Category: Albums

Bird Friend, Carolyn Know (self-released)

Fans of folk revivalists like Karen Dalton and Jackson C. Frank, Manchester local Geoff Himsel and his girlfriend and musical co-conspirator Carson Kennedy were covered before on this page back in June 2020, upon the release of their I Am The Hand album, which was a pretty trippy little joint, full of real-sounding samples of rain, train station sounds and thunderclaps. Thankfully the pair hasn’t lost their taste for weird-beardness; opening track “Will You Miss Me/A Brighton Beach Of The Body” begins with some sort of circa-1930s-sounding radio broadcast, which is charming on its own, and then the duo ease into some organic, vintage-sounding busking that evokes Dust Bowl sharecroppers on a deserted street corner. More old-time-radio chatter and happy desolation ensues, most agreeably on “Angel Was My Friend,” at which point you begin picturing unplugged Woodstock performances of old, things like this. Some courageous, warm-hearted stuff here. A+

Pete Malinverni, On The Town: Pete Malinverni Plays Leonard Bernstein (Planet Arts Recordings)

Well that makes two winners this week, this one more in the category of records to be listened to when you absolutely, positively must chill. Jazz pianist Malinverni has been a fixture in the New York scene for 40 years if I’m reading this right, and toward our purposes, one of the highlights of his career was meeting legendary composer Leonard Bernstein. For what it’s worth, I totally get that; the first rock star I met still evokes memories of encountering a being not of this earth, so I can understand why Malinverni felt the need to, well, commemorate that meeting at long last. And so our principal here settles in with bassist Ugonna Okegwo and drummer Jeff Hamilton to deliver stunningly genial versions of such classics as “New York New York,” “Some Other Time” and “I Feel Pretty” with the utmost care; the renditions feel intimate, playful and absolutely spot-on. A+

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• Yo homies, Jan. 21, is creepin’ up on us, bearing with it “gifts” of hot new albums, for you to buy, ignore or, in my case, see if they make me barf! These are the days that try men’s souls, nothing but frozen tundra, slush and Alaskan mountain blizzardry until July, when we switch over to baking ourselves like microwaved Hot Pockets just to get low-grade lattes! But our North Pole life isn’t our focus today; no, we’re supposed to be poking innocent fun at new albums. Say, do you remember when X-Files person David Duchovny made a couple of albums and I was super-nice to them here, except for the part where I said they kind of sucked? What about when Billy Mumy from the 1960s TV show Lost In Space made some albums, and they sucked because there was no Dr. Smith freaking out and screeching in fear? I wonder if any more overrated actors will ever dare to step in to my critical crosshairs, to risk everything to see if I can stomach what musical thing they’re attempting, oh wait, look, it’s none other than Kiefer Sutherland, former Lost Boys and 24 star and now de facto president of the United States, with an album of his own, called Bloor Street, due out Friday! Bloor Street is an actual place in Toronto, Canada, which is north of us, covered in snow and ice, a place where you always have to watch out for Grinches and Abominable Bumble monsters until the weather turns warm in — well, it never does, so maybe Kiefer’s album is about his boyhood times living in a Toronto igloo before his famous dad Donald let him come to live with him in Hollywood, I have no idea. I know, I know, let’s get this over with, there’s some dumb YouTube video for the title track of this album, I’m going to go and see if I can stand it right now! Whoopsy daisy, Kief, way to rip off the guitar part from Bob Seger’s “Against The Wind,” what are you even doing. I don’t know, I suppose the rest of it is OK, if you like bands like Train. I don’t, so so I’m just going to move on to our next tale of terror. Let’s go, folks.

• Yes, finally I catch a break, after no new albums to talk about for weeks, here they are, my favorite psychedelic-stoner-rock band, only because their name is super-long and fills up all sorts of column space, yes, it’s Australian boneheads King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, with their first album of 2022, Butterfly 3001! Mind you, this is a remix album, and — holy crow, look at the participants, DJ Shadow did a rewrite of “Black Hot Soup” and called it “My Own Reality,” but this might be a troll on King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard’s part, because I can’t find proof that DJ Shadow did anything with that Blind Melon-ish song, so forget it, but Canadian punker Peaches’ remix, “Neu Butterfly 3000,” is super cool, draped in a busy, pretty world-music fractal.

