Category: Albums

CrowJane, Bound To Me (Kitten Robot Records)
I’d thought it’d happened a lot more recently, but it turns out I haven’t heard from this Los Angeles kook lady since the release of her Mater Dolorosa EP in October 2020, which I described using RIYL comparisons like Swans and Einstürzende Neubauten. In this new five-songer she’s aiming for Siouxsie Sioux’s brand of weirdness, or so it says on the thing in front of me, and that sort of ’80s-goth-pop epicness is prominent in the works here, helped out by some pretty sweeping orchestral layers and Blue Man Group-ish drum-thumping (I should probably also mention that it’s a really captivating, super-nice tune). Elsewhere we have “Ides Of March,” which is like Siousxsie in metal mode, just an outstanding wreck-stuff rockout that’s got a bit of KMGDM to it. I hadn’t detected such a high level of accessibility in her earlier EP, but this one is remarkably good, well worth checking out. A+ —Eric W. Saeger

Maddi Ryan, Growing Pains (self-released)
In this EP I’m hearing a cross between Amy Grant and [place random anti-diva like Lorde here] undergirding the voice of this Boston-area singer, who racked up Country Act of the Year nominations at count-’em-three New England Music Awards events. Enough Kellie Pickler/Taylor Swift wannabes have dropped CDs on this desk that I’ve forgotten what real disappointment feels like, but stop the presses, this five-song EP is proof that this particular cowboy-booted Insta princess knows her way around a studio, or at least whom to seat at the mixing booth’s least rickety chair, whichever the case. “Wilderness” opens things with some Swift-in-Jewel-mode crooning atop an acoustic guitar line, her soprano aiming for the angsty, hormone-bending vibe that usually leads to a boring chorus, but instead she stays on top of it, adding a truly pleasing vocal harmony, then some floaty dobro and similar layerings as it eventually morphs into Norah Jones-ish Americana. She’s a serious contender, I kid you not. A

Playlist

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• Friday, Dec. 1, is the next CD release day, ermagersh, where did the summer go, what are we even doing here, and now let’s riff on ancient legendary arena-rock band Genesis for a minute, because one of the new rock ’n’ roll CD releases you can buy this week is I/O, from original Genesis singing person Peter Gabriel, his first since, holy catfish, 2011! Like his Genesis-singing successor, Phil Collins, Gabriel is famous for writing dishwasher-safe AOR-pop for dentists’ offices and Dollar Tree stores, and he’s most famous for being the singing person in the song trenchcoat-wearing kickboxing-slacker John Cusack was playing on his boombox during the famous “why aren’t the cops grabbing that guy” scene in the 1989 movie Say Anything. That alone elevated his cred far higher than that of Popeye-The-Sailor-lookalike Phil Collins, whose 1980s hits were horrible enough, but in order to ensure his ”Worst Song Of All Time” achievement award — and most Xers and Boomers have subconsciously erased all this from memory — Collins participated in a duet with really bad singer Philip Bailey on the song “Easy Lover” from Bailey’s 1984 LP Chinese Wall. The only ’80s rock music fail that came anywhere close to unseating that tune as the, you know, Worst Song Of All Time, was Eddie Murphy’s hilariously hubristic fish-out-of-artistic-water laughingstock, “Party All The Time,” which saw the first time a record company ever called an emergency Auto-Tune guy to come in and clean up Murphy’s transparently off-key vocal, and let’s not forget the video for Billy Squier’s “Rock Me Tonight,” in which he pranced around a bedroom like a preteen girl overdosing on Flintstones vitamins, a cringe-gasm so explosive that Squier’s career instantly tanked faster than the Lusitania. But yes, Gabriel has always been borderline listenable in my book, like, “Games Without Frontiers” was OK, mostly because I, like everybody else, thought it was either Psychedelic Furs or Echo And The Bunnymen, who even knew, you know? But anyway, whatever, “Turn It On Again” was a cool Genesis song, even though Peter Gabriel wasn’t there at the time, so here we go, let’s have a look at what’s on this new Peter Gabriel album, and wait a second, two remixed versions of the kickoff single song, “Panopticom,” have been released thus far: the “Bright Side Mix” (done by Mark “Spike” Stent), and the “Dark Side Mix” (mixed by Tchad Blake), both of which were released in January of this year. The Bright Side Mix is OK; the song is important-sounding in a first-world-problems sort of way, studious Gabriel nonsense that’s kind of a chore to listen to, same as always.

• Love Minus Zero is a new collaborative project between electro-revival producer Tiga and Scottish producer Hudson Mohawke, who was part of the “wonky” techno scene (think slo-mo dubstep with a lot of distorted, wobbly dance beats) until the end of the Aughts. L’Ecstasy is their forthcoming debut full-length, which spotlights “Love Minus Zero,” a track that’s a few years old, a really cool, hypnotic dance joint combining dubstep, trance and tribal, you’d probably like it.

• We Owe is the solo project of Swans’ Christopher Pravdica, whose new LP Major Inconvenience uses such things as autoharp and djembe to make off-kilter tunes like the new “Time Suck,” a woozy, discordant, Throbbing Lobster-ish experiment.

• Lastly we have yet another Bandcamp mess to decipher: When No Birds Sang, a joint-effort album between grindcore outfit Full Of Hell and heavy shoegaze dudes Nothing. “Spend The Grace” is a skronky, apocalyptic, blissed-out noise exercise, but other than that it’s probably fine for bouncy-house parties.

