Author: Eric Saeger

Göden, Vale of the Fallen (Svart Records)

Awesome, a sludge-metal album, such a cute sludge-metal album, who’s the good boy! The public relations person uses the confounding blurb “Celtic Frost is to Triptykon what Winter is to Göden” to describe it, because see, Göden is the follow-up project to Winter, same guy and whatnot, take from that what you will. This “slab” starts out with a really depressing instrumental with fake strings, then it moves into some super-slow Exorcist stuff with the title track. I think he’s grumble-singing about the fiery end of civilization, but it could also be about bunnies, I don’t know. The singer bro sounds kind of like Papa Satan from Ministry but he’s trying too hard. On and on it goes for 4.5 minutes, then it’s “Urania,” which sounds like the previous tune but in a different key. It’s haunted graveyard music for making sure your mom doesn’t dare enter your room without knocking super loudly. C

Clare O’Kane, Everything I Know How To Do (Pretty Good Friends Records)

It’s been too long since the last time a standup comedy album came in for inspection. I think the last time somebody sent one in, I was listening to a lot of Doug Stanhope’s stuff, but nowadays I’m into Anthony Jeselnik, the American Psycho of comedy. But I’ll get sick of him too, of course, all of which leads to the question “Why do people buy comedy albums?” given that once you’ve heard the jokes, why listen to them again? Anyway, this pansexual, polyamorous OCD sufferer from New York City riffs on her quitting the Saturday Night Live writing staff, bravo for her, and she does get plenty raunchy. Personally, I think everyone has an OCD gene somewhere in there, and her takes on it aren’t all that funny. It gets better when she equates people’s reactions to her pansexuality lifestyle to when you see some rich person riding around on one of those electric one-wheel gizmos, like what are you even supposed to talk about with someone like that? She’s a good egg, this lady. B

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A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• Cowabunga, dudes, it’s the May 31 CD-release Friday, that’s pretty gnarly, isn’t it? It means that we are heading straight for the summer, on our totally tubular and bodacious day-glo skateboards, and to take us into the molten lava temperatures (and always rainy weekends, again) that are surely ahead, it’s time for y’all to stop looking at sight-gag TikToks and sneaking peeks at all the nonsense your exes are up to on Facebook, and survey the squadron of albums that are, as we speak, headed to our Pandoras and toy Apple apps, for our listening perusal and etc.! But first, I hope you’re saving your buffalo nickels and Bitcoins, because my second book will be coming out on June 10! It’s a semi-humorous “travel guide” of sorts for people who spend a lot of time on Twitter and Facebook and whatnot discussing politics! It is titled My Year In The Online Left: Social Media, Solidarity, And Armchair Activism, and you’ll be able to order it at basically any bookstore in the world, so remember to do that, please, at least one of you, out of pity, that’d be great, now let’s look at all the new albums that had the audacity and the brass Chiquita bananas to dare darken my music-journo door, expecting me to give them unbiased reviews and urge my thousands of readers to buy said albums, when in reality, as usual, said albums will have me running for the Pepto-Bismol and guzzling the whole bottle-load of its shocking-pink wonder drug elixir in one gulp after hearing to just a few notes from said whatnots! No, I’m just kidding, gag me with a spoon, let’s have a look at the new album from Australian sports-bar standbys Crowded House, Gravity Stairs! You all know the House, or at least you’ve heard the Sixpence None The Richer cover version of their song “Don’t Dream It’s Over,” because it plays at every Hannaford supermarket whenever you can afford to go in there, good for them. The new single, “Oh Hi,” is a mellow blend of MGMT and ’90s radio-pop that goes down quite nicely, thankyouverymuch.

• Some of you remember Bat for Lashes from a few years back, but I don’t, I just remember confusing her with the Fruit Bats or whatever their name was, and thinking what a stupid band name Bat For Lashes is. But that’s all water behind the bridge now, like, I can look past a lot of things, including bands that give themselves stupid names, all I ask nowadays is for bands not to sound like Pavement or Slint, that’d be great. The new album from this person, whose real name is Natasha Khan, is The Dream Of Delphi, whose title track is airy and atmospheric, except with Nintendo keyboards, which is a new one on me, I have to admit.

