Category: Albums

Rudresh Mahanthappa, Hero Trio (Whirlwind Recordings)

Jazz sax legend Charlie Parker is often referred to by his nickname “Bird,” which explains the title of this Princeton jazz director’s widely acclaimed 2015 album Bird Calls. If you’re familiar with Parker, you know he had the ability to dazzle with his bebop stylings, and so has Mahanthappa, who viewed this LP as an opportunity to pay rapt obeisance to Parker, his biggest and most obvious influence. But whatever, my goal here, as always, isn’t to lay out some eggheaded synonyms for the benefit of solemn aficionados whose record collections are 20-feet-wide end-to-end, but to rope in the odd stray who’s thinking of taking a dip in the depthless pool that is jazz. The long and short of this business here is that I can’t recommend this album highly enough if you’re wanting to be blown away by technical wizardry; most of its contents are extremely busy, effecting to cover the listener in bright musical glitter, but the touchstone knuckleball’s a beauty too, a rub of Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire” that plays with the modal subject like a dolphin with a beach ball. Nice one to have around. A-

The Milwaukees, The Calling (Mint 400 Records)

You can imagine how many times the great cosmic metaphorical Lucy van Pelt has pulled away the football just when I’m about to pronounce a straight-ahead rock record something special, leaving me tripping hilariously and landing on my duff, holding a half-written review that has to get sent to the recycle bin. It’s happened a lot. No, if your band wants to sound like Goo Goo Dolls with a side of Foo Fighters and get your local following of working stiffs to pay actual attention, this is what you want to sound like. As demonstrated here, decent guitar riffage is only one tool on hand, not the whole box; these guys prove that there’s still a place for non-indie hooks in our world, even if the most common place for hearing such stuff — sports bars — seems to be gone for good in the face of Covid. This is the sixth full-length from a crew of New Joisey die-hards who’ve worked their formula to the point that anyone would be convinced they were paper-trained by Bryan Adams. Some really catchy, heartfelt stuff here. A+

Retro Playlist
Eric W. Seager looks back at hip-hop.

Now that the Covid virus has left us all marooned on our own domestic desert islands, any elephant in the room is getting close examination. The elephant in the room regarding my 16-year-old column here is, of course, the fact that I don’t cover a lot of hip-hop. No reader has ever complained to me about it; I’ve posted the occasional Lil Wayne review and whatnot, but you and I both know I largely avoid the genre.

Fact is, I’m at the point where I find basically all corporate hip-hop quite tedious to write about. I was the first kid on my block to buy a Run-DMC cassette, I’ll have you know, and quite frankly, I decided that after Public Enemy’s 1990 masterpiece Fear of a Black Planet, there was nowhere to go but down for the entire genre.

I tell you, I’ve tried, and yeah, I’ll continue to. I paid some lip service to Swedish rapper Yung Lean’s recent LP Stranger, but now that we’re all friends here, lazily tossing peanuts at Dumbo, I can say that I think the guy just sucks. No, I was more hopeful about white-guy indie-rap in 2006, upon hearing Astronautalis’ The Mighty Ocean & Nine Dark Theaters (some truly immersive beats there), but to be honest, to me, if it isn’t Chuck D-level angry, I don’t have time for it. Same as I like DMX a hundred times more than Ludacris, I like Death Grips a hundred times more than Kendrick Lamar. Make sense?

One reason I mostly avoid corporate rap is because the reviews always end descending into reams of in-crowd nonsense about this or that tweet or Instagram beef. Gag me. As far as indie rap, I’m down, like I’d be big into giving some press love to a local artist who’s got some beats, if one even exists.

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. Email esaeger@cyberontix.com for fastest response.

PLAYLIST
A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• One more round of new CDs for August comes at us on the 28th, and then it will be September, and I’m just going to shut up about what comes next, because surely nothing good will come of it, unless you are an abominable snowman or a ski buff, neither of which I’ve ever had an interesting conversation with. Self-taught musician Angel Olsen is from St. Louis, Missouri, and her deal is art-pop/indie folk. She received the most love for her 2016 album My Woman, because she successfully tried to get away from being pigeonholed as a lo-fi indie artist (pro tip for local musicians: Don’t play lo-fi indie if you want to avoid said pigeonhole). Pitchfork liked that one and, as usual, wrote way too many wordy words to indicate same (“congeal” was in there) but that’s Pitchfork for you, and the PopMatters review was poorly written, but that guy loved it too, all of which then presented a double-edged sword, because now all the hipsters were used to her not being a sad, privileged gloom-girl anymore, so all the critics hedged their bets on her next album, Phases, which covered songs from Bruce Springsteen and Roky Erickson, and gave it middling grades. That sort of brings us to now, and her new one, Whole New Mess, which comprises a bunch of songs from her 2018 album, All Mirrors, but supposedly these are more “intimate” versions, which tells me that if this stuff isn’t going to sound lo-fi and gloom-girl, I’m a monkey’s uncle in a striped suit. Yeah, yep, the title track is all gloomy, and I think one of her guitar strings is a little out of tune, which will bring joy to anyone who loves their music crappy. She’s a good singer, a little like k.d. lang, but gloomy and redundant. Come and get it, three-toed sloths.

• Toni Braxton is trapped in fame purgatory these days, now that she’s more of a reality show oddity than what she was originally, a cool bedroom-soul lady who was name-checked by a Spike Lee character in Do The Right Thing. Whatever nonsense is on her upcoming new album, Spell My Name, I’m sure it’s decent as long as she hasn’t switched over to doing Slim Whitman covers, but come on, isn’t there footage of her tripping over a Gucci bag and skinning her knee, or whatever happened on her reality show? Right, I’m supposed to take this seriously? Fine, I will, I’ll listen to her new single, “Dance,” and if I barf, it’s on you. Right, it isn’t bad, sort of like Sade but with more soul. Some gentle 1980s UFO bloops, a 1970s-radio orchestra section. Ha, now it’s getting all excitable toward the fadeout, and the overall effect is like a disco dance scene from The Love Boat. Let’s just forget this ever happened, fam, and move on to our next tale of terror.

• I know I’ve talked about Toots & the Maytals in the past, in this award-winning column, but I totally forget/don’t care what they do, so this’ll be like that movie where Drew Barrymore forgets where she is every day upon waking up. Wait, here we are, they’re a Jamaican ska/rocksteady band, maybe I was thinking of someone else. The band’s new album, Got to Be Tough, is coming, and the title track is pretty standard one-drop chill with a cool guitar part. The lyrics are about caring, which obviously nails the current zeitgeist.

• We’ll end this week’s parade of shame with another soul singer, Bettye LaVette, who, to her credit, doesn’t have a stupid reality show. Blackbirds is the new album, “I Hold No Grudge” the single. OK, now this is authentic and awesome, torchy soul, electric piano, and her voice is all croaky and old. Nice.

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

The Killers, Imploding the Mirage (Island Records)

Um, wow, I never would have dreamed that we critics — at least the ones of us who just couldn’t quite place the wellspring from which Killers singer Brandon Flowers was drawing his hypnotic urgency — would have ever pegged him as some sort of new-jack Bruce Springsteen, but there it is, scrawled in big font all over album opener “My Own Soul’s Warning.” I mean, this time Flowers really wants us to feel our plebeian angst in this decent-enough rocker, which has as much in common with Kenny Loggins’ ’80s-shlock classic “Danger Zone” as it does with Bruuuuce, but let’s not talk about that (let’s really not). “Fire In Bone” is a departure, but in a good way, a thrumming head-bopper that reminds me of Robert Plant’s David Byrne-worshipping solo albums from the early ’80s; it assuredly is epic, awash in feel-good desperation. “Caution” is the room-flattener, outfitted with one of those bold, swashbuckling singalongs that put these guys on the map forever. As always, wow. A+

Psychedelic Furs, Made of Rain (Cooking Vinyl Records)

It’s been 29 years, 29 since the Psychedelic Furs released World Outside, dropped the unabashedly Depeche Mode-like single “Until She Comes” upon our heads, then realized that the 1990s weren’t going to be their decade and sank back beneath the waves, more or less. Since then, the band-founding Butler Brothers have toured, released solo albums, and, well, I could swear there was something else, but the world’s been pretty much Furs-less for all these years, unless you count the time their 1984 tune “The Ghost in You” was playing in the background on an episode of Stranger Things. We can see here that they still have a gift for pretty much useless dissonant filler (“The Boy That Invented Rock & Roll”) (and yes, there’s sax), in other words they haven’t grown up and found a way to appeal to Generation iPhone by trying out captivating new recipes the way Pet Shop Boys did, but most of their fans probably don’t want the Psychedelic Furs to be awesome in the first place. “Don’t Believe” has super-cool drums and a mildly depressing, awkwardly compelling hook to it, if you’re looking for the barest reason to invest your time in this. B-

Retro Playlist

Eric W. Saeger recommends a few albums worth a second look.