Gale Forces, Highlights Of Existence (self-released)

Well, I don’t mind this at all. As often as I’ve been disappointed by the last few months’ worth of Los Angeles bands darkening my door, there’s a lot of cred here, starting with the roster, which includes ex-members of Engine Kid and This White Light, along with a guy who’s still in AWOLNATION. The raucous music that’s on this LP isn’t hard to describe; there’s a lot of Aughts-era stoner rock to it, buoyed by a “brown” sort of guitar sound that typifies Trail Of Dead, and frontman Jade Devitt’s voice (he collaborated with someone from (((Sunn O))), by the way) evokes U2’s Bono on Nick Cave juice; that is to say it’s energetic but not hopelessly commercially shrinkwrapped. The end result is a bunch of tunes that are too cool for sports-bar rock but still quite accessible; SST Records would have loved this stuff as a companion product to Redd Kross and bands like that. A

dreamTX, Living In Memory Of Something Sweet (self-released)

Dallas, Texas,-based multi-instrumentalist and producer Nick Das is looking into techno reinvention after spending a few years chasing Drag City Records cred the way his fellow Texans do. He hatted out for Woodstock, New York, to inhale the spiritual air, promptly finding himself roasting in July without air conditioning, so this collection obviously has some trippy life stories behind it. “Get Around” has a tribal bend to it, evoking sunburnt neo-hippies jumping and dancing crook-legged; it’s celebratory, yes, but it’s also pretty gothic in its way, and I definitely like the muzzled no-wave guitar sound. “Elated” aims for the same sort of emotional bliss; like a sort of shoegaze 2.0, it’s sexless but rave-y, with multi-tracked faraway chant-like vocals begging the listener just to let go and be elated over something, whatever it might be. I’m sure a lot of writers will file this under dream-pop for the convenience of it, but it’s more than that, a very listenable mystery-meat I found particularly blissful really. A+

Playlist

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• Nov. 24 is the day after Thanksgiving, aka Black Friday, and wouldn’t you know it, as always, even though Black Friday is the holiest of shopping days, very few albums will be released, assumedly because all the bands and artists and record company Men In Black know that people won’t be buying albums, they’ll be trapped at the mall, in the Apple and T-Mobile stores, trying to buy just the right glorified Tamagotchi for their ungrateful little Jacobs and Marissas, waiting around for some store clerk (who knows even less stuff about smartphones than they do, if that’s even possible) to take pity on them and answer their technical questions, like “Where’s the ‘on’ button?” (By now I’ve probably given away the fact that I hate smartphones; being an OG software engineer I see them as nothing more than walkie-talkies that tell you the weather). But anyway, Friday is a day that ends in ‘y’ and that means incorrigible songwriting addict Robert Pollard has written enough sort-of-songs to release a new Guided by Voices album whether I want him to or not! When last we left Pollard, federal agents were unable to confiscate his recording equipment owing to an obscure constitutional clause called “artistic freedom,” and so, for what, the 10th time this year, I’m again tasked with peering through an electron microscope at his latest songwriting outburst, an LP titled Nowhere To Go But Up, in an effort to find something to like about it. When last we left this nonsense, it was July and our intrepid hero had just released Welshpool Frillies, which had a song that I said was OK, not that I can remember anything about it, so I’ll have to take my word for it. OK, aaaand I’m riffing, let’s listen to the new single, “For The Home,” there it is, on YouTube. It starts out with some unplugged Led Zeppelin III weirdness, which would have been fine if Pollard had simply left it at that and maybe yodeled over it, but no, here we go, he rips off Norman Greenbaum’s “Spirit in The Sky,” hoping that there are three people left on the planet who’ve never heard that song and they’re Guided By Voices fans. It’s cool enough but pointless.

• British indie band Spector enjoy making borderline pub-rock for sports bars, you know, that goop that sounds important and edgy even though it’s not, and suddenly you’re saying to the waitress, “Sure, I’ll try the extra-hot wings,” and then you regret it. Their bandleader, Fred Macpherson, is influenced by ’80s/90s swill like OMD, Spandau Ballet and Ultravox, but I’m going to listen to the new single “Driving Home for Halloween,” from their fast-approaching new album Here Come The Early Nights, nevertheless. Oh lol, this is so gross, the tune’s faux-punk AOR hook is something you want to get out of your head as soon as it catches hold, it’s like a gothy version of the worst Kaiser Chiefs song you’ve ever heard, and there’s no escaping it. Absolutely terrible.

• Take That is a British dance-pop band that’s won zillions of British music awards, meaning that no American has ever heard of them except for me, just now. This Life is their ninth studio album, and the title track is — aw, I can’t snark at this, it’s nice and dancey, a dumb piano-pop thing, sort of like Andy Grammer or Billy Joel, and at least the video doesn’t have a runway model in it pretending to be a normal person.

• We’ll end with all y’all putting on cowboy hats, because country dude Chris Stapleton releases his new one, Higher, this week! He’ll be at the Bank of NH Pavilion for three days next August, tickets are going fast, and in the torchy new single “I Think I’m In Love With You” he sounds like a cross between Bon Scott and Peabo Bryson! Yee-haw, you have to love it!

Sick Boss, Businessless (Drip Audio Records)

Brandishing not just post-rock but indeed post-apocalyptic sound adventures a la That F-king Tank, the meanderings of this Vancouver, B.C., six-piece outfit are mostly loud and sinister, nicking from Jimi Hendrix, 1970s-spaghetti-crime flicks, Primus and really anything they can wrap their instruments around. Slotted into the fusion jazz category for reasons of convenience, this bunch is led by guitarist Cole Schmidt and includes trumpeter JP Carter (who’s collaborated with Destroyer), as well as a violin guy and a cellist; all six of them are terrific improvisers when they’re called upon to put in two cents toward realizing the noise-stomp-meets-Ennio Morricone ideas put forth. Par for the course for any outstanding group of this sort, static-noise jams give way to passages of beauty and vice versa; there are hard riffs, proto-emo chill-outs (“CJ Blues”) and other related-or-not things that complete a picture of a very interesting instrumental group that’ll be around a while with any modicum of luck. A+

Art Feynman, Be Good The Crazy Boys (Western Vinyl Records)

Art Feynman is an alter ego of producer Luke Temple, and it’s a lucky thing I even found that out when I skimmed the press release for this LP; anyone who reads this column knows that I’ve had a soft spot for the Salem, Mass., native since I first heard him years ago and likened him to another artist you’ve never heard of, one Winston Giles (I’m waiting for just one reader to finally get into Giles and express their eternal gratitude in sonnet form in my Facebook messages). This one was recorded live in the studio with a full band, a first for Temple; the record’s nervous but basically carefree feel recalls Talking Heads’ Remain in Light, which was a touchstone in the writing process. The tunes are meant to touch on “the part of the modern collective consciousness that’s struggling to maintain balance in a toxic, chaotic world,” but it’s a lot lighter-hearted than that; “In CD” feels like a Vampire Weekend demo intended for approval by B-52s. Infectious, massively accessible, genius-level stuff. A+

Playlist

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• Nov. 17 will be a day of new CD releases, try to stay calm, with regard to all the new music! It’s almost Thanksgiving, fam, and in order to honor that pumpkin-spiced holiday in the most appropriate way possible, Hollywood released a movie named after it, and the soundtrack was done by one Brandon Roberts, who handled the soundtracking for a bunch of other nonsense-horror movies, including A Quiet Place and The Woman in Black. At present the soundtrack isn’t available, probably because no one would buy a CD of a soundtrack about serial-killer turkeys or whatever it is, but, just saying, I did look into it for you. In fact, I’m a little surprised that there was an actual professional soundtrack for that movie, but you just never know what’ll happen when those Hollywood guys start drinking at Spago’s, you know?

