Author: Eric Saeger

Friko, Where We’ve Been, Where We Go From Here (ATO Records)

A hard one to classify, this Chicago indie band’s first album for ATO Records, although it was finished before they signed with the company. Vocalist/guitarist Niko Kapetan’s voice is awkward, shaking like a vintage glass tray on the mantel during an earthquake near your grandmother’s house, which makes this whole thing an acquired taste from the beginning, but these guys do come up with some interesting song structures. For instance, there’s “Where We’ve Been,” which starts out as a ’70s beach-time radio-pop thing, then begins to pulsate and crumble in waves of noise, then reassembles itself and ends in unplugged Bonnaroo folk. Kapetan’s Conor Oberst side comes out for “Crimson to Chrome,” a mid-tempo semi-rocker that flirts with no-wave (or post-punk, depending on your point of reference) relevance (nice loud guitar sound at the break, me likey). “Chemical” is pure shoegaze, and when you take it all together you realize the band is a coherent Brian Jonestown Massacre. Worth your time, absolutely. A

Nicky, by (PRAH Recordings)

Point of order, the Nicky Harris under scrutiny here is a composer, pianist and singer inspired by London’s queer performance scene, not the South Carolina dude who’s done some Vegas-begging records featuring his Elvis-like baritone. Ryuichi Sakamoto, Duval Timothy, Anohni and Perfume Genius are cited as similar artists, as are The Carpenters (!), but for general audience purposes, I’d say it’s more like a cross between Nick Cave and the Eels, or Ben Folds on downers. This person is obviously a good pianist; given the rather casual noises they allowed into the recordings, I assume most of the tunes that ended up on the record were first takes, which I have no problem with whatsoever. It’s made for a very intimate album filled with a certain warmth despite Harris’s creepy singing; hearing Harris tap their foot and pop off a few random spoken lines keeps things interesting to say the least. It’s a tour de force of something, even if I’m not exactly sure what. A

Playlist

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• Friday, Jan. 19, will see buckets of new rock ’n’ roll CDs dumped into the stores by guys with trucks, that’s how it works, folks! I can safely predict that a few trucks will be filled to bursting with the new Green Day album, Saviors, when it comes out this Friday, so that 35-year-olds will buy them and relive the days of skateboarding and having no clue whatsoever what punk really means, good times, amirite folks? Yes, yes, I was there, when they first arrived on the scene, and all the old punks were like “OK, it’s official, punk is dead,” but I was in a cover band at the time, and the bass player wanted to do “Longview” (I guess because maybe he thought that somehow an 8-year-old who actually liked Green Day would somehow end up in one of the adults-only clubs we played at), so I had to learn the lyrics to that dumb song, and every time we played it I’d have to go wash out my ears with some Ramones or Buzzcocks just to keep my stomach calm. Anyhoo, FYI, when anyone asked me whether or not I actually liked Green Day, I’d always change the subject to sports (all the Boston teams were losers back then, sort of like they are now) so I wouldn’t have to admit that I was just singing the Green Day song for money from drunks, but in retrospect I forgive the band for destroying punk once and for all, because I actually did like one of the songs, I forget which — oh, “American Idiot,” that one. It’s sort of like ’80s Joan Jett but with guys singing, and, just like that, I’ve digressed. Since there’s no way punk could be destroyed any more than it is, I suppose I’ll trudge over to the YouTube and see what they’re yammering about now, in the opening song “The American Dream Is Killing Me.” Ack, why would anyone in a band even want to play this song, it’s just “Longview” except the guitars have about 50 overdubs, and, as usual it isn’t actually punk, it’s something for Nylon to write about and promptly forget forever. It basically sounds like Weezer trying to be Foo Fighters or something. All set with this, barf barf barf.