With the Covid pandemic looking about ready to plunge the entire country into general lockdown again, many bands are on their last legs, or at least down to their last shreds of sanity. Many musicians are having to collaborate through Zoom and other online platforms, which I’m sure is nice and all, but trust me, nothing beats the throbbing, eardrum-busting insanity of feedback from a bassplayer’s amp, or a nerve-jangling impromptu drum solo when the drummer is feeling bored and wants to take it out on everyone in the room. Such deafening horrors are pleasures one can only experience at a rehearsal space.

Any musician will tell you that the hardest thing to find to round out a band is a decent-enough singer. In the Covid era, many bands are stuck at the same place they were months ago, looking for that last elusive piece to their artistic puzzles, someone who can carry a tune and not annoy the hell out of everyone else by never helping out with moving (much less buying) any equipment, stuff like that. I was one of those guys back in the 1980s, auditioning for basically every band in Boston, getting tons of offers just because I could do a passable Robert Plant imitation and a letter-perfect David Lee Roth, complete with all the Screaming Lord Sutch shrieking. I felt bad for all the bands I had to say no to, but that’s the breaks. Many deserving bands never get off the ground owing to an inability to find a singer, which should explain all the bad singing one typically encounters during a SoundCloud binge, from the drunken-sounding awfulness of King Krule to the unapologetic suckage of Versus.

Mind you, some bands — nearly all of them heavy metal ones — just throw up their hands and say, “Fine, no one we know can sing, so hey, we’ll be an instrumental band!” I’ve talked about a few Pelican albums here, including their last one, 2019’s Nighttime Stories. Their songs all sound the same to me; a few decent metal guitar riffs here and there, but just, you know, lacking, because no singer. I’ll stop picking on them only when their PR rep smartens up and stops sending me their music.

There are good instrumental bands out there, though. Everyone seems to worship Tortoise, and, if I recall correctly, I was nice to their 2016 album The Catastrophist, only because it’s pretty nuanced for a post-rock record (there was an unnecessary cover of David Essex’s ’70s hit “Rock On” that I probably dissed).

Some of those bands are quite awesome in their way. I’d be cool with reviewing the next Animals As Leaders album if I get sent an advance, and if your thing is utterly demented math metal, you’d probably like Behold The Arctopus. But if you’re in a metal band and want to know the key to it all, take my advice: don’t do it. Easiest: hire a girl, like, any girl, your little sister, the mail delivery lady. You’re guaranteed plenty of good reviews from nerdy writers; critics become hypnotized like possums at a square dance if there’s a girl in your band, even if she sings horribly. Just don’t start an instrumental metal band. Don’t.

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. Email esaeger@cyberontix.com for fastest response.

PLAYLIST

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• Great, the next mass CD-release date is Aug. 21, meaning the summer’s just about over, and all I’ve accomplished as far as beachgoing was one quick visit to York Beach, and we went so late in the day — a Friday — that the parking lane was completely full all the way to the end of “Long Sands,” in other words we may as well have been on the Tijuana border. I give up, I want a do-over, how awful it’s been. But you know what could brighten my spirits is a few snippets from decent albums that will be released on the 21st. Maybe Sugaregg, the fast-approaching new album from Bully, will fill my beachless soul with happiness, and I’ll forget the fact that the only decent fish and chips I’ve had all summer came from the hilariously crowded Goldenrod in Manchvegas. I just give up, where’s the fast-forward button on this crazy thing. So, according to some idiotic blog, Bully’s new single “Where To Start” was inspired by Chumbawamba, but that’s idiotic, because it’s actually ’90s riot-grrrl, sort of like Hole but with good meds. It’s awesome, don’t believe any stupid rock writer other than me, go check it out this instant.

• Oh lovely, time for me to pretend to know/care about Old 97’s again, because their new album, Twelfth, is about to be released. You know, if I want to hear middle-of-the-road albums made of boring country-tinged mystery meat occasionally interrupted by almost-cool punkabilly, I usually — well, actually, I never do, I just listen to, well, basically anything else. But I will endeavor to see if my stomach can handle this new Old 97’s single over here, titled “Turn Off The TV.” Nope, it can’t, please pass the barf bag, this song is, as usual, a tuneless lump of bingo-parlor-indie, like, the overall sound is epic, but the music is like Goo Goo Dolls played by Martians wearing people-suits, trying to trick us into accepting this ridiculous nonsense as decent music. Rhett is dancing enthusiastically, and one of the guys is dressed like a clown, yet it still sucks. OK, let’s go on to the next one, come along everyone, is that someone’s Judas Priest backpack someone’s forgetting?

• Blub blub blub, I’m drowning in horror and lack of beach-time. Oh look, the new Fruit Bats album, Siamese Dream, is on the docket, for imminent release, just like my friend at Merge Records told me (we aren’t actually friends, they honestly don’t care about me, but whatever). This is a covers album, of the same-titled Smashing Pumpkins album from the Triassic Age, let’s see if it’s any good. Nope, the version of “Today” doesn’t make me want to cruise around in the official Smashing Pumpkins ice cream truck, it makes me want to take a nap and pretend these hipsters aren’t ruining the song. Don’t you hate that?

• Last thing for your consideration is, oh no, a new Bright Eyes album, called Down In The Weeds Where The World Once Was. The single “Mariana Trench” has decent singing from Conor Oberst, a good verse part, and then it gets sloppy and stupid for no reason, then becomes good again. OK! — Eric W. Saeger

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

My Morning Jacket, The Waterfall II (ATO Records)

I tend to associate this Louisville band with their neighbors to their southern border, Tennessee’s Kings Of Leon, who’ve similarly carved a lucrative niche for themselves by tossing depleted-soil mystery-meat 1970s-rock into a blender, hipstering it up a little, and trying not to come off too rock-starry lest they’re abandoned en masse by the last few millennial-pandering blogs that might be interested in them. Where Kings are more like a rebooted, radio-centered Allman Brothers, MMJ are more blatantly Lynyrd Skynyrd-like, which won’t mean much to most of you, not that you should believe Last.FM’s assessment that they’re similar to Wilco and Spoon (good grief already). Whatevs, MMJ is at this point just a very good rock band, as we heard in 2015’s The Waterfall, from whose sessions these new songs sprang. “Tropics” had its Blue Oyster Cult side to it but was still uniquely epic, while here, album opener “Spinning My Wheels” flirts with early Yes throughout its breezy, windswept duration; it’s pure yacht-rock really. “Still Thinkin’” touches on Beach Boys, then we get some twee (“Climbing the Ladder”), some faux-Jamie Liddell soul interpolating a monster guitar interlude (“Magic Bullet”) and a bunch of similar things, the biggest departure being “Wasted,” the token Flaming Lips-ish jam-out. Harmless vacation listening, not that they should be doing that, but it’s their career. B

VOS, Rise EP (Cammo Music)

Not big on mawkish, wildly overacted gospel-pop myself, but hey, plenty of people love them some network talent-show bombast, and this is as good as any, I guess. VOS stands for “Voices Of Service,” a foursome (a woman and three guys) of African American singers who placed fifth in Season 14 of America’s Got Talent; all of them are military, two active, two not. You can easily picture Howie Mandel or whoever bowing and mugging it up with “I worship you as music gods” in the face of this angst-racking four-song effort, but that’s fine with me. After all, “Brother” has more in common with Ten Tenors/Celtic Woman than it does with any shlubby awards-show tribute to Aretha Franklin; it’s not horrifically overdone, and does have a lot of melody to it. “Choke” is the ballad, such as it is, unplugged guitar accompanying refried but boldly delivered breakup sentiments that spotlight each singer’s strengths. All the best of luck to these folks. A

Retro Playlist

Eric W. Saeger recommends a couple of albums worth a second look.

