Category: Albums

Ghostkeeper, Multidimensional Culture (Victory Pool Records)

One usually doesn’t think of indigenous people as dancing jigs and playing fiddles, but the Métis people — Canadians with a mixed heritage of indigenous and European ancestry — are big on that. The husband-wife team of Ghostkeeper aims to put this culture on the map by infusing Métis music with ’70s freak-folk, proto-punk and various forms of psychedelica (this isn’t a case of cultural appropriation, if that’s any concern; they originally met in the Paddle Prairie Métis Settlement in Alberta). So, then, the album title is accurate in its way, but the music backs up the gauntlet that’s implicitly thrown. You can all but see the groovy 1960s liquid-light effects morphing into non-shapes behind opener “Doo Wop” as singer Shane rants Nick Cave-ish through a bullhorn, and it’s there that you quickly realize that these kids aren’t sheltered know-nothings; Trent Reznor would be proud of them, put it that way. As the record goes on, it’s impossible not to think of both Jerry Lee Lewis (“Finn”), screwy Aughts-indie (“Grassy Plains”) and even shoegaze (“Summer Child”). Well worth investigating. A

Darren McClure, Slow Up Speed Down (Audiobulb Records)

A soundscaper from Northern Ireland who now lives in Matsumoto, Japan, McClure uses found sounds (as in yeah, he’ll literally go outside and record stuff, or capture oddball digital bleeps and such from wherever, all toward an effort to fill out his compositions). His main intent, so I’m informed, is to “create music to zone out to and zone into, a balance of widescreen drones and more minimal, abstract ambience.” Out of that little word salad I’d say there’s some truth to it, but one really has to travel far through this record to find anything I’d call music. And that’s OK; no harm, no foul; McClure’s an experimentalist after all, and that’s what these tracks are. The title track, for instance, is 12 minutes of what I’d call Neptunian swamp vibe; there are War Of The Worlds-style alien hisses and such peeking out of a gently droning synth (I think) sample. This time out, he aims for slowness and immersion, incidental patterns that bespeak eternity without much noisy fuss. It’s hypnotic enough, sure. B

Playlist

• Happy Upcoming Fourth Of July, everyone. Here I am to give you some Christmas gift-giving ideas, because brand new albums will “hit the streets” on July 1! I’m sure all the 8-year-olds will be glad to hear that one of the new releases is from Imagine Dragons, the false metal band that would be Kiss if they weren’t awful. This glorified joke band will have a two-pronged assault of music on Friday, because Mercury: Act 2, which continues the aimlessness the band tabled in Mercury: Act 1, will street on the July 1, along with an 18-track double album comprising both Mercury “Acts,” so I hope you’ve been saving your allowance or your paper route money if you want to buy these new rock ’n’ roll records from this stupid band, because it’s going to be expensive. The first sampler tune I ran into in my halfhearted search for something to review was “Darkness,” which sounds more like a Conor Oberst campfire-indie sing-along than the sort of lightweight hard-rock piffle that put these guys on the map, but what makes this tune particularly bad is the high-pitched vocal that rounds out the hook part. It’s a joke, basically, one that I don’t find very amusing. Aside, has anyone over the age of 10 ever bought one of these guys’ albums?

• Burna Boy is Damini Ebunoluwa Ogulu, a Nigerian-born Afrobeat/dancehall guy, whose sixth album, Love Damani, is on the way! Here’s your fun trivia factoid regarding this super cool dude: In 2020, his album Twice as Tall was nominated for Best World Music Album at the 63rd Annual Grammy Awards, making him the first Nigerian with back-to-back nominations at the Grammys. His trip has been based in legitimacy from birth, being that his grandfather once managed Afrobeat superstar Fela Kuti, not that that should matter all that much, but it kind of does, sorry. Whatever, if you’ve ever liked Elephant Man or anything even close to that, you really need to check out the first single from this album, “Last Last,” because it’s pretty amazing, just take my word for it.

