Author: Eric Saeger

Carrier, Rhythm Immortal (Modern Love Records)

Once in a while I do check in on the bleeding edge, at least as Brooklyn, N.Y.,’s influenceratti define it, and as of this afternoon anyway, this is the bee’s knees, according to one of the loquacious scribes at Pitchfork Media. Carrier is the nom-de-DJ of Brussels, Belgium-based producer Guy Brewer, who was previously half of the drum ’n’ bass duo Commix, whose glitchy, trippy Burial-adjacent beats grabbed the attention of, well, Burial himself, who remixed one of their songs (see how all this works?). Anyway, at some point Brewer looked around the room he was DJing at and suddenly decided that drum ’n’ bass is crap and that he needed to try something else, namely this collection of thoughtful, monochrome, often sparse compositions you’d picture serving as background at a spotlessly scrubbed art museum full of postmodern sculptures and junk like that. Clicks and thumps and splashes and such appear and reverberate at random, threatening to break into IDM coherence, but that never happens, which isn’t to say that it’s completely scattershot or at all unlistenable, more that the beats tend to settle into grooves that bespeak Aphex Twin nicking Portishead or somesuch. It’s worth knowing about, sure. B —Eric W. Saeger

Lip Cream, Kill Ugly Pop [Reissue] (Relapse Records)

From their inception in 1984 to their breakup in 1990, this crew was one of Japan’s most important punk bands, or so I’m told by my buddy at Relapse Records. As with most U.S.-based underground acts of that era, their elite pedigree is, or at least was until just now, mostly based on anecdotal evidence, tales told by curiosity-seeking mosh-pit scamps who risked their lives smashing into anyone, anytime, anyplace. In those days, of course, there was no handy digital proof that bands like this even existed outside of American cities, so, sure, I was game to investigate this. It’s hardcore all right, of a Black Flag bent, but these guys wore their influences on their sleeves: This 1986 record, considered to be their seminal one, gets right down to cheeky business with opening song “Shangri-La,” ripping off Black Sabbath’s “The Mob Rules” as if they had written permission to do so. “Fight In The Street” comes after that, sounding more like mid-career Metallica than Metallica did at the time. The quality of sound here is pretty remarkable, it’s honestly as much an ’80s thrash-metal album as a punk one. A+ —Eric W. Saeger

_PLAYLIST

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• It’s November, and look there, a bunch of new albums, all waiting to be released on Friday, Nov. 7, but what a lot of people have asked me about, of course, is the upcoming tour by Canadian prog-rock band Rush! They have a new drummer now, Anika Nilles, replacing the completely irreplaceable Neil Peart, who, after spending years redefining the art of hard rock drumming, passed away in 2020. What he did was monumental really; unlike more prog-oriented drummers like ELP’s Carl Palmer and Yes’s Bill Bruford, Peart had to make a lot of noise on the drum kit, which he did, but his noises were next-level, full of odd little tricks that were too clever to be written off as mere gimmicks. Anyway, like many Rush fans (not that I’m a card-carrying Rush fanatic; I really only like their album A Farewell To Kings and the more self-indulgent half of Hemispheres), I wanted to see what Nilles has done before. She arrived on the scene in the early 2010s through a series of videos posted to YouTube, which is where I found her playing along to her first album, Pikalar, the camera fixed solely on her while her backing band played along unseen, revealing that she was intent on parlaying her drumming work (and cachet as an educator specializing in pop music) into some sort of big gig. Joining Rush is certainly that, and I’m genuinely happy for her, and even more so for Rush’s fans (although ticket prices for this “reunion tour” — which is far from that, given that surviving members Alex Lifeson and Geddy Lee are best friends who hang out constantly — are monstrous, as I talked about last week), especially the ones who never got to see them stand around play in their heyday. On the other hand, it does feel to me like something of a money grab by the original members. Why? Not just because of the ticket prices, which they could have had some say in capping, but — and I’m well aware that this will sound snobbish — because Nilles is an above-average rock drummer who seems to have a side fetish for Return To Forever-style fusion, i.e, she isn’t a lifelong prog/jazz drummer. Yeah, it bothers me that Lifeson and Lee didn’t grab someone like Weather Report’s Peter Erskine (who, at 71, is actually younger than the Rush guys) or Will Kennedy of the Yellowjackets. But hey man, that’s just me; if you have that much spare cash, you do you, so let’s put aside all that awfulness and talk about the new Mountain Goats album, Through This Fire Across From Peter Balkan! The Goats are still led by singer-songwriter John Darnielle, of course; the new single, “Only One Way,” sounds like Pavement re-doing Elton John’s 1976 hit “Don’t Go Breakin’ My Heart,” but it’s all good, no one under the age of 40 knows Elton John ever existed anyway.