Last night, with literally nothing else on TV, I wound up watching the last two-thirds of Bohemian Rhapsody, the movie about the 1970s superstar rock band Queen. It’s a fairly forgettable biopic, not all that believable at times (trust me, no band has ever stopped in the middle of a high-drama fight to go “Say, that’s a cool bass line!” and suddenly start jamming out). That sort of thing aside, Rami Malek (playing Freddie Mercury) did a good job of convincing me that he was experiencing genuine distress over coming out as gay and upending his entire life.

Maybe I’m “too online,” but in my view, the LGBTQIA community hasn’t benefited all that much from the “Social Justice Warrior” (SJW) craze that’s swept over Twitter and such for the last decade or so. Instead of helping to spread real understanding and empathy between gays and repressed types who can’t get over their generalized fear of things that weren’t de rigueur in 1950s culture, it’s served as a popularity (and, let’s face it, money)-generating machine for B-list celebrities, self-obsessed nobodies and wannabe philosophers. The only online personality I trust (and have learned a lot from) is American trans woman Natalie Wynn, a philosophy major whose YouTube channel Contrapoints is must-see stuff. The short of it is that she’s actually had more support from conservative types (many of whom she’s taught to adjust their worldviews) than from certain rigid SJW gangs.

As a music critic and cis male, I tend to view gay-made and/or gay-centered music as simply another form of world music, a glimpse into a different culture. For the record, I don’t lump Queen as a “gay band” and never really thought much of them; aside from “Bohemian Rhapsody,” that tune’s rather uninteresting follow-up “Millionaire Waltz,” and a few sections of certain songs (they were/are annoyingly modular in their song structures), I don’t like them, really. I do like New York glam-disco band Scissor Sisters, whose album Night Work I talked about here in reverent tones way back in 2010. I was thrilled by it, a fun, jubilant set of really great songs.

I admire trans singer (for the band Against Me!) Laura Jane Grace’s courage, if not her music so much. In 2014 I may have been a little too enthusiastic with my praise for the band’s album Transgender Dysphoria Blues, which was pretty disposable. But she’s a hero to many, and I’d never detract from that.

Before I toddle off to read your hate mail, does anyone remember the local Nashua band Billie Dare, the punk band that used to play all the gay clubs in Boston? The girl singer used to wear a giant “diamond” on her ring finger? No? I loved those guys.

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. Email esaeger@cyberontix.com for fastest response.

PLAYLIST

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• The coronavirus marches on, and so I must fill this page with music news and snark, so that I can hopefully elicit a little half weep-giggle from you, as you sit sniffling back all the tears you’re shedding over having nothing left to watch on Netflix other than gross, badly overdubbed police dramas from Norway. Maybe you’ve even given up all hope and actually watched Tiger King, like, it’s gotten that bad. But for now, shut up, it’s time for your bowl of snark-berry cereal, this time focused on the music nonsense-albums that will hit the SoundClouds and your little brother’s totally hacked dark web laptop on Aug. 14, starting with Motherhood, the new album from Canadian shoegaze band No Joy.They hit the big time when they opened for Grant Hart of Husker Du, and he was like, “wow, two hot blonde chicks totally shredding it,” and that’s the whole story! I’m listening to “Birthmark,” the rollout track from this new album, and it’s got a lot of semi-interesting syncopation, and gentle sexless shoegaze singing. It’s kind of like a cross between Kylie Minogue and Goldfrapp but more interesting. The video has a UFO flying around in interstellar space, interspersed with some hipster doing a 1990s breakdance, but other than that, awesomeness does abound, and I approve.

• Yikes, it’s Scottish metrosexual-metal whatevers Biffy Clyro, with A Celebration Of Endings, their new album! I guess they’re sort of emo now, judging by the new single “End Of.” Wait, the guitars have been cool for a few seconds. Nope, forget it, it’s just boyband rawk wearing a scary Halloween mask. Seriously, do people buy albums like these, or do they take the advice of their older brothers and broaden their horizons away from this kind of recycled Weezer-meets-Papa Roach garbage? I need answers, fam.

• Dum de dum, oh look, someone I’ve never even heard of, Kathleen Edwards. Isn’t she the weather lady who replaced Al Kaprielian on local cable? I’m almost interested to find out. Nope, she’s a Canadian alternative-folkie who plays guitar, bass and violin. She once wrote a song called “Hockey Skates,” in case you didn’t believe she’s Canadian. Who cares, her new album, Total Freedom, is on the way right this minute, led by the single “Options Open,” whose opening chords were ripped off from the fadeout to Natalie Imbruglia’s “Torn,” a.k.a. the national anthem of Hannaford Supermarket. Yadda yadda, boring verse, two-note chorus that was probably written by a bot. We’ll do one more and bag it, guys.

• To close out, we have somehow-still-relevant Doors guitarist Robby Krieger, whose resume includes the lame solo to “L.A. Woman,” a song I detest with the power of a thousand suns. The Ritual Begins At Sundown is his new “platter,” and it includes a tune called “The Drift” that sounds like Pat Metheny, which means it’s awesome. I forgot he’s into jazz now, sue me. This isn’t bad. — Eric W. Saeger

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

Fantastic Negrito, Have You Lost Your Mind Yet? (Cooking Vinyl)

In a sense, Xavier Amin Dphrepaulezz, a.k.a. Fantastic Negrito, reminds me of filmmaker Spike Lee, a Black man finding greatness in a white world. Like Lee, Negrito possesses an ultra-rare, universally accessible level of creativity that’s essential to getting his points across. We last left Negrito laying to waste every last Led Zeppelin wannabe with (to invoke Lee again) his musical answer to Do The Right Thing, 2018’s Please Don’t Be Dead, an LP that was a complete 180-degree turn from his Prince/roots-blues debut. Here, he nails the middle ground, strutting and owning his Blackness again, starting with the Stevie Wonder-on-rohypnol “Chocolate Samurai,” then (on the Tank-guested “I’m So Happy I Cry”) blasting a full 17-cannon broadside against Moby’s “Honey,” and no, I’m not imagining it. Even his Prince shtick returns, just because (“Searching for Captain Save a Hoe”). Just go buy this album, would you please? A+ — Eric W. Saeger

Bear Grillz, “Fire” (Dim Mak Records)

By its very nature, electronic dance music is a genre constantly in flux. By the same “progress-for-the-good-of-all” token, it’s rarely a violent uprising. But from the sound of this advance single from Bear Grillz’ upcoming EP, the entire genre may be under construction, or demolition, take your pick. The story here is that when Covid-19 shut down the world, Denver-based DJ/producer Grillz reached out on Twitter to any rapper willing to record a few syllables to be used on songs to come, and Salt Lake City native Atari answered (he sings and raps on two other tracks to be released later). I imagine most critics wouldn’t associate this with EDM at all, more like very aggressive dubstep; the main thrust is an Islamic call-to-prayer vocal over a menacing stun-guitar line, then build-up to chaotic drop, with a few lines laid down here and there. Maybe it’s official, then, that the lines of all electronic genres have blurred; I’m sure that’d be fine with fans who’ve grown quite tired of trying to keep up with designations-of-the-week.
A

Retro Playlist

Eric W. Saeger recommends a few songs worth another listen.