• Oh no, I’m writing this on a Tuesday, which means a new Guided by Voices album is coming out! This month’s eyeroll-inducing self-indulgence from pathologically prolific songwriter Robert Pollard is yet another full-length album, Tremblers And Goggles By Rank. My having to discuss a new GBV album really has become sort of a meme found only in this paper, and the only reason I’m going to bother listening to “Unproductive Funk,” the single from this new album, is that I adhere to the tenets of due diligence and chronicing the growth of rock ’n’ roll artists who’ve given so much to society, all of which actually means “I’m sure that this song will be as limp and uneventful as the last 500 Guided By Voices songs, but that wouldn’t be nice for me to say, so let’s get this over with already.” I assume that with a title like “Unproductive Funk,” there will be some funk in the recipe, but it’ll be super-lame. OK, nope, I’m listening to it now, and it’s basically like a cross between Gang Of Four (the “funk” part, I’m assuming) and Starz (the ’70s-throwback “unproductive” part). There was no good reason Pollard made this record, but when did that ever stop him?

• In closing, let’s talk about Electrified Brain, the new album from Virginia-based crossover-thrash band Municipal Waste! I’ll listen to the title track so you don’t have to, because I care. Huh, it’s pretty much like early Slayer, some of you might actually like it, who knows. The end.

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).

Chastity Brown, Sing to the Walls (Red House Records)

The long and short of this album is that it’s like Adele but with approximately 564 times more soul. Like everyone else’s, Brown’s world slowed to a crawl when Covid hit, and as a bonus she got to watch the horror of the Minneapolis riots unfold from her place in the city (we probably all have a story or two from those days, don’t we, when we were all still trying to get an understanding of exactly what Covid is, and suddenly there’d be something afoot right on our doorstep that scared us silly?). As a Black woman, she’s got plenty of anger to burn from those days (and these days, for that matter), but the songs here are Americana-steeped easy listening neo-soul for the most part, slow pensive beats combining with seriously good songwriting to make for a really comforting, Roberta Flack-ish vibe. Nothing wrong with this record from my seat; I’d recommend it for fans of both Adele and Amy Winehouse. A+

Todd Marcus Orchestra, In the Valley (Stricker Street Records)

Ack, my envy’s really acting up thanks to this one. I started listening to this, the nine-piece jazz group’s first album since 2015’s Blues For Tahrir, without having first read the blab sheet and was tooling around with something else I had to do, so the goodly amount of dissonance had me grimacing a little; if you’ve read this column for basically any amount of time, you’re aware that I prefer my jazz the way I like my coffee, bold but not too obtrusive. Turns out, though, that clarinetist/bandleader Marcus is a frequent visitor to Egypt, the one place I’ve always wanted to see and probably never will now that Covid’s all but officially endemic. Anyway, Marcus’ dad is Egyptian, and like I said, he’s been there a lot, darn him, and the previous album was largely inspired by the 2011 Arab Spring movement, whereas this one focuses more on the history and nuances of the country. Hence you’ll hear quite a few turns that sound cobra-charmer-ish (the closing title track especially), but don’t turn up your nose yet; there’s plenty of nicely written straightforwardness in the form of modern jazz, post-bop, etc. A niche product that’ll enchant certain ears, obviously. A

Playlist

• This Friday, June 24, is the next date for new CD releases, and wow, look at this, folks, it’s Closure/Continuation, the new album from British prog-rock band Porcupine Tree! It’s funny this came up now; a few weeks ago I was on the phone with an old bandmate of mine, and he said he totally loves this band and was planning to drop $400 to see them play someplace, I forget where. If you’re interested, I myself wouldn’t pay $400 to see any band, ever, unless there was a working time machine involved and I could see Al Jolson play at some club around 1931 or so, but my homie loves Porcupine Tree so much that he’s going to pay $400 and he’s going to this show by himself because no one else would do something that crazy. But to each his own, and just to reassure myself that I wasn’t a fool for not spending $400 to see these guys, I looked into their oeuvre on YouTube, and sure enough, their big-ish 2009 single, “Time Flies,” is indeed very cool, providing instant proof, at least to me, that the dearly departed Minus The Bear stole some ideas from them. Anyhow, this band has been around since 1987; they broke up for 10 years between 2010 and 2021, so this is a reunion album of sorts that features all the original members except for bassist Colin Edward. The most recent single at this writing is “Of The New Day,” a chill song with a decidedly mature edge reminiscent of Disco Biscuits but without the goofy funk samples. To be honest it mostly reminds me of the local band Vital Might, not that you’ve heard of them, or Disco Biscuits either, for that matter. Little bit of Pink Floyd going on with this band, before I forget to mention it.

