Category: Albums

Joseph Shipp, Free For A While (self-released)

This 40-year-old Tennessee-born singer-songwriter tried San Francisco life for a while, landed himself a wife, then came back to his home state, specifically to Nashville, where he put out a coffee-table book (A Community in Black & White) of old photographs in collaboration with The Bitter Southerner. His background is in fact rooted in photography; his family owned a photography business, so what prompted him to put out this debut album (shipping on Oct. 28) is lost on me but probably speaks to an adjunct product to the book. Unlike so many of these jack-of-all-trades projects, the music fits in quite well with his rootsy art; in fact, if I had to pick a RIYL comparison for kickoff song “Rest Assured,” it’d be a cross between Hank Williams Sr. and Woody Guthrie, a comparison that’s deserved. Lot of more modern Americana here, though, like the strummy, near-Guster-like “Where You Are,” and there are curveballs of course, like the Mazzy Star-like “Only The Moon.” Shipp’s voice is unusually high, which does add some quaint eeriness to these proceedings. A

The Callous Daoboys, Celebrity Therapist (Modern Static Records)

It’s been quite a while since I investigated a band that specializes in mathcore, a genre that, last I knew, was lorded over by Dillinger Escape Plan and all that stuff, armor-plated with old-school emo ’tude and a lot of riffs with bizarre time signatures. That’s descriptive of the genre’s high end, of course; there’s no hard and fast rule to mathcore other than being loud and somewhat unfollowable relative to song structure (and yes, that’s my guideline; I stopped trusting Wikipedia’s genre definitions years ago, not that that’s the smartest thing to do in every case). So these four guys are from Atlanta, and what a terribly clever name they’ve given themselves, I’ll readily admit. That’s in line with their musical approach too: extended bursts of Dillinger Escape Plan-ish syncopated cacophony, but plenty of skit moments as well, probably recorded during dinnertimes and whatnot; it all feels very punky and personal. Well done, for what it is. A

Playlist

• Friday, Sept. 16, will see, like every Friday, a bunch of new music CD releases, and I’ll tell you right now, gang, things are already starting to heat up for the holiday buying season! I didn’t get a lot of Christmas releases last year, so hopefully that situation won’t repeat itself as we start running out of months in the calendar of 2022, widely regarded as the worst year in history only because nothing’s been fixed, things just get worse and worse, don’t they? But I know that you know the only cure for all that existential dread, that’s right, it’s new rock ’n’ roll albums, and guess who’s leading us off? That’s right, famous Manhattan-based band Gogol Bordello, with their Eastern European tuneage and fiddles and accordions; it’s great music to run around to while guzzling cheap whiskey and randomly punching people in the face, you should try it sometime if you haven’t! Wait, don’t go to Amy’s movie reviews yet, there’s a point to all this, specifically that this bizarre accordion-filled Romani-punk band does have an album coming out on Friday, titled Solidaritine! As always, the band is fronted by Eugene Hütz, who was born in Ukraine, so I’m assuming there won’t be a lot of protest songs about the recent Russian invasion or he’d end up peeling potatoes in a factory, but you never know, so howzabout we get to the gettin’-on and give a listen to the new single, “Take Only What You Can Carry,” which is — wait a minute, like Steve Harvey says when he’s emceeing a beauty pageant, it is about the Russian invasion! It says here that the song “encapsulates [the] emotional message of uprooted people whose lives were destroyed by this f–d up war in Ukraine.” Love this video, look at Eugene and his peeps walking around and overacting, occasionally stopping to say hello to some of the refugees. The tune has sort of a Meatloaf-ish, off-Broadway feel to it; it’s fun and crazed, of course. Did I mention there’s fiddles and accordions?