• I’ve never liked Portugal. The Man, but maybe “Angoon,” the single from their new album, SHISH, will convert me, you never know. Hmm, Of Montreal-style singing, some noise-pop edge to it, weren’t the Aughts a great time to be alive, guys?

• Welsh-Australian indie-waif Stella Donnelly has a good one here, the single “Feel It Change,” from her new album, Love And Fortune! Nice, gentle, mildly angry despite its 1960s pop vibe, it’s, you know, nice.

• And finally it’s former Kurt Vile cohort Steve Gunn, with a bunch of new mope-folk tunes on his latest album, Daylight Daylight! “Nearly There” is of course strummy and depressing, perfect for staring at your bad date’s fish tank while you think of an excuse to leave. —Eric W. Saeger

Featured Photo: Carrier, Rhythm Immortal and Lip Cream, Kill Ugly Pop

Mitski, The Land: The Live Album (Dead Oceans Records)

I’ve meant to delve into the work of this Japanese-American singer for a long time and always dreaded it. She’s been prime Pitchfork-bait for years now, targeting bougie audiences with random two-minute outbursts of overly artsy, poorly sung existentialism, often coming off like a cross between Ani DiFranco and Yoko Ono but more depressing. She does have her moments; in 2014 she provided evidence that she’s not a Martian with “Townie,” which, given its ultra-distorted Big Black guitar sound and noise-pop hook, is probably the only Mitski song I’d ever add to a Spotify list. That said, she’s happier in a live setting, which immediately lends these versions more attractiveness than their studio counterparts, but, as many people have commented — including on the r/Mitski subreddit — the most irritating thing about this lady is her fans. They’re “woke” of course, which isn’t cause for any grown-up to downright hate them, but these people way overdo it and behave in the meantime like they’ve never heard a verse of poetry in their lives. The rapturous weirdness starts right at the beginning of this set: “Everyone” is a decent-enough Patsy Cline-nicking tune, but suddenly, five seconds in, the crowd is going absolutely bonkers, making like pre-teens flipping out over Hannah Montana materializing in a latex tutu. I’m giving it an “A” grade only because I must be missing what her cult sees so vividly, but by the time you’re reading this I’ve assuredly dropped it to a B-, tops. A

Machine Gun Kelly, “home bittersweet home” / “no cell phones in rehab” (Interscope Records)

This isn’t meant to serve as a wildly instructive explainer for Gen Z kids, who’ve already made up their minds as to whether or not this dangerously gifted performer is worth a minute of their time, more of a gentle urging to older/less plugged-in folks who long ago abandoned figuring out which “new” rock stars they should be investigating in current_era. Normies know him as “Mrs. Megan Fox,” the kids know him as “mgk”; either way he’s a giant of today’s mashup-obsessed pop zeitgeist, especially after his last album, the August-released lost americana, which repackaged old melodies, from The Who’s “Baba O’Reilly” to Alice Deejay’s 1999 Eurodance hit “Better Off Alone,” all done seemingly in an effort to tell Zillennials that they have a lot of catching up to do while simultaneously celebrating the generation’s trademark “vulnerable sincerity.” Anyway, these two just-released songs, along with one or three others, were left off mgk’s 2000 LP Tickets to My Downfall, a landmark record that bridged the gap between commercial hip-hop and power pop (which I still refer to as “emo,” because it’s my column). Like a fusion of Bruno Mars and Dashboard Confessional, these tunes would have been just as successful as the album’s hits, proving that this guy’s instincts in developing the formula were dead right. He, or, more likely, some team he’s got in place, could write this stuff in their sleep. A+

