Author: Eric Saeger

Friendly Rich, The Birds of Marsville (We Are Busy Bodies Records)

It’s not often that I mumble “Oh shut up” at a record, but the spoken introduction to the first of these two 18-minute experimental-cabaret tracks had me doing that. Once the babbling (mostly chatter about how he’s — Rich Marsella — chasing a Ph.D. in musicology and how bizarre his music is, etc.) finally stops, the tuneage reveals itself to be something the steampunk crowd will go wild over. I’ll make it even easier: This guy is the Captain Beefheart of steampunk, and I won’t be surprised in the least if I happen upon him someday at some nerd convention and get mad at myself for not remembering how on Earth I first heard of him. Contents: Calliope (you know, the mechanical organ stuff you hear on a merry-go-round), tempos changing with no rhyme or reason, Hammer horror frightwig soundtracking, spastic Bride Of Chucky ballistics, bell-and-whistle stuff out of Monty Python, you get the idea. He’s gathering a following, fair warning. B

Still in Love, Recovery Language (Church Road Records)

Always cracks me up to be presented with an informational one-sheet from a hardcore punk or extreme-metal band, and when it gets to the stuff about the musical messaging, the verbiage suddenly starts looking like an ad for a yoga retreat. In this case, I’m informed their new album “delves into themes of personal struggle, resilience, and emotional catharsis, offering a sonic journey through the complexities of the human experience,” all of which is, I suppose, more elegant than just writing “GRAHHH” in 52-point font, which would be more succinct. Either way, yes, more of this please. The band is something of a supergroup, composed of members of the biggest (for want of a better word) hardcore bands stomping stages and breaking stuff in the U.K., and boy are they out to break stuff. Two-minute songs that aren’t speed races, no gimmicky screamo yowling, no nonsense, and the guitar sound is absolutely filthy. A+

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A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• Wuh-oh, frantic fam, the new albums of Aug. 15 are afoot (and I assume that’s what most of them are going to smell like when I go check them out in a minute), but in the meantime I’m sure that parenthetical segue will only serve further to convince my small platoon of haters (they’re out there, folks, and I mean that in more ways than one) that the only music I actually like is made by noise bands from Boise, Idaho. As someone once said to me, “Just what the world needs, a music column written by someone who hates music,” after I’d mentioned that I thought AC/DC has been hilariously overrated since Day 1 (obviously your mileage may vary, but I don’t really want to know about it), but either way, that’s not part of my actual mission statement. I don’t view this column as a platform for me to change people’s minds but instead to find and promote the occasional artist/band I find worthy or interesting. This isn’t a Nylon column written by a 23-year-old intern who lives for getting free CDs from the big record companies; if I think something’s dumb, I can say so, and in the meantime, sending me a Facebook message in ALL CAPS that’s basically the music-related equivalent of “Maybe if you weren’t such a poopyhead you’d appreciate the exotic, tantalizing flavor of a freshly made peanut butter and guacamole sandwich” isn’t going to change my mind any more than my strapping you into a chair and forcing you to listen to Kiss albums is going to make the lights come on in your attic. OK, with that completely unaccomplished, let’s turn our attention to this week’s slate of decent things and peanut butter and guacamole sandwiches, and there’s tons of ’em, so let’s start with the big one, Maroon 5’s Love Is Like! Ha ha, I totally changed my mind about Maroon 5 and love them now ever since the other week, when they put that AI CEO guy in an old pickle by shining the Kiss Cam on him and his “Chief People Officer” lady friend while their spouses waited for them to finish “working late,” wasn’t that the stupidest — oops, wait, someone in my earphone just informed me that that wasn’t Maroon 5, it was Coldplay, my bad, doesn’t Andy Grammer sing for both those bands anyway, nothing to see here! Whatever, the new single, “Priceless” is a bootylicious yacht-hip-hop tune featuring Lisa Manoban from the South Korean girl group Blackpink, who does a fantastic job sounding exactly like Kesha, but wait, there’s more, OK actually there isn’t.

