Album Reviews 22/04/28

May Erlewine, Tiny Beautiful Things (Warner Records)

Some really gentle, very pretty stuff here engineered for comfortably settled womenfolk who enjoy sipping chai tea while gazing out the window at lazy rains. This Maggie Gyllenhaal lookalike is from Big Rapids, Michigan, and drew her inspiration for this full-length from the similarly titled book by Rumpus advice columnist Cheryl Strayed. Erlewine has the perfect voice for such a thing, wedged somewhere between Natalie Imbruglia and Jewel, and the songs fit like your favorite super-thick socks, laid-back but earning attention as they putter along. The instrumental bits are always pleasurable, with piano, dobro, acoustic guitar working pretty much perfectly together to form pieces that evoke Americana and AOR-pop at the same time. “Your Someone” is outstanding, fluttering along on silken wings and really blooming at the chorus; “He Knows” borders on Taylor Swift’s early days (when she wrote actual songs); “Could Have Been” flirts with Billie Holiday torch. I can’t find anything wrong with this album at all. A+

Meshuggah, Immutable (Atomic Fire Records)

Oh man, are these guys good, and that’s coming from someone who’s basically a newcomer to their greatness, given that I generally avoid thrash metal and missed out on their stuff for seven full albums (I’ve still got a lot of catching up to do). Immutable is their ninth full-length, and the draw is, as always, Tomas Haake, the drummer for this Swedish tech-metal juggernaut. Here it is, if you want some juxtaposition in order to grok the technical abilities at work here: Dillinger Escape Plan is first-grade math, Meshuggah is quantum calculus. If I were stuck on a desert island with only one record, this one would be in the running as my choice, since it would take a lot of listens simply to understand what’s going on here, which is, namely, very advanced syncopated patterns and polyrhythms, a lot like progressive jazz in a way, as others have noted. But the base of the recipe isn’t post-bop, it’s thrash-metal that has to be heard to be believed. If the above is all old news to you, the first Godzilla-playing-with-a-bunch-of-telephone-poles tune is “The Abysmal Eye,” taking the band’s patented approach that just never gets old. Astonishing. A+

PLAYLIST

• Ay caramba, it’s already the last week of April, and there will be new albums coming your way on the 29th! There’s so many of them for me to pick and choose from this week, so let’s start with 900-year-old bong-collector Willie Nelson, whose 900th album, A Beautiful Time, is winging its way in trucks to the five people who still buy CDs at full retail price! Funny coincidence, I asked a friend whom he thought would make a great president of the United States, and he said Willie Nelson, so maybe that really isn’t just a meme, what do you think? I’ll tell you what I think, I think it’s one of the dumbest ideas I ever heard, having a bong in every room of the White House, and would he offer the Pope cannabis gummies when he came by? I don’t like it, and I probably won’t like this upcoming album’s first single either, it’s called “I’ll Love You Till The Day I Die,” but I’m going to find out right now. So there’s a video for it, and he’s stacking some playing cards on some table in a honky-tonk bar or something, and the song is a typical country-and-western slow-burner, about some girl he once talked to for a few minutes, but that short conversation changed him forever. There is slow piano and thoughtful strumming, in case you couldn’t possibly picture what might be going on here.

• Grammy-winning country songstress Miranda Lambert is known as the other person to marry Blake Shelton, and the first person to place third in the USA Network’s Nashville Star talent show, but that placement was enough to make her into a famous singer, so keep your chins up, people who place third in things. Lambert’s ninth full-length, Palomino, features a tune called “Music City Queen,” and I was actually kind of interested to hear it, because 1980s weirdos The B-52’s are guests on that song, but naturally there’s no advance of that song yet, so it looks like I’m stuck listening to a different single, called “Strange,” which is just a normal tune. She kind of sounds like Dolly Parton when she’s singing on this tune; it’s a pedestrian joint with an unplugged guitar part, then a Reba McEntire part and so on. It’s OK!

• When it comes to stomping industrial-rock madness, I don’t think German band Rammstein is relevant anymore, what with KMFDM still putting out albums and whatnot; I haven’t heard anything from them in years, but supposedly they’re not industrial metal anyway, their style is actually “Neue Deutsche Härte,” which is German for “new German hardness,” a genre that mixes ‘Neue Deutsche Welle’ (whatever that is), alternative metal, groove metal and elements of electro-industrial and techno. Either way, I was never really crazy about them, but here they are, in front of my face, proffering a new album, called Zeit. The title track has a really disgusting video, and the tune is slow and bombastic, and of course they sing in German. It’s about pirates or something with muskets, I can’t understand anything they’re singing, so let’s move on to the next whatsis.

• Lastly we have British indie-rock outfit Bloc Party, with their sixth full-length, Alpha Games! This band is OK, with their jagged Gang Of Four-style guitars and soccer-hooligan vocals, as heard on almost-hit-singles like “Banquet” and “Helicopter”; you’ve probably been exposed to their tunes before at sports bars and beach arcades, but it probably went in one ear and out the other, like, you were like, “Is that The Police? Rancid maybe?” and decided you didn’t care. The new single, “Traps,” is appropriately spazzy; it’s sort of like “Rock Lobster” but more boneheaded. It’s OK.

If you’re in a local band, now’s a great time to let me know about your EP, your single, whatever’s on your mind. Let me know how you’re holding yourself together without being able to play shows or jam with your homies. Send a recipe for keema matar. Message me on Twitter (@esaeger) or Facebook (eric.saeger.9).

Album Reviews 22/04/21

Cypress Hill, Back In Black (Mnrk Records)

You have to admire the timing of this ’90s rap group’s latest release, given that the last Super Bowl halftime show was a showcase of that genre, and the rush will surely be on to revive the whole thing. And that’s OK with me, at least in the case of this crew, whose Latin-tinged cannabis anthem “Insane in the Brain” became a meme before there were memes (my favorite use of the song was its appearance in the movie Bulworth, if that matters to you). They released an album called Elephants on Acid a couple of years ago, in case you were too stoned to notice, but this LP brings them back to their OG roots. The songs aren’t total cartoons, which kind of detracts from the half-joke tunes I’d expected, but they’re definitely old-school, meant for sitting in a 1964 Lowrider and hoping there isn’t a cop within smelling distance. OK, there’s “Open Ya Mind,” which is more plugged into their sillier side, but the subject matter is serious, at least to them: Did you know that weed is still illegal in some parts of the U.S., which means some people will go to jail for it while others will make mad bank selling it? It’s true! B

Nazareth, Surviving The Law (Frontiers Music s.r.l.)

