Category: Pop

Tom Smith, There Is Nothing In The Dark Which Isn’t There In The Light (Play It Again Sam Records)

First solo album for the leader of The Editors, a Birmingham, England alt-rock band with whom you may be familiar for such semi-hits as “Papillon,” a really sturdy tune that sounded like Elbow with a more liberal dollop of Bruce Springsteen and more sweeping orchestration. For this one, Smith originally started constructing the songs with long-time collaborator Andy Burrows (they’d already done two albums together), but he ultimately decided to go it alone with producer Iain Archer, whose credits include Snow Patrol’s Final Straw LP. Thematically it’s about loneliness and resilience, its half-plugged guitars driving that obvious point home, which is to say it’s in no way an Editors album, more a songwriting showcase, but then again Smith’s writing for Editors was always top-drawer. That ability’s on full display here with “Leave,” an Americana-drenched slow-burner, and the finger-picking “Broken Time,” which could be mistaken for Coldplay in acoustic mode. One couldn’t say it’s a good start, more a next-phase statement by a well-established songwriter. A —Eric W. Saeger

TEED, Always With Me (Nice Age Music)

This Los Angeles producer (real name Orlando Higginbottom) goes by the TEED acronym nowadays after having spent a few years performing as Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs, a nym that bespeaks a lot more upbeat fun than he delivers. He’s a thinking dude who’s “yearning for connection at the end of the world,” publicly posing such questions as “How do we find happiness in the chaos of our world? How do we release music in a broken, toxic industry?” etc. As such, he and his unapologetically ’80s-tinged sounds fit in well in a shattered world that has no choice anymore but to face its mortality. I agree with the sentiment of course, but the execution feels like defeatism at times: “My Melody” borrows its sadly resigned, minor-key-driven vibe from Spandau Ballet, Depeche Mode and The Motels, but on the other hand he’s obviously influenced by MGMT, Gorillaz and things like that, and that side of him sees plenty of light at the end of the tunnel, as “Desire” attests. Nice, melodic stuff here. He’ll be at Bsmt in Boston on Friday, Dec. 5. A —Eric W. Saeger

PLAYLIST

• Wow, just look at this year, running toward its finish line as fast as it can, and who could blame it, if I were the year 2025, I’d be doing the same thing, hiding my face in shame and trying to forget I ever even happened, wouldn’t you? But hold it, 2025 isn’t quite done tormenting us, because it looks like there are more albums coming out this Friday, Dec. 5! And look at that, this week I didn’t even have to resort to asking the AI gods what albums are coming out, because there are enough serious albums that are coming out that I don’t have to risk it, which is good, because as wonderful and omniscient as AI is, it has wrought chaos, like the time Zillow had to fire 2,000 employees because their AI-powered home-value-forecasting program screwed the pooch completely, or the time New York City’s MyCity chatbot got caught encouraging business owners to perform illegal activities. And plus, with my luck, when it’s the dead of Christmas week and there are literally no new albums coming out, I’ll ask Google’s AI droid for a handy list of records I can tell all you nice people about, and the AI will glitch out in the manner of the Year 2000 software bug, and I’ll be telling you about “new records” that literally came out 100 years ago, like Vernon Dalhart’s “Puttin’ On the Style,” which came out in December 1925. Now, if something like that ever does happen, I hope you’ll be nice and write it off as a little technical glitch that wasn’t my fault at all, it was our robot matrix overlords, and you’ll tell me you’re actually super-glad that you bought an album that was recorded by a military bandleader who played the coronet. Who knows, it might lead people to buy Al Jolson records instead of video game soundtracks, which would be a massive win-win all around, don’t you think? Whatever, either way, we don’t have to worry about any Terminators at the moment, because look who has a new album coming out on Friday, none other than Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds! What’s that? No, silly, Nick Cave only started making records in the 1970s, so he wasn’t the one who recorded the original version of “Yes Sir That’s My Baby” in the 1920s, you’re thinking of Gene Austin, can you not be insolent for one second, that’d be great. All right, this new Nick Cave album is called God Live, which led me to assume that it’s a live album, which it is, which proves once again that I am the best music journalist in our state and you should buy me a coffee on my Patreon. Nick still looks like the Tall Man from the 1979 film Phantasm and he still sings like Dr. Frank N. Furter in the new live version of “Wild God,” so all is bright this holiday season!