• Recently divorced nepo baby Chance the Rapper shows he can still rhyme in half-speed-reggae-triplet-rhythm just like everyone else on the planet on the title track from his second full-length album, Star Line! His fans are hoping this LP is a lot better than The Big Day; the tune is pretty edgy but there are so many people who can’t wait to diss the album he probably should have just had Lil Wayne guest-rap on the whole thing or at least just stuck to mixtapes.

• I’ve gushed over bluegrass/Americana artist Molly Tuttle before; she’s won awards for her “clawhammer” guitar-picking style and for being awesome in general. However, the single “That’s Gonna Leave a Mark” from her new album So Long Little Miss Sunshine is pretty basic, sounding like a cross between Amy Grant and Reba McEntire, but if that sounds great to you, well, peanut butter and guacamole it is, you do you.

• Ending this week’s exercise on a positive note, synthpop/trip-hop singer Alison Goldfrapp releases her second LP as a solo artist, Flux! “Reverberotic” is an electropop single in the tradition of Britney Spears and ’90s-era Madonna, nothing too innovative but it’s, you know, nice.

Tulip Tiger, Da Meanz of Production (self-released)

This collection of (purportedly) throwback Aughts-era electronica comes to us from Los Angeles sound-artisan Augustus Watkins, who attempts here to combine big-beat (Chemical Brothers/Prodigy etc.) explosiveness with “genre-shaping soundtracks from films like The Matrix and Blade.“ Or so he’s said, but once you get past that mission statement, what this experiment proves is that the latter vibe tends to cancel out the former, which some might find appealing. I could be wrong of course (that did happen once in 1993 or 1995, I forget), especially given that these beats aren’t block-rockin’ (insert snobby production-nerd comment here); I’m saying that it’s probably better suited to movie soundtracking than dance floors. And that’s OK if you really liked the soundtrack to 1987’s The Running Man (there’s plenty of cheese afoot here, so if I were to concur with Watkins’ info-sheet and tell you people it’s 1998-reminiscent that’d be a disservice). No, my impression is that it’s variations on the first Terminator’s soundtrack with some Meat Beat Manifesto stuff in there. The producers of Stranger Things would probably love it. B

Maia Sharp, Tomboy (self-released)

This singer-songwriter, the daughter of Grammy-winning country songwriter Randy Sharp, is, like her dad, one of those largely unsung folks who’ve racked up a pretty near endless list of behind-the-scenes credits over the decades, having collaborated with such artists as Cher, Carole King and, interestingly enough under the circumstances, fellow note-Tetris-ing wonk Bonnie Raitt, who’s one of her influences. The title track of this one is quite ’70s-radio in its way, with some smooth intricate vocal work you’d rather listen to while relaxing than try singing along with, which is to say that it comes off as slightly academic but in a very colorful, deeply unworried manner, a la late-career Otis Redding and that sort of thing. “Counterintuation” is a clever one that’ll appeal to Norah Jones fans, and in fact there are hints of a Jones tune in there that I can’t think of at the moment, not that that detracts from the richness of the songwriting. The record ends on a hauntingly pretty note, a Joni Mitchell-ized version of U2’s “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For.” A

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A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• Oh, look, it’s the pile of new albums coming out on Aug. 8, isn’t that awesome, rock fans? We’ll get right into this week’s morass with a look at the new album from white-rapper-turned-Dashboard-Confessional-wannabe Machine Gun Kelly, he of someone-with-way-too-many-tattoos and unironically-being-from-Cleveland fame. No seriously, this fellow — whose real name is Colson Baker, how gangsta can you get — was all up in the hip-and-hop for his first few mixtapes; why, he even got into a war of diss tracks with his fellow white rapper, Eminem, a fact of which you’re well aware if you’re a fan of mindless displays-of-media-manipulating opportunism corporate hip-hop. That tedious little fake beef put our boy Colson on the map, but then one day someone in his totally gangsta hip-hop crew fell asleep while he was supposed to be keeping people out of the studio, and Blink-182 drummer Travis Barker snuck in and started randomly producing Colson’s Tickets To My Downfall album, and then Halsey let herself in to “help out” and so did emo-rapper Trippie Redd, and suddenly Colson was no longer just a bargain-bin Eminem but some guy with an idiotic amount of tattoos who couldn’t decide whether he wanted to be Weezer or the Killers. At that point, Transformers actress and terminally insecure person Megan Fox entered the picture: Hypnotized by Colson’s impressive number of tattoos and the fact that Colson’s career was launched by none other than insane sex felon Puff Daddy, Megan unwisely stretched their first date into a four-year relationship. Are you with me so far I don’t care either, so here we are with the new MGK album, Lost Americana, a record that I can’t hate because it has an awesome single: “Vampire Diaries” (no, I’m serious, I really like it, what is even happening in this world)! The tune is like what would happen if Amos Lee got married to Good Charlotte and didn’t do anything stupid. The video is chef’s-kiss too, guys.