• Well, here’s a blast from the past; it’s surf-rocker Jack Johnson, with his eighth LP, Meet The Moonlight, his first since 2017’s All the Light Above It Too. Johnson’s a pretty cool guy as guys come, always pretty happy (who wouldn’t be if they spent a lot of time surfing in Hawaii and elsewhere?), known to support and donate to such causes as Amnesty International, things like that; his most popular single was 2010’s “You And Your Heart,” a likable-enough unplugged Bonnaroo-begging campfire-indie sing-along that you’ve surely heard at one time or another. As for the new record, the leadoff single is the title track, a — spoiler alert — mellow surf-folk tune that’s a little bit Red Hot Chili Peppers and a little bit Beck, nothing groundbreaking but nothing to sneeze at either.

• Huh, look at this, my little 4chan trolls, it’s a new album from punkish Russian chick-rocker Regina Spektor, called Home Before And After! I’m sure there’ll be something fun on here; remember when she did the theme song to Orange Is The New Black, and it was kind of awesome? I mean I’m sure I’ll like the new single, “Becoming All Alone,” let’s go see. OK, it’s a poppy ballad-ish tune that’s reminiscent of 1970s radio-pop lady Maria Muldaur. Nice and catchy, this, but it’s not punky, so forget everything I said in the first part of this blurb.

• We’ll wrap this week up with Canadian “post-hardcore” crazies Alexisonfire, whose new LP, Otherness, will be here before you can say, “I sure hope this doesn’t sound like Good Charlotte, please don’t be another band that sounds like Good Charlotte.” OK, it doesn’t, it really is some sort of attempt to make “post-hardcore” music if you ask me, like it’s very yell-y but it’s also kind of doom-metalish. It’s neat, like if Imagine Dragons were an actual rock ’n’ roll band with “Anarchy” T-shirts and stuff instead of, well, whatever you’d call Imagine Dragons

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).

Ironflame, Where Madness Dwells (High Roller Records)

As you may have noticed, I’ve ignored all the bleating from our Baby Iron Maiden Band desk for months now, but my luck ran out today when this one refused to be denied. It’s the fourth full-length from the straight-up project led by Ohio’s Andrew D’Cagna, who, as you probably don’t know, is still involved with the bands Brimstone Coven and Icarus Witch (in case you thought he was some boring old normie, he says he’s got a black metal thing going at the moment as well). D’Cagna apparently liked Maiden’s Number Of The Beast album a lot, as we hear on “Everlasting Fire,” which is too much like that aforementioned LP’s title track to chalk it up to coincidence. But wait, he loves him some late-’80s power metal too, as the Savatage-ish “Under The Spell” attests; that one’s a more energetic headbanger. It goes on uneventfully from there (trust me when I say I looked for something that proved he really did want to add some “fun” parts), a dreary yowling metal moaner played in a minor key, etc., etc. B-

John Carpenter, Firestarter Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (Sacred Bones Records)

Boy, this has become a tradition in this space, hasn’t it, another soundtrack from horror filmmaker Carpenter, who redefined the meaning of “bad movie soundtracks” with the eternally dated-sounding music he contributed to such 80s classics as Halloween and The Fog. But I’ll admit, this has more going for it than the last few Carpenter-backgrounding records we talked about (and if you can remember what those were, I congratulate you for being blessed with a memory like Krazy glue). Don’t get me wrong, there’s still stupid stuff here, like the Rockman-plugged guitar on ther title theme, which is right out of “Danger Zone” from the original Top Gun’s soundtrack, but this time it looks as if Carpenter really wanted to have the creeps set in. There are Omen-like monk-choir things but they’re not at all overdone, the melodies actually have some heft, and, best of all, there’s a welcome paucity of that old Casio keyboard he used to love. I haven’t seen the movie and don’t plan to, but at least I can spoil that the soundtrack is fine. A