Millennials (adults aged 22 to 38) (um, 38 now?!) are about to inherit the world. The lovely starter kit God has chosen to bestow upon them includes such wonderful gifts as the coronavirus, a wild west internet filled with fake news and constant invasions from brigades of sockpuppet trolls, a failing climate, and “Past Shock,” a societal malady I coined in my book to describe the horrors that deeply tech-savvy younger people regularly experience when having to deal with outdated financial, political and other systems that are still rooted in backward, Industrial Age technology (or non-technology — why on earth should anyone have to show up in person at the Department of Motor Vehicles, ever?).

One of the culture wars raging nowadays is one in which “Zoomers” (a.k.a. “Generation Z,” i.e., the 21-and-unders) are blaming millennials for a lot of the world’s problems. It’s an unfair rap, really. Millennials have never gotten a break. Too many of them had to live with their parents because there were no jobs. Drowned in college debt, they abandoned all hope of ever owning homes. And why have children when the world’s literally on fire?

Even in the music world, they just can’t win. No fictional “Council of Millennial Tastemakers” ever voted for the “Millennial Whoop” to be identified as their core pop music sound. In fact, the “Millennial Whoop” — the same musical notes as in the children’s playground taunt “Nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah” — has been a go-to melody in pop forever. Wikipedia cites “Jungle Love” (1983) by Morris Day and the Time, and Lady Gaga’s “Poker Face,” but it’s been around a lot longer, in Cheap Trick’s “Surrender” (sneakily) and Queen’s “We Are The Champions” (blatantly) for starters.

Millennial-centric bands have done epic things with the Whoop, or at least its two dominant notes. It’s all over Kings of Leon’s “Use Somebody,” “Kings & Queens” by Thirty Seconds to Mars (I reviewed their 2009 LP This Is War here), and was even used by Green Day, whose “Oh Yeah” single lifts from Joan Jett’s “Do You Wanna Touch Me.”

Moral? We need to ease up on millennials already. They’ve done some cool things with their Whoop. Let them have that at least.

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. Email esaeger@cyberontix.com for fastest response.

PLAYLIST

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• Bands, singers and various random art-frauds will release new records this Friday, Aug. 7, including mummified arena-rockers Deep Purple, whose new album’s title, Whoosh!, has an exclamation point at the end of it, just like this sentence, which automatically makes you read it harder! Before you ask, no, guitarist Richie Blackmore is not in this band anymore, and hasn’t been since 1983. All the other original members are here, except for organ player Jon Lord, who is deceased. The video for the new album’s tire-kicker single, “Man Alive,” starts out with an orchestral background while some astronaut dude walks around in slow motion against a background of stars exploding or galaxies being formed or whatever; it reminded me a lot of how much I hated the movie Ad Astra, for being pretentious, boring and nonsensical, much like this song’s intro. But then the 1980s-Purple hard rock kicks in with a rumbling riff, and Ian Gillan starts singing about a Life After People scenario in which a guy washes up on a beach, and then there’s some esoteric spoken word nonsense, and that’s really it. Maybe it’s a concept album, but if so, is the guy in the video supposed to be a gill-breathing Waterworld dude, or just some lonely castaway “last man on Earth” who gets to draw a moustache on the Mona Lisa just because he can and he’s bored? I’m sort of intrigued, aren’t you? No?

• I’m going to assume yep, Wikipedia says I’m right — that California hardcore punk band Death by Stereo named themselves after the line Corey Haim spoke in The Lost Boys after killing the vampire with the Jennifer Connelly hair. That is actually a point in their favor as far as I’m concerned, so I will keep an open mind as I toddle off to listen to “California Addiction,” the single from their forthcoming new album We’re All Dying Just in Time, their first official full-length since 2012’s Black Sheep of the American Dream. Wait, they’re supposed to be “hardcore punk,” but this just sounds like old Slayer, like the guitar riff is fast and kind of complicated, and the singer sounds like Tom Araya. You will like it if you like misidentified hardcore punk or Slayer. Does that help?

• U.K.-based psychedelic art-pop fellas Glass Animals actually made quite the splash in the U.S. with their 2016 album, How to Be a Human Being, appearing on Jimmy Kimmel Live to play the song “Life Itself,” which had a pretty cool tribal beat, an LMFAO-style hook, and a really stupid video. The title track from their new album, Dreamland, is quite different from “Life Itself” in that the singer sounds like Bon Iver; it’s light and pleasant, with trip-hop elements and a hook that makes it non-sucky.

• To close out the week, we have country singer Luke Bryan, who wrote Billy Currington’s 2007 single “Good Directions,” among other things, before striking out on his own and becoming too big for his britches. His latest LP, Born Here Live Here Die Here, has as its single the title track, an instant cowboy-hat classic hoedown-ballad whose lyrics start with “Bunch of buddies in John Deere hats, a little crazy but they got my back.”

Anyone need further explanation? Good.

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

Boris, NO (self-released)

Already charter members of the cool kids club, the Japanese experimental bliss-metal trio are completely indie as of a year or so ago; this LP was released through the direct artist-to-consumer service Bandcamp. Not to get too inside-baseball with it, but that tells me they weren’t deliriously happy with Jack White’s Third Man Records imprint, but regardless, the band’s 27th album is up. As always a self-indulgent joint, NO’s obligato forked-finger-salute song-intro comes at the Motorhead-like speed-punk tune “Anti-Gone,” a welcome departure from album-opener “Genesis,” which treads a middle ground between Sunn(((O))) ringout-drone and singer-less Pelican riffing that had me wondering why I was bothering with the record. Don’t get me wrong, bandleader Wata still reigns as Japan’s answer to Iggy, but I was far more entranced by the absolutely spastic “Temple of Hatred,” the slow-mo black-metal dooming of “Zerkalo” and the Misfits-nicking “Fundamental Erorr” than that sad excuse for a leadoff track. Oh whatever, fine, it’s awesome, don’t mind me. A+

The Clientele, It’s Art Dad (Merge Records)

To hear Pitchfork tell it, this Monkees-twee band should have called it quits 10 years ago; it was a bit odd reading the ravings of the nerd who got assigned 2017’s Music for the Age of Miracles, who actually complained about that’s album’s overabundance of complacent cheeriness (I was like, now I’ve heard everything, literally). Forgive that segue, as there’s really not much to complain about here, particularly if your tastes run to Columbia House Record Club fodder from the 1960s, or if you ever wanted a more melodically astute Field Mice, but then again, this is composed of old tunes from the first half of the 1990s, which may mean that the band took such criticism to heart, one never knows. The crew does have, as alleged by critics, a dream-pop/shoegaze aspect, mostly due to the Alasdair MacLean’s Spacemen 3-level fetish for drowning his voice in reverb (sometimes he even plugs his microphone into a guitar amp for a modicum of extra weirdness), but other than that, it’s antique radio Britpop mellowness with quite a few hooks. A

Retro Playlist

Eric W. Saeger recommends a few of albums worth a second look.

At this point, it doesn’t feel like we’ll ever see another blockbuster movie in an actual movie theater. And that stinks, at least for me; the wife and I have accumulated around $200 worth of free movie passes at last count, once-valuable swag that feels like worthless Monopoly money now. It’s unfair. The loss of big-screen escapism isn’t only felt by “cinema” nerds; music fans feel the void as well. After all, soundtrack albums have been a big sell for many decades, starting with the very first one, Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1938. And deservedly so —‌ soundtrack albums allow us to relive awesome cinematic and theatrical experiences.

I’ve only bought two, ever. The first one was the soundtrack to the 1987 vampire film The Lost Boys. Around 75 percent of the songs are still awesome: Lou Gramm’s “Lost In The Shadows” (in which the guys bomb around trails on motorcycles), saxophone hack Tim Cappello’s “I Still Believe” (the bit with the beach concert), the two Jimmy Barnes tunes, even Roger Daltry’s cover of Elton John’s “Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me” (if you can make it to the end, you’ll be treated to a solo guitar playing the riff to “Saturday Night’s Alright For Fighting,” which is so cool it makes me sweat just thinking of it).