• Ack, speaking of famous Maryland-born emo-cretins Good Charlotte, they’ve also got a new one coming out this Friday, Motel Du Cap! Now, it must be said that unlike Machine Gun Kelly, these guys are content to stick to their original genre, and their devotion to their craft has resulted in yet another classic emo song, “Rejects.” I’d say it’s their best ever, except for the little problem with its being nothing more than a cleverly disguised ripoff of Weezer’s “Beverly Hills,” but that being said, it might nevertheless impress the last few toucan-god-worshipping Amazonian tribespeople who somehow still haven’t ever heard that song before, so by all means, a heartfelt “godspeed” to Good Charlotte from everyone at this newspaper!

• Oh, gross, I’ve never heard a song by The Black Keys that didn’t make me not want to be listening to it, but such is my lot, checking out their new one, No Rain, No Flowers! The synth lines are really thick in the aimless title track, which will, I hope, lead to many music journos following my lead and finally writing those guys off as a cheap imitation of MGMT once and for all, I mean can we talk for Pete’s sake?

• We’ll wrap things up with New York City-based chiptune-rock band Anamanaguchi, whose new one, Anyway, doesn’t sound very chiptune-ish if by “chiptune-ish” you mean music that sounds like it was made using 8-bit electronic devices, as opposed to basic unlistenable indie rock. Unfortunately, the new single “Rage” sounds like Pavement with a huge budget and one of those big-name producer dudes. Aaaand we’re barfing.

Tchotchke, Playin’ Dumb (self-released)

So I said to the public relations lady, three cute 23-year-old babes from New York City on a retro 1960s-pop tip, where do I sign, and 10 minutes later there it was, in my emailbox, this, their second album. Their 2022 debut full-length was a little scattershot, a mishmash of everything from the aforementioned era, from beehive-hairdo girl-group to random Dolly Parton/Harry Nilsson-influenced radio stuff, all with too much cheese in its sound, but this is a little more serious, or at least as serious as you’d want from a pop-vocal-oriented trio who think life must have been a lot more fun when Nixon was president (probably was, given that it was merely the beginning of the end for America). This is more 1970s-centric, beginning with “The Game,” in which the group drapes intricate ELO-like harmonies over Randy Newman-style piano-pop lines, and then it’s “Did You Hear,” a listenable but too flatly produced glam-influenced thingamajig that will make your grandparents think of Big Star and Sweet. “Kisses” is twee-ish proto-pop in the manner of Ben Kweller meets Versus, and so on; altogether the effect is like Au Revoir Simone with three singers who don’t suck. Not to be an annoying production-snob, but someone text me when they grow up, stop obsessing over filling the Brooklyn nightclubs and get an actual studio budget, that’d be great. C+

John Yao, Points In Time (See Tao Recordings)