_PLAYLIST

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• Halloween is this Friday, Oct. 31, and since it’s a Friday there will be new CDs for you people to buy and cherish and keep under your car seat when you get sick of them. But first, I know I promised to leave the house and investigate the city’s music scene in more depth than I did a few weeks ago, but I honestly haven’t had the time. I plan to, though, because it’s fun to put a “press” identification card in the band of my fedora and watch local musicians squirm as I ask them why they didn’t respond to my last five emails, but there’s been Other Stuff to do. Today I spent a few hours investigating what’s happening in the Billboard magazine space, which is where you go if you want to find out what pop songs the top echelon of the music industry really really wants your grade-school children listening to on their TikToks and MySpaces, so that the rich dudes at the top can all dive into swimming pools full of cash, like Scrooge McDuck, all for rubber-stamping the release of albums that basically sound exactly like Britney Spears did during the Aughts but with more deep house and random world music sounds. A recent darling of the corporate-dance-pop crowd is Kali Uchis, a Latin techno singer who made Billboard’s cover recently; she’s been fighting in the trenches for a few years now and finally hit on the right formula with her fifth album, Sincerely, which features a mix of ’70s radio pop, reggaeton and (mostly) Lana Del Rey-style yacht-techno. What I heard of the LP was quite nice, but the tunes sounded too similar to each other, which is all too common nowadays. Of course, it’s understandable that the Scrooge McDucks of the music business don’t want to take chances on artists; as Shirley Manson of Garbage said in a viral onstage rant last month, the music business is becoming completely unsustainable, with everyone but musicians making any money. “The average musician makes $12 a month on Spotify,” she said, warning that a musicians union is long overdue. “This is an alarm call for all the young generations of musicians who are in our wake, and who we feel duty-bound to speak up for because there’s nobody speaking up for them.” Good on her, but gone equally viral recently is the backlash to Canadian band Rush’s handlers charging ridiculously high prices for tickets to their 2026 reunion tour’s shows (tickets for their Sept. 12 show at TD Garden currently range from $500 to $4,000). What does it all mean? It means that fans have to start supporting smaller bands, like for instance U.K.-based grunge-punkers Witch Fever, whose fast-approaching new album Fever Eaten is a fascinating study in messy loud-quiet-loud-ness! Leadoff single “Safe” is a good one, combining a New Order-ish rubber-band bass line, early Cure desolation and no-wave singing, it’s seriously great.

• In other non-stupid news, Florence + the Machine, aka this generation’s Siouxsie, is back, with an album titled Everybody Scream! The title track is actually kind of cringey, meant as a crowd-yell-along thing; hopefully the rest of the album is a lot better.

• It’s been a while, as in a month or whatever, so it is time for a new Guided by Voices album, because bandleader Robert Pollard is addicted to making albums! Thick Rich And Delicious is their second one this year and features “(You Can’t Go Back To) Oxford Talawanda,” a rugged but forgettable attempt at mid-tempo Brit-punk.

• To close out the week let’s discuss Iconoclasts, the new full-length from Swedish goth singer Anna von Hausswolff, who enjoys playing the pipe organ! “Stardust” is really neat, a cross between Massive Attack and Bjork in tribal mode.

Featured Photo: Mitski, The Land: The Live Album and Machine Gun Kelly, “home bittersweet home” / “no cell phones in rehab”

Tortoise, “Layered Presence” (Nonesuch Records)

This is the lead single from this all-instrumental Chicago band’s new album, Touch; there was more of it available for me to review, but it’d be dishonest of me to pretend I wanted to hear it, given that these guys have never made me feel anything other than slightly intimidated that I’ve never gotten the point of their trip, which is invariably described by (strictly hipster) tastemakers as “post-rock with jazz influences.” This meandering but oft-dissonant tune rates the same as anything else I’ve ever heard from them: It got on my nerves, not because the musicians aren’t any good; they are, but not to the point that I think of Tortoise as anything more relevant than a fashion statement that’s way past its expiration date. They pay a lot of lip service to free jazz, so much so that some of their fans literally name-check Ornette Coleman when describing them, but — and this may owe more to production limitations than their creativity — there are always annoying sounds in their tunes, to put it simply. I mean, experimentation and improvisation are fine, but — and this is just my impression, of course — this is more like a Flaming Lips-flavored Pelican: every move was planned, and they should just grow up and hire a singer. But you do you, as always. C —Eric W. Saeger

Kashena Sampson, Ghost of Me (self released)

