Category: Albums

Anika, Abyss (Sacred Bones Records)

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

The South Hill Experiment, Earthbreaks

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

Playlist

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

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

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

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

Featured Photo: Anika, Abyss (Sacred Bones Records) & The South Hill Experiment, Earthbreaks

Sanhedrin, Heat Lightning (Metal Blade Records)

I haven’t checked in with the Metal Blade Records stable in quite a while. This record seemed mildly interesting, given that the New York-based three-piece band’s musicianship is advertised as being top-drawer, which made me think of Rush, a band that was rather interesting for two or three albums before they decided to kind of suck. Ah yes, look at that typical Metal Blade-approved cover art, evoking an AI-created Halloween card created for sale at dollar stores; but wait. Opening song “Blind Wolf” rips off the intro to Metallica’s “For Whom The Bell Tolls,” then combines Savatage and Mercyful Fate and tables some really nice melodic touches. “Above The Law” nicks Buckcherry but in a good way; “Franklin County Line” Slayer-izes the Fates Warning formula. It’s fine for what it is. A —Eric W. Saeger

Mark Pritchard & Thom Yorke, “Back In The Game,” Warp Records

The only reason I came within a country mile of paying any attention whatsoever to this new collaborative single is its painfully strident “edgelord” factor: “Look everyone, it’s Thom Yorke! And it’s on Warp Records!” Usually I avoid both those things like leper-hospital Dumpsters (my favorite all-time line about Yorke was Dr. David Thorpe’s iconic “Thom Yorke, the man with completely superfluous letters in both his names,” while Warp’s output has never failed to disappoint me; they have a strange fetish for electronic music that’s so boring it makes Postal Service sound innovative), but it was either this or dig through my emails for something great but which most of you wouldn’t care about anyway, so here we are. Pritchard, of Reload and Link fame, previously featured Yorke on the Sigur Ros-ish “Beautiful People” from his (Pritchard’s) 2016 LP Under The Sun; the only thing that made that tune interesting was its New Age vibe and some mildly innovative vocal effects. This track employs the latter trick again but with less boldness; all in all the song comprises dated, government-issue krautrock that sounds like a bonus track from the Saw soundtrack. There, I pretended to care about this, I demand my gold sticker this instant. C —Eric W. Saeger

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A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

NOTE: Local (NH) bands seeking album or EP reviews can message me on Twitter (@esaeger) or Facebook (eric.saeger.9).

• Before I descend into the usual madness about albums good and bad coming out this Friday, Feb. 21, here’s something important. You guys know I’m a big supporter of New England-based singer-songwriter Kris Pedersen, whose award-winning Tom Petty-meets-Florida Georgia Line/Kings Of Leon-style music is amazingly well-written and well worth your support. You may also know that he’s had a very tough slog of it, but on Feb. 9 the absolute worst possible thing happened. A fire consumed his family farmhouse in South Wallingford, Vermont, in no time flat; his home and all his possessions were totally gone before the fire department guys could even get set up. He and his wife April have literally nothing left but the clothes they were wearing that day, and that’s where you rascals come in: Kris’s fan base stepped up immediately to start a donation page, which is already up to around $3,500 at this writing with a $5,000 goal (and no limit), but he’s obviously going to need a lot more than that to get back to business, so if you’re feeling it, please do give. “Mutual aid” is a big thing nowadays, as you probably know, and this is as deserving a cause as you could ever imagine, so if you have a few bucks to spare, please donate to Kris’s GoFundMe pool at this page: www.gofundme.com/f/support-kris-and-family-after-devastating-fire. It’s the best way for you to help out this struggling world-class artist.