• Yikes, time for me to waddle out of my comfort zone and talk about Things Are Great, the new LP from Seattle folk-indie dweebs Band of Horses! I don’t wanna, but I’ll listen to the single “Crutch” only because you demand it. Yuck, as always, it sounds like a B-side from the ’70s band America, like it’s music to shear your sheep to, aren’t sheep so cute, get me out of here before I melt down completely.

• Last but not least, it’s pale and slightly edgy-looking Norwegian synthpop girl Aurora, whom I’ve never heard of, ever, with The Gods We Can Touch, her new album! Hmm, I actually like the single, “Giving In To The Love,” it’s got some big bouncy Blue Man Group-style drums, ABBA-pop hooks, some Zola Jesus edge, there’s nothing wrong here folks, great stuff.

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

Pussy Riot, Rage Remixes (self-released)

These Russian protest-punk girls should be no strangers to your cultural head space, given that they’ve caused all sorts of trouble with the powers-that-be in their homeland, which has led to their arrests and such. As a band, they have a sound that’s always evolving; they started out as a live-only performance-art act (there are now three albums in the books) that sounded like a bad version of Courtney Love, then became more like The Kills, and they’re now more of an edgy bubble-pop group. The Britney/Kesha sound has really served them well of late, and this collection finds their tuneage being remixed by such players as Berlin, Germany-based producer Boyz Noise (a decidedly industrial-stomping version of “Rage”), weird “elven songstress” Hana (a trance reimagining of “Toxic”) and Dutch artist Young & Sick (a fairly rote snap-dance take of the aforementioned “Toxic”). “Not A Friend” tables the obligato dubstep version of “Rage,” completing the package one would expect for a pretty darn spazzy anger-management record. A

Spoon, Lucifer On The Sofa (Matador Records)

This Austin, Texas-based indie band still stands as one of the very few things that made Aughts music tolerable. Do you even remember how bad it all was? But these guys, whose fetish for listenable hooks was a slap in the face of the entire Bowery Ballroom unintelligentsia, have dug even deeper with this one, which one band member described to Spin magazine as “the sound of classic rock as written by a guy who never did get Eric Clapton.” There cool stuff here, if a bit contrived: lead single “The Hardest Cut” rips off Stone Temple Pilots’ grunge standard “The Big Empty”at the verse, but there’s some muddy-as-heck guitar riffing in between the rest of it, which is basically, well, Bo Diddley by way of Stray Cats. What does that mean? It means it’s raw and awesome, like Black Lips trying to write a car commercial jungle and hitting paydirt, and hey, they’ve still got a knack for awkward rock ballads, as indicated by “My Babe,” which gives off a whiff of — gasp — Led Zeppelin in a way. They’re going to be able to get away with being an Aughts-indie band forever at this rate, folks. A-

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• In case your Siri didn’t tell you, it’s the second week of the new year, folks, put me back on the chain gang until Memorial Day, when I will go back to my summer schedule of four days off and four days on, which, at this writing, is only 20 weeks away, or 100 workdays, but who’s counting. OK, I totally am, but let’s forget all that and focus on the pile of new releases due out on Jan. 14, which will hopefully consist of lots and lots of them, so I can just write this column quickly and eat my Funyuns and make jokes about my choice of a million albums without having to dig up some obscure metal album or any of that desperate hassle. Ah, here we are, the list is actually promising, so let’s kick off the “festivities” with The Boy Named If, from Elvis Costello & the Imposters! I don’t know if the Queen has made Costello a knight yet in his native Britain, but I’m sure it’s just a matter of time, like at this point she probably just makes singers into knights if they get a good review in New Music Express, just so she has an excuse to get away from her gigantic staff of Downton Abbey chambermaids and vape her truffle-and-apricot-flavored CBD oil in peace. Whatever, let’s get this out of the way quickly, I never cared about Elvis Costello or his jack-o’-lantern teeth or his stupid crook-leg-dancing, although “Pump It Up” is OK. Maybe the single from this album, “Magnificent Hurt,” is almost as weirdly danceable as “Pump It Up,” let’s do this. Ha ha, wow, it’s basically “Pump It Up” wearing a fake beard, I’m not kidding, I didn’t even listen to it until just now! I mean, it doesn’t have that roller-rink organ, but he’s clearly trying to revive the glory of those days when his entire trip was doing nothing but trying to weird out the normie parents of Gen Xers, as if the safety pins and Mohawk haircuts didn’t make for enough dinner table awkwardness. Wait, there’s the dumb organ, and it sounds more like a song Sting would write except a little more interesting, like that’s difficult. We done here, guys? Cool beans, let’s investigate the next monstrosity.