The other one was a film score. I’m not big into scores, although The Hunt For Red October and The Usual Suspects had some great moments. My software-tech friends were all into The Lion King soundtrack in the early ’90s, which really made me worry for humanity. But yeah, I did buy one, the soundtrack CD to Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. Yeah, yeah, I know, “hurr durr, Jar Jar sucks,” but the version of the main theme on that album was and is the best one ever, loud, unabashed and relentless, a reckoning. The battle droid war theme is cool; the music to the “there’s always a bigger fish” scene is awesome, and so are several other pieces.

Now, as for “Duel Of The Fates” (the “Darth Maul vs. the two Jedi dudes” battle), I didn’t really like it. Too contrived. Like, why not just have the choir singing “Look! It’s the Devil!”

(I’m anticipating hate mail for that last part, but don’t do it: You’ll only become more like me if you allow the Dark Side to grow in you.)

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. Email esaeger@cyberontix.com for fastest response.

PLAYLIST

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• The next traditional CD release day is July 31, when, among several others, the new album from Creeper, called Sex Death & The Infinite Void, wings its way into the stores and Soundclouds. I wasn’t aware of the Southampton, England-based band, but I’d heard of AFI and Alkaline Trio, two bands they are usually compared to, which means we are dealing with some sort of emo concoction here. But — and here’s where you really need to stop paying attention — the boys of Creeper consider themselves a “horror punk” band, which means that they are not only emo but scary emo, which is actually an oxymoron, because there’s nothing scary about emo except when your little brother is playing it cranked to 11 and your mom won’t let you throw him and his stupid emo CD out the window. Oh, let’s just get this over with, because I’m still trying to find something decent on Netflix and have already wasted at least two hours by selecting a movie that looks cool but then, after I start it, I find out it has subtitles, because it was made in Turkey or Zanzibar, don’t you totally hate that? This new Creeper album has a single called “Annabelle,” and it isn’t “horror punk” or anything of the sort, it’s more like My Chemical Romance, in other words “listenable emo that isn’t completely awful.” Actually it’s more like old Cheap Trick than regular stupid emo, so maybe these guys are actually OK, but to be honest, my stomach is feeling really fragile from my last 10-hour binge of stuffing my face with random food as a way to cope with coronavirus boredom, like there’s no way my body could deal with a “decent emo” record while also trying to figure out what to do with some Saku takeout and Ruffles cheddar and sour cream chips and Stonewall Kitchen blackberry jam on Ezekiel sprouted grain bread, which can only be bought, apparently, at Whole Foods. Yes, I’m fragile right now, sorry.

• The band Land of Talk is an indie band from Montreal, so I automatically hate them, but they have a girl singer, so maybe they aren’t awful, I just don’t know yet. The band’s new LP, Indistinct Conversations, has an annoying title, but other than that, I don’t know if the music itself is annoying, because for that, I will need to visit YouTube and see what the song “Compelled” is about. So the first two parts of the song are mellow, ’90s-ish and not terribly annoying, but there is of course, haha, nothing hooky, and then it goes into some messy chillout part that made me run for the bathroom. (Really man, does every indie band in Montreal suck this badly? Serious question for the floor. My God, my God.)

• Steve Howe, the guitarist from arena-prog band Yes, may be 73, but he still makes albums, because he just must, you know? His 21st album, Love Is, contains a song called “The Headlands.” It starts off like some awful old Motels tune, but then he plugs in his guitar gizmos and it suddenly becomes rather awesome, and he does some solos, but after three minutes there’s no singing, so I gave up on it.

• Our last target-bot this week is the new Fontaines DC LP, A Hero’s Death! The video for the title track stars tertiary Game of Thrones mandarin-dude Aidan Gillen as Conan O’Brien, while the singer babbles some stream-of-consciousness nonsense in a Cockney accent over art-punk guitars. It is OK. — Eric W. Saeger

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

Limousine Beach, Stealin’ Wine + 2 (Tee Pee Records)

More than any other record company that sends me stuff, the Tee Pee imprint is the most like a box of chocolates, at least as far as the noisiness goes. They’ve released LPs from Warlocks, High on Fire and Brian Jonestown Massacre, to name a few, and that’s a pretty diverse spread if you think about it. As for this little three-songer (and I do mean little, clocking in at six minutes total), it’s something fresh, at least as far as its throwback nature. It’s three lead guitarists from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, trying to make the genre “sizzle rock” catch on. Thing is, this sound already caught on 45 or so years ago. Their spazzy but precise vibe recalls Sweet more than anything else (sidetrack: did anyone ever decide if that band was supposed to be called “The Sweet” or just “Sweet,” not that it matters anymore?), but I suppose you could always throw Manchester Orchestra into the discussion, mostly because the recording is comparatively low-rent. It’s Electric Light Orchestra-level fun for its entire shrimpy duration, anyway; I’d be interested in hearing more. A- — Eric W. Saeger

Permanent Collection, Nothing Good Is Normal (Strangeway Studios)

You’ve heard of musicians branching out to painting and film, but this is a new one for me, a guy who’s so thoroughly, well, human, that you can find a review of him as an apartment tenant from one of his past landlords in Oakland. This is only the second full-length in seven years from Jason Hendardy’s one-man Permanent Collection project, as he’s been tied down with running his Strangeway imprint (all the company’s records, mostly 7” EPs and cassettes, are out of print), doing video stuff, showing his bum on Impose magazine’s site, and generally being rad. This LP starts out with a doom-metal bliss figure made of pure fuzz, which had me expecting some sort of Sunn(O) trip, but then it suddenly became awesome, dousing me in unkempt Big Black drone-metal with a black-metal guitar sound and “In Bloom”-mode Kurt Cobain vocals with the reverb absolutely pegged. What I’ve just described is something too cool for human ears, and it’s that way through the whole set. If the songs weren’t so melodically repetitive, I’d be this thing’s most wild-eyed groupie. A- — Eric W. Saeger

Retro Playlist
Eric W. Saeger recommends a couple of albums worth a second look.

I opened a can of worms the other month when I accepted a certain PR person’s request to send me jazz material. Like all soldiers at the front lines of jazz publicity, she is absolutely overloaded with new albums of which she wants to raise the public’s awareness. Over the past few weeks, my snail-mailbox has been crammed with her stuff.

As I’ve said many times here, jazz players have a tough enough time as it is. Trying to get the attention of an American public that gains alarmingly little (if any) musical training in public schools is a tough nut to crack when your product — jazz music — is geared toward well-rounded palates. It doesn’t help that many jazz records are too cookie-cutter, of course, a handicap common to all musical genres but completely untenable in jazz. It’s always better to hear something that’s actually new, at least to me, like Jean Chaumont’s 2018 LP The Beauty of Differences, whose greatest power stems from the guitarist’s non-standard setup, specifically a close-miked Eastman hollow-body guitar armed with steel and nylon strings. The tunes themselves are nice too, chilly modern doodles that don’t strain themselves.

Last year I mentioned Subtone’s then-new album Moose Blues, another one worth revisiting for the piano lines of the seemingly everywhere Florian Hoefner alone. Even if you aren’t a fan of ’70s-era post-bop, you still have to hand it to them for the insane amount of touring the band puts in. That kind of thing really makes a crew appreciate their studio time, which is very evident here.

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. Email esaeger@cyberontix.com for fastest response.