• British techno-funk-blues singer Neo Jessica Joshua is better known as Nao, and her new album, Jupiter, will be out this Friday! Her resumé is top-level, including singing backup for such peeps as Kwabs and Jarvis Cocker, and six years singing in an all-girl a cappella group called The Boxettes. And so I must take her very seriously, and thus I shall remove my (true fact) custom-designed T-shirt that reads “Your Band Completely Sucks =(” and approach this section with all the professionalism I can muster, excuse me while I open this box of Jolly Joes grape jellybean thingies to ensure that my brain has enough reserve sugar for the task! So I am watching the visualizer video for her new song, “Happy People,” and let me just say that she is blessed with a bubbly voice that sounds kind of like a Munchkin; the music underneath is sparse and lo-fi, a combination of acoustic guitar and authentic-sounding Afrobeat, in sum a very island-vacation feel to this. It is very nice, yes.

• Singing human Patterson Hood, a co-founder of the band Drive-By Truckers, releases his fourth solo album this Friday, Exploding Trees & Airplane Scream! The spearhead track is “The Pool House,” whose video features the stupidest-looking puppet I’ve ever seen, doofing around in a quaint doll house or whatnot. The music is an eclectic but listenable mixture of Bon Iver and corporate country & western, sort of like what you’d hear if Garth Brooks toned things down in order to do a Robert Palmer trip from 1990, you know, when he did that dumb Marvin Gaye cover tune.

• British wimp-indie bros The Wombats are up to six LPs as of this Friday, with their latest, Oh! The Ocean. “Can’t Say No” is a twee-ized ripoff of Echosmith’s two big hits, you know the ones. Nice but completely disposable.

• Lastly we have Boise, Idaho-based producer-DJ-whatever Trevor Powers, who goes by the nym Youth Lagoon, and his new album, Rarely Do I Dream! “Speed Freak” is wicked cool in my opinion, a ratty, crunchy no-wave/electro joint with an ’80s-pop center. —Eric W. Saeger

Featured Photo: Sanhedrin, Heat Lightning (Metal Blade Records) & Mark Pritchard & Thom Yorke, “Back In The Game,” Warp Records

EST Gee, I Ain’t Feeling You (Bonus Edition) (Interscope Records)

This 30-year-old Louisville, Kentucky-born rapper lost a good number of fans after trying actual singing on for size for a couple of albums or so, but his return to straight spitting in this one does go pretty hard, aiming for the same intensity as 2021’s Bigger Than Life or Death. Of course, “intensity” isn’t an attribute that’s usually applied to him, what with his mumbly, disjointed style; he’s been dubbed a “less coherent Rich Homie Quan” among other things, but I was captivated enough by opener “Free Rico” and its woofer-rattling, from-the-mountaintop kettle-drum beat to get past the pedestrian trap undergirding that serves as its base. “The Streets” winds and roils in hypnotic, serpentine fashion, evincing casual excitement and an endless supply of oxygen, instantly lending the record grower potential rather than evoking some texted-in flavor-of-the-week exercise. “Do My Own Stunts” is the underground stoner-a-thon, for those who live for that kind of thing. A —Eric W. Saeger

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

In In-Case-You-Missed-It news, this album didn’t hit my radar until just now, so you have my sincere apologies if you’re already deeply familiar with it. I’m literally a year late on it, but in my defense the angle here is that on Saturday, March 8, they’ll be at The Sinclair in Cambridge, Mass., and besides, at the rate indie bands come and go in the endless flux of our no-attention-span zeitgeist, it’s worth mentioning. This Chicago duo, claiming to be inspired by such acts as Minski and such, are, as some have noted, remindful of Radiohead and Arcade Fire, but there’s a wild-horses feel to these frightwiggy tunes; they incorporate some of the decent things (few though they were) about Aughts-indie bands like New Young Pony Club and Los Campesinos, for one thing the amateurish group-singalong sound that was a staple at Bowery Ballroom shows and later refined by Arcade Fire. The overall effect is like being subjected to a cult initiation; you want to learn the lyrics because the melodies sound so bloody important, a rare thing these days. A —Eric W. Saeger