• If you put Versus and Sheryl Crow into a Mixmaster and flipped the switch, you’d have “Honey,” the leadoff single from the upcoming Packs album, Melt the Honey. This Canadian slacker-indie band, led by Madeline Link, has been compared to Best Coast, though I don’t know why; they tend to write generally hookless tunes and throw them out on their Bandcamp space without much ado, a practice I’m fine with overall, I suppose, but I’d almost rather subject myself to a Pavement LP (I’m kidding, there’s literally nothing worse than Pavement, as you probably know) than investigate this disposable nonsense, but for its part at least it isn’t shapeless musical tapioca like Broken Social Scene (sorry, did that sound grumpy? I can never tell).

• Today I learned that feminist-indie band Sleater-Kinney took its name from a road in Lacey, Washington. I also found out that they’ve still got it, because their new LP, Little Rope, is actually pretty good. You can listen to the whole thing on YouTube, if that’s your wont, and if you do, you’ll hear some sturdy, interesting, Wire-like art-rock on “Say It Like You Mean It,” and “Hell” will probably remind you of the No-Nos. Best stuff I’ve heard from them, anyway.

• We’ll wrap things up with a seriously casual shoegaze band from Bristol, U.K., The Fauns, whose new LP, How Lost, is their first in 10 years! The title track’s guitar line evokes Modern English’s “I Melt With You” and the lady’s singing is neck-deep in reverb. Yup, it’s a shoegaze band all right, end of mini-review!

Nigel J. Anderson, Material Science (Redwave Recordings)

I literally had to weed through a few dozen emails from public relations people trying to push metal bands on me before I found this one, and I’m covering it simply because it’s not a metal album (trying to cut down here, folks, which is tough, because metal albums have been hitting this desk like tribbles during mating season). Having never heard of this U.K. techno DJ, I was delightedly surprised to hear a bunch of bright, bouncy but not smarmy attempts at upfitting traditional deep house; I honestly would have been all over this if it were still 2004 and I were looking for some drive-time euphoria, but either way it’s super nice. “Material Science” brings a faux-steel-drum sample to the percussive fore of its afterparty groove, and man, it really works. Unfortunately, “Going Home” follows in a more goth-industrial vein, at which point I sort of abandoned any hope that this would be the sharply focused genre exercise I’d anticipated, although the next track, “Octopus,” recalls Above & Beyond, which I’m always up for. Despite Anderson’s obvious case of ADD, I’m giving it high marks owing to the fact that all the tunes are on point. A

Nnenna Freelon and Pierce Freelon, AnceStars (Redwave Recordings)

One of the slings or arrows I suffer on a yearly basis comes around this time of year, when all the public relations goblins request that I vote for one of their artists in the next Grammy Awards, not that I’m part of the cabal who has any say in all that; if I indeed were some sort of cog in the Grammy machine, I probably wouldn’t vote for any modern artist, just 80-year-old Al Jolson compilation albums. But this one’s interesting at least, a mother-son duo who are up for the Best Children’s Album Grammy, so, just for the heck of it, I listened to it and am dutifully reporting and blah blah blah. Lyrically it’s based on “the spirit world,” i.e. ancestors, in particular Nnenna’s husband (and Pierce’s father) the late Phil Freelon, the architect of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History. The title track is a lilting/bouncing number combining Afrobeat with Spyro Gyra, a pleasant thing altogether. Most of the rest is hip-hop-tinged urbanity suitable for Sesame Street audiences or feel-good moments in general. A