• Oh come on, just when I thought it was going to be a fun column, here we go, look who it is, folks, it’s unlistenable twee-rockers Death Cab for Cutie, with Asphalt Meadows, their latest batch of Gilmore Girls-begging nonsense-pop! Death Cab were the poster children for the “do all indie-rock bands have to be white” backlash of a few years ago (you remember, right? No?), which I largely avoided owing to the fact that I’ve never considered these guys to be “rock” in the first place, more like a sleepy, boring, dishwasher-safe garage band that’d be right at home opening for a balloon-animal-making clown at kids’ birthday parties. Man, do I hate them, but here we go, let me finish this bottle of Jagermeister and see if I can handle their new song, “Here To Forever.” Wow, it’s kind of listenable after all, but in a stupid way. It’s a cross between New Order and Christopher Cross’s yacht-rock song “Sailing.” Why would anyone do this sort of music? Don’t ask me, I really have no idea.

• Well, bless their hearts, look folks, it’s 30-year-old British art-rock band Suede, with their first album since 2018, Autofiction. The single, “She Still Leads Me,” is a feisty little Blur-like number that totally rips off Flock Of Seagulls’ “Space Age Love Song.” Other than that it’s astonishingly original.

• OK, and finally, it’s neo-neo-metal whatevers The Mars Volta, with a self-titled album. The album opens with “Blacklight Shine,” which features some very authentic-sounding African tribal music. Still not going to keep most critics from making fun of the band, though, 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).

Darryl Harper, Chamber Made (Stricker Street Records)

Here we have something of a culturally relevant item, a highly successful attempt to expand the racial boundaries of concert music, specifically chamber jazz, an organic style that sounds like high-end soundtrack music made with the barest numbers of personnel. In this case it’s New England Conservatory-taught clarinetist/composer Harper working in various settings, most fascinatingly the Wistaria String Quartet in the three-part “Suite For Clarinet and String Quartet.” That’s 16 minutes of nimble, sublimely melodic tuneage that will alternately make you think of very old Disney films and the more innovative things you’ve heard in Daniel Day Lewis’s more gritty movies, as wide-ranging as that may sound. And yes, the compositions aren’t of a kind your typical listener would usually peg as coming from Black musicians, but that’s part of the point — despite all their genius, the world tended to deny even the greatest composers their due as “legitimate” concert music composers: Duke Ellington, Scott Joplin and James P. Johnson, to name three. In Harper’s case, his deep expertise with his instrument keeps every moment vibrant and attention-grabbing, even when his accompaniment is bare-bones. Complicated, tuneful and brilliant. A+

Blue Largo, Got To Believe (self-released)

Pretty nice little surprise here, a married-couple-led band from California that categorizes itself as “Americana soul.” As you may or may not know, I’m not big on “fedora bands,” the type of act that would fit in fine at some craft-beer eatery playing Van Morrison covers and things like that, and that’s what I’d expected to hear from this LP. Ten original songs here, along with a cover of Nina Simone’s Quentin Tarantino-begging torch-blues hit “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood,” which does go well with their core vibe: a rugged, rough and slightly muddy style, redolent of ’60s girl-groups and Amboy Dukes on a Byrds kick. Eric Lieberman and Alicia Aragon share the wheel here, the latter taking the mic for the Blues Brothers-meets-Temptations-ish album opener “A World Without Soul,” a fine vehicle for Aragon’s trill-heavy warbling. “Got To Believe” finds the pair cleverly blending their voices on a Frankie Valli-oriented joint. Nicely done all around. A

