Sparks, MAD (Transgressive Records)
The press notes for this nearly 60-year-old band’s 26th album start with this: “If the world is a cafe, its ridiculous patrons babbling ridiculously all day long, then Ron Mael is the guy on his own in the corner that you don’t notice, quietly sipping his coffee.” From there it proceeds ad nauseum, painting the two Mael brothers (Sparks’s only constants over the decades) as geniuses of postmodern pop music and stagecraft, largely owing to their yin-and-yang hyper/reserved stage personas. To be embarrassingly honest, I came to them from the 1985 seriocomic vampire movie Fright Night, which I’ve seen approximately 2,825 times, a film whose soundtrack included their song “Armies Of The Night,” a technopop bauble that was so naïvely upbeat and European-sounding that I had no idea the brothers are American until, well, an hour ago (the band has gone to some lengths to make the world forget that song ever happened; it’s not mentioned on their Wikipedia page for one thing). This album, coming on the heels of their winning an AIM Outstanding Contribution to Music award, is mostly a mixed patchwork of subdued, not-really-danceable messaging but it does have its moments, for instance “Do Things My Own Way,” which is quite a bit like “Armies Of The Night” in its silly Pet Shop Boys-ish accessibility (translation: it’s fun). They do have their fans, obviously, who’ll be glad to know that they’ll be at Boston’s Berklee Performance Center on Sept. 11. B
Cautious Clay, The Hours: Morning (Concord Records)
Impressive third album from Clay, real name Joshua Karpeh, a native Ohioan of Kru (Liberian) ethnicity, whose breezy indie/R&B sensibilities tend to read as a form of yacht rock; for example, if the Weeknd were more AOR-minded, “Father Time (10 am)” would be something you’d hear from him, and if that’s not clear enough, I could certainly suggest Seal as a similar artist (it’s really time for people everywhere to admit that nearly all of us have a favorite yacht-rock song, isn’t it?). The record label’s bots have been busily boosting that particular song on YouTube, although one oddly cynical human stumbled upon it and remarked that it sounds like Big Wreck, which is completely false; “Tokyo Lift (5 am)” is proof positive that this guy is aiming for Seal’s happily contented bedroom-pop space, but with a deeper (and quite a bit more resonant, honestly) vocal range, so I’d urge you to find out for yourself. It’s seriously listenable. He’ll be at The Sinclair in Cambridge, Mass., on Sept. 30. A
PLAYLIST
A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases
• Here come the new CDs of Friday, May 23, annoying everyone in sight with its springtime vibe and happy bunny rabbit face, don’t you just hate May? We all know where this is heading, soon enough it’s going to be hot and roasting with no end in sight, someone get these happy springtime bunnies off me before I love them and pet them, that’d be great. Ohh, what have we even got today, let’s see, we’ll start with a blast from the past, our old buddies from the U.K., Stereolab, who’ve been around since — gulp, holy crow — 1990, fun-time’s over, late-born Gen Xers, enjoy grandparenthood! Yes, you old fossils remember Stereolab, mostly from back in college when you had to explain to your dorm-mate why you thought they were awesome and played them one of the band’s motorik-driven milquetoast hits, then watched in horror as your dorm-mate fell asleep out of boredom, you remember those days, right? Well, we are gathered here today to see if Stereolab is still trying to revive their preferred sound, 1950s French mall-shopping music, and pass it off as something even vaguely relevant, let’s do the searchy thing in the YouTube box and see what’s on the band’s new album, Instant Holograms On Metal Film! Right, here’s something, a tune called “Aerial Troubles,” which begins with a pseudo-Sigur Ros part and then becomes — I don’t know what you would even call this, Supertramp as a lo-fi band? The boy-girl harmonizing is deliciously amateurish and off-key, what more could you ask for? Now may I go?
• Wait, I know, let’s try something interesting, wouldn’t that be novel? Chances are you’ve never heard of British post-rock band These New Puritans, an act solely operated by Jack and George Barnett, twin working-class brothers who taught themselves to play musical instruments. Their sound was once described by someone at Another Man as an attempt to blur “the distinction between rock, classical, electronic and experimental,” which sounds like half the bands on Earth at the present moment, but suppose we just belay the snark and check out their new album, Crooked Wing, and its single “A Season In Hell,” are y’all down for that? OK, this tune is quite nice, undergirded by military snare-drum patterns over which a slow-burning psychedelic trip starts to take shape, with some from-the-mountaintop effects on the vaguely Pink Floyd-ish singing. It’s all more vibe-focused than eventful, which (all together now) sounds like half the bands on Earth at the present moment, but the old-school organ does provide it with a lot of casual gravitas. It’s the kind of thing that’s too cool for American bands, let’s just say that.
• The good news continues, with a collaboration between Taj Mahal & Keb’ Mo’, titled Room On The Porch. If anyone still takes blues-guitar music seriously, this is about as important as it could possibly get, a meeting of the minds between two of the genre’s all-time masters, 82-year-old Mahal and 73-year-old Keb’ Mo’ (Kevin Moore). Given all that, we need to investigate how self-indulgent (or, conversely, how nauseatingly commercial) this is, so let’s. Nope, the title track is harmless and delightful, featuring the Randy Newman-like voice of Ruby Amanfu. There’s plenty of bluegrass vibe and a bottomless supply of innocent positivity, very nice.
• Lastly it’s grungy Britrock band Skunk Anansie (just so you know where you are, they covered The Stooges’ “Search and Destroy” for the soundtrack of the movie Sucker Punch), weighing in with the seventh studio LP in their 30-year history, The Painful Truth, featuring “Lost and Found,” a quiet-loud-quiet song that switches back and forth between dub/trip-hop and nu-metal. It’s neat, if self-indulgent.
Featured Image: Malphas, Tales from the Olden Realm (self-released/Bandcamp) & Ches Smith, Clone Row (self-released)