Category: Albums

Neuro No Neuro, Faces & Fragments (Audiobulb Records)

Meanwhile on Neptune — or in Tucson, Arizona, same thing — electronic music tinkerer Kirk Markarian is still at it, making albums of gently demented noise for people who probably need a few drinks before they crack in half. I have too many big-time connections nowadays to ever have to go back to the days when I was the eclectic-music-blogging world’s central repository for albums made by kooks, but I’ve heard this guy’s name enough times to have grown curious to see what the fuss is about. And, well. These experiments are intended to “blurr the connections between vocabulary, memory, and day-to-day processes,” with tracks that illuminate “fragments of memory and speech, as they wander out of focus in the growing aperture of time.” It’s a littered beach of sound, this thing, gentle waves of synth coming in and out of focus while found sounds, snippets of human speech and random clanks drop out of nowhere. Not a party record, but, you know. B-

Hollan Holmes, Emerald Waters (Spotted Peccary Music)

Well, I’ll be darned, it looks like fate’s decided that both of this week’s album-review slots need to be occupied with similar products; let me explain. Right after I wrote the Neuro No Neuro review for this week, I emphatically deleted a thrash metal album download offer from my email, and literally the next thing that popped up was this record, which is indeed related: Where Neuro No Neuro does have an ocean-like ambiance to its weirdness — whether or not that was Markarian’s intent — this LP from Texas music-scaper Holmes is something far more geared to normies. Holmes, a Berlin School-influenced composer, is big into Tangerine Dream, and that’s what you get here, in a broad sense, but sans any goofy krautrock edge. The ocean-like feel (and if you don’t miss that this time of year there’s something wrong with you) is baked into this stuff, its main ingredient lazily sweeping synths that sometimes form into things that recall the progressive trance of Above & Beyond. Deeply agreeable, soul-soothing stuff here. A+

PLAYLIST

• Like it or not, new rock ’n’ roll albums will magically appear in your stores and streaming services on Feb. 18, right in the middle of the worst month of the worst part of the year, not that you should dislike any of those albums for that reason alone (the music will probably be nauseating enough, just sayin’). Our solar system’s sun is a big tease right now, chuckling and yelling “Neener” as it stays too far away from us to give us New Englanders any relief from our North Pole weather, but like I said, there are albums coming out, like Are You Haunted, the fourth full-length from Australian art-indie band Methyl Ethel! I nearly wrote them off as a weak imitation of Tame Impala the first time I heard their 2017 single “Ubu,” but the tune is possessed of an instrumental break that proves they weren’t put on earth just to annoy me, so I’ll proceed with caution in the hope that new single “Proof” is a slight improvement (I don’t know diddly about their third album, Triage, so they’ve had ample time to improve in my eyes). So, the song features vocals from successful-enough singer Stella Donnelly rambling prettily over a polite staccato laptop beat, and then — yup, there it is, a really cool little melodic tangent. Works for me. You know, I have to confess that I always feel a bit funny giving love to Australian bands even today; a lot of them are really good, but it seems to be really difficult for them to break big in America. I mean, they might as well be on Mars, all things considered, but those bands rarely disappoint.

• Hurray for the Riff Raff is the Americana-indie project owned and operated by New Orleans singer-songwriter Alynda Segarra. Her seventh album, Life On Earth, is here, daring to step forward to face my judgment and wrath, coming on the heels of her sleepy 2017 album The Navigator, which I’m pretty sure I tossed into the yard sale pile for its mostly unplugged Natalie Merchant verisimilitude — yes, that’s the one. Whatever, “Rhododendron” is the single, and it does have more of a pulse than I’ve felt from her earlier stuff, not that that’s a rock-solid recommendation, mind you. It’s Bonnaroo-hipster stuff but does have something of a punk edge (every time she sings the word “boys” she sounds like she’s describing rotten eggs, which is oh so novel and edgy). The video is pretty awful — where did they get all that bubblegum? — but I don’t know, maybe someone will get something out of it. I sure didn’t.

• OK, I know I’ve heard of Metronomy, let me go look. Ah, yes, they’re an “English electronic music group formed in 1999.” That didn’t help at all, but I know I’ve heard of them, and I’m too lazy to search my archive, so let’s pretend I liked them before, at the very least to have some more positive news in this week’s thingie. Their new album, Small World, is on the way, featuring the single “It’s So Good To Be Back,” comprising a blip-bloopy elevator-music beat and some happy-but-not-aggravating vocals. Jeez, so happy, but I’m not getting angry. What on Earth is happening to me?