• Wait, can we just go back to Elvis Costello and not even discuss this new album from Canadian wine-parent-indie-rock bores Broken Social Scene? I mean it’s obvious that with the title Old Dead Young: B-sides & Rarities this is just a collection of songs that weren’t even considered good by these guys, so there has to be some seriously not-good music going on here. But wait, we’re talking about Broken Social Scene, so maybe it means they didn’t push these songs because they actually are good, like maybe they accidentally wrote some songs that didn’t put people to sleep within five seconds. Don’t know about you, but I’m officially intrigued, so let’s have a listen to “This House Is On Fire,” the only song I could find from this stupid thing. There’s a trigger warning for the video because there are supposed to be pictures of burnt-down houses. No, I’m serious. The song is a gentle and sad twee thing, sort of like Springsteen’s “I’m On Fire”… yeah, that’s the song it rips off. OK!

• Brightside is the new LP from Denver folk rockers Lumineers. The title track is draggy and slow, with raunchy Rolling Stones-style 1960s guitars. The singer is trying to sound more like Conor Oberst than he ever has, and there’s no discernible hook, only polite broke-down-truck vibe. Go for it if you must.

• We’ll wrap up the week with Hop Up, the new album from Orlando Weeks, the singer from London indie band The Maccabees. Test-drive single “Look Who’s Talking Now” is actually kind of pretty, basically yacht rock for people who can’t afford yachts.

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

Mild Orange, Colourise (self-released)

By now you’ve probably noticed a growing preference in this column for dream-pop and chamber-pop. Those genres go easy on my constitution these days, and that’s just kind of stuck, apparently permanently. Dimly related to shoegaze and no-wave, such bands are usually melodic but wonderfully noisy, raucous but unobtrusive in the great scheme. Now, these guys, professed to be dream-poppers, are New Zealanders, the two principal members having grown up together since the age of 3, which is even more promising, given that they didn’t meet at college, which usually leads to monstrosities like [any band from the Aughts]. They’re a 5-million-views-and-counting YouTube success and thus have remained indie, and this LP is captivating from the opening title track, its sub-spaghetti guitars and Coldplay-ish vocals capturing the essence of the genre perfectly. Elsewhere we have “This Kinda Day,” which sounds like what Pavement would be if they weren’t absolutely terrible, and “Aurora,” an exploration of pool-side Chris Isaak vibe that features some nifty Vampire Weekend guitar work. No problems here, folks. A

Project Youngin, Letter From The Projects (self-released)

Whether or not it’s a bit of a snobby take, fact is that the rap game is powered much less by musicianship than it is by PR stunts and spurious drama. It parallels online troll culture in that regard, so it’s culturally relevant as well as being the most defining vibe of our era. To us critics it’s more than a little stale; the backstory of this St. Petersburg, Florida, rapper can’t be told without including mention of a fake “shooting” that took place during the filming of the video for his 2018 mixtape Thug Souljas, a stunt that made headlines in XXL and other big-hitter webzines. Mine isn’t to judge, of course, simply to report, and all that really happened is that he’s still around and currently pushing this 11-song EP, which jumps off with “Prophet,” Youngin’s disaffected, heavily accented (and kind of ragged-sounding) flow sitting in a broth of swirly, immersive trap beats. And so it goes; “Money Callin’” fits into this collection of pain memoirs with a beat that, if you’ll pardon, evokes the theme from the TV show Cheaters more than anything else. Pretty contrived, but what isn’t these days? B

