Category: Albums

Gogol Bordello, Solidaritine (Cooking Vinyl Records)

I swear, one of the few remaining genres I can still consistently stomach is European-folk-rooted punk. Have you ever been disappointed by Korpiklaani or any of those bands? Never mind, I already know you haven’t, like, who could? It’s drunken noise that’s so sweaty and smelly you can’t help holding your nose and bobbing your head up and down to it, and that brings us to this New York City-based outfit that’s been putting out albums since 1999’s Voi-La Intruder. By all rights Solidaritine should be their supernova, given that most if not all of them are Ukrainian, but yes, this band’s putting out a political punk album right now is definitely good business. Typical Ramones/Bad Brains rattle-bang hardcore here for the most part, Slayer meets Borat, you know the routine. A

Laufey, The Reykjavík Sessions (Awal Recordings)

From Ukrainian folk-punk to Icelandic wombat-jazz, we’ve got all the bases covered today, my friends. I dunno, Fader loved this record, and I’m fine with it in the main I guess; her sold-out tour, which took her to Boston’s 500-seat Sinclair in September, compels me to take her a little more seriously than I might, and I’m in a lousy mood right now, so when I say she sounds a bit hacky, you might not want to take it to heart; I’m simply referring to her rather uneventful, unadventurous voice. She’s a good songwriter, though, specializing in a weirdly edgy but quite palatable style that makes the songs sound like they’d been written during mid-century romantic periods; she dabbles in things like bossa nova and cowboy-saloon player piano at odd but fitting moments. She plays piano and cello here at turns, exhibiting some serious musicianship, not that the songs really call for it. Music to drink coffee by, sure. A

Playlist

• We’re up against Friday, Oct. 14, gang, a whole bunch of new albums coming at us in a burst of crazy, hoping for your holiday gift-buying dollar (what, your Halloween skeletons are wearing Santa suits, come on!) and we’ll probably have to start with the ’90s band I like the least, Red Hot Chili Peppers, with their new LP, Return Of The Dream Canteen! No need to belabor the point again; as I’ve said before, I think when historians close the book on ’90s rock, it’ll be Pearl Jam that’s considered the Band Of The Decade. I mean, lots of people love the Chili Peppers, with their perfect blend of jangly, watered-down Sublime-ska and basic quirky bar-rock, but come on, Pearl Jam, you know? Everyone can stomach at least one Pearl Jam tune, don’t kid around with me. Anyway, that, so let’s move it along here and check in with the Peps, and whatever they’ve done this time. When last we left them it was April of this very year, when they released their previous album, Unlimited Love, which saw the return of Rick Rubin as their producer, but wait a minute, it wasn’t that great, and that’s not according to me, it’s what fans have told me: They didn’t like it. So I guess I was right when I uttered such sweetness as “[on and on] the tune drags, with Anthony making stupid rapper hand movements even though he doesn’t rap, and then there’s some psychedelic ’70s vibe that’s just annoying and then some Austin Powers 1960s-pop vibe that also just made me depressed.” So shout out to you Pep fans who agreed that it was an awful album: you like me, guys, don’t you, you really, really like me! Sorry, could you repeat the question? Well no, I think the dude from Primus is a million times better a bass player than Flea, but let’s proceed to the part where I force myself to listen to whatever these overrated little rascals have done to destroy rock ’n’ roll this time. Rick Rubin is on board for this one, rakin’ in the mad bank, just cold helpin’ make boring songs famous, but hold on folks, let’s see what the dilly is with the first single, “Tippa My Tongue,” whatcha think of them apples? Oh, look at this video, this is so cool, guys, it’s like random colorful Austin Powers psychedelic just, you know, weirdness, right, and then they start their little joke song, and it’s sort of a mixture of Eminem and parts from the only two songs people know from this super-hilarious joke band, and look at the guys in their funny music video for this idiotic song, all dressed up in 1970s disco clothes, trying to look like they should be in one of those awful Will Ferrell “comedies.” It’s working, folks, any minute I’m expecting to see John C. Reilly or Chris Kattan pop out of nowhere and make funny jokes, those freakin’ hams, ha ha.