Holy crow, Scottish arena-metal dudes Nazareth, who are like one million years old, now hold the distinction of having the coolest album cover in history (the one for Hair Of The Dog, which is just endlessly fascinating) and the worst (this one). I was just Twittering with a few folks who agreed with me that the fadeout solo to HOTD’s “Changin’ Times” is the greatest solo ever, but that was back when this band was actually Nazareth. The only surviving original member is, as is always the case, the bass player, Pete Agnew; crazed-banshee-voiced singer Dan McCafferty died a couple of years ago and has been replaced by Carl Sentence, who sounds like a cross between Paul Stanley and David Whatsisface from Whitesnake. The guitar sound, courtesy of long-time new guy Jimmy Murrison, is blissfully heavy, and as for the tunes, they’re OK: Opener “Strange Days” is rote hair-metal; “You Gotta Pass It Around” wants to grow up to be Zep’s “When The Levee Breaks”; “Runaway” reminds us that band Fastway was once kind of awesome; “Better Leave It Out” pickpockets Living Colour’s “Cult Of Personality.” Above average stuff, all hail Naz (RIP). A-

PLAYLIST

• April 22 is a Friday, which means a bunch of new albums will be out, for your perusal, enjoyment and, mostly, general disappointment. But that’s being cynical, and I won’t be that today, because the summer is all but here, and when it comes I will be content, eating clams and french fries and random Doritos by the seashore, just looking at all the peeps and judging. But there is news in the world of rock ’n’ roll, because the quirky, half-cocked Australian psychedelic rock scene that was spearheaded by King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard has another contender you’ve probably never heard of, namely the Psychedelic Porn Crumpets! Let’s welcome these Crumpets to our pages with our traditional first question, folks, ready: Just how bad is this band anyway? Well, I don’t know yet, but if they’re anything like King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, we can expect a band with the brains of Black Lips, the sloppiness of the guy who sings the “Rock ’n’ Roll McDonald’s” song from the documentary Supersize Me, and a lot of sub-Flaming Lips pseudo-psychedelic nonsense. But I’m getting ahead of myself, not that I don’t want this part to be over already, so let’s put this new album, Night Gnomes, on the barbie, like an Australian shrimp, and see if I can stand more than 10 seconds of whatever these guys are doing, what do you say? They’re influenced by Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, and The Beatles, which would normally herald a depleted-soil disaster if a bunch of millennials were trying to do it, but no, the single “Bubblegum Infinity” is pretty cool indeed, a grungy, high-octane cross between Oasis and early Soundgarden, kind of. Welcome to the pages of The Hippo, Psychedelic Porn Crumpets, I’m glad to have you aboard, but do keep in mind that it’ll be all downhill from here.

• I never really liked Bon Iver at all, but too bad for me, because here’s a new album from Bon Iver’s drummer and second-banana singer, S. Carey! His singing has been compared to — I hope you’re sitting down, folks — Beach Boy singer Brian Wilson, so I am sitting here with a barf bag nearby, ready to listen to the 42,000th hipster singer to ruin Beach Boys music for posterity. No, let’s not be like that, for all I know, this guy’s new album, Break Me Open, will amaze me; maybe it will dazzle me with totally not-awkward existentialism as experienced by overeducated dunces and enthrall me with its acumen. Here’s one of the songs, the title track, are you ready? OK, it’s sad and floaty and chill, and Carey sings like the Beach Boys of course. It is morose and sad, a tune that should be playing in the background as your girlfriend drives off in her 3-foot-long electric vehicle, looking at you sadly but determinedly, never to see you again. Brings a tear to my eye, folks, let’s move on.

• Right, then, here’s another Australian, a dream-pop singing girl called Hatchie, with her latest album, Giving The World Away. The single is called “Quicksand,” and it’s kind of nice, especially if you like Echosmith, because she sounds exactly like Sydney Sierota during the hook. I would call it influencer-technopop; it’s dreamy and catchy, meaning most people would like it, which of course makes me very suspicious.

• We’ll wrap up this week with Skinty Fia, the third LP from Irish post-punk band Fontaines D.C.! If you’re one of the five people who actually still watch the Tonight show, you saw these guys perform “Boys in the Better Land,” in 2019, but as for the here and now, the band’s new single “Jackie Down The Line” is a cross between Violent Femmes and Blur in mellow mode, meaning I have no use for it whatsoever.

If you’re in a local band, now’s a great time to let me know about your EP, your single, whatever’s on your mind. Let me know how you’re holding yourself together without being able to play shows or jam with your homies. Send a recipe for keema matar. Message me on Twitter (@esaeger) or Facebook (eric.saeger.9).

Album Reviews 22/04/14

Julieta Eugenio, Jump (Greenleaf Music)

Sorry, but the first thing that jumped out at me is how huge this Argentinian jazz up-and-comer’s tenor sax is. That thing is huge, like she could probably use it as a decoy in order to use the carpool lane. But I digress already, which isn’t fair, because lest we forget, the music’s the thing in jazz, and what a masterful collection this is, single-handedly helmed by nowadays-New Yorker Eugenio, accompanied by an upright bassist guy and a drummer. That may look a bit sparse on paper, but Eugenio fills all the space with divine runs and passages, like a kid trying to cover an entire page with their favorite crayon, rub rub rub. The CSI mostly reveals various shades of utterly charming post-bop of course, some neo-swing (“Snowbirds”), and a ballad that isn’t too obligato (“For You”). She got her master’s degree at Aaron Copland School, if that makes any difference to you, but this is far from any sort of trite academic exercise. A+

Roland & Albert & The Orb, Roland & Albert Meet The Orb Upcountry in Uganda (Orbscure Recordings / Cooking Vinyl)

Well, what a stop-the-presses moment this is, folks. If you and I were just being casual and you asked me what the weirdest band in the world is, chances are very good that I’d say it’s London afterparty club act The Orb, unless — OK, no, The Books are weirder, but they’re broken up. And that’s all moot anyway because of this project, which finds the Orb guys futzing with an EP’s worth of traditional blues and Ugandan rhythms originally recorded by (spoiler alert, these guys are obscure) Roland & Albert. I know, I know, who cares, but I’m telling you, these beats are completely addictive, right from the EP’s leadoff track “Squirrels In Jumpsuits,” whose mellow, urban vibe is driven by plinky guitar, ’70s synth and — because it’s The Orb, a constant stream of random dialog. It’s stuff that even I could fall asleep to on a plane, which says something, because all I think about on planes is, you know, gravity’s effect on large metal objects. Curiosity-seekers will thank me for this. A+

PLAYLIST

• April 15 is this Friday, I hope you will not be arrested for doing anything untoward with your tax documents. It is also a day for new albums, like the newest one from indie-rock fixture Kurt Vile, a guy I’ve been meaning to look into a little bit, and now I have no choice, because at this writing there isn’t too much else for me to talk about in the way of new releases. His influences range from the unassailable (Neil Young, Tom Petty, Dinosaur Jr.) to the unbearable (Pavement); all I really know about him is that he helped launch the band The War On Drugs in 2008, and they are still around, floating Guster-ish tunes that I have no interest in whatsoever. That doesn’t bode well for the proceedings at hand, I know, but life is always full of surprises, so I will surf over to YouTube to check out “Hey Like a Child,” a song from his new album, (watch my moves), and yes, the album title is stylized precisely like that, because tiresome gimmicks are an important ingredient in good rock ’n’ roll. Here, you’re near a phone or a computer, let’s listen to this song together. Hmm, it’s sort of Bob Dylan-ish I suppose, but he uses a weird “wobbly guitar” technique when he strums, which isn’t something I’ve heard before. That’s kind of cool, and the song is OK, if you like music that basically drones on without any ambition and has no drop or “cool part.” OK, that was enriching.