Playlist

• Yikes, folks, we’re staring down the barrel of June 17, which, like every Friday, is a perfect Friday for new releases, hopefully good ones! So let’s start with British art-punk/math-rock/indie-rock trio Foals and their seventh album, Life is Yours, just to get it out of the way, because there’s nothing I look forward to messing up each week more than trying to grok the intentions of a band that wants to fall under every category except schottisches played on kazoo and trumpet. No, I’m kidding, for all I know I’ll like this record as much as I have the last few Al Jolson albums. By the by, 1930s Jolson records are really all I’ve really listened to in the car for the last two weeks. When he messes with the lyrics of “Is It True What They Say About Dixie” and changes it to “Is it true what they say about Swanee,” it lights up my heart, reminding me that our species was in fact pretty neat at one short point in history, unlike now. Right. OK, what was I talking about again, oh, yes, Foals. OK, OK, right, these guys, the ones who did “Mountain At My Gates.” That was actually a really good song, like, if you heard it at a sports bar, you’d know it wasn’t the typical sleepy rawk fare you’d hear in such a place; in fact there’s a good chance you’d kind of bob your head along to it while you chew your cheeseburger. What does this mean? It means the hipster press probably didn’t like it, because it’s an actual good song, you know how this goes by now. Right, where were we, OK, the new single “2am.” I see, they’re trying to revive the Black Eyed Peas or LMFAO, whatever, because the beat is bloopy and crunchy, it’s a cross between The Weeknd and some tedious Aughts indie band like Shins or something. People will like this a lot but I really don’t. And yes, I’m being that difficult on purpose, I’m finally admitting it to the world right here, today.

• Dum de dum, how bad will it get this week, gang, how freaking bad could it possibly — wait, what do we have here, it’s Ugly Season, the new album from indie-popper Perfume Genius, real-named Michael Hadreas, whose most popular tune so far has been 2020’s “On The Floor,” a Wham!-style bump-and-grind disco thing. The new album features songs Hadreas wrote for “The Sun Still Burns Here,” an immersive dance project with choreographer Kate Wallich, a show that played in a few American cities in 2019. One of those songs, “Eye In The Wall,” is an unnerving, understated techno thing with wub-wub bits and other weird things. It’s OK.

• Brooklyn, N.Y.-based rapper/singer/actor Joey Bada$$ has done it all: gotten arrested for breaking some poor security guard’s nose; started a really stupid and apparently never-ending Twitter beef with Troy Ave, and landed a role in a cable TV series, Power Book III: Raising Kanan on the Starz network. His new LP, 2000, is coming out imminently and will feature a bunch of songs that are only available in snippet form at this writing, stuff that was inspired by Tupac and all Bada$$’s other rather conventional influences, including an R&B tune that’s chill and sexy enough.

• We’ll wrap up this week with Farm To Table, the second album from indie-rock/jazz-rap dude Bartees Strange, who was born in Britain and forced to grow up in Mustang, Oklahoma, where the population is about 85 percent white, which made for a decidedly miserable experience for Strange, who’s Black. His debut LP, Live Forever, received universal acclaim for its odd mix of influences, which appear again here in the gorgeous new single “Heavy Heart,” a rap-decorated mixture of Hootie and The Blowfish and Coldplay. You should really give this a listen, folks.

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).

