Category: Albums

Ian Sweet, Shiverstruck (Polyvinyl Records)

I get it, the Chappell Roan copycatting will continue until morale improves, or something to that effect, but stay tuned, because this Los Angeles-based indie singer hasn’t quite settled on a sound, it looks like. She (real name Jillian Medford) started out by making interesting records; her first album, Shapeshifter, was an amalgam of Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Raveonettes and a few other good things, and Stereogum loved it, and then she went in a Mazzy Star direction in 2021 with Show Me How You Disappear, which I suppose is a relatively similar sound to the Roan worship we hear on focus single “Wild Heart,” but admittedly it isn’t without some of the Jay Som-with-a-pulse ideas she’s tried before. What does that word salad mean? Well, think Karen O meets Roan, and with regard to the latter, she’s put together some seriously angsty atmospherics that are so vibrant they’ll probably fool many people into thinking it is Roan. This all isn’t to say it’s not good stuff; there’s nothing wrong with being doubly derivative. Either way, she’ll be at The Press Room in Portsmouth on Oct. 15. B

Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra, Ellington Masterworks (MCG Jazz Records)

Huge-sounding collection of Ellington obscurities tendered by this (depending on the day) 17-member Washington, D.C.-based outfit. That’s refreshing, given that usually such homages are larded with well-known chestnuts like “Prelude to a Kiss” and of course “Sophisticated Lady.” So this one’s a more or less chronologically arranged set of (verified) rarities (the band had around a thousand tunes to choose from that Ellington had written during his half century of work), beginning with 1940’s “The Flaming Sword,” a number derived from “Panama” (no, not the Van Halen song), a thumping, Latin-infused swing joint that recalls (obviously) Benny Goodman. Clocking in at over 12 minutes, 1948’s “Tattooed Bride” rises from a slow-burn to take the listener on what feels like a speedboat ride over busy waves, “built into a W-shape” with irregular phrasing. I noticed that some of the individual songs, though obscure, have inspired academics to give them the full wonk treatment; there are no poor choices here. A+

_PLAYLIST

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• Aug. 7 is this Friday, which means new CD releases, which means we have stuff to talk about, as long as there are some new CDs coming out! It just so happens that there are, but first, you’ve seen me talk before about my favorite joke band, Mac Sabbath, the Los Angeles-based outfit the Village Voice called “Hieronymus Bosch meets My Little Pony,” which isn’t something I’d have written, but I haven’t contributed to the Voice family of newspapers for many years now, if there even is one anymore. No, in case you forgot (recommended), this band — comprising Ronald Osbourne, Slayer MacCheeze, Grimalice and Catburglar — plays Black Sabbath covers dressed up as Ronald McDonald, the Hamburglar and whatnot, but they futz with the lyrics, turning them into political screeds disguised as rants about fast food. I think it’s hysterical; Ronald McDonald has seen other dark parodists through the years, like YouTube’s RakkaRakka guys, who portray Ronald as a demented homicidal lunatic, I suppose you’d have to see it to appreciate it. Anyway, I was pleased to hear that this band is on tour and will be in Worcester, Mass., at The Palladium on Dec. 9, I might actually go to it myself. Now, turning to (only slightly) less comedic news, widely hailed California indie-folk band The Mountain Goats are back this week, with their count-em 24th LP, Days, which is said to be a not-very-serious look back at previous cultural tropes through the last few decades, for example the lead single “Charlie Sheen Reaches Out to the Feds,” an examination of Sheen’s “tiger blood” period. The tune is a thrumming, no-wave-ish tune that sounds like something Pavement might do if they were trying to be punky and weren’t one of the worst bands in history, I like it just fine.
• OK what’s this, I’ve never heard of The Anchoress, have you? Of course you haven’t, she’s popular with edgy people in England, so nobody in this country knows she even exists. Possessed of a Ph.D. in literature and queer theory, her real name is Catherine Davies; she wrote a book about epic poetry titled Whitman’s Queer Children, and when she’s not doing stuff like that, she’s producing her own indie-pop albums, like her new one, As We Once Were! You might like the single “Throw Over Your Man” if you like Kate Bush and/or Florence + The Machine; I like them myself and admire that this lady is trying to sound cool, but as with most New Music Express-approved bands from the U.K., the song really goes nowhere. And now you know why you’ve never heard of her.