Playlist

• Happy Valentine’s Day to those who celebrate, and even to those who haven’t dated or even talked to another human being since the 1990s (good choice)! It is another two months before the South Korea-originated “Black Valentine’s Day,” when people who celebrate being “happily single” take themselves out to dinner and a movie and then go home to descend into madness in front of reruns of Classic Concentration on the Buzzr channel, as opposed to us totally happily married people who spend most of our time living like Fred Flintstone, half-watching Match Game ’78 while trying to figure out how to hide ridiculously impulsive Amazon purchases from our spouses, do you guys even know how much money buying a 20-pack of button-cell batteries for kitty laser pointers can save you in the long run? But I digress, someone stop me, the record companies are gearing up for a long year of releasing albums and trying to figure out a way to out-sell Chappell Roan, who won the Best New Artist Grammy award the other week for such things as dressing up like Carol Kane in Scrooged, giving attitude to random people with cameras, and of course her masterstroke, adding gravelly Ed Banger beats to microwaved Madonna oatmeal and summarily dispatching a battalion of record company mafiosi to pressure low-information writers from Nylon and such to proclaim her marginally listenable album The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess to be the greatest thing since Reese’s Cups. This too shall pass, as you know (by the way, are Zola Jesus and Poppy still relevant, someone please tweet at me), but in the meantime we have albums to discuss, new ones that are coming out on Valentine’s Day, let’s get it over with. First things first, speaking of Buzzr, guess who’s got an album coming out on Friday? None other than Richard Dawson! But wait, it’s not that Richard Dawson, the creepy touchy-grabby British dude from Family Feud, it’s a different one, some British folkie whose voice sounds like a drunk Basset hound! Nothing normal is going on here, this man has been using a literally broken guitar as his go-to instrument for years, he just likes the sound of it. His trip has been described as “the folkie version of Captain Beefheart’s approach to blues music.” In other words it’s completely horrible, but our pals at Domino Records are releasing this monstrosity nevertheless, so I’m compelled to listen to it, so I am. OK I’m not anymore, it sounds like the Unabomber singing a love song to his first-grade teacher on a wooden Fisher Price guitar from 1959. If you honestly love this I hate you.

• Usually when I hear the term “space rock” I start barfing uncontrollably, figuring I’m about to hear something that sounds like Spacemen 3 or a Loot Crate version of Pink Floyd, but British band Doves are pretty awesome: They actually sound kind of like Elbow! Constellations For The Lonely, their new one, features the tune “Renegade”; it’s psychedelic, yes, but singer Jimi Goodwin’s voice is seriously neat.

• Oh, great, notoriously awful singer Neil Young has once again found some old tapes in his goat barn and made an album out of them. Oceanside Countryside was recorded in 1977 but never released until now; it features “Field of Opportunity,” a fiddle-driven bluegrass jam that’s OK if you like bad singing with your bluegrass.

• Finally we have Sleepless Empire, the latest LP from Italian goth-metal spazzers Lacuna Coil. The song “Gravity” is doomy and epic, of course, less so when the Cookie Monster-voiced dude is doing the singing, more so when the hot chick singer is trying to sound like an America’s Got Talent contestant. It’s fine for what it is. —Eric W. Saeger

Featured Photo: EST Gee, I Ain’t Feeling You (Bonus Edition) (Interscope Records) & Friko, Where We’ve Been, Where We Go from Here (ATO Records)

Frank Meyer, Living Between The Lines (Kitten Robot Records)

Back in June of last year I’d talked in this space about former New York Dolls guitarist Steve Conte, whose Concrete Jangle LP was a really pleasant surprise, a decidedly ’80s post-punk exercise that was full of really filthy guitar work and awash in hooks. Age and elite-level experience will bring that sort of pedigree to an artist, as it did to this guy, whose resume includes stints with Wayne Kramer from MC5, former New York Dolls utility player Sylvain Sylvain, and Iggy & the Stooges guitarist James Williamson. Like Conte, Meyer has spent so much time as a second banana that he hasn’t gotten around to releasing his own stuff; in fact this is his first solo album, and what a great one it is. It’s a gamma ray blast of shredding, glam, Iggy, Kiss, and, well, early Bon Jovi, a ferocious uncorking of ’70s-’90s testosterone that’s (all together now) the sort of thing the current dystopian zeitgeist needs. Absolutely nothing bad here. A+ —Eric W. Saeger