Playlist

• Friday, Sept. 9, is the next date for CD releases, and wouldn’t you know it, the first thing to appear in my list of “important new albums” is the new album from Julian Lennon, son of former Beatle John Lennon and Cynthia Lennon. The album’s title is Jude, which I assume is somehow derived from the ancient Beatles song “Hey Jude,” which I never really liked, but maybe there’s something more to this album than Julian doing his usual John Lennon karaoke and trying to ignore the fact that most millennial kids who heard his boring songs on the school bus radio back in the ’90s thought he was Hanson or maybe They Might Be Giants trying to sound like The Beatles, who knows. I mean, you remember his 1984 hit “Too Late for Goodbyes,” and how it sounded like a song made specifically for grandmothers who needed a song about riding a choo-choo train made out of candy to help the grandkids fall asleep at nap-time? I’m sure you hated it as much as I did, and that you were like “Why would the son of a Beatle ever record such a thing?” but, like me, you sort of forgave him because he never really liked Yoko, like everyone else on Earth, I mean, you did, right? Oh, whatever, Julian had a hard time of it as a kid, being that John dumped his mom for Yoko. In fact, “Hey Jude” was written by Paul McCartney to console Julian over John’s divorce from Julian’s mom; it was originally called “Hey Jules” but McCartney changed it because he thought that “Jude” was an easier name to sing. But I won’t turn this exercise into a documentary about bad music and artistic oligarchy, as I’m sure other award-winning music journalists have done that with regard to The Beatles, so with your permission I’ll move on to the entertainment portion of this column by toddling off to listen to “Save Me,” the latest song from this album, and it’s actually not bad, a dark, insistent piano line, haunted vocals. I dunno guys, maybe it’s time to give the kid a break, hah? No? OK then.

• The old-school music from bands who don’t need the money at all continues with Ozzy Osbourne hawking his 13th album, Patient Number 9! The title track features a team-up with the super-ancient Jeff Beck, who’s been on more Guitar Player magazine covers than probably anyone, mostly because throughout his career he always stubbornly refused to play anything that most people would call “listenable music,” although his “People Get Ready” team-up with Rod Stewart almost qualified, back when the Earth was still cooling from the Big Bang. As I expected, the situation where Ozzy hasn’t had a truly cool arena-metal song since his Bark At The Moon days hasn’t changed, i.e. the song is in the vein of Alice Cooper and kind of sucks, but Beck’s guitar is pretty neat of course.

• Santigold, an avant-electronic artist whose real name is Santi White, releases her fourth album, Spirituals, this Friday. She’s dabbled with a lot of techno sub-genres, but the new single “Disparate Youth” finds her in sublimated dubstep mode, the main groove a barely there rinseout-ish thingamajig while she sings druggy indie-pop lines over it. It’s not catchy, but who knows, people have liked a lot worse songs.

• OK, very good, we’ll wrap up this week’s nonsense with Idaho-based indie band Built to Spill and their new album When The Wind Forgets Your Name! This includes the new single “Gonna Lose,” a completely horrible little song that’s like if Pavement and Flaming Lips had a baby and it was christened by those King Gizzard guys. This has been done a million times and a lot better, but other than that it’s terrific.

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).

Mary Onettes, What I Feel In Some Places EP (Labrador Records)

Glad I decided to clean out my pathetically overstuffed excuse for an emailbox, because this one had gone in one eyeball and out the other back in June and I’d totally forgotten about it. This Swedish band would belong in the same section of your Spotify as Raveonettes, Jesus & Mary Chain, et al., i.e. they’re a shoegaze/dream-pop crew, one of the few genres I still get excited about: Usually noisy but pretty, it’s been around forever now; you always know what you’re going to get out of these records. The tradition continues here with this three-songer’s title track, a stunningly pretty, sunburst-y mid-tempo tune that has more ’80s-synthpop than any casual fan of Stranger Things could ever hope for. It tugs at the hormonal angst area of the brain with the best of them, and then comes “Mind On Fire,” a vision of Sigur Ros reborn as a radio-pop band. Great stuff. A+

Boris, Heavy Rocks (Relapse Records)