Keith Hall, Made In Kalamazoo (Trios And Duos) (Zoom Out Records)

Sparsity, thy name is Made In Kalamazoo, and it has my endorsement for a few reasons. First, it’s nice that a jazz micro-combo led by a drummer starts its debut LP with an extended drum clinic; paradiddles and all sorts of other tricks simply rain from the speakers as something of a warm-up for the rest of what you’ll hear. Second, it’s a cozy, rather endearing statement of homecoming on Hall’s part; he played the New York jazz scene for nearly 10 years before coming back to his Michigan home base, which leads to a third positive here: Sax player Andrew Rathbun is outstanding, as is bassist Robert Hurst III. The recording is clear and pristine, but of course it has to be; this is as analog and stripped down as it gets, and these guys make great hay out of it. “Kzoo Brew” offers an extended bass/drums exercise that has a wonderful throwback feel, and the post-bop found in such pieces as “Douglass King Obama” remind me of Sonny Rollins’s Prestige Records-era output. Intimate and terrifically done. A+

Ianai, Sunir (Svart Records)

You know, every once in a while, we music journos trip over something that’s truly magical and have to chalk it up to fate, or the power of probability. This is one of those ultra-rare happenstances, an astonishing world music-tinged mega-release that will certainly please anyone who likes electronic New Age music, Enya more specifically. The whole thing is amazingly beautiful, evoking wind-swept deserts where a sexless mirage person is beckoning from atop a dune, singing and humming of hope and all that happy stuff. Influences include the native music of Scandinavia, Africa, Asia, Middle East and South America. Not much is known in the wider public about the performers but they’re apparently well-known throughout the music community, as he receives help from members of such bands as Massive Attack, Sisters of Mer-cy and Souvenir Season. Absolutely essential if New Age/yoga class chill is your thing. A+

Playlist

• Friday, June 10, will be the latest in an endless string of all-purpose summertime CD release Fridays, when albums come at us hot and heavy and, on very rare occasions, some are from actual artists who offer the world art rather than irritating nonsense. Speaking of that, have you ever noticed that it’s only country music stars who get married to each other and then get divorced for our entertainment? Just today I was reading a news story about Miranda Lambert dealing with her divorce from glorified used car salesman Blake Shelton last year or whenever it was, and it helped her write new songs for her new album, Palomino, which we talked about in this space a little while back. There are a bunch of those sad divorce stories in the country music world, but I’d like to see some regular non-country stars get married for the heck of it, like Eminem tyin’ the knot with Celine Dion, you know? Marriage stuff makes for great gossip in the country world, but you know who’s having none of that? Carrie Underwood, who’s still married to pro hockey player Mike Fisher! The moral is that love does last, people, even if you’re rich and constantly happy (as long as the nannies show up for work every day). Anyhow, that’s about all the wisdom I can impart on that subject, except to say that Underwood has a new album, Denim & Rhinestones, coming out on June 10, and it will feature a title track that’s pretty good if you like slightly Auto-Tuned female pop vocals and old Mr. Mister beats from 1985. A pleasant enough listen, not that there’s any real point to it.

• Vance Joy is an Australian indie-pop heartthrob whose 2018 full-length Nation Of Two was summarily dismissed by a Guardian writer as “an album of songs about relationships written, seemingly, from the perspective of someone who has learned about them from watching the romcoms Matthew McConaughey was starring in during his dark ages.” It’s hard for me to top that level of snark at the moment, only because I don’t really care about tuneage that’s only going to make it into the overhead speakers at Red Lobster and no farther than that, but I do have to deal with Joy’s new LP, In Our Own Sweet Time, so let’s get this out of the way before I just bag it and write about someone else. OK, so the single “Clarity” is the same sort of dishwasher-safe gruel described above, sounding more or less like Zero 7’s Jose Gonzalez trying to write a particularly pointless Ben Kweller song. There’s a Spanish horn part here that makes it almost bearable, and before that we have a rather animated rockout bit, so maybe it’ll be used as dance floor fodder in virtual bars when Mark Zuckerberg turns Facebook into “the Meta experience,” i.e. a glorified version of Second Life that will assuredly make social media more unbearable than it ever was.