• British indie/baroque-pop singer/whatever Richard Hawley was raised on rockabilly, which is all anyone should be listening to these days, like my next mix for the car is going to have ’50s and ’60s music on it, like “Wooly Bully,” remember I talked about that song a couple of weeks ago, guys? Sam The Sham should have been bigger than Elvis, but that’s neither here nor there, let’s just get this new Robert Hawley album, In This City They Call You Love, off my plate so I can do some day-drinking, don’t try this at home, folks. The single, “Two for His Heels,” starts out sounding like Bruce Hornsby’s “The Way It Is,” if there are any fans of depressing music out there, then it turns into Hawley doing an Elvis impersonation over — I don’t know, some tosser track from the 1980s Fright Night soundtrack. All set with this.

• We’ll close the week with remember to buy my new book on June 10, oops, I mean the new album from Ben Platt, Honeymind! Opening song “Cherry On Top” is mildly edgy jangle-indie.

The Treatment, Wake Up The Neighbourhood (Frontiers Music s.r.l.)

Yep, it’s been a little while since we checked in at Frontiers Music Mercy Hospital, where throwback-arena-rock bands and power-metal dudes get record contracts that most of them don’t deserve. No, I kid Frontiers Music, there’s hope, rockers, and isn’t it past time for a rawk resurgence? I think so, so let’s put this one under the snark-o-scope, the latest from this Cambridge, U.K. hard rock band, which has opened for Kiss and Alice Cooper and is professed to be influenced by Def Leppard, AC/DC and Thin Lizzy. Usually these bands don’t sound like their RIYL suggestions, but this one’s in the right pew, I’ll admit. The dumbly named “Let’s Wake Up This Town” is like a lost AC/DC demo from the ’90s, you know the period; “Back To The 1970s” is more along the hair-metal lines of Poison; “This Fire Still Burns” is Skid Row prostration, and bonk bonk bonk, yadda yadda, the overall effect is Buckcherry (if you’ve never heard that band, I beg of you, don’t bother, but in the meantime this band is a hundred times better than them). B-

John Escreet, The Epicenter Of Your Dreams (Blue Room Music)

Touted as a best-in-class practitioner of Myra Melford et al.’s “free-bop post-Cecil Taylor aesthetic,” this modern jazz pianist herewith tables his second album for Blue Room, a small Korea-based label. It’s not often I’m compelled to use an adjective like “relentless” when covering jazz, but there’s no better one to describe opening track “Call It What It Is,” in which Escreet’s keys alternately explore mechanically precise syncopation and busy waterfalls of 64th notes. Returning to this quartet from Escreet’s 2018 Seismic Shift album are bassist Eric Revis and drummer Damion Reid, tenor saxophonist Mark Turner adding the final piece to a world-class group. The arrangements are bold and dominating except when they’re not, in gentle but resolute chillouts like the title track. Don’t miss this one. A+

_PLAYLIST

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• Here we go, kids, summer’s a-comin’, we’re staring down the barrel of the May 24 music-CD release date, doesn’t it seem like it was 10 degrees out like a couple of days ago? Boy, this climate apocalypse really is the dickens, am I right, fam, but let’s see what craziness is in the list for today, my super-secret list of new album releases that cements my status as the greatest CD reviewer in the history of this Granite State, unless Dr. David Thorp moved here because he couldn’t afford the rent in Boston anymore, which has to be, what, $8,000 a month these days for a tool shed in Dorchester? Tell me when everyone’s gotten a grip on reality, but meanwhile let’s talk about music albums, like this new one, Frog In Boiling Water, from Brooklyn slacker-indie quartet DIIV! These guys look like Kiss, if Kiss were 98-pound weaklings and all of them except for the Peter Criss wore $5 mail-order eyeglasses from EyeBuyDirect.com. But eyewear fashion aside, what say we go investigate this nonsense and plumb its depths for aesthetic verisimilitude, in other words let’s see what bands they rip off, I’m as excited as you are, trust me. I’ve got a simply capital idea, folks, let’s listen to the title track to get a general gist of what the dilly is, by all means let’s. Wait a second, actually, this is cool, really grungy, like Nirvana, which makes me want to go on a rant about how ’90s music is going to be everywhere before you know it, but you must have figured that out by now. It’s low-slung, muddy and metallic, with an extreme emo-metal tinge to the guitar sound. You’ll probably love it, I’d hope.