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• Boy, thank heaven the holidays are over and we’re back to normal Fridays, with tons of new records coming out on Jan. 7, so I can tell you all about them here, on this page! I’ll tell ya, I’ve been doing this column for one million years now, but this past holiday season was the worst ever, like I thought I was going to have to talk about restaurants just to fill the space, but I wouldn’t have even been able to do that, because I’m one of those people who’ve been wearing an N95 mask and a space helmet just to go to the mailbox, so I’ve only been to a few local restaurants for takeout! But look, let’s start 2022, The Year That Everything Ends, with some levity, because look guys, it’s an album from everyone’s favorite actor, model, singer, television personality, and author in the world! No, no, I don’t mean Betty White, we’re talkin’ RuPaul, who’s most known for his drag queen act! Believe it or not, this album, titled Mamaru, is his count-em 14th, so I guess he really is some sort of musician/singer person, which is actually news to me. OK, where were we, who knows, right, his new single, called “Blame It On The Edit,” a catchphrase that denotes something to do with his TV show, I don’t know or care what. The lyrics “could be taken a few ways,” supposedly, like whatever they’re babbling about on his show, or something to do with how social media life is different from real life. World’s loudest-ever “duh,” am I right guys? OK, whatnot, let’s have a listen to this thing, I can hardly wait. Hmm, it’s kinda like a Skee-Lo rap joint, but snap-dance, and there’s goofy Auto-Tune effects and other junk going on. Someone will probably like this, I don’t know, let’s proceed.

• Bob’s your uncle, folks, look, it’s British indie-rockers The Wombats, with a new album, called Fix Yourself, Not the World! Boy, if people would only take that advice, know what I mean? These guys are Liverpudlians, like the Beatles, if you’ve ever heard of them, and this album has already seen four singles released ahead of time, one of which is “Method to the Madness,” a slow, plodding wimp-rock thingamajig with chilly, low-impact vocals that kind of sound like Paul McCartney a little, but sloppy and a little off-key. It’s boring and not really catchy, but that’s what you hipsters get for your entertainment dollar these days, because bands like this can get away with anything, because they’re Lilliputians or whatever, from Gulliver’s Travels or wherever. Get this trashy nonsense away from me or I’ll barf, I mean it.

• Oh look, it’s Eric Nam, with a new LP called There and Back Again, his second! We rock ’n’ roll journalists always have to assume our audience already knows everything, so I’m about to use the phrase “of course” in a way that’s completely unwarranted, because 99.99 percent of you have never heard of this artist, are you ready? Here goes: Nam is, of course, hugely popular in Korea, and the single is “I Don’t Know You Anymore,” Ha ha, it’s a little like Michael Jackson, but mostly like Bruno Mars doing a sexytime hip-hop-tinged trifle. You’ll probably like it if you’re 11 years old, and if you are, you shouldn’t be reading this, you should be getting tucked in so you’ll be ready for school in the morning.

• We’ll end this artistic train wreck with Scottish alt-rock band Twin Atlantic’s new full-length, Transparency! “Bang On The Gong,” the single, is droopy grime-tinged bubblegum-pop. It’s the only thing I’ve liked hearing this week, just saying.