• Oh yay, here we go again, another album from filmmaker John Carpenter, who directed such films as The Thing and Halloween. In case you missed it, this is a regular thing: Once every year, this film-directing man puts out an album mostly made of synth cheese that might have been relevant in 1981, and no one’s been able to stop him (if you want to know what I’ve had to endure from this guy for the last few albums, most of the amateurish three-chord music in his films was written by him). And so, like Charlie Brown running to kick the football Lucy’s going to yank away, I’ll go listen to something called “Lord of the Underground” from his new album, Cathedral! Yikes, it’s ’80s monster metal, like slow King Diamond, but no singing, just some evil choral stuff! Does anyone buy his records?

• And finally it’s Canadian indie band Kiwi Jr. with their fourth album, Blowin’ Up, whose title track sounds like They Might Be Giants covering a Cars song, it’s OK.

Featured Photo: Ian Sweet, Shiverstruck and Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra, Ellington Masterworks.

The Durutti Column, Renascent (London Records)

Here’s a band name you’ll want to keep handy in your brain if you often find yourself conversing with fans of artsy post-punk in the vein of this crew’s former Factory Records label-mates Joy Division, et al. Largely regarded as a solo vehicle for the classical-flavored noodlings of brilliant guitarist Vini Reilly (who’s alternately been called the Van Gogh and the Jeff Beck of post-punk, among other appropriately breathless outbursts of praise; he’s collaborated with Morrissey among others), the group is legendary among old-school British New Wavers and such, but, like Wire, they somehow never achieved the household-name status one would have expected. It’s been 14 years since the trio’s last album, 46 since their first, and Reilly’s ability has been affected by three strokes he suffered in 2010 and 2011, but this record is nevertheless a next logical step, a mature-minded collection filled with plenty of lush, bright, sweeping, epic, Orbital-like passages. Shame that the Great Unhelpful Algorithm that rules over us all has made Reilly basically invisible, but now you know, so please get to listening to him. A+

David Occhipinti, Looking Glass (Elastic Recordings)

The recipient of two Chalmers Arts Fellowships and a few Juno nominations, this Canadian composer/guitarist is said to have developed a genre-bending approach to his writing that “gestures toward several styles without comfortably settling into any.” Lots of other fifty-cent words in this one-sheet that sure look smart, and there are indeed some mildly surprising moments here and there, but to my ears this is a form of neo-classical that’s remindful of deservedly acclaimed soundtrackers like Thomas Newman (The Shawshank Redemption, Road To Perdition, etc.). The compositions can get pretty snooty, such as when mezzo soprano Alex Hetherington steps in to lay down some church-y Christa Ludwig epic-ness, but Occhipinti is an unconventional thinker, so it isn’t unusual to hear things (guitars, most prominently) that feel more like curveballs than classical obeisance; “The Frumious Bandersnatch,” his paean to Lewis Carroll, finds him emulating a bloopy synth with (I think) his guitar. A highly advanced classical tinkerer, let’s say. A

