Category: Albums

Ingrid Laubrock, Purposing the Air (Pyroclastic Records)

Her fully caffeinated handlers describe Laubrock as an “experimental saxophonist and composer interested in exploring the borders between musical realms and creating multi-layered, dense and often evocative sound worlds.” In this album the composer pairs single instrumentalists with lone vocalists to futz with the poetry of African-American poet/essayist Erica Hunt, whom I’d imagine might be a little taken aback (or totally not) by this LP, which, at 60-odd short compositions, is a Whitman’s sampler of modern alienation, its half-written/half-improvised passages offering seemingly random bite-sized chunks of psychic turmoil. There are sing-song thingies about kites, general observations on everyday items and such (I lost track), fleshed out musically by an acidic, often noisily played cello for the first 16 pieces (undergirding Fay Victor in noise-scat mode) and a much tamer but equally animated piano, played by Matt Mitchell for the next set, over which our old buddy Sara Serpa unleashes her inner songbird (as in actual bird, seemingly). If you want unapologetically urban ambiance, this is one-stop shopping. B+ —Eric W. Saeger

Art Nation, The Ascendance (Frontiers Music s.r.l.)

Seems to me — mostly because I haven’t heard a lot of this kind of stuff — that melodic metal may be starting to move in an emo direction, that is unless this Swedish trio is startlingly original. Here we have the speed of Good Charlotte and the hormone-tugging angst of Trivium without the low end; I suppose the short version is Iron Maiden as its most highly evolved Pokemon character, if that makes any sense. The thing these guys do really well is bring the hooky, operatic melody without making it as indecipherable as those things can get; there’s almost no punk element to this tuneage but it’s quite powerfully done. And boy, the sound is pretty huge, which one wouldn’t expect from a trio, not that that can’t be explained by multi-tracking of course, but yeah, they shoot for the rafters. Past the obligato ballad (“Julia”) you’ll find songs like “Lightbringer,” which is like a cross between King Diamond and Pendulum, i.e. next-gen tech metal. High marks for sure. A+ —Eric W. Saeger

_PLAYLIST

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• Happy weekend, rock fans, it’s your weekly ray of musical sunshine and blind hope for humanity, back with another fresh Dumpster-load of albums from rock stars, nepo babies, comedy bands whose silly monkeyshines amuse unfunny people, and whatever else is in this list of new records coming out on April 11, don’t mind the stench, I hope you guys all brought clothespins for your noses! Jeezum crow, look at all these darned albums, durn burn it, this is gonna make a freakin’ mess! Since I probably should, I’ll launch the festivities by drinking five much-needed fingers of scotch and heading to the YouTube matrix to listen to something from Wisconsin-based soft-rocker Bon Iver’s (pronounced “BONE ee-VAIR” for you readers who couldn’t care less about mispronouncing his name and will continue to do so regardless, sticking to the New England-centric pronunciation “Bawn EYE-vah”) new album, SABLE fABLE, see what he did there, with those modern Latin alphabet letters [shocked face emoji]? No, I kid Bon Iver, his first record was done in total DIY fashion; he played a borrowed old Sears brand Silvertone guitar, which has become sort of a cult instrument among musicians, hilarious as that may seem. I don’t hate those things myself; my first guitar was a 12-string Silvertone, and its sound was pretty neat, so I won’t argue about it, but that doesn’t mean I approve of any Bon Iver music I’ve ever heard, because I don’t, but maybe this new record will change my mind about this crazily overrated dude, let’s go. So the album opens with “THINGS BEHIND THINGS BEHIND THINGS” (in which Mister Ivah continues his capitalization gimmick, which, to the average reader, is pretty rude, like getting yelled at on Facebook by someone who really, really wants you to LEAVE ELON MUSK ALONE). With all that capitalization stuff I assumed I’d be hearing a new Ivah-meister, maybe even packing a little aggro-metal attitude, but nope, it’s yet more sleepytime music for awkward millennials, just like during the Aughts, when Ivah-bro was relevant, when millennials hated music and music hated them back. I suppose the tune is nice if you ever wanted to hear Coldplay doing some unplugged twee-Americana hybridization, so if that interests you, by all means, go buy this album and stay away from me on my socials, that’d be great.

