback nature. It’s three lead guitarists from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, trying to make the genre “sizzle rock” catch on. Thing is, this sound already caught on 45 or so years ago. Their spazzy but precise vibe recalls Sweet more than anything else (sidetrack: did anyone ever decide if that band was supposed to be called “The Sweet” or just “Sweet,” not that it matters anymore?), but I suppose you could always throw Manchester Orchestra into the discussion, mostly because the recording is comparatively low-rent. It’s Electric Light Orchestra-level fun for its entire shrimpy duration, anyway; I’d be interested in hearing more. A- — Eric W. Saeger

Permanent Collection, Nothing Good Is Normal (Strangeway Studios)

You’ve heard of musicians branching out to painting and film, but this is a new one for me, a guy who’s so thoroughly, well, human, that you can find a review of him as an apartment tenant from one of his past landlords in Oakland. This is only the second full-length in seven years from Jason Hendardy’s one-man Permanent Collection project, as he’s been tied down with running his Strangeway imprint (all the company’s records, mostly 7” EPs and cassettes, are out of print), doing video stuff, showing his bum on Impose magazine’s site, and generally being rad. This LP starts out with a doom-metal bliss figure made of pure fuzz, which had me expecting some sort of Sunn(O) trip, but then it suddenly became awesome, dousing me in unkempt Big Black drone-metal with a black-metal guitar sound and “In Bloom”-mode Kurt Cobain vocals with the reverb absolutely pegged. What I’ve just described is something too cool for human ears, and it’s that way through the whole set. If the songs weren’t so melodically repetitive, I’d be this thing’s most wild-eyed groupie. A- — Eric W. Saeger

Retro Playlist
Eric W. Saeger recommends a couple of albums worth a second look.

I opened a can of worms the other month when I accepted a certain PR person’s request to send me jazz material. Like all soldiers at the front lines of jazz publicity, she is absolutely overloaded with new albums of which she wants to raise the public’s awareness. Over the past few weeks, my snail-mailbox has been crammed with her stuff.

As I’ve said many times here, jazz players have a tough enough time as it is. Trying to get the attention of an American public that gains alarmingly little (if any) musical training in public schools is a tough nut to crack when your product — jazz music — is geared toward well-rounded palates. It doesn’t help that many jazz records are too cookie-cutter, of course, a handicap common to all musical genres but completely untenable in jazz. It’s always better to hear something that’s actually new, at least to me, like Jean Chaumont’s 2018 LP The Beauty of Differences, whose greatest power stems from the guitarist’s non-standard setup, specifically a close-miked Eastman hollow-body guitar armed with steel and nylon strings. The tunes themselves are nice too, chilly modern doodles that don’t strain themselves.

Last year I mentioned Subtone’s then-new album Moose Blues, another one worth revisiting for the piano lines of the seemingly everywhere Florian Hoefner alone. Even if you aren’t a fan of ’70s-era post-bop, you still have to hand it to them for the insane amount of touring the band puts in. That kind of thing really makes a crew appreciate their studio time, which is very evident here.

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. Email [email protected] for fastest response.

PLAYLIST
A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• Oh great, the next general release date for albums is July 3, and at this writing I’m going to have to dig deep to find new records that’ll come out that day. Like basically at this point, it’s just Paul Weller (no, he didn’t play Robocop, that was Peter Weller), whom I know nothing about, and Willie Nelson, so who wants to hear about new albums made by rich people when there’s no work, and plus, coronavirus, can’t we all just move to communes and forget about mowing the lawn? But whatever, since no one but Willie and Not The Robocop Guy is releasing CDs, it’s the perfect time to fill this space with a retraction, for an error I made weeks back! Yes, the impossible did happen, and my friend Gary P. noticed it, because he actually reads these words instead of doing what you do, going right to Amy’s movie reviews and then the Sudoku, and then it’s time to wash the plague germs off your hands again, and then you forget that I might actually be worth reading because I have won two awards for writing snark grenades. What did I mess up? Well, the other week, I wrote in my expert-level, Pulitzer-worthy review of Suzi Quatro’s new album that she played Pinky Tuscadero on Happy Days, but I was wrong, and it bummed Gary out, because Suzi Quatro actually played Leather Tuscadero, not Pinky. So he texted me, all like “Dude!” and I was like, “This is how much I care about this career-destroying error: See that atom-sized dust-mite foot on your screen? No, next to the super-teeny spot of old Taco Bell slime, to the left.” It was wicked tense, but then we had a laugh about it.