• If you spend a lot of time on Twitter or basically any other social media site that isn’t Facebook and is thus possessed of a little bit of street credibility, you know that Dolly Parton is now Taken Seriously by Serious Internet Posters because she’s rattled off a few virtue-signaling posts about something or other, which resulted in a noticeable uptick in her cred! Yes, her coolness factor is now at Tom Jones level, and all sorts of younger musical artists are hopping on the gravy train, like when Lady Gaga recorded the duet with Tony Bennett for no rational reason whatsoever, but good for her! Yikes, just look at the roster of rockers who contributed to her fast-approaching new album, Rockstar: her version of “Let It Be” features the last two surviving Beatles, Paul McCartney and Ringo Magoo or whatever his name is; it basically just sounds like Dolly Parton doing a Vegas version of that tune, in case you ever wanted to hear such a thing. But wait, folks, there’s more, Rob Halford from Judas Priest and Nikki Sixx from Motley Crue appear on the third single, “Bygones,” and it’s pretty funny but serious, like you end up thinking “why did they let Dolly Parton start randomly singing on a disposable heavy metal song,” not that she doesn’t do as good a job as you could ever hope for with it; she sounds wildly out of place, but yes, she does keep pace, singing fast over the metallic riffing, boy did I land on the wrong planet.

• Ah yes, Smoke Fairies, we’ve dealt with them before, to a most pleasant outcome in spite of the fact that the indie-folk ladies rose to fame mostly owing to the fact that famous hamburger-gobbling person Jack White decided they were cute and he simply had to have them on his record label! Who cares, either way, yes, they’re cute, toward an Emily Perkins I-am-the-world’s-weirdest-dorm-mate fashion, so I welcome the chance to hear them sing new songs about ghosts or whatever it is. Carried In Sound, their new album, is on the trucks headed to the stores as we speak, and it will feature a new single, called “Vanishing Line,” a haunting tune that combines Loreena McKennitt’s ren-fair shtick with Enya’s multi-tracked technique. You know, if you’re a pale-skinned goth who’s never listened to these gals, do yourself a favor and check ‘em out; they’re completely crazy but don’t let that stop you.

• We’ll end the week with Salvage Enterprise, the new album from The Polyphonic Spree, a huge-ass “choral rock band” from Dallas, Texas! On Nov. 17, they released the single, “Shadows On The Hillside,” a really pleasant tune that’s pure ’70s acid-AOR, recalling Nilsson and, quite frankly, The Who’s Tommy album. It’s pretty deep and wide, well worth checking out.

Newmoon, “Fading Phase” (self-released)

Funnily enough I was just watching a long documentary about shoegaze bands for no real reason, luckily for me. Newmoon, based in Antwerp, Belgium, has already released a couple of albums to “critical acclaim” (which, let’s be honest, in some cases may pretty much mean that one of the band’s friends said “it’s awesome” on Instagram), and this single will lead off their third when it drops in March 2024; it’s mastered by Simon Scott of shoegaze legends Slowdive. That last bit is important, because if there ain’t no plasma-blob immersiveness to the guitars it simply ain’t shoegaze. Toward that, the guitars are pretty bright and, well, tropical as the tune rolls out, until of course the inevitable noise-chaos appears two-thirds of the way through. I’m definitely more of a My Bloody Valentine guy than a Glasvegas fan, but all the ingredients fit, from the sexless faraway Q Lazzarus-like vocals to the ludicrous reverb level. It’s fine. A-

Dokken, Heaven Comes Down (Silver Lining Music)

Once you little Zoomer rascals get off my lawn, I’ll tell you the story of way back in the 1980s, when I completely ignored this Los Angeles-based glam/hair-metal band, mostly because my guitarist at the time thought they were awesome; he and I shared a strained, awkward mutual respect. I preferred bands that had a pulse and obvious brain damage, like Slade, Wasp and Alcatrazz, where Dokken had a weird rep as some sort of borderline prog-rock thingamajig but was really just about getting dates, which is of course the only reason anyone starts a metal band in the first place (raises hand). OK whatever, the LP kicks off with “Fugitive,” a decent speedster that’s decorated with either a 12-string or sitar that makes it sound important, and then the main riff kicks in and yep, it’s good, making the listener want to punch someone in the face out of adrenaline overload. Singer Don Dokken is as boring as ever, which really drags things down during obligato lonesome-male filler tune “Is It Me Or You.” The band’s the same as ever, folks, pseudo-epic slow-burn tunes (“I’ll Never Give Up”) yadda yadda. A-

Playlist

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• Nov. 10 will be a day marked by the release of many new albums, because Friday is the traditional day of the week when all the bands and artistes release their new records in the hope that people will buy them! Hello to all the new readers out there, I’m your host for this journalistic exercise, in which, every week, I try my darnedest to find something nice to say about albums that should never have seen the light of day. Just so’s you know, I actually do try to wax positive about all the bands and sonically creative types that send things to my physical and virtual mailboxes in the usually misplaced hope that I’ll be in good enough of a mood to say something positive, which, my longtime readers know, is like expecting the famous groundhog Punxsutawney Phil to neither confirm nor deny that he saw his shadow but instead to start singing “Vesti la giubba” from the classic opera Pagliacci in such a perfect tenor that people begin weeping uncontrollably on the spot. No, kidding, I’m usually really nice to bands, especially local ones, not that that ever gets me anywhere.