• Drum-playing human Evan J Cartwright had a good thing going with Canadian experimental-pop band U.S. Girls, whose specialty is quirky but mellow disco/soul-indie. He also had a pretty good thing going with the similarly girl-commanded quirk-folk band Weather Station, but he apparently got tired of being in good bands and has struck out on his own to release his first solo album, Bit By Bit. Ha ha, I actually like the first single, “And You’ve Got Nobuddy,” because the video has him just sitting down playing his drums, but there are no drums in the song, just a sleepy guitar, and his mouth moves along to the words, which are perfect for your favorite Generation Z doomer to laugh-and-cry-at-the-same-time to, viz: “I always had it in my mind that life was kidding this whole time.” I hope this strange little man gets his music on an episode of Euphoria someday, because it’d be fitting, and I’m sure he’d call it a successful career right afterward and, with any luck, never darken my door with his joke songs ever again.

• OK, hold it, no, here’s an actual band folks, look, it’s Cancer Bats, with a new album called Psychic Jailbreak, I can hardly wait to talk about an album made by an actual band that does something more than joke songs and ringtones for dairy farmers! I’d say something critic-ish like “You’d have to have been living under a rock to have never heard of Cancer Bats before,” but that wouldn’t be fair; I’m probably the only person in New Hampshire who knows that the band is a semi-cool southern-rock/sludge metal outfit. But now you know, so let’s lend an ear to the album’s title track. Hmm, it’s got some doom-metal parts, and the singer basically just yells, and then it rips off Alice in Chains’ “Would.” Yes, this is the best thing on board so far this week.

• No, don’t leave yet, I have to tell you about Los Angeles-based singing girl Primer, whose new album Incubator is already getting press attention, because I’m about to pay attention to it now! The single, “Warning,” is really cool, an ’80s-tinged chillout with really nice syncopation courtesy of a tabla sample, or so it sounds. Her voice is kind of low and really listenable. (I’m glad there was one thing I could actually recommend out of this week’s really stinky barrel of fish.)

If you’re in a local band, now’s a great time to let me know about your EP, your single, whatever’s on your mind. Let me know how you’re holding yourself together without being able to play shows or jam with your homies. Send a recipe for keema matar. Message me on Twitter (@esaeger) or Facebook (eric.saeger.9).

Album Reviews 22/04/07

Jizzy Pearl’s Love Hate, Hell CA (Golden Robot Records)

I must have missed when this Hollywood hard rock band was making waves in Europe and elsewhere, like, apparently in 1990 they won Record Of The Year in readers’ polls put forth by magazines Kerrang and Metal Hammer. That of course doesn’t bode well for the here and now, this electronic zeitgeist wherein every song seems to have a trip-hop part, a noise part, a Mario Bros. soundtrack part, and then everyone goes back to not knowing the band even exists. OK, I’m riffing, but I’m so far behind on this column you’ll just have to deal, and whatever, we’re talking about a street-metal band that still sounds like Skid Row (anyone remember them? Anyone?) as we hear in album opener “One Hot Minute.” These guys are aware that Greta Van Fleet are huge right now, solely on the strength of ripping off 50-year-old Led Zeppelin songs, so they’ve “graced” us with “Acid Babe,” a vaguely “Black Dog” joint that would have fit on Zep’s Physical Graffiti LP, which still remains the most celebrated album of phoned-in swill in history. Fine for what it is, this CD would make a fine drink coaster if it isn’t your thing. B+

Chelsea Jade, Soft Spot (Carpark Records)

Over to the bloop-bling side of things, we find this South African-born singer-songwriter and record producer, who’s now based in Los Angeles, making yet more tuneage for the ritzier fashion shops at the local mall. Like I talk about in this week’s other review, it doesn’t take a lot of detective work to figure out the current zeitgeist, one born of now-decades of basically no musical education in public schools, which has basically left most younger listeners tilting their heads quizzically at the goings-on in the golden age of electronic music and just accepting the vibe as worthwhile. There’s nothing disagreeable here, don’t get me wrong; I appreciate the power of Jade’s wispy voice. But there’s nothing fascinating either, just subdued reggaeton and snap-dance, its intensity set to almost-none, and of course a lot of Billie Eilish-style stopping and starting, which is already well past its sell-by date. B

PLAYLIST

• On April 8 you will see a plethora of new albums in your Spotify, and now it can henceforth never be said that I’ve never used the word “plethora” in this award-winning column, please make a note of it. The summer draws closer, folks, it draws, and so the folks at the big record companies are gearing up for the big summer push, releasing new albums you can listen to while knowing you are completely safe from Covid, which is, as we speak, holding a national conference on what sort of insane mutation it’ll take so that the winter months are pretty much like the last 20 minutes of the film Contagion, I can hardly wait. But in the meantime, we have albums for your pleasure, if not for the aesthetic sense of any rational person, and so we will start with former relevant person Jack White, whose appetite for Big Macs rivals only that of the Hamburglar, who may actually be related to him as far as this reporter knows. Fear Of The Dawn is his new album, and I was rightly surprised to find that the title track is the most awesome tune I’ve heard from him since back when he was relevant and not a Hamburglar. It’s a buzzing mixture of Big Black no-wave and the 1960s acid-rock vibe of Norman Greenbaum’s “Spirit in the Sky,” I’m not kidding, you should check this out. If any Jack White song sounded like it really, really belonged on the soundtrack to one of those sequels to The Purge, it’s this one. It’s very cool, and if White were here in front of me right now I’d give him a Wendy’s Baconator as a richly deserved reward.

• After the death of best drummer of all time Neil Peart, the progressive-rock trio Rush was pretty much done. But there are still two guys left, one of whom is the band’s original guitarist, Alex Lifeson, who will release a new self-titled album with the band Envy Of None, a quartet that also features Coney Hatch’s Andy Curran, Alfio Annibalini and Maiah Wynne. Whatever, there are rumors of a “Rush reunion,” which would be like a Wright brothers reunion with just the two guys who ran out of way during the first plane’s takeoff at Kitty Hawk, but they could probably hire one of those guys who plays drums to Rush songs on YouTube; I mean after all, that’s how Journey ended up hiring their Steve Perry-soundalike singer, from some online video. But anyway, gang, sorry, I digress, let’s just go to the internet and listen to the first single from this silly album, “Look Inside.” Hm, it’s kind of noise-rock-ish, but there’s a girl humming something or other, so it sounds a lot like early M83, except kind of metallic. I’ll let this one pass, it’s acceptable.