• Commercial-bluegrass outfit Zac Brown Band’s most famous song is “Chicken Fried,” which has been my personal national anthem recently, given that it’s all I’ve really wanted to eat for many a fortnight. Their new album Love & Fear includes the single “Let It Run,” which features Snoop Dogg doing some rapping, because it is a song about the “devil’s lettuce” or whatever you little monsters call it nowadays, the end.

• Since 2012, dream-pop princess Melody Prochet’s main project has been Melody’s Echo Chamber, whose new LP is Unclouded. The single, “In The Stars,” is a slow, bug-eyed tune that is “distinctly Sixties,” a phrase no one can say 10 times fast.

• We’ll call it a week with Anna of the North’s new album, Girl In A Bottle! Anna is from Norway, which is fine by me since we’re not at war with them at the moment (yet); lead single “Dream Girl” is a cross between New Young Pony Club and TLC (yes, that TLC). It’s agreeable enough. —Eric W. Saeger

Featured Photo: Tom Smith, There Is Nothing In The Dark Which Isn’t There In The Light and TEED, Always With Me

Hirons, Future Perfect (Western Vinyl)

This debut EP earned at least an A grade before I even plopped the record on the (yes, literal, many thanks to Western Vinyl) turntable, what with its being helped along by experimental-pop genius Luke Temple, a constant fixture in this column for many years now (if you haven’t listened to him yet, please do). Jenny Hirons is an unabashed, deeply educated art-wonk who’d obviously love to delete her dreary LinkedIn forever and simply flit around, Zola Jesus style, from makeshift museum soundstage to sweaty nightclub and back again, but wouldn’t we all; such things require interesting, really good tuneage, which she duly exhibits here with this short set of airy, light but sturdy experiments. Her voice is a dead ringer for Toad The Wet Sprocket’s Glen Phillips in upper-register mode, with more than a touch of José González, which explains the “sturdy” adjective, but again, we’re in experimental territory here. “Vertigo” combines Caribbean percussion with circuit-bending to captivating effect; “Being The Cause” is waltz-time yacht-pop; “TV Sermon” blends Enya with Bowie, and the balance forward completes her pastel dream that involves, as she describes it, “shaking off drudgery, returning to play and becoming the cause of our own lives.” Irresistible stuff. A+ —Eric W. Saeger

Bog Band, Mocashno Days (Headlamp Records)

You’re forgiven for noting this duo’s name and assuming they’re an Irish outfit playing drunk-ass pub rock, but you’re actually half right: They’re from Ireland, but there’s literally nothing Irish-folk about this record. Elsewhere on this page I mention Luke Temple, and his brand of highly listenable alternative/experimental pop is in the same church but a different pew. The shoegazey vocals are floaty, detached and Beach Boys-esque, but more in the manner of Sigur Ros, Spandau Ballet or Wham! than anything else I could name-check for normie consumption, and the overall vibe is more Aughts-hipster than Temple would ever bother with. Now, these are laptop guys who’re quite good at their craft, pulling off some really sweet melodies that’ll remind older people of the sort of radio-pop that was common throughout the entirety of the ’70s, but their impression of disco (“Apryl Fools”) draws more from the depleted soil of the Napoleon Dynamite soundtrack and Jamie Lidell’s stuff, than the original sources. But other than that it’s fine. A —Eric W. Saeger

PLAYLIST

• I’m too afraid to look yet, but hopefully a few new albums will be released this Friday, Nov. 28, the literal day after Thanksgiving, so I will have something to talk about in this multiple award-winning column! OK, I looked, and it’s even worse than I thought; according to the Metacritic website there’s just one album coming out on the 28th, namely Don’t Tease Me With A Good Time, from Jessie J! Yes, out of all the holiday traditions, the stupidest one continues: Almost no new albums are released on the biggest shopping day of the year. Now, I know what you’re thinking, how does this make my job harder as your favorite music journalist? Well, traditionally, my short answer has always been, “Fine, I’ll just Google it and begin the grim task of weeding through the vast wasteland of music journalism websites that have nothing but misinformation or news about ‘new albums’ from 11-year-old rappers who bust rhymes about their pet lizards and the joy of eating their mom’s spaghetti.” But wait! We are in a brand new era, the time of AI, a “technological marvel” that’s in a bubble that will eventually destroy Oracle and a bunch of other Godzilla-sized tech companies that think that throwing literally tens of trillions of dollars at a technology that doesn’t have an actual business model (aside from maybe-probably charging people to use ChatGPT, which will certainly fail horrendously when tiny companies that don’t need trillions of dollars in revenue eat their lunch) is smart strategy. So while we wait for the tech economy to collapse a hundred times worse than it did in 2000, you better believe I was going to ask the free Google AI bot “What new albums are coming out on Nov. 28?” and guess what, it knew about plenty of new albums, that I can talk about in this space, for you to read about! And no, I’m not talking about devil-metal albums from Scandinavian bands with unreadable band logos (although there is one, Winter Mass, the upcoming live album from Norwegian band 1349, and yes, just as you’d expect, it sounds like a hyper-speed punk band with down-tuned guitars playing as fast as they can while their Cookie Monster frontman yells at the crowd at the top of his lungs, demanding everyone’s COOOKIEEEES), I’m talking about actual album-albums! Come look!