Sorry that I’m a little lost here; I’m informed I gave this elite New York-based trombonist/bandleader a big thumbs-up in your Hippo for one of his recent albums but I can’t find it for the life of me. That’s OK, though, because he and his 17-count-’em accomplices are all about big-band jazz, a genre that’s always guaranteed a glowing review on this page unless I sense the slightest bit of incompetence, which I don’t at all here. This full-length reflects upon what Yao’s learned and experienced (and stars many of the musicians he’s accumulated) over the 20 years that’ve passed since his first big-band album, Flip-Flop, which All About Jazz pronounced, in their inimitable obfuscatory writing style, as heralding the arrival of “a strong compositional voice and effective band-leader able to use his 17-piece band to paint across a wide spectrum and infuse his complex…” blah blah blah (someone needs to introduce AAJ’s writer-nerds to the word “awesome”). So yeah, this is awesome, from the pensive “Early Morning Walk” to the irrepressibly upbeat “Song for Nolan”; if you like big band (and you should, I tell you), you’ll definitely want this. A+

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A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• This week’s “new CD release Friday” falls on Aug. 1, summer’s just about over and it happened so fast, why did we even bother, and now for a mindless tangent in which I congratulate myself for reviewing Black Sabbath’s second-worst album, Never Say Die, the other week, given that the band’s been a trending internet topic for what feels like 40 years now, between the farewell concert and then the tragic passing of the band’s singer Ozzy Osbourne just a couple-three weeks later. I feel like I deserve a gold sticker for indulging in current-month’s hottest pop-culture-trending thing, which, as you know, I don’t usually do, but in this case, Sabbath was my favorite band during my boyhood days. I’ll have you know I even commented on social media about his passing, which I also never do, considering that everyone does that so I feel like I can’t; as a wise person once said (and I’m editing this quote for consumption by a more general audience), “Every time a celebrity dies, Twitter turns into 5,000 people trying to flush the same gum wrapper down the same toilet.” I mean, it’s not illegal to be the zillionth person to post “thoughts and prayers” about someone they never met even if it should be, but what amazed me was how all sorts of people leapt out of the woodwork five seconds after Ozzy’s death announcement to condemn him for his politics (seriously, go look). I sympathize with his critics for what they were trying to illuminate, but honestly, one would think we’ve got more important fish to fry these days than trying to posthumously cancel a fellow who once bit into an actual fruit bat for the entertainment value of it, but you do you, and meanwhile I digress, because we need to talk about The Starrr Of The Queen Of Life, the second album from Nigerian-Canadian techno artist Debby Friday, who in 2023 won Canada’s Polaris Music Prize, which comes with a lump-sum cash award of $50,000, did you even know what a Polaris Music Prize is, I didn’t either! Arcade Fire won it in 2011, which is something of an unsettling omen for Ms. Friday, but regardless, let me try to get my train back onto its rickety tracks by listening to this album’s new single, “Lipsync.” Hm, I don’t mind it, it’s like a cross between Goldfrapp and some underground goth band — yikes, the more I listen to it, the more it sounds like Birthday Massacre covering a Kylie Minogue song. It’s pretty boring, but the overall feel is okey-dokey.

• Reneé Rapp is an actress-singer who played the part of Regina George in the 2019 Broadway musical version of Mean Girls and starred in last year’s film adaptation of same, all of which is news to me, why didn’t any of you people inform me about all that nonsense? Bite Me, her second album, spotlights its title track, a drank-addled sleaze-a-thon whose video features scantily clad models having a pillow fight, in case you’ve never seen anything remotely like that in all the years you’ve been online.

• The Armed is an experimental hardcore punk band whose members are anonymous, but they’ve had so many famous guests on their albums (people who are well aware of who they are, obviously) that they might as well drop that whole “anonymous” shtick, don’t you think? The band’s new LP, The Future Is Here and Everything Needs to Be Destroyed, includes the single “Well Made Play,” a messy mess of a tune that combines black metal and ad-lib noise just to be weird.

• Lastly it’s Australian hip-hop miscreants Hilltop Hoods with their new album, Fall from the Light. Focus track “Don’t Happy Be Worry” is a fun-enough tune.