• Canadian dude Orville Peck is sort of like the Deadmau5 of cowboy music, like, he wears a crazy fringed mask that he never takes off, so no one knows what he looks like. In fact, all Wikipedia knows is that he was “born in the Southern Hemisphere” (actually it’s safe to say that in reality he’s Daniel Pitout, drummer of the Canadian punk band Nü Sensae, because that’s the person who owns his songs according to ASCAP, and plus he has the same tattoos), but who cares, his new LP Bronco is coming out this week, led by the single “Daytona Sand,” a pretty hilarious song that’s like Elvis meets the Lone Ranger, you should download it or something.

• Lastly, we’ll do the new Calexico album, El Mirador, because when isn’t there a new Calexico album? The title track starts with an ambitious-enough cha-cha rhythm but then turns into the usual Yo La Tengo oatmeal; I’m not impressed.

If you’re in a local band, now’s a great time to let me know about your EP, your single, whatever’s on your mind. Let me know how you’re holding yourself together without being able to play shows or jam with your homies. Send a recipe for keema matar. Message me on Twitter (@esaeger) or Facebook (eric.saeger.9).

Album Reviews 22/03/31

Various Artists, Black Lives: From Generation to Generation (Jammin’colorS Records)

The Belgium-based Jammin’colorS label is run by its chef/cook/bottle-washer, Stefany Calambert, whose husband, bassist Reggie Washington, helped out on the writing end in this collection of songs, which aims to present “Black music as a source of moral truth and potent weaponry against the scourge of racism.” The Belgian government directly contributed to the creation of this hefty double album, so Calambert was able to gather an amazingly diverse herd of artists that includes Oliver Lake, Marvin Sewell and a chorus line of others. It’s strikingly produced and deeply urban, all of it: Stephanie McKay’s playful, electric-piano-and-la-la-la driven “Phenomenon” checking off the ’80s-jazz-pop tick; Andy Milne & Unison’s dreamy, soprano-scatted “Togged To The Bricks”; Cheick Tidiane Seck’s tribal-rhythmic “Sanga Bo” adding some Fela Kuti texture; even some opera-diva high-wire stuff from Alicia Hall Moran, getting plenty of help from Washington and DJ Grazzhoppa (“Walk”). An honest, depthlessly immersive experience throughout; it may not solve anything but it sure does try. A

Graeme James, Seasons (Nettwerk Records)

In the busking space, you’ve got your golden-throated guys like Peter Bradley Adams, and you’ve got your po-faced Art Garfunkel types. This New Zealander would fall into the latter category, a serious balladeer who plays a million instruments in these smooth, sometimes mildly rocky tunes. Let’s see, here you’ll hear him play mandolin, double bass, fiddle, guitar, banjo and bass ukulele, among other things, a cornucopia of sound that’s equal to the task of supporting his voice, which is similarly all over the place, ranging from floaty Bon Iver to vanilla Sufjan Stevens to clear-throated sea shanty slinger to the aforementioned Garfunkel (“Death Defying Acts”). The song that’s so far received the most attention (including some love from Rolling Stone) from this album is a song about a terrifying adventure aboard an old ship (let’s all agree that humanity will never have enough of those), that being “The Voyage of the James Caird.” A-

PLAYLIST

• The next batch of new albums scheduled for release will get here on April 1, i.e. April Fools’ Day, which is, of course, most apropos, because this week we start with badly tattooed Red Hot Chili Peppers, whose new album, Unlimited Love, is first to be put into the Snark-O-Scope™ for a thorough and proper evaluation! But before we do that, let’s go over it again: I don’t like this band, and, um, well, I never really did. If the ’90s were the ’60s, RHCP would have been the Rolling Stones to Pearl Jam’s Beatles, if you’re down for some rather trite juxtaposition, and I have no idea how that happened, how RHCP got so popular. But people of all ages love ’em, they just love ’em. A couple years ago I was given a single pass for the RHCP show at TD Garden, and since it was snowing and it was only one pass and I don’t like RHCP to begin with, I gave it to a friend, who drove down from New Hampshire, through the snow, to see the show. He loved it, which I wouldn’t have, because I don’t like a single one of their songs, literally none. The only thing that pumps me up about the old ’Chili Peppers is being given this new opportunity to trash their funk-ska nonsense in public, and since I’m salivating at that prospect, I’ll toddle off to YouTube right now, to listen to the new song “Black Summer.” OK, the video starts with Anthony Howeveryouspellit dressed like the Karate Kid, and the song is mellow, with their usual drippy guitar sound (it would be so cool if they’d learn that their Peavey amplifiers actually have things like distortion knobs and stuff and thus don’t necessarily have to sound like the sort of 1-foot-tall amp that’s normally played at kids’ birthday parties, so lame!). Anyway, on the tune drags, with Anthony making rapper hand movements even though he doesn’t rap, and then there’s some psychedelic ’70s vibe that’s just annoying and then some Austin Powers 1960s-pop vibe that also just made me depressed. What does this all mean? Well, it means that a lot of people will like it, just to tick me off.

• In spite of their German-sounding name, Warmduscher is a British garage/post-punk band. Wikipedia says that a “Warmduscher” basically refers to someone who’s a wimp, like, at English “pubs,” the beer-gargling “punters” tease their “mates” with that term, in the hope that someone will start a huge bar fight that will need to be broken up by the “bobbies.” Any-whatever, the new album, At The Hot Spot, is on the way, in the “lorries” right now, headed to the “record shoppes,” where you can buy it with your shillings and tuppence, and it will feature a song called “Wild Flowers,” a stream-of-consciousness rant spoken by one of the “lads,” who “prattles” on and on about all the stuff he hates in everyday life. There’s a wah-wah pedal on the guitar, not that that sound will be coming back from the grave for widespread use anytime soon, or at least I hope.

• You have to admire a band whose cover art is inspired by those old Garbage Pail Kids stickers, so props are due for Toronto four-man power-pop band PUP, whose new LP The Unraveling Of Puptheband is on the way! The push track, “Robot Writes A Love Song,” is a pretty well-rounded amalgam of Weezer and Violent Femmes, if that sounds like something anyone out there would be the slightest bit interested in.

• Finally, let’s check in with Canadian singer Lights, and her new album PEP, with its single “Salt and Vinegar.” This is basically next-gen Taylor Swift bubble-pop, made tolerable by some nifty samples; it’s brainless but not hateful.

If you’re in a local band, now’s a great time to let me know about your EP, your single, whatever’s on your mind. Let me know how you’re holding yourself together without being able to play shows or jam with your homies. Send a recipe for keema matar. Message me on Twitter (@esaeger) or Facebook (eric.saeger.9).

