Author: Eric Saeger

Huey Lewis & The News, Sports [vinyl reissue] (Capitol Records)

I know right, 40 years late, but hey man, this is an actual reissue on vinyl, and another notable aspect of this occasion is the fact that I’ve never reviewed a Huey Lewis record, unless I have, but I doubt it. Anyway, Lewis’ pull quote from the press release for this one goes, “In the early ’80s, there was no internet, no alternative scene, and really only one avenue to success; a hit single on CHR (Contemporary Hit Radio)” and blah blah blah, out of touch much, and plus some nonsense about the band producing this album themselves and such, which I don’t believe for a millisecond, but at any rate, for the benefit of all the millennials I see grumbling on social media about how much better the ’80s were, this album is solid proof that they weren’t, because you had to hear this album’s singles everywhere you went on this planet, from the beep-beep dingbat-pop megahit “Heart Of Rock n Roll” and its evil twin, “I Want a New Drug” to the mindless heavy rock-riffed “Heart and Soul” and the doo-wop pandering of “If This Is It.” So, young folks, if you want to know what 1985 sounded like, it was this: If you weren’t being subjected to the eleventy-zillionth listen of one of the singles from Michael Jackson’s Thriller (the only album to beat this one, sales-wise, that year), it was one of these monstrosities, so really, count your blessings. B

Girlschool, WTFortyfive? (Silver Lining Music)

No, the titular “forty-five” here doesn’t reference Donald Trump, it’s a reminder that this British all-female heavy metal band has been at it for 45 years, exhibiting a knack for technical-enough riffing of a Judas Priest-ish bent all the while, meaning that they’re better musicians than the guys in, say, Saxon, for example, which isn’t supposed to matter anyway in this era of so-called “another politics,” in which activists and such are expected to stop disrespecting others based on anachronistic power levels and whatnot, in other words it doesn’t really matter whether it’s a guy or a girl shredding on guitar, it just is. A noble thing, that, but opening tune “It Is What It Is” is the most generic ’80s-metal track I’ve heard since the entire B-side of the original Fright Night soundtrack. “Cold Dark Heart” is cool, though, a grinder about vampires I think, but, in a move to negate any credibility they could have attained otherwise, the band brought in Saxon frontman Biff Byford to holler a few syllables in the tosser “Born To Raise Hell.” Ah well. B

Playlist

• Aug. 11 is a Friday, which is as good an excuse as any for bands and artistes to put out albums, like the ones we will discuss today in this multiple-award-winning column! I haven’t won an award for my in-depth music journalism since 2007 or thereabouts, so if any reader out there is up for handing out an award, I’d be glad to hear from you, but what would be even better would be someone from New Hampshire Chronicle getting in touch with me for a long-overdue interview; I’d be glad to talk to them and discuss my decades as a rock journalist, especially if it meant that I’d get the chance to maybe run into Fritz Wetherbee at the WMUR snack machine and “totally accidentally” touch his awesome bow tie, and maybe chat with him about my adventures hunting antiques in Warren, N.H., and all the chickens that run around loose in the town, anecdotes I’d gladly allow him to use on his show! With regard to what new rock ‘n’ roll albums I’d suggest Fritz listen to, it’s hard to say, because if he insists on listening to proven great music like Jerry Lee Lewis and Bo Diddley, there’s not much I could offer the esteemed Nashuan this week aside from the latest record from The Hives, The Death Of Randy Fitzsimmons! The Hives are, of course, one of the few bands born during the aughts that’s worth even listening to, mostly because, hey, imagine five Swedish dudes who think they’re Jerry Lee Lewis, or the guy from The Cramps, or whichever. Honestly if Fritz and I were at the beach enjoying some cheap beach-stand chop suey right now, I would play the new single from this album, “Bogus Operandi,” in the car, and just crank it until he started bobbing his head over its post-Black Flag punkness. It’d be rad, and then we’d talk about all the ghosts and chickens he’s encountered in our beloved Granite State.

• Ha ha, speaking of Johnny Rotten and whatever, someone tell Fritz Wetherbee that Public Image Ltd. has a new album coming out this Friday, titled End Of World! Boy, I’ll bet my homeboy Fritz would suddenly find his bow tie spinning around like a cartoon Elmer Fudd pinwheel if he heard this new single, “Car Chase,” because it’s a combination of ’80s krautrock and Ozzy Osbourne, sort of, and Johnny’s voice is cracking worse and worse every minute, which actually makes it cool.

• Ack, it’s a day that ends in ‘y,’ so there’s another Neil Young album for me to deal with. Chrome Dreams was supposed to be released in 1977, but it wasn’t. Or not, it seems like YouTube has plenty of video versions of the gentle, breezy, strummy snore-along “Will to Love,” a song that’s decent enough but doesn’t go much of anyplace, not that that’s ever been part of the plan with that dude. Aside from “Ohio” and “Southern Man” I guess. Oh, forget it. Next.

• We’ll end with indie-whatever stalwart Bonnie Prince Billy, who has a new album, Keeping Secrets Will Destroy You, coming out in like 10 or 15 minutes! One of the songs is “She Is My Everything,” and in it he sounds like an off-key Peabo Bryson, and he’s singing over a folk guitar, and then he adds some oboe to make it completely unpalatable. I love all the hot new music jams, folks!

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).

Babychaos, “Guilty Hands (I Bleed)” (self-released)

Initial single heralding a fast-forthcoming EP from this eye-rollingly edgy goth chick, who, like Poppy (and you’ve already forgotten how awesome Poppy is, or at least was, I’ll bet), is Boston-based (this girl won the Metal Artist of the Year award at the 2022 Boston Music Awards), has a lot of gross slasher-movie stuff in her videos (Poppy wanted to be a one-woman Meshuggah before she foolishly abandoned that ship in a rush), has a lot of tattoos (I think Poppy’s are fake) and is a big social media influencer. Does that automatically make her interesting or important? No, it does not, but it might inspire some to become entranced by her siren song (she’s from Salem, Mass., by the way!), because — at least going by this single — her trip is part Marilyn Manson and part Evanescence — my stars, look at how edgy she is on this video! OK, may I go now? B

The Mystical Hot Chocolate Endeavors, A Clock Without A Craftsman (Massacre Records)