_PLAYLIST

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• Yep, this Friday is July 31, all that’s left of the summer is August, when the sun starts going down early and everyone starts in with how much they looove pumpkin spice, which is of course a Stockholm syndrome reaction to the fast-approaching ridiculousness of frostbite weather, like, everyone’s like “fall is my favorite season, don’t you love pumpkin spice and apples,” even though apples are hilariously common in New England, like they’re on half the trees and no one eats them because who even wants to, and pumpkin spice just tastes like fresh-squeezed allergy juice from concentrate. Toward all this horror, the unkindest cut of all came in early June, when I happened upon a giant Starbucks pumpkin spice display at Giant Box Store, which totally floored me, what on Earth are you people even doing, and furthermore, I — oh forget it, I need to get back to the business of this literal award-winning column, and oh just great, look what I have to deal with first, a new album from Wicked actress Ariana Grande, titled petal (in lowercase, not that you’ll find it stylized like that in any other publication other than Nylon), I can hardly wait to hear her new rock ’n’ roll song, for the twerking children! Yikes, what a mess, the advance music on YouTube is a shambles, just 20 seconds of the title track, and then a song that’s also claimed to be “petal” but isn’t, it’s actually called “in the moment” (lowercased again because yadda yadda) and it is gentle and Wicked-y and cultural appropriation-y for all the twerking children, who never heard a Mariah Carey or Beyoncé song before, don’t you wonder what passive-aggressive diva fights Ariana had with Elphaba behind the scenes of Wicked, I’ll bet there are stories to be told!
• The subject of my next live-reaction will be Virginia rapper-singer Shaboozey, who won some Billboard Music Awards (I’d assume because someone paid for those “honors” but who knows, right?) and a Grammy for his collaboration with Jelly Roll on “Amen.” His forthcoming new album, The Outlaw Cherie Lee & Other Western Tales, is largely being ignored on Reddit groups like r/Popheads except for a handful of breathlessly enthusiastic, totally obvious bots, but we will take this album seriously, because it is a country-hip-hop concept album, with videos, in which Shaboozey totally rips off the vibe of Sinners shows off his signature move of channeling Johnny Cash and Lil Nas X. Fine with me, the teaser stuff has a DMX flavor to it, I’d never complain about that, it is gritty and mean, it might be a good album, someone let me know!

• Dum-dee-dum-dee doo, heaven help us all, what’s next, ah, it’s trans Latina experimental composer/DJ Arca with her ninth album in 12 years, XXXXX! Her last one, 2021’s Kick IIIII, was Aphex Twin-like, so maybe this one is decent too. OK maybe not, the song samples consist of stuttering robo-noises with nary an actual beat to be found among them, but it’s not my place to question anyone’s taste.

• We’ll wrap up this remarkably forgettable week with Austin, Texas, indie band Shearwater, which came into being when two of the guys from Okkervil River left the band to play even wimpier music. The New World, the band’s 20th album, includes the single “Daydream Unbeliever,” which actually gets kind of heavy after a Bela Fleck-ish opening bit. I hate the guy’s voice, but your mileage may vary.

Featured Photo: The Durutti Column, Renascent and David Occhipinti, Looking Glass.

New England Jazz Collaborative, Tributaries (Amherst College Press)

Well, that’s a scary little jumble of words, isn’t it, the “New England Jazz Collaborative?” It portends a listen that’s rendered somnambulistic and amateurish through the intervention of academic purists, but don’t let that fool you; far from being an uninteresting exercise for wonks, this set of six new works for jazz orchestra by four modern composers explores several different subgenres that make the record crackle with excitement and innovation. The lead single, “Ol’ Liminal,” combines Benny Goodman full-orchestra swing with noir-detective raunch — think the Peter Gunn theme — and then heads straight for Alpha Centauri, launching a fireworks display of hilariously cool melody. “Another Brighter Day” switches gears to bright, midnight-at-the-urban-mecca joy, with classical elements blending with straight Yellowjackets-style progressive steez. This is a composer-driven collective and it shows; in interviews the sound designers indicate that they can hardly believe their luck in being involved with such an overabundance of talented players. This is one you absolutely do not want to miss. A+ —Eric W. Saeger

Sharon Katz & The Peace Train, Desert Air (self-released)