• The 1975 is one of those bands that has no idea what the ’70s were really like, yet everyone thinks their ’80s music is ’70s music. Their new album, Being Funny In A Foreign Language, is out on Oct. 14 and features the single “I’m In Love With You,” a tune that’s catchy but unexciting, like if the Cure and Guster had a boring baby.

• Todd Rundgren used to be famous, but nowadays he begs for nickels from Zoomers who have been taught that music is supposed to be awful. The title track from his new LP, Space Force, steals the hook from Toad The Wet Sprocket’s “All I Want,” apparently to remind us that “All I Want” was an OK song 40 years ago.

• Finally, it’s annoying quirk-chill band Wild Pink’s ILYSM, the single from which, “Hold My Hand,” sounds like Bon Iver on animal tranquilizers. I do not like it, nope.

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).

Alexis Castrogiovanni, Someday My Thoughts Will Be Like a Range of Mountains (self-released)

Debut EP from this Canadian singer-songwriter/cellist, steeped in ’90s throwbackism in the vein of Tori Amos and tinted with Minski, more or less. Castrogiovanni loves her some angst, as the above influences would handily indicate, but lyrically she’s more concerned with her own inner journey than the usual suspects on which “angry girl music” of the ’90s (exes, bad boyfriends and the patriarchy) focused. This is no Alanis clone, in other words, more an Ani DiFranco thing, characterized by her rapid-fire ranty-singing in “Ex-Girl,” whose beat is driven by the artiste plucking a bass-like line on her cello. I expect most listeners would hit Eject right off if they’re not into Ani or Tori or even PJ Harvey, and that’d be too bad, because the title track fares a lot better, sort of a Bjork-on-meds trip, and the effects she put on her instrumental weapon of choice keep it from being entirely disposable. B-

Chez Kane, Powerzone (Frontiers Music)

Cheerio, Bob’s your uncle, I’ll take any excuse to go check out a gorgeous British hard-rock-singing girl who dresses in basically nothing to shoot her videos, and bonus, fam, she’s actually a sweet, rather shy person, or at least she plays one on YouTube. This is her first solo album, one that doesn’t involve her sisters, who play with her in a band called Kane’d, whose 2013 single “I See Ya” was a pretty neat cross between Alanis Morissette and Joan Jett, if you can imagine. That wasn’t bad, even if it was kind of derivative, but time’s passed. Now Chez is older and is on a mid-1980s Heart trip; opener “I Just Want You” is basically “What About Love” but without an orchestra. “The Things We Do When We’re In Love” rips off Bryan Adams’ “Summer of ’69,” and so on and so forth. It all sounds great, but it’s also literally all been done. B-

Playlist

• Watch out, kids, here comes Friday, Oct. 7, bearing albums aplenty, and with that, you can make a note that I have indeed used the word “aplenty” in this award-winning column, as of today! No, there will be lots of albums coming out on the 7th, I’m sure of it, since Halloween is over and it’s basically the holiday shopping season until we get to the snow-and-abject-misery quarter of our year, can’t we just get it out of the way now so we can start thinking about eating fried fish and chips on the beach? I’d love for it to be over already, wouldn’t you? But there’s nothing we can do other than to press on, do our best to avoid getting frostbite, and listen to all the great new rock ’n’ roll albums, like for instance Under The Midnight Sun by U.K.-based ’90s-hard-rock fellers The Cult, you know, the band where the guitarist and the singer beat each other up on stage when their drugs wear off and they remember how much they despise each other. One of those two guys definitely earned some hatred, and I’d nominate whichever of them decided to abandon the slithery, almost psychedelic awesomeness of their breakthrough 1985 album Love — you know, the one with “She Sells Sanctuary,” “Revolution” and all that groovy hippie stuff — and decided to turn the band into some sort of straightforward and boring Buckcherry tribute band on their 1987 Electric LP, with all those stupid bonehead tunes like “Love Removal Machine.” Ha ha, I’ll bet it was the singer’s idea, remember how he had that stupid possum-fur hat on the album cover and all the songs were extra dumb, and you were “RIP, rock ’n’ roll, again?” Man was that album a disappointment, but hey, a lot of water’s gone under the bridge with these guys, so hey, man, maybe there’s something to like about this new album, as in maybe they realized how awful they became 35 years ago and there’s something cool on this album. Just call me a dreamer, folks, I’m going to go listen to the latest “cut” (I hate when that moron bass player Needle Drop uses that word to describe a “song” or “tune” in his CD reviews on YouTube; I only used the term to remind you that I detest Needle Drop as much as the guys in the Cult detest each other) “Give Me Mercy,” and frankly I already have high hopes, because the sample loop of the video shows Ian Astbury dressed like Anton Lavey at a devil conference, and there’s a spooky tree. OK, to the song itself, because that’s why we’re even here in the first place. Huh, look at that, they’re dancing in devil robes, and the guitar sound is awesome, almost kind of emo, maybe they did figure out that they needed to sound like they did in 1985. But wait, singer Ian Astbury’s voice is boring and old-person-sounding. Eh, it’s just the shell of The Cult, but with a great guitar sound, a lot of you would probably like it.