Yow, here we go, look at that, I had all but forgotten the the early Aughts had ever even happened (I’d need 50 pages of space in this paper to list all the reasons), so it was quite a trip when I noticed that the Cold War Kids have a new album coming out. The LP is self-titled, which is such a late-Aughts thing to do, but I liked those guys; they had Spoon-level songwriting, even if they were too catchy and commercial-sounding for the snobs at Pitchfork Media (which is actually a selling point in the opinion of most people, let’s be honest). Anyhow, the Kids have a new single, of course, and it’s called “Run Away With Me,” let’s listen to its YouTube version. Wow, it’s energetic and bouncy and poppy, Pitchfork would hate it, and at the moment I’m trying to find a reason not to do the same. It’s disco-y and works a Weeknd/LMFAO angle, but — OK, here’s the chorus. Right, it’s cool, try to picture the Strokes having a Some Girls period, that’s what this is. I physically can’t hate these guys.

• Pinkpantheress is a British 22-year-old who had viral success on TikTok; when our civilization is gone, TikTok success will be something that will puzzle archaeologists. She’s into bedroom pop and two-step garage, and thus her new single, “Capable of Love,” is a lot more listenable than Ariana Grande, there, I said it.

• We’ll end with Beirut’s new one, Hadsel, because why not. The band is led by trumpet/ukulele dude Zach Condon, and the new single “So Many Plans” is a plodding weird-beard tune that crosses Sigur Ros with Carolina Chocolate Drops; it’s liveable.

E-Garbage, LLM (Dee Dee’s Picks Records)

Swiss artist & engineer Eric Nardini is more commonly known in techno circles under the pseudonym E-Garbage, which points to his penchant for the raw techno that he creates through the use of trash electronics, random objects, modular synthesis, and “the DIY ethos of the punk scene in Geneva” such as it is. The “recommended if you like” list includes Drexciya, Unit Moebius, Legowelt and Terrence Dixon, not that there’ll be a quiz later, but what it means is that you’ll encounter the usual periods of self-indulgent noise, much of it basically white, that you’re expected to relate to, and some IDM DJ stuff that’s rather pleasant, albeit not groundbreaking (as found in the track “Glitched Token E,” an unfocused joint that also fronts some pretty-much-breakbeats, a style I thought I’d never hear again, not that I mind it). “Stochastic Parrot E” is mildly industrial krautrock that at least sticks to its subject for a while. B — Eric W. Saeger

Best Ex, With A Smile (Iodine Recordings)

For being a married person, this quirk-pop indie lady sure sings about how much men suck, not that we don’t know that we do; with this she takes up post-riot-grrrl gauntlets against a lot of things, like inattentive boyfriends and the dudes who run the music business (I can’t imagine anyone being surprised to learn that those guys suck even worse than the average Joe). The overall sound here is Taylor Swift on a low-ish budget, but there are some arena-stomping Imagine Dragons-style moments if you stick around for the middle of the single “Tell Your Friends,” a tune about a breakup that’s led to zen moments in a car with the window open and blah blah blah, in other words no real lessons come of it, just B-grade disaffection. “I Promise To Ruin Your Life” lifts the basic recipe from Ingrid Michaelson’s “Be OK” and doubles down on the teen-pop attitude, not that I’m saying no one should do that. It’s catchy. A- — Eric W. Saeger

Playlist

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• Jane, stop this crazy thing, the next general-CD-release Friday can’t be Nov. 3, it just can’t! Great, that means it’s Thanksgiving in a few minutes, so now I have to figure out which family members and friends are still classified as “the non-crazy people” by my preferred crazy family members so I can invite them to Thanksgiving, that’s if I can even find creamed onions for a Thanksgiving side dish, does anyone even know if they stopped making those forever or what? But I’m getting ahead of myself, I need to just face one nightmare at a time, so I’ll put aside Thanksgiving for now and try to see if there’s anything in this pile of new album releases that won’t get my stomach roiling and lurching and dancing the macarena! Hm, here we go, we’ll start with The Struts, an English glam-rock band that’s from Derby, in Derbyshire, U.K., a “township” located due west of East Derby in East Derbyshire, U.K., if I know my British geography, which I don’t at all. I’m sure I’ll be fine with this band’s rock ’n’ roll, because glam rock is what everyone should be listening to now, and literally nothing else; after all, Slade was/is/whatever the greatest U.K. glam band in history, so maybe these guys just sort of absorbed some of Slade’s greatness just by being from the only island in the west where the owners of the place unironically wear crowns. Pretty Vicious is whatstheirface’s new album, and it features the title track, which was made by taking the interesting parts of Chris Isaak’s “Wicked Game,” throwing them in a randomizer and coating it in British glam that isn’t even close to being as interesting as Slade’s worst song. Other than that, I am genuinely excited about this album release.

• Ack, everybody duck, here it comes, right on too-soon-time, the flood of posthumous releases from Jimmy Buffett, the first of which is Equal Strain On All Parts! Look at you, getting ready to be mad at me for saying something mean, but surprise, I will honor Mister Cheeseburger’s memory by listening closely to whatever song his agent found in 1/2-inch tape reel form in Jimmy’s trash can, whatever tune the record company’s Men In Black will front as the single from this — wait, no, I’m told this is an actual, official album, one that was completed only two months ago, no rush, amirite? Anyhow, the single, “Bubble Up,” is a basic country-pop chillout that most listeners will think is a Willie Nelson song until the accordion comes in, which, point of order, doesn’t make it an actual zydeco song, but of course whichever “music journalist” hack reviews it for Nylon or Buzzfeed or whatnot will say it’s a zydeco song. I cannot do anything about that inevitable nonsense, but yes, I would if I could.

• Irish musician Hilary Woods is a solo artist, previously the bass player of the vastly underrated jangle-grunge band JJ72, which dissolved in 2006 just to get on my nerves. Woods’ current trip is “nocturnal keyboard-based songs” largely inspired by “filmmakers, electronic artists, experimental noise, and folk music traditions.” In other words she’s kind of weird, as exemplified by her forthcoming new album Acts Of Light. This set of songs is based on “a fugue comprised of nine slow hypnotic dirges,” in other words it’s probably kind of weird, but let me go visit the YouTube machine and find out for sure. Ugh, yes, the tire-kicker single “Where The Bough Has Broken” is definitely weird, a miserable, morose ambient exercise that drags on forever, but don’t let that stop you.

