Category: Albums

Kristian Montgomery and the Winterkill Band, Soul Family (self-released/Bandcamp)

We’ve talked about this local musician before, including how he lost his home and all his belongings in a fire last year, and about his ongoing battles with the elements that lord over the Boston rock scene. We’re more than casual acquaintances now, online at least, where I heard some rough demos of the songs on this album while they were still babies. Anyhow, as always, there’s a lot of great stuff to be heard here, beginning with opener “This Is How We Roll,” which he’s sculpted into a really amazing tune that combines the beat from The Outfield’s “Your Love,” adds some Allmans hubris and tops it off with a pseudo-Millennial whoop for good measure. That tune also signals a leaning toward riff rock and less Tom Petty pop than we’ve heard before, which we hear in “Brotherhood Of Ghosts,” a cross between Zep’s “Black Dog” and early Mountain. On the lighter side, ballad-adjacent Cajun-rocker “The Last Time I Loved You” floats an instantly hummable verse and some techy layering; “Home” is pure Gregg Allman-style Southern bombast. Sooner or later this guy’s hitting on a hit, I assure you. A+

Rich Willey, Laid Back Vol. 1 featuring John Swana (self-released/CDBaby)

Just in time for the hot weather comes this appropriately named if imperfect collection of seven jazz compositions from trumpet/tuba player Willey and his band of 11 guys, whose sound is slightly bigger than that number would indicate. As far as vibe, you should be thinking Caribbean, Spyro Gyra, reggae and that sort of thing, perfectly innocuous, but it’s not quite as simple as that, given that some of the sounds are a little, well, unconventional, starting with Paul Mutzabaugh’s antiquated-sounding B3 organ, but more to the point is the presence of Swana, the wild card in the deck: He plays an “electronic valve instrument” (EVI), of which Willey is apparently a fan, unfortunately. Where Geof Bradfield and Jim Gailloreto’s saxes fit quite well with the trumpet played by Willey and Carey Deadman, the bizarre, often high-pitched, alien sounds from the EVI become something of an unwelcome distraction and would work much better in a more, I don’t know, progressive setting. Willey loves the thing, though, and wants it to become a more commonplace sound within jazz, which is noble, but, again, I wouldn’t have used it on this album. B-

_PLAYLIST

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• Look out everyone, the next New CD Release Friday looms over us like a, you know, a looming loomosaurus, June 12 to be specific! As you know, I’ll try anything once, and that includes pop divas who want to turn our schoolchildren into twerking zombies. I will give anyone a chance, because I am a professional at this, and professionalism requires constant sacrifice, so for the moment my mission is to try to see why the new Olivia Rodrigo album is more musically profound than the ones from the last few child-ruiners, like Ariana Grande or Sabrina Carpenter. Why do I do things like this? Mostly because when people send me hateful Facebook messages yelling at me for selling out and writing about corporate pop music instead of obscure bands who purposely try to sound weird just to get attention from their former college roommates, I learn things, and it also provides me the opportunity to practice my yelling at people over the internet, which will be a very marketable skill when the AI bots take all our jobs. But I also have a certain curiosity about popular culture, so it’s nice to know what people like Ms. Rodrigo sound like, given that they are hip and groovy and important to our children, sort of like how Cyndi Lauper was in 1986 and Annette Hanshaw in 1934. I do try to spot new pop trends too, not that there’s been much to do in that regard since Madonna discovered trance music and put a bunch of it on her 1998 (where does the time go, I ask you) album Ray Of Light, after which most of the new shrinkwrapped, corporate-molded pop divas copied her, the way all the divas ape Chappell Roan (who’s basically a humorless Cyndi Lauper, if you think about it) these days. Anyway, the new Olivia Rodrigo album is titled You Seem Pretty Sad For A Girl So In Love, a Chappell Roan-inspired title if I ever saw one, but apparently there is depth to this vacuousness, as the LP is divided into two parts: One side is dedicated to first love, and the second half is about how being in love won’t solve your anxieties and personal problems (such depth, folks! I’ll tell you, if my first love had been that introspective at age 20, my life would have turned out differently, that is unless it wouldn’t’ve). The single “Drop Dead” starts out all slow-techno-y, like Chappell Roan, then the epic chorus comes in and it totally rips off Chappell Roan’s “Casual” but all the children will be too scared to say anything, so all this derivative nonsense will continue until further notice.