So I’d just finished up the Babychaos review (somewhere else on this page), and funnily enough Poppy has an album coming out as well, but the only advance I had in hand was a single, but even funnier-ly enough, this prog-rock band is from Boston as well, so let’s give this a whirl. This count-’em 98-minute double album from the four-piece group professed to enjoy dabbling in “everything from ’70s progressive rock, ’90s alternative rock/shoegaze, ’80s New Wave” to blah blah blah, this was a pleasant surprise. It’s tough to nail them down, not because they’re unfocused but because they really are good. A lot of this stuff really soars, toward a middle-of-the-road, aughts-indie-radio fashion: try to picture Nile with a Minus The Bear fetish, or just Minus The Bear, period, but 10 times more technically busy, and that’d be this. Seriously, if you’d be down with a more tech-metal Foo Fighters, this’d fit the bill for you. It’s already on my short list for Underrated Record Of The Year. A+

Playlist

• Oh, no, it’s August already, I am not ready for the summer to end, are you? Of course not, especially because you can be sure that Mother Nature will make up for the limp winter she sent us last year, remember? Yup, I only used the snowblower once, and since all the “snow” was actually just lemon slushie goop that was already half-melted, my indestructible 30-year-old snowblower was all like, “right, you know all I’m going to do is clog and stall, let’s just bag it and take a nap, there, buckaroo, it’ll be melted by morning, relax.” And it was, and what that means is that this winter will be a vengeance-wreaking hellscape of horizontally blowing ice-doom and Abominable Bumble monsters chasing Yukon Cornelius around and eating cars — oh, just tell me when it’s over and I can go have fish on the beach again, won’t you? Where was I, oh, yes, the new albums that are hitting the streets on Aug. 4, that was it. Art School Girlfriend is the pseudonym of Polly Mackey, a producer, multi-instrumentalist and vocalist from Wrexham, North Wales, and her new LP, Soft Landing, is headed this way right now. I just checked out the latest single, “Real Life,” from this music album, and it’s pretty cool if you like a little Portishead vibe with your Goldfrapp-style bedroom techno. It’s pretty somber and depressing overall, but her samples and grooves are quite nice indeed.

• Girl Ray is an all-female indie-rock trio from London, U.K., and look over there, their new album, Prestige, is on the way for delivery to stores this Friday, if there are indeed any record stores still in existence other than the Newbury Comics in Manchvegas, unless even that place stopped selling records and got into the vitamin supplements market. Anyway, this album is quite fascinating, or at least the tire-kicker single “Love Is Enough” certainly is; it leans heavily to a funky, almost progressive vibe a la Red Hot Chili Peppers, but with Lana Del Ray-ish vocals. Hard to picture, I know, right, but trust me on this, it’s impressive.

• Hey, Zoomers, did you know that once upon a time there was a TV show called General Hospital, and it starred this guy Rick Springfield as one of the doctor/model dudes or whatever they are? No, I can see you don’t, and I don’t blame you at all, just suffice to say he was basically the prototype for the Kardashians, except he didn’t know how to apply press-on fingernails, which is, admittedly, an essential survival skill. But whatnot, anyway, Springfield’s new “platter” is Automatic, I’ll bet it sucks beyond belief, let’s go listen to the title track, shaaaall we? Ack, it has a sample composed of unplugged guitar, and it moves really fast; the song sort of rips off Robert Palmer’s “Simply Irresistible.” You’d have to hear it for yourself, let’s move on.

• And finally we have Mammoth WVH, with their new album, Mammoth II. Guess what “WVH” stands for, I’ll bet you’ll never get it, it’s Wolfgang Van Halen, gawd, I miss his dad Eddie so bad, don’t you? Wolfgang plays almost all the instruments on this album, and the first single, “Take A Bow,” sounds like Creed trying to be the Foo Fighters, but take heart, maybe there are other songs on this album that will save the day and preserve Eddie’s legacy, I am not sure at this writing.

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).

EbE404, Dark Ice Days (Give/Take Records)

It’s not that I’ve been avoiding the goth/industrial promo albums that have been coming in for many months from the Give/Take label; to be honest, the name of the PR company that services the imprint’s stuff is very similar to one of the nyms that a local troll uses when he emails literal gigabytes of punk cartoons to author Matt Taibbi and me, so most of it gets deleted out of hand. As far as the music on this album goes, it’s pretty much a stompy, wordless industrial DJ trip, the first two songs (“Open Water” and “Alchymicus”) sounding almost identical, which I truly hope wasn’t done on purpose; they’re of a Combichrist/darkwave sort, lots of sustained laser bursts, random samples and whatnot, not my cup of tea really but nothing that would keep the latex crowd off the dance floor, I suppose. Things get more interesting with “Bouncing,” in which the artiste(s) dabble in Greater Wrong Of The Right-era Skinny Puppy glitch and bleep-bloop. It’s fine for what it is. B

Styx, Crash Of The Crown (Alpha Dog 2T/UMe Records)

Owing to age and such, midcentury-era arena bands are dropping like flies, or at best, touring around with only one original band member, as is the case with Foghat, which is down to the drummer. Styx, though, comes off as being as spry as Greta Van Fleet, pound for pound; now that they’re pretty much a self-contained unit, with their own record label (and, assuredly, studio and all that), they’re free to be as prog-rock as they like, and this album does go into some pretty busy riffs and things, as evidenced in the opening track, “The Fight Of Our Lives,” which continues their tradition of writing sociopolitically topical lyrics focused on conflicts between the First and Third Estates, but always ending on a positive note (which gets more difficult each year, of course). But as I alluded to, this is more proggy; drummer Todd Sucherman has Neil Peart-level chops, which has to be making the other guys feel really pleased. Probably the band’s best ever, pound for pound. A+

Playlist

• Jane, stop this crazy thing, it’s July 28 already, a Friday, and you know what that means, that’s right, it means there will be a bunch of new albums for you to listen to if you haven’t completely given up on music yet! Look there, the first album off the assembly line is a live album from Sissy Spacek look-alike Joni Mitchell, called Joni Mitchell At Newport! That’s right, Facebook grandmoms, totally live versions of all your favorites from back when everyone lived in log cabins and believed in forest giants and wood nymphs, and — wait, is this the one where — yes, it is, it’s the one where Joni was wheeled out to the Newport Folk Festival as a surprise guest during Brandi Carlisle’s set, and it was so cool, Brandi twerking like a dancehall princess or whatever she usually does, and then they rolled Joni onstage in her ancient scarab-inlaid sarcophagus and Brandi probably ruined a few songs by singing/twerking along to tunes like “Big Yellow Taxi,” “Shine,” “Help Me” and “Come In From the Cold” and whatever, “Both Sides Now” and all those other super-old melodies that, when the grandmothers put their Joni cassettes in the boombox at the backyard barbecue, it’s the cue for us males immediately to gather together, pretending not to hear them or our wives or dates, while we form a big awkward man-circle, sizing each other up just like our Neanderthal ancestors, cheap smelly American lagers in hand, talking about installing random shelves in our garages or the skyrocketing price of Viagra and all the usual man stuff. And so all those tunes will be on this disc, remember to buy this album so that Joni can get even more ridiculously rich, you owe it to ’Murica as a citizen.