Playlist

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• OK, wake up, everyone, we are back to a somewhat normal-sized slate of stuff for our next general-issue CD release Friday, on Jan. 12! Look at this, though, sad-face emoji, there are no new albums made by artists and bands I can make fun of, no Neil Young album, no Dolly Parton or Willie Nelson album, not even an album from King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, which is weird, because they’ve been putting out new albums every two weeks for the last few years, I can’t believe this. So I am forced to do research and perform random acts of journalistic investigation for your entertainment, so why don’t we start with The Vaccines, whose new album, Pick-Up Full Of Pink Carnations, is fast approaching! Ack, this doesn’t bode well, fam, the aggregate Metacritic score is already 62 percent and the album isn’t even out yet, which means that a lot of people have either pirated it or they’re just trolls, so why don’t I go check out this album and make your minds up for you, that’d be great. The band is an indie band from West London in the U.K., and their hobbies include playing with other bands on stage. They’ve had guest spots with Lyle Preslar of Minor Threat, Ryan Jarman of the Cribs, members of Savages and Paul Thomson of Franz Ferdinand, and, wait, in 2013 they performed in Florida as John Fogerty’s backing band, making them honorary Creedence Clearwater Revival dudes or something! And yadda yadda, let’s go listen to “Love To Walk Away,” a song from this new album, and hey, wait a minute, I don’t mind this at all! It’s kind of no-wave-ish, in other words loud and dumb, bordering on bands like Black Lips or even Half Japanese as far as sloppy sound engineering. There’s on-the-phone patch on the vocals, too. It’s a winner, let’s go see if the next album will disappoint me, eh wot, chaps and chapettes?

• I always question the motives of bands that start out playing one genre of music and then move on to a totally different thing, like how Pantera started out as a Whitesnake band or whatever and then became Megadeth, or like how The Horrors made the greatest album of all time and then decided to become completely worthless overall, never forget! Bring Me the Horizon are another such — you know, thingamajig, like, they started out as a deathcore band and now they’re regarded as something completely different, sort of along the lines of Imagine Dragons and such. The band’s new album, POST HUMAN: NeX Gen, includes a song titled “Code Mistake” that’s sort of Imagine Dragons-like but there’s a lot of yelling and stomping, you know, like Slipknot, but less well-behaved. It’s OK I suppose.

• Marika Hackman is a British singer who’s put out two albums of cover songs, and when she’s not doing that she’s sounding a lot like a disaffected 1980s pop diva, for example on her biggest song, “I’m Not Where You Are” from 2019. Not saying it’s bad, but it’s a bit opportunistic if you ask me. Her new album, Big Sigh, drops this Friday, of course, otherwise I wouldn’t be talking about it at the moment, but regardless, the new single, “Slime,” reminds me of M83 a bit, which is more relevant than refrying ’80s-pop, at least in my opinion; as always, your mileage may vary, a scenario that’s out of my control.

• Finally we have Kali Uchis, an American singer from a Colombian family. Orquídeas is her second Latin-language album and fourth one overall; it features the single “No Lay Hay,” a bubble-pop type thing with an understated deep-house vibe. I found it sublimely acceptable.

Save Ferris, “Xmas Blue” (self-released)

This one came in too late to be included in the pre-HannuChistmaKwanzaa column. This teaser single from a 2024 LP from the Orange Country, California, ska band comes with some interesting sidebars for us to go over, the first being the song’s background itself. It’s a girl-sung rootsy dancehall track that does have a Christmas-y feel to it; it’s not some sort of annoying ’90s-ska phone-in at all, but anyway, the lonely-at-the-holidays-steeped lyrics revolve around the trials of a friend of singer Monique Powell who “went through a hard divorce, and even two years later was still so obsessed with his ex-wife that it was borderline stalking.” Sucks that anyone has to be without a love connection any time of the year, but another thing to know is that this is the band’s first release under the newly launched music community platform We Are Giant, which, local musicians should note, helps give a social media edge to unknown bands who could use a boost, this by connecting more intimately with fans. Good for them, I say. A —Eric W. Saeger

Patrick Wolf, A Circling Sky (self-released)