• Speaking of the Aughts, look who it is, guys, it’s OK Go, with a new album, And The Adjacent Possible! You rock fans all remember when this Chicago band filmed the most epic music video of all time for their yelly indie-pop song “This Too Shall Pass,” the one where they built a gigantic Rube Goldberg machine (you know, like the kids’ game Mousetrap, but a million times more elaborate) in a warehouse and it was awesome, right? Well, times change, so the video for the new single “A Stone Only Rolls Downhill” is a wickedly elaborate shoot that involved 64 smartphones; the tune is kind of like something you’d hear if Maroon 5 were kinda funky. They’ll be at the Royale in Boston on May 30.

• Ecstasy-gobbling Norwegian soundsystem Röyksopp releases True Electric on Friday; it looks like a bunch of re-rubs of their more explosive techno tunes. Fever Ray guests on a version of “What Else Is There” that’s basically a repeat of the Trentemöller remix you may have heard on the HBO show Entourage back when our planet was still managed by dinosaurs and giant dragonflies.

• Lastly it’s the posthumous album from Flaming Lips fixture Nell Smith, Anxious. The title track is a pretty little twee-ish mid-tempo thing; the only thing wrong with it is the occasional tremolo effect on her voice (probably Wayne Coyne’s dumb idea). —Eric W. Saeger

Featured Image: Ingrid Laubrock, Purposing the Air (Pyroclastic Records) & Art Nation, The Ascendance (Frontiers Music s.r.l.)

Michael Rudd, Going to the Mountain (Invisible Road Records)

Although one would naturally assume that Bob Dylan viewed Townes Van Zandt as a competitor, the two were quite respectful of each other; like the Stones and The Beatles, one couldn’t exist without the other. Thus we could wax hyperbolic and say that there are only two types of roots-folk fans in the world, and this K-8 school principal, an Albuquerque resident who left New Jersey to concentrate on writing, lumps into the “darker please” category, preferring muddy examinations of slovenly desperation to Dylan’s more laissez-faire, metaphor-stuffed acquiescence. Rudd’s second album begins with “Before The Demon Came,” and immediately comparisons to Eels and Tom Waits spring to mind, along with the usual suspects, T. Bone Burnett and such. In that, the tuneage is more appropriate for an American civilization that’s creaking awkwardly around on its last legs; sung in a baritone that’s both weary and indestructible, Rudd weaves a tapestry comprising dream fugues (“Going To The Mountain”), quiet soul-searching (“End Of Days”) and spidery unplugged honky-tonk (“Walk My Way”). Boy, would I like to hear local folkies lean into this approach. A+ — Eric W. Saeger

Carriers, Every Time I Feel Afraid (self-released)

This band’s leader/frontperson is Curt Kiser, formerly of indie rockers Pomegranates; in this project his focus is fixed in the direction of War On Drugs (for reference, old people should think David Essex fronting Pink Floyd). There’s a similar airy quality to these songs, and in fact Kiser’s infatuation with WOD is a little off-putting: The title track is a little too close to WOD’s “Suffering” for my comfort, not that that should necessarily dissuade you from checking this out, and besides, a little melodic helium does fit our zeitgeist a lot better than that of Bon Iver and such, especially given that the Aughts-indie period has finally been consigned to the recycle-bin of history where it belonged on Day 1. What am I even saying, you ask? I mean that it’s melodically pure if derivative in spots; where WOD’s “Under The Pressure” is more Joy Division-ish, Kiser selects A-ha’s “Take On Me” as his spirit animal for the push track, “Motion.” Hey, either way, at least I don’t have to stomach more Sigur Ros verisimilitude, put it that way, which is always a good thing. B — Eric W. Saeger