• So, right, Willie Nelson has a new one coming out on the 3rd, called First Rose of Spring! I dunno, I don’t know anyone who buys Willie Nelson albums, do you? Usually people just Spotify his one-off duets with whoever, Johnny Cash or Death Grips, isn’t that right? No? Well, then, I will now see how much I can tolerate of this billion-year-old’s new song, the title track. Bet you anything it starts with slow acoustic guitar. Yup, it does, and sleepy dobro. He’s singing about a girl, and butterflies and flowers. There’s harmonica, and dobro, and Willie sounding a billion years old, and it just makes me think of the scene in Blazing Saddles when the guys are eating beans and passing gas. Aren’t fart scenes the funniest? I wonder if people would buy an album of Willie burping while playing harmonica and dobro. I bet they would.

• Jane, stop this crazy thing, let’s just wrap up this week with On Sunset, the new LP from Paul Weller! Oh for cripes sake, we already talked about this album the other week, so the release date was moved, and that’s why you couldn’t buy it on June 12. Only other new music to talk about is London punk band Dream Wife’s So When You Gonna, and its single “Sports,” a riot-grrrl type song that’s awesome and bratty, like you will love this band if you are a girl who enjoys randomly breaking stuff. — Eric W. Saeger

Local bands seeking album or EP reviews can message me on Twitter (@esaeger) or Facebook (eric.saeger.9).

Jeff Cosgrove, History Gets Ahead of the Story (Grizzley Music)
This album is pretty niche indeed, combining a few things I tend to avoid (improvisational jazz, old-school classic organ, like, I mean right out of Lawrence Welk) with something I do appreciate regardless of setting, namely top-drawer musicianship. The story behind this (I assume) one-off is a bit convoluted; Cosgrove is a Washington, D.C.-based drummer leading a bass-free trio (himself along with organist John Medeski and sax player Jeff Lederer) in a tribute to bassist William Parker, who’s still alive. Got that? No bass playing in an album of tunes written by a jazz bassist (who, incidentally, played in a trio with Cosgrove until 2015). So, an odd duck indeed, but it gets odder; both Cosgrove and Parker love them some ad-libbing, so on the whole the record could be categorized as “skronk-coffeehouse,” if you will, a roller coaster ride of precision and spazzing. Some stellar organ-noodling on “Gospel Flowers”; adept modal sax things on “Moon”; even some noise on “Little Bird” (I had to double-check to see if a guitarist wasn’t messing around with pick-scraping in there or something; I still can’t guess what the sound is). Anyway, that; it is what it is. B — Eric W. Saeger

Skeleton, Skeleton (20 Buck Skin Records)
Debut LP from a crew of Austin, Texas-based guys who stalk a middle ground between old-time black metal and neo-street metal a la High On Fire. I have no idea why this isn’t more of a thing in the metal scene, but then again, any bunch of Air Max-wearing suburban dudes whose sole mission in life is impressing the barista girls at Starbucks knows that the quickest route to being able to brag that “we got a record contract” is to play some boring, pedestrian emo through a Mesa Boogie amplifier that’s been made wimpy and useless through too much processing. No, these guys have better riffing than any ’70s-revivalist band that I’ve heard lately (The Sword can sit down now), and it’s cut with Venom-style spazz-outs that keep listeners on their toes, or at least listening. I like everything about this one, but wait, there’s more, folks: the singer sounds like he ran out of enthusiasm for doing a scary-devil-guy Quorthon imitation the minute he got in the studio. A giant leap for mankind, in short. A+ — Eric W. Saeger

Retro Playlist

Erik W. Saeger recommends a couple of albums worth a second look.