Unbeknownst to most, this 40-something British singer-songwriter is one of the most talented and idiosyncratic musicians of his generation, with a run of critically hailed albums, notably Lycanthropy in 2003 and Lupercalia in 2011, the latter of which saw him incorporating viola, Celtic harp, dulcimer, baritone ukulele, piano, harpsichord, analog synthesizers and re-sampled field recordings in his music and collaborating with the likes of Marianne Faithfull, Tilda Swinton, Patti Smith and others. Imagine what you’d get if Mark Oliver Everett from The Eels wanted to make tuneage for steampunk conventions and you’re pretty close, at least going by this set of B-sides and rarities, which includes the front-facing “Godrevy Point,” a gently apocalyptic track full of from-the-mountaintop reverb propelling the odd little collection of instruments on board. Nick Cave is another touchstone here, if that’s your bag. A —Eric W. Saeger

Playlist

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• Nice, way to hurry things along, 2024, the first general-issue CD release Friday of the year is Jan. 5! It is an election year, fam, and at this rate it’ll be the last one before the whole system melts down, so it was sure nice knowing ya, but whatever, there are albums on trucks headed to stores, including a new one from British grime rapper Ghetts, On Purpose With Purpose. You hip American kids probably know him from his days with the grime collectives The NASTY Crew and The Movement, but nowadays — wait, what, you’ve never heard of NASTY Crew or The Movement or any grime collectives to begin with? I’m kidding, of course you haven’t, bands and artists from the U.K. might as well be from the planet Neptune for all American listeners care, even though garage-grime has been a lot more fun and cool than American hip-hop for, what, 10 years now? Twenty? But that’s OK, when did American hip-hoppers ever get anything wrong, aside from all the PR stunts they fell for, in other words, absolutely, don’t pay attention to grime, just because it’s better than U.S. corporate hip-hop in every single way. Wait, don’t get mad, here, forget I said anything, let me go check out this album and report my findings, for your reading pleasure! So, the LP starts out with “Daily Duppy,” comprising a dream-time beat and Ghetts’ impeccably enunciated British blatherings; it has a little trap-drumming going on there so American audiences can understand that it’s some sort of rap or hip-hop or whatnot, be sure to listen to it with a parent or guardian in case you have any questions.

• LastWorld is a band whose music is targeted at “fans of Journey, Bon Jovi, Night Ranger, Alias & The Storm,” got that, guys?, and what that means is — wait, what does it mean, I’ve never heard of “Alias & The Storm,” am I being trolled (OK, I looked, there’s no such band, so they probably mean a band called Alias and another one called Storm, oh forget it)? Whatever, LastWorld, a two-piece consisting of Jim Shepard (all instruments) and David Cagle (all vocals) will release a new album titled Beautiful Illusion this Friday. The kickoff single, “Never Gonna Let You Go,” is a big bouquet of hair-rawk hooks that blends Journey, Bon Jovi, Night Ranger, and — wait, we already talked about this. Right? No, seriously, if you liked White Lion, a band that wrote all their songs to “Billboard specifications,” you’ll like this, probably.

• Hannah Kaminer is an Americana group from Asheville, North Carolina. They want people to stop saying they’re an Americana band and instead tell all their friends that they’re a country music band, which I refuse to do because of my journalistic principles, and because I am a jerk most days. The band’s third studio album, Heavy On The Vine, is on the way, and you can check out the title track on YouTube. The song is an Americana take on the typical Mazzy Star B-side, with lots of slidey dobro, a synth that sounds like dobro, a fiddle, and a drummer on a drum set that has like three pieces to it. It’s very pretty and dreamy for a totally Americana song.