G. Himsel, Songs of Doubt & Despair (Sedan Is Real Records)

You probably won’t remember this, but exactly three years ago I wrote up Manchester, N.H., folk revivalists Bird Friend, which featured this fellow and his girlfriend Carson Kennedy trying out some rather adventurous Woody Guthrie-steeped stuff. What made it seriously notable was the liberal use of random sound samples that evoked 1930s train stations, rainstorms, things like that. He’s up in Portsmouth, N.H., now, more pessimistic than he was before, still obsessed with the sound of the Dust Bowl era and such; these tunes range from the “gospel and old-country balladry of the 1800s to the coffee shop folk of 1950s New York,” meant as harbingers of what climate change is bringing us all in the far future (and the present day, as in the case of areas of Pakistan where wet bulb temperatures can already suffocate a person to death within a couple of hours, just sayin’). The songs were recorded at his kitchen table, not that it shows; this time he’s more focused on antiquities than jazzing them up with natural sound effects, his own missives to a species in deep peril. Other than that it’s an upbeat record of course, don’t get me wrong. A+ —Eric W. Saeger

Playlist

• A brand new pile of CDs will be dumped on humanity this Friday, Feb. 7, the date that marks the 61st anniversary of The Beatles’ British Invasion, when the Fab Four landed in New York City for their first U.S. concerts! Two nights later, Beatlemania stormed America, when their performance on the Ed Sullivan show was “watched by 73 million viewers” (mostly it was bots run by the record company of course). Now, if you were age, say, 60 back then, you were confused and not sure what to make of all the hubbub, because the music of your youth was made in the 1920s and 1930s, by people like Al Jolson, the Billy Hays Orchestra and all the other bands that recorded their music using “a single microphone, a towering 6-foot amplifier rack, and a live record-cutting lathe, powered by a weight-driven pulley system of clockwork gears.” In other words, it was like a glorified grandfather clock that only worked for a short time: The musicians had roughly three minutes in which to record a song directly to disc, hopefully without any foul-ups, before the weight hit the floor. Of course, The Beatles had modern analog technology and saved us from all that cringe by recording three-minute lovey-dovey songs that featured Chuck Berry guitars being played aggressively, sort of like Metallica would have if they hadn’t all been playpen-dwelling infants at the time, and voila, rock ’n’ roll had arrived to change the world! That brings us to the here and now, after however many years of advancement in recording techniques, with U.K.-based post-punk band Squid, whose new concept-ish album, Cowards, cleverly eschews lovey-dovey Al Jolson piffle and focuses instead on an obscure dystopian Splatterpunk sci-fi novel, about institutionalized wide-scale cannibalism, how rock ’n’ roll can you get! The novel in question, Tender Is The Flesh, was panned by one Redditor as being “the worst horror book I’ve ever read by far,” but did that stop the bandleader guy from Squid? Nope, the single is titled “Crispy Skin,” and it sounds like Devo doing a joke version of a speed-rockin’ Hall & Oates song, like “Maneater,” but really stupid and pointless, doesn’t that sound gooood? Pitchfork Media thinks so, of course!

• Krept & Konan is a British hip-hop group whose haters are starting to pile up at the gates. Most of those are incensed over the fact their new album, Young Kingz 2, caters to American tastes, which is definitely true of the new single, “Low Vibrations,” what with its uneventful trappy beat and boring flow. Naturally, the haters aren’t as angry about the yawn-inducing music as they are triggered by the fact that the crew bought into a supermarket chain and are presenting it as a Black-owned business when it’s actually owned by another minority, which we won’t get into here because who even cares about silly beefs anymore.

• You remember Boston-based progressive-metal band Dream Theater, right? Well, don’t look at me, because I can’t erase those memories, but their new one, Parasomnia, is here! “Midnight Messiah” is basic Slayer-tinted epic-metal oatmeal, and ha ha, the video for the tune has a guy in the audience who looks like the skinny blond guy from the X-Files’ Lone Gunmen! This column is writing itself these days, fam!