Album Reviews 22/03/24

Raveena, Asha’s Awakening (Warner Records)

Another Missy Elliott wannabe heard from, more or less, although this diva is more prone to tabling reggaeton and such than Ariana Grande-ish Disney-spazz when she’s in gyration mode. With regard to her reggaeton, her singing on “Rush” has the same fluttery fragility as The Jets’ “Crush on You,” if you remember that one, and “Secret” borders on same, but the beat there is more a general-purpose Shakira thing than anything else. “Mystery” is different, though, a rather straightforward R&B tune with a pretty remarkable amount of bubbly femininity. I wouldn’t want to be trapped in a car driving around with nothing but this album for a few hours, but it’s pleasant enough. And mind you, the LP revolves around a conceptual theme regarding an alien princess “who, through a fantastic journey across the centuries, learns about love and loss, healing and destruction.” So anyhow, that. The closest her tour will bring her to New Hampshire will be on June 15, at Brighton Music Hall in Allston, Mass. A-

Dave Douglas, Secular Psalms (Greenleaf Music)

Quite the Da Vinci Code-tinged curveball here from jazz trumpeter Douglas, who was commissioned by the city of Gent, Belgium, to score music for the city’s 600th anniversary celebration of the creation of a 24-part polyptych (multi-paneled painting) titled “The Adoration Of The Mystic Lamb.” There’s an interesting backstory of course, revolving around the 2012 discovery that the altarpiece had been overpainted around AD 1550, and a couple of pieces are apparently missing, and such and so, all of which served to inspire Douglas and his sextet to work with such components as Latin Mass chanting, medieval folk songs and the work of composers of the period. As well, the band plays unconventional instruments such as a lute and a serpent (a huge, meandering ancestor of the tuba), which takes us to the first track, “Arrival,” a bizarre piece that evokes a William Peter Blatty fever dream. There’s relatively normal stuff as well, some readily accessible modern jazz and such, but chanting and such things do appear from time to time. Like its subject, a unique, rare artwork. A

PLAYLIST

• Onward we slog, my stouthearted ones, to March 25, when the new albums will magically appear in your Spotify, begging for just a little space in your non-existent attention span. Pitchfork will have to talk about these albums, as will YouTube’s resident clue-mosquito “musicologist” Anthony Fantano, a.k.a. “Needle Drop.” As always, in between making up nonsense words in an effort to overanalyze simple rock ’n’ roll songs, Fantana will make super-funny comments and perform two-second skits dressed up as a butler or Haystacks Calhoun or whomever he assumes will entertain his audience of 11-year-olds that day. And once he’s done confusing the young’ns, he’ll either toddle off to say something completely idiotic on some political podcast run by college freshmen who’ve never actually read any political books, or he’ll go shopping for more funny costumes in order to better entertain his fans, who apparently don’t have ears attached to their own heads, so there’s no way they can judge all that awful music for themselves. Needle Drop will definitely ignore the new Cowboy Junkies album, Songs Of The Recollection, because he is fake-edgy and only likes songs he could play his stupid bass to, but you know this album will be OK, because the ole Junkies have always made it a point to make a stop in New Hampshire when they tour, which is pretty cool of them. This year they’ll be at Portsmouth Music Hall on April 12, and the alternative country-folk veterans will surely play a few numbers from this new LP, a collection of cover tunes. There’s a boozy/pretty version of David Bowie’s “Five Years” on board; singer Margo Timmins sounds particularly Melissa Etheridge-ish on it.

• Speaking of Bowie, there’s a new album coming from British pop-punkers Placebo, who benefited greatly when Bowie took them on tour with him in 1996. It’s all well and good by me that they’ve had success; I suppose the world could always use a band that sounds like a weak version of Killers, but such analyses are beyond the scope of this newspaper article, as I’m supposed to discuss this new album, Never Let Me Go, and move on to the next thing. Fine, then, one of the tunes, “Surrounded By Spies,” has the same rhythm as “Cry Little Sister” from the soundtrack to The Lost Boys, like it’s music for dancing slowly and weirdly around a roaring campfire and making googly eyes at people, except the vocals sound like Pet Shop Boys. I have no idea what these guys think they’re even doing these days, but anyway, that.

• What else, what else, what else, oh look, it’s Toronto hardcore punk band F–ed Up, with a new album, called Do All Words Can Do. The title track really is old-school, which is cool, like, it’s really fast and crazed, and it sounds like it was recorded on a boombox and whatnot, but the only reason I even brought this up was that you bands out there really need to stop having swears in your names, because 99 times out of 100 you’ll be ignored by respectable newspapers like this one, because young children would accidentally read it and have questions. It just isn’t done, you see. If you’re looking for a way to make me listen to your music, I’d much rather that you brag about how awesome your band is instead of behaving like a 10-year-old, that’d be great. This has been a public service message; the more you know.

• Let’s wrap up the week with Australian all-girl indie-rock trio Camp Cope, whose new full-length, Running With The Hurricane, is heading your way in trucks right this minute! The title track is really good, evoking Florence & The Machine in a Woodstock frame of mind, you’ll like it, I promise.

If you’re in a local band, now’s a great time to let me know about your EP, your single, whatever’s on your mind. Let me know how you’re holding yourself together without being able to play shows or jam with your homies. Send a recipe for keema matar. Message me on Twitter (@esaeger) or Facebook (eric.saeger.9).

Album Reviews 22/03/17

Crowbar, Zero And Below (Mnrk Records)

’Twas only by accident that I ever discovered this New Orleans mud-metal band for myself in the first place, and for that, you’ll have to indulge a little inside baseball, apologies in advance. In 2005, around the second year I’d decided to moonlight as a music reviewer, Candlelight Records was sending me every CD they released. Those albums were never any good, and I was just about to swear off them, but I was trying to fill a column and ended up with Crowbar’s Lifesblood for the Downtrodden in my car. I couldn’t believe how awesome it was, Kirk Windstein’s ragged, uniquely badass voice and sludge riffage blasting into my face like a Frankenstein’s monster that had a personal gripe with me. You have to hear these guys to believe it, and the tradition continues here, in their 12th album, starting with “The Fear That Binds You,” a brand-flaunting exercise that sounds like early Mastodon covering Paranoid-era Black Sabbath. Windstein’s voice isn’t as insane-sounding as his “Slave No More” days, but that really shouldn’t stop you; if you’re a rivet-head who’s never heard these guys, your life is incomplete, trust me. A+

Birthday Massacre, Fascination (Metropolis Records)