• If you’ve spent any time within earshot of the overhead speakers in a Target electronics department you know of Post Malone, the Syracuse, N.Y., singer/sort-of-rapper who’s essentially a more Disney-fied version of The Weeknd, doesn’t that sound goooood? Whatever, he’s got no beef with any corporate hip-hop fraudster that I’m aware of, so I’m already fighting to stay awake writing anything about him at all, but suffice to say that his new album is called Austin, and the title track is OK if you like his usual brand of post-Drake bedroom-trap-chill and have a tolerance for Auto-Tune and grillz and all the other cutting-edge cultural touchstones Malone figures he should zzzzzzzzzzzz

• Ack, I fell asleep, sorry, guys, and look who’s here, it’s Florida nu-metal wannabes Sevendust, with a sizzlin’ new album titled Truth Killer! You know, I interviewed these guys once, way back, for the Village Voice family of newspapers, and they were probably the nicest, least egotistical fellas I encountered back in those days, so hopefully they’re still a decent-enough band and still making tolerable if not terribly inventive hard rock so that I don’t have to bring down the thunder and bum them out in today’s column, you know how it goes! OK, wait, I am now broadcasting live from YouTube, where I’m watching the video for the band’s new song “Everything,” and it’s pretty decent, like Living Colour but heavier. They always did sound like Living Colour, of course, but now they sound like an even angrier derivative act!

• And finally we have London-based indie pop band The Clientele, with a new LP titled I Am Not There Anymore! They’ve released albums on Merge Records (including this one if I’m not mistaken) and that always means one thing: the reverb level is cranked to 11, which automatically makes this band awesome. The single, “Blue Over Blue” is like a cross between Beck and Belle & Sebastian, not anything I’d ever listen to in the car, but it’s fine, you have my permission to listen to it wherever you like.

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).

Fay Victor, Blackity Black Black Is Beautiful (Northern Spy Records)

This record is definitely in the same church if not the same pew as most slam poetry, and while I’m at this, if you’ve had the slightest interest in the ongoing saga involving my attending a Slam Free Or Die slam poetry event here in Manchester, I’m happy to say that the show’s organizer, Christopher Clauss, contacted me the other day and I’m hoping to get to their next show on Aug. 3, which will feature Chicago veteran slam poet Billy Tuggle. As for this album, it’s the Brooklyn-based composer’s first solo record in a thus-far 30-year career whose highlights have included distinguished prize awards, lots of performances in museums, jazz festivals and the like. Her trip is layering her own spoken word poetry and melodic soul/gospel vocalizations over techno, glitch, acid jazz, more glitch and various other beats, her lyrics intended to raise awareness about the things and public figures she holds dear (“Governorship/Senate” is dedicated to Stacey Abrams; the spooky-bizarre “Trust The Universe” to Sun Ra). Fascinating urban art piece, all told. A

Bloodstrings, Heartache Radio (Dackelton Records)

This one had me at “horror psychobilly” but even more so when I noticed they’re Germans. If anyone knows how to conjure drunken, boneheaded American-style punk aggression, it’s Europeans, especially when they’re from countries that aren’t France. This lot have been around since 2009 and mostly did a lusty Ramones-goth thing until the present, which finds the poor dears feeling reflective after losing a few friends to depression and such, which is always horrible, and so, instead of singing about cartoonish fantasy demons, the demons examined in this record are the real ones, for instance the demons of addiction in “The Bottle Talking,” a great little punker that sounds like No Doubt-era Gwen Stefani fronting Hole. The production here is absolutely sparkling, totally pro level, which makes the deranged thrasher “Colorblind” sound like the Runaways on a Green Day budget. Not a lot of punkabilly here, just nicely rendered hardcore for the most part, but there’s nothing wrong with that of course. A

Playlist

• Ack, I hate it, look, the next CD-release Friday is July 21, summer’s already more than half gone, where’s my confounded snowshoes? Ack, but it’s even worse, because look fam, it’s depleted-soil Led Zeppelin wannabes Greta Van Fleet, with their latest album of Zeppelin IV ripoff songs, Starcatcher! I saw a recent YouTube “reaction-style” video where some 20-year-old dude was, he swore, listening to Zep’s “Whole Lotta Love” for the first time, and he was surprised at how much he liked it. Like all olds, it’s impossible for me to believe that someone’s never heard that boring old tune before, but remember, fellow olds, these kids today aren’t listening to 50-year-old songs when they make out in their moms’ Toyota Camrys, they’ve got all kinds of commercial hip-hop and K-pop and Weeknd and Kings Of Leon songs on little thumb drives, and because of that, they don’t tune mom’s car radio away from NPR’s Marketplace or Sirius’s 80s On 8, and because of that, mom has no idea how vacuous and wimpy and empty their preferred music is, and that’s good, because you know what that is? It’s teenage rebellion, folks, kids exercising their right not to listen to Led Zeppelin and Def Leppard until they’re older, saving up all that “good stuff” until they’re old enough to appreciate it, so they can make reaction YouTubes and then immediately go back to listening to their Bruno Mars and Lorde “oldies records” and never have to listen to that old blues-metal nonsense again. See, kids today are smart; they know that Led Zeppelin is actual devil music, direct from H-E-double-toothpicks, and if they’re not careful, they’ll get sucked into the same Evil Dead time-space vortex that the guys in Greta Van Fleet did, which caused those dummies to try to rewrite Zep’s “Black Dog” every album until they get it sounding better than the original, which they obviously can’t, but look how hard they try! Anyway meanwhile, back at the column, the Fleets have graced us with a new song called “Meeting The Master,” and it’s basically Zep’s “The Rain Song” turned inside out and made into a quirky hat. I have no more time to discuss this, thank goodness.