It was refreshing to see this Nashville folk-rocker opening the one-sheet press announcement for this, her third album, by admitting that the record is about her frustration at not being where she wants to be in her music career, to wit: “Besides being a musician, I have also been a bartender at a music venue for the past 10 years to pay my bills. It’s a great job, but there are some nights that feel like my heart is breaking, watching others live out the exact dream I’m still chasing, night after night.” That’s some rare honesty there, a sentiment many can relate to in our golden age of show biz nepotism, when impossibly high paywalls prevent worthy artists from achieving mainstream success. Now, she did recruit Jon Estes to produce the record (he’s worked with Bela Fleck, Abigail Washburn and many other well-knowns), and he dragged some pretty dramatic performances out of her, so much so that she probably needs her resumé overhauled: In the past, wags (including a Rolling Stone writer) described her as a ’70s radio-folkie, but her vocal sound here evokes Grace Slick, Florence Welch — dare I say an older version of Chappell Roan — mostly in from-the-mountaintop mode. She’s shooting for something of a goth image, but I’d advise her to think about some image redefinition; she’s pretty close to the right formula, I’d say. A+ —Eric W. Saeger

_PLAYLIST

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• Oct. 24 is the first new-album Friday after my birthday, so if you forgot to do something special for my birthday on the 21st, like leave a microwaved joke on my Facebook about my being older than your grandmother or whatever (do people even bother sending birthday cards anymore, when they can just post something completely vacuous on social media, we really need to change that), you could order one of my books from any bookstore or just send me money, either thing is fine, I thank you in advance for your kind indulgence. Now, as important as it is, we aren’t here to talk about my birthday, we are gathered here today to talk about albums, and I’ll tell you folks, this week’s slate’s getting filled up with new ones, all competing for your holiday dollars, if you have any! Why, just look at this, we were just making fun of talking about this fellow last week, in the context of Chrissie Hynde saying she hates his music, one Mr. Bon Jovi, who of course rose to fame in the 1980s for looking like Farrah Fawcett or whatever his appeal was (mostly the press just talked about his hair), since his music was pretty awful, but then legendary hair-metal songwriter Desmond Child entered the picture and wrote songs for him, like “Livin’ On A Prayer” and such, and then he left the picture, and the Jovis tried to re-capture the magic, but instead went back to their tradition of writing bad music, starting with the awful ballad “Bed Of Roses” and the hilariously contrived single “It’s My Life,” which all of us music critics secretly refer to as “Just Pretend Desmond Child Wrote This Song And Give Us your Money, That’d Be Great” when we’re holding our secret meetings about controlling what music all you people have to listen to on the radio and Spotify. Whatever, who cares, the new album is titled Forever, same as their last album, but this is the “Legendary Edition,” spotlighting the push single “Legendary,” which stole the hook from Whitney Houston’s “Greatest Love of All” and had a mediocre run on Billboard’s Adult Contemporary chart, mostly by accident, given that people who are old enough to be able to name one Bon Jovi song assumed it would be awesome, but it wasn’t, because Desmond Child had nothing to do with the album, and now you’re armed with all the information you need to make a buying decision about this completely unnecessary record (there’ll be a lot of such albums coming out as holiday gift-buying season draws closer), you’re welcome.

• As you all surely know, alt-country folkie Brandi Carlile bestowed upon humanity the ballad-ish single “The Story,” a romantic dirge that was about as fun as getting your four-wheeler stuck in a swamp, and that’s actually what the song sounds like as far as I’m concerned, but many people like it because they think it’s as epic as “What’s Up” by Four Non Blondes for some reason. Returning To Myself is her new album; the title track is a yodely unplugged strum-a-thon that’s pretty unremarkable until the 12-string guitar kicks in, after which it’s pretty decent-ish.

• Demi Lovato rose to stardom after appearing on Barney & Friends and then some Disney Channel things and now she’s just massively famous for totally sounding like Kesha. The title track from her newest LP, It’s Not That Deep, is fine by me, an Aughts-era house track that Tiesto wouldn’t hate at all.