PLAYLIST
A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• Oh great, the next general release date for albums is July 3, and at this writing I’m going to have to dig deep to find new records that’ll come out that day. Like basically at this point, it’s just Paul Weller (no, he didn’t play Robocop, that was Peter Weller), whom I know nothing about, and Willie Nelson, so who wants to hear about new albums made by rich people when there’s no work, and plus, coronavirus, can’t we all just move to communes and forget about mowing the lawn? But whatever, since no one but Willie and Not The Robocop Guy is releasing CDs, it’s the perfect time to fill this space with a retraction, for an error I made weeks back! Yes, the impossible did happen, and my friend Gary P. noticed it, because he actually reads these words instead of doing what you do, going right to Amy’s movie reviews and then the Sudoku, and then it’s time to wash the plague germs off your hands again, and then you forget that I might actually be worth reading because I have won two awards for writing snark grenades. What did I mess up? Well, the other week, I wrote in my expert-level, Pulitzer-worthy review of Suzi Quatro’s new album that she played Pinky Tuscadero on Happy Days, but I was wrong, and it bummed Gary out, because Suzi Quatro actually played Leather Tuscadero, not Pinky. So he texted me, all like “Dude!” and I was like, “This is how much I care about this career-destroying error: See that atom-sized dust-mite foot on your screen? No, next to the super-teeny spot of old Taco Bell slime, to the left.” It was wicked tense, but then we had a laugh about it.

• So, right, Willie Nelson has a new one coming out on the 3rd, called First Rose of Spring! I dunno, I don’t know anyone who buys Willie Nelson albums, do you? Usually people just Spotify his one-off duets with whoever, Johnny Cash or Death Grips, isn’t that right? No? Well, then, I will now see how much I can tolerate of this billion-year-old’s new song, the title track. Bet you anything it starts with slow acoustic guitar. Yup, it does, and sleepy dobro. He’s singing about a girl, and butterflies and flowers. There’s harmonica, and dobro, and Willie sounding a billion years old, and it just makes me think of the scene in Blazing Saddles when the guys are eating beans and passing gas. Aren’t fart scenes the funniest? I wonder if people would buy an album of Willie burping while playing harmonica and dobro. I bet they would.

• Jane, stop this crazy thing, let’s just wrap up this week with On Sunset, the new LP from Paul Weller! Oh for cripes sake, we already talked about this album the other week, so the release date was moved, and that’s why you couldn’t buy it on June 12. Only other new music to talk about is London punk band Dream Wife’s So When You Gonna, and its single “Sports,” a riot-grrrl type song that’s awesome and bratty, like you will love this band if you are a girl who enjoys randomly breaking stuff. — Eric W. Saeger

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

Jeff Cosgrove, History Gets Ahead of the Story (Grizzley Music)
This album is pretty niche indeed, combining a few things I tend to avoid (improvisational jazz, old-school classic organ, like, I mean right out of Lawrence Welk) with something I do appreciate regardless of setting, namely top-drawer musicianship. The story behind this (I assume) one-off is a bit convoluted; Cosgrove is a Washington, D.C.-based drummer leading a bass-free trio (himself along with organist John Medeski and sax player Jeff Lederer) in a tribute to bassist William Parker, who’s still alive. Got that? No bass playing in an album of tunes written by a jazz bassist (who, incidentally, played in a trio with Cosgrove until 2015). So, an odd duck indeed, but it gets odder; both Cosgrove and Parker love them some ad-libbing, so on the whole the record could be categorized as “skronk-coffeehouse,” if you will, a roller coaster ride of precision and spazzing. Some stellar organ-noodling on “Gospel Flowers”; adept modal sax things on “Moon”; even some noise on “Little Bird” (I had to double-check to see if a guitarist wasn’t messing around with pick-scraping in there or something; I still can’t guess what the sound is). Anyway, that; it is what it is. B — Eric W. Saeger

Skeleton, Skeleton (20 Buck Skin Records)
Debut LP from a crew of Austin, Texas-based guys who stalk a middle ground between old-time black metal and neo-street metal a la High On Fire. I have no idea why this isn’t more of a thing in the metal scene, but then again, any bunch of Air Max-wearing suburban dudes whose sole mission in life is impressing the barista girls at Starbucks knows that the quickest route to being able to brag that “we got a record contract” is to play some boring, pedestrian emo through a Mesa Boogie amplifier that’s been made wimpy and useless through too much processing. No, these guys have better riffing than any ’70s-revivalist band that I’ve heard lately (The Sword can sit down now), and it’s cut with Venom-style spazz-outs that keep listeners on their toes, or at least listening. I like everything about this one, but wait, there’s more, folks: the singer sounds like he ran out of enthusiasm for doing a scary-devil-guy Quorthon imitation the minute he got in the studio. A giant leap for mankind, in short. A+ — Eric W. Saeger

Retro Playlist

Erik W. Saeger recommends a couple of albums worth a second look.

With a new renaissance of thought and cultural realism dawning, I’m surprised that heavy metal hasn’t made a massive comeback. (Note that by “heavy metal,” I mean crazily angry music of a type that should, by all rights, be soundtracking the cultural transformations that are in the air everywhere, at least in an in vitro sense on social media.)

One of the things that may annoy you about me is the fact that I tend to ignore what’s happening in the area of “middle-of-the-road metal.” To clarify, that’s a pretty loose catchall I use to describe a wide range of bands, from mildly dangerous-sounding metalcore bands (Bullet For My Valentine, et al.) to nu-metal nonsense like Avenged Sevenfold. In contrast, my tastes gravitate to things that make Everymen feel their true power levels.

Your mileage may vary, of course. Like, for some, death metal peaked with Slayer (along with the 127,287,558 bands that sound like them) and it does the trick for them. Older folks just want some Black Sabbath. But for me it’s Ministry or bust. Their 1996 LP Filth Pig is an F5 tornado of rebellion; if you haven’t ever cranked that album’s “Dead Guy” to the point of permanent hearing loss, please do so now.

Zoomers, if you ever want to be as unstoppable as Greta Thunberg as a group, you need angry, uncompromising instrument-driven anthems, that is to say, riffs. Black Veil Brides is a cool band, but they’re literally too good in a politely melodic sense. Know what you really need, Gen Z? Sweaty fat guys with awesome, awesome guitar riffs, like Bachman Turner Overdrive. On their 1974 album Not Fragile, the title track may not have been the cleverest or most innovative use of a Marshall amp in history, but it’s perfectly conceived. The riff is exquisitely played; way past fed-up; boiling over with stubborn, overconfident resolve; and only really effective with the volume knob set to 11.

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. Email esaeger@cyberontix.com for fastest response.

PLAYLIST
A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases
• The next traditional date for new album releases is Friday, July 17, and, as seems to be common these days, I must eat a few stupid words I said before. The Chicks’ new album Gaslighter is out on that day; it wasn’t released on March 4 as I previously reported. That was just the title-track single. It is a great song; otherwise there’s no way on Earth I’d have ever copped to this oversight, like, as if, and I blame Metacritic.com anyway, so feel free to send hate mail to them, because it’s all their fault.

• I reviewed Gang of Four’s EP This Heaven Gives Me Migraine back in February, but guess what, there is another Gang of Four EP coming out, called Anti Hero, on the 17th. If you recall, and you probably don’t, I did like Heaven, even though it was just a bunch of reruns of past GoF tunes that Andy Gill wanted to get off his chest while he was dying of pneumonia. There’s a similar downer history to this EP, a short collection of the last songs Gill was working on from his hospice bed; the story is that he was working on new tuneage until the very last. The kickoff single, “Forever Starts Now,” is an above average post-punk song, with art-wave elements borrowed from Talking Heads. By now you’ve either made up your mind about the band or avoided them like the plague, so in honor of Gill’s memory I’ll just keep my wise mouth shut about this one.