• Ack, wait what, not a new Guided by Voices album, this cannot be, will Robert Pollard ever take a break from writing five boring new songs every 10 minutes and insisting on recording them? Ever see the end of the 1970s version of Planet Of The Apes, when Charlton Heston is pounding sand and cursing at the sky? Well, that’s me every 15 minutes, when I read that a new GBV album is coming out in time for mention in this column. If you’re keeping count, we’re now at eight GBV albums in three years, and this one’s titled Welshpool Frillies. The single, “Seedling,” is like an angular art-rock version of Yardbirds. It’s not totally bad, but you can tell Pollard wrote it on the potty in 10 minutes, like all his other songs. What-ever.

• Nils Lofgren is in Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band, which isn’t necessarily a reason to hate him. In between making Bruuuce albums he makes his own albums, like the forthcoming new Mountains, which is on the way to your pirate music feeds as we speak. In the leadoff single, “Nothin’s Easy (For Amy),” Nils sings like a cross between Willie Nelson and Neil Young, and the refried Americana-bluegrass underneath his voice is even worse. Enjoy, fans of Bruuuce!

• We’ll end the week with not particularly funny comedian/musician Jaboukie Young-White’s new album, All Who Can’t Hear Must Feel, featuring the single “Goner,” whose haunted-house-meets-industrial beat is, I must admit, pretty gosh-darn above-average.

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).

Craving, Call Of The Sirens (Massacre Records)

I’m barely doing Facebook at all lately because I’m trying to finish a new book, but one thing I did notice in my recent drop-ins to that hell-site was the descent of local author and Hippo co-founder-or-whatnot Dan Szczesny into the ranks of epic metal fanboys; in other words, he really likes bands like Nightwish and Visions Of Atlantis, which, basically translated, means bands that are basically like Trans Siberian Orchestra except there’s a lot more opera and all that stuff. Usually he’s a Springsteen-head, but it’s a free country, so here’s an album I can recommend to Dan and whoever else might dig “epic metal as defined as ‘melodic black metal and melodic death metal,’” mainly because the drummer of this German trio broke the “unofficial world record in playing blast beats at 250 bpm for over 20 minutes straight,” why aren’t you buying this album right now? OK, maybe you shouldn’t; it’s big into old-school black metal, going by opening tune “Mich Packt Die Wut” and much of the rest of this stuff, but it is indeed epic, fusing Scandinavian hardcore grog-oi to the dulcet caterwauling of Deafheaven. It’s fine. A

Cut Worms, Cut Worms (Jagjaguwar Records)

This is as good a time as any to let all you local bands in on a secret: If you’re paying for studio time to make a record, don’t hire a producer. Do. Not. Unless they’ve cut an actual Top 10 album, the producer is as lost as you are. You want a certain sound, just tell the engineer to get it for you. I bring this up because this follow-up to Brooklyn indie dude Max Clarke’s 2020 album Nobody Lives Here Anymore is better than that one because he took the helm himself: It nails the happy-go-lucky Beatles-meets-Ben Kweller vibe he wants. It’s retro ’70 radio pop at its best (there are moments in opener “Don’t Fade Out” that evoke Todd Rundgren for sure, Let It Be-era Beatles in “Take It and Smile,” etc.). These tunes just want you to feel good, and they go a long way toward that without any forced awkwardness or lonely precarity like so many of his peers are into. Nice stuff here. A

Playlist

• Ahoy, mateys, looky yonder, hard a-larboard (which means “to the right” in Moby Dick language), it’s a whole fleet of new albums coming this way, sure to delight the senses and such and so, when they all go on sale this Friday, July 14! OK, let’s do this, you trolls, the first thing to get out of the way is the inevitable “too soon” album to appear after the recent death of Canadian folk-pop genius Gordon Lightfoot! This one is a live album, titled Gordon Lightfoot At Royal Albert Hall, featuring all his greatest hits and more, from “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” to “Sundown,” which was a really great song indeed. The only real tangent I can offer as far as Gordon Lightfoot stories is the time I was a rising young business executroid doing phone sales stuff for IBM. I was on a call with some software company and suddenly I was talking to his actual daughter, and no, I’ve totally forgotten her name, but she was nice. Anyway, that’s it, gang, that’s it, Gordon Lightfoot everyone, go buy this new album so his nice daughter can quit her software job.

• I know diddly about ’80s funk/soul-poppers Kool & The Gang except for the fact that I never really cared about them at all, so please enjoy yourselves as you watch the silly journalism man try to fill some space with random brain droppings about the group’s new album, People Just Wanna Have Fun, an album title I think would be much more fitting if the group were a death metal band, but you do you, Kool and the Whatevers! No, OK, I’m kidding, k-i-d-d-i-n-g, folks, I think they had a song on the New Jack City soundtrack, which automatically makes them relevant forever — nope, it wasn’t them, never mind, they’re still irrelevant, except no, they did that song “Celebrate,” and recorded the worst funk song ever in music history, “Emergency.” There, that all should serve as a usable intro to the Kools, and now let me just duck out of here for one second and head to YouTube to listen to the new single, “Let’s Party,” which, if I recall correctly, was named after something really gross the maintenance crew had to clean up after Aztec ritual sacrifices. It sounds like a cross between Daft Punk and the Weeknd; your puppy would probably jump around cutely to it if you played it on your phone and told the little rascal you were going to upload the video to TikTok.

• Kosovo-born electropop-singing lady Rita Ora is back, with a new album, her third, You & I, and she wants you to listen to it, because — wait, “Rita Who?” you ask? Why, just one of the most famous England-based singing ladies in the world at the moment, that’s who! Wait, let me dial it down and Americanize it for y’all, you’ve heard of the song “Black Widow featuring Rita Ora” by Iggy Azalea, right? Well that explains everything right there, because she’s the same Rita Ora! Other than that she gets hundreds of millions of views on her videos from British bots and the occasional stray human of course, but who even cares about all that, let’s just go listen to her new Fatboy Slim-produced single, “Praising You,” won’t that be coooool? Right, it’s neo-disco with a neat little U.K. garage-ish drum sound underneath. I like it fine, but you might not.

• Lastly, it’s Norwegian nu-disco producer Lindstrøm, who has gotten in line to become this year’s Steve Aoki. Everyone Else is a Stranger is his new album, and it features the tune “Syreen,” an Aoki-ized house jam that’d be fun at a beach club if there were any such thing as fun anymore.

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).