• On the older pop diva front, now that Bebe Rexha has reached her mid-30s she’s adopting a “cool auntie” (not my expression, by the way) attitude for her new album Dirty Blonde, her first record to be distributed independently under Empire Distribution. Free at last to do whatever she wants, her main goal is to “sound unlike anyone else,” so let’s go see about that. The second single, “Sad Girls,” features Rexha teaming up with boring house producer David Guetta but nevertheless it is good, mostly because it sounds like half the songs trance soundsystem Above & Beyond did during the Aughts (anyone noticing a pattern yet?).

• Until now, Fruit Bats albums have mostly comprised Eric Johnson playing over click tracks, but the new one, The Landfill, features his actual band. The title track actually does have a pulse, sort of like Smashing Pumpkins meets Train.

• Lastly we have prog legends Yes, with Aurora, an album whose seven-minute title track showcases some fairly cool guitar bits from sole original member Steve Howe, some orchestra stuff from the Czech National Symphony Orchestra, and some particularly lifeless vocals from Jon Davison, whom the band should fire.

Featured Photo: Kristian Montgomery and the Winterkill Band, Soul Family and Rich Willey, Laid Back Vol. 1 featuring John Swana

Aaron Bilodeau, Lid Licker (self-released/Bandcamp)

So here is a fellow from Milford, N.H., whose trip is experimental art-rock, unless he’s pulling my leg, but I’m now pretty much convinced he isn’t. The latter bit I have to mention because this was nothing like I’d expected in the area of loudness (let’s admit it, New Hampshirites, most of our local bands don’t know how to be really noisy) or seriousness, but this guy does seem to be on a mission, bless him. He apparently has a lot of projects, but this is him unfiltered, and by the way, he’s currently looking for Milford-area musicians to do some live shows with this collection of tunes, so look him up on Bandcamp if you’re interested. Anyway, the music is fun in its way, very hard to pinpoint at first, but in the end it evokes a three-way cross between Blue Oyster Cult, Screamin’ Jay Hawkins and Captain Beefheart. To wit, there’s a lot of blues-rock going on here (turbo-powered by a Deep Purple-style Hammond organ and the usual guitars and such), some (a bit too polite) spazzing and a healthy dose of alternative weirdness. I personally think he’s on to something that might really work with the right collaborators, so please give him a shout. B

Midge Ure, A Man Of Two Worlds (Chrysalis Records)

Let me scramble the usual lead-in: What can one say about this 72-year-old Scotsman that someone who was born in the last 40 years should even know? OK, he was in legendary New Wave band Ultravox, but he was also in Thin Lizzy, let’s start there; he hasn’t released an album since 2014, and “Midge” is his real name, Jim, pronounced backward. So he’s a firebrand and a loose cannon, as you now know, but he’s also an elite-level songwriter (he co-wrote the charity single “Do They Know It’s Christmas” for the Band Aid project in 1984) who hasn’t lost his edge or writing ability at all; in fact he’s upped it by embracing his maturation. Half of this all-new double-LP set showcases his songwriting for vocalists, with single “Just Words” reaching for the show-stopping epicness usually reserved for new-jack divas like Taylor Swift, whereas the other half delves into commercial instrumental tuneage that sometimes gets a little mawkish (“The Space In-Between”). Put it this way, don’t pretend to understand what old people grew up listening to without knowing thing one about this guy. A