• Lastly and definitely leastly, it’s Guided by Voices, the band led by Dayton, Ohio’s pride and joy, Robert Pollard, who just can’t stop making albums! Universe Room, his 41st album, features “Fly Religion,” whose first part is decent, but then he adds some other silly parts and it sort of flops like a failed Teardrop Explodes experiment. —Eric W. Saeger

Featured Photo: Frank Meyer, Living Between The Lines (Kitten Robot Records) and G. Himsel, Songs of Doubt & Despair (Sedan Is Real Records)

J. Michael Graham, Stuck (self-released)

Debut six-song record from this Manchester, N.H., native, who’s nowadays running his operation out of Rhode Island. He’s worked his way up in the world, having opened up for basically anyone who’ll have him, from James Montgomery to The Samples to, um, waitwhat, the Dresden Dolls. What’s going on here is a mostly unplugged Dylan-meets-Tom Petty entry. The record’s release party was set for Feb. 7 at Chantilly’s Restaurant in Hooksett. B

—Eric W. Saeger

Niambi, Taboo (Easier Said Records)

Debut solo EP for this Washington, D.C.,-born artist, who, after establishing herself as one-half of the neo-soul/hip-hop duo OSHUN now operates out of Puerto Rico. I really have no complaints regarding this record aside from its length; hopefully there’ll be a lot more of her to hear soon. On first listen I’d attest that this stuff is state-of-the-art trip-hop, beginning with “Soccer Mom,” whose subliminally buzzy busy-signal-ish sample fits perfectly with this lady’s stoned-out-of-her-gourd-style flow; it’s underground to a fault but simultaneously non-threatening, given its sexually ambivalent attitude (Billie Eilish could learn some things from this girl, take that however you wish). “No Budget” is a page right out of Massive Attack’s Heligoland-era schematic, with a lazy, tick-tocking drum line reminiscent of “Teardrop” (the theme to the old House TV series if you’re unfamiliar). “Run It” is the record’s final entry, the closest thing to a trap joint in the set but undeniably soulful. Great things ahead for this lady, no doubt. A+ —Eric W. Saeger

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• Before we get into the new releases streeting this Friday, Jan. 24, I’d like everyone in the class to please pick up your copy of the Dec. 26, 2024, Hippo and take a look at the ribbing I gave former British boyband-numbskull Robbie Williams for the soundtrack for his album Better Man (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack), based on his biopic of the same name. You see, Variety just announced the numbers for the independently made Paramount-released movie (please ask your kids to leave the room, folks, this is for mature audiences only). Ahem, it was a record-breaker in the States, all right: It appeared in 1,291 movie theaters and made $1 million, which would be great if it had cost $5 to make, but guess what: it cost $110 million to make! Even overseas, where people actually even know who that dude is, it’s only made $4.9 million! Now, it might have done better if Williams hadn’t been portrayed by a digitally animated chimpanzee in the film, but you know what, I’m glad he was, because now maybe we have a new Rocky Horror Picture Show to mock and deride and laugh at. I’ll tell you, I don’t mind being right all the time, but this was like winning the Lotto!• Cool beans, we’re almost done with stupid wasteful frozen January already, let’s go! Friday the 31st will see a bunch of new albums, which we must talk about now, so let’s do that, please let’s! Why don’t we kick off the week with The Purple Bird from Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, real name Joseph Oldham, known for his “do-it-yourself punk aesthetic and blunt honesty.” Music critics who are just trying to get their columns finished for the week usually associate his music with Americana, folk, roots, country, punk and indie rock, but this new album’s leadoff single, “London May,” is Guster-like and formulaic in a sonic sense: The piano-bonking chorus is compelling enough to prevent it from being written off as unlistenable, much as it deserves it. “Downstream” is more interesting, possessed of a bluegrass patina that mixes dobro and Irish ren-faire folk; it’d be pretty great if not for the guest vocal from overrated country singer John Anderson. Oldham is trying too hard to be eclectic there, but Flight of the Conchords fans will probably like it for its faux-sincerity and world music feel.