• Ha ha, oh no, it’s Old Man Luedecke, with a new album called She Told Me Where To Go! There is no person named Luedecke, by the way; that’s the stage name of alt-country banjo-picker/singer Christopher Rudolf Luedecke, who has won multiple Juno awards, the Canadian version of the Grammys, and shouldn’t they be spelled Grammies, what the devil is going on here. Anyway, the single from this album, “She Told Me Where To Go,” is a jolly good one from this Canadian soy-boy. It definitely borders on Muddy Waters territory, except with, you know, kind of wimpy singing. He’ll probably win another Juno for this, and I wouldn’t begrudge him for it.

• You may recall that America started swirling down the cosmic drain when reality TV shows started getting 100 times worse than they’d ever been, and House of Carters led all those shows straight to the vortex, like some sort of demented pied piper. It only lasted eight episodes but hoo-wee was it awful, lol. Along with former Backstreet Boy Nick, all the other Carter siblings were there, being cringe, including Aaron Carter, whose new album, The Recovery Album, is a posthumous affair, because he died in 2022. “Blame It On Me” is a heart-tugging boyband ballad that isn’t completely awful, may I go now?

• We’ll bag it this week with Columbus, Ohio-based alt-hiphop/indie/electronica/whatever duo Twenty One Pilots, whose new LP, Clancy, continues the dystopian-fantasy conceptual trip they’ve dabbled in for years now (they promised to stop after this one, but I don’t believe them). Once again the lyrics are set in the metaphorical world of Trench and the horrible city of Dema; the single, “Backslide,” evokes a futuristic Eminem with enough underground hip-hop vibe to make it non-barf-inducing.

Unearthly Rites, Ecdysis (Prosthetic Records)

You know, I don’t know if I’ve ever reviewed an album from the Prosthetic imprint in this space, but they’ve stuffed my emailbox for so long now that it’d be weird if I didn’t hear from them. It’s like that viral video that made the rounds a few months ago, where a little boy’s getting off the school bus and an all-black chicken comes running over to him to get hugs; Prosthetic is one of my favorite hug-seeking chickens, so let’s do this thing. If you haven’t guessed by now, we’re talking about a death metal band, one that comes to us “from the death metal caves of Finland,” and this is their first full-length. They love to brag about their DIY roots, which are verified through their really raw overall sound, which one critic didn’t like, but I do: It’s very punky, folks, just a dilapidated wall of hate atop which sits a workable-enough singer who does a fine Cookie Monster imitation. For what it is, it’s awesome. A-

High On Fire, Cometh The Storm (MNRK Heavy Records)

The mainstream rock press’s love for this mud-metal band has mystified me since the release of their first album, never you mind how long ago it was. I know some people love them some Motorhead, and I appreciate that, but that’s what ex-Sleep guitarist Matt Pike and his boys have always sounded like to me, Motorhead with a side of — well, nothing else really. By the way, they won a Best Metal Performance Grammy in 2019, the last time they could be bothered to put out an album, which speaks more to the distracted, half-informed mindset of the Grammy people than anything else, but let’s get to this one, which opens in fine fettle with “Lambsbread,” a riff clinic that sounds like Motorhead crossed with early Slayer, then the distinctly Crowbar-like grind-a-thon “Burning Down,” which does peg the coolometer. Bassist Jeff Matz (formerly with Zeke) adds some trippiness to the proceedings, specifically by playing a Turkish lute, so some of this sounds like Motorhead playing with Ravi Shankar. OK, anyway, there we are, Motorhead, um I mean High On Fire everyone. A

_PLAYLIST

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• Hoo-rah, look alive guys, the May 17 music-CD drop-date, and look at this, I’m already out of my element, because the first thing I have to deal with in these proceedings is a new album from Cage the Elephant, called Neon Pill! I am one of those professional music journalists who was sent the first Cage The Elephant album and thought it was boring and stupid, which led to a 20-year journey of having no friends, but it was worth it just to see the look on people’s faces. I still don’t get it, and I still don’t like this band or Portugal [curiously placed period] The Man either. But one of my associates really likes Cage The Elephant, and so for them (because I really, really care) I will heretofore forthwith proceed to put my current stomach contents at risk by listening to their new single to see if they’re still the emperor’s new clothes of skinny-jeans bands. Are y’all ready, that’d be great. OK, so I’m now reporting to you live from YouTube, guys, where I’m about to listen to the title track. Uh oh, wait, is this actually Cage The Whatever, or is it Guster? It sure sounds like Guster, talk about boring. Wait, this just in, folks, there’s some skronky noise in the mix, probably added so people would think the song’s important, but it’s better than nothing. Once again, I’m Eric Saeger, everyone, and this is “Listening To Really Pointless Music.”