We last left this Japanese experimental metal/stoner trio way back in — wow, January of this year, with their count-em-27th album, W. That one included material that was on a Portishead/My Bloody Valentine tip, and like always there was nothing wrong there other than yet another return to a more ambient approach, but after 30 years in business and that many records, these guys are holding a golden ticket, able to do pretty much whatever they want. Lucky for their metalhead fans, what they usually want to do is spazz and rock out; which is what they do on this one, again. To me, their essence is that of a wind-up toy, sort of like those plastic teeth that would walk around chattering crazily until they ran out of steam: Like they’ve done plenty of times, this LP finds them wound all the way up and throwing cartoonish but thoroughly listenable wackiness at the listener, starting with opener “She Is Burning,” a cross between AC/DC and Hives if I’ve ever heard one, and I sure haven’t. Is it awesome? Yes, it is, and fun fact, this is the third time they’ve put out an album titled Heavy Rocks. No, I’m serious. A+

Playlist

• It’s over, baby, the summer’s over, I can’t even stand it, the next bunch of albums will be out this Friday, Sept, 2. Where did it go, the lovely summertime, with its beach trips and the occasional visit to the Goldenrod ice cream place in Manchvegas? That’s actually a nice place, for ice cream, I had a chocolate frappe there, and Petunia had some sort of vanilla caramel ice cream thing, you should try it while there’s still time, before it’s freezing and insane, you betcha. Oh sorry, yes, new albums, yes, let’s talk about them. Hopefully you remember when I was throwing all sorts of shade on dumb aughts-era band names, right? Well I really didn’t have room in that mini-rant to cover all the bands with “Club” in their names, like New Young Pony Club, which was a new-rave sort of band, and also Ireland’s Two Door Cinema Club, billed as a post-punk revival band, which, can we be real for just once, is basically the same thing as new-rave. In a way. Or maybe not. Oh whatever, Two Door Cinema Club releases their fifth album, Keep On Smiling, in just a few hours, and it’s all sort of auspicious, given that their last album, 2019’s False Alarm, actually made it to No. 11 on the U.S. indie charts on the strength of the Simple Minds-influenced single “Talk” and a few other tunes, and so I must take them seriously, and so away I go, off to listen to the new single, “Lucky.” Wow, it is totally ’80s, pretty much like A-ha and whatnot, music to roller skate through malls to and all that stuff. If you’re a Gen X-er, you’d probably love these guys.

• Yungblud, the pansexual British alt-pop singing dude who was the momentary boyfriend of Halsey, is up to three albums this week, as his new self-titled album is on the way! When it gets here, you’ll be able to thrill to the emo-rawk strains of “The Funeral,” in which our hero dabbles with My Chemical Romance sounds whilst playing around with the Adam Lambert aesthetic he had to steal just to get on the map in the first place. Cool goth jewelry bro!

• Sawayama Rina is a Japanese–British art-pop Lady Gaga-wannabe singer-songwriter and model who’s set to make her film acting debut in John Wick: Chapter 4, but then again, isn’t everybody? She’s obviously sort of a manufactured person, molded out of plastic, bearing random messages about — well, nothing really, something-something sexuality, and she did a cover of “Enter Sandman,” probably because she noticed that Miley Cyrus had done some heavy metal cover songs. In other words she’s basically a trite contrivance and you shouldn’t let your kids listen to any of her music, not that you’ll be able to stop them. Mind you, the above is all based on prejudices I held prior to listening to her new album, Hold The Girl, so why don’t I just go and check that out right now, that’d be great. So the video for the album’s title track starts off with a visual based on Walking Dead-style imagery, a random house in the flatland countryside that’s sort of randomly menacing, but then we get a shot of Rina sitting in one of the upstairs bedrooms and then she’s singing exactly like Gaga and you realize she’s destined for obscurity in the not-too-distant future because there’s already a Gaga, so why would anyone care about this album? Why do people even do stuff like this, honestly?

• Let’s wrap up the week with a cursory listen to the new album from arena-thrash band Megadeth, The Sick, The Dying… And The Dead! The tire-kicker advance tune “The Dogs of Chernobyl” sounds exactly like what you think it sounds like: Metallica with a really low budget but totally killer double-bass drums. (People still use “killer” as an adjective, right—?)