• We’ll close with Little Bit Of Sun, the new full-length from Minnesota post-grunge trio Semisonic! I don’t mind the title track at all; it sounds like what would happen if Amos Lee tried to sound like Coldplay and Tom Petty at the same time. Good stuff. —Eric W. Saeger

Featured photo: E-Garbage, LLM (Dee Dee’s Picks Records) and Best Ex, With A Smile (Iodine Recordings)

Hugo’s Voyage, Inception (Frontiers Music)

No matter how popular they become, bands that start out as cover bands — i.e., bands that play other bands’ music — are, in general, at a hopeless disadvantage when they decide to make their own music. This is a tribute band whose specialty is playing nothing but Journey songs, which is as good an excuse as any to remind readers that I was going to be the Dave in the local Van Halen tribute band Diver Down, but the guitarist wanted me to stop sounding like Album Quality Dave and just be Lousy Live Version Dave, so it never happened. Matter of fact, if anyone knows whatever happened to New Hampshire’s favorite Pat Benatar tribute singer, Gail Savage, I’d be really curious to know about it; I asked around but apparently no one knows. Anyhow, if you like Journey, this album sounds exactly like the current version of that band, which, ironically replaced their original singer with a dude whom the band saw doing Journey covers on YouTube. Funny how things work out, isn’t it? No new ground broken at all here, of course, but the songs are, you know, just fine. A-

Rick Bogart, What A Wonderful World (Arabesque Records)

Glad to have been made aware of this February release just now; it’s up for a Grammy, not that I have any say in such things. It’s timely, regardless; no holiday albums have shown up in my mailbox this year as of yet, but this one would definitely work if you’re just trying to get in a holly-jolly mood. If you never would have guessed, this is a collection of Louis Armstrong classics led by rendered through a light, tinkly, Champagne-tinted lens, with a dual-edged nod toward modern New York City club-jazz and mid-sized New Orleans combos, although the former wins out by a mile in my view; it’d be well-placed backgrounding a wedding reception, holiday party or whatever. All the great tunes are here, from “Hello Dolly” to the title track to “A Kiss To Build A Dream On”; if you’ve ever owned a disk of Satchmo tunes, this will all be familiar territory. “Way Down Yonder In New Orleans” is a new one on me, not that I’m an Armstrong expert; I’m used to the Al Jolson version but this does the trick nicely (if politely) enough.

Playlist

• Yay, the next crop of rock ‘n’ roll CDs comes out on Oct. 27, which is this year’s opening day for Halloween! As everyone knows, Halloween is the real start to the holiday season, which is backward, because Halloween should come after New Year’s Day, the worst of all the holidays unless you have someone brand new and special to watch the ball drop with. For everyone else, New Year’s is the most miserable time of the year, with all its pointlessness and beginner-level beer-chugging, so the best way to walk off the whole experience would be if Halloween came afterward, so that there’d be Dracula movies and snack-sized Reese’s Cups and skeletons around to help us forget the real-life horrors of the previous year! But no, Halloween is here, and there will be albums, I haven’t even checked the list yet, I’ll bet there’s a Christmas album in there from someone like Skee-Lo or Coldplay or someone else whose career is way past its sell-by date, let’s go have a look! Hm, nope, no holiday collections, but there it is, bazinga, a new album from everyone’s favorite acid-dropping Australians, King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, called The Silver Cord! It is psychedelic and trippy like always, what else were you expecting?

• Let’s see here, OK, History Books is the sixth studio album from New Jersey rockers The Gaslight Anthem, whose recent reformation after a seven-year hiatus only happened because one of the members was cajoled into it by none other than Bruce Springsteen, who, as it happens, guests on the video for the album’s title track. What this tells us is that Bruuuce is the gatekeeper to the entire New Jersey rock scene, but let’s leave it all be, because the song isn’t bad at all. It’s a loping affair that combines Goo Goo Dolls and Amos Lee; it’s OK if you like good songs, which many people don’t these days, of course.

• So, 1989 (Taylor’s Version) is the newest album from registered 4channer Taylor Swift, and her second this year. It’s simply a re-recording of her 2014 album, which she can get away with because only jerks really hate her, because jelly much? Luckily my attitude toward that corporate-manufactured diva is similar to the one Tommy Lee Jones exhibited in The Fugitive when Harrison Ford had him trapped in the sewer and was trying to convince him he didn’t commit any crimes, like, when some internet person tries to tell me that Taylor Swift will save democracy or bring balance to the universe or whatnot, I just hold my hands up in surrender and say, “I don’t care.” But that’s not to say that she’s a bad artist or doesn’t have great taste in future ex-boyfriends; if you have a 9-year-old daughter you’ll simply have to go buy this new CD of needlessly re-rubbed songs and play it in the car until you’re driven to rendering it useless by scratching the disk with your car key and telling your Precious Princess that your Amex is maxed out and you can’t afford another copy. Just trying to help.

• We’ll end with indie darlings The Mountain Goats, because even I have to admit they’re awesome, so I’m going to go out on a limb and assume that their new LP, Jenny from Thebes, will contain a song that I can stomach! Fans of this alt-rock outfit know that the original lineup consisted of only one person, frontman John Darnielle, until he started hiring all sorts of people to contribute to his albums, playing banjos and cellos and violins, and now Mountain Goats is sort of settled on a quartet setup. This record is said to be a rock opera, so I am already nervous that it will suck, but I shall nevertheless go see what the deal is with the new single, “Clean Slate.” Right, right, it’s Ben Folds-ish, poppy, danceable, the coda sounds like a cross between Springsteen and Calexico.

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).