• Uh-oh, guys, take cover, it’s a new album from Billy Howerdel, called What Normal Was. No, seriously, take cover, because this could be dangerously rockin’, as Howerdel is the guitarist from crazily overrated alt-rock outfit A Perfect Circle, the side project of Riff Raff look-alike Maynard James Keenan, of Tool! Yikes, let’s tread carefully, because this might be so awesome I’ll be zapped into dust. OK, I’m going in, guys. Right, the single, “Poison Flowers,” is a more goth version of any random Nine Inch Nails sort-of-ballad, which is fitting, because Howerdel’s band logo rips off Nine Inch Nails’. Awkward. Let’s move along.

• Lastly and leastly, it’s Cali pop-punk zeroes Joyce Manor, with their sixth album, 40 oz. to Fresno! The single, “Gotta Let It Go,” is such a Weezer ripoff that they should just change their band name to Wish We Were Weezer. Good lord, holy crow.

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).

Nicki Bluhm, Avondale Drive (Compass Records)

Today I learned that even Idris Elba had to get his start somewhere, because I’m like 100 percent sure he’s the bartender in the video for Tracy Chapman’s 1995 hit “Give Me One Reason.” I was looking for RIYL-type comparisons for the subject at hand, the latest LP from a blues-soul lady who’s from Nashville by way of San Francisco of all places, and Chapman definitely is a similar artist, so, voila. So is Linda Ronstadt, while I’m at it, not that anyone will ever have Ronstadt’s unmatchable voice, but Bluhn does try in her way. Avondale Drive is Bluhm’s second album, a milestone that usually comes with a pocketful of bad luck, but in this case it’s steady-as-she-goes, especially for listeners who are looking for a more interesting singer than Sheryl Crow (email me for the full 100-page list). Her breezy, mildly boozy and catchy little tunes address such subjects as middle-aged dating (“Love to Spare”) and failed marriage (the waltz-timed “Juniper Woodsmoke”). Bonnie Raitt fans would probably be into this also. A

Kisskadee, Black Hole Era (Anxiety Blanket Records)

Hope Sandoval on fen-phen pretty much captures what this stuff is, a dreamy, quirky but fairly artistic LP from the Los Angeles multi-instrumentalist. This album is said to be redolent of a “maximalist” approach, which makes literally no sense to me; when she’s lilting in her helium-wombat voice whilst playing bare-bones acoustic guitar underneath, it’s more like some sort of lost soundtrack to a made-on-the-cheap independent film or a particularly disjointed scene from Euphoria, not that there’s anything inherently wrong with that, but come on, that’s minimalist, I don’t care how long such shibboleths are supposed to live these days. So it’s a coming-of-age record, then, obviously aimed at Zoomers who are beginning to realize they won’t be able to play Elden Ring as their full-time job, but that terrible news is delivered by this lady as gently as possible, despite its fetish for bizarre time signatures. It’s OK. A

Playlist

• Can you believe it, we’re basically into summer, folks, as the next general-release date for all the hot new rock ’n’ roll record albums is Friday, June 3. Bring on the beach, baby, I am 110 percent ready, and let’s just get right into it with Auto-Tuned cultural appropriator Post Malone, whose latest full-length, Twelve Carat Toothache, is shipping right now! OK, back up a few syllables, it’s not cool to accuse “Post” of cultural appropriation, just because he sounds like some sort of trap-hop also-ran or because rapper Lil B said he expects ole Posty to go full-on country music in a few years (which is probably going to happen for sure, if, as one Redditor put it, he doesn’t have to quit the rap game because he can barely even sing anymore), I mean let’s just be nice. But whatever, at least the guy is an expert on U.S. political history, like hey, man, he has a tattoo of U.S. president John F. Kennedy on his arm, which he got because Kennedy was “the only President to speak out against the crazy corruption stuff that’s going on in our government nowadays,” a non sequitur that totally ignores Dwight Eisenhower’s warning about the military industrial complex (that really happened, homies, look it up!). But OK, fine, he’s a rock star, not some pundit who’s going to go on Meet The Press pushing a book about Millard Fillmore, so let’s pretend he isn’t some sort of disposable bubblegum-rap charlatan and discuss his new single “Red Line.” It’s basically “Rockstar” wearing a glued-on beard and flirting with reggaeton (hey, that stuff still sells, I’m telling you!), all in all another step toward his launching a Vegas act in 2035 or whenever he gets tired of tatting himself silly.