• Finally it’s Boston alt-rock legends The Lemonheads, led by Evan Dando, who has been name-checked in a whole bunch of popular songs, including “Jane” by Barenaked Ladies. “In The Margin,” the lead single from the band’s new album, Love Chart, is a return to their nerdy, low-key, mumbley Ramones-twee roots, it’s pretty cool. —Eric W. Saeger

Featured Photo: Tortoise, “Layered Presence” (Nonesuch Records) & Kashena Sampson, Ghost of Me (self released)

Patricia Brennan, Of The Near And Far (Pyroclastic Records)

The only reason you don’t see a lot of vibraphone-jazz reviews in this space is that I don’t receive many of them from the coffee-pounding public relations people who promote jazz albums. This one’s important: Mexican-born Brennan is one of the best around; she’s played with Yo Yo Ma, The Philadelphia Orchestra and Vijay Iyer for starters, not to mention all the awards she’s won, including Jazz Album of the Year and Vibraphonist of the Year in Downbeat’s 2024 Critics Poll. But wait, what are we even talking about, you ask, isn’t a vibraphone the same thing as a xylophone? No, xylophones have wooden bars, whereas vibraphones have metal bars that produce a warmer, more sustained sound, but either instrument would seem an odd choice for an astronomy nerd who grew up listening to Zeppelin and Radiohead until you knew that Afro-Cuban musical traditions and the sounds of Mexican marimba bands were vying for her attention all the while. This record, as everyone from NPR to Stereogum expected, is a masterstroke, a worthy successor to 2024’s Breaking Stretch; like the album cover, it’s an exercise in beautifully bizarre fractals (opener “Antlia”), frightwig Latin-jazz (Andromeda”) and experimental ambient (“Lyra”). Transcendental stuff for sound explorers. A+

Holy Wars, “Metamorphosis” (Rise Records)

This industrial-indie single came to my attention courtesy of (you should be able to guess by now) friend-of-the-Hippo Dan Szczesny, whose love for badass chick-rock is inexplicable but fierce; this Los Angeles boy-girl duo was his weekly Favorite Band Of All Time a week or so ago, and the singer is now pen pals with Dan’s kid. The tune follows their more recent single, “Crucify,” which for me immediately evoked a bolder, more over-the-top version of another L.A. boy-girl duo, Collide, who entranced me — good lord — 20 years ago, with their Tool-meets-synthpop vibe. The punchline here is that the link Dan sent for “Metamorphosis” was on a delay, and I was literally one of the first people to hear it, along with their most diehard fans and however many PR bots were in attendance (I know how weird that sounds, but it’s the honest truth; I literally clicked the link three minutes before the video premiered). The recipe’s been done, but the song’s quite good; think A Perfect Circle but more sharply focused and with more Nine Inch Nails menace (in other words Poppy, i.e. Evanescence jamming with Rammstein), or, more accurately, Collide after downing a flask of 28 Days Later serum. It goes hard, sure. A

_PLAYLIST

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• Oct. 17 is the next Friday-load of albums from established rock stars and such, but there are local bands and artists that could always use more attention, so let’s turn to that first! I had planned to visit another local club in order to spout more run-on sentences in support of the local scene, but it didn’t happen this week, because I’ve been so busy with other stuff I’ve barely even checked my rapidly dying Twitter in a month. OK, I’m being serious, I do want to talk more about local bands in this space, like my plan was to see what’s happening at The Wild Rover Pub, which, I hear from Ross The Mandolin Player from local Irish-folk-rock band Rebel Collective, people are pretty excited about. But I didn’t; instead I waited for the universe to send me local stuff to talk about so I wouldn’t have to stop re-binge-watching Alien: Earth and leave the house, and sure enough it did. Here it is: You people know how supportive I’ve been of hilariously underrated Americana-rocker Kristian Montgomery for years now, right? Well, believe it or not, he just racked up a bunch of first-round nominations for actual national Grammy awards, including the Best Rock Album Grammy for his newest full-length, Prophets Of The Apocalypse. Naturally, we all wish Kris the best of luck competing against Taylor Swift and whatever’s left of the Beatles and whatever other nobodies put out records this year, and if he does win, Petunia and I will be attending the afterparty at Snoop Dogg’s apartment, and I will demand a huge bowl of all-purple Skittle-flavored gummies from Snoop’s victory garden. Mind you, competition for that Best Rock Album Grammy will be fierce, because guess who’s got one coming out this week, none other than Chrissie Hynde, of The Pretenders! Titled Duets Special, the record features (spoiler) a bunch of duets with famous rockers, for instance a version of Billy Paul’s 1972 radio hit “Me & Mrs. Jones,” which Chrissie sings with k.d. lang. Spoiler, k.d. sings the really high parts, because she is a more awesome singer, although Chrissie is more awesome at making fun of bands she hates, like Bon Jovi and Duran Duran, no one can top her, don’t even bother trying.