• Carefully manufactured fashion-victimizer Billie Eilish is still around, being an unintelligible one-person Insane Clown Posse and doing annoying stuff like resembling my least favorite ex, and plus making albums, like her new one, Hit Me Hard And Soft! No, I don’t mind Billie Eilish, if people want to believe the record company’s story about how they found her in a Dumpster eating stale saltines or whatever the deal was, I cannot prevent them from falling for marketing ploys, but either way, let’s trudge back over to the YouTunes to see what’s going on with this ridiculous post-postmodern whatever. So, dum de dum, let’s see, here’s a tune from the new album, called “Chihiro.” She is half-whisper-singing, of course, because that’s her brand, heaven forbid she should just sing like a normal — wait, hold it guys, this is just a bunch of snippets from the song, because she knows all the 9-year-olds who listen to her would just pirate the tune through YouTubeToMP3, isn’t that clever? The song is slow, with an upbeat afterparty vibe, sort of like if Sade were a 15-year-old who smoked cigarettes and skipped school a lot. We’re just plain doomed, fam.

• There are a lot of albums for me to ignore this week, look at ’em all. There’s massively annoying ’90s person Ani DiFranco’s Unprecedented Sh!t; massively boring Canadian indie band Of Montreal with some stupid album, who cares what it’s called; and get this, guys, smirking nepo baby actress Kate Hudson is putting out an album titled Glorious, for some reason, which I only mention so you don’t accidentally buy it at Strawberries or Service Merchandise or who even knows where you’re supposed to buy albums now! Jeez Louise, everyone’s putting out an album this week, including mummified ’90s boyband New Kids on the Block, with their new one, Still Kids!

• And finally, it’s Portishead singer Beth Gibbons, with her new LP, Lives Outgrown! She of course is a trip-hop goddess, so there will probably be nothing to dislike about this. Yup, nope, “Reaching Out” has some really cool samples, a Florence Welch part, just badass stuff that you should listen to.

Taylor Swift, The Tortured Poets Department (Republic Records)

In case you’re new to this planet, the patriarchal establishment wants women to be obedient second-class citizens, focused on tedious, badly matched, purely sexual relationships, like 11-year-olds experiencing first crushes. That’s what this album accomplishes. It’s about private, individualist, closeted empowerment for enduring all the horribleness all women experience on a daily basis, and in that, it’s not the call to arms that the gender actually needs in a time of ever-dwindling rights for women. I will say that at least the record isn’t as embarrassingly hormonal as what Adele puts out, which is who TayTay’s trying to undercut with this stuff. Musically it’s decent, largely composed of hypnotic, post-coital musings that are a lot less grown-up than Tay (read: her producers, who write all this stuff) thinks they are. The melodic verisimilitude hides itself under “hmm, what’s that sample” moments and controlled bursts of primal, from-the-mountaintop, wild-woman battle cries signifying nothing. A-

Good Morning, Good Morning Seven (Polyvinyl Records)

Not only did Rolling Stone compare this Australian duo quite favorably to fellow Aussie bands Royel Otis and Budjerah; they went so far as to declare them the “future of music.” Hyperbolic much, I know, but they’re hitting the road with Waxahatchee soon, which should be a good fit. This LP opens with “Arcade,” which has a swampy-ethereal ambiance to it, techno-cheese and reverb-smothered vocals conjuring a half-plugged Kings Of Leon collaborating with Air, something of that sort. “Monster Of The Week” is like a more muscular Chris Isaak, for want of any better comparison. In that regard it’s definitely booze-soaked and faraway, an interesting but acquired taste that wouldn’t prompt me to yammer something like “the future of music” but definitely the type of thing that’ll please listeners who like their tuneage Pink Floyd-slow. A-