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

Reptaliens, Multiverse (self-released)

The first album from this Portland, Oregon-based husband-and-wife synthpop duo was 2017’s FM-2030, named after the famous transhumanist (a barmy, pseudoscientific discipline that focuses on artificial intelligence, longevity by becoming part-robot or whatnot, etc.). So by now, if you’re normal, you’ve got warning bells going off all over the place, as you’ve seen words like “transhumanism” and “Portland,” so you know there’s plenty of kooky nonsense going on here, and you should probably avoid it, and you’d be right, at least in my book. Anyway, that first LP was dreamy but not dream-pop, more like Au Revoir Simone-meets-Postal Service-style rubbish that didn’t make it onto an episode of Portlandia. Cut to now, when Covid has prevented Mr. and Mrs. from jamming with their wine-gulping band, so it’s just the two of them, with less synth in their synthpop, just guitars and boring drums, still sporting the New Order fetish they had before. These harmless, ’60s-radio-tinged little tunes aren’t really bad, but, as on their first two albums, the muse begins to tire of them, as does the listener, and by the time album-closer “Jump” rolls around, you’re like “Wow, that’s 40-odd minutes I’ll never get back.” Don’t get me wrong, a couple of tracks would fit well on your wombat-indie mixtape, be my guest. B

Engelbert Humperdinck, Regards (OK Good Records)

I really don’t remember if we’ve gone over this former 1960s/1970s megastar before, but this five-song EP does present an excuse to remind everyone within eye-shot that this British India-born tenor was the Pepsi to Tom Jones’ Coke during the Nixon years. He was, um, I mean is, a crooner who never had the unhinged bombast (or the hips) of Jones, but he definitely was the second banana. A bonus here is that I also get to touch on a holiday tune, a super-long-overdue version of Elvis’s “Blue Christmas” in fact, not that there’s any time left for your grandmother to enjoy it unless she’s hip to the Downloadin’ Stuff scene. It’s all covers, of course; market-made spectacles like this guy probably wouldn’t know the first thing about writing a song, but it’s all good. “What a Wonderful World” is here in all its chintzy glory, and of course a tearjerker, “Smile” this time, packing a full orchestra to deliver its hilariously maudlin message. Nothing unexpected. (What else am I supposed to say? “It’s dumb”?).

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• Happy New Year, folks. My favorite “2022 is coming” internet meme so far right now is the one with a picture of two tidal waves, representing 2020 and 2021, and a Godzilla standing behind them that’s supposed to represent 2022. What sheer lunacy is left to happen in 2022? I suppose we’ll find out soon enough, but we have one final week of awful albums to cover for 2021, some of which are actually being released on New Year’s Eve, which is dumb, because who buys albums when they’re drunk? But whatever, who cares, some metal band called Oathean is releasing their new album, cheerfully titled The Endless Pain and Darkness, on Dec. 30, a Thursday! Or at least that’s what the Album Of The Year webzine is saying; some other sources are saying it was released on Nov, 30, which is even stupider, since it’s a Tuesday, but at this point I need rock ’n’ roll albums to write about, because otherwise I’m going to talk about politics or something, because it’s that time of year when no band in their right mind is releasing an album, except for Oathean, whoever they are. So anyway, let’s see what this Oathean band even is, shall we? Ha ha, they use that funny font in their band logo, the type all the “extreme-metal” bands use so that their fans don’t really know which album they’re buying, they just know that the devil is involved somehow, and what else should someone care about? I’ll bet you it sounds like Deafheaven, I’ll just bet you. Huh, look at that, they’re from Korea. I thought they were from Finland or whatever, that’s weird. The whole album is up on YouTube right now. It starts out with some “symphonic metal” elements (in other words it sounds kind of snobby, like Evanescence but with no singing) and then, ah, there we are, they want to sound like Bathory/Deafheaven. That singing cracks me up so bad, like the guy sounds like a giant rat who’s demanding your cheese right this minute or he’ll — why, he’ll — he’ll screech like a giant rat at you, that’s what! Beware the wrath of the King Of The Cheese Rats, fam, that’s my only warning!

• And that brings us to the music albums that are literally being released on New Year’s Eve, the day before New Year’s Day, which is easily the worst holiday of the year. Why, you ask? Come on, you know why. All the good holidays are gone, and you know you have to go back to work or school or your court-directed community service thingie in a day or two, and from there it’s the usual wintertime activities: trying to keep from getting frostbite on your feet or going completely insane from sun deprivation while reading tweets about the Kardashians vacationing in Maui, or however you usually torture yourself. Again, there’s nothing to talk about here other than metal bands, so come on, get out the barf bags and let’s try to find something from Vanda’s new Covenant of Death album! They’re from Sweden, and they look kind of normal, like regular Judas Priest stans. Nothing on YouTube at all, but their Facebook has a snippet from some tune that’s pretty basic thrash from 1989. Yours in metal, guys!