Cyclone Static, Cave Pop: Dance Songs For Primitive People (Mint 400 Records)

Wow, this isn’t the usual stuff I get from this particular public relations dude; it’s full-on throwback ’80s-rock a la Billy Idol or The Alarm or [name of angry-sounding oi-pop band] as opposed to the truckload of metal CDs he floods my mailbox with every month. But wait a minute, a few critics have tagged it as grunge stuff, and yup, it is, on the dumb, bonky, basically Nirvana-ish “On the Block,” but wait a minute, on “Real Sign” it makes like Weezer after way too much beer, all loud and aggressive and slow. And then they go full-on Nirvana again on “It’s Okay Now.” Wait a minute, maybe the problem is that this New Jersey (punk) band doesn’t have any idea what it’s doing (it’s actually proto-’90s-punk with too much raucousness to be counted as grunge), but whatever, a combination of Billy Idol, Weezer and Nirvana is pretty listenable, just admit it. A+ —Eric W. Saeger

Andrew Hung, Deliverance (Lex Records)

OK, I liked this one right from the drop, which is a nice break from, like, every little thing going wrong for like the past two weeks straight. Deliverance is Hung’s third album, but between releases he’s been Doing Things, most importantly collaborating with folktronica princess Beth Orton. I was warned ahead of time that Hung’s voice isn’t very good, not that that’s ever stopped anyone, and besides, his hesitant, repressed baritone sounds like Ric Okasek from The Cars trying to stay barely loud enough to be picked up at all. Also weirdly, opening tune “Ocean Mouth” has the same beat and tempo and affability as the old Cars tune “Touch and Go,” but anyway Hung’s trip doesn’t really parallel anyone else’s past that. His ethos combines punk with just enough tech and a lot of serious listenability, reminding me of guys like Winston Giles. There’s a dubstep feel to a lot of this, too, but the drum sound is splashy and super nice. Well worth investigating. A

Playlist

• Our next general CD release date is July 7, the Friday after this year’s really badly placed Fourth of July day off, thanks so much for having it on a Tuesday, founding fathers, so that we get to nurse our lager hangovers for three days in a row without any random naps! Actually I could use a nap or some fetid American beer right now, because there’s no escaping it, I have to talk about the forthcoming Taylor Swift album, Speak Now (Taylor’s Version), because she really could use some press, like, have any of you ever even heard of this person? No, I’d seriously rather write an essay on my favorite dentists than write about Taylor Swift, because it will involve some research on my part, given that (a) all I know is that she writes her own bad country songs and leaves the writing of all her diva hits to the two European dudes who write all the other bubble-pop hits, and (b) I couldn’t care less. I assume she’s got a bunch of drama going on, oh for cripes sake why don’t I just Google it. OK, forget it, just some 4chan-level “edgy” nonsense from her new totally-not-boyfriend/ex or whatever Matty Healy, who looks like a Spago’s busboy, I’m all set with all this, let the 11-year-olds argue about all the ins and outs. Ack, ack, listen to that new single, the title track, it is a harbinger of the ’90s grunge-chick radio-pop that’s poised to take over the world any day now. That’s right, folks, before you know it all the hip kids will be buying old Sub-Pop record albums instead of buying food or other important things, just to impress their slacker friends, and all the pop-divas will sound like Lisa Loeb and Jewel, and then everything will be horrible when all the Gen Z’ers discover Ani Di Franco. That’s what we have to look forward to, folks, mark my words. Move to Belgium while you still can before it’s too late.

• What’d I just tell you, folks, the Worthless Nineties are back! Look over there, it’s a new album from British indie-rocker PJ Harvey, titled I Inside the Old Year Dying, her first full-length since 2016’s The Hope Six Demolition Project, which drew criticism for its political messaging because she offered no solutions, just complaints. But isn’t that what we’re supposed to be doing, yelling into our social media bubbles without ever being constructive? I don’t know, but whatever, she always makes me think of the Lili Taylor character in the movie Say Anything, strumming her guitar and singing angry-disaffected-angry tunes like “Joe Lies!” about whatever, but hey, maybe this time she’ll change the world with her singing; let’s go have a listen to “I Inside the Old I Dying,” eh wot? So, right, the first part is awful, like she’s singing bad on purpose over some ukulele (have we not yet had enough of stupid ukuleles yet, America, like, can we just move on to French horns or whatever’s next?) but the other half is forebode-y and gothy and dark. So it’s half-good and half-stupid, right in line with the zeitgeist.

• Chamber-pop performer Anohni is releasing a new album with her backing band, The Johnsons, titled My Back Was A Bridge For You To Cross! The single, “Sliver Of Ice,” is slow and depressing and weird, I wish I hadn’t listened to it because now all I want to do is eat an entire angel food cake. All set with this.

• And finally it’s Local Natives, a vanilla-indie-rock band from Los Angeles, with their latest, Time Will Wait For No One. If you like Muse you’ll probably be down with their new tune “NYE,” but if you find Muse annoying, as most normal people do, you won’t.

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).

Aja Monet, When The Poems Do What They Do (Drink Sum Wtr Records)

Right, so today I learned not only that famous-ish actress Amber Tamblyn is a poet, but that she was actually here in Manchvegas (unless it was her talking through a Zoom feed or some dumb thing) in May, at a Slam Free Or Die event at the Stark Brewing Co. This presents yet another opportunity for me to implore whoever runs the Slam Free thing to get in touch with me for press love opportunities, especially if any local poet has done a recording. And so on, but yes, all that stuff is relevant to this item, because Monet’s trip is beat poetry (or whatever she’s calling it, but it’s beat poetry, OK) and it comes from the heart of a community organizer and an enraged Black woman with the capacity to censor herself well enough. The New York Times and all those guys are into her very clever, very urban stuff; her backing musicians are quite creative as well. A

Austin Stambaugh, ‘Til I Reach Downtown (Anti-Corporate Music)

Recorded in just three days (probably owing to the fact that there are some pretty good session musicians who were on the clock), this is the latest album from the Nashville-by-way-of-Ohio guitarist/poet/songwriter, the preparation for which — so he claims — involved his listening to a lot of Roger Miller, but it’s all good either way. This is the most drawl-y sort of bluegrass, remindful of Hank Williams Sr. in his earliest heydey. The pedal steel is handled with tobaccy-spittin’ aplomb by Stephen Karney; there’s fiddle of course, including Jared Manzo’s (of Brazilbilly) “bass fiddle,” in other words upright acoustic bass. Any old-school — and I mean seriously old-school — country music fan would love these tunes about being lonesome, being lonesome around people, and being lonesome at a hotel. The whole record sounds like these folks were having a great time making it, oh, and by the way, the drummer, John Mctigue III, played with Emmylou Harris. Not a hair out of place on this one. A+