• Since 1996, Athens, Georgia, country-rock band Drive-By Truckers has been wild about touring to any venue that’ll have them, including shows right here in New Hampshire at Meadowbrook in Gilford, New Hampshire (2018) and Club Casino in Hampton (2014). The band peaked in 2014 with their English Oceans album, which is generally considered a southern rock record that was marred only by some boring songwriting that was Patterson Hood’s fault. But we’re all friends here, right, so let’s have a look at their upcoming 14th LP, Welcome 2 Club XIII, and see if the new single will do well enough to allow these guys to just sit and chill and count their royalty checks instead of having to visit every mid-sized rock club from here to Copenhagen once again. Yeah, about that, the title track is kind of a joke song, like Barenaked Ladies meets Neil Young, the sort of bar-band oatmeal that’s been irrelevant since 1984 or whatnot. Have fun at the Ace of Spades bar in Sacramento again, guys!

• First there was KISS, the band that dressed up like sort-of-monsters, and then came Richmond, Virginia’s GWAR, a.k.a. “KISS For Idiots,” who dress up like actual monsters to detract from their mediocre metal nonsense! Their 15th album, The New Dark Ages, is only their second since the death of their singer “Oderus Urungus,” and it includes a tune called — well, never mind, I can’t repeat the title here, but it has the word “Liar” in it. It sounds like Rob Zombie around the time he had completely run out of ideas (I know, I know). Hey, did you know this band has its own brand of barbecue sauce? It’s true, and I’ll bet it’s totally awesome!

• We’ll end this week’s rundown with Outta Sight, the new LP from Canadian southern/blues rock band The Sheepdogs! Their trip aims to “land in the sweet spot in between Led Zeppelin and Crosby Stills & Nash,” but the single, “Find The Truth,” is more like a B-Side from 38 Special. Ah, you have no idea who that is, that’s OK, never mind.

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).

Ghostkeeper, Multidimensional Culture (Victory Pool Records)

I suppose I wasn’t prepared for how much a band said to combine “elements of ‘60s girl-group melodies, country music, ‘90s indie rock, African pop, and traditional Aboriginal pow wow music” would come off like the soundtrack band from a late 1970s no-budget hippie-horror film, but there it is. I mean, I like this record overall (which means nothing, really; it won’t be getting into my summer mix CD rotation, to be sure); it’s probably good for one’s soul to hear a dude singer pontificating over a retro soul beat that’s decorated in Mellotron keyboards right out of Donovan during his peak acid-trip era. This quartet is from Calgary, Canada, but it’s not like anything you might be imagining; in fact the scene there does seem to be heavy into psychedelica and such. To cut to the chase, this is like Woodstock vibe retrofitted for Generation iPhone. It’s not annoying at all, which is all that’s needed in this zeitgeist as far as I’m concerned. A

Devil Master, Ecstasies Of Never Ending Night (Relapse Records)

By now you know how much I enjoy bragging about the endless promo releases that land on this desk. It doesn’t take much to get my full attention (and while I’m at it, if you’re in a local band that has an official release and wants a review in this space, really, send a message to my Facebook, it’s the only reliable method), but, as you’ve seen, I do tend to go for albums that have some sort of horror angle, like this one. That said, normally I ignore albums that are just schlocky, but in this case the title and concept (real devil worship) just hit me with a Stupid Stick, and here we are. The title track opens up this one with ’60s surf guitar more or less, and then comes the Raging Speedhorn-style doom-thrashing and all the other stuff that’s made Relapse my by-far-favorite indie metal label. The balance forward is prototypical death metal with an early Mastodon edge, with un-ironic titles like “Golgotha’s Cruel Song.” Beelzebub music done right. A

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).