• L.S. Dunes is something of an Aughts supergroup, fronted by Circa Survive/Saosin vocalist Anthony Green, who’s backed by My Chemical Romance guitarist Frank Iero, Coheed and Cambria guitarist Travis Stever, bassist Tim Payne and drummer Tucker Rule from the band Thursday. Their new LP Violet is heading to your Soundclouds as we speak; it’s the follow-up to their 2022 debut Past Lives, which sputtered at No. 174 in the U.S. charts despite its spazzy screamo/extreme-metal-tinged single “Permanent Rebellion,” which is nevertheless a pretty cool tune if you give it a chance (since I know you won’t bother, I’d urge you instead to go listen to the new album’s title track, which is in the same vein but slightly more accessible, sort of like Fall Out Boy with a jet pack strapped to its butt). These guys are definitely on to something, but their survival depends on suburban American youth’s capacity for taking scream seriously in [current_year]. (One annoying side effect of my looking into this band on YouTube was that I’ve ever since been spammed by ads for the Coheed and Cambria/Taking Back Sunday tour, which, by the way, will be coming to Boston’s MGM Music Hall on August 30; I will not be attending that one, for the record.)

• Manic Street Preachers is a Welsh alt-rock band that’s done some interesting stuff over the near 40 years of their existence, including their older hit “La Tristesse Durera (Scream to a Sigh),” which krazy-glued grunge-rock to Jet in a long-overdue experiment (I liked that one a lot more than their more popular hit “Motorcycle Emptiness,” but your mileage may vary). They’re officially old nowadays, so their forthcoming LP Critical Thinking includes a transparent attempt to dent the AOR charts, specifically with the single “Hiding in Plain Sight,” a sleepy mid-tempo rocker that might have been interesting in 1967 but won’t do much for anyone under 40 today, I assure you. That’s not to say that traditional rock ’n’ roll is dead, but bands like this should really Google the word “electronic sampling” for all our sakes.

• We’ll end this week’s nonsense with Maribou State, an English electronic music duo famous for remixing stuff from Alpines, Lana Del Rey and anyone else who’ll put up with them. Their new full-length Hallucinating Love features the single “Bloom,” a ’60s-soul-tinted that’s got a lot to offer in the electro-experimentation department. They’ll be at the Royale in Boston on May 8. —Eric W. Saeger

Featured Photo: J. Michael Graham, Stuck (self-released) and Niambi, Taboo (Easier Said Records)

Löanshark, No Sins To Confess (Reigning Phoenix Music)

I swear I haven’t developed some weird fetish for foreign heavy metal bands, cross my heart; you may have noticed that I pick a random metal band out of my overstuffed emailbox every few weeks, and it just so happened that this week it’s yet another entry from Barcelona, Spain. I can make this short and sweet: If you ever wanted to hear what it would sound like if Scorpions and Alcatrazz had a baby, it’s this. The old-school hamster-wheel gets spinning really fast from the jump, with opener (no, I’m not making this up) “Electric Shockin’ Waves,” a headbanger that doesn’t break any new ground at all but nevertheless is a fine attempt; the singer sounds like a cross between Klaus Meine and Dio, which is about as generic as things could get. In case you’re not sure what this is about, there’s a cover version of NWOBHM cult band Marseille’s“Open Fire” that sounds a lot like a forgotten hit from Europe, come to think of it. It’s OK! A —Eric W. Saeger

The Vapors, Wasp In A Jar (Vapors Own Records)