_PLAYLIST

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• June 5 is when we’ll see the next bunch of new music CDs hit our Soundclouds, but first this message about the Manchvegas music scene! Some of you know that during the Precambrian era, when we were all just amoebas with only slightly less artistic taste than we have now, I was in a punk-metal band that made some records. This was before we amoebas crawled ashore and became humans, at which point I decided I liked money, so I gave up making records and became a software guy, then got totally sick of having any money at all and wrote some books. Anyway, when I was a simple amoeba, making records and playing at local clubs like the Granite Rock Club in Nashua, we played several shows with a local Manchvegas fellow who called himself Jonny (sometimes spelled “Johnee” or “Jonhee”) Earthquake. Now, let me tell you little twerking brats about the Manchester, New Hampshire, rock ’n’ roll scene back when Abraham Lincoln was president, it was a dangerous place, like half the bands were associated with the immortal and hilariously insane punk rocker GG Allin, who used to go on stage and — well, never you mind what he used to do on stage. Fine, I’m getting to it, so, we played around nine million shows with Jonny Earthquake when he was also making albums, and all I knew about him was that he loved Nick Cave the way you kids love Justin Bieber and Raffi today. Back then, Jonny dressed like a pirate everywhere he went, with a Captain Hook hat and coat and the whole works, so if anyone had asked me two weeks ago, “Is Jonny still around,” I would have assumed he’d either become a software engineer, bought an Arby’s or decided to become an actual pirate and moved to Aruba or whatnot. Funny thing, I was in the Manchester Market Basket (pronounced “MAH-kit bass-kit”) the other day and spotted a literal pirate buying some stuff just as I was leaving. There he was! It’s official, Johnee is alive, folks, I had no idea, and he still dresses like — you know, Jack Sparrow, around Manchvegas! We made some small talk about Nick Cave and the corporate greed Apocalypse and I told him who I was, the music-journo dude at this fine family newspaper, and he was like, “Oh. You.” Apparently Jonnee hates my taste or something, or maybe the fact that I’ve never mentioned his band, but I am making amends now! Ahem, OK, kids, put away your Roblox soundtrack albums and go buy a Jonee Earthquake album at Newbury Comics if they have any, that’d be great, support your local pirates bands! And that deftly and sublimely segues us over to the new album from Death Cab for Cutie, a band that’s about as punk as a Lawrence Welk polka marathon! This album, I Built You A Tower, features the single “Riptides,” which I was prepared to hate, which is good, because it’s like a 1970s Bob Welch B-side that doubles as a sleeping aid.

• The title track to Lizzo’s new LP Bitch interpolates the bratty 1997 Meredith Brooks pop hit that everyone thought was Alanis. There are swears and rapping, because of course there are.

• Liminal, the new album from avant garde London, U.K., composer Poppy Ackroyd, features a piano-driven instrumental titled “The Unknown” that reads like next-generation soundtracking, very nice stuff.

• Lastly, Modest Mouse releases their eighth full-length, An Eraser And A Maze, on Friday. Leadoff single “Look How Far” is pretty berserk, like if Strokes were possessed by Captain Beefheart, I don’t mind it at all.

Featured Photo: Aaron Bilodeau, Lid Licker and Midge Ure, A Man Of Two Worlds

Satoko Fujii and Myra Melford, Katarahi (Rogueart Records)

Recorded live in September 2024 at Jazz festival Leibnitz in Austria, this unplugged neo-classical piano exhibition pairs up brave, melodically obsessed American Melford with Japanese butt-kicker Fujii, who shows off her ability to turn a Steinway into a percussion instrument. No, I mean she puts a hurting on the thing when these two ladies aren’t trying all sorts of other tricks, including playing the interior piano strings themselves. The album’s title, suggested by Fujii, translates to “an intimate conversation between two friends,” but this, I assure you, is no everyday chitchat, more a loud, boisterous meeting of two (somewhat) like minds who are keeping the waiter busy way past end-of-shift and are the last ones still sitting around. There’s real athleticism to be found here, with hilariously nimble, lightning-speed runs that sound almost AI-like in their precision, and that makes this an album for people who love to hear the instrument pushed beyond all normal boundaries. Priceless. A+

Confess, Metalmorphosis (Frontier Records s.r.l.)