_PLAYLIST

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• Yippee-ki-yay, my little trolls, it’s the May 10 music-CD drop date and I can’t wait to preview all the hot new songs that’ll be playing at the Fun-Ride Center in downtown Old Orchard Beach during the summer! I haven’t even gone to the mall to buy my swimsuit attire yet, would day-glo green look good on me, please be honest! But there’s some hum-ding-dang-er butt-kickers coming at us this week, fam, so let me put aside this “Swimsuit Attire For 2024’s Hot Guys” catalog and go check it out (when I was in my 20s I used to troll people by saying that the Nashua Chamber of Commerce asked me to be Mr. October in the “Men Of Nashua” calendar and no one ever laughed, so I must have been quite the cutie back when I still had to take dating seriously, so don’t be sending laughing emojis to me on my social media, it won’t work). Holy catfish, not a lot of new albums this week, but the ones that are on my super-secret list of new albums seem pretty interesting. In fact, let’s start with totally edgy Scottish slowcore/post-rock band Arab Strap, I’m Totally Fine With It Don’t Give A F— Anymore. I don’t know, these guys are usually mentioned in the same breath as Swans and the Throbbing Lobster family of musical products and such, but I’ve never taken the plunge all the way with them. But I will try doing that today, bear with me a second while I listen to the new single, “Bliss.” Right, so the video has some girl doing a weird interpretive dance to a noisy-ish beat, and the singer sounds like Iggy Pop in mellow mode. It makes me want to say it sounds like Simple Minds doing krautrock, but that might inspire readers to go check it out, which isn’t my intention at all.

• Uh oh, look out, millennials, it’s your favorite arena-folk band, Kings of Leon, with a new album, titled Can We Please Have Fun. Wait, just a second, this just in: Yes, roger that, the band’s last album, whatever its name was, was so terrible that Kings Of Leon is no longer the favorite band of any generation. In that, they’re like Mastodon and Trent Reznor, a band that sold out and let the dummies at the record label take artistic control of their, you know, artistry. Oh, definitely, I’m sure this will be just scintillating stuff, let’s go listen to the advance cut, “Mustang,” and see what the dilly is with these jive turkeys. Ugh, so gross, it sounds like Pavement at the beginning, but then it gets a little more boisterous, and then the singing Hollowill brother starts rocking out to a not very catchy part. It does have a pulse to it and will probably be a lot cooler when they play it live, but at first listen it’s not as great as their earlier hit, the one with the Millennial Whoop in it, you know, the decent one.

• Oh, please stop, what’s this, it’s hair-rock children’s-party-clown Sebastian Bach, even he has a new album, and this one’s called Child Within The Man! Now I feel compelled to find out what he’s been doing since his “acting stint” on Gilmore Girls, do you guys even remember that, or did your brain work properly and erase it the way brains are supposed to work when you get abducted by aliens or watch Gilmore Girls? The single, “Everybody Bleeds,” is hair-metal-y but old ’Bastian wants it to be kind of Alice in Chains-ish, so it’s not too — wait, what’s he doing with the high voice thing, stop that this instant.

• And finally we have How to Dress Well, the stage name of Colorado’s Tom Krell. His new album, I Am Toward You, includes a decent neo-AOR tune, “New Confusion.” He sings like trip-hop superstar Jose Gonzalez on this pretty, fractal-filled joint, it’s cool.

Elvie Shane, Damascus (self-released)

Generally organic feel and great production propel this blue-collar hero’s twangy and slashy tuneage. He’s also something of a preacher, so he comes to the countrified Springsteen pace with the right credentials, which has taken him pretty far to date, with love coming his way from Rolling Stone and a formidable group of other press outlets. This stuff is undoubtedly bad-ass, beginning with album opener “Outside Dog,” a tune that evokes Jerry Lee Lewis fronting Butthole Surfers; the vibe is swampy and muddy and broke-down, and the bullhorn patch on Shane’s voice is just, you know, chef’s kiss. “What Do I Know” is a more Bob Dylan-infused joint, a hardscrabble working person’s call for clarity while trying to thrive in our impossible era of forced economic austerity: “I’m just hard-working beer-drinkin’ son of an average Joe.” The honesty is magma deep here; this isn’t some former trust-fund kid who got cut off for dropping out of university. A+

Julien Knowles, As Many, As One (Biophilia Records)