While it’s still summer and you’re in the mood to sway in the beach breeze to musical trifles, this outfit will be performing July 27 through July 31 at The Power of Music Conference at Star Island (one of the Isles of Shoals, 7 miles off the coast of Rye, N.H.). A white guitarist, singer and musical therapist, Katz is from South Africa’s now-renamed Nelson Mandela Bay and has always been something of a missionary; as a teenager during the apartheid era she’d sneak out to the “Blacks only” townships by hiding under blankets in the back seat of her friend’s car, which eventually led to her forming the country’s seminal 500-voice multiracial/multicultural band and youth choir in 1992, performing at all of Mandela’s special events after his election. The music on this record is carefree, absolutely no-contact and no-stress, reminiscent of Sade in some ways and Maryanne Faithfull in others, but altogether twice as gentle, so if you’re attending that event, leave the glow sticks at home. A

_PLAYLIST

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• Look out below and whatnot, new albums are getting airdropped onto our heads this Friday, July 24, I give up, waitwhat, the summer’s already half over, I may as well try to find my Ren & Stimpy chullo hat and noisy swishy snow pants in my nonsense-filled closet, unless Petunia threw them out because smelly, why am I living in the insane Siberian wilderness of New Hampshire again? But whatever, as long as it’s still summer, it’s actually warm in the permafrosted nation of Canada, which we can thank for all their wildfires, which turned our lovely New Hampshire skies the same color of sickly yellow as the planet Venus, remember when the Russians sent a probe there and it melted within 10 minutes, accomplishing nothing more than sending back photos of molten rocks and a barf-yellow sky? But I digress because whatever, one of Canada’s greatest exports is of course Shania Twain, the criminally gorgeous woman with the singularly mediocre voice who was the ’90s girl-AOR version of Adele, when Western civilization was almost palatable and single 30-something women hadn’t yet abandoned all hope that men would ever understand anything that wasn’t cryptocurrency, sports or Roblox. Come on, you remember, she gave us such hits as “You’re Still The One” and “Man I Feel Like a Woman” and people had normal jobs instead of driving an Uber 96 hours a week for Jeff Bezos or whatever’s even going on now? Well, she’s back again, with an album titled Little Miss Twain, ready to lip-sync something from it on the Today show for the entertainment of the five remaining nursing homes in Idaho that still have it on the teevee, let’s go find something from this album and talk about it and drink heavily, not necessarily in that order! How do you like that, she’s gone in an even more country music direction this album, despite the fact that she grew up in the blue-collar high-unemployment-cursed city of Windsor, Ontario, but whatever, the first single from this album is the title track, which features country legend Tanya Tucker, a much better singer than Shania, but then again who isn’t, wait, I get it, there’s a line in this sleepy country ballad where the ladies sing “according to my mother I’m the next Tanya Tucker,” I see what they did there. I don’t know, you might like this song if you have ducks and chickens living on your property, let’s move on.

• Yay, if you can’t deal with Shania’s classy je nes sais quoi, you can always just settle for London rave queen Charli xcx’s occasional twerking, which at least she doesn’t overdo, because come on already, it’s 2026. Her new LP Music Fashion Film features the single “Rock Music,” which is actually neat if you like four-chord electro-punk (who doesn’t?) and can stomach a little AutoTune (it’s acceptable in this case).

• It’s never been cool to slag off New York City indie-rockers The Strokes as a sucky band, but only because they usually aren’t. Their forthcoming seventh album is called Reality Awaits; it starts with the tune “Psycho Sh-t,” which consists of equal parts New Order and Yo La Tengo, it works nicely enough, same as always.

• We’ll wrap things up with now-73-year-old Robyn Hitchcock, whom you might remember from his biggest tune, 1988’s “Balloon Man,” you remember, the video was a stop-motion thing with a can of baked beans and some fruit and it sounded like The Monkees, OK, just forget it, no one knows that song, his new album The Confuser has a single, “My Dead Astronaut,” that’s kind of a joke song, it’s stupid, but he’ll be speaking and signing books in Boston at Porter Square Books on July 27.