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).

Hiss Golden Messenger, Wise Eyes: Live at The Neptune, Seattle, WA, 2/25/22 (Merge Records)

This Durham, North Carolina, quintet has been a part of the Merge Records stable since 2014’s Lateness of Dancers, after releasing pretty much all of their first six LPs on bandleader MC Taylor’s own Heaven & Earth Magic imprint. Often compared to indie-folk/alt-country acts like Will Oldham, these guys are fedora-rock all the way, appealing to Deadheads probably more than anything (in fact a cover of “Bertha” ends this 17-song live excursion with an appropriately hooting and hollering crowd response). This performance is said to be one of the best from the band’s shows so far, and I’ll take their word for it for now, as they now have something called the “Hiss Mobile Recording Unit” and this collection is the first in a series of live releases recorded on it (I told you they sound like the Dead, right?). Merle Haggard’s “Mama Tried” gets a hayloft treatment here, but other than that it’s the band’s own stuff, including deep cuts and as little as possible from their last full-length, Quietly Blowing It, which got a lot of negative press for its redundancy. B

Matthew Fries, Lost Time (Xcappa Records)

This jazz pianist’s journey started in Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania, his birthplace as well as the city where his father served as a piano professor at Susquehanna University. His deck fiercely stacked, Fries earned his Master of Music degree at the University of Tennessee and eventually won 1997’s Great American Jazz Piano Competition in Jacksonville, Florida. His output is moving into who’s-still-keeping-track numbers at this point, which does help to explain the rather remarkable level of expertise and deep musicality Fries not only wrings out of himself in this tinkly-adamant-tinkly set of originals, but also his two sole cohorts, drummer Keith Hall and bassist John Hebert. The occasion here is the death of Fries’ mother and stepfather (“not from Covid” I’m told), but sad passages are few and far between on this one; mostly it’s colorful, cohesive, upbeat; technically whiz-band. The title track is the one Fries dedicated to his mom; it does stick out as a rather sad but very artful, determined paean. B

Playlist

• The next batch of CD releases drops this Friday, Aug. 26. Like every week, there will be albums that should be taken very seriously, albums that should be taken kind-of seriously and albums from bands like Muse, whose new album Will Of The People is on our docket today! Do you know anyone who loves this band and their sort-of-rock-but-come-on-that’s-not-really-rock music? Heh heh, the first time I heard them was way back in 2006, when they sent me their Black Holes and Revelations LP. Ah, memories, I had no idea what I was doing back then, like, I just wanted these famous bands to like me, if I recall correctly, so I was probably really nice to it when I reviewed it, even though its single, “Starlight,” was a ripoff of ABC’s hauntingly bad 1985 hit single “Be Near Me,” during the mercifully short era in music history when ABC and Spandau Ballet were trying to start a craze where yuppies danced waltzes to bad songs written in 4/4 (non-waltz) time. Music never really recovered from that catastrophe, obviously, and even worse, like we’re talking about, Muse never got the memo about never trying that nonsense. And so Muse went on to become a defective version of Killers, part rock band, part practical joke, and the only reason I’m talking about them at the moment is that there’s no way that they could still be that awful, it’s simply impossible. But now’s when we find that out for sure, as I’m at YouTube, about to listen to — well, I don’t know which song yet. The record company says “the album is not of a ‘singular genre,’” that the title track is a “glam rocker” and “Kill or Be Killed” is “industrial-tinged.” I suppose I’ll have to go with the latter, here we go. Yep, starts off kind of industrial-y, more like Korn-ish, but then it turns into a Raspberries-esque bubblegum-pop song from the 1970s or something, with whatsisname doing that dumb singing. Ha ha, what a weird and stupid band these guys are, seriously.