• Speaking of awesome, Icelandic indie band Of Monsters and Men release their new album, All Is Love And Pain In The Mouse Parade, this week! If you’re like most people, you became aware of their awesomeness by way of hearing one of their better songs on TV soundtracks, like the time on Sweet Tooth when their totally killer track “Dirty Paws” was playing while the kid was turning into a goat or whatever the point of that show was. OK, you can already listen to the whole LP on YouTube; I just picked the tune “Dream Team” at random, and it is of course crazy-cool, a cross between M83 and God Lives Underwater, full of surprising electro and post-indie twists and turns. Those guys still haven’t messed up yet.

• Boz Scaggs is responsible for some of the worst cab-driver-radio songs of the ’70s, like “Lowdown” and “Lido Shuffle,” but maybe his new album, Detour, has something good on it, who even knows anymore. Yes, “I’ll Be Long Gone” is a strummy mellow jazz-pop ballad, perfect for watching potato-baking contests on ESPN.

• We’ll call it a column with Deadbeat, the new album from Australian indie dude Kevin Parker, aka Tame Impala. New single “Loser” is a Jamie Liddell/Gorillaz-infused joint that really brings the mellow electro-funk, if that’s your jam (it isn’t mine).

Featured Photo: Patricia Brennan, Of The Near And Far album cover and Holy Wars, “Metamorphosis” album cover

Air, The Virgin Suicides Redux (TH Productions)

I was never a fan of this French space-rock duo or space-rock in general, but this remix of their 1999 album The Virgin Suicides is more like it, mostly because it’s an all-analog affair that reveals the band as the outlet-mall-ambient organism that it is much more so than the original did. They knew the 1999 record wasn’t representative (or useful, let’s just say it) because it was made on a very low budget. “It was during the first era of digital home studio equipment,” the band recently said, now that it’s safe to admit it, “and the sound is very metallic and cold. We’ve always regretted that about the way it sounds.” Well, hear hear, I completely understand it now after hearing this reupholstered version: They wanted it to sound like Dark Side Of The Moon-era Pink Floyd, except, you know, edgier. Or something. No, seriously, the non-cheese-drenched parts are quite indica-stoner-listenable, whereas the over-modulated Flaming Lips parts are still intact, all of which means it’s actually more relevant now than when it first came out. The spaceship sounds and This Island Earth robo-bursts are still idiotic, but Wayne Coyne wouldn’t be around today if it weren’t for that nonsense, put it that way. B-

Magic Wands, Cascades (Metropolis Records)

Ah, a nice easy Halloween-apropos dream-pop/goth record from Metropolis Records. This one features a Los Angeles-based boy-girl duo, Chris and Dexy Valentine, who first surfaced in 2012 with Aloha Moon, the title track of which sounded like a shoegaze band trying Sadé-yacht-pop on for size, while the rest sounded like a Chex Mix of Asteroids Galaxy Tour, Lana Del Rey and Lola Falana. This one stays in that zone but goes harder, starting with “Across The Water,” which borrows the buzzy guitar drone from Wire’s “It’s A Boy” to good brain-zapping effect, after which “Armor” does the obligato Joy Division-meets-Bauhaus thing (translation: there’s a lot of reverb, angst and intentionally cheesy production values; “Hide” uses a similar sewing pattern). “Albatross” is pure shoegaze, sounding like Raveonettes trying to sound really forlorn; “Moonshadow” is the best on board if you like sexy vampires riding motorcycles (and who doesn’t). This is definitely worth any goth’s while. A-