Featured Photo: New England Jazz Collaborative, Tributaries and Sharon Katz & The Peace Train, Desert Air

Shonen Knife, Let’s Knife Re-Cut (Summit Records)

Full-scale re-rub of the Japanese trio’s 1992 Let’s Knife LP, which Rolling Stone Japan placed at No. 37 on its list of the “100 Greatest Japanese Rock Albums of All Time” in 2007. No idea why they did this; they could have left this album alone and simply rattled off a new collection of Ramones/Black Flag-flavored punk tunes, but instead it just serves to show that they’ve, you know, gotten a lot older. We can start at the start with “Riding On The Rocket,” which has its original raw energy surgically removed and replaced with a version that’s so lifeless it’ll make you think of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Of course, that might have been the point of doing it; the updated version of “Get The Wow” sounds like a tune that should have made it onto the first Go-Go’s album. It’s still Shonen Knife, but jeez. They’ll be in Durham, N.H., with Men At Work and Toad The Wet Sprocket at the Whittemore Center on July 28. A

Electric Six, I Shall Exterminate Everything Around Me That Restricts Me from Being the Master (red vinyl remaster) (Metropolis Records)

Born in the 1990s Detroit scene that also saw the emergence of bands like the White Stripes, these guys are often considered a “gay disco” band owing to their upbeat, high-energy tuneage and theatrics. If it matters to you, and it shouldn’t, the members all identify as straight but supportive of the LGBTQ community; they’re a go-to band for bros and others who hold such-themed events. This was their fourth album, released in 2007, and it was and is a blast, distilling their fun-filled essence and cementing the band’s reputation as a borderline joke band that can really play (“Down at McDonnelzzz” is a classic among their food-obsessed songs; as one YouTuber commented, “I got this song banned before due to ‘over-requesting’. 6:30 AM, trippin’ nuts, getting Egg McMuffins, and this song on the radio, I can die happy”). The bullet version of their legacy would read “Come for the hard garage rock, stay for the Danceteria madness.” Absolutely relentless record, now with bonus tracks and downloadable stuff and ruby red vinyl. A+

_PLAYLIST

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• July 17’s list of new album releases is in my hands, everybody start drinking and I’ll try to make it as painless as possible! Now, something that’d technically be proper to talk about this month owing to this column’s focus on — you know, famous people playing/singing music and whatnot — was the planned concert series for America’s 250th anniversary, which took place in several U.S. cities, including Los Angeles, California, and Philadelphia, a city in Hell. As everyone knows, the main event was originally planned to be held at the National Mall in Washington, D.C., but since all anyone does these days is argue about politics on Facebook, it got canceled and replaced with a giant thunderstorm, so I tried to find something about that whole 250th kerfuffle that wasn’t horrible, or at least not politically radioactive, and I finally did find something, specifically the appearance of opera-singing tenor dude Christopher Macchio, whose specialty is blending non-operatic genres with, you know, opera, at the Freedom 250 rally performance in D.C. on June 24. He has only made two albums and probably couldn’t care less if SpongeBob SquarePants was our president, but either way he is a great singing human. He hasn’t made an album since 2020, a Christmas album, on which he sang a rendition of my least favorite Christmas jingle, “O Holy Night,” which most singers only sing in order to show that they have lungs made of Kevlar and could probably impress Simon Cowell on his stupid talent shows, in other words it’s the “My Heart Will Go On” of holiday jingles. Will he make another album? I don’t know, but there’s definitely one coming out Friday from trip-hop pioneer Tricky, titled Different When It’s Silent! He was a member of Massive Attack when they were The Wild Bunch, and even though his last appearance on a proper Massive Attack album was 32 years ago, no one can ever utter his name without mentioning Massive Attack somewhere within the same breath. What does this mean? It means he is too cool for school, so let’s see what he’s up to, on this new album! Yep, “I’m Yours” is a great little tune, starting with its 1960s guitar line, over which Tricky lays his usual helium vocals, and then it becomes a loud-ass no-wave thing, he’s still got it, or whatever the kids say nowadays.

• But does rapping man Ne-Yo still have it, he of “I Wish” fame, from 70 years ago? The answer is a definite no if you only like him for his flows about being short or whatever, as he has been going in a more cowboy-hat direction since last year’s “Simple Things,” how do you feel about rappers going country? Highway 79 is the new album, and “Miss Tundra” the single, a chill R&B-tinted cowboy song about a girl with large glutes, don’t you love how nothing ever changes?