With a new renaissance of thought and cultural realism dawning, I’m surprised that heavy metal hasn’t made a massive comeback. (Note that by “heavy metal,” I mean crazily angry music of a type that should, by all rights, be soundtracking the cultural transformations that are in the air everywhere, at least in an in vitro sense on social media.)

One of the things that may annoy you about me is the fact that I tend to ignore what’s happening in the area of “middle-of-the-road metal.” To clarify, that’s a pretty loose catchall I use to describe a wide range of bands, from mildly dangerous-sounding metalcore bands (Bullet For My Valentine, et al.) to nu-metal nonsense like Avenged Sevenfold. In contrast, my tastes gravitate to things that make Everymen feel their true power levels.

Your mileage may vary, of course. Like, for some, death metal peaked with Slayer (along with the 127,287,558 bands that sound like them) and it does the trick for them. Older folks just want some Black Sabbath. But for me it’s Ministry or bust. Their 1996 LP Filth Pig is an F5 tornado of rebellion; if you haven’t ever cranked that album’s “Dead Guy” to the point of permanent hearing loss, please do so now.

Zoomers, if you ever want to be as unstoppable as Greta Thunberg as a group, you need angry, uncompromising instrument-driven anthems, that is to say, riffs. Black Veil Brides is a cool band, but they’re literally too good in a politely melodic sense. Know what you really need, Gen Z? Sweaty fat guys with awesome, awesome guitar riffs, like Bachman Turner Overdrive. On their 1974 album Not Fragile, the title track may not have been the cleverest or most innovative use of a Marshall amp in history, but it’s perfectly conceived. The riff is exquisitely played; way past fed-up; boiling over with stubborn, overconfident resolve; and only really effective with the volume knob set to 11.

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. Email [email protected] for fastest response.

PLAYLIST
A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases
• The next traditional date for new album releases is Friday, July 17, and, as seems to be common these days, I must eat a few stupid words I said before. The Chicks’ new album Gaslighter is out on that day; it wasn’t released on March 4 as I previously reported. That was just the title-track single. It is a great song; otherwise there’s no way on Earth I’d have ever copped to this oversight, like, as if, and I blame Metacritic.com anyway, so feel free to send hate mail to them, because it’s all their fault.

• I reviewed Gang of Four’s EP This Heaven Gives Me Migraine back in February, but guess what, there is another Gang of Four EP coming out, called Anti Hero, on the 17th. If you recall, and you probably don’t, I did like Heaven, even though it was just a bunch of reruns of past GoF tunes that Andy Gill wanted to get off his chest while he was dying of pneumonia. There’s a similar downer history to this EP, a short collection of the last songs Gill was working on from his hospice bed; the story is that he was working on new tuneage until the very last. The kickoff single, “Forever Starts Now,” is an above average post-punk song, with art-wave elements borrowed from Talking Heads. By now you’ve either made up your mind about the band or avoided them like the plague, so in honor of Gill’s memory I’ll just keep my wise mouth shut about this one.

• Like everyone else on Earth, The Pretenders have something to say about the unspeakable train wreck that is the current American sociopolitical environment, but since it’s Chrissie Hynde putting in her two cents, I’ll actually pay attention, because Chrissie is my rock ’n’ roll waifu, accept no substitutes. But wait, the band’s new LP, Hate For Sale, isn’t some sort of political statement, it’s actually a tribute to The Damned, because Chrissie thinks they’re awesome, which only means that Chrissie is even more awesome than ever before. HFS is their first release since 2016’s Alone, and guess what, the original release date was May 1, but then there was the coronavirus, and here we are, it’ll finally be out at Strawberries or Tower Records or whatever store’s open. Hey, wanna know something hilarious, of course you do, they were supposed to do a five-month tour this summer with — you’ll die, I swear — Journey, of all the bands in the world. To me, that’s the ’80s-rock equivalent of Imagine Dragons touring with Black Lips, but anyway the new single, “You Can’t Hurt a Fool,” isn’t a tribute to The Damned, it’s a ’60s-Motown-influenced chill song about being in a stupid relationship, or maybe a diss of J-Lo (listen to the words), I don’t know for sure.