_PLAYLIST

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• Hooray, the most pointless month of the calendar is over, good old March, goodbye forever, hasta la vista, arrivadertch, but oh goodie, here comes March’s annoying little brother, April, the month when we all hit Target at 7 a.m. the morning after Easter just to stock up on Reese’s peanut butter eggs at 50 percent off, what else are you supposed to do in April other than start a really inadvisable romantic relationship now that the alcoholic bars are serving their gourmet cheeseburgers outside, when there isn’t a “freak” (in other words normal for April) snowstorm? Well, OK, there’s always that other thing you can do, go to Strawberries or Rockit Records or Bradlees or K-Mart or Amazon to buy bad albums, but you can do that every week, when Friday strikes, with its Easter basket-load of new albums! Just look at this one, streeting this Friday, April 4, a collaborative album between Elton John and Brandi Carlile, titled Who Believes in Angels! Now hopefully, Elton, who recently celebrated his 3,000th birthday at his vampire pyramid-castle, had some vague idea of who Brandi Carlile is when he was doing these recordings and didn’t think she was actually Lorde or Madonna or Brenda Lee, who can even keep up with all this nonsense, you know? In case you’re also a mega-old vampire who doesn’t know who she is: Carlile’s a famous folk-rocker who wrote a bunch of tunes for Tanya Tucker, so maybe Elton’s handlers told him she was actually Alison Krauss (of frequent Robert Plant-collaboration fame) to get him on board, but either way, I’m sure the circumstances of their collaboration are bizarre indeed, but belay all that, folks, let’s go listen to the title track of this collaborative collaboration between the 3,000-year-old mummy-vampire and Carlile, whom some of us professional rock journalists refer to as “No, Not Bonnie Raitt, The Newer One.” Yikes, you should see the video for this song, they’re trying to revive Elton’s most famous antics, the stage set in the video revolves around his Captain Fantastic-era optics, you know, when he was into high nonsense-art a la Hieronymus Bosch (but nice!), and then we move to the song, which is in the same vein as “Candle in the Wind,” Elton’s famous ode to Princess Diana. What am I saying? Well, basically I’m saying that there was no need for this mutually collaborative collaboration-a-thon to ever happen, but I’m sure there are some 80-year-old National Enquirer readers who’ll love it, and Elton looks really good for someone who’s been preserved in a Dracula coffin with ancient tanna leaves since Carter was president.

• DOGGOD also comes out on Friday; it’s the third album from L.A. Witch, an all-girl garage band that launched when the singer’s boyfriend forbade her from playing with male musicians, and instead of dumping him on the spot she decided to go with it, because boyfriends don’t just grow on trees, you know. “The Lines” is a cool ’80s-goth-dance thingie, evincing the band’s love for The Gun Club (and by extension X-Ray Spex, but don’t tell them that). It’s fine, sure.

• And yadda yadda, here’s another one, The Ophelias, with their new LP, Spring Grove! Oh, it’s not the California psychedelic band, it’s the Ohio indie band, what are we even doing right now? The single, “Salome,” is a grungy filthy indie-grinding mess with a really catchy groove, I approve of these people, whoever they are.
• We’ll put this week to bed with New York noise-poppers Sleigh Bells, who are selling a new album, Bunky Becky Birthday Boy! The single, “Bunky Pop,” is like a Nintendo-ized ripoff of Outkast’s “Hey Ya,” and yes, it’s as artistically important as it looks. — Eric W. Saeger

Idle Heirs, Life Is Violence (Relapse Records)

Relapse continues to be one of the two or three (tops) metal-focused record labels I actually appreciate getting new stuff from, and the debut LP from this Kansas City crew is yet another spine-crunching assault, if you’ll pardon the metal-centric hyperbole. The “RIYL” (“Recommended If You Like”) list, so they told me, includes Deftones, Mogwai and Cult of Luna (in all honesty I was pleased that anyone knew Cult Of Luna even existed) and that’s right on target. I’d also add Isis as a more-or-less-soundalike, not that this record is as, I don’t know, polite as those guys; what I refer to is the raw intensity. We start with “Loose Tooth,” which lifts off with one of those balladic-acoustic patterns, with Coalesce singer Sean Ingram floating in mellow mode for a bit, and then the thing just explodes as Ingram lets out a Crowbar-worthy yowl that seems to go on forever (it sort of made me chuckle insanely, thinking about the last time a tooth was bothering the heck out of me). Anyway, it’s all overhead-speaker ambiance for Hell, as promised, not for the squeamish. A+