• British indie rock band Kasabian has still got it, even though they’ve gone in a more wimpy direction since their early days, remember when “Club Foot” was on the mixtapes of everyone who felt the need to hide their taste for old-school heavy metal, that was a good one. Their latest LP, Act III, finds them trying to become New Order harder than ever, at least as far as the single “Great Pretender” is concerned; it has the same vibe as the old Modern English song “Melt With You,” which will please people who remember that dreadful period of cultural history.

• We’ll call it a week with boomy-voiced rapper Rick Ross and his new LP, Set In Stone! It is the usual fare: Sell stuff on black markets, avoid the po-po, and then buy some Benzes. Reddit’s r/hiphopheads group, which never met any pointless thing that didn’t start fights among the regulars, is mostly angry that the album cover is AI-generated; as far as that business goes, I do not care.

Featured Photo: Shonen Knife, Let’s Knife Re-Cut and Electric Six, I Shall Exterminate Everything Around Me That Restricts Me from Being the Master

Chuck Bergeron, Bass & Face: Duets With Ten Premier Vocalists (Summit Records)

The ever-polite All About Jazz describes bassist Bergeron as “one of the most active and innovative musicians working in the field of jazz,” not that I’ve ever seen a review from them that went something like, “Boy, this lazy putz should just quit polluting the airwaves,” you know? I mean, I kid, he’s assembled, as described, an elite group of jazz singers that includes Manhattan Transfer’s Janis Siegel; Deborah Silver, who was Grammy-nominated for her 2025 collaboration with the Count Basie Orchestra, and the appropriately named Kevin Mahogany, whose rich, knurled baritone positively floats over Bergeron’s deftly bowed acoustic bass interpretation of Duke Ellington’s “Sound of Love.” Overall this record feels like a comfortable, casual pair of socks, not a novelty release aimed at bass wonks; the funnest moment is Nicole Yarling’s unapologetically urban rendition of “Audubon Zoo/Iko-Iko,” which anyone with ears will recognize as the Mardi Gras singalong from the 1988 film Rain Man. Plenty to like here. A+

Alden Hellmuth, Tether (Leiter Verlag GmbH Records)

Just to reassure regular readers, no, I’m not turning this into an all-jazz column; fact is, over the past few months I’ve been absolutely buried in new jazz releases — physical copies too, not just empty-brained emails with links to confounding whiz-bang download pages that require a master’s degree in IT just to get to the part where one actually listens to stuff — and at this point I’m feeling guilty that I haven’t been able to get to many of them (there are so few music publications covering jazz nowadays). I wasn’t going to let that happen with this imported 12” vinyl LP, which was Fedexed to me from Germany (do you have any idea how much that costs?); its subject is an avant garde saxophonist with a casual fetish for noise. Ipso facto, this one’s obviously from the more experimental space, but New Yorker Hellmuth is as interested in brain-dazzling melody as she is in Mingus bonking; she goes into a deep, center-of-midtown reverie in “Witness,” the best on board here. Fascinating album. A+

_PLAYLIST

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• July 10 would be a great day for some new albums to appear, and lo, thus it shall be, unto us, and yadda yadda. Yikes, look at all the albums that are coming out this week, I wonder if any of those albums will do something more than get on my nerves, let me look. Well, at least the 80-year-olds are still “rockin’ out,” like they say in Kansas, given that The Rolling Stones have a new one, called Foreign Tongues, which isn’t a strictly bad thing I suppose. I mean, they did turn the studio into a giant party, with people like Robert Smith, Steve Winwood, Paul McCartney and the drummer from Red Hot Chili Peppers dropping in to help out, not that the Stones need any help. For example, on “Rough and Twisted,” a loud, loutish blues-rawk tune that name-checks Muddy Waters in the band’s most Muddy Waters-ish tune ever, the Stones’ singer, whatever his name is, plays harmonica, and it doesn’t suck. I don’t know, I’ve never really cared about the Stones but never actively disliked them either, like, my high school friends who liked them were all confirmed druggies, so I just associate the band with drugs, which is what rock ’n’ roll is supposed to be about, or at least it was until it became a distinctly un-fun genre in which Berklee-dropout guitarists showed off the scant few jazz chords they’d learned in school and sang songs about Trump and being awkward around their exes or whatever everyone’s deal is now. I mean, yes, there’s literally no need for a new Rolling Stones record, but at least they’re singing about cocaine and one-night stands at that age, where most people would just be singing about adult diapers. That’s a good thing, isn’t it? I don’t know, you tell me, America.