• We’ll pull stakes on this week’s column with the new album from boy-girl indie duo Beach House, whose new album Once Twice Melody is probably a bunch of dream-pop songs, because that’s what Wikipedia says, they do dream-pop. My stomach will be able to tolerate that, I’m sure. Yes yes, it’s like My Bloody Valentine but not messy, like your grandmother probably wouldn’t mind this at all. It’s so polite and listenable that I’m starting to get a little mad, so before I start comparing this to 1960s Spanky And Our Gang records and getting jerkish, let’s end it here.

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

We Are The World, Clay Stones [2022 Reissue] (Give/Take Records)

Today I learned that Madonna wasn’t the only artist Lady Gaga stole song ideas from, and that’s about it. An alleged selling point of this “seminal” album from the Los Angeles electro-pop quartet (which, for clarity’s sake, had nothing whatsoever to do with the 1985 famine-relief charity single) is that it was Gaga’s “favorite album” in 2010, thus its 2022 reissue marks a milestone of something or other. I suppose I’ll buy that, given that I just can’t call Gaga right now to vet all this rubbish for myself, so I’ll play along. It’s mainly a ringtone-centric rehashing of the eclectic cultural appropriation Moby hawked with his 1999 Play album; in that vein, the Pitchfork guy basically wrote this off as a ripoff of Knife, which is fine with me, as maybe the Moby reference is a bit dated (you should see my face right now, panicking at the thought of committing such a colossal foul-up). But, yeah, there are unintelligible Baptist preacher-ish chants and creepy voodoo-priestess `ocal lines going on here, all marinating in thick rhythmic samples, and sure, it all sounds like it could have inspired Gaga circa 2010. It’s OK I guess, and if you’ve read this far you have my sympathies. B-

Charming Disaster, Our Lady of Radium (self-released)

Most recent LP from the Brooklyn, N.Y.-based goth-folk duo comprising Ellia Bisker and Jeff Morris. She plays ukulele, he guitar, so like anything else they’ve done, it’s a novelty record intended for convention nerds who covet overdone eye makeup, fishnet stockings and vintage weirdness, and for those things I do thank them. The two are really great at welding their voices into fascinating harmonies in the service of songs dedicated to steampunk-ish themes, in this case, Marie Curie. They’re a mishmash of black-clad-but-innocent tropes, paying obeisance to the likes of Edward Gorey and Tim Burton, but given that they’re from the Boroughs, this ain’t no foolin’ around. They strum and busk, busk and strum, warbling on about the subject and going into the deeper ends, like a Curie séance they attended. They’re nothing like Dresden Dolls, so don’t think that; more like an opening act for The Cure at an Addams Family festival. She sounds like Siousxie Sioux when she wants to, if that helps sell you. B-

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• O, what artistic marvels shall we experience on Feb. 11, when the usual Friday delivery of new albums drops into our music stores and Pandoras and illegal torrent streams? Uh-oh, gang, looky there, it’s Pearl Jam’s singer/surfer Eddie Vedder, gone solo, with a new album called Earthling! LOL, remember when he put out that album Ukulele Songs in 2011, and the only problem with it was that it was a bunch of songs literally played on the ukulele? Boy I do, and I remember that all the annoying hipster bands were playing ukulele around that time too, like I couldn’t just sit and watch a stupid car commercial without some twirp playing a ukulele in the background. But that’s finally over with, so we can cut to now, and this new album, his fourth, which features a single titled “Long Way,” I can’t wait! But wait, ack, ack, what’s this, is he trying to be Tom Petty? This sounds like some strummy nonsense song for bored Uber drivers to play on the radio when they’re driving grandmothers to casinos. Come on, Eddie Vedder, what happened to those stupid lumberjack shirts and an entire generation getting nothing accomplished other than oh, I dunno, making people afraid of Courtney Love? I mean, what happened?