Roi Turbo, Bazooka [EP] (Maison Arts)

Fun act here, comprising two brothers named McCarthy, who grew up in Cape Town, South Africa, with music-loving parents and abandoned their drum lessons for autodidactic strategies (Conor played along to Bloc Party records; Ben learned via YouTube). I liked ’em already just based on that, but what’s even more hilarious and exhilarating is the underlying gay-disco-but-not-quite-gay-disco vibe of “Super Hands” on this five-songer. It’s pretty relentless, really, semi-seriously dabbling with Afrobeat and subsonic Aughts-era house cavitation; it made me think of YouTube’s Hulett Brothers, you know, the guys who do the trick shots with ping-pong balls and whatnot. These are party jams for sure, mildly gritty, slightly Ed Banger-ish instrumentals guaranteed to get heads a-bobbin’, for example “Dystopia,” with its faux-yacht-techno steez, which is punctuated with monkey sounds and ’70s-pop sweetness. They’ll be (very appropriately) supporting Empire Of The Sun at The Music Hall in Boston on May 24. A+

PLAYLIST

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• And lo, unto the masses the lord (or someone pretending to be Him) commanded from his brunch table, “Let there be new albums dumped unto those peeps on March 28,” and thus it will be, this Friday, because I have no say in the matter! Yes, it’s another new release Friday, as we await “second winter” after a bunch of 60-degree days, but I’m ready for it! Why, you ask? Because I stored a turkey in our freezer in January, back when Market Basket was charging negative ten cents a pound for them or whatnot, so when this year’s Second Winter’s cruel frost sets in, I am going to be eating Second Thanksgiving Dinner, in my house, and then an entire blueberry pie, and then Petunia and I are going to go Christmas caroling in our neighborhood, dressed like Grinches, for the amusement of all the little children! Important note, I saved last year’s Detroit Lions’ Thanksgiving Day game on DVR, so I could watch it on Second Thanksgiving, so please don’t message me to tell me what the final score was, that’d be great, I just want to enjoy Second Winter in style, snoring on the couch! But where were we, oh yes, albums, and look at this, guys, the first thing to hit my radar is none other than Based On A True Story, the first album in 20 years from insane slapping person Will Smith! Wow, so that explains why he keeps coming up in “my socials” and by extension why my Twitter is full of slapping jokes! I was like, “Why is everyone suddenly making fun of the stupidest moment in the history of awards ceremonies, isn’t that old news,” but this explains it: The guy actually thinks we forgot about that incident with Chris Rock, my third favorite comedian after Doug Stanhope and Elon Musk! Well I’ll tell you, I haven’t forgotten, but I suppose there’s always the possibility that his new duet with Big Sean, “Beautiful Scars feat. OBanga,” will be so awesome and underground-hip-hoppy that I’ll be like, “Maybe Chris Rock actually deserved it for all his rotten ‘literally being a funny person’ antics, can’t we just pretend it’s 1990 again?” Nah, it’s awful; as you know, Big Sean peaked with Detroit 2, this is just corporate-hip-hop nonsense, with Auto-Tune, because of course there’s Auto-Tune. Some online person just said something about “Will should do a diss track of Jada Pinkett Smith and have Chris Rock spit some lines.” Ha ha, wouldn’t that be funny, OK, let’s move on from this horror, I’d love that.

• Mumford & Sons, they’re still relevant, aren’t they, or are we already past believing any good music came out in the 2010s? Well, doesn’t matter, the Mumfords’ new album, Rushmere, is getting uploaded to your Spotifys as we speak, and it will include the title track, which is another one of those urgent-sounding galloping-horsie indie-meets-bluegrass tunes those guys specialize in, so yes, it’s cool, if hilariously redundant. You know, they really need to make up their minds about what to do next while they figure out which Vegas theater will give them a residency after their inevitable Grand Ole Opry phase (ack, did that sound cynical, I can never tell).