• I always get a nice short burst of Facebook un-friendings when I mention that I always hated Queen, like when I state that their News Of The World album was a low point in arena rock that will never be matched. I only mention that because Adam Lambert, Queen’s kind-of-replacement for singer Freddie Mercury, has a new album streeting this week, cleverly titled ADAM, in capital letters, because wouldn’t you if you were him? OK, I wouldn’t either, but whatever, we shall talk about this new album, from the one-time American Idol runner-up, because if we didn’t, the 10 people who’ll be buying the stupid thing might feel abandoned, and I wouldn’t want that. O, what horrors will be on this record, OK, at least it isn’t a bunch of covers like the last one, the first single is titled “UNDER THE RHYTHM,” in capital letters, see what he did there, but it isn’t bad if you like Michael Jackson/Bruno Mars-type singing; it’s very busy and well-done, and this is without a doubt the last time you’ll see this album mentioned in any media outlet, ever.

• Release the kraken of hamburger jokes, because it’s a new album from famous burger-eating human Jack White, called Frozen Charlotte! Now, my guess is that the music on this album will be Led Zeppelin-esque, because isn’t it always, but this human Ronald McDonald is at the “One Never Knows What I’ll Try Next” stage of his career, so this may just be heavy metal versions of 1930s polkas, so let’s just do the dutiful and find out. Yup, nope, “Dollar Bill” pilfers the drunken guitar noodling of Zep’s “In My Time Of Dying,” you get the idea, right, let’s move on.

• And finally it’s fashion model/actress/singer/future ex of Robert Pattinson Suki Waterhouse, with Loveland, her third album. Single “Back In Love” regurgitates the breathy, amateurish sound of Aughts bands like Au Revoir Simone, I don’t care for it.

Featured Photo:

Ow! Live at The Penthouse, Johnny Griffin and Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis (Reel To Real Records)

It’s summer in New England, when we hardscrabble Yankees regroup and take a look at things we may have missed over the past year. My problem is that so many albums get dumped into my virtual and non-virtual mailboxes that I tend to run years behind, which means a lot of releases never get the attention they deserve, case in point this one, which originally streeted on Record Store Day in 2019 as an exclusive, and then in standard form a couple of weeks later. Put simply, it’s a master class in hard bop jazz, spotlighting two amazingly gifted tenor saxophone players; it really show-stopped my music-listening life the first time I heard it and it’s become a staple in my car over the past couple of months. Recorded live over two nights at the Penthouse jazz club in Seattle in 1962, it features both guys (who were dubbed the “Tough Tenors” for their fast-motion interplay) in peak form, blazing (in an uncharacteristically gentlemanly way, as opposed to the one-upmanship observable in their other Prestige Records outings) through such improv-begging tunes as Count Basie’s “Tickle Toe,” at mind-boggling speeds. Advanced post-bop is everywhere here; if you buy one vintage jazz record this year, this should be it. A+

Gandalf Murphy and the Slambovian Circus of Dreams, A Very Unusual Head (Storm Kings Records)