And meanwhile, back at Frontiers Records Mercy Hospital, one of the last legitimate record companies that still puts out albums from bands that sound like they’re from the 1980s, there’s this, the fourth full-length from a Swedish band that identifies as a “sleaze-metal” unit, and yo, it’s actually pretty good, stealing the right anachronistic vibes and all that rot. Now, “sleaze-metal” usually describes your Motley Crües and Ratts, and that kind of sound does surface here and there, but these guys have been mainlining old Ozzy Osbourne albums in preparation for this one; opening track “Colorvision” starts off with an obligato opera-chorus thing and then becomes a variation on Ozzy’s “Now You See It Now You Don’t” which, OK, is Ozzy’s sleaziest song ever, but not in a stupid L.A. way, and yeah, they’re all tatted up and looking like a Poison tribute band, if that matters to your aesthetic. “The Warriors” wants to be the adopted little brother of Guns N’ Roses’ “Mr. Brownstone” while “Wicked Temptations” leans more toward the vibe of Skid Row (is there supposed to be an umlaut in that band name? I can’t remember). They’ve got a great sound anyway. A

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A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• Holy guacamole and whatnot guys, we’re just about done with May, which means summer is basically here! To celebrate, there will be a clutch of new albums on Friday, May 29, because that’s how this “music business” gizmo works, as we’ve discussed ad nauseum before! The first one to look at this week is from Paul McCartney, former bass player for the Beatles; this one is titled The Boys Of Dungeon Lane, but before you start expecting reams of snark from your humble correspondent just because I’ve said many times that I couldn’t care less about The Beatles, the truth is that I haven’t minded a lot of his solo stuff throughout the years, except of course for the really stupid stuff like the duets he did with Jacko back in the 17th century, like “The Girl Is Mine,” just be glad you didn’t have to listen to those horrible tunes on the school bus (do kids still ride on those things or what?) or in maximum-security juvenile prison or however you spent your formative years. No, old people know that his 1973 album Band On The Run had some good songs, like the title track, and “Nineteen Hundred and Eighty Five,” which was pretty funky, but you have no idea what I’m talking about anyway because all you care about is twerking to nepo baby Sabrina Carpenter and watching K-Pop cartoons, let me go listen to the new single “Days We Left Behind,” from this new album! Right, right, the push single “Days We Left Behind” is exactly what I expected, a drippy unplugged sort-of-rock-ballad that’s really sad, which is understandable, given that Sir Paul is so old now that his voice is super weak and constantly shakes, like it sounds like when Svengoolie reworks some hundred-year-old tune like “Mack The Knife” to make it about Count Dracula, but hey man, it’s still Paul McCartney, right, so I should shut up I suppose. YouTube said there are other songs to sample from the album aside from this one, so for all I know there’s something clever and non-depressing. I doubt it, but be my guest if you love the sound of rich octogenarians singing about the end of the road.
• All Them Witches, you say, who even is that? OK, they’re an indie stoner-rock band based in Nashville, where the drummer relocated from Oregon when he was homeless; the band’s name is taken from a book of witchcraft, All of Them Witches, which was featured in the 1968 film Rosemary’s Baby, and that’s led to trouble, because they have weird fans who follow them around trying to get the fellas to turn them into toads and such. Anyhow, their new LP is titled House Of Mirrors and includes the single “The Welterweight.” It is not your typical Queens Of The Stone Age-type of stuff, like; to me it just sounds like early Nick Cave with a heavy guitar line that comes in once the boring part’s out of the way. Long as we’re here, if you’re the type who plans ahead, you can see this band play in Portsmouth at 3S Artspace on Oct. 19.

• In news that will titillate fans of music that’s been totally irrelevant for decades, folk/psychedelic-rock throwback Kurt Vile is back with another album, Philadelphia’s Been Good To Me. “Chance To Bleed” sounds like something the Rolling Stones left off their Tattoo You album in 1981, but don’t let that curb your enthusiasm.

• And lastly it’s — oh for cripes sakes, it’s been, what, two or three months since the last Guided by Voices album, so it’s already time for Robert Pollard to barf out his most recent failed songwriting attempts. This one, called Crawlspace Of The Pantheon, includes the single, “We Outlast Them All,” which kind of sounds like Psychedelic Furs but is as lame as ever, can you even imagine.