• To close out the week, we have Florida band Surfer Blood, with a new album, Carefree Theatre! Like so many milquetoast-indie bands, despite their scary name, these guys specialize in, you know, milquetoast-indie, but the single “Karen” is kind of loud, a little bit, and would almost be art-rock if it didn’t sound like Death Cab For Cutie with their volume accidentally cranked. It would make a great closing song for a trite hipster movie about a bunch of hipsters who are on an endless quest for an unused pair of 1971 PF Flyer sneakers, and one of the hipsters smokes weed all the time, which hurts his chances for ever finding true love, except for maybe with the crazily shy girl who works at Whole Foods and likes Perry Como records, and then it thankfully ends. — Eric W. Saeger

Local bands seeking album or EP reviews can message me on Twitter (@esaeger) or Facebook (eric.saeger.9).

Tokyo Motor Fist, Lions (Frontiers Music SRL)

Clear the decks, grandmothers, it’s a bona-fide ’80s melodic-metal fest, a new project from Danger Danger singer Ted Poley and guitarist/producer Steve Brown of Trixter. Unlike so many wannabes who have (dis)graced this column, however, it would appear that this gang of hairdos can actually write songs, an ability that may or may not be critical to rock ’n’ roll success anymore, not that anyone’s keeping track really. “Youngblood” kicks off this set with Eddie Van Halen hammer-on-guitar stuff, a ton of hookage and a rather successful nicking of Def Leppard, which is the overarching thrust here. What’s that? No, I don’t mean stupid first-album Def Lep, I mean the ideas that came from the skull of Mutt Lange, the dumb-looking producer who got himself dumped by Shania Twain for being the stupidest playa in history. Poley doesn’t have the vocal range of Joe whatsisname, but the flash-fried hormonal angst is all there. Thirty years late, but yeah, nothing wrong here. A

The Beths, “Out of Sight” (Carpark Records)

With the slightest effort I’m sure I could pirate or Google my way into finding the rest of this New Zealand act’s upcoming second album, Jump Rope Gazers, but this single should pretty much spill all the tea I need in order to determine whether they’ve got a handle on ’90s radio rock, which is the real test. They look like they’re 15, or they dress like it; there’s a certain doubling-down on the millennial ukulele-rock look that seems to be defining Zoomer bands, which is fine with me, being that they really have nothing else to be enthusiastic about in the world these days. Anyway, yeah, their 2018 debut LP Future Me Hates Me put them on the radar of all the Stereogums and Pitchforks of the world, deservedly so, being that the better parts of the record would have fit in fine between a Fiona Apple track and one of those dreadful tunes by Live, and, well, voila, they’ve still got it, going by this new track, even down to the video, which was shot on Super 8 film, comprising footage of our heroes doofing around in their Volkswagen Rabbit or whatever it is. The tune has a huge shoegaze-rawk opening worthy of Goo Goo Dolls and such, but — here’s the kicker — singer Elizabeth Stokes’ vocal never gets above milquetoast level, lending it just the amount of broke-down cred it’ll need to get the attention of tedious zines like Nylon. Good luck to ’em, I say; this isn’t bad at all. A

Retro Playlist
Eric W. Seager recommends a couple of albums worth a second look.

Many things are going to change in a Covid-19 world. Meantime, not directly related to Covid but nonetheless indicative of a burst of cultural evolution, we’re also seeing changes in the arts as far as the general regard for women. We’re still miles and miles from arriving at the right place, but the #MeToo movement has made things just a bit safer overall for women to function in industry without having to expect the worst sort of discrimination and physical and psychological abuse on an ongoing, daily basis.

The perception of women in rock has changed as well over the years. The punk-based riot grrl movement, born in the Pacific Northwest in the early ’90s, has become a bit obsolete as far as a driving social force; we’re quite used to seeing women spazz and stomp or otherwise completely own a stage by now, whether you’re a boomer who dug on X-Ray Spex back in the day, a Gen Xer who followed Courtney Love, or a Zoomer who’s into the boldly androgynous vibe of Billie Eilish.