_PLAYLIST

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• Sure and begorrah or whatever, this Friday is another Friday, Oct. 10, meaning there will be new albums coming out that day, and we will talk about them in this space, but as long as we’re talking about albums while speaking with Irish accents, I would like to discuss very quickly an album that is not coming out on Friday, because it isn’t done yet! This segues magnificently into my new sub-series for this column, tentatively titled “Eric Actually Leaves The House To Find Nightlife In Manchester NH,” which I did once again on Saturday, Sept. 28, to chill with the homies at the Shaskeen Pub on Elm Street! Yes, if you can even understand my words through this thick Irish brogue, that date was the Pub’s 20th Anniversary celebration, so I showed up at midnight to meet Ross The Mandolin Player from the Irish folk/rock band Rebel Collective, whose members live up north a bit, but not as ungodly far as Berlin or Montreal, I forget where exactly. Anyway, they have recorded all the tracks for their upcoming new album, but haven’t mixed it yet. I’m sure it will be awesome; they are influenced by Flogging Molly, The Pogues and of course world music of a leprechaun bent, and it all went off quite well during this performance. FYI, they haven’t played any large conventions where people guzzle green absinthe lager or whatnot, but they have played their tin whistles and guitars and fiddles at the Highland Games, so that’s something to look forward to! Now, recall that I did ask you people where I should go after the Slam Free Or Die poetry event I attended the other week, and you naturally ignored my totally desperate pleas, but funnily enough, I, a confirmed unwelcome person from Mass., heard about the Shaskeen from a friend on Twitter who used to live in Manchester during the days when Pockets The Mastermind was the local king of hip-hop, so neener, I know your secrets now. In the meantime, while you wait for Rebel Collective’s awesome new album, you could always put away your kilt and taxi-driver cap and don your skinny jeans and chullo hat to go listen to Paw, the new album from indie-rock dude Avery Tucker, formerly half of Girlpool, whose awkward moonbat-twee tune “Chinatown” is still talked about among the 10 or 15 people worldwide who still remember it! Paw’s leadoff single, “Like I’m Young” is similarly moonbatty and minimalist, except for when Tucker starts singing increasingly loudly and then the whole mess descends into a slow-motion ’90s-grunge Silkworm-ish skronk-a-thon. It’s OK!

• In April, Mass Appeal Records announced a set of seven albums coming this year from such rap artists as Ghostface Killah, Raekwon, and Nas, the latter of whom helped out on the forthcoming new one from Mobb Deep, Infinite. Includes some rhymes from Prodigy, who died in 2017; “Easy Bruh” is eerie, trippy and of course badass, just like all hardcore hip-hop that appeals to fans who prefer groups whose logos are rendered in Spinal Tap font.

• The Wytches is a raw, rattley post-punk band from England that kind of reminds me of The Horrors when they were good. Talking Machine, their new album, features a tune called “Black Ice” that’s loud and messy in a Hives kind of way but less spazzy and more mid-tempo; you’ll probably like it if you like Brian Jonestown Massacre and that kind of thing.

• And lastly we have to pay attention to veteran emo band Yellowcard, whose new album Better Days sounds exactly like Blink-182 and Lit and Good Charlotte and all the rest of them, isn’t art amazing?

Featured Photo: Shiner, BELIEVEYOUME (Spartan Records) & Patrick Wolf, Better Or Worse [EP] (Appaport/Virgin Music)

Todd Herbert, Captain Hubs (TH Productions)

Herbert, an Evanston, Illinois-bred jazz saxophonist, has been a top-level performer out of New York City for many years now, serving as a member of the Freddie Hubbard Quintet, Jimmy Cobbs Legacy Band, and the Charles Earland Quartet, among others. As great as this album is, it does feel a little sparse all told, but only because Herbert’s only traditional-style cohort here is pianist David Hazeltine, whom I’ve talked about here now and then. The sax runs are gold for the most part, but the excitement, along with the sound levels, drops considerably when Herbert’s seemingly tireless workouts suddenly stop and Hazeltine steps in with his smoke-filled-room tinkling. I say this only to point out that this isn’t a whiz-bang sax-jazz album but a duo collaboration, which some would admittedly find wildly appealing. John Weber’s bass is flawless, as is Louis Hayes’s drumming, and the selections are good; the bombastic title track that opens the record was originally written for Hubbard and is a definite keeper. Wayne Shorter’s “Fee-Fi-Fo-Fum” and John Coltrane’s “Straight Street” are here, so it’s worth investigating, sure. A-

The Belair Lip Bombs, Again (Third Man Records)