• Ha ha, look, guys, it’s super-old Canadian thrash metal weenies Voivod, with a new album called Synchro Anarchy, that you can buy on Friday when the clock strikes midnight! What’s that? No, I know you won’t, I’m saying you could buy it. If you’re in your 40s, maybe you remember when Voivod was an actual force to be reckoned with in the heavy metal scene, because they had good drawings of monsters on their album covers or whatever the attraction was aside from their (really stupid) band logo, I forget. But whatever, outta my way man, I have to go to YouTube and listen to this new song, “Planet Eaters,” and give you my expert review! Ha ha, look at this video, there’s like an evil Pikachu ball and some other poorly drawn monster-whatever things in a swirling hypnotic mush, and they’re trying to sound like Primus. Hm, now it’s trying to be like Guns N’ Roses, and it’s boring, let’s bag this and just continue.

• Oh, here we go. In its continuing, moronically conceived mission to confuse its readers as much as it can, Pitchfork Media described “Cisgender,” the new single from Shamir, as “Prince masquerading as Camille,” failing to remember that most people who have actual busy lives were never aware that the very existence of Prince’s (unreleased, mind you!) Camille album is nothing more than a weird little footnote to His Purpleness’s career. It annoys me that I had to look that up; the writer could have simply spent a handful of words to explain to their bewildered readers that the Camille concept was to present Prince as a female version of himself, but whatever, I suppose the comparison is more or less apt, given that Shamir’s voice is, as you probably know unless you’re older, very feminine. His new album, Heterosexuality, is on the way and will feature the aforementioned tune, a bizarre noise ballad reminiscent of M83 trying to be epic a la “Skin of the Night”; it’s cool, more or less.

• To close out the week, let’s look at indie-folk band Big Thief’s new one, Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You before I fall asleep from all this nonsense. Hm, they wear farmer overalls; I knew someone was still buying those things. The single “Time Escaping” has some weird organic-sounding percussion driving a decent hayloft-pop idea, this is OK I suppose.

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).

Power Paladin, With The Magic Of Windfyre Steel (Atomic Fire Records)

You know, I don’t think I’ve seen the words “Reykjavík, Iceland” in years, or at least since there was talk of the city hosting a biannual Olympics. Oh wait, though, that’s every year, including this one. But before I tangent all my allotted words away, this power metal band is from there, actual Iceland, and, as I fully expected, their childlike enthusiasm is off the charts. I’m sure I’d get along with them personally; not that I’m a Dungeons & Dragons guy, but I’ve never not gotten along with anyone who’s into those dragons-and-elves games, a passion that drives these five or six or however many guys. They’ve confessed to being fans of Dio, Iron Maiden, Hammerfall and Rhapsody, so they obviously have no shame, and that’s refreshing in its way; the true test, though, is the music of course. Toward that, we start with “Kraven The Hunter,” which recalls Motley Crue’s “Kickstart My Heart,” then move to the Savatage-ish “Righteous Fury,” and the title track, a pomp-blasted hit of epic metal. It’s all super tight, and look at how cute this all is; I can’t hate these guys at all, sorry. A

Martin Wind/New York Bass Quartet, Air (Laika Records)

Every time I think I’ve heard it all, something bubbles up from this massive pit of promotional albums and makes me go, “OK, another country heard from.” Picture it: four guys who all play double bass (i.e., the upright acoustic bass guitar), but instead of laying down the low lines for four different bands, they’re in one place, jamming to familiar tunes from various genres. If you need some sort of certificate of authority for this one, Rufus Reid thinks it’s great, as does 84-year-old bass icon Ron Carter, so all that’s really to be done here is listen to some of it. It starts off with the title track, two or three of the players bowing at the high end in a thing that threatens for a second to droop into the maudlin strains of “Whiter Shade Of Pale” but instead turns into J.S. Bach’s immortal ‘Suite No. 3 In D Major: Air’ (you heard it in the movie Se7en, when Morgan Freeman is in the library). It’s an eerie thing to hear, but these supremely talented guys make it sound natural, rather cello-ish. Return To Forever drummer Lenny White also helps turn that arrangement on its head, and later helps to nail down a cover of Weather Report’s “Birdland.” Quite the gold nugget for eclectic tastes here. A