This Canadian goth-techno band is still, at least to me, the gold standard for spooky 1980s ghost-pop. Some critic wrote that their 2007 full-length Walking With Strangers is the “Sgt. Pepper’s of Dark Wave,” and I’d have to agree; it’s still an unsurpassed mix of Missing Persons and Depeche Mode, the perfect dance tuneage for an ’80s-themed Halloween party. But notice I said it’s still “unsurpassed,” which is a bit of a run, there, because this crew should have surpassed it a long ago, and, well, they haven’t. The band tried some KMFDM stylings that fell flat; singer Chibi is no raging Lucia Cifarelli and should never have tried it on for size, but anyway, that brings us up to date, and to this album, which does start out on a cool-enough note with a sparkling rawk ballad in the title track. Definitely more of a pop edge than on the last few records, which is where they should be; it’s definitely their best since WWS, but all that means is WWS is still, you know, unsurpassed. A

PLAYLIST

• March 18 is our next all-purpose album release date, when you can wait outside the record store for the guy in the truck to dump out all the albums, where they will find homes in people’s cars, where the delicate CDs will eventually wind up getting Wendy’s mayonnaise spilled on them and thrown away, which is what you should do with most of those albums in the first place, use them as little single-serving plates for fast food. So that brings us to Georgia Gothic, the new album from Mattiel, a band from Atlanta that’s fronted by its namesake, Mattiel Brown, who sounds like a cross between Nico and Siouxsie Sioux, not that that means they’re forgiven for making such boring music. Take for example teaser single “Jeff Goldbum,” a tune that sounds like Garbage but without any hook whatsoever, just a medium-tempo Rolling Stones-ish groove that wanders around aimlessly looking for spare change on the street and then, finding none, ends as uneventfully as it began. Punchline to this bit is that the band played this dumb tune on Stephen Colbert’s late night TV show, which proves once and for all that Colbert needs to find some act-bookers who don’t take the first bribe some indie label (ATO Records in this case) extracts from their trenchcoat and slides over to them at the greasy coffee shop. I mean, don’t get me wrong, this would be awesome stuff if it were the first time I’d ever heard music played on an electric guitar, it’s all good, man.

Midlake is a funny little indie-folkie-ish band from Denton, Texas, and they seem to be something of a big-hitter, an up-and-coming band on the AOR/yacht-rock scene! The band’s new LP, For The Sake Of Bethel Woods, is coming out in just a few hours and features the single “Bethel Woods,” a tune that’s sort of like if Guster had a baby with some sleepy-time 1980s AOR band like Bruce Hornsby, like there’s a sort-of-driving piano line and a hook meant for driving around in the rain looking for a 7-Eleven. It’s boring, in other words, but like I hinted, there’s money behind these guys, so the video for the tune features none other than Hollywood second banana Michael Pena, who’s just walking around the city looking kind of intense, and — wait a second, is that Trinity from The Matrix? Nope, it’s a younger Trinity, and now they’re in a church and there’s a wedding. No, wait, it’s a baptism. Nope, hold it, it’s a funeral, and now Michael Pena’s running around on the streets having memories of being a young boy or whatever. I’d rather peel potatoes for a month than ever have anything to do with this band again, honestly.

Babeheaven is a pair of British girls who started their career as youngsters, and now no one seems to know what they are exactly. Run a search for the band’s name and you get “they’re R&B,” “they’re dream pop,” and of course Pitchfork’s “bedroom indie,” which does make sense I suppose. Whatever, blah blah blah, they’re “more mature” now, which means they have their own smartphone bills to deal with or something, I guess. The new LP Sink Into Me is kicked off by “Make Me Wanna,” which would have been a cool Portishead-ish chillout, but the tandem appearance of a crummy cheese-synth and none-too-smooth rapper Navy Blue had me bailing after about two minutes. Hard pass.

• We’ll close this out with Sonic Youth’s In/Out/In, which features unreleased tuneage from 2000 to 2010. Keeping in mind that the band peaked in 1983, I was naturally none too thrilled with “In And Out,” which comes off like a Tangerine Dream throwaway, but all the power to you if you’re a Sonic Youth completist; enjoy.

If you’re in a local band, now’s a great time to let me know about your EP, your single, whatever’s on your mind. Let me know how you’re holding yourself together without being able to play shows or jam with your homies. Send a recipe for keema matar. Message me on Twitter (@esaeger) or Facebook (eric.saeger.9).

Album Reviews 22/03/10

Bye Bye Tsunami, Bye Bye Tsunami (Nefarious Industries Records)

You know, giving this Copenhagen-based noise-rock album any amount of love in this space makes me feel guilty that I haven’t done the same for the couple of weirdo bands who’ve been blowing up my email with demands that I stop “being all corporate and covering national bands,” mostly sent from (I think Boston-based) dada weirdos who’ve been emailing me gigabytes of nonsense that honestly isn’t any more unlistenable than this. And plus, a lot of those “national bands” have no support from their record labels. This one is a messy cacophony, some noise-punk grooves, some sax skronk, a few samples, some absolutely piercing feedback bursts, and so on. Recently been hit in the head with a 90 mph fastball? You might actually love this. C

Away, self:antiself (Boom Records)

Four-track EP from the Los Angeles-based beatmaker, whose biggest inspirations are professed to be Nine Inch Nails, Deftones, and Burial, a compelling trifecta of kickassage if I ever saw one. And kickoff song “Ritual” does possess all those aspects: some heavy electro riffage, a volley of glitch-dubstep and goth-sexytime vocals courtesy of Echos, whose soprano is a cross between Kesha and Evanescence’s Amy Lee. So the formula is inarguably good, but the result? Eh, not so much; it’s vibe more than anything else, something to have blaring in your ear when you’re 99 percent sure your sketchy significant other is cheating on you, that sort of thing. “Help Me” fares a lot worse, outright ripping off NIN’s “Closer” to such an extent that for the first 20 seconds you’ll think it’s a cover of that tune. “Ghostbox” is the winner here, possessed of a mellow-mode Imagine Dragons idea that translates even when the glitch gets a little thick. It’s OK overall. B

PLAYLIST

• March 11 is our next all-purpose album release date, and to help us celebrate the last few weeks of our yearly collective cracking in half Shining-style here in Antarctica, looky there, it’s three-chord pop-metal dunderhead Bryan Adams, with his new album So Happy It Hurts! No, I’m just joshing, he’s not a dunderhead, I really don’t mind Bryan Adams and his tidy, perfect little rock ’n’ roll songs; he’s actually a very good songwriter in my opinion. Remember when he did that three-chord hard rock ballad with Tina Turner? My favorite was when he did that tune “Bang The Drum” with Nelly Furtado at the 2010 Winter Olympics opening ceremonies, man was she gorgeous, and he was so funny, dressed like a Blues Brother with that stupid skinny tie and off-the-rack suit, ha ha. Whatever, he had a bunch of catchy songs, and I didn’t hate him, which brings us to the here and now, when I’ll probably hate everything I’m about to listen to from this new album. Right, the title track is a sleepy, strummy bridal-shower-pop ballad that’s probably some old John Cougar song played backward, it’s lame and dumb, but “On The Road” is a lot better, because the guitars are heavier, I don’t really have anything bad to say about — wait, ha ha, you should hear it when he starts singing about “Gettin’ back on the road / is all I’ve ever known.” What a hapless fail, I’m telling you, your uncle who used to play in an AC/DC cover band could think of something cooler than this, honestly. Remember when I made fun of the last David Duchovny album because it was such dad rock? This record would get the same review if I had to review it, the exact same verbiage.