• We’ll wrap up this rotten year with something that isn’t metal, a compilation album called Stars Rock Kill, composed of cover tunes from indie bands on the Kill Rock Stars record label, including Chateau Chateau, Amber Sweeney and Lucy Lowis, whose cover of Elliot Smith’s “Say Yes” is folk-grungy manna for ironic, badly dressed 40-somethings. Fifty-two songs here, which is pretty generous, man!

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

Alice Phoebe Lou, Child’s Play (self-released)

I don’t like getting all class-war on an innocent album that never did anything to me personally, but sometimes weak albums released by highly privileged postmodern artists really get on my nerves, I have to tell ya. I do try to telegraph my moves in that regard, and I’d think by now you know I don’t trust most indie bands these days, given that the Pitchfork Media crowd has become the “essential art” dictators of the potty-trained “professional management class” that’s being bashed to smithereens in leftist intellectual circles. A big-time PR firm is handling this piece of junk, the latest album from this South African-raised white woman whose parents are documentary filmmakers; Lou’s voice was purported to “sound like Judy Garland, Kate Bush, or Angel Olsen” but “mostly her own.” They got the last bit right anyway; she’s a pretty unremarkable fashion-victim waif, and her woozy awkwardness (not to mention absolutely dreadful Lawrence Welk keyboard sound) had me reaching for the Off button every 10 seconds. She strikes me as a third-rate Kate Bush with a decent-enough ear for samples, but, as always, your mileage may vary. D

ABBA, Voyage (OK Good Records)

What a treat it was to witness the Pitchfork Media writer squeezing his brain for the requisite 1,500-word essay on this album! It’s the first one in 40 years from the Swedish pop group that basically owned the 1970s, and so Pitchfork Guy’s obscure shibboleths included nonsense like “glam boogie” and “scandi-disco bounce.” It was so rich and delicious to watch him squirm, when all that’s really to report is that the two dude songwriters still have it, and the singers all sound older. That’s it. There have been a couple of hilariously bad musicals based on the band’s million-year-old tunes, of course, all of which resurged in popularity after the 1990s ABBA Gold album, so it’s not that these people have ever disappeared. Anyhow, the first two songs threaten to go Celtic Woman, especially “When You Danced With Me,” which has an Irish jig feel to it, but most of the balance forward is the usual formula of all-hook tuneage fit for children’s dentist overhead speakers. Same as it ever was, really. A

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• It’s the least wonderful time of the year for people like me, music columnists who have to spin column-gold out of literally nothing, because there are basically no important new records coming out on Friday, which is Christmas Eve. And why? Well, because it’s time to forget about important things like redundant, overhyped music albums and instead — yuck — feel jolly and bright or whatever, and be sociable — with people! Gross! — and visit. It stinks, man, I just want some albums to write about, so I can fill this column with humor and fascinating news about whatever stupid pop diva or tedious Coldplay-clone-band band, because it’s my job, to fill this space with information and advice that you won’t follow anyway, but at least I try. But here we are again, with the never-ending culture war in happy détente, and me with no albums to write about, because only certified loons (and metal bands) (same thing) would put out an album on Christmas Eve. Fact is, guys, I’ve been through this for nearly 20 years now, scrambling for stuff to write about this holiday week. You see folks, here’s the thing: I must stop Christmas from coming. But how?