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• Feb. 4 is here, can you feel the madness creeping in, on little tiny creepy feet? It’s frickin’ freezin’, frantic fam, I hate everything about it, and my seasonal affective disorder (or whatever it’s called, I just don’t like being cold) has me breaking down into teary madness every morning, just waking up and realizing that I still live in the North Pole and this will never end, ever. Other than that I am fine, I hope that you are well as well, as we examine the “slate” (I really hate seeing that word being used by a writer when “set” or “list” wouldn’t tick off half their audience) of new albums that’ll be released on the 4th in the hopes that someone will have one too many drinks and accidentally buy one. Hopefully no one accidentally buys the new album Pompeii from official crazy lady Cate Le Bon, because when she was writing it she was grappling “with existence, resignation and faith. I felt culpable for the mess but it smacked hard of the collective guilt imposed by religion and original sin.” Ha ha, she’s like Bjork but in clown makeup and outfits because she’s so edgy. She told the utterly enthralled, neckbearded writer from Pitchfork Media the album “was written and recorded in a quagmire of unease. Solo. In a time warp. In a house I had a life in 15 years ago.” Yes, Cate Le Bon, but what we really want to know is what snacks did you have? Probably nothing good, I’ll bet, and that’s why she lives a lonely fourth-dimension existence, being weird, all because she doesn’t have tasty shelled pistachios or chocolate cream pies. That’s basically all I eat now, someone should text her that diet tip, but in the meantime let’s see if my stomach can handle the new Cate Le Bon single “Running Away,” I’ll bet it can’t. Hold on, this isn’t so bad, it’s like a poor imitation of Siouxsie And The Banshees, but really, that’s what every band should be doing now, trying to imitate Siouxsie. Every once in a while a decent-enough melody trickles in, then disappears again into the sloppy imitation-’80s muck. Ok, this thing’s getting on my nerves, let’s just go to the next thingie.

• Oh terrific, can we just go back to Fake Siouxsie so I don’t have to listen to anything from Time Skiffs, the new LP from Animal Collective? I mean, all you ever needed to say in an Animal Collective CD review was “Cool fractals” and that was really it, although yes, they changed things up after the hipster crowd decided to abandon the band to the trash folder of college-rock history, so maybe there’s something worthwhile on this new “slab” (another word I hate to see used in a music review, because it makes the writer sound like they’re from the 1950s). I mean, it could happen, so let’s check out their new song “Prester John.” It’s noisy and creepy and slow. Wait, I get it, they’ve obviously been listening to a lot of Massive Attack, because this is just an edgy, grungy ripoff of “Teardrop,” which you know as the opening theme to the old TV show House. Next.

• OK, here we go, it’s a new album from edgy/gross/awesome metal guys, Korn, called Requiem! I’ll bet there’s no way I’ll have anything bad to say about their new tune “Start The Healing.” Whoa, bouncy beat here, my foot is already tapping, and — wait, this is some pretty basic nu-metal, almost kind of pop-punk, or like Tool. What the — oh, whatever, it’s Korn. They’ve earned the right to suck.

• We’ll end the week’s nonsense with indie-punk girl Mitski, because she’s awesome, so “Working for the Knife,” from her new album, Laurel Hell, must be awesome too. Wow, there’s like cowboy guitar in there, and it’s trippy but high-class, your girlfriend will probably like it. You should probably marry her, by the way. — 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).

Dust Prophet, “Hourglass” (self-released)

Local bands could learn a thing or three from what this veteran threesome — led by Manchester’s long-put-upon, one-man demolition crew Otto Kinzel — accomplished publicity-wise in getting this new single to make the rounds in some of the more notable blogs. It debuted on none other than the Decibel blog, sporting a great review, for starters, which means this ain’t no joke, as metal releases go. Bassist-keyboardist Sarah Wappler and drummer Tyler MacPherson support guitarist-singer Kinzel in this one-shot, which is aimed at the stoner-metal crowd, i.e. folks who are into everything from Sabbath-ish Trail Of Dead stuff to Sabbath-ish Candlemass stuff, and it’s quite fitting in that regard, launching with an almost-sitar-emulating bit that has a world-music tint to it, after which comes the expected slow-mo-mosh-pit bombast in the vein of Sabbath’s “Sabbath Bloody Sabbath” or your basic Kyuss-ish slowbie. Kinzel sounds quite a bit like early Ozzy Osborne here, which is of course apropos; there’s no reason these guys couldn’t have the success of any of their competitors. A+

Kristian Montgomery & The Winterkill Band, A Heaven For Heretics (self-released)