• Speaking of horsies, there’s pop-metal band The Darkness again, with a new album, called Dreams On Toast, featuring their horsie-voice singer, Whatsisname! The new tune, “I Hate Myself,” sounds like 1970s-era Sweet but super-boring, has anyone ever actually cared about this band, like really seriously, pinkie swear?
• In closing this column, I’d like to say that Deafheaven is still around, as they have a new album coming out momentarily, Lonely People With Power! “Heathen” starts off sounding like Sigur Ros, and then they do their usual black-metal nonsense. I don’t actually hate it, make of that what you will.

Diane Coll, I Am Fire (Happy Fish Records)

Musically, Coll, a professional couples therapist from Atlanta, Georgia, is a true DIY warrior, having released three full-length albums since 2022 along with several EPs and singles, the latter of which this is, a three-songer released in honor of International Women’s Day (March 8). Coll’s muse for these songs is the goddess Kali, “destroyer of ignorance and liberator of the ego; a benevolent and unapologetic warrior who takes on the torment caused by those who operate from their own ignorance and the need to dominate others.” Sounds like my gender for sure, yes, and if you want to know (or don’t, it’s all good), I’m considering wrapping up my trilogy of internet-culture-focused nonfiction books with one about how women are subliminally oppressed on social media. Anyhow, to the music, tally-ho: In short, I’m very impressed. “Starting a Fire” is a brilliant deep-house-rooted exercise, its beat consisting of AM radio patter and a synth that becomes more menacing by the moment while Coll incants various warnings and calls for “accelerated action,” which was the theme of this year’s IWD observance. “Timeline Shift” is yoga-class soundtracking, reminiscent of Anugama, if you have any idea who that is; “Je Suis Feu” ends the set with a polyrhythmic tribal dance-along that’s both hypnotic and, well, catchy. Very nicely done, great-sounding stuff. A+

Luke Marzec, Something Out of Nothing, Side A (Swift Half Records)

Technically, this odd bird submits this as the “first half of his debut album,” which might play in Poughkeepsie but not with me; nevertheless I’ll play along and not tell you it’s an EP; let’s just proceed. Marzec’s a multi-instrumentalist Londoner who led a bunch of classical and jazz bands during his high school days, nowadays he’s a reformed music-academic who put out several other EPs prior to this release. He’s a terminally hip white kid whose gravelly singing voice evokes Satchmo and Little Richard, which screams “cultural appropriation” if you’re nasty, but you’d better be dissing Jamie Lidell too if you’re going to do that, not that this is the proper place to get into that. So what we have here is a jambalaya consisting of funk (“I Can’t Get You Out Of My Mind” is pure James Brown-ness), deep soul and random jazz phrasings that sound antiquated in all the right ways. Given that he’s racked up well over a million Spotify listens (and really knows what he’s doing) he’s certainly one to watch. A

_PLAYLIST

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• Our country’s next “New CD Release Friday” is March 21, isn’t that the wackiest thing you’ve heard all week? We’ll get into it, but before I forget, everyone’s favorite local historian Fritz Wetherbee officially retired from his New Hampshire Chronicle post at WMUR TV, and so I am once again asking you, my loyal readers, to demand that the station hire me as his replacement and keep the tradition going! Hassle them on Facebook and MySpace or whatever, that’d be great!

But rather than delve into that any longer than my editors would want me to, it’s probably best to chat about the fact that Selena Gomez and Benny Blanco are releasing an album this Friday called I Said I Love You First! Those two are married, in case you didn’t know, and between Selena’s $1.3 billion fortune and Benny’s measly $50 million emergency fund, it’s safe to say that they’re able to afford to eat eggs every Sunday, in case you were worried about them. Where does this all lead us, fam? Well, where else: directly into the bizarre alternate universe of Bieberland. You see, Justin Bieber used to go steady with Selena, and they broke up (probably because he is insane) and last month the Biebs unfollowed former collaborator Blanco on Instagram, but not because he was envious of Blanco’s dating his ex, or so Bieber nation claims. That leaves only other two possibilities: Either he was hacked (in January he claimed he got hacked and the hacker unfollowed Biebs’s wife, Hailey) or Biebs is insane. You see, he (or the hacker) also unfollowed a bunch of other vacuous pop-culture celebrities, including Drake (who hasn’t?) and The Weeknd. Whatever, the title track from those two lovey-doveys’ new album is a chilled-down reggaeton thingamajig, featuring Selena singing like Lady Gaga like always. It’s cool, if anyone actually cares about this!