• And finally we have someone from Florida recording under the stage name Tegu, with a new album titled Forest Hills, which was recorded in one 24-hour block of lo-fi improvisational mayhem. It features an ingredients list consisting of, and I quote, “field recordings, tape loops, vocal haze, FX, and thrifted Yamaha keys.” Given that, you already know pretty much what it sounds like: breezy soundtrack-ish stuff, with hazy synths, bluebirds chirping, etc. It’s OK. —Eric W. Saeger

Morbid Saint, Swallowed By Hell (HR Records)

Still a lot of metal in the pipeline, folks, so let’s look at some of it, specifically from this Wisconsin band. This one comes to us “more than 30 years after their second LP, ‘Destruction System,’ was recorded but not finished, only to be officially published recently.” And so they’ve been very not-busy of late, these fellas, but the only thing that resulted from their hilariously long hiatus is that, well darn, they’ve gotten pretty good, to be honest. If you’ve ever really loved Slayer you’ll like this for sure; singer Pat Lind is still on board, tabling Tom Araya dead-ringer soundalike bellowing. The title track is rooted in Aughts-era black metal, which I’m sure you’ll want playing in your baby’s nursery; “Bloody Floors” is power metal, and such and so. They’ve got a great sound if you like this kind of thing. A

Mary Tominy, Untame The Tiger (Merge Records)

This Washington, D.C., lady has been a fixture in the indie-rawk world for 30 years, playing with such bands as garage-pop power trio Ex Hex and post-punk troupe Autoclave. Although her voice is still a bit awkward, she’s refined her style to a really noticeable degree; if you stick with album opener “No Thirds,” you’ll encounter some really stunning symphonics that put her in the same ballpark as Natalie Merchant. It’s jangly, vaguely hopeful and easily accessible. “Summer” comes off like a Versus A-side, which means it has no commercial hope whatsoever, not that that’s a bad thing of course, but in the meantime she does add something of a Sheryl Crow break to it. “Looking For The Sun” is pretty trippy, for sure; imagine Chrissie Hynde going through a ’70s Donovan phase, is how I’d put it. Overall she’s aging like a fine wine that won’t appeal to all palates, not that she cares about that by now, I’m sure. A

Playlist

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• Yay, groan, New Year’s Eve is on the way, one of my least favorite days of the year, when my Grinch heart has to endure people looking all happy awaiting the mass amateur drinking contest that is the reason for the season, and we marrieds stay up until midnight, pretending to be relevant for whatever reason, watching all the Dua Lipas and Ricky Martins as they honk their Who-Flonkas and bash their Who-Bombas, and then they’ll sing and sing and sing, and then comes the thing I hate worst of all, watching Ryan Seacrest and Anderson Cooper doing their potted houseplant imitations while wearing actual ties in order to “check in” on concerts from Poppy and Taylor Swift and the Beibs or whatnot, which is of course your kids’ cue to run to their rooms in order to avoid catching a bad case of “Responsible Adult Cooties,” where they’ll listen to death metal and crunk and text their little friends about things you really don’t want to know about. I have no idea why we celebrate New Year’s Day; I mean, it’s the last gasp of the holidays that started on Halloween with everyone dressing up as sexytime monsters and rolls of paper towels or whatever they do, so really, what’s to celebrate? It’s just going to be freezing and slushy for the next few months, and all that New Year’s alcohol will be long worn-off by February. But let’s put that aside for a second while I take a look at the (I’m so sure) tons of new albums coming out on Dec. 29. If there are two I’ll be lucky to get through this column, maybe by riffing on a few other things, like the fact that I couldn’t find actual candy canes for my HannuKwanzzMas tree literally anywhere for a day or so. Right, right, what do we have here, literally no albums except for stompy German band Lord Of The Lost, whose stupidly titled covers album, Weapons Of Mass Seduction, is on its way! These goth-metal frauds like to dress up like the glittery, certifiably crazy dude in The Cell, and in this one they cover songs from Billy Idol, Bronski Beat, Judas Priest and — well, you know, Sia, because those bands always have to do stuff like that. The teaser single is a Rammstein-ized version of Cutting Crew’s “I Just Died In Your Arms” that’s just as bad as you’re imagining it, like they have a girl singer who has all the nuance and originality of a McDonald’s french fry, and the male singer just sings the same nonsense an octave lower than her, and there are ’80s synths in there. Ack, let’s move on, if there’s any place to move on to.