Another local band, if you count Vermont as more or less local; Montgomery, a native Dane, moved there from Cape Cod, which is where he was when we first chatted over Facebook PMs in March of last year, upon the release of his Prince Of Poverty LP, which I do recall rather liking. His forte is Appalachia-rock, which is just my rushed catch-all for this blend of hard-charging but breezily pretty Americana/semi-country. I suppose if he wanted, Montgomery could make a run for the space occupied by Dierks Bentley or really any other band that’s got enough bluegrass-elegance in its formula to avoid ever being accused of courting NASCAR and wrestling fans, but look at this mess, I’m all over the place, so let’s get to the point: Imagine a more aggressive, working-class Amos Lee or Peter Bradley Adams and you’re in the ballpark. This stuff is truly good, sporting a production that sounds like they had a ton of studio time to refine these gems. Dobro lines turn straight into earworms, hooks are omnipresent; this will probably amaze you if you’d be up for something Bob Seger-ish but fluffier and much more eloquent. A+

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• Jan. 28 has a really low Yelp rating, because it falls right in the middle of the “January/February Slog,” when the holidays are long forgotten and the only thing people can really do for fun is to see if they won’t get actual frostbite on their feet just for walking to the mailbox. I am already completely insane from winter and would take up daily drinking if it weren’t super dangerous, but either way, Jan. 28 will see our next corporate dumping of random albums, for you, the public, to consume in enthusiastic fashion! In keeping with this column’s subject-to-change tendency to favor indie bands over commercial hip-hop albums that you all know about (or summarily avoid) anyway, we’ll kick off this week with none other than the brand new Eels album, Extreme Witchcraft! I have a couple of Eels albums and only play them when I’m in a self-destructive mood; you see, I don’t like Mark Oliver Everett’s music and, um, uh, never really did, except for maybe one song off Hombre Lobo (for the record, there’s no need to tweet at or email/Facebook me that Hombre Lobo is a “sub-par Eels slab” or whatever, because (a) I won’t believe you, and (b) it may indeed be even less tolerable than the other Eels album I have, but I can’t find it, and actually I couldn’t care less if one of the cats chewed it into unlistenability; as a matter of fact, if my own kitty Babypuss scratched up that CD, I’m giving him at least 10 Greenies treats for being the world’s greatest goodboy). No, you know what bothers me about Everett’s crummy tunes is that his picture should be under the Webster’s definition of “weird beard,” like he’s got this lumberjack neck-beard, like Paul Bunyan, which makes it even more difficult to appreciate the overrated “eclecticism” of this desert-dwelling Californian who’s pretending to be a super-cool millennial even though he’s 58. I mean, other than that he’s totally an artiste par excellence, so keep that in mind if my words have made you mad, and I hope you’ll take the time to find something else in our newspaper that’s more in line with your taste; I can recommend several regular columns. Oh whatever, I hate the Eels but I can’t just say that and call this a mini-review, so I’m off to torture myself with the new single “Good Night On Earth” right now. Oh boy is this stupid, a room-temperature stun-guitar riff, no bass, Super Mario Brothers drums, then some Flaming Lips garbage-noise, and then his dumb voice, with its weird beard singing. I can’t stand this trash so much I can’t even put it into words.

• The only Pinegrove song most people know, if they even know one, is “Old Friends,” a laid-back tune that sounds like a lame grunge band covering a Nilsson song. But they’re more of an alt-country/emo band, if you can picture such a thing, not that you ever would, so the band’s new album, 11:11, is more in line with that as far as the single, “Alaska,” goes: a little bit Guster, a little bit Dashboard Confessional. Actually it’s not all that bad.

• Urge Overkill is the goofy hard rock band that did the cover of “Girl You’ll Be A Woman Soon” in Pulp Fiction. Their new LP, Oui, has a song called “Freedom” that sounds like Foo Fighters trying to be Barenaked Ladies. No one would care about this.

• We’ll wrap this up with flute-metal fossils Jethro Tull, whose zillionth album, The Zealot Gene, is here, with a single called “Shoshana Sleeping” that’s pretty cool, kind of mid-career Zeppelin-ish except there’s that dumb flute, and singer Ian Anderson is trying to talk-sing like Lemony Snicket. Ha ha, he’s so weird and overpaid.

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).

Bird Friend, Carolyn Know (self-released)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pussy Riot, Rage Remixes (self-released)

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

Spoon, Lucifer On The Sofa (Matador Records)

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

PLAYLIST

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

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

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

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

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