Featured Photo: Satoko Fujii and Myra Melford, Katarahi and Confess, Metalmorphosis

Simon Hanes, Gargantua (Pyroclastic Records)

If you’ve already read the Playlist piece this week, you know I am presently besieged by self-indulgent experimentalists, and this Brooklyn, N.Y.-based composer is not a departure from that; the inspiration for this concept-album-but-not-really-a-concept-album came from 16th-century novelist François Rabelais’ five-volume satirical pentalogy Gargantua and Pantagruel, about a father-and-son pair of literal giants (it gets scatological, for one thing). So, for this, Hanes assembled a large band comprising three drum sets, three electric basses, three trombones, three French horns and three soprano voices, but before you give up on me for the week, know that this is a hypnotizing earbud trip that’s worth taking if you have time for it. Rich sounds morph and combine and then morph into something else, mostly to aurally agreeable effect, but irreverence is indeed a main ingredient here, especially in “Gigantes,” in which comedic nyeah-nyeah vocalizings serve to reveal that the line between regal posturing and self-mockery is and always has been a blur. Lots of interesting twists and turns. A-

Crow and Gazelle, Truth Be Told (self-released)

Usually when I know I’m about to review an Americana record, I start anticipating a lot of dreamy incidental dobro and unabashed prettiness. That may seem dumb to people who’re familiar with the genre’s full range of sound, which can trend a little edgy when things like fiddles and banjos are added, but vocal stylings can also serve up sounds that are outside the (usually sleepy) norm. In the case of this harmonizing Texas couple — Red Dirt pioneer Mike McClure and multidisciplinary artiste Chrislyn Lawrence — the first thing any reviewer would do is scramble for comparative boy-girl pairings from years past, and when they don’t appear (because there aren’t any, really), it’s easy enough to focus on the duo’s messaging, a series of anecdotes from a loving couple trying to navigate the utterly unlivable current era. There’s an appealing honesty in their sound as well, mostly driven by Lawrence’s creaky but adamant voice, which is equal parts Patti Smith and Stevie Nicks. Well worth any folkie’s examination. A

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A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• Yee-hah, nothing like a new pile of CDs hitting the virtual racks at Soundcloud and Pirate Bay, I always say, and there’s a big pile arriving this Friday, May 22, and now this message. Regular readers know that I’ve been promising to get down to Jewel Nightclub in Manchester to check out its goth music night, lovingly known as Resurrection, which takes place on the second Thursday of every month. And so, on May 9, I donned my ace reporter’s fedora with the PRESS card in its brim and headed down to Jewel to, you know, check out and investigate, etc. Full disclosure, I hadn’t been to a goth night in maybe eight or so years. Upon my arrival I was presented to Lilz, who goes by DJ Sawtooth, the resident DJ there. According to Lilz, they’ve been holding the Resurrection night at Jewel since 2020; before that it was held at the Breezeway Pub, a popular gay bar on Pearl Street (it’s still active), and before that it was held at the now-closed LGBTQ+ establishment Doogie’s on Manchester Street. And so Lilz and collaborator Jim (DJ Pet) have been essential to the local goth scene for quite a while now; we puzzled over the fact that there’s no actual “velvet rope” trance/techno club in the city, which, let’s admit it, sure is strange, but anyhow, the atmosphere at Resurrection is pretty neat, remindful of ManRay in Boston when the crowd really starts to thicken (there were at least 100 people dancing and making out and such in the main room by 9:30 p.m.). Like at ManRay, there are hot dancing girls dressed up like Rammstein groupies writhing in front of big video screens, and on this night the music trended toward industrial and darkwave, which I found, you know, pleasant. The hidden gem is the back room’s “Interference” sideshow, where your all-encompassing $10 cover charge also allows you in there to check out experimental music artists. I met Acton, Mass.-based performer A. Campbell Payne there; his set was heavily steeped in drone (he generally tries to soundscape with a much wider palette of “pattern, chance, time, and perception” in his tuneage, but that night he was heavily fixated on a French experimentalist whose name I didn’t write down because I couldn’t hear what he was saying). Whatever, it’s a fun night, you should go to the next one on June 13; feel free to adhere to the Jack Skellington-inspired dress code or of course your “DAVE MATTHEWS 2013 TOUR” T-shirt if you must (but please don’t), and that brings us to the new album from, coincidentally, Portland, Oregon, experimental duo Visible Cloaks, which started as a project focused on “rare groove new age music and ambient music from Japan.” The pair’s new album, Paradessence, includes the advance track “Disque,” which, between long silent breaks, consists of gentle, woozy, highly melodic experimentalism you’d imagine playing through the overheads at the Boston Aquarium.