Charlene Darling, La Porte (Disciples Records)

It’s been a while since the last time I was presented with an album from a quirk-pop Kate Bush wannabe, and here it is, and thankfully not drowning in desperado-romantic angst. But at least this Parisian-born, Brussels-based underground fixture sings off-key a lot, I’ll give it that! No, seriously, folks, if you like Air, Figurine and all that stuff, you’ll probably find a lot to like here, even if I can barely stand it. The key to making music like this is to spend a lot of time in your apartment playing at being existentially lost, as the video for “Tour s’efface” demonstrates; I saw something in the press release about a guy running tape loops for this lady’s group but didn’t hear anything notable in that regard, which is par for the course here. Despite all my disdain for this thing, Iggy Pop, of all people, liked it enough to play it on his BBC radio show. Urban sluggery and first world problems ahoy! C- —Eric W. Saeger

Iogi, We Can Be Friends (Raw Tapes Records)

It’s been a while since the last time I was presented with an album from a quirk-pop Kate Bush wannabe, and here it is, and thankfully not drowning in desperado-romantic angst. But at least this Parisian-born, Brussels-based underground fixture sings off-key a lot, I’ll give it that! No, seriously, folks, if you like Air, Figurine and all that stuff, you’ll probably find a lot to like here, even if I can barely stand it. The key to making music like this is to spend a lot of time in your apartment playing at being existentially lost, as the video for “Tour s’efface” demonstrates; I saw something in the press release about a guy running tape loops for this lady’s group but didn’t hear anything notable in that regard, which is par for the course here. Despite all my disdain for this thing, Iggy Pop, of all people, liked it enough to play it on his BBC radio show. Urban sluggery and first world problems ahoy! C- —Eric W. Saeger

Playlist

• Oct. 20 is our next new-CD-release Friday, and, much as I don’t want to, yes, I will be normal today and speak first about the only album that matters to Billboard magazine and the mainstream audience it hypnotizes, The Rolling Stones’ new one, Hackney Diamonds! OK, I mentioned it, may I be excused now? Right, I guess not. Let’s just say that I never cared about the Stones and never will; the only songs I used to like were “The Last Time” and one other, I forget, but it doesn’t matter, if I want to hear Stones songs all I have to do is go to Dollar Tree and wait around a few minutes, basking in the despair of that end-stage-capitalist vibe you can only get at a dollar store. Personally I’d much rather hang around at Discount Madness in Pelham because they play 1950s songs all day, and it’s fun to hear the retirees walking around casually whistling along to tunes about jalopies and sock hops, songs that really marked the end of rock ’n’ roll’s usefulness. I mean, after that, pop rock was just about hair and “trousers” and really nothing else; the Stones were basically Black Sabbath to Led Zeppelin’s more pliable Beatles, and both ’60s bands had super-boring drummers. That’s all I have on all this tediousness for the moment, so, as far as the new album, the single, “Angry,” has a video that features this generation’s Marilyn Monroe, Sydney Sweeney belly dancing to the song, which has some good AC/DC energy but is still mindlessly Stones-ish. I don’t hate it, no, now may I please go?
• The Streets is one of the stage names under which British alternative hip-hop/garage dude Mike Skinner releases records. His forthcoming new LP, The Darker The Shadow The Brighter The Light, features the single “We All Need An Enemy,” a Cockney-accent-drawled chill-trap number that’s actually quite listenable; in it, Skinner waxes apathetic about people finding love in hate groups and other necessary evils. I was impressed.
• Bombay Bicycle Club is an English indie-rock trio named after a now-defunct chain of Indian restaurants in North London! In 2009 they released their first album, I Had The Blues But I Shook Them Loose, a fairly thrashy affair that was all about post-punk, and the hilariously loquacious wonk at Pitchfork Media found stuff in it to complain about, and then they went low-key folk in 2010 with their Flaws LP, which was silly of them to do, then they tried stadium-indie on for size in 2014 with the album So Long See You Tomorrow, which was electronic pop, and that takes us to now, with their newest, My Big Day. I hate to take just one song to talk about when discussing the latest album from a band that’s never really even known what kind of band it’s supposed to be, especially given that it’s my understanding that this album is a genre-mishmash according to my fellow music-journalist hacks, but I’ll go out on a limb and give a listen to the title track, because I am a daredevil, don’t try this at home, folks!
  Right, so it’s a quirky whisper-electro joint powered by a fake electric piano sample that really accomplishes nothing, but that’s the charm of that kind of thing, isn’t it?
• We’ll wrap things up for the week with Blink-182, which is one of those emo-rock/power-pop bands whose success baffles most people over 45; at the moment their main selling point is that their drummer is Mrs. Kourtney Kardashian, which is sure to change after her next mimosa vacation in the Maldives, but that’s OK! One More Time is the band’s new full-length, the title track from which is a strummy nerd-pop ballad. It sounds like Lit trying to be Simon & Garfunkel, all set with this. —Eric W. Saeger

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).

Diamond Dogs, About the Hardest Nut to Crack (Wild Kingdom Records)

I don’t get too many rootsy honky-tonk-punk records in here, but point of order, they’re always welcome. Formed way back in 1991, this Swedish rock group attempts to revive the soul of borderline Stiv Bators/New York Dolls-style pre-punk, not the least melodic thing you’ve ever heard, but certainly awash in attitude. “Blight The Life” is all that and more in the form of purebred bluegrass punkabilly, and by that I mean of the purest original Hank Williams Sr. sort, the type of mayhemic cowpunch-rock that evokes an odd combination of barns and chickens and imminent danger from carelessly flung slam-dancers; similarly, “Wring It Out” is a hilariously anachronistic cross between the Stones and Black Crowes, which isn’t to imply that there’s anything wrong with it. If you need a legitimacy check, the band’s OG posturing earned them a brief moment of fame on MTV’s Headbanger’s Ball in 1993 when one of their tunes somehow snuck into the show. A

The Nervous Eaters, “Kelly’s Sixteen” (Wicked Cool Records)

I didn’t hate this band all that much back when I was even younger than you are today, when idiotic soul-sucking working-class assembly-line jobs were depressingly plentiful (you unemployed kids living in your moms’ basements really need to count your blessings) and WBCN was the Boston radio station to listen to if you wanted people to think you were cool. This local-to-Boston band was a one-hit local-radio wonder (unless I’m missing something) whose big single, “Loretta,” was produced by Ric Ocasek of The Cars in the early ’80s; the tune was, like most Boston rock was in that halcyon era, ’50s-tinged, mildly punkish and sublimely tuneless, but there were a lot worse bands to “experience” at the Rathskellar and whatnot, and so the Eaters made their mark, not that anything ever came of it. And so, yadda yadda, here’s a new single by them, a corporate-punk-speed snoozer that sounds somewhat Gang Of Four-ish and Buzzcocks-ish at first, and then, right when you think a giant-ass hook-fadeout is coming, it just flops and expires. Nothing changes, folks, remember that. C