• One of the dumbest band names of the Aughts was Pianos Become the Teeth, the name of an alt-rock band from Baltimore. I hated those Aughts-era band names, because way too many times the bands were just as dumb, like Philadelphia band Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, South Dakota folk-pop crew We All Have Hooks For Hands and whatever others, sorry, I’m really trying not to think of them right now so I won’t get upset. The only good thing about those band names was that it let me know beforehand that the music was going to be really awful, and for that I sort of thank them. Aaaand we’re moving, one tune on their new album, Drift, is called “Buckley,” a rather cool jangle-drone thing redolent of, say, Jeff Buckley (oddly enough) meets chill-mode Smashing Pumpkins, I don’t mind it.

• Australian indie rock singer-songwriter Stella Donnelly released her first album, Beware of the Dogs, in 2019 and a lot of people really loved it, including famous music critic Robert Christgau, who praised it as a “musical encyclopedia of [male jerks].” That’s all well and good, but her new full-length Flood will street on Friday, and the title track is like Lomelda but with a lot more “what me worry” charm and listenability.

• Finally let’s look at All Of Us Flames, the sixth collection of tunes from Ezra Furman, who came out as a transgender woman in late April 2021. The latest single is “Lilac And Black,” a droopy, woozy alt-ballad. No tour stops in our area from what I can see aside from Fete Music Hall in Providence, Rhode Island, on Sept. 19.

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).

Sampa The Great, As Above So Below (Loma Vista Recordings)

Commercial African music isn’t strictly relegated to Afrobeat, a fact that this Zambia-born, Botswana-raised rapper-singer wants to bring to light through this debut album. This is a really rangy record, running a full gamut of feel, from torch to Lil Kim badassness and far beyond. There’s plenty of tourist-trap chill on board, for instance, such as when she tries Sade on for size in the lush, lazy singalong-powered “Never Forget,” but this isn’t yacht-rock joint by a long shot: Breakout track “Bona” is inspired by kwaito and amapiano, dance music styles Sampa grew up with in Botswana, but the vibe itself is pure club, hearing-test bloops trying to pop your woofers like bubble-wrap, doong-ing in rhythm as our heroine raps along at scat speed in a really impressive display of bravado: She owns the place, is the takeaway. That’s fine by me, for what it’s worth, Sampa’s ’tude is absolutely righteous. A+

The Sons of Adam, Saturday’s Sons: The Complete Recordings 1964-1966 (High Moon Records)

Big package here celebrating the first-ever release of this Los Angeles garage-pop quartet’s complete collection of recordings, isn’t that cool. Oh, you’re wondering who these guys are/were? Well, obviously they were around during the first wave of British rock, when the Beatles, Stones and Who first took over the planet. But Sons Of Adam were working out of L.A., as stated above, led by guitarist Randy Holden (touted as one of the era’s great unsung guitar heroes, he eventually wound up with Blue Cheer, considered by most rock historians to be the fathers of heavy metal). “Everybody Needs Someone To Love” is really fun, think an alternate-universe collaboration between the Stones and Jet, and yeah, the guitar sounds fantastic for its time. “Mr. Sun” has a definite Black Crowes feel to it, brandishing another four-chord guitar riff that’s a bit more advanced than the average Kinks joint, much like everything else on board. A true historical artifact, great stuff. A+