• West Texas Degenerate is the third LP from Odessa, Texas-based Treaty Oak Revival, which specializes in an amalgam of Red Dirt country, southern rock, and punk! Sometimes they wear funny French-chef hats, and they don’t like people in general, which means they’ve earned your wholehearted approval! They recently appeared at the Grand Ole Opry, which means that even Nashville is taking them seriously; there are no preview songs on YouTube with regard to this new album, but they have a snippet on their Instagram that sounds like a cross between Primus, Molly Hatchet and Black Sabbath, and one of the guys punches a whole watermelon as hard as he can and the thing basically blows up, this is my new favorite Southern rock band, at least for the rest of today!

• Who says the French can’t do dub riddims? OK, fine, most non-French people do, but if you’ll just be open to new ideas, you’ll probably like Dub Inc, whose new album Atlas includes a pretty killer track called “Décibels!” Just picture Method Man covering a Bob Marley tune and — oh, you’re buying it now, good idea!

• We’ll wrap it up with Jessie J’s Don’t Tease Me With A Good Time, just to prove I didn’t forget that I mentioned her at the top of this column! No, I’m kidding, it took her five years to finish this record and it shows, “Living My Best Life” is a great wide-screen diva-soul tune that’s better than anything Mariah Carey’s ever done. —Eric W. Saeger

Featured Photo: Hirons, Future Perfect (Western Vinyl) Bog Band, Mocashno Days (Headlamp Records)

Wayne Wilkinson, Holly Tunes (self-released/Bandcamp)

It’s that time of year when I complain that no one’s been sending me holiday-time CDs, so I requested some from my jazz contacts, and yikes, in no time one appeared in my mailbox, this one. One cool thing about jazz bands is that they try to give credit to super-old songs that weren’t ever copyrighted or the copyright expired in the 1950s, so today I learned that “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” was first popularized by an English lawyer, William Sandys, in his 1833 publication Christmas Carols Ancient and Modern. Anyway, that one’s here, in subtle, quiet, barely-there form, rendered by guitarist Wilkinson and his two-man rhythm section. While we’re at it, I’ll have you know that “Deck The Halls” is a 16th-century Welsh melody whose English lyrics were written by a Scot, Thomas Oliphant, around 1862. That’s here too, but — OK, fine, fine, you want to know what it sounds like, OK, it sounds like what you’d get if Pat Metheny threw together a trio so he could (very lightly and expertly) decorate a bunch of famous Christmas songs. It’s lovely I tell you; I’m keeping this one in the car till the dread of January. A+ —Eric W. Saeger

Premik Russell Tubbs & Margee Minier-Tubbs, “The Bells” (Margetoile Records)

I think the last modern original holiday original song my stomach could tolerate was Aimee Mann’s “Calling on Mary”; you know how it goes, modern Christmas tunes are so awful that they’ve become memes, like I’m sure you know at least one person (if not you) who’s praying to avoid the usual awful suspects, George Michael’s “Last Christmas” and Mariah Carey’s sanity-destroying “All I Want for Christmas Is You” (I’m always more concerned with avoiding “O Holy Night,” but you do you). Now, what we have here is a husband-wife team with a holiday song whose lyrics are inspired by Edgar Allan Poe (yeah, I know, how goth, but this is the time of year I read M.R. James’s ghost stories, so it is proper in my opinion). They’re from Connecticut, but once I got past that I was interested enough to see if this was any fun, and it is. After a few lines of banter between the principals, multiple Grammy-winning violinist Zach Brock goes full-on merry fiddler while Margie and some friend of hers named Patrick trade spoken-word verses filled with Connecticut-y words like “mellifluous” and “raconteur” (in the same sentence!), and then they start talking about why the season is so wonderful, which isn’t very Poe-esque, but whatever, it’s fun, we’re all obviously doomed at this point, I got a kick out of it. A —Eric W. Saeger