Holy crow, stop the presses, this isn’t stupid at all! I know it must be a shock to Gen-Xers (how’s the imminent approach of your 60s feeling, kiddies?) to find that this U.K. New Wave band is still at it; you oldbies remember their big (OK, only) hit “Turning Japanese” from wayyy back in the day, but fact is, this isn’t the only album they’ve released over the decades. Anyway, what was I saying — oh yes, it’s not stupid, or at least it doesn’t start out that way, with the hardcore thrasher “Hit The Ground Run.” That one’s followed by “The Human Race,” a spazz-fest that’s their newest “Son Of Turning Japanese” entry, replete with a geeky, mildly catchy chorus. Later comes the obligato joke song, “Miss You Girl,” with a challenging but stupid bass line and purposely sloppy feedback-washed guitar line (literally every New Wave band wrote one of these during the Reagan years). Whatever, it’s a fun record, God bless ’em. A —Eric W. Saeger

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• Before we get into the new releases streeting this Friday, Jan. 24, I’d like everyone in the class to please pick up your copy of the Dec. 26, 2024, Hippo and take a look at the ribbing I gave former British boyband-numbskull Robbie Williams for the soundtrack for his album Better Man (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack), based on his biopic of the same name. You see, Variety just announced the numbers for the independently made Paramount-released movie (please ask your kids to leave the room, folks, this is for mature audiences only). Ahem, it was a record-breaker in the States, all right: It appeared in 1,291 movie theaters and made $1 million, which would be great if it had cost $5 to make, but guess what: it cost $110 million to make! Even overseas, where people actually even know who that dude is, it’s only made $4.9 million! Now, it might have done better if Williams hadn’t been portrayed by a digitally animated chimpanzee in the film, but you know what, I’m glad he was, because now maybe we have a new Rocky Horror Picture Show to mock and deride and laugh at. I’ll tell you, I don’t mind being right all the time, but this was like winning the Lotto!

• If you’re old, you had a small psychological meltdown in 2021 when you were just trying to mind your own business and eat your Fiery Doritos and watch the Super Bowl halftime show and suddenly, instead of Tom Petty or Aerosmith actually playing the hits you used to listen to at keggers in 1986, there was some dude running around in a funhouse mirror-hall, lip-synching some Raffi-esque nursery rhymes, and you were like “How did this all happen?” It’s hard to say, but that was The Weeknd, and he has a new album coming out this Friday, titled Hurry Up Tomorrow, which took forever to roll out even after being postponed, and is said to be “all over the place” genre-wise. “The Crowd” is one of the new songs, an Auto-Tune fest that’s slow and foggy. “Timeless,” with a feature from Playboi Carti, is a cleverly syncopated chillout that fares a lot better. Late breaking: Oh for cripe’s sake, this guy moved the release date again, back a week to Jan. 31, for anyone who takes this ridiculousness seriously.

• Southern-roots-rock band Larkin Poe is often said to be a female version of Allman Brothers, mostly by journalists who don’t know what they’re doing. The band’s new album, Bloom, is led up by the single “Little Bit,” an unexciting slow-rock ballad that’s like Melissa Etheridge trying to be relevant to both the Billboard chart guys and the Zoomer demographic, which is obviously not something anyone should ever try.

• Lol we certainly are on a roll this week, folks, what could possibly be next, I ask you seriously, what on earth will be the next thing I’ll have to — oh look, it’s Scottish post-rock whatevers Mogwai, a band that’s famous for the horribly horrible Pavement-meets-Spacemen 3 single “Take Me Somewhere Nice,” deliver me from nonsense somebody please. Their new album is titled The Bad Fire and features a song called “Lion Rumpus,” a shoegaze-ish thingamajig with lots of guitar distortion that is, as always, its only saving grace, although the fact that there’s no singing on it is an added bonus. The video features the “lads” walking their dogs around Glasgow and asking people if they’ve even heard of Mogwai; most of them say “no” of course.

• Finally we have London-based indie-Bandcamper Anna B Savage, attempting to salvage something positive from this absolutely dreadful week of new releases, with her new one, You and I Are Earth. The single, “Agnes ft. Anna Mieke,” is basically an overacted nick of Tori Amos for Zoomers who’d secretly rather be listening to something decent (they all are); too bad about that. —Eric W. Saeger

Featured Photo: Löanshark, No Sins To Confess (Reigning Phoenix Music) and The Vapors, Wasp In A Jar (Vapors Own Records)