Playlist

• Yowza, we’ve actually got a pretty impressive lineup of releases coming out this Friday, Aug. 19, or at least releases from bands and whatnots that people have actually heard of, for a change. I mean, don’t think I’m unaware that some of y’all are all like, “I’ve never heard of this band, why does he write about them” about some of the acts covered in this space, because after all, some of you people actually just walk up to me and say it. But see, you have to take into consideration that we hit the tipping point of too many new bands putting out records somewhere in the late ’90s, probably, and now there are definitely way too many bands and albums and snobby vinyl versions and box sets coming out all the time. Every week it’s a million new albums from bands you and I have never heard of, mostly bands that sound like other bands, and I have to investigate them, because that’s what this award-winning column is for, after all, isn’t it? I know, it can be annoying, reading about bands you’ve never heard of, but I think we have a special thing going, you and I, don’t you? Here, I’ll even be nice this week and talk first about an album from British synthpop that all you Aughts kids will know about, unless of course the only things you were just listening to were Lil Kim or Evanescence. Yes, I’m of course speaking about British synthpop group Hot Chip, whose new LP, Freakout/Release, is on its way! Of course, the band started out as a sloppy, barely listenable indie-tronica mess, which was what they still were when I first had the misfortune of encountering them in 2008, upon the release of Made In The Dark, an album that was inspired by Prince’s Sign O’ The Times LP and the Beatles’ “White Album” or at least that what they said. MITD was probably the most difficult review I’ve ever written, because it was considered genius by most hipsters, but I really hated it and struggled to find kind things to say about it so that I wouldn’t look like a rock ’n’ roll Luddite. In the end I was vindicated, as most hipster writers finally admitted it was quite noticeably flawed, but anyway, that brings us to now, and Freakout/Release, with its single, “Down,” a stompy, funky-ish number that’s a lot more like Prince than any of that earlier trash I had to listen to. It’s got an ’80s vibe, just like everything else today, but it’s not bad, so let’s just leave it at that.

• Panic! At the Disco is of course one of the world’s top emo bands, basically a solo venture for Utah-bred singer Brendon Urie. If you ask me, he won’t rest until he’s all the members of My Chemical Romance in one body, and, like Hot Chip, all his old music is pretty dumb, but he’s got a new one coming out right now, an album called Viva Las Vengeance. The title track is straining so hard to be a Killers song that I feel obliged to be nice to it, so here it is: It’s acceptable.

• Here we go, California indie-folk band The Mountain Goats are cool, I already said so before these guys got really big. Their new album Bleed Out includes the single “Training Montage,” a classic example of their ability not to suck, it’s half hayloft-indie and half midtempo rockout, quite decent.

• We’ll wrap up this week with Heartmind, the latest from rather innovative indie-mishmash songwriter Cass McCombs. “Unproud Warrior,” the single, is boozy blues/country-drone a la Kevin Morby at Chris Isaak speed. It’s got enough going on layer-wise that it’s not a complete waste.

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).

Jackboy, Majorly Independent (1804 Records)

I do make a constant attempt to cover all musical genres in this space, and yeah, it’s made me a jack of all trades and master of — OK, not all that many, especially indie hip-hop records that sound like I’ve heard them before, a ton of times, and break no new ground. Like this one, which does, for its part, come with receipts: JackBoy — real name Pierre Delince — spent the first six years of his life in Haiti, then wound up in Florida, where he became part of Sniper Gang with Kodak Black, with whom he has (of course) beef nowadays. I won’t get into why I’m convinced this guy’s “fame” is largely generated by a bot swarm, nor will I bother rattling off a list of very similar-sounding artists, since you know the drill by now: smack talk and savings account fables delivered via “clipped cadences and pained operatics,” as one rap wiki observed (in a review snippet that could describe, well, nearly every rapper ever), while the beats explore basic trap, polite neo-crunk and whatnot, nothing too crazy. You see, folks, albums like this don’t want actual music reviews, they want sets of biographical drama bullets on the artist. My DMs and PMs are wide open if you disagree, but I can’t imagine anyone would. As is, sure, it’s tight and whatnot. And absolutely disposable. C+

Rusty Santos, High Reality (Lo Recordings)