• Ack, ack, it’s another metal band, called Dominum, with their new one, Hey Living People, but you know who’ll want to know about this is famous local author and friend of the Hippo Dan Szczesny, because the leader of this euro-trash band used to be in the symphonic-metal band Visions of Atlantis. This band’s trip is sort of like a zombie-centric version of Abney Park, with zombie stuff instead of steampunk stuff. “Patient Zero” is awesome if you like bad acting and (actually good) sympho-metal.

• Ten years ago Irish indie-folkie Ciaran Lavery didn’t get enough attention for his album Not Nearly Dark, so he has re-rubbed the whole thing under the title Not Nearly Dark (10 Years Later). It’s stupid that the Bonnaroo crowd didn’t get into him, he’s like a cross between Jeff Buckley and Rod Stewart, so snooze on him this time, that’d be great.

• We’ll end the last column of 2023 (good riddance, am I right?) with Mexican oi band Malcría! This one is tough and loud and punkish, and it’s titled Fantasías Histéricas, which even I could roughly translate.

Dollyrots, “Auld Lang Syne” (Wicked Cool Records)

I absolutely hate New Year’s Eve. It’s the last celebratory moment before everything freezes here in New England for a good four or fifty months, and in honor of that, the lowest-tier 20something-age drinkers are out and about, having fun while we marrieds try to stay awake till midnight as if we’re somehow relevant. I’m basking in a little joy here, though: Finally a holiday record darkens my emailbox, after I’d given up hope (I probably missed like 20 of them, and I do apologize to any PR person who sent me news about one I absentmindedly deleted), and look at this, it’s a husband-wife punk team (the lady plays bass and sings, hubby does the guitars) who used to be on Joan Jett’s Blackheart Records label, doing everyone’s — OK, my, after “O Holy Night” and “Feliz Navidad” — least favorite holiday song. It starts out semi-seriously, as tedious as any other rock version you’ve heard, then it moves to a sort-of-fast tempo, nothing too wild, just something they’re probably hoping will make it onto a rom-com soundtrack, mostly to be annoying. I have no idea why I bothered with this at all. C

Various “Artists,” Yule Log Jamz: The World’s Hottest Wood Burning Sounds (Pretty Good Friends Records)

Fine, if I’m going to get trolled, I’m passing it along to my thousands of readers. This looked to me like a holiday record, but actually it’s a variation on the virtual “Yule log,” or “crackling fireplace” that can be found on Netflix and elsewhere. Pretty Good Friends is a comedy label, not that I can for the life of me remember reviewing one of their comedy albums, and I’m (all together now) too lazy to look, but yeah, it’s kind of funny in its way. This consists of videotapes of 11 different log fires from different countries, with no talking or anything, including “the party-pumping flames of Germany, the polite crackles of Canada, and the hygge-hysterical hotness of Sweden. Plus New Zealand lit up some Manuka wood like you’ve never heard it before!!” Anyway, you can find it at prettygoodfriends.com/fire, where you can pay $5 to own it forever, or just be normal and cheap and simply stream the YouTube version at their channel. They also offer a festive “Smells Like Something’s Burning” soy candle if you have $15 that you don’t figure you’d ever otherwise use under any circumstances whatsoever ever. A