• Greenville, North Carolina, is home to retro synthpop band Future Islands, whose new full-length From a Hole in the Floor to a Fountain of Youth includes “The Ink Well,” which combines (of course) Depeche Mode-style angst with an early Cure drum sound.

• Geez, Bleachers’ new album Everyone For Ten Minutes makes it three DIY albums in a row today! “The Van” is lo-fi bliss if you like Jose Gonzalez and old Beach Boys.

• And finally we have Radiohead guitarist Ed O’Brien releasing a new LP titled Blue Morpho. The title track will appeal to fans of Sigur Ros, but then again it is very immersive and melodically charming, so maybe they won’t like it, I have no idea anymore.

Featured Photo: Simon Hanes, Gargantua and Crow and Gazelle, Truth Be Told

Toadies, The Charmer (Spaceflight Records)

I mentioned this album the other week in mindless passing, which is of course how I roll in the Playlist column. Mind you, for the record, the column’s review snippets reflect cursory, usually distracted first glances as opposed to overly long Pitchfork-style essay contest research; after all, the Playlist thingies mostly focus on advance singles, which often do suck, as any reader who has any musical taste whatsoever knows only too well. So yeah, I wasn’t impressed with this album’s title track, and am still not, but sure, there’s a lot here to like. If you don’t know, the band’s from Fort Worth, Texas, where they started as a late-’80s grunge act with a rugged, brazen southern twist, and they still have a pretty fierce following (which has nothing to do with why I gave this one a more thorough examination; that has more to do with an odd sequence of events). Any-freakin’-way, they’re usually accused of sounding like Nirvana (which I don’t agree with at all) or Pixies (slightly more accurate), but overall, I’d characterize them more as a three-way between Danzig, Pennywise and Pavement, the latter sound of which explains why I didn’t like the title track. Not exactly my jam, but on second glance it’s hard and raw and slovenly enough that I must dutifully rubber-stamp their hall pass. A-

Slim Volume, Off The Grid (self-released)

You know, folks, it’s about time I started getting some albums from serious local-to-NH bands like this one, who, like Lee & Dr. G (an arena-blues band whose album I reviewed last month), did a big album-release gig in Concord at the BNH Stage. I mean, not to make this column about me (which, OK, it really is), but yeah, it’s been very weird for me not to be inundated with promo stuff from local bands trying to get some love in this newspaper. Of course, I attribute all the shunning I’ve received to the fact that New Hampshirites have a fierce allergy to anything from Massachusetts, which includes me (I must admit the feeling’s been mutual for years, ever since the half-decade I spent in Portsmouth, N.H., where I was routinely exposed to some of the most boring fedora-hatted bar bands ever put together). So yeah, I’ve been snobby, but these guys, like L&DG, do have some potential to bring in some actual big-time record company interest (I mean come on, it happened in Seattle, so it conceivably could happen here). OK, anyway, these guys. Regular shows at Strange Brew in Manchvegas to start, where they refined their sound, which isn’t fedora-hatted at all but assuredly is deeply and accurately commercial. There’s some Tom Petty in their sound, which any idiot could identify, and some Michael McDonald yacht rock, but there’s also a northernized Kings Of Leon/Mumfords edge to it, some Minus The Bear, and (I could hardly believe this) songwriting that’s on the level of one of my favorite-ever Boston-area bands (sans the prog), The Vital Might (please go listen to their 2006 tune “Mist Of Crystals” all the way through, I beg of you, please do). These guys are right in the ballpark, and you absolutely must support them. A+