• No, seriously, it’s that time of year when I actually want to hear bad new albums from non-musically trained indie bands banging their ting-tinglers and disposable hit singles from whichever lollipop-brained Ariana Grande-of-the-month is honking her gong-zookas. But do I dare even bother webbing into the Album Of The Year site to look for an album to talk about here, or should I talk about my feelings? I don’t know, but here, fine, I’ll look. OMG, guys, I totally found one, it’s Tales From The Pink Forest, by some band or whatever called ID KY! I feel like Yukon Cornelius on that Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer show, like I was chipping and chipping at the barren Google wasteland and finally there it was! Silverrrr! Silver and gold! OK! Now, ahem, let’s just calm down and try to find out what an “ID KY” is; it’s probably something dumb, like some YouTuber playing Panic! At The Disco cover songs on a kazoo (I’m not expecting anything more artistic than that, honestly). OK, great, there’s literally nothing on Google or YouTube about this, so now I feel like Geraldo Rivera after he opened Al Capone’s secret vault and came out with a sales receipt from Walmart or whatever it was. Just great. OK, let’s pretend it was just really dumb polka played on a Charlie Brown toy piano. Aaaand we’re moving, people, let’s go.

• Hmm, it’s some other band-or-whatever-who-cares with a random four-letter name, this time MDMJ! I can’t wait to hear — oh, never mind, the album is called “Album” probably because it doesn’t have a title yet. I’m about to bag it, folks. Look at all you Whos down in Whoville, just laughing at the sad music critic clown making a fool out of himself, so that you can laugh and point. I can’t wait to stuff your Christmas tree up the chimney and have my dog drag it to the top of Mount Crumpit. OK, one last pass and I’m getting a drink, I deserve it.

• We’ll evacuate these dreary premises by closing with — OK, there are no other records supposedly being released on Christmas Eve. None. So let’s just get drunk and listen to the only thing that’s literally coming out on Christmas Day itself! Of course it’s a metal record, Sonic Wolves’s It’s All A Game To Me EP! Ha ha, these three people look like sleepy Hells Angels, and the EP is a two-song “tribute to Lemmy and Cliff Burton!” Figures, there’s no music for me to trash, um, I mean critique, so let’s do a last Jell-O shot and forget this column ever even happened. Happy holidays and whatever!

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

Tulip Tiger x Garrett Noel, Synth Xmas II (Give/Take Records)

Funny, right after I wrapped up this week’s Playlist thingie, in which I bemoaned the fact that no public relations goblins had sent me any holiday albums to review this year, this one just came in, from a bicoastal lo-fi hip-hop collaborative duo. Just to put things in context, big-beat aficionado Tulip (Augustus Watkins) is based in Los Angeles and Prague, modern psychedelia guy Noel’s from Baltimore, and this is their take on a set of eight old Christmas classics, “reimagined in tranquil, instrumental, electronic arrangements.” Very true, that; the guys have selected from the chillest of vintage chestnuts: “O Come All Ye Faithful” and “Silent Night” to name two, rendering them in tasteful 1980s-synthpop cheese and adding things like glitchy noises, bell samples, etc. The overall effect is cloudy, woozy and, well, edgy, evoking high-end backgrounding for fashion outlet malls; in other words, it’s very unobtrusive but redolent of seasonal spirit. Very nice. A

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• The new albums set to be released on Dec. 17 are in our scope today, folks! I haven’t even looked at the list yet, because that has as much appeal to me as watching my dentist prepare his syringe of Novacaine. Like, I know it’s coming, and there will be “bootleg” albums for collectors and massively expensive box sets for people who’d rather have albums than a car, but what’s odd to me is that I haven’t been made aware of any new holiday albums as of yet. OK, lemme go look at the list of — holy crow, there are almost no new albums coming out on the 17th, let alone holiday albums! What the heck am I supposed to do here? You know, that always happens during these last weeks of the year, and the only bands putting out albums are metal bands, because there’s a new metal album born every minute. With the big holidays coming so soon, the editors should just let me fill up this column with jokes, nursery rhymes and bedtime stories, so at least there’d be — wait, wait, I found one, Califas Worldwide, from California quartet Hed PE, a the band that’s known for “its eclectic genre-crossing style, predominantly in the fusion of gangsta rap and punk rock it has termed ‘G-punk,’ but also for its reggae-fused music.” Great, whatever, I’m just glad I have something music-related to talk about in this music column (I’ll bet next week is going to be even worse). So there’s a single, called “Not Now,” which features the mad metal-rappin’ skillz of some collective (or just one dude, it’s impossible to tell from their Facebook, which, trust me, annoys me a million times more than it does you) called The Final Clause of Tacitus. So the overall effect of the song is Rage Against The Machine with no budget; it’s not bad I suppose, but I’d have to say — oh, you don’t care about this either, it’s not Tom Morello or anything, just some guys who sound like they won a football pool and decided to spend it doofing around in a recording studio while the engineer ate Funyuns and took naps. Let’s forget this and try to find something normal, not that I think there’s a snowball’s chance of that happening.