Playlist

• Friday is the last day of June, the 30th, and that means the summer is already a third of the way over, can you even stand it? In addition, Friday is a day when new albums will emerge to bring us joy and happiness and barfiness in appropriate measure, and that’s what we’ll talk about today, in this multiple award-winning column, the good albums and the bad ones! The first thing we should cover is the “new” LP from Frank Zappa, Funky Nothingness, because a lot of people really like Zappa for some reason and I don’t want everyone to think I’m a jerk. OK, I really don’t care about that all that much, and in fact this is the first time I’ve ever mentioned The Zap in this column, because I’ve always thought of him as a cross between Captain Beefheart and Weird Al Yankovic, basically a joke-band leader I don’t have time for, but whatever, I think the most eyebrow-raising thing is that since 1994 the Zappa family trust has released count-’em 63 posthumous albums (nine of which have actually charted) prior to this three-record set. No, I’ve always viewed Zappa adherents as casual music fans who listen to his music because they’re afraid that if they listened to listenable music they’d actually like it; they’re sort of like Marxists who’d much rather discuss peripheral nonsense like “dialectical materialism” than do anything constructive. I mean, your mileage may vary of course; if you love Zappa because you had some sort of religious or drug-induced or whatnot epiphany that led you directly to the realization that he was a genius, then bless your heart, I accept you without reservation and hope this record makes your day. All I’d ask in the meantime is that you consider listening to Charles Mingus if you really want to hear noise-music-genius, and please don’t send me emails trying to convince me that I just don’t get it. I tried once in the past, I assure you: I bought the Joe’s Garage album with real American money long before I became a music journo whose only tangible reward has been receiving over 21,585 free albums from PR people since 2004, all of which I’ve liked more than Joe’s Garage. I don’t get Zappa and never want to. I’d rather listen to the 1970 nature album Songs Of The Humpback Whale than try to like Joe’s Garage, much less this new collection of balderdash, which is said to include a song I can’t name in this fine family newspaper, although a live version of it recorded at Olympic Auditorium in 1970 is blow-doors if you like hard jam-band music, which I don’t.

• Next up is another posthumous release, from former Rolling Stones drummer Charlie Watts, widely known in musician circles as The Little Engine That Wasn’t Allowed To Make Interesting Drum Rolls. The LP is called Anthology and features the artiste’s impressions of old jazz tunes from Charlie Parker and such. Let’s move on.

• Folk-rock veteran Lucinda Williams, a.k.a. “not Bonnie Raitt,” returns with a new “platter” of music things, titled “Stories From A Rock N Roll Heart!” One of the songs is “Where The Song Will Find Me,” a slow moonshine-crooner with some nice pedal steel guitar, not that pedal steel guitar isn’t nice.

• We’ll close with Angelo De Augustine, an awkward California-indie dude who’s collaborated with and opened for Sufjan Stevens. His new LP is Toil And Trouble and features the tune “Another Universe,” which has lots of falsetto vocals and whatnot, making him the 2 billionth awkward indie-pop dude to rip off Pet Sounds this decade! Congratulations, Whatsyourface!

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).

Dan Rosenboom, Polarity (Orenda Records)

L.A.-based trumpeter/composer Rosenboom leads a modern jazz quintet assisted by the production expertise of Justin Staley, who has worked on albums by Prince and Beck in the past. I really like this one. Opening song “The Age Of Snakes” has a slow, city-at-midnight beat that’s pure addictive chill, featuring some truly wonderful (and, appropriately, serpentine) interplay between Rosenboom and progressive-steeped sax guy Gavin Templeton. Those guys are heavyweights in the L.A. jazz scene, which has been trying to find its center-point over the last few years, but they imported both pianist John Escreet and drummer Damion Reed from New York City to liven things up, which they certainly do on “A Paper Tiger,” a hyper-speed post-bop-tinged foray into harmonic dissonance powered by jaw-dropping solo turns from those two. Templeton summons Wayne Shorter in the lonely but happy “On Summoning The Will”; group-syncopation and world-melodic patterning infuses “Ikigai” with a level of gentle forcefulness you rarely find. A great record. A+

Alex Lore & Weirdear, Evening Will Find Itself (Whirlwind Recordings)

Weird, this: Just when I thought the Dan Rosenboom album (reviewed elsewhere on this page) was going to be the most accessible/sturdy/appealing jazz record I’d hear for months, this one came in on the same banana boat sent by one of my favorite PR providers. Lore, whose trip is more Mingus-ish and less prog than Rosenboom’s crew, plays sax in this quartet but it’s similar in its sonically forceful gentleness, which we could all use right now, am I right? In fact, the apocalyptic state of the world (watch any YouTube interview with economist Clara Mattei if you really want to know how America got into this mess) figures heavily into this set of songs, in which Lore, a rising star, attempts to make sense of it all through careful experimentation. One quibble, it would have been nice to have anything — especially a trumpeter or Pro Tools person — aboard to canoodle with him further, but Glenn Zaleski’s piano helps deliver the latte-bar ambiance well enough. A

Playlist

• June 23 is a wonderful day in the neighborhood, because it is a Friday, which means new albums, new albums everywhere! What’s really great is that this week I get to pick on one of those American Idol people, Kelly Clarkson to be specific, because she has a new LP coming out on the 23rd, Chemistry! I mean, I think she’s a nice lady and a true warrior for whatnot cause and yadda yadda, but those talent shows have bothered me from the beginning, like, they all have a sort of Hunger Games patina to them, don’t they? And most of the big winners end up getting polite-sized record contracts and eventually wind up doing nothing really. Remember Taylor Hicks? I don’t either, like I had to toss “American Idol Taylor” in the internet search-box because I couldn’t remember his full name for the life of me. Lol, what a weird time that was, those early American Idol days, wasn’t it? It seemed as though the world was just careening off a cliff, that corporate garbage-pop had finally won and taken the last bit of fun away from music itself. Hicks looked like George Clooney’s really stupid brother, which appealed to people at some level, and then he put out two “blue-eyed-soul” albums that were too white to be considered cultural appropriation, the last one in 2009, and nobody bought them, and then the Billboard world suddenly woke from their stupor and mumbled something about Kelly Clarkson, and here we are. I’ll bet the new single, “Mine,” is Vegas-ized country-pop, wouldn’t that be extraordinarily bizarre, especially since she’s doing a 10-show stint in Vegas that’ll probably turn into a lifetime residency? Yes it would, and guess what, “Mine” is a diva ballad in which Clarkson tries to sound like every other currently relevant diva within each of the lines alternately; it’s like some sort of TikTok challenge: the first two lines sound like Billie Eilish, then Beyonce, then there’s some loud Adele myna-birding, and so on. The song itself is pretty good for a way-too-serious attempt at bumming out well-off yuppie girls who don’t have boyfriends, but you might like it, I do not know.