_PLAYLIST

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• Our next new-release-Friday is Nov. 21, which happens to be the anniversary of two major events. For one, the first ARPANET connection was made on that date in 1969, marking a crucial step in the advancement of the internet, which gave us such technological miracles as Twitter and Skynet (I know, I know) and led to your breaking all ties with your uncle forever because of a Facebook argument over his totally medically plausible theory that if you’d just stop being a bratty know-it-all and guzzle Clorox out of the jug you’d never contract monkey pox or whatnot. More to our point, though (assuming there’s been any point to rock ‘n’ roll at all lately, at least since the Rolling Stones licensed their song “Start Me Up” to Bill Gates to serve as Windows 95’s theme song, thereby erasing any remaining doubt that computer use isn’t cool), in 1877, Thomas Edison announced the invention of the phonograph (basically an early version of Pandora) on that date. Since then, quite a few albums have been released, so if you want to blame someone for Corey Hart’s records and Dishwalla’s “Counting Blue Cars” and all the other absolutely terrible music you’ve been subjected to over the decades, it’s too late to post an anti-Thomas Edison rant on Facebook, his account is closed! Now, meanwhile, I’m sure I’ll have good stuff to talk about this week, because look who has a new album coming out on Friday, none other than Danko Jones, with one titled Leo Rising! Now, who exactly is Danko Jones? I have no idea at all, so let’s discover this person together! Ah, I see, he has a hard rock band based in Toronto, Canada, which is already frozen over until late July, let’s proceed to the part where I listen to their stupid new song, “Everyday Is Saturday Night.” OK, it sounds like a cross between Hellacopters and late-career Thin Lizzy, which isn’t actually stupid; it’s safe to say that they are a lame, modern-day Thin Lizzy similarly to how Buckcherry is a lame, modern-day Spinal Tap. Who even ordered this, send it back, oh look, lol, the first YouTube comment sums up this thing perfectly: “When I was getting my vasectomy, this song was playing in the background at the hospital,” let’s please just move on to the next horror.

• Neo-folkies Haley Heynderickx & Max García Conover release their second collaborative album this week, What Of Our Nature. They love Woody Guthrie, whose Facebook account is also closed, so I assume the new single “Fluorescent Light” sounds like your grandpa singing a Stephen Foster song. Nope, it’s more like an unplugged Norah Jones/Amos Lee collaboration, it’s neat if you’re a folkie.

• As we discussed when she released her last album two months ago, Kara-Lis Coverdale is not a nepo baby, but — waitwhat, TWO MONTHS AGO? Whatever, I give up, Changes In Air is the new one, not that you’ll be able to tell the difference, because “Curve Traces of Held Space” is, like her last single, a sparse, aimless exploration of harp samples and cheap synths, but at least it’s melodic.

• And finally, it’s a new album from classical-folkie Keaton Henson, titled Parader. Now, I know what you’re thinking, but this fellow is not an obvious nepo baby; he isn’t related to Jim Henson of the Muppets, he’s more of a “stealth nepo baby,” given that he’s the son of actor Nicky Henson, who, among other roles, played a Shakespeare-looking trooper dude in the idiotic 1968 Vincent Price tomato-soup-soaked horror film Witchfinder General! OK, now that you know, grab your box of Raisinets and let’s go listen to the new single “Insomnia.” OK, it’s a cross between Sigur Ros and Smashing Pumpkins, let’s just escape from this week with our lives. —Eric W. Saeger

Featured Photo: Wayne Wilkinson, Holly Tunes (self-released/Bandcamp) & Premik Russell Tubbs & Margee Minier-Tubbs, “The Bells” (Margetoile Records)

Mark Sherman, Bop Contest (Mile High Records)

If the class will please turn to the CD review page of the Oct. 16 Hippo, you’ll note that the first jazz-vibraphone bandleader ever featured in this section was Patricia Brennan, who earned the spot by tabling some wildly innovative tuneage, so much so that it didn’t feel much like a jazz-vibraphone record at all, at least not in the way this one does. At 68, Sherman is a confirmed old-school vibes legend, joined here by, among other renowned fixtures, pianist Donald Vega and already immortalized bassist Ron Carter, who always pops up when you most expect it. The basics go like this: mostly renditions of Great American Songbook-adjacent bop-drenched standards, like Johnny Mercer’s “Skylark,” Oliver Nelson’s bustling “111-44” and Cedar Walton’s jog-time ”Bremond’s Blues,” along with a pair of originals (“Love Always Always Love” and the speed-limit-stretching title track). It’s most listenable when one of Joe Magnarelli’s horns takes the spotlight, which shows you how enamored with vibes I am. A