• Holy cats, King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard has a new album coming, called Ice, Death, Planets, Lungs, Mushrooms And Lava – do I even have room for all that text? “Ice V,” one of the tunes, is an electro-tinged Flaming Lips thingie, it’s OK. Needle Drop had words to say about that “track”/”cut” but I didn’t listen to them.

• Ermagerd, look out, it’s super-heavy (from what I’ve heard) metal band Lamb of God, with their new one, Omens! The title track is metalcore, surprise, and it isn’t as fun or cool as Heriot, if that affects your buying decision.

• In closing we have idiotic ’90s band Bush with The Art Of Survival. Leadoff single “Mor Than Machines” is ’90s-hard-pop oatmeal but with bendy guitar bits reminiscent of Korn added for no reason whatsoever.

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).

Maraton, Unseen Color (Indie Recordings)

Well, here’s a nice attempt at prog rock by a bunch of Norwegians, whose first album, 2019’s Meta, set the band off in the direction of serious things like festival concerts and all that happy stuff, not that basically every European band doesn’t get to play at those things. On this one, their fifth in three years, believe it or not, the singer is growing into his own as a Seal-soundalike, at least in album opener “In Syzygy,” which is probably indicative of a desired future as some sort of New Age festival staple band, a la Shadowfax and such. Do I mind this stuff? No, to be honest; it’s not Yes or Return To Forever, it’s slightly like Asia, but with a gentler, less in-your-face melodic approach. “Blind Sight” is really ’80s-sounding; they’re probably big into Tangerine Dream, which works for me, given other tacks they could have taken. It’s OK. B+

Kristian Montgomery and the Winter Kill Band, Lower County Outlaw (self-released)

It’s really not hard for me to keep up with eclectic Vermont-based folk-rocker Montgomery, what with the friendship we hatched on social media, but that’s not why this six-song EP gets a high mark. I was drawn to his stuff from the first time I heard it, a couple of records back; it’s fedora-rock but with top-drawer melodic urgency and no filler. I’m sure the ever humble Montgomery would attribute that to the synergy he’s developed with drummer Andrew Koss, but he’s had it in him the whole while, I assure you, and these songs are yet another quantum leap. His trip is a hybrid that melds bluegrass-tinged folk-rock to, well, name an arena band and he’s probably tried it on for size. “Gypsy Girl,” for instance, starts out with an early Yes guitar line, down to the backward-masked reverb effect, and then goes all-out Allman Brothers like a boss. “Easy To Forget You When I’m Gone” has a Chris Whitley angle to it, if that’s your thing; “Annie Pay Your Band” is a swampy Cajun beef-fest whose lyrics are directed at a Massachusetts concert promoter. A+