Playlist

• Yay, Oct. 13 is a Friday the Thirteenth, I’m sure all the new albums coming out that day will jibe with the occasion in a manner most apropos! But first things first, fam, wait till I tell you about my visit to Manchvegas’ new rock club, Angel City Music Hall, the other week! It takes a lot to get me out of my trash-pile, um, I mean my ultra-modern, totally organized office, but when my PR friends the Brenners in New York City told me that Crowbar was coming to play their crazy sludge-metal tuneage right here in da city, I was like “I’m your huckleberry!” So I contacted a couple of bros to go see them, like our local rock ’n’ roll mastermind Otto Kinzel of Dust Prophet and friend of the Hippo Dan Szczesny, but they made up excuses, so I went by myself. The band was deafeningly loud, which was nice, and the lady who runs the place calls people “Hon,” which is also nice.
• OK, I don’t know if you people remember that techno soundsystem called Justice, and how they named one of their albums “†” (you know, like, “cross”) just to be a pain to everyone who had to write an article about them and hunt down that particular ASCII character. If you do, you also remember that they tried to make the super-noisy Ed Banger sound happen, which it did for little while, but — oh for pete’s sake, I’m going totally off-track, whatever, there’s a band that started up around the same time as “†”, called †††, a darkwave/dream-pop/witch-house project often referred to as Crosses by journos who hate hunting for ASCII characters, and guess who’s in it, that’s right, it’s Deftones singer Chino Moreno and his buddy Shaun Lopez, from the band Far! I’m sure you’ve heard about them if you’re a ‘Tones-head, amirite, but this is news to me, so in order to catch up to all you hippies I’m going to go listen to a single from their new album, Goodnight, God Bless, I Love U, Delete, called “Invisible Hand.” So it starts off with some sort of glitchy-ish techno beat, and then the Deftones guy suddenly starts jumping up and down all hip-hop style, yelling and ranting about something, and then there’s a barrage of angry Death Grips-inspired haunted-house-metal. I don’t really hear anything compelling going on here, but feel free to pretend to find something redeemable about it.
• Oh no, come on, not another Canadian indie band, I’m really not in the mood! OK, it’s Metric, so there’s an outside chance that this might be salvageable, even though the singer is involved with Broken Social Scene, I don’t really know right now. The band’s new album, Formentera II, features the single “Who Would You Be For Me,” a sort of ’90s cowboy-goth-tinged chill-pop jam that’s not unlistenable, it’s OK.
• We’ll wrap up the week with Australian/South African singing man Troye Sivan, who portrayed young Wolverine in X-Men Origins: Wolverine. OK, so Something To Give Each Other, his new full-length, includes the single “Rush,” a house-chilldown whose video features Sivan smoking weed out of a banana and singing gently through his Auto-Tune. Yay, Auto-Tune, what would we do with it!

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).

Wolves in the Throne Room, Crypt of Ancestral Knowledge (Relapse Records)

I remember this Olympia, WA trio from way back; the name impressed me but the music — a mixture of various disparate Bathory/Boris/Neurosis thingamajigs microwaved to extreme-metal-ish perfection for the benefit of beginner indie-metal stans — didn’t. 20 years on, this is more of the same, music that’d be perfect for gore-horror-movie man-to-ghoul transformation sequences, you know, waves of raucous, tortured monster-yelling buoyed by (place name of earl-Aughts-era Epitaph Records band here) guitar spazzing and such and so, nothing you haven’t heard before but (more or less) epic toward a bargain-bin fashion, intended to impress the easily impressed. I’ve never liked this kind of stuff, but if demon-caterwauling, pre-Sunn(((O))) noise-thrash and etc is your bag, don’t let me stop you, not that I ever have, to my eternal chagrin. By the way, “Initiates of the White Hart” starts off with a mandolin, not that that explains anything, and “Crown of Stone” is like Enya on downers. A —Eric W. Saeger

Elm Street, The Great Tribulation (Massacre Records)

Well, what a nice surprise this is. Seems like 90 percent of the jazz albums I’ve been getting for review lately have been breezy dark-coffee-house exercises (luckily there’s been a lull in singer-oriented Big Book projects; not that I don’t like hearing the 4,749th interpretation of “Nature Boy,” there’s just no need for it in current_year), but this one, the debut EP from the Manhattan School Of Music pianist, is deeply ritzy ambiance, stuff you’d expect to hear at a snobby wedding reception for which all the stops have been pulled. The difference comes by way of the fact that Fujiwara is supported by a four-piece string section, along with a vibes person and a pretty chill drummer; as well, our heroine tables a pretty dazzling, dextrous version of Scott Joplin’s “Maple Leaf Rag,” and, in a really courageous effort, offers a retrofitted version of a Japanese children’s song from her earlier life (“Hotaru Koi”). This is well worth the trip, folks. A+