Smoke Fairies, Carried In Sound (Year Seven Records)

My excuse for bringing up this nearly two-year-old album now is that I’d really truly meant to mention it here but it wasn’t the right time (promo people hate it when I review advance albums a few weeks — or sometimes months — early, but tough noogies for them from now on, is what I say), so I filed it in the hopelessly overstuffed George Costanza wallet I call a brain and then, of course, forgot about it. This British female duo are epic in their way, which I discovered after hearing their second album, Blood Speaks, in 2012. That one revealed the pair as Loreena McKennitt stans who also think Led Zeppelin’s Physical Graffiti era was their best; naturally Jack White signed them to a record deal faster than you can say bacon double cheeseburger. This one found them completely independent, not even reliant on White, and it’s a sentient evolutionary step. “2002” reads like a rawboned Enya, the harmonies soaring far above what we’d heard previously, setting the tone for the balance forward. “Vanishing Line” is a witchy exercise in counterpoint; the title track makes terrific use of stun guitar as understated drone; “Perseus” would have fit great on the Lord Of The Rings soundtrack. These two are the bee’s knees, truly. A

_PLAYLIST

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• Like every Friday, Nov. 14 will be a day of albums that you can buy, with whatever’s left after you paid $50 for a Spider-Man costume for your third-grader for Halloween trick-or-treating, did you even know this was going on? I know, of course not, anyone who’s young enough to have kids can’t afford them, and besides, we need to start talking about holiday albums, if there are any, let’s go see! Ack, there aren’t any at this writing, and in fact there aren’t many new albums coming out at all in the next few weeks, what’s going on here? This isn’t supposed to be the time of year when I have almost nothing to write about, but this week is an abyss of almost no albums, and it’s your fault! You people had your chance to buy new albums, but you didn’t, except the one from Taylor Whatserface, which you only bought because of all the peer pressure, so now the record companies are mad at you. Why didn’t you people buy any albums this year, aside from the fact that your 8-year-old’s Elphaba dress and witch hat ensemble forced you to finance it in four easy-pay installments of $12.50 at 23 percent interest, how are you people even buying food and whatnot these days? But it’s OK, the two albums I’ll definitely have in my car until all the festive happiness dies on Jan. 2 are old ones, Enya’s Best Of Enya album and Boston Ballet Orchestra’s recording of The Nutcracker, since they always make me feel holiday-y, but until it’s time for me to venture into our bat-filled attic to try and find those albums, I’ll make do with the new album from ’80s New Wave goofballs Cheap Trick! It’s titled All Washed Up, which they definitely aren’t, since they practically invented the formula for writing hard-rock-flavored pop songs, but just to be sure they haven’t suddenly forgotten how to write pop songs I’ll go check out the first tune on this album, “Twelve Gates.” Yup, same as always, it’s genius, evoking a drive at the beach in the 1980s. It’s put together perfectly, because the weird-looking guitarist with the baseball cap could write Billboard-ready hits in his sleep. Seriously, I’ll bet the whole album is awesome, someone tell me if something on there isn’t (and I won’t believe you).

• Blondshell is the stage name of talented Los Angeles singer-songwriter Sabrina Mae Teitelbaum, who first broke out on Soundcloud and was on Jimmy Fallon’s late night show once. She is a nepo baby of course, given that her dad is chairman of the vape company NJOY, but I’ll ease up on that noise since she sounds like she wants to be a cross between Sheryl Crow and Avril Lavigne, going by the tune “T&A” from her forthcoming new album Another Picture. Her lower register sucks, but she does a decent Michelle Branch imitation when her grungy guitars go for the mountaintops.

• Moving on, it’s some sweet sounds from California-based electronic alt-pop band The Neighbourhood, whose new album (((((ultraSOUND))))) is their first in five years. Their new tune “OMG” blends the best parts of Pet Shop Boys and New Order, so if you’re allergic to good music consult your physician before listening.

• And lastly it’s British avant-pop/trip-hop lady FKA Twigs, who’s been in relationships with Robert Pattinson and Shia LaBeouf (both relationships ended for the exact reasons you’re suspecting). Her new full-length EUSEXUA Afterglow features the single “Eusexua,” a shape-shifting EDM/electro-noise stomper with some Kylie Minogue stuff in there; it’s interesting enough.

Featured Photo: Mark Sherman, Bop Contest and Smoke Fairies, Carried In Sound.