• Now that Marilyn Manson did so much stupid stuff that he got himself kicked off the Loma Vista Records roster, the company sincerely hopes that you’re in the mood to buy the new Ghost album, Impera, which will be out tomorrow! These guys are a veteran hard rock-ish/metal-ish band from Sweden, and they’re kind of weird. In the new single, “Call Me Little Sunshine,” they sound like a cross between ABBA and Whitesnake. Read that again: a cross between ABBA and Whitesnake. The tune wants to be a catchy, epic ballad but it just sort of flops around and looks at you dumbly, hoping that you’ll be interested in it, but then you go off to find a snack and forget you ever heard it; I know I already have.

The Districts are a stripped-down, minimalist-ish indie band from Pennsylvania, composed of three guys who’ve known each other since high school. They’re up to five albums as of tomorrow, when their latest, Great American Painting, hits the Spotifys and whatever, so I checked out the new single “I Want to Feel It All” to see if there was anything to salvage out of it, and there was, if you like mall-pop with a lot of bloops and whatever. The tune doesn’t really go anywhere but it’s pleasant, as aimless music goes.

• We’ll wrap up this week’s business with an album from Rex Orange County, a disposable English hipster-pop dude whose real name is Alexander James O’Connor; his claim to fame is a “token skinny jeans dude” guest spot on Tyler, the Creator’s Grammy-nominated album Flower Boy. Anyone still paying attention, anyone at all? No? Well that’s fitting, because this fellow’s new album is called Who Cares, featuring the single “Keep It Up,” a tune about unironically puttering around on a little boat or something while pastel ponies dance around, I don’t even know. This dude wants to be Jose Gonzalez really badly but will just end up being forever known as “Whoever, you know, that one dude on that Tyler mixtape.”

If you’re in a local band, now’s a great time to let me know about your EP, your single, whatever’s on your mind. Let me know how you’re holding yourself together without being able to play shows or jam with your homies. Send a recipe for keema matar. Message me on Twitter (@esaeger) or Facebook (eric.saeger.9).

Album Reviews 22/03/03

The Waymores, Stone Sessions (Chicken Ranch Records)

I’m not big into latter-day “country music” (or so they call it) because it’s usually so awful, evoking noisy tuneage for NASCAR commercials or WWE wrestler entrances, but if you’ve read this space for any amount of time, you know for a fact that I have the utmost reverence for things like genuine bluegrass and such. I’m not a monster; there are hallowed genres that are completely unassailable, and I count traditional C&W in that number, including the vanishing breed of coed duos whose achievements are historic, like Johnny Cash/June Carter and Loretta Lynn/Conway Twitty. This LP aims for a similar down-home honky tonk/country-pop vibe, and though it’s professed to have blues and folk elements, it’s more like a sonic homage, songs about whisky, cheating, road life and all that stuff, and it does nail it with some great songs. “Asleep At The Wheel” fiddler Katie Shore helps out on “Caught.” A

Howless, To Repel Ghosts (Static Blooms Records)

Wow, my favorite new record of this young year, right here. This female-fronted Mexico City quartet offers a noise-pop/dream-pop style that’s part Jesus And Mary Chain, early Cure and New Order, dipped in 24-karat gold production values and — this is the best part — born of a certain innocent, anti-punk Go-Go’s-ish je ne sais quoi. The guitars sparkle like an autumn river over heavily saturated synth layers, all driven by the faraway, shoegaze-ish singing of Dominique Sanchez and Mauricio Tinejro, altogether just the system you’d want if you were trying to resurrect ’80s alt-pop but keep it fresh, gorgeous and no-nonsense. Lyrically it’s about such things as “questioning our place on earth,” “the bitterness of saying goodbye to someone who hasn’t yet left your psyche,” and “human self sabotage” — no dummies, these people, and that’s a rare thing in an indie scene overrun with bored hipsters who just bought their first guitars a week ago. Fantastic stuff all around. A+

PLAYLIST

• March 4 is dead ahead, y’all, and the warm weather isn’t too far away, all you have to do is get through a few weeks more! So let’s get to the albums that will be released on that fateful day, oh great, look, there’s not a lot, but I shall make do with what little nonsense has been handed to me, starting with Oochya, the new LP from Welsh indie-rawk band Stereophonics! You may be familiar with this band from their 2003 single “Maybe Tomorrow,” which rose to No. 5 on Billboard’s U.S. Adult Alternative Songs chart. If you’re not sure what that is, picture Rod Stewart singing the most boring Black Crowes/Train mashup you could imagine, and then picture it being even more tuneless. Yes, that tune, please try to stay awake so we can talk about this new album, which has a single, called “Hanging On Your Hinges.” The video has a bunch of cheap art that’s sort of playing-card oriented, like there are art deco devils and waitresses and whatever this other stuff is, and the music is sort of throwback boogie, like if Jet spent too much time listening to Bo Diddley but was trying to be as cool as The Hives, something like that. As always, there is little in the way of melody here, just empty-calorie music for Uber drivers to fall asleep to while waiting for their fares to get their acts together. The only comparable song that comes to mind is like a rockabilly version of Ramones’ “Freak Of Nature,” but you readers have probably never heard that song — my god, why am I even bothering trying to describe this stupid song, let’s forget this ever happened and move on to something else, anything that isn’t the Stereophonics.

• Oh, no. No. If you could see me right now, you’d see that I am clutching my chest like Fred Sanford from Sanford & Son, because “Elizabeth, I’m comin’ to ya,” things just got even worse: Just when I was recovering from the new Stereophonics album, will you look at this, now I have to pretend to care about Vancouver-based surf-indie Bonnaroo-bums Peach Pit, whose third album, From 2 To 3, is here. OK, let’s calm down, the single “Vickie” isn’t all that bad, it’s jangly and has a stupid tremolo-or-something effect going on in one of the guitar layers, and it’s a happy song about walking around on a sidewalk or something. The singer kind of sounds like Kermit the Frog. You know, if you ever went back in time to the 1980s or before that and played this idiotic waste of musical notes to someone and told them people would be buying this record, you would have been locked up in a padded cell. I can’t believe how much lower the bar goes every single week, people, I mean it’s — haunting. Next.