This Los Angeles-based producer/musician has worked with tons of bands and artists, usually in the space occupied by purveyors of wetwork tuneage of pretty high quality: Chui Wann, Gang Gang Dance, Animal Collective (since you likely have no idea what those acts sound like, just think pretty layers, electronically tweaked/pinched vocal lines, things like that in general). By my count, High Reality is Santos’s sixth solo album, his forte a guitar/vocal thing with varying levels of roughness on the sample side. Opener “Dream In Stereo” is throwback Beck, for sure; it starts with a really woozy, wobbly sample that, it turns out, is a template for most of the songs that are aboard this thing. It’s kind of dated in that regard; in the press materials for this one he yammers about learning all kinds of stuff, which would be natural, given the collaborations in which he’s figured, but after many minutes of wobbling and slow-trilling and whatnot it feels like the work of a one-trick pony who should probably stick to remixing and things like that. B-

Playlist

• Aug. 12 is here, homies, here it comes, we may as well just call it September, fun-time’s over. But since the 12th is a Friday, there will at least be some new albums, if that’s any consolation (I know, I know), so let’s pull up the barnacle-covered lobster trap, toss the bewildered-looking starfish back in the water and see what albums wandered into my crafty little device for capturing albums before they can swim away and not have to face my mightily eloquent blah blah blah. We may as well start with movie soundtrack dude Danny Elfman, whose new album, Bigger Messier, consists of a bunch of remixes from his 2021 artist album, Big Mess. Right, so just to clear up one of the questions that always comes up about Danny Elfman: He is the uncle of actor Bodhi Elfman, who is married to actress Jenna Elfman, so they’re not siblings or whatever, he’s just — you know, whatever an uncle-in-law is called. Now, you also may not know that Elfman was in a really awful band called Oingo Boingo in the ’80s. They were like Devo but basically 200 percent less funny, but one interesting thing is that there’s been a lot of confusion around one particular actor who appeared in Oingo Bongo’s video for their really terrible single “Little Girls”: Tons of young people are clogging internet boards proclaiming that they’re convinced that the actor is indeed Peter Dinklage from Game Of Thrones. However, some smarty-pants on LinusTechTips.com set the entire internet straight in one post, so the question will never be posed again, ever, by anyone, because the internet is a perfect, self-maintained mechanism. To wit: “Peter Dinklage was 12 when that song was released, so it’s very unlikely that the person with a mustache who looks nothing like Peter Dinklage is him.” So there’s that; and remember, Elfman’s pretty dumb-looking; he played the parts of all the Oompa Loompas in the Willy Wonka movie that starred Johnny Depp, and, cutting to now, I wasn’t that impressed with anything I heard from the Big Mess album, like, it kind of wanted to be an edgy rock album but wasn’t interesting; however, the Squarepusher remix of “We Belong” turns the original tune, a morose, funereal droner, into a dubstep tour de force. It’s fine, but has nothing to do with the original. Let’s just leave that here.

• Yikes, look, folks, it’s Japanese stoner/psychedelic-metal masters Boris, with their new album Heavy Rocks 2022; this is probably awesome! The trio usually gets lumped in with Seattle’s plodding drone-meisters Sunn(((O))), mostly because they collaborated on a (rather unnecessary) record; you should ignore any such nonsense and go check them out if you’re into Jack White’s retro-hard-rock and that kind of thing. But wait, maybe I spoke too soon, because I haven’t even listened to the new advance tune “She Is Burning,” so for all I know they’re horrible now, let’s go check it out. OK, forget it, this is wicked cool, hyper-thrash hard-rock with dueling guitar riffs, why aren’t these guys 100 times bigger than they are now?

• Oh, how adorable, San Francisco borderline punk outfit OC’s have changed the spelling of their band name to Osees, just to make sure their fans won’t be able to find their new album, A Foul Form, on the internet (again). Isn’t that special? Too bad, because the title track is hardcore no-wave, thrashy, really bad-ass, love it.

• We’ll wrap it up with 1980s-famous synthpop duo Erasure, whose new LP, Day-Glo (Based On A True Story) is broken up into “chapters.” The tune “Chapter 2” is krautrock-ish roller-rink techno that immediately made me think of aughts-era Haujobb. I can deal 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).