• Praise be, gang, there’s another one, titled Food For Thought, from some rapper lady named Che Noir! Unless the Brooklyn Vegan blog-site has no idea what it’s talking about (which is always a possibility), she is from Buffalo, New York, a place that Trip Advisor says is mostly inhabited by clinically depressed football fans and Loch Ness Monsters. OK, let me get down with this awesome tune. Hmm, that’s original, she starts out her rap by saying “Yeah,” you know, in this really rappy tone, and then she’s spittin’ mad words and swears. She’s pretty edgy I suppose, but her voice is gentle-ish, like if Dionne Warwick were a rapper. The beat is this dumb 1980s synth-cheese thing. I don’t hate it, mostly because I just feel sorry for it. Aaaand we’re movin’, folks, let’s keep trying to find something normal.

• OK, I give up, there’s not even a heavy metal Christmas album, just no albums at all. Looks like I’ll just do a bedtime story and then tuck you in. OK, so this little bear got lost in the woods looking for special mushrooms, see, and — wait! Wait! Look! Looky yonder! You’ll never believe it, a new album from 1950s rock ’n’ roll icon Chuck Berry, Live From Blueberry Hill! Why am I being given this gift of column-filling news? Well, it’s because the 17th would have been Chuck’s 95th birthday! It’s dumb but I’ll take it, this wonderful collection of live versions of “Roll Over Beethoven,” “Sweet Little Sixteen” and “Johnny B. Goode,” I will take it, as a Christmas miracle! God bless us, guys, every one!

RETRO PLAYLIST

I’ve obviously slacked this year as far as throwing you nice people a few recommendations for holiday music buying. I almost forgot again this week, which would definitely been bad, but by chance I happened upon a column I’d written this very week in 2009, and it started out with a suggestion for, of all things, a country music compilation, to wit: “Howzabout this for a compilation: Dim Lights, Thick Smoke & Hillbilly Music: Country Hit Parade 1951. Comes out on Tuesday [11 years ago, mind you], which gives you no time to find it, but you should try, so that you can hear awesome old garbage like “Shot Gun Boogie” by Tennessee Ernie Ford. We’ve all gone old-school anyway, so why not just reboot the whole thing and start off with bands that had to sing into toasters while sticking their fingers into light sockets so the tape-gizmo thing would record it, because they did not have our awesome technology, which has turned us all into people nobody can trust.”

Boy, could someone tell me when I’m acting cynical, would you folks, I can’t stop myself. But then again, I have every excuse in the book, because 99 times out of a hundred, holiday albums are usually just comprised of old bands doing versions of old carols you’re already sick of hearing. See, what I listen to myself this time of year is music that’s either Christmas-y sounding or actually peripheral to my chosen pagan frostbite-holiday. For the former, you can’t beat Enya’s Paint The Sky With Stars, a compilation of her more popular “hits.” As you may or may not know, she multi-tracks her voice hundreds of times in the studio, which means we’ll never see her play live, because you’d need 100 singing Enyas to accomplish it. But the music itself is reflective, pretty and spiritual. My holiday-sounding faves are “Anywhere Is” and “Storms in Africa,” but almost all are very nice.

As for the latter, the Boston Ballet Orchestra’s version of The Nutcracker is a CD I keep in the car every year, from Thanksgiving to Dec. 26. The CD is missing a few things, like the teddy bear’s dance, but other than that it’s such a peach, especially if you’ve ever seen it live. It seems to be out of stock at bostonballet.org, but it’s worth hunting down.

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