• Yay, guys, it’s Nilüfer Yanya’s new album, Painless, I’m not kidding! And who is Nilüfer Yanya? I don’t know, let’s find out together! Here it is, she’s a singer from London, and she turned down a gig in a girl-group that was going to be produced by Louis Tomlinson of One Direction. Hm, we may have something here, supposedly she sounds like Siouxsie from Siouxsie and the Banshees, so let’s give a spin to the tune “Stabilize,” maybe it’s like “Hall Of Mirrors” or something else cool. Nope, she doesn’t sound like Siouxsie, she sounds like Lorde but mumbly and sleepy. The beat is spazzy but aimless, like a British grime fan’s idea of Siouxsie if Siouxsie had been into skateboarding and whatever.

• We’ll close with Crystal Nuns Cathedral, the 228th album in the past five months from Guided by Voices, in other words the last bunch of crummy demos from songwriting-addicted Robert Pollard. Yup, as I expected, the single “Excited Ones” is boring and stupid, sounding like an old demo The Cars made and then recorded over because they hated it. If Pollard ever writes a good song I’ll weep with joy.

If you’re in a local band, now’s a great time to let me know about your EP, your single, whatever’s on your mind. Let me know how you’re holding yourself together without being able to play shows or jam with your homies. Send a recipe for keema matar. Message me on Twitter (@esaeger) or Facebook (eric.saeger.9).

Album Reviews 22/02/24

Mark Stewart VS, Challenge Institutionalized Power (eMERGENCY hearts Records)

Whoa, now we’re getting somewhere. Stewart has been a fixture in the noise-punk scene since he visited New York City in 1980 and got vacuumed into the no-wave vortex, and here he “faces off against” some of his favorite like-minded music-cultural transgressors, but now for some normie-speak. This is literally the most badass thing I’ve heard in months, evoking images of my walking into basically any half-edgy record store and feeling like I’d landed on a hostile planet that was yet somehow home, with the terrifying, epic sounds of Jim Thirlwell or Big Black blasting over the speakers as if the whole place just wanted everyone to leave. Who’s here? Well, Front 242 for one, leading off with a techno assault that’s trying to chase Stewart’s wobbly David Byrne-ish tenor out of town. There’s a face-off with electronic post-punk pioneer Eric Random (“Ghost Of Love”) that’s got dubstep in its DNA and pure anarchy in its heart. If you’ve ever liked any sort of aggressive music, especially one that’s got a lot of techno to it, you have to get this, you simply must. A+

Sataray, Blood Trine Moon (Scry Recordings)

This one-woman dark-ambient project (based in Olympia, Washington) has released a four-song EP here that’s aimed at the goth-est of the goth, meaning people who really think they’re witches or whatnot. It’s something you’d definitely want to have on hand at Halloween to scare the kids away: no cute howling dogs or whimsical mad scientist laughter; this lady wants to instill really ghoulish visions in the listener (think Lovecraft, M.R. James, etc.), and she’s started to make inroads into the convention world, bringing her super-creepy Japanese butoh dance moves to such nerd-fests as the Esoteric Book Conference, Passiontide and ShadowDance. Trippiness abounds here, folks, trust me, with slow, relentless, samples of (probably) gongs, singing bowls and Addams Family organ samples building in intensity until she starts going deep with some Linnea Quigley-circa-Night Of The Demons-worthy half-whispered chants and invocations. Don’t get me wrong, though, this isn’t cheesy in any way; this lady really wants to scare the pants off you, and for what it is, it’s totally rad, sure. A

PLAYLIST

• Next stop Feb. 25, get on board y’all, choo choo, isn’t it great! Yep, that’s when the new albums will come out, for your listening pleasure, and boy, is it great that February’s almost gone or what, am I right? We’ve got a full deck this week, so let’s start with ancient witch lady Judy Collins, whose latest album, Spellbound, is on the trucks, ready for delivery to anyone who can still buy an album and afford $190 for a gallon of milk, or however much it is these days, with all the cows being on strike or whatever the problem is! Collins rose to fame in the 1960s (she’s 82 now) with the song “Both Sides Now,” which her arch-enemy Joni Mitchell wrote while on a plane, reading some boring book about a guy who was in a plane flying over Africa and he saw some clouds. That’s all it was, but whatever, maybe Joni and Judy and their co-arch enemy Carole King will star in a reboot of The Golden Girls where they make hemp necklaces and maybe they’ll have Dolly Parton show up to play the Betty White lady, wouldn’t that be hilarious? Whatever, I think it would, but to the business at hand, Judy — she was the cute one out of the whole bunch, by the way — has a new single that will be on this album, namely “When I Was A Girl In Colorado,” a pretty little country-folkie tune that finds her singing as well as Amy Grant if you ask me, so take that, young people, these super old pop stars are going to be topping the Billboard charts until they’re 150 years old, so don’t bother learning instruments is my advice. And guess what, even though Judy’s super old, she will be on tour in 2022! The closest she’ll get to New Hampshire is Bar Harbor, Maine, on April 23, at the 1932 Criterion Theater! It’s true!

• Ha, if you’re kind of old, you may remember when, in the 1980s, British pop nincompoops Tears For Fears were going around saying they were going to be bigger than The Beatles. I remember it vividly, and I was probably the only one who didn’t think that was stupid, in fact I thought it was kind of awesome. Like, what else would you want to hear from some band that you kind of liked on MTV, “We anticipate having a fairly successful career?” No, if you have to deal with some idiot from MTV, of course you’re going to say something crazy, and for that I thank them. Anyway, their upcoming new album The Tipping Point is their first in 18 years and second in 27 years, meaning half the people reading this are like “Tears for who?,” to which I say they were a decent enough band that had a fairly successful career. The album’s seen a few singles already, but I’ll just check out the tune “No Small Thing.” Hm, it’s kind of like a cowboy-spaghetti song, a little Ennio Morricone and a little Conor Oberst, in other words it doesn’t have any relation to the yuppie-pandering synthpop nonsense they used to do. The hook is weak and depressing and old-sounding, let’s bag this and move on.

• Speaking of 1980s shlock, look guys, it’s bloopy synthpop retirees Soft Cell, with their newest, Happiness Not Included! These guys were one band I always kind of hated, which means that after 35 years they’ve probably written a good song, right? Well, the single “Heart Like Chernobyl” is bloopy and dumb, even worse and more meatless than “Tainted Love.” Repeat: It’s. Even. Worse. Than. “Tainted Love.”

• Time to bounce, fam, but first let’s have a listen to “Love It When You Hate Me” from Avril Lavigne’s new album Love Sux! Holy crow, is it still 2003? This is the exact same song she’s always written, the exact same hook, everything. Hard pass on this.

If you’re in a local band, now’s a great time to let me know about your EP, your single, whatever’s on your mind. Let me know how you’re holding yourself together without being able to play shows or jam with your homies. Send a recipe for keema matar. Message me on Twitter (@esaeger) or Facebook (eric.saeger.9).

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