Knowles is a Los Angeles-based trumpeter and composer, said to be one of the most sought-after musicians on the L.A. jazz scene; most recently he’s been heard on such albums as Anthony Wilson’s Collodion, Peter Epstein’s Two Legs Bad and Louis Cole’s Some Unused Songs. This full-length kicks off with the impossibly dreamy “Opening,” fronting enough background noise to sound vastly different from most bands that try to summon Do The Right Thing’s urban background-at-night steez. It picks up in a startlingly tight-sounding manner, with Javier Santiago’s piano laying down a bonking pattern that feels like a raft ride down the rapids. I should mention that there are nine musicians involved, which does make everything sound thick and full; Knowles’s crazy-busy trumpet seems relegated to the back of the mix, with the piano (there are two guys handling that) situated in front, in first-person stereo view. Definitely proggy but it all goes down very smooth. A+

_PLAYLIST

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• Yay, it’s the May 3 crop of new musical CD releases, for your listening dysphoria! You know something, fam, for the last few years I’ve been pretty much oblivious to all the goings-on with the lilting soprano nymphettes that are always singing about depraved sexual acts on corporate kiddie-pop radio stations — wait, do the kids even know what a radio is anymore? Are there radios anymore? What does the school bus driver play over the $3 loudspeakers nowadays on the way to bringing all the kids to school to give their parents a break from having to listen to them yammer on about hip-hop beefs and gender-neutral dialectical materialism these days, or does the bus ride into school with everyone listening to crunk and black metal in their earbuds? You know, just to find out how kids live nowadays, I am publicly volunteering to work for the cops undercover in a school, like on 21 Jump Street, all I’d need to do is dye the gray out of my hair with a ton of Revlon ColorSilk No. 231 or whatnot and lose 20 pounds and get a face lift and before you know it those little rascals would be all up in my business, asking me where to score some sour Trolli jelly worm candies and how to talk to girls, as if I’d know, and I’d just make up stuff and get them in trouble. Why do I bring up this idiocy? Well, because it’s time for me to stop pretending that Dua Lipa doesn’t exist, given that she has a new album out this Friday, there’s no escape for me this time. Can you tell I’d rather be talking about literally anything on Earth other than Dua Lipa? You know me so well, guys, but let’s do the dutiful and go listen to this soon-to-be-forgotten flash in the pan’s latest single, “Bet You Like The Fact That My Butt Is Bigger Than The Entire State Of Kansas!” Wait, no, that’s not whatsername, that was from some journalistic writing notes I made while preparing to see how long my barf-reflex would hold out while investigating the new album, Radical Optimism, and its single, “Illusion.” Yikes, it actually isn’t bad, very 2006 disco-house, it’s a lot better than Taylor Swift and all those other people, I guess.

• London, U.K.’s favorite electronic afro-funk band (or at least one of them), Ibibio Sound Machine, is at it again, with a new full-length, Pull The Rope! The title track features a laid-back, pretty nifty rubber-band groove that goes on forever. Not much else happens, but maybe it’ll backdrop a Geek Squad commercial someday and they can tell their grandkids about it.

• You’re kidding. It’s horror director/Casio keyboard enthusiast John Carpenter, with yet another album of themes that didn’t make it into one of his movies (or whatever the deal is), Lost Themes IV: Noir. “My Name Is Death” is pretty advanced for what he usually does. OK, no it’s not, it’s the same sort of thing as the incidental music from his 1978 movie Halloween, but the explodey synths, well, they’re pretty explodey!

• Lastly it’s Long Island-based indie rockers The Lemon Twigs, with A Dream Is All We Know! The single, “A Dream Is All I Know,” totally sounds like “really bad” era Paul McCartney, when he did “Wonderful Christmastime.” I don’t love it.

Gryphon Rue, 4n_Objx (self-released)

Traditionally, my desk has been a dumping ground for noise and avant releases of all types, which I’ve never minded; the only thing that gets on my nerves is impromptu jazz that uses badly matched acoustic instruments, like, say, a fiddle with a clarinet. I mention all that merely as preface for this, which is decidedly not acoustic at all; in fact it’s a very techy and quite accessible blend of electroacoustic, field recordings, tropicalia psych and krautrock. There’s an underwater, deeply textural feel to all the contents, which unexpectedly shift into bizarre royal-trumpet parts like the soundtrack from The Cell (the J-Lo one I mean) and then gradually move back to more aquatic, graceful spaces. Rue is a New York City kid, and this isn’t his first LP; I’m sure he’ll be a soundtrack force in future. I almost hate to call it experimental, since that tends to scare people off, but yeah, these are doodlings, but high-end ones. A+