• Like everyone else on Earth, The Pretenders have something to say about the unspeakable train wreck that is the current American sociopolitical environment, but since it’s Chrissie Hynde putting in her two cents, I’ll actually pay attention, because Chrissie is my rock ’n’ roll waifu, accept no substitutes. But wait, the band’s new LP, Hate For Sale, isn’t some sort of political statement, it’s actually a tribute to The Damned, because Chrissie thinks they’re awesome, which only means that Chrissie is even more awesome than ever before. HFS is their first release since 2016’s Alone, and guess what, the original release date was May 1, but then there was the coronavirus, and here we are, it’ll finally be out at Strawberries or Tower Records or whatever store’s open. Hey, wanna know something hilarious, of course you do, they were supposed to do a five-month tour this summer with — you’ll die, I swear — Journey, of all the bands in the world. To me, that’s the ’80s-rock equivalent of Imagine Dragons touring with Black Lips, but anyway the new single, “You Can’t Hurt a Fool,” isn’t a tribute to The Damned, it’s a ’60s-Motown-influenced chill song about being in a stupid relationship, or maybe a diss of J-Lo (listen to the words), I don’t know for sure.

• To close out the week, we have Florida band Surfer Blood, with a new album, Carefree Theatre! Like so many milquetoast-indie bands, despite their scary name, these guys specialize in, you know, milquetoast-indie, but the single “Karen” is kind of loud, a little bit, and would almost be art-rock if it didn’t sound like Death Cab For Cutie with their volume accidentally cranked. It would make a great closing song for a trite hipster movie about a bunch of hipsters who are on an endless quest for an unused pair of 1971 PF Flyer sneakers, and one of the hipsters smokes weed all the time, which hurts his chances for ever finding true love, except for maybe with the crazily shy girl who works at Whole Foods and likes Perry Como records, and then it thankfully ends. — Eric W. Saeger

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

Tokyo Motor Fist, Lions (Frontiers Music SRL)

Clear the decks, grandmothers, it’s a bona-fide ’80s melodic-metal fest, a new project from Danger Danger singer Ted Poley and guitarist/producer Steve Brown of Trixter. Unlike so many wannabes who have (dis)graced this column, however, it would appear that this gang of hairdos can actually write songs, an ability that may or may not be critical to rock ’n’ roll success anymore, not that anyone’s keeping track really. “Youngblood” kicks off this set with Eddie Van Halen hammer-on-guitar stuff, a ton of hookage and a rather successful nicking of Def Leppard, which is the overarching thrust here. What’s that? No, I don’t mean stupid first-album Def Lep, I mean the ideas that came from the skull of Mutt Lange, the dumb-looking producer who got himself dumped by Shania Twain for being the stupidest playa in history. Poley doesn’t have the vocal range of Joe whatsisname, but the flash-fried hormonal angst is all there. Thirty years late, but yeah, nothing wrong here. A

The Beths, “Out of Sight” (Carpark Records)

With the slightest effort I’m sure I could pirate or Google my way into finding the rest of this New Zealand act’s upcoming second album, Jump Rope Gazers, but this single should pretty much spill all the tea I need in order to determine whether they’ve got a handle on ’90s radio rock, which is the real test. They look like they’re 15, or they dress like it; there’s a certain doubling-down on the millennial ukulele-rock look that seems to be defining Zoomer bands, which is fine with me, being that they really have nothing else to be enthusiastic about in the world these days. Anyway, yeah, their 2018 debut LP Future Me Hates Me put them on the radar of all the Stereogums and Pitchforks of the world, deservedly so, being that the better parts of the record would have fit in fine between a Fiona Apple track and one of those dreadful tunes by Live, and, well, voila, they’ve still got it, going by this new track, even down to the video, which was shot on Super 8 film, comprising footage of our heroes doofing around in their Volkswagen Rabbit or whatever it is. The tune has a huge shoegaze-rawk opening worthy of Goo Goo Dolls and such, but — here’s the kicker — singer Elizabeth Stokes’ vocal never gets above milquetoast level, lending it just the amount of broke-down cred it’ll need to get the attention of tedious zines like Nylon. Good luck to ’em, I say; this isn’t bad at all. A

Retro Playlist
Eric W. Seager recommends a couple of albums worth a second look.

Many things are going to change in a Covid-19 world. Meantime, not directly related to Covid but nonetheless indicative of a burst of cultural evolution, we’re also seeing changes in the arts as far as the general regard for women. We’re still miles and miles from arriving at the right place, but the #MeToo movement has made things just a bit safer overall for women to function in industry without having to expect the worst sort of discrimination and physical and psychological abuse on an ongoing, daily basis.

The perception of women in rock has changed as well over the years. The punk-based riot grrl movement, born in the Pacific Northwest in the early ’90s, has become a bit obsolete as far as a driving social force; we’re quite used to seeing women spazz and stomp or otherwise completely own a stage by now, whether you’re a boomer who dug on X-Ray Spex back in the day, a Gen Xer who followed Courtney Love, or a Zoomer who’s into the boldly androgynous vibe of Billie Eilish.

It’s still a work in progress. Looking back at my review of Dead Weather’s 2015 album Dodge and Burn, I’m a little disappointed that I didn’t go off on some tangent about women rockers needing an Eilish-style next-step. Yes, singer Alison Mosshart was/is a badass when she’s fronting The Kills, but her role in that band feels like more of a Robert Plant to Jack White’s Jimmy Page than an equal partner. There’s just something sketchy about it, is what I mean. Maybe it’s the band’s (well done) ’70s hard rock image, but it felt like less of an equal partnership than a case of White saying “She’ll do.” The number of female musicians and singers to whom White has played Svengali has bugged me for a while now, and I could be dead wrong, but I’ll just leave it at that.

To me, the queen of rock is and always has been Chrissie Hynde. The woman just doesn’t care about what you think, as we talked about in 2008 when the long-overdue ninth Pretenders album, Break Up The Concrete, landed. On that one, there was the bit where she comically sounded out a drum roll with her voice in one of the songs, another example on the album in which she flaunted her power level like an alternate-universe George Thorogood trying to save the world from greed and stupidity. Always, my vote would be Chrissie for President.

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. Email esaeger@cyberontix.com for fastest response.

PLAYLIST
A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• Friday, July 10, is the next general release date for albums, when we will hear new material from Rufus Wainwright, whose new album, Unfollow the Rules, is in the trucks and on the way to stores, if there are any stores even left! Isn’t that exciting? No? Come on, you guys, you know, it’s Rufus Wainwright. No, I don’t know any of his songs either. All I know is that he was born around the time John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were making up crazy lies about each other in order to convince voters they should be the one to be president. Aren’t you glad that things have evolved so much, in our political arena? Wait, Wiki is telling me that Rufus Wainwright didn’t participate in the Battle of Bunker Hill, he was actually born in 1973. Huh, I thought he was some super-old dude who didn’t make it as big as the O’Jays or Minnie Ripperton. Wait, let me read this more. Let’s see, Blah blah blah, likes opera … his career peak was in 2007, when his album Release the Stars climbed to No. 23 on the Billboard payola spreadsheet, and his mopey sadboy piano “Going to a Town” did OK. He’s done acting. He’s Canadian. Burp. Did I miss anything? His new song is “Damsel in Distress,” a Harry Nilsson-ish tune, heavy on the wide-screen ’70s taxicab-radio vibe. It’s OK, but it’s definitely not opera. Jeez, the more it goes on, the more it sounds like every ’70s song ever made thrown into a blender. He should stick to acting.

• Mike Skinner is the white rapper dude who makes albums in his U.K. bedroom under the name The Streets, a project that’s huge in England but hasn’t yet cracked the U.S. Top 50. All that means is that I could probably deal with whatever Skinner’s selling on his new mixtape, None of Us Are Getting Out of This Life Alive, because it’s probably crummy British-cockney hip-hop, not crummy American Jeezy/Eminem-wannabe hip-hop. Yep, there it is, listening to the single “Call My Phone Thinking I’m Doing Nothing Better,” I am drowning in chill-out cockney rap that’s got a bumpy, off-kilter, mildly Gorillaz-ish beat, all made the better because Tame Impala is the guest. In other words it’s a tasteful, mellow Tame Impala song, except with Skinner doing his Stormzy imitation. All right? OK, everyone, single file, let’s move along.