Jens Kuross, Crooked Songs (Woodsist Records)

The first time musician/politician Hayden Pedigo heard this folkie’s music he pronounced it a cross between Arthur Russell and Harry Nilsson, but that was before Kuross, a Los Angeles-to-Idaho refugee, put aside his synthesizer and followed Pedigo’s advice to make this minimalist, ambient half-plugged-guitar record. The short description of this one is Jeff Buckley with Chris Martin’s Marvin The Martian-esque voice, unhurried slices of life that’ll be perfect for sipping scotch in quietude by your end-of-summer campfire. What’s great about this is that Kuross had all but given up on ever making any splash in the music business prior to running into Pedigo; he’d retreated to Boise and become a cabinet maker. Ironically enough, that’s precisely the sort of authenticity any L.A. music scout would max out a few AmExes to find, so one can’t help wishing this guy the best when this record streets at the end of August. I mean, Bonnaroo types who are always bemoaning Buckley’s loss really need to put this on their radar. A+

Gayle Young and Robert Wheeler, From Grimsby To Milan (Farpoint Recordings)

Pardon the setup, there’s some unpacking to do here before we drill too deep into this experimental album. First item to note with regard to this duo is the presence of Robert Wheeler, the great-great-grandnephew of Thomas Alva Edison, as well as a member of 50-year-old Cleveland-based art-punk band Pere Ubu since 1994 (that band has been somewhat obscure through the decades, only charting once with 1989’s “Waiting For Mary,” a Joy Division-meets-Captain Beefheart-sounding tune). Meanwhile, in her spare time, Canadian concert musician Gayle Young builds her own instruments, including the “amaranth,” a complicated-looking stringed instrument that vaguely resembles a bongo drum that’s been sawed in half; that’s the thing she noodles around with here whilst Wheeler makes a bunch of flatulent noises with a vintage ElectroComp 101 (made by EML during the late 1960s). The twosome probably got some therapy out of making this record; most of it is like ASMR for mud-dwelling snapping turtles, as in one can practically smell the skunk cabbage. A curiosity for noise wonks. B

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A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• Friday, July 25, will see a jumble of new music releases dumped upon humanity, not that we aren’t still traumatized by the last jumble, you folks had better toughen up, let me see your war face! Now surely all you older Americans reading this remember Madonna, but for those of you who are younger, just think of Lady Gaga wearing stripper outfits from the 1930s, or if you don’t even know who Lady Gaga is because you’re really young, maybe just imagine a cross between a non-funny Chappell Roan and Cardi B. Are you with me so far, good, I’d hoped not, but anyway, in the ’90s, Madonna stopped doing normal 1980s techno-pop songs in order to become a trance-techno diva, which resulted in the album Ray Of Light, cementing her as, you know, the next Cher. Now, if you’ve never heard of Cher, ask your grandmother, because like all boomers, she owned a copy of Cher’s early-1970s vinyl single “Gypsies Tramps And Thieves” and she’ll be glad to explain Cher to all you young 4channers, since I don’t want to. I apologize for that, since I know for a fact that people get a kick out of my reporting on the doings of really super-old pop stars. How do I know that? Because a local-to-Manchester Jehovah’s Witness pastor showed up at my house to give me pamphlets and tell me about the fast-approaching Apocalypse (which, duh, it’s already here isn’t it) but anyway — and this is a true story — he asked me excitedly if I was indeed “that Eric Saeger,” and when I told him I was, he started giggling schoolgirlishly and telling me how much he loved this column because it cracks him up when I make fun of prehistoric arena bands and mummified pop stars who are somehow still around despite spending most of their days bathing in formaldehyde. And so this section of this week’s multiple-award-winning column is dedicated to that pastor, let’s go see what on Earth Madonna is even doing on her brand new album, Veronica Electronica! By the title I assumed it’s got AutoTune on it, but nope, it’s composed of previously unreleased remixes from Ray Of Light, doesn’t that sound unnecessary? I have to pick a tune; how about Johnny Madder’s “Oriental Hindu Mix” of “Shanti/Ashtangi,” since I haven’t been to a yoga class in forever and kind of miss it (I’m lying of course). Yes, it’s even more yogic than the original, but the vibe is ruined; it sounds like there’s a sample of a jaw harp in the beginning. In the trash it goes.