• Yikes, here we go, let’s start some arguments, whattaya say? I used to have a CD from Portugal. The Man in my car, and gang, I tried sooo hard to like them, mostly because I sort of felt sorry for their being a six-piece indie band from Alaska, like, what parent would want that for their children, you know? Whatever, I listened and listened and eventually gave up, because I couldn’t stand them at all. But now I have friends my age (never you mind) who’ve been hypnotized into liking them, and I know I’ll be hearing all about the band’s fast-approaching new album, Chris Black Changed My Life, but this time I’m actually going to listen to it and see if I can keep my lunch down, just so that I can stay relevant in the always evolving world of rock ’n’ roll music, so let’s do this thing, let’s listen to their probably dumb new song, “Champ,” which is the most appealing to me at the moment, because Edgar Winter is playing in it for some ridiculous reason, which means that there will be some minor guitar-god stuff in it. Yup, there is, toward the end, but other than that it’s awkward ironic trash, with Beach Boys vocals and Flaming Lips junk all over the place. I hate it.

• Ack, look fam, it’s Baltimore’s favorite boy-girl indie-folk/dream-pop/noise act, Wye Oak, with their new full-length, Every Day Like The Last! The pair’s newest single, “I Learned it From You,” is in front of my face right now, let’s just get it over with. Yup, sounds kind of Pretenders-ish, mopey, the drum sound is huge, it’s OK.

• And finally, let’s look at Melodies On Hiatus, the new full-length from the second-banana guitarist from The Strokes, Albert Hammond Jr.! “100-99” is an indie-hip-hop crossover tune featuring Goldlink on raps. Hammond’s voice sucks, so it’s relevant.

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).

Troller, Drain (Relapse Records)

So this one is basically a cross between the ambient doom-drone of Sunn(((O))), Swans-style apocalypse-noise-punk and Raveonettes, in other words music to chant devil incantations by, in sum. It was purported to me to be possessed of such elements as “witch-house, goth-pop and industrial shoegaze,” which I suppose equals my above assessment; it’s proffered by a trio from Austin, Texas, composed of singer/bassist Amber Star-Goers (possibly not her real name), Justin Star-Goers (ditto) on guitar and SURVIVE synthesist/programmer Adam Jones. The tune “Lust In Us” is assuredly a shoegaze excursion, bathed in decidedly anti-sexual warbling and existential noise that isn’t on a My Bloody Valentine tip, more a sort of radio-static-dipped albeit melodic base. It’s a formula that could have served well enough to produce a full album, but as I pointed to earlier, the trio has other plans, mainly of the volcanic slow-motion-math variety. “Out Back” has an ’80s-synthpop edge to its woozy, muddy weirdness. B+

The Alarm, Forwards (Twenty First Century Recording Company)

During their early ’80s heyday, pushing hits like “The Stand” (which you’ve likely heard if you’re a devout follower of the 13 Reasons Why TV series; it played in the background of one episode, which led to 3 million Spotify plays) and “68 Guns” (their signature tune), this Leeds, U.K., band was a kinder, gentler Clash, I’d say; there was enough tough-guy edge to make their melodically agreeable tuneage appeal to the safety-pin-pierced patrol while maintaining a rather polite U2 flavor. This album, their first since 2021’s WAR, finds singer Mike Peters taking a decidedly Bono direction (particularly in the mid-tempo ”Another Way), which helps to justify his aping Tom Petty a bit in the blues-tinted “Love and Forgiveness.” “Transition” is the best on board here, fiddling with a sort of Ennio Morricone spaghetti-Western vibe before exploding into its Cult-inspired second half. I wouldn’t say the band’s evolved per se, but they’re still a bunch of (mildly) bad boys with a desire to make a dent. B+

Playlist

• I was privileged to attend the Sisters Of Mercy show at the Big Night Live club in Boston on May 31, so it’s a great time to remind all the young ’80s-goth-rock-loving kids out there that their last album, 1990’s Vision Thing, is still available to buy and act tragic to, if you really want to be an edgelord and impress your little friends with your comprehensive black-fishnet-clad acumen! Oldsters know that the big songs on that one were the title track and “Doctor Jeep,” and that the album was produced by Bat Out Of Hell fixture Jim Steinman, but wait, a few things first. The album you really want is 1987’s Floodland, which includes the band’s most enduring hits, namely “This Corrosion,” “Dominion” and “Lucretia My Reflection,” all groove-centric tunes that inspired the Boston crowd to break into snake-charmer dance moves when they were nicely rendered at the Boston show. The classic songs were the shorter studio versions but effective nonetheless, bringing the loudest applause after a series of less well-known numbers, a couple of which were pretty cool. It was the first time I’d been to Big Night Live (or any club in the last three years, owing to Covid), and I was treated super-nicely: the staff found me a table at which to sit so that my injured foot could take a nice break here and there. Anyway, what was I — oh yes, so even though Sisters frontman Andrew Eldritch is widely regarded as the godfather of goth, he hates that appellation, so don’t do it, even though he is totally, totally goth. He’s no longer the long-haired troublemaker of olde; nowadays he looks more like James Carville than Sid Vicious, but he still sings angrily and spookily, and hearing them play “This Corrosion” was worth getting stuck in an inexplicable midnight traffic jam for 1.5 hours. And voila, there you go, vampire kids, go support your uncle Andrew!