_PLAYLIST

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• This Friday, May 15, will bring with it a host of new albums, as nearly all Fridays do. But this Friday is a special one, given that college graduation season is starting to heat up, meaning that it’s time to have ChatGPT tweak your Claude-written resumé, so your Gemini AI can “target” jobs that are nearly all just fictitious “roles” created by corporate AIs for info-gathering purposes so they can send you car insurance spam, don’t you feel sooo special, in these final days of the human species? I sure do, but we’re not here to talk about that because too depressing, let’s just instead talk about all the recent music-release news that public relations AI bots have sent to my emailbox, like for instance Same Fangs, the new album from Wolf Parade/Moonface singer Spencer Krug, from Canada! Krug claims that the test-drive single, “Timebomb,” is “a song about a song about a band on tour, or rather, about the failed revision of that song, upon sadly realizing that its original message no longer rings true,” in other words it revolves around total bummer subjects, so the tune’s bummer vibe is apropos: The slow, redundant three-chord riff that composes 90 percent of the song is played on a piano with the distortion level set to Melvins, which actually makes it sound a lot more interesting and dangerous than it is, and so it actually works pretty well. Registered weird person Elbow Kiss guests on the track, which makes it a little less boring, but the net effect is like listening to two giant clams discussing their favorite acts at this year’s SXSW conference. That’s not necessarily to say I didn’t like it; I’ve heard a lot worse in just the past half-hour.

• OK, help me out, twerker people: Drake, is he in or is he out? My AI is waffling on the subject, so let’s please just move along to his new record, which is totally-not-ironically titled Iceman, like the book about the mafia contract killer guy! No, I’m sure it’s all just a misunderstanding, and besides, the publicity stunt meant to announce the release date of this album (yes, it’s officially been termed an album and not a mixtape) was a master stroke of nonsense that tapped into a rich vein of stupid in the corporate rap-pop world: Drake rented a hotel parking lot in Toronto and had a 25-foot wall of actual ice built there, and when it was finally melted by Toronto firefighters who were sick of getting yelled at by people who wanted their parking spaces back, there it was, the release date, May 15 (not to be out-stupided, Pitchfork interviewed an actual quantum physicist to predict when they’d be able to read the date)! Will this get any stupider? Yes, it is safe to assume so.

• Oklahoma-based emo-indie rockers All-American Rejects release their first album in 14 years, Sandbox, this week! The title track is catchy and weird and Van Halen-ish, and the video is even cooler, with fake Muppets committing R-rated acts of violence on the band. I approve of this message.

• And last, it’s Florescence, the new LP from British singing-songwriting waif Maisie Peters, who’s often described as sounding like Taylor Swift, which she doesn’t at all on this record’s first single, “Kingmaker,” more like a tween trying to sound like Gracie Abrams really. Mindless pastel patter for people who loved the Juno soundtrack.

Featured Photo: Slim Volume, Off The Grid and Toadies, The Charmer

Ted Lucas, Images of Life [Disc 1: Strange Mysterious Sounds (1965-1970)] (Third Man Records)

Forgive me for being overly complicated in this bit: What we have here is disc 1 of a three-LP (vinyl) set covering the life’s work of one Ted Lucas, a fixture in the Detroit music/counterculture scenes of the 1960s and ’70s; disc 2 was released the other week, and the third won’t be released until the whole thing comes available on May 22. Everyone with me? OK, so for some reason — probably something to do with cultural preservation of early Motor City psychedelic-cum-proto-punk music, or possibly owing to the fact he felt Lucas was “unfairly” obscure — Jack White (who owns Third Man Records) wanted to release this compilation, which includes music from three of Lucas’ bands, Spike Drivers, The Misty Wizards and The Horny Toads. As well, White unearthed some rare live appearances and whatnot to complete the package. Like I hinted at earlier, it’s a historical artifact, its target taste most certainly acquired during that particular decade. To be honest — and I don’t say this just to help meet my self-imposed yearly quota of making fun of Jack White — the stuff on this set sounds as dated as first-album-era Jefferson Airplane, like, it’s trying so hard to be trippy it comes off as self-mockery — think the “Bat Dance” from the 1966 episode of Batman when Adam West couldn’t stop dancing with the hippie girl. For all I know this would be manna to 75-year-olds who miss the good old days (and sitars), but past that I have no idea what to tell you. D

Holy Wars, Shadow Work / Light Work (Pale Chord Records)