• My new pastor bro will also be delighted to know that famous performing Halloween clown Alice Cooper has a new album coming out this week, The Revenge Of Alice Cooper, I assume this’ll be absolutely dreadful, except maybe during some of the parts where Alice isn’t singing. But wait, this is the first album in 51 years from the original Alice Cooper band (the four who are still alive I mean)! Features the tune “Black Mamba,” wherein Alice does his creepy guy shtick and the band sounds like 1960s-era Traffic with a wah wah pedal. Apocalypse, take me away!

• Chicago-based psychedelic rockers Post Animal’s fourth LP, IRON, includes the tune “What’s A Good Life.” This doesn’t sound psychedelic at all, more like a throwaway demo from José González singing over a 1982 Casio keyboard. Hitting “Delete” now before I forget.

• We’ll wrap up this apocalyptic week in music with underrated folk-rocker Patty Griffin, whom some of you know as “Not Shawn Colvin, The Other One, Whatsername.” Crown Of Roses is her new album; its single is “Back at the Start,” a KT Tunstall-ish number that’s very nice but packs all the excitement of a Home Depot paint-swatch book.

Dawn of Ashes, Infecting the Scars (Metropolis Records)

Back on my goth-rock tip again (for as long as it lasts), bringing you one from a Denmark-by-way-of-Los Angeles-based artist who unironically calls himself Krystof Bathory, a fellow whose wardrobe comes courtesy of VampireFreaks.com and who chooses only the finest gross-out makeup for that fresh-from-The Grudge look. Spooky character, this guy. He was a lot more aggressive in his earlier days (he’s been around since the early Aughts), but he’s mellowed some, I’d say; this LP is quite palatable if you’re into, you know, music as opposed to Hot Topic fashion statements. The best point of reference here would be mid-Aughts-era Wumpscut, and that raspy-growls-and-cheesy-tech sonic verisimilitude is what compels me to recommend this album. There’s some jackboot-stomping stuff on here that’ll please the Rammstein crowd but more than enough dedication to haunting melody that keeps it from being anything close to disposable. It’s for a Halloween-obsessed mindset, then, and does the job nicely. A

Honeymoon Suite, Wake Me Up When The Sun Goes Down (Frontiers Music s.r.l.)

Meanwhile, back at Frontiers Mercy Hospital, where former and would-be arena-rock bands go to receive emergency transfusions of actual record contracts, look who’s getting wheeled in on a gurney, it’s this Canadian hard rock/glam band, established in (good lord guys, look at the time) 1981 and which hasn’t charted in the U.S. since 1988’s “Love Changes Everything.” On this release, the band’s vibe isn’t ’80s hair-metal at all, more like a mutant cellular fusion of Buckcherry and Dashboard Confessional — actually, scratch that, I’ll say it, Weezer. That automatically lends them a nice fat stack of cred points, almost negating the Bon Jovi-meets-Bryan Adams robbery they committed with “Love Changes Everything,” and yes, I’m being serious, they’ve made a real effort to be 2020s- (or 2010s-) (OK, fine, Aughts-) relevant here, and that counts for something, folks, it really does. There’s some shredding for you Flying V disciples out there, and that’s really the only thing that one might say “sounds dated” (funny that, isn’t it). It’s perfectly fine, folks, and if you’re not convinced, “Way Too Fast” sounds quite a bit like Taking Back Sunday covering a Taylor Swift song, I’m not kidding, go listen for yourself. A valiant effort, really. A+