• Julianna Barwick is said to be a New Age ambient artist, but I’ll be the judge of that. Her trip is using an electronic loop station to decorate her voice, which is interesting, and she was commissioned to remix Radiohead’s “Reckoner,” which I won’t bother listening to because I don’t have to. Her new album, Healing is a Miracle, is out within mere hours and features the single “Inspirit.” Hmf, it builds up for two minutes with multi-overdubbed vocals with from-the-mountaintop effects on them, yet never turns into something that would make me say, “Jeepers, that’s almost as nice as Enya.” Actually make that four minutes. Nothing happened, why did I bother.

• Lastly, The Fader calls Margo Price “country’s next star,” so maybe her new album That’s How Rumors Get Started will make me say the same thing after I hear the single “Twinkle Twinkle.” Hmm, I dunno, it has fuzzed-out ’70s Deep Purple guitars, but she sounds like KT Tunstall or something. It’s cool, I guess. Is it OK if I just call her “country’s next Deep Purple lady” or whatever?

High Spirits, Hard To Stop (High Roller Records)

This is one of the many projects of metal guitar god Chris “The Professor” Black, who is from Chicago. He’s an alpha type for sure, insisting on diving into projects that call for him to play different instruments, including drums, and, well, he’s just, you know, one of these spazzy workaholics who’s got to be busy over his head all the time. In fact, last year, if I’m even reading this thing correctly, he recorded three solo albums under three different band names, and so on and so forth. He’s pretty stretched, is the takeaway, which shows in this tightly recorded set of NWOBHM/power-metal tunes, the first of which showed me exactly how thinly stretched he is; to wit, album opener “Since You’ve Been Gone” actually does borrow the chorus of the 1979 pop-metal song of the same name by Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow. I mean, the song’s much faster, like Savatage speed, but man, it’s hard to get past that. The other songs, despite having some great solos, are pretty rote examples of Mayyyden and Prieeeest worship, which wouldn’t have turned me off completely, but come on dude, slow down and think a little. B-

Bananagun, The True Story of Bananagun (High Roller Records)

If Flaming Lips were as Afrobeat-driven as Vampire Weekend, this is what it would … no, that’s not really it, because this is really old-sounding but in a good, super-cool way. It’s the first record by Melbourne, Australia-based multi-instrumentalist/singer Nick Van Bakel in a band setting, I understand, not that he’s ever been on my radar before, but it’s quite the revelation. This is all heavily groove-driven, heavy on the ’70s blaxploitation cinematics but instead of adamantly African Fela Kuti-style singalongs, the multi-vocal tracks evoke The Byrds, but not in that crummy Aughts-indie way, like the singing is all in key and whatnot. If you’ve heard really old Santana albums, this is similar product, rudimentary and analog in the overall sound, but with a slightly more polished feel. Ever watch the scenes in old Starsky & Hutch episodes where they’re chasing guys around with guns? It sounds like that, except with pro-enough Byrds vocals. Quentin Tarantino would love this, put it that way. A+

Retro Playlist

Eric W. Saeger recommends a couple of albums worth a second look.

Over these last interminable weeks we’ve looked at a lot of musical genres, but one of the things I’ve pretty much successfully avoided looking back at is old music, specifically antique arena rock. Granted, we did talk about Yes a while back in a different section, and I got roundly trolled for it by a reader, but we also covered the need for moronic silliness in this space, and I’d like to go back to that for just a second, skimming the most notable output of one of the great arena bands, New York City’s Blue Oyster Cult, which does tend to get name-checked in the course of my ravings.

The first thing you younglings should know about BOC is that they were hardly the missing link between punk and arena-rock that historians make them out to be. Their biggest album, 1976’s Agents of Fortune, was, put simply, the greatest vampire-centric classic-rock album of all time and had nothing punk on it at all. Assuming you haven’t spent your entire 20-whatever years off the grid, there’s no way you’ve avoided that album’s classic hit “Don’t Fear The Reaper,” the song Saturday Night Live made fun of during the Will Ferrell era (“more cowbell!”) and which was most recently used as an episode-closing tune on Orange is the New Black. My favorite from that record was “ETI,” which still kicks so much ass that you’ll need to sit on an orthopedic pillow for a week after listening to it.

Fact is, though, that album was pretty much their last chance to avoid becoming known as a joke band, which I didn’t even realize until I got into it with a Facebook friend a couple of weeks back. Really the only thing punk about the band was that the band’s second-banana guitarist, Allen Lanier, once dated punk goddess Patti Smith, probably because, my bro insists, she was otherwise homeless at the time. Listening to AOF’s preceding LP, 1974’s awesome-stupid-awesome-structured Secret Treaties, the other day, it really dawned on me that they were indeed just a bad album-closing song (which “Astronomy” is definitely not) away from registering as a joke band before AOF: part Grateful Dead, part Traffic and part Black Sabbath. Anyhow, younglings, now you know the rest of the story. Just put “ETI” and “Astronomy” in your Spotify and you can call yourself a BOC expert. You’re quite welcome.

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. Email esaeger@cyberontix.com for fastest response.

PLAYLIST
A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• Barring further apocalypse, including my own demise from end-stage quarantine boredom, June 26 will occur, and that date is a Friday, a day full of awesome and awful new music albums for young and old! The most high-profile release scheduled for that date is the new one from Los Angeles sisters HAIM, called Women in Music Pt. III! Naturally, there wasn’t a Women in Music Pt. I or II, it’s their quirky L.A. way of saying this is their third album, which will cause some confusion, but who cares, as nothing makes sense anyway nowadays, other than my desire for greasy fish and chips at the closest beach, not that we’ll probably ever be at the point again when I can just walk into one of those joints without having to cover myself in Purell and Lysol mixed with cheap suntan lotion. Whatever, I’ll go check out the song “The Steps,” which came out the same day as the album preorder. Everyone’s talking about this tune, not that I know why. I mean, if you’ve always wanted to hear a twentysomething version of Sheryl Crow whine about having a rotten boyfriend (aren’t we all at some point?) while a subtle, countrified ripoff of the guitar line from “My Girl” plays underneath, you’ve hit the jackpot. In the meantime I’ll just be sitting here patiently, waiting for corporate pop-rock to evolve, which I’m sure will happen as soon as I can get some fried fish, the latter of which is the only thing I really care about, to be honest.

• Corb Lund is a Canadian cowboy singer, but wait, before you go do the Sudoku, there are actual cowboys in Canada, mostly in and around Edmonton, which is in Alberta, and guess what, this dude is from the town of Taber, in Alberta, whose corn crop is so awesome that they have a “Cornfest” every August. Now, I don’t know why they need cowboys to wrangle corn, but whatever, I’ll just go with it and say that Lund is a Canadian corn cowboy, who makes country music. Ha ha, this is funny, his touring band is called the Hurtin’ Albertans. I like him already! His new corn-wranglin’ cowboy-hat album is Agricultural Tragic, and the single “Raining Horses” isn’t bad, with its nice shimmery Americana guitar line. Only problem is I wish it wasn’t him singing, because he’s kinda boring, but — hold it, some dobro just appeared in the song, so its stock went up a little bit. It’s pretty, but he’s boring, let’s move on.

• No way, it’s fossilized arena-rock legends Kansas, with a new album! I haven’t checked to see yet which original band members are here; I’ll bet you anything there was a huge court fight, and there’s another band out there called “Kansas Featuring Blah Blah Blah” because legalities. Indeed, which members are putting out this new album, The Absence of Presence? Yup, told ya, it’s just the lead guitarist and the drummer, because all the other original members hate those guys. Original singer Steve Walsh isn’t here. Do I really have to do this? OK, one new song is called “Throwing Mountains,” and it’s an awesome prog-rock song. I would go to their show if they had fried fish at the concession stand.

• To wrap up this week, let’s listen to “Strong Enough,” from the album Monovision by Ray LaMontagne, who is from Nashua! Wow, this is kind of like a cross between Creedence Clearwater Revival and that old Stealers Wheel song, “Stuck in the Middle With You.” It’s cool, be nice to this singing man from Nashua.