Playlist

• Like every Friday, Oct. 6 will be a day on which new albums are released in a giant gust, there’s no place left to hide, let’s go look at the — wait, folks, wait, I can’t believe it, guess who’s got an album coming out, you’ll simply die: It’s none other than 1980s boy-man-toddler Rick Astley, I’m not kidding you! Astley is from the U.K., because no one else would have him, and his claim to fame is being the subject of the “RickRoll” internet meme that was first discovered in a newly unearthed Babylonian tomb from 12,000 BC, but it never gets old, am I right, folks? It’s the prank where you post something to everyone on your social media space and tell them to click a link in order to find out more information, but what happens instead is you’re sent to a YouTube of Astley, looking like a preteen, singing his one hit, in a super-serious man-voice, the famous awful song “Never Gonna Give You Up!” Ha ha, OK, Billboard announcement page, fun time’s over, if you think I’m actually going to search YouTube for a link to a “new” Rick Astley song, nudge-wink, from a totally fake album called Are We There Yet and then suddenly find myself watching Doogie Howser singing “Never Gonna Give You Up,” um, no, I’ll have you know I’m not that dumb! OK fine, I’m going, let’s see what this is, this quote-unquote, air-quotes, “new Rick Astley song,” which is called (I’m serious, folks) “Never Gonna Stop.” Huh, hold the phone, guys, it’s not anywhere near as stupid as you’re imagining, it’s bonk-bonk piano-soul, and Astley is singing sort of like Bill Withers, I would actually listen to this song if I didn’t have exactly 2,593 other CDs in my car.
• The Rural Alberta Advantage is a Canadian indie trio, but other than that, they’re OK! Their new album, The Rise & The Fall, includes a single titled “Conductors” that is really quite muscular, a loping strummer that evokes Kings Of Leon and even a little bit of old-school emo.
• My wife is from Texas, so it’s always hilarious when I troll her yankee-style. For example, she worked super-hard for years to lose her southern drawl, so every couple of weeks I start talking in an Alabama trucker accent, like the “Git ’Er Done” guy, Larry The Cable Guy, and after an hour or so, she starts to slip and talk about eating grits and whatnot in a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader accent, it’s so funny, you’d have to be there, but another prank I like pulling is when we’re watching TV and I go off to write my book or this column or check in on my social media friends, I change the channel to CMT, because Reba McEntire’s sitcom is always on it, I don’t think they have any other shows, and before you know it there she is, drawling like Reba. Endless laughs that never get old, fam, but in this case it’s relevant, because a new Reba album is coming at us fast, titled Not That Fancy! Now just let me go and — wait, the entire world has been rickrolled by Reba, because from what I’m seeing this isn’t an album, it’s some dumb audiobook, written by a bored ghostwriter, I’m sure, so forget it, false alarm, at least I didn’t have to go listen to some new Reba song.
• • We’ll put this week in the books with Dogstar, because their new album, Somewhere Between The Power Lines And Palm Trees, has such a long, space-filling name that I’ll finally have time to catch up on Amy Diaz’s film reviews and see if one single movie that has come out in the last three years is worth watching, I seriously doubt it! Anyway, Dogstar’s new single, “Breach,” is a grindy ’90s-rock shepherd’s pie of Marilyn Manson, Weezer and — wait, the bass player is actual Keanu Reeves, you people need to tell me these things before I start riffing! This is actually cool! —Eric W. Saeger

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).

Zooey Celeste, Restless Thoughts (ATO Records)

Meanwhile on the planet XT-431, we have here a collection of tunes from this southern California-based dude, who’s busily trying to craft his own chill-techno trip, revolving around a genre he’s dubbed “astral-pop,” which his PR people cleverly promote as a “soundtrack for nocturnal driving and an immediate conduit for lasting transcendence.” I myself meditate once a week, usually, and this stuff wouldn’t interfere with the practice’s process of trying to become a witness to one’s own passing thoughts, but it’s not as TM as he might like to think. OK, there were probably a lot of drugs involved, let’s just say that, but I could be wrong; a lot of the imagery comes from a novel he wrote a while back, the feel of which, he professes, is “somewhere between Quentin Tarantino and the Bhagavad Gita.” Oh, I almost forgot, the music is gently woven tech-pop of the Goldfrapp sort by way of 1960s Donovan, all of it made uniquely magnetic because Celeste sounds a lot like the Cure’s Robert Smith. A lot of people would be down with this, absolutely. A

Arina Fujiwara, Neon (self-produced)

Well, what a nice surprise this is. Seems like 90 percent of the jazz albums I’ve been getting for review lately have been breezy dark-coffee-house exercises (luckily there’s been a lull in singer-oriented Big Book projects; not that I don’t like hearing the 4,749th interpretation of “Nature Boy,” there’s just no need for it in current_year), but this one, the debut EP from the Manhattan School Of Music pianist, is deeply ritzy ambiance, stuff you’d expect to hear at a snobby wedding reception for which all the stops have been pulled. The difference comes by way of the fact that Fujiwara is supported by a four-piece string section, along with a vibes person and a pretty chill drummer; as well, our heroine tables a pretty dazzling, dextrous version of Scott Joplin’s “Maple Leaf Rag,” and, in a really courageous effort, offers a retrofitted version of a Japanese children’s song from her earlier life (“Hotaru Koi”). This is well worth the trip, folks. A+

Playlist

• On Friday, Sept. 29, we’ll see a new LP from hilariously overrated singing person Ed Sheeran, called Autumn Variations! I’ve always thought that his fans just feel sorry for him because he is a ginger neckbeard, but what do I know; I mean, I did see the video where he went on a stupid talk show and “proved” his claim that every pop song in the world is an old Beatles song, I forget which one, and he accomplished that by pulling out his guitar and asking the audience to give him a song title, and then he “proved” it had the same chords as “Let It Be” or whatever by slowwwly and sneakily changing the chords to fit his insane theory. Your mileage may vary, of course, who cares, but that brings us to his latest song advance, “A Beautiful Game.” It is a piano-pop song that is pretty and oafishly show-stopping, just like every Zoomer-targeted pop song being put out today, and I’ll at least admit that it isn’t a variation on “Let It Be.” No, indeed; cleverly, it rips off Joan Osborne’s “One Of Us” at the beginning and U2’s “Beautiful Day” as things “progress.” What a talented human, that ginger neckbeard, wouldn’t you say?
• Naturally I always confuse Blonde Redhead with Concrete Blonde, who wouldn’t? Sit Down For Dinner is the former’s new LP, and the latest single, “Before,” is very gentle and mellow and chill, evoking Fleetwood Mac stealing from REM. It’s not bad.
• Finally, let’s have a laugh at the expense of former Pitchfork darlings Animal Collective, whose new full-length, Isn’t It Now, is on the trucks, headed to the malls and all that happy stuff. I have not kept track of this band, because why would anyone do that anyway, but I do give them credit for totally owning the “tuneless fractal-indie” space for those 10 minutes, remember those days? The single, “Soul Capturer,” sounds like Vampire Weekend trying to be Mungo Jerry. Does anyone seriously have any deep love for music like this, like at all?

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).