It’s still a work in progress. Looking back at my review of Dead Weather’s 2015 album Dodge and Burn, I’m a little disappointed that I didn’t go off on some tangent about women rockers needing an Eilish-style next-step. Yes, singer Alison Mosshart was/is a badass when she’s fronting The Kills, but her role in that band feels like more of a Robert Plant to Jack White’s Jimmy Page than an equal partner. There’s just something sketchy about it, is what I mean. Maybe it’s the band’s (well done) ’70s hard rock image, but it felt like less of an equal partnership than a case of White saying “She’ll do.” The number of female musicians and singers to whom White has played Svengali has bugged me for a while now, and I could be dead wrong, but I’ll just leave it at that.

To me, the queen of rock is and always has been Chrissie Hynde. The woman just doesn’t care about what you think, as we talked about in 2008 when the long-overdue ninth Pretenders album, Break Up The Concrete, landed. On that one, there was the bit where she comically sounded out a drum roll with her voice in one of the songs, another example on the album in which she flaunted her power level like an alternate-universe George Thorogood trying to save the world from greed and stupidity. Always, my vote would be Chrissie for President.

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. Email [email protected] for fastest response.

PLAYLIST
A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• Friday, July 10, is the next general release date for albums, when we will hear new material from Rufus Wainwright, whose new album, Unfollow the Rules, is in the trucks and on the way to stores, if there are any stores even left! Isn’t that exciting? No? Come on, you guys, you know, it’s Rufus Wainwright. No, I don’t know any of his songs either. All I know is that he was born around the time John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were making up crazy lies about each other in order to convince voters they should be the one to be president. Aren’t you glad that things have evolved so much, in our political arena? Wait, Wiki is telling me that Rufus Wainwright didn’t participate in the Battle of Bunker Hill, he was actually born in 1973. Huh, I thought he was some super-old dude who didn’t make it as big as the O’Jays or Minnie Ripperton. Wait, let me read this more. Let’s see, Blah blah blah, likes opera … his career peak was in 2007, when his album Release the Stars climbed to No. 23 on the Billboard payola spreadsheet, and his mopey sadboy piano “Going to a Town” did OK. He’s done acting. He’s Canadian. Burp. Did I miss anything? His new song is “Damsel in Distress,” a Harry Nilsson-ish tune, heavy on the wide-screen ’70s taxicab-radio vibe. It’s OK, but it’s definitely not opera. Jeez, the more it goes on, the more it sounds like every ’70s song ever made thrown into a blender. He should stick to acting.

• Mike Skinner is the white rapper dude who makes albums in his U.K. bedroom under the name The Streets, a project that’s huge in England but hasn’t yet cracked the U.S. Top 50. All that means is that I could probably deal with whatever Skinner’s selling on his new mixtape, None of Us Are Getting Out of This Life Alive, because it’s probably crummy British-cockney hip-hop, not crummy American Jeezy/Eminem-wannabe hip-hop. Yep, there it is, listening to the single “Call My Phone Thinking I’m Doing Nothing Better,” I am drowning in chill-out cockney rap that’s got a bumpy, off-kilter, mildly Gorillaz-ish beat, all made the better because Tame Impala is the guest. In other words it’s a tasteful, mellow Tame Impala song, except with Skinner doing his Stormzy imitation. All right? OK, everyone, single file, let’s move along.

• Julianna Barwick is said to be a New Age ambient artist, but I’ll be the judge of that. Her trip is using an electronic loop station to decorate her voice, which is interesting, and she was commissioned to remix Radiohead’s “Reckoner,” which I won’t bother listening to because I don’t have to. Her new album, Healing is a Miracle, is out within mere hours and features the single “Inspirit.” Hmf, it builds up for two minutes with multi-overdubbed vocals with from-the-mountaintop effects on them, yet never turns into something that would make me say, “Jeepers, that’s almost as nice as Enya.” Actually make that four minutes. Nothing happened, why did I bother.

• Lastly, The Fader calls Margo Price “country’s next star,” so maybe her new album That’s How Rumors Get Started will make me say the same thing after I hear the single “Twinkle Twinkle.” Hmm, I dunno, it has fuzzed-out ’70s Deep Purple guitars, but she sounds like KT Tunstall or something. It’s cool, I guess. Is it OK if I just call her “country’s next Deep Purple lady” or whatever?