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A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• As per tradition, all the “important” new albums are being released this Friday, July 18, which, by the way, is the 12th anniversary of the City of Detroit’s declaring bankruptcy, which is probably prophetic. But what all my older readers want to know is whether or not Chicago-based arena-rock band Styx is promoting a new album, given that they’re playing at the Bank Of NH Pavilion in Gilford this Friday (this time without support from REO Speedwagon, because they’re basically broken up these days, or they might as well be, seeing as how singer Kevin Cronin isn’t speaking to them, probably for good reason). To that I reply with an emphatic “yes”: Their new full-length, Circling From Above, is out this Friday, which, by my calculations, means that the Gilford show is actually a record release party of sorts! Now, I know Styx is sort of a meme band at this point in the eyes of anyone younger than 60, but you should stop it, “The Grand Illusion” was/is a cool song, can’t you just admit it you guys, that’d be great, all you kids should go see this show if you want to be aware of ’70s-era rock music (OK, enough kissing butt so I can mooch free tickets next year, let me go see if this album is any good). Right, so “Circling From Above” opens the album as a two-minute intro thingie; it sounds exactly like something from Close To The Edge-era Yes (I hope there’s at least one person reading this who knows what that even means), and then it goes into “Build And Destroy,” which is even more Yes-ish but also borrows heavily from “Sheep,” Pink Floyd’s only decent song. So, to review, even at the age of 112 or however old those guys are, they’re even better musicians than they were during the 1970s, an admirable thing, which I also mentioned in my review of their previous album. So what’s the upshot, you ask? Well, given that good musicianship doesn’t matter in the Golden Age Of Twerking And Fake Beefs, it doesn’t actually matter all that much, but if you’re a serious musician you might be impressed with some of this stuff; it’s quite decent (you’d be better served buying an old Return To Forever album if you want to hear some serious prog-rock, but you’d be doing so at your own risk, just saying). (Actually, just forget it, don’t.)

• Speaking of music for guitar nerds and other people who can’t maintain normal relationships, blues-rocker Joe Bonamassa is back in the emailboxes of us professional music journalists again, hawking his new LP, Breakthrough! I punched up the YouTube for the title track, and holy cultural appropriation, Batman, this is the most Willie Dixon-sounding tune I’ve heard from a white dude since the last five Willie Dixon-sounding white dudes, like is he this generation’s Ry Cooder maybe? I don’t know, so one of you people can message me the deets if you’d like, given that I don’t care about such things.

• Florida punk band Against Me! has basically been kaput since 2016, but the band’s trans frontperson Laura Jane Grace is still making albums for her wildly devoted LGBTQ+ fan base! Her new one, titled Adventure Club, includes the single “Wearing Black,” a semi-speedy, aggressive tune that combines angular Gang Of Four guitars and Exene-level brattiness. It’s an anthem intended for pride parades, and I’d love to tell you some of the lyrics but I’d get in trouble, so never you mind.

• And finally we have New York City’s We Are Scientists, an indie band that’s never impressed me, but who knows, maybe the 500th time is the charm. Their new LP, Qualifying Miles, features the tune “Please Don’t Say It,” a shapeless meatloaf of goth/pseudo-industrial sentiments that has an emo aftertaste, hard pass on this.

Afterz, The Midnight Cafe (self-released)

Mixed pot of trip-hop artistry here from a London, UK-based duo, professing to be influenced by Massive Attack et al but deeper and more world-music-rooted than that. These guys are inspired by the Alté movement in Nigeria (a fusion of genres that include Afrobeat, hip-hop, R&B, and alternative sounds), as well as the dance music culture of South Africa. They aim to bridge the gap between traditional Afrobeats and amapiano (a South African deep house/jazz-based hybrid) and more experimental-alternative and electronic sounds. This EP is like a collection of dream sequences, borrowing heavily from Tricky’s sounds but with the reverb set to 11; passages come and go, processed through the aural equivalent of a Vaseline-smeared lens. The title track may have the gentlest reggaeton undergirding I’ve ever heard, put it that way, while “Voltaire” comes off like a shape-shifting wave pattern that emulates a giant’s resting lungs. This is some exquisite stuff but could stand a little more layering. A

Black Sabbath, Never Say Die (Warner Bros Records)