Like I always say sometimes, if you can’t make the Who’s Who, try for the What The Hell Was That, where these guys are situated comfortably with a bullet. At first glance I was expecting steampunk: stovepipe hats, facial hair courtesy of 1971, suits louder than Godzilla after stubbing his toe on a school bus, etc., but this 30-plus-year veteran crew of upstate New Yorkers is usually found at folkie festivals, which makes sense, given their sound, but only a little. More accurately, their trip is usually described as “hillbilly Pink Floyd,” and when I found that out I was filled with dread (you all know what a jerk I am about Floyd, and obviously everything about these guys screams joke band). But whattaya know, opening tune “Beez (I Know Where The Beez Have Gone)” is very listenable and really very epic; if there was anything you liked about Dark Side Of The Moon, it’s distilled here. No, I’m being serious, the sound is very big, even when it gets a little weird thanks to the presence of hayloft/jackass instruments like ukuleles, melodicas, flutes and theremins. This is simply a great band of songwriters who happen to dress like Randy “Macho Man” Savage. A+

_PLAYLIST

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• OK, the summer’s already moving along too fast; the next new-CD Friday is this one, July 3, the day before this country’s 250th birthday, which means that everyone you know will be spending their time gathering together dangerous quantities of liquor and fireworks, not thinking about buying albums, but new albums will come nonetheless, and you can listen to them, while you shoot off fireworks, safely drunk, unless you hate George Washington! According to Metacritic, which has been proving itself increasingly worthless of late with regard to telling me about new albums, there are only two, but Google’s AI (the one everybody’s already using for free, which means it’s totally destined to win the AI wars, which will bankrupt companies like Microsoft and Oracle and bring on the Apocalypse, but not to worry, because something-something) found several more! The most “important” album comes from 58-year-old British hard-rock band Deep Purple, and it is titled SPLAT! Now, I don’t know how these fellas are even still alive, but I’m certain I’ll be impressed by their ability to keep up with the times and street a record that sounds fresh and innovative, let’s go find out! Yes, yes, the new single “Guilt Trippin’” is basically the same thing as their 54-year-old song “Space Truckin,’” except that 80-year-old singer Ian Gillan is trying to sound funny, like Butthead from Beavis and Butthead, so if you enjoy hearing five 80-year-old men pretending to be a joke band, I highly recommend that you consider purchasing this album!

• Two weeks ago, Happy Mag reported that Madonna wanted an “extortionist’s sum” to fund her biopic Who’s That Girl, and not even Netflix would pay for it. Says here that the script, which she wrote herself, would demand a blockbuster budget, so it’s on hold until further notice, meaning it will probably never happen, which is a bit unfair I suppose; as Happy observed, “[A Bob Dylan movie] gets [a gigantic budget]. Bruce gets one. Michael gets one. But Madonna? Apparently the industry forgot who invented half of pop culture.” Well, as far as I’m concerned — and not to minimize the fact that women are treated horribly by the music industry — I’d remind the Happy writer that we already had a Madonna documentary in 1991, titled Truth Or Dare, whose most non-boring moment was when she pretended to barf when Kevin Costner appeared backstage, but either way, Madge has a new album out this week, called Confessions on a Dance Floor: Part II, which harkens back to her space-disco days, with hypnotic progressive-house elements, random sexy whispering, etc. It’s fine.

• Next is Anton Pearson, guitarist for U.K. band Squid, which is, according to the band’s subreddit, “focused on post-punk, jazz-rock, ambient and krautrock,” meaning they’re, you know, totally unfocused, not that that’s always a bad thing. Pearson’s debut solo LP, Driving Through Belgium, is ambient stuff; I listened to two tracks, one that was cheesy Daedalus-type stuff, and another that sounded like an electric shaver getting pressed against a stainless steel pot; I’d cite the song titles but I already forgot them, mercifully.

• And finally we have Atlanta rapper/producer Ken Carson with his newest album, Xperiment, a 22-track affair that lays melodically competent AutoTuned rhymes over rage-y, distorted, experimental beats. I would give you the deets on one tune in particular, but given that all he’s made available for preview is a collection of snippets, I assume he couldn’t care less about my desire for exhibiting any journalistic professionalism whatsoever, bravo.

Featured Photo: Sublime, Until The Sun Explodes and Tori Kelly, God Must Really Love Me