Playlist

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• Oh by gosh by golly, it’s time for no new CDs to come out on Friday, Dec. 22, just like every year on the last Friday before ChristmaKwanzaKkah! I’ll tell you, hopelessness abounds, fam, hopelessness abounds, I’ll bet there are like zero new albums coming out for me to talk about here, and I’ll have to resort to riffing about how I couldn’t find candy canes at Walmart the other week to put on my HannuChristmaKwanazaa tree! There were literally none, which was insane, but if you want to read the whole story you’ll have to “friend” me on Facebook, but be patient; I usually only get around to checking my Facebook notifications once a month, as long as the month has a full moon in it somewhere. Oh, forget it, it’s no use, I’m going to do the dutiful and look for some albums to write about for all you good little boys and girls, you deserve a big huge ChrisHannuKwan cookie of snark, and by the gods, I will deliver, you’re just going to have to give me a minute to find something! (20 minutes later) Ack, ack, there’s nothing anywhere! Let me check Amazon, maybe Jeff Bezos isn’t too busy building his giant toy NASA to let us poor music journos know about some new albums! Wait, here’s one, from Conway the Machine and Wun Two, whoever in tarnation that is, it’s a new album, titled Palermo! This project unites Buffalo, N.Y., rapper Conway the Machine and German lo-fi producer Wun Two. The sample track I decided to, you know, sample, was “Brick By Brick,” a good example of awkward downtempo weirdness, over which Conway spits a bunch of venomous but unadventurous prattle while rapping like he’s eating a meatball sub. It’s cool, don’t get me wrong.

• I’ll tell ya, folks, for ultimate weirdness, you can’t do much better than Louisville, Kentucky’s Bo Daddy Harris, who as a kid wanted to grow up to become a superstar of something-anything. Hey, man, like I always say, if you can’t make the Who’s Who, you can always try for the What-The-Heck-Was-That, and guess what, he succeeded, folks! He continues his tradition of What-The-Heck-Was-That-ness on his new album, It’s a Southern Thing, and it’s always trippy to see him do his thing, singing his weird country tunes in that — voice of his. The closest experience I can think of to watching him sing one of his old-school country songs in his super-low weirdo voice — which you’d never expect to hear coming out of him, being that he looks like a typical Zoomer incel who’s employed at an Apple store talking to boomers about technology despite the fact that he wouldn’t know an embedded operating system from Jethro Clampett — was the first time I saw Gomer Pyle sing opera like Placido Domingo, but that’s OK! He tried doing comedy but that didn’t pan out, so obviously he was born for this, being a cross between Hank Williams Sr. and Tom Waits. Seriously, go check out one of his YouTubes, you’ll melt down completely.

• Ack, ack, there’s nothing but metal albums left, fam, except for some other CD that we’ll get to in a minute. Let’s see, we have the snobbily named Colombian thrash band Funeral Vomit, with their new album, Monumental Putrescence, which I guarantee would make a great gift for your grandma, and U.K. act Ulfarr, with their new one, Orlegscaeft! Ulfarr wears spooky eye makeup, so proceed with caution!

• We’ll vamoose for the week after one more, This Is New Tone, the new compilation LP from Bad Time Records! One of the sample tracks is “Better Home” by We Are The Union; it’s a frenzied ska-punk track that will appeal to millennials who thought Sublime were too wimpy and boring, which, of course, they were.

Asha Jefferies, Ego Ride (Nettwerk Records)

Debut album from this Australian pop-princess, steeped in queer sensibilities, aimed at the straight-ahead alt-pop demographic that gravitates to Liz Phair and such, and look, it’s on the Nettwerk Records label, which always promises goodness. I’m way ahead of the curve on this one, which isn’t out until April, but Katy Perry did pretty much the same thing with her first LP, like I was already sick of hearing about her months before her LP came out. I’ll leave it to you to grok the parallels there, but in the meantime, this one’s a winner from the word go. “Stranger” starts off in a casual Portishead-ish direction, triple-layered with lazy synths, slow-bonked piano and orchestral statements, and even before Jefferies adds her Sarah McLachlan semi-yodel to it you’re already envisioning its future as a roll-credits fadeout to a major movie, something of that sort. The artiste’s people want me to talk about the single, “Keep My S—t Together,” a master-class mid-tempo chick-rocker a la Sheryl Crow, and so here goes: It’s pretty dreamy too. A+

Tutu Puoane, Wrapped in Rhythm (SoulFactory Records)