Playlist

• Friday, Sept. 30, is the next big date for CD releases, and we may as well kick off the anti-festivities with Slipknot’s new album, The End So Far. There are many people who like this pseudo-metal band, but I am not among them. In fact, one of the least enjoyable interviews I ever did was when I talked to their DJ, Sid Wilson, back when he was trying to sell himself as a massively indie jungle/dubstep edgelord. He went by the name DJ Starscream back then and had a sort of MF Doom trip going on, with some stupid metal facemask thing and all that. Anyway he was really annoying when I spoke to him, like he expected me to know all the obscure underground dubstep guys he was referencing, and the whole interview got bogged down with him trying to “OK boomer” me with a barrage of nonsense. The interview was for a show he was doing in Miami if I recall correctly, and the article had to be full of nice words, so as much as I wanted to simply write a bunch of jokes about how contrived and stupid he is, I wrote some nice things I didn’t want to. Karma did win in the end though, folks — Wilson did send me a couple of vinyl singles that I immediately sold on eBay. But that’s all neither here nor there, Wilson is just one cog in the Slipknot “juggernaut,” so let’s leave behind my memories of wanting to bake him in a pie and see how much I can stand of sampler single “The Dying Song (Time To Sing).” Yup, there we go, it’s the same old Slipknot: half the song is death metal lunchmeat and the other half is old-school emo/nu-metal. A lot of people dig this stuff, which I find is the only interesting thing about it.

• Wait, here’s something I can deal with, the new album from Yeah Yeah Yeahs, titled Cool It Down. As you may or may not know, the New York-based post-punk-revival band features South Korean-born American singer Karen O, along with a guitarist and a drummer who looks like he’s 12 years old. Pretty bratty stuff from this band, historically, not as mentally ill as Hole or whatnot, but pretty jagged and always interesting, so hopefully the new single, “Spitting Off the Edge of the World,” which features Perfume Genius. Well, listen to that, it’s a departure from their norm, but a nice departure: slow, melodic, epic shoegaze, with Karen coming off as an asexual moonbat, which she plays rather well. I love stuff like this and hope you do too.

• I’d be a complete loser if I didn’t mention Doggerel, the new album from Pixies, a local band that helped bring about the fall of the Boston rock scene that was actually happening during the 1980s after The Cars got big. Anyone remember that? If it hadn’t been for bad bands like Pixies and all those guys, Boston would have been a pretty happening place, a legitimate mecca of music that would have attracted major-label guys and big producers, which would have resulted in about 30 Led Zeppelins taking over the world from our dumb New England area, but alas, when all the big shots came to Boston from L.A. and New York, they weren’t impressed by Del Fuegos or the Neighborhoods, but they did sign the Pixies. That brings us to now, and the new tune “There’s A Moon On,” a rockabilly-tinged garage song that is decidedly OK, nothing to hate and nothing to be impressed over.

• We’ll close with Nymph, the debut album from British rapper-DJ Shygirl, who cites Aphex Twin and Madonna as influences. That makes no sense, but the kickoff single, “Coochie,” is nice enough, with its bloopy, half-there, Billie Eilish-ish beat, Empire Of The Sun-inspired melody and Shygirl’s pretty soprano. My stars, the record company’s bots have gone nuts posting comments on the video. Whatever it takes, 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).

Franklin Gothic, Into The Light (Very Jazzed & Pleasure Tapes)

Nothing I hate more than committing to writing up a new release and there’s literally nothing about them to be found through a basic Google search. After 10 minutes of backbreaking effort, all I really know about this one is that the principal — Jay DiBartolo of Portland, Oregon — has taken the name of a computer font as his stage name, and that he’s a really interesting songwriter. His stuff is out there but eminently accessible, in the eclectically hip manner of guys like Luke Temple and Winston Giles (I know, you’ve never heard of them, just trust me on this) but with a more mellow bent. DiBartolo stated that this 12-song EP’s mission was to mold something that was so genre-mixed as to be original, and I’d say he’s in the ballpark; opening tune “Beneath” is like a cross between Byrds and Zero 7, and that’s just for starters. Love this kind of stuff. A

Whitney, Spark (Secretly Canadian Tapes)

Fourth full-length from this Chicago band, although they’d describe it more as a debut of sorts, a departure from their first three. Vibe-wise that claim does pass the smell test; they were eminently more hip-hop/aughts-indie infused in their last LP Candid, which was often like a cross between Jamie Lidell, MGMT and Grizzly Bear. But their new thing is applying their samples and (spoiler alert) falsetto voices to things that speak more to an afterparty thing. That ties in with the environs in which these tunes were slapped together: (very) late-night recording sessions in a rented Portland, Oregon, bungalow, which appears to have dredged up a certain melancholy resident with all humans; what I’m saying is that there’s a bizarre but very tuneful trace element of Elton John’s Captain Fantastic to be heard if you pay close attention, a subdued, desperate, lonely-but-dealing-with it angle on tap here. The overall sound is a bit contrived, sure, but this is no Jr Jr wannabe, not at all. A+