Time once again for another lady-fronted epic-metal album recommended by friend-of-the-Hippo Dan Szczesny, one that’s been in the queue since he first flipped over this Los Angeles band’s first one, after which his Substack-column co-writing daughter “Little Bean” made email-friends with Kat Leon, the band’s singer. Usually when a bandwagon-jumping L.A. outfit clambers onto my desk I can expect two things: great musicianship (bad musicians find out just how bad they are after, like, two days in that city and give up quickly) and a lack of originality (anyone remember when L.A. band Gliss tried to be relevant in the shoegaze space? Anyone at all?). The first part gets a checkmark (if anything it sounds overly tight, typical for the genre); however, I wouldn’t write off these guys as Cassyette/Evanescence clones; Leon does have a distinctive flourish to her vocal lines that matches her ’tude, which is less untouchable Amy Lee dom-princess vibe and more bemused Natasha Lyonne “where even am I” puzzlement. Stronger songs than I’d anticipated, too. A

_PLAYLIST

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• Come sail away with me, my legion of drunken scamps who still believe in rock ’n’ roll for some inexplicable, intricately convoluted reason, come have a gander at the new albums of Friday, May 8, through our mud-colored Jagermeister goggles! First up in our list of abject disappointments new records is Look For Your Mind, the latest from Long Island, N.Y., jangle-poppers The Lemon Twigs, a band semi-famous for collaborating with Bread-worshipping mope-popper Weyes Blood and perpetually unexciting veteran dude Todd Rundgren! Knowing those facts, I wasn’t expecting a whole lot from these guys’s new single “My Golden Years,” but I’ll admit that they did make a valiant effort to resurrect the ’70s-radio-bubblegum sound of The Raspberries, down to the Beatles guitars and creamy, sugar-frosted vocal lines. Much of the song is spent trying to re-create Eric Carmen’s way with a hook, which of course doesn’t happen, but like I said, they did try, which counts for — well, nothing really, but I’ll pretend it does if someone out there feels it’s necessary. Now, if you happen to be in a neo-jangle-pop band and want to sound like The Raspberries, the fastest way to create those tunes is by (A) being a decent songwriter, and (B) not even bothering to try doing it at all, since our current timeline in rock ’n’ roll has an unquenchable thirst for mediocrity, which these guys possess in big bucket-loads. I predict that they will do more songwriting with Todd Rundgren, which will deplete even more from their oeuvre, and they will eventually give up and become part of the problem, working in the music business as “talent scouts” and signing random bands to contracts they don’t deserve, but that’s enough inside baseball for today.

• Now, like I just kind-of said, being in a band that would like to try to sound like Raspberries is evidence of having good intentions at least, which I’ve never accused Canadian milquetoast-hipster clowns Broken Social Scene of harboring, but here they are, with a new album, Remember the Humans. Aside from giving us a couple of debatably decent songs from charter member Leslie Feist, Broken Social Scene has mastered the art of bland, un-catchy music, and we music critics have had to pretend to like them forever now, mostly because catchy music is bad for people’s ears because — well, it just is, never even mind why (it’s like the Aughts have never ended as far as overrated indie bands like Broken Social Scene are concerned). But fine, cut to now, and the new single “Not Around Anymore,” which sounds like a Strokes (of course) filler track that’s been put through a Jamie Lidell modulator and just aspires to be, you know, a really bad song. Let’s continue.

• Lykke Li is a Swedish dream-pop/dance-pop singer, songwriter, model and actress, because hot-looking people should never have to settle on just one attention-seeking specialty, amirite folks? Her forthcoming sixth LP, The Afterparty, is claimed to be her final one; there’s no explanation for that as far as I could find on my ’puter, but she recently had her second child and wanted to explore darker “themes of the lower self, including revenge, shame and despair,” and that’s fine with me. “Knife In The Heart” sounds like ABBA trying to be Sigur Ros, which isn’t as bad as it might look.

• And finally we have British emo/noise-rock/soft-grunge band Basement with Wired, their fifth album and first since 2018’s Beside Myself. I expect this to be good, let’s go see. Yup, nope, “Be Here Now” is just Foo Fighters’ “My Hero” in a fake beard and sunglasses, I hope this has edified you.

Featured Photo: Ted Lucas, Images of Life [Disc 1: Strange Mysterious Sounds (1965-1970)] and Holy Wars, Shadow Work / Light Work