Another far-in-advance notice that’s well worth the wait. Born in Pretoria, South Africa, and a resident of Belgium since the early Aughts, this theatrical singer has collaborated with the Brussels Jazz Orchestra, Bert Joris, the Flemish Philharmonic, Tineke Postma, John Clayton, Metropole Orkest and Black Lives – from Generation to Generation. Her lilting soprano, which you’ll find here nestled among typical smoky room-jazz components like belled trumpets and such, is of the Toni Braxton variety, at least when she’s in a more or less post-bop groove, but as well — and this should come as no shock — she’s got a world-music side to her, half-singing about esoteric concepts like the promises the Earth made to her forebears and how she feels them in her feet. This is a lot more advanced than what Braxton fans have become accustomed to over the years, but Braxton is without a doubt the touchstone here. The passages glide and swoop and become more irresistible by the minute. A+

Playlist

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• Ack, ack, I’m supposed to be writing about albums coming out this Friday, Dec. 15, but I’ll bet you there aren’t any on my go-to critics’ cheat sheet! Yup, nope, just one, an LP titled One Wayne G, the sixth one from Canadian jangle-pop annoyance Mac DeMarco, but since I’d rather go get a root canal than — wait, never mind, he’s a cat person, he made a video about his cat, Pickles, who died recently, so in honor of Pickles I’ll go check out whatever YouTube has on this album. Huh, looks like he named all this album’s songs after the dates he wrote them. Here’s one of the dumb things, titled “20180512.” It’s really mellow and upbeat and he thankfully doesn’t sing; it’s like what you’d hear if Spyro Gyra wrote an elevator music song for a yoga retreat, so forget all this nonsense, I’ll look for something kind of normal at a little-known CD-release-information website called Amazon.com. Well well, the first thing I see is a soundtrack thing, titled Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street 2023 Broadway Cast Recording. Now I know what you’re thinking, you want to watch me predict what I think this album will sound like, as if I’m just here for your entertainment. Well, to heck with it, I’ll tell you, I predict it sounds like bad but important-sounding music from a Broadway play that people stopped going to see back in 2011. Et voila, that’s exactly it, the same music they played on the super-boring 2007 Stephen Sondheim/Johnny Depp film that was based on Christopher Boyd’s 1970 play. Josh Groban sings the Sweeney Todd parts in this one, not that it helps any.

• There are so few new CD releases coming out as the “countdown to Christmas” winds down that I think we may as well just talk about new country & western albums for the remainder of the column, because that’s all I’m really seeing. But before that, if you’re wondering why you don’t have as much fun during Christmas as you did when you were 11, it’s probably because the mass media wants you to think there really is a “countdown,” like you’re not actually having fun or experiencing the joy of camraderie yet, because the countdown is still going on. Or at least that’s what “they” want us to think. The truth is that the journey is the fun part. In fact, when HannuKwanzmas day actually arrives, that’s when the fun ends, you know? That’s when things really get stressful as you run around trying to get your relatives out of your house, returning gifts and whatever. So enjoy the season, fam, and in the meantime you might consider buying country singer Riley Green’s new LP, Ain’t My Last Rodeo. Green is of course a Jon Pardi wannabe, sounding sort of like Thomas Rhett or a tin-plated Merle Haggard, but at least it’s not Rascal Flatts, so count your blessings, cowpokes!

• Sticking with this week’s country music tangent, Earned It is the new album by Larry Fleet, who sounds like every modern male picker-grinner, and plus, he has a ZZ Top beard, at least at this writing. The title track is really bluegrass-y, which I respect, like, if Larry the Cable Guy could hold a tune it’d probably sound like this.

• We’ll wrap up this week’s horse-ropin’, chicken-pluckin’, pig-scramblin’ column with the new full-length from Nashville’s most famous “nepo baby,” Rosanne Cash! The album is called The Wheel, and the title track is actually pretty good, some busy finger-picking guitar-tronica. Imagine Wilson Phillips trying to be seriously country and you’d be in the ballpark.