Playlist

• As is tradition, Friday, Sept. 23, is the next date for CD releases, and guess what, gang, this week I get to riff on that TV show Stranger Things, because the first album on the docket is Maya Hawke’s second album, MOSS! Hawke is, of course, the daughter of actress Uma Thurman and actor Ethan Hawke, so we know that her path to stardom was a tough row to hoe, probably involving waiting tables at IHOP for six shifts straight, you people just don’t know what it’s like! On the show, she plays the chick who dresses up like Popeye the Sailor for whatever kinky reason. I’m trying to remember anything she did in the show other than annoy her coworker, she’s that great of an actress, but then again, to me, that show is just a big fat fricassee of random 1980s cultural tropes with an unfollowable storyline about — you know, I don’t honestly know what it’s about, even though I’ve seen the whole series twice already. Whatever, it’s about ecto-monsters from another dimension or some idiotic thing, and the biggest headline that it ever inspired was “Wow Look It’s That Kate Bush Song On A TV Show,” which just made me and all the other incorrigible grumps say, “Who cares.” Will the 80s craze ever fizzle out? and yes, it’s news to me that she did an album before this, but yes, she did, in 2020, an LP called Blush, a set of country and folk songs that received a 6.8 rating from our friends at Pitchfork. I haven’t the motivation to go listen to any of that, but as far as the MOSS album, there’s a single, “Sweet Tooth,” a half-there twee-quirk-pop trifle that’s pretty and catchy enough if not very tuneful or adventurous, but seriously, gang, you have to hand it to this hilariously privileged wombat-pop wannabe for hanging tough in the face of all her obstacles. Warms my heart.

• And moving on, let’s see, blah blah blah, etc., here’s a band called The Comet Is Coming, with an album titled Hyper-Dimensional Expansion Beam. I’ll assume since I’m completely unfamiliar that this is going to be a Flaming Lips trip or a Kaiser Chiefs clone, and either way I’ll hate every note their instruments and voices produce, let’s go see what this nonsense does to my sensitive stomach. Nope, they’re a nu-jazz band from London, England, and, just like every other techie-ish band, they have pseudonyms like “King Shabaka” and “Danalogue” because their real names — “Dan,” “Max” and something else — won’t get people to buy their albums, and — oh, let’s just get it over with; the teaser track is “Code” (see how techie they are, folks?), a stompy, big-beat thing with a lot of skronky saxophone. It’d make great background music for a YouTube of someone getting chased around by a moose in real life, Benny Hill-style, let’s keep moving.

• Makaya McCraven is a jazz drummer from France, and the big news here is that I almost never see actual jazz albums in my corporate “You need to talk about this” list. This dude’s new album, In These Times, includes a number called “Dream Another,” an unbelievably boring, mid-tempo song that makes me think of Ben Kweller but with no singing. The video uses an animation technique in which images are composed and laser etched on stone and played through a zoopraxiscope, not that anyone will know what that means other than that it looks kind of dumb.

• We’ll end the week with Oakland-based singer The Soft Moon and his sixth LP, Exister, whose tire-kicker single “Become The Lies” is like 1980s Duran Duran but with some Depeche Mode goth going on. It’s OK.

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).

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

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

The Callous Daoboys, Celebrity Therapist (Modern Static Records)

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

Playlist

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

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

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

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

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

Darryl Harper, Chamber Made (Stricker Street Records)

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

Blue Largo, Got To Believe (self-released)

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

Playlist

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Boris, Heavy Rocks (Relapse Records)

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

Playlist

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Matthew Fries, Lost Time (Xcappa Records)

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

Playlist

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Playlist

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

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

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

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

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

Jackboy, Majorly Independent (1804 Records)

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

Rusty Santos, High Reality (Lo Recordings)

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

Playlist

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

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

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

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

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