Continuing with my inconsistent, totally off-the-cuff series on Classic Rock Albums Zoomers Need To Know, you know how you’ll go on social media and see someone talking about something you sort of like and then find out that the person really hates it? That happens to me every time someone mentions this 1978 album, the last record that featured the original lineup of Sabbath (yes kids, with Ozzy): everyone hates it. Now that the band has just (reportedly, and I don’t believe it for a second) scrapped itself forever, it’s safe to come out of the closet and admit that this one featured a few pretty good songs (the title track, “A Hard Road,” “Swinging The Chain”) and was actually quite a bit better than its 1976 predecessor, the absolutely dreadful Technical Ecstasy. Mind you, defending this LP is no hill I’d ever want to die on; the bad tunes are truly bad (“Johnny Blade,” “Junior’s Eyes,” the soggy “Over To You”), but it’s notable in that it was guitarist/bandleader Tony Iommi’s final desperate effort to keep the band interested in staying together. That was impossible: They’d been ripped off by their manager for years (fun fact: to this day they still get no money from their first five albums, yes kids, including Paranoid) and Ozzy was about done with it, yet Iommi persisted heroically. Obviously he knew the band was over, and it shows; there’s a deathly pall over the record that’s quite sad, but again, some of it is well worth knowing. B-

_PLAYLIST

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• Ugh, this new-CD-release Friday is July 11, meaning the summer’s already half over. I hope you already visited the Atlantic Ocean (you know, the really waterlogged place that makes up everything to the right of New England), because I haven’t yet, except for a quick fish ’n’ chip basket at Bob’s Clam Hut in York, Maine, where I sat gawking at the muddy estuary next to it, where all the seagulls go to poop and make little seagulls. But be that as it may, it’s time to look at this week’s list of new albums, which I assume is rather long, given that almost no new albums were released last week, and, with the slightest modicum of luck, doesn’t have any holiday albums in it, because come on man, it’s way too early for those, please not yet, I beg of you. OK, no Christmas albums this week, that’s good, now let me see if I’ve even heard of any of these people who’re releasing albums this week (things don’t look promising). I’ll start with English singer Mark Stewart, a pioneer of post-punk and industrial music and a founding member of The Pop Group, whose most renowned song, “We Are All Prostitutes,” wasn’t the slightest bit industrial; more of a ska-punk joint that had a Trent Reznor tint to it. Stewart died in 2023, but as is wont to happen, some old recordings of his have been found and summarily compiled into a new album, The Fateful Symmetry. “Memory Of You” is one of those tunes; in a nutshell it sounds like David Bowie singing with a goth-techno band, which of course means that it’s worthwhile in its way.

• Blub blub blub, nothing else is really jumping out at me, so let’s keep moving and I’ll babble something I hope is informative about No Sign Of Weakness, the new LP from Nigerian dancehall/Afrobeat singer/producer Burna Boy! In 2019, his fourth studio full-length, African Giant, was nominated for a Best World Music Album at the Grammy awards, but what you obviously want to know is whether or not his dancehall stuff is as fun as Mad Cobra or whatnot. It isn’t, but one of the singles, “TaTaTa (feat. Travis Scott)” is pretty authentic. Would I dance to it at a tiki bar? No, I do not do such things.

• Actress/singer Noah Cyrus is the sister of famous bothersome person Miley Cyrus, and toward that I have no comment at this time. Interesting how Wikipedia doesn’t even bother assigning a musical style category to Noah like they do with literally every other singer on Earth, given that anyone could take a wild guess, but let’s look and listen, shall we, actually wait, let’s not, I want to see what I’m about to deal with — OK, Wikipedia categorizes Noah’s 2016 debut single “Make Me (Cry)” as “electro,” which sure narrows it down, doesn’t it folks, do I really have to do this? Ack, I suppose I do, so here’s the skinny: Noah’s new album, I Want My Loved Ones To Go With Me, includes a single, titled “New Country,” and guess what, you’ll never guess, it’s not electro, it’s a country ballad duet with some obscure country singing dude named — let’s see — “Blake Shelton” it looks like, unless there’s a typo. The tune is unplugged Bonnaroo bait, pleasant enough I suppose, but come on, can Blake Shelton ever just get out of our face for five seconds for once, that’d be great.

• We’ll wrap up the week with seven-piece jazz/Afrobeat band Kokoroko and their new one, Tuff Times Never Last! The single, “Sweetie,” is “a salute to West African disco music from the ’80s/’90s,” so yes, it sounds like something Sade would listen to while she’s getting a foot rub. No brains required here, but it’s nice, sure.