Here we have the first Australian band to be picked up by Jack White’s Third Man Records label, and strangely enough it’s not the most amazing Australian band I’ve ever heard, not by a long shot. It’s a female-fronted indie band that makes the right noises, with their scratchy-raunchy ’90s-tinged guitar sound betraying a fetish for Big Black and things of that sort, but singer Maisie Everett’s voice rarely pushes past the tepid Sheryl Crow range that’s well into her comfort zone. I’m saying that the band’s noise level is up there with Amyl And The Sniffers, maybe even more aggressive than that, but Everett doesn’t quite fit in, save for when they try snoozy pub-pop oatmeal on for size (“Cinema”; “If You’ve Got The Time,” which includes an incidental heavy-ass Queens Of The Stone Age riff for no logical reason). “Hey You” reads like Au Revoir Simone, while we’re at it; I literally have no idea what these guys are trying to accomplish, to be honest. C

_PLAYLIST

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• Friday is Oct. 3, a day that will live in infamy because my sister was born that day (she’s a dog person and I’m a cat person, so Thanksgivings are super-hard and usually end in yelling and Facebook-unfriending until the next time). And speaking of unfriendings and harmless, mindless drama, look who’s got another album coming out, it’s none other than Taylor Swift, the subject of half the internet fights a few months ago, for really no good reason whatsoever! This one is called The Life Of A Showgirl, and it is produced by, you guessed it, ubiquitous Swedish pop-music-oligarch Max Martin, whom I’ve talked about before. He’s written, among other modern super-hits, Katy Perry’s “I Kissed a Girl,” Celine Dion’s “That’s the Way It Is,” Britney Spears’s “Baby One More Time” and TayTay’s “Shake It Off” and “Blank Space,” in other words he’s written the second-most No. 1 singles in history, behind only Paul McCartney, so if you want to write Facebook posts about how much modern music stinks, always be sure to blame it all on that dude. Along with Max, this album is co-produced by his producer-bro partner, Shellback, another overexposed Swede, so I know I am about to listen to something so unbelievably novel that I will explode, so here’s the title track, a diva ballad that sounds like Mariah Carey for a while and then she starts hitting high notes kind of like Celine Dion in yell mode. A lot of people will like this, because it is a single-ladies’ angst overload but not as intolerable as Adele.

• Rachael Yamagata is an adult alternative singing lady who hasn’t dented the U.S. charts since 2003, which means that I’ll probably like what she’s doing on her new album, Starlit Alchemy. Ugh, forget that, her voice is too breathy on the advance single, “Birds,” like a female Peabo Bryson, or Ani DiFranco trying not to be too annoying. It is a piano-driven ballad; I imagine you’ll probably see it on Good Morning America or whatnot and think “well that’s kind of pretty,” and then never think about it again.

• Sparks, a band we talked about a few months ago, is releasing an EP, titled MADDER! Funny story about Sparks, someone read my review of their last album, Mad, in this newspaper and sent me a private Facebook message asking me to write about a Sparks-related art project they were doing, and that was the only time I’d ever mentioned Sparks on Facebook. But then, oddly enough, I started getting spammed by Facebook about Sparks’ Sept. 11 show at Boston’s Berklee Performance Center, meaning Facebook is reading people’s private messages in order to spam them. Isn’t that disgusting, but anyway, the new single is “Porcupine,” a really dumb thing that sounds like Devo trying to be elevator music, go hear it for yourself.

• Lastly and somewhat apropos for early Halloween, Canadian alt-folk/country band The Deep Dark Woods releases their 11th album, The Circle Remains, this Friday! They are from Saskatoon, the biggest city in Saskatchewan, whose closest U.S. city is Portal, North Dakota, all of which means that it’s basically like living on Pluto except it’s much colder. Saskatchewan, which means “Great, how did we end up here anyway” in Native Canadian, doesn’t field a professional hockey team, so they root for the Edmonton Oilers, who have lost the last two Stanley Cup Finals series in a row, which is very sad, so I anticipate that this album will be full of sad songs from these Plutonians, whose team cannot win the Stanley Cup, let’s go listen to some of their mournful wailing on kickoff single “The Circle Remains Unbroken.” So yeah, it’s droopy and soft and vaguely funereal but not really sad, with slow-strummed acoustic guitar and a vintage-sounding organ doing annoying things. The singer sounds like Burl Ives, if that does it for you.

Featured Photo: Shiner, BELIEVEYOUME (Spartan Records) & Patrick Wolf, Better Or Worse [EP] (Appaport/Virgin Music)