• You guys all know that English band The Horrors tabled the most disappointing sophomore album in rock history, but they’re back! Night Life, the band’s new LP, features the single “More Than Life,” a decidedly Depeche Mode-sounding thing. It’s very kyewl. They’re back!

• Louisville, Kentucky’s My Morning Jacket is also back, with Is, their new album! The single, “Time Waited,” sounds like Spandau Ballet trying to be Lynyrd Skynyrd, and if you have no idea what that might sound like, count your blessings.

• Aaand lastly it’s dream-poppers Japanese Breakfast with their new LP, For Melancholy Brunettes (& Sad Women)! The single, “Mega Circuit,” is really mellow for a dreampop tune, kind of like Lana Del Rey meets Wilson Phillips. They’ll be at The Music Hall in Boston on May 7.

Featured Photo: Diane Coll album I Am Fire and Luke Marzec album Something Out of Nothing, Side A.

Free Range, Lost & Found (self-released)

’Tis the season for music journalists getting inundated with spam from agents and record companies whose artists are scheduled to perform on various stages at the SXSW festival in Austin, Texas. This year’s conference ends on Saturday, March 15, so if you’re down in Austin reading this remotely, there might still be time to plan a visit to this person’s 8:15 p.m. show on the 15th at the Dear Life Showcase, which’ll be held at All The Sudden. The nym belongs to one Sofia Jensen of Chicago, who previously dazzled listeners with her 2023 album Practice; the overall vibe is easy listening Americana with lots of quirky but eminently listenable indie-weirdness on board. Lots of Norah Jones energy going on here, of course, but with a few vocally acrobatic twists; in the dobro-washed bluegrass tune “Storm” she browses the scale like a savvy farmers market shopper, finding hidden jewels of melody that are pretty unique. Well worth your time. A+ —Eric W. Saeger

Good Looks, Lived Here For A While (Keeled Scales Records)

Also performing on SXSW’s final day is this hometown Austin four-piece, who gravitate to feel-good rock that combines jam band, alt-country and ’90s radio-indie in fun ways. That’s not to say they aren’t serious-minded; the lyrics on this one take jabs at such things as “job creators” (“they’re just stealing our labor”) and that sort of thing, and besides, they’ve got plenty to be existentially discombobulated about; while leaving the venue where they’d just played the record release show for their critically acclaimed 2022 debut LP Bummer Year, lead guitarist Jake Ames was hit by a car crossing the street, fracturing his skull and tailbone. This album almost never happened, in other words, but after a lot of rehab and despair they’ve cobbled a seriously listenable set of songs reminiscent of Barenaked Ladies duking it out with Tom Petty (“If It’s Gone”) and Hank Williams Jr. (“Can You See Me Tonight”) in a dark alley. I couldn’t hate these guys if I tried. A+ —Eric W. Saeger