• Getting back to our usual business, June 16 will find you covered head to toe in albums, because it is a Friday, which means zillions of albums — most of them joke albums from troll bands, or just plain bad albums from people who still think the planet needs more albums — will enter Earth’s atmosphere at the speed of light, and they will all change course as they hurtle and make a beeline for people like yours truly, renegade music “journos” who still tell the truth about how most albums are pretty awful. But maybe that will change during today’s album-storm, as we look at the new Deer Tick album, Emotional Contracts, with a clinically detached eye, looking for something praiseworthy in this album. Yes, it’s one of those bands with “Deer” in the name, so I’m lost; I don’t remember the last few album reviews I wrote trying to excuse Deerhunter or Deerhoof or Deerpark or Deer Tick, so (as always) let’s just take the easy way by starting from scratch and having a look at this indie-rock album, which will probably be subtly boring or earth-shakingly awful like all the other “Deer” albums I’ve reviewed over my career. But look at that, it’s not so bad: “Forgiving Ties” is the closest thing to a Tom Petty single since “Learning to Fly,” except it goes nowhere melodically. It is meh but I don’t hate it.

• Jackpot, gang! Look at the title of this new album from psychedelic druggie dorks King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, it’s going to take over half the space for this column, and for that I thank it! Ready to spend eight minutes reading the title? OK, it’s: Petrodragonic Apocalypse; Or, Dawn Of Eternal Night: An Annihilation Of Planet Earth And The Beginning Of Merciless Damnation! That leaves us about 10 words left to talk about how the bald Needle Drop music reviewer dude on YouTube thought the title track “dragged a little bit” at the end, which is wrong, as always. If you like old Black Sabbath, that’s what it sounds like, not their usual early Pink Floyd/Flaming Lips nonsense. Never pay attention to Needle Drop, is the moral to this story.

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).

Cache, Cache (self-released)

Minneapolis, Minnesota, is from where this five-piece band originates; their aim, if I’m translating their one-sheet correctly, is making mud-metal fun, which is far from the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard, not that the Melvins are slouches in that regard (they did record a metal version of “Dies Irae,” the opening theme to The Shining, once, never forget). This is the band’s debut EP, and whoa, I really like this already, at kickoff song “El Rudo,” a stoner-metal tune that’s got more personality in it than Queens Of The Stone Age have ever exhibited. It’s a cross between High On Fire on the instrumental end and Isis on the vocal side, mid-tempo NWOBHM stuff but not with anything annoying going on. That’s right, kids, you could do much, much worse than this, and as far as injecting a little fun, go check out “Forever in Retrograde” and its roots-punk-meets-black-metal fierceness. If your little brother is getting bullied at school, this record could change his life. Big thumbs up. A+

Adekunle Gold, Tio Tequila (Def Jam Records)

This three-song teaser for an album to be released on Def Jam in July bills this fellow as a “master of Afropop,” which may or may not be all that accurate; to me it can often sound like a slightly inebriated Rik Rok, retrofitted with too much Auto-Tune, engaged in a search for the bubble-pop radio-matrix that loves shoving stuff like this into the ears of preteens. Don’t get me wrong, his CV is impeccable: He grew up in the city of Lagos in Nigeria, specifically the area that’s slated to become Eko City, a massive development designed to help in stopping the erosion of the city’s coastline (the breezy, shuffley “Omo Eko” pays homage to the project). An established hit has already made the rounds, “Party No Dey Stop,” an irresistibly sweet but unabashedly Afrobeat-driven joint that’s further prettified by the presence of guest chanteuse Zinoleesky’s subtle soprano. A great summer jam for sure. A+

Playlist

• June 9 is our next CD-release-jubilee Friday, and there will be new albums released on that day, by the shipload, see the ship heading to the dock right now, filled from the “aft to the stern” with new albums! Thankfully the ship didn’t encounter an iceberg or a 100-foot tidal wave on its way to the dock, because someone would be making a movie about it right now, meaning we’d have to be subjected to more “acting” from Ryan Reynolds and the other three or four elite actors who are the only ones who get invited to make blockbuster movies these days, you know? What’s that? Yes, you’re right, I’m just jealous of play-to-the-back-of-the-theater hacks like Ryan Reynolds, and that’s why I became an art critic, just so I could work off my soul-deep envy, because if there’s anything I could get out of this life, it would be the starring role in a Paul Blart, Mall Cop: Who Blarted alongside Kristen Schaal or some other insanely gifted artiste lady. Satisfied? Yes, I became a rock critic because I wanted to hurl insults at bands and artistes who deserve much better treatment, and speaking of that, let’s go ruin the day for fans of Godflesh, whose new LP, Purge, is just coming out right now! Wait a second, I like this band, if I recall correctly, let me go look. Right, they’re not God Lives Underwater, a band I like, and they’re not Godsmack, a band I never really cared about because they were a local band that got a big record contract while my band was struggling to get a European record contract, so yes, I’m envious of them. While all this is going on, Godflesh rules, if you like stuff like Crowbar or Melvins, devastatingly heavy stuff. The new “single,” for lack of a better word, is “Nero,” comprising a nasty, caterwauling riff that evokes slow-motion math metal or emo. I’ll stamp this as 90 percent awesome and we can proceed with the rest of this.

• So King Krule is the stage name of an Englishman named Archy Ivan Marshall whose trip is indie, jazz fusion, hip-hop and other genres. His new album is Space Heavy, and the whole record is on YouTube if you want it and can find a YouTube-to-MP3 converter that won’t turn your computer into a doorstop. One of the tunes is “Seaforth,” a sunny but miserable little ditty that sounds like really sad Gorillaz or Crash Test Dummies, depending on how old you are. It’s got this feather-light half-unplugged guitar part that seems to go on forever and the whole thing is about as interesting as a potato-baking contest, so let’s drop this business and go on to something else, that’d be great.

• Like King Krule, Youth Lagoon is another pseudonym occasionally deployed by a millennial with a jones for bad indie rock, but you know what was great about today? My commute to the office was all green lights for once, and YouTube hasn’t been making me watch a bunch of Liberty Mutual commercials, they’re just letting these dumb songs play without making me wait, hence I’m receptive to this person’s music for the moment, so I’m listening to “Idaho Alien,” the new single from his forthcoming album Heaven Is A Junkyard. Maybe it’s owed to the fact that I hated that King Krule tune, but this one’s good overall, the dude sings kind of like Kim Carnes before she wrecked her voice. Ha ha, this guy could have at least tried not to make it so obvious that all the up-votes and comments are from the same bot farm, jeez Louise.

• We’ll close with The Boo Radleys, whose new album, Eight, includes the song “Seeker,” which sounds like Maroon 5 trying to do ska, and no, I can’t imagine what could be worse than that, for the record. — Eric W. Saeger

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).