—Eric W. Saeger

Caldwell, Caldwell (Popclaw/Rise Above Records)

New Orleans-based rocker Kevan Caldwell is a member of The Planchettes, which probably doesn’t mean anything to you, but you should check them out, because they were like a ’60s garage/horror rock New York Dolls, like, if three subway rats formed a band and got booted out of every place they played, they would have sounded like The Planchettes. This dude is sort of a chicken-fried Nick Cave, evident from the wah-pedal groove of opener “No Flowers Today” and the breezy, acoustic-fronted pop idealism of “Love Confessions,” to the tripped-out nursery rhyme strut of “Picturesque Self Portrait,” this is an album of endless curveballs, one that any psychedelic garage lover should consider investigating. He was big into the Kinks at the time of writing this LP (Covid lockdowns informed it as well), so it’s a peek into this guy’s soul, which seems to be a welcoming place. A —Eric W. Saeger

_PLAYLIST

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• Just like every other Friday, we’ll see a relentless storm of new CDs on April 26, can you hardly even wait or what, folks? Like every week, I’m about to look at my super-secret list of new CDs, a list that only professional music journalists can see at metacritic.com, after I’m done whispering prayers to Odin that every CD on the list won’t be annoying. Wait, we have a nice start for once, with a new Pet Shop Boys album, called Nonetheless! Over the years, Pet Shop Boys have become a secret, guilty pleasure for people who don’t like all the really bad music that’s been put out for decades now (OK, fine, maybe they aren’t so secret, given that they were listed as the most successful duo in U.K. music history in the 1999 edition of The Guinness Book of Records, can you just not argue with me for once, that’d be great) and prefer music that makes them feel good, not that they started out that way. Like, their first hit single in the ’80s, “West End Girls,” used to get on my nerves and make me think of creepy incels, but 15 years ago their PR person sent me a copy of their album Yes, and I was all like, “Wait, when did these guys become the greatest duo in U.K. music history?” But putting that aside, all I can hope is that their newest single, “Loneliness,” is unequivocally awesome, so that I can make fun of myself again for being so wrong about this successful U.K. duo! Oh darn it all, it’s awesome, a really mellow krautrock-infused thing with a rubber-band beat and way-toned-down vocals, excuse me while I’m once again forced to recite 50 “Hail Odins.”

• Wolfgang Tillmans is a really famous photographer from Germany, which somehow led to his believing that he’s also a musician, and so he has done Music Stuff, including having one of his tracks sampled by Frank Ocean on his video album Endless. Yes, there is much postmodernism going on here, which is annoying to people like Jordan Peterson but enticing to others who are art-challenged. I cannot choose, so I’m going to let Tillmans’ music do the talking and listen to “Here We Are,” which is apparently included in Tillmans’ new album, Build From Here. OK, it starts out annoying, with a droopy krautrock intro synth-line that drags on forever, and then it becomes a David Bowie thing. Boring. Oh wait, here’s another tune that’s on the album, called “Where Does The Tune Hide,” and Tillmans sings on it. Ack, gross, it’s like Haujobb (if you even know them) but it’s super stupid, a bunch of pretentious New Age nonsense. This is not my favorite record of all time.

• Lol, I remember way back in the mid-2010s, when bands were giving themselves names that had two V’s in them, do any of you people even remember that doomed little mini-trend, like Wavves? Well, I’m here to report that there is a new band that does that, called Hovvdy, whose self-titled album is here, for my expert examination, get on my doctor table, little album, and let’s have a look at ya. Hm, the doctor chart here says they’re an American indie-pop duo from Austin, Texas, I’ll bet it sounds like Guster, let’s go check out the single, “Forever.” Yup, ding ding ding, it sounds like Guster but with a little Vampire Weekend syncopation but not enough to register an actual pulse. Holy cats, folks, let’s wrap this week up.

• Lastly we have famous French tech-house producer duo Justice, with their newest album, Hyperdrama! You remember these guys, with their asphalt-grating Ed Banger sound that’s gone the way of the McDLT, but the new single is “Generator,” made of typical edgy noise-electro, like soundtrack music for a live-action Pokemon movie, so nothing’s changed. They’re coming to the MGM Music Hall in Boston on Aug. 2. —Eric W. Saeger