_PLAYLIST

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• Today we’ll talk about the albums coming out on March 14, because that makes perfect sense, like it wouldn’t be timely or hip to talk about some military coronet album that came out in 1918, now would it? Unfortunately, the first thing we’ll need to talk about here is the fast-approaching 12th album from Nyack, New York’s favorite (because there aren’t any others) progressive-rock band, Coheed and Cambria! That band, as everyone knows, is cut from the same cloth as Mars Volta, Thank You Scientist and Muse, specializing in the sort of arena-rock style invented by Queen, whose albums were mostly comprised of half-written obnoxious filler tunes with one or two overwritten orchestral pieces added into the mix to get musically untrained critics to write nice things about them. Ahem, in the hierarchy of musical genres, Coheed and all those guys occupy the rung that sits just under Tool, Pendulum and Linkin Park; Coheed’s stuff is music for people whose post-grad sensibilities demand that they not get caught listening to actual techie-prog-metal because they don’t want to scare off future employers, so what Coheed does instead is throw a bunch of random musical notes in a blender and hope to attract the sort of listener who takes LinkedIn seriously (have you guys ever watched any of LinkedIn’s user-submitted short videos? They’re all basically “career-promotional videos,” starring and written by people who double-majored in marketing and business, and any time they come within a country mile of criticizing anything about corporate culture that obviously bugs them, a chimpanzee in a power suit zaps ‘em with a taser and they get back to the script). Anyway, if that describes you, and you want to stick with listening to anodyne milquetoast tripe instead of something interesting like Pendulum or Mozart, then Coheed’s new album, The Father Of Make Believe, is for you! Yup, like Billy The Exterminator used to say, I can’t wait to get my hands on this horrible new critter and tell you good folks all about it! So the single, “Searching for Tomorrow,” is like Linkin Park doing power pop, like, if Beavis and Butthead had jobs as human resources directors, they’d totally head-bang to it. If Dashboard Confessional had rabies it’d probably sound something like this (lightbulb moment: I’m going to start calling this band “LinkedIn Park!”).

• Circuit des Yeux is the stage name of Chicago-based singer/songwriter Haley Fohr, whose four-octave vocal range is a big deal to people who don’t like normal singing but instead prefer people who can both squeak like a Munchkin and mumble like Lurch from The Addams Family! While we’re on the subject, I always thought the super-high notes on allegedly four-octave-range-possessing chanteuse Mariah Carey’s “Fantasy” were generated by a computer, but this multi-talented blah blah blah person’s new album is called Halo On The Inside, and it spotlights a Trent Reznor-sounding single called “Megaloner” where she sings like the dude from Roxy Music, which is impressive.
• Electronic rock band Courting is from Liverpool, England, which goes to show you that not every band from Liverpool is as famous as The Beatles. Their new album Lust for Life has a single, “Pause At You,” that sounds like Aha meets Gang Of Four meets Hives; it’s OK.

• And finally we have Whatever the Weather, which is what British electronic producer/musician Loraine James likes calling herself in order to confuse old people or something. Whatever The Weather II is her new album, with the single “12°C,” a sluggish noise-electro ambient thingamajig that goes nowhere, but they’re your ears. —Eric W. Saeger

Featured Photo: Free Range, Lost & Found (self-released) & Good Looks, Lived Here For A While (Keeled Scales Records)

Anika, Abyss (Sacred Bones Records)

Since the assimilation of punk, New Wave, et al. by the corporate Matrix (it happens every time), rock and rebellion have been business partners more than any sort of combined force for socioeconomic or culturally equalitarian progress. You can quote me on that, but chances are that you’re already well aware of it; most of the tuneage that lands on this desk (from white-kid bands especially, let’s note) has no idea that “the system” is their real problem, not their awkwardness or generational malaise. Yet they persist, for the most part, but once in a while a record does bumble in here that evokes memories of artists who seriously wanted to break stuff rather than resign themselves to forlorn inevitability. This British-born, Berlin-based singer channels Patti Smith more succinctly than anyone I’ve heard recently; she actually wants people to direct their energies toward creating “safe spaces” where people can vent and collaborate on ideas for better living in an unlivable world. The tunes are rough and jangly and decidedly punky; she comes off like a ’90s-grunge Grace Slick with no-wave sensibilities. I hope she keeps sticking to this formula, put it that way. A+

The South Hill Experiment, Earthbreaks

Brothers Baird and Gabe Acheson left Baltimore for Los Angeles several years ago and the move is finally paying off: “Open Ocean,” the single from this, their band’s third full-length, hit No. 1 at KCRW, the seminal Santa Monica NPR affiliate. This is decidedly DIY stuff, probably recorded in their bedrooms, which afforded them the opportunity to experiment, as heard in album opener “Rifting,” built around backward-masked percussion and gentle vocals that have the reverb set to 11 (it’s not shoegaze, just to clarify, it’s a lot more experimental than that: Think early Luke Temple or a more technologically adventurous Gorillaz). But things change quickly here, with “Maybe It Takes Time” borrowing its bubbly ’70s-radio-pop undergirding from Michael McDonald, and then we have the focus track, “Open Ocean,” a deep-house-adjacent dance-along combining Atlas Sound with Jamie Lidell. This is all to say that it’s definitely worth investigating, I assure you. A

Playlist

• Feb. 28 is a Friday, which means new albums will be released en masse! Now, one thing we Professional Music Journalists always have to remember is that not every band with “Bear” in its name sounds the same, even if OK, they basically do. It’s sort of like bands that have “Deer” in their names: Deerhoof and Deer Tick are both supremely boring indie bands, but my mnemonics go like this: “Deerhoof helps me fall asleep faster than Deer Tick when I’m stressed,” or “Don’t even bother trying to name a Deer Tick song, because even their fans don’t remember any of them.” You see? But I digress, which I can do because it’s my multiple-award-winning column, so let’s get back to the “bear” thing. I liked Grizzly Bear, but only because I didn’t really hate them; they can indeed be borderline interesting with their skronky noise approach, and Minus The Bear was a great prog band but for some reason no one cared about them or their potluck formula of Rush-meets-Jackson Browne, so they broke up, and it made me sad. But the really sad news is that for the purposes of this week’s column I have to pretend I know who Panda Bear even is if I ever hope to win another award, let’s go have a look, because their new album, Sinister Grift, is coming out this Friday! Oh, OK, Panda Bear is what Noah Benjamin Lennox calls himself, in order to get dates with awkward college girls just like all the other indie rock bros. Lennox is co-founder of Animal Collective, a band that was relevant during the Aughts when college radio stations nationwide became hypnotized by their use of “fractal” music patterns, back before Nels Cline of Wilco invented the fractal riff to “Love Is Everywhere,” which was so cool that it instantly made people forget who Animal Collective even is (what took you people so long?). Anyway, at first, the “Defense” single sounds like a Hank Williams Jr. song about sitting in a Dumpster drinking Jagermeister, which would be cool, but then it turns into a really boring mess, something you could tell your little brother was considered too stupid to be added to the Napoleon Dynamite soundtrack and he’d totally believe you.

• Brooklyn R&B singer Jonathan Josiah Wise is more famously known as Serpentwithfeet, and since we were just talking about Grizzly Bear, his Wikipedia page says that he opened for them for a while. Boy, this Wiki page may be the most boring one I’ve ever seen — blah blah blah, his mom forced him to join a boys choir, he worked with a producer who worked with Bjork, yadda yadda. Whatevs, his new album is Grip Sequel, featuring the single “Writhing In The Wind.” The beat is kind of cool, like Blue Man Group doofing around with Aphex Twin, and Wise is singing like Keith Sweat. Is that what all the children are listening to now, I simply must know.

• Andy Bell used to play bass for famous indie-pop band Oasis, but now he is on his own because everyone in Oasis hates each other. Pinball Wanderer is his latest “opus,” and the single “I’m In Love…” is very neat because it sounds exactly like Wire circa Change Becomes Us, except there are girls singing. I endorse it.

• Lastly it’s British metalcore band Architects, whose new album The Sky The Earth & All Between is on its way to your eardrums if that’s the sort of thing you enjoy doing to yourself. This is pretty loony stuff, reminiscent of Dillinger Escape Plan and such, but with occasional Cannibal Corpse vocalizing. What does that mean? It means that their listening experience is lightning-fast and scary, but one of the things chasing you is the Cookie Monster, and he really wants your tasty, tasty cookies!

Featured Photo: Yes, Relayer (Atlantic Records), Rush, Permanent Waves (Anthem Records), & Eric Comstock & Barbara Fasano, Painting The Town (Human Child Records)