Category: Pop

Steve Conte, The Concrete Jangle (Wicked Cool Records)

You may know Conte from his guitar contributions to the New York Dolls (or, more likely, not; he was with them for about five whole minutes, and yes, David Johansen was there at the time); he was also the guitarist for Michael Monroe’s band, in which he continues to perform. This dude has for-real rock star cachet either way, though, having been a utility player with Peter Wolf, Eric Burdon and even Paul Simon, by which I’m saying he knows how to write great songs. Half of this album was co-written with Andy Partridge of XTC, but after listening to the whole thing I get the sense that Conte is never the weak link when collaborating with the big stars he’s played with; it’s probably the other way around. Though this is billed as a Beatles-meets-’80s-pop-rock affair, the underlying vibe is undoubtedly Raspberries, i.e. ’50s-informed radio rock from the ’70s. The songs all get right into your head and take root right away. Really top-drawer stuff here. A+ —Eric W. Saeger

Marshall Jefferson, House Masters – Marshall Jefferson (Defective Records)

At 64, Jefferson is one of the still-ticking vanguards of OG Chicago/deep house music; indeed, he’s generally regarded as the father of house music, if you wanna know. If you’re intimately familiar with the genre, this 40-song retrospective needs no introduction, but there are many years of his oeuvre to cover; this collection kicks off with an extended mix of his 1986 single for Trax Records, “Move Your Body,” the first house tune to use piano (Trax chief Larry Sherman didn’t consider it a house tune, so Jefferson added the line “The House Music Anthem” to the title, and the rest is literally history). “Devotion” is here also, another classic that clearly proves the ’70s-disco roots of deep house, with its sizzly hi-hat-driven beat and such. You may or may not also know that Jefferson put together plenty of songs with other stars like baritone singer CeCe Rogers; that collaboration is represented here in a club mix of their 1987 hit “Someday,” which is also a legendary jam. To say this collection is essential for house fans would do it no justice whatsoever. A+ —Eric W. Saeger

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A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• Bulletin, this just in, fam, there will be new rock ’n’ roll music CDs released this Friday, June 7, which is three days before my second book, My Year In The Online Left: Social Media, Solidarity, And Armchair Activism, becomes available for sale worldwide, can you even believe it folks, now there’s a coincidence! So, the hot weather is here, and we will roast, because unbelievably hot, but that’s OK, because we will have new albums to keep us cool, like f’rinstance the new one from Bill Belichik’s favorite hair-metal rocker, Bon Jovi, titled Forever! In celebrity gossip news, the other day I learned that Millie Bobby Brown (no relation to rapper Bobby Brown) married Bon Jovi’s son, Jake, in a beautiful ceremony celebrating the doomed special sort of love that lasts forever when you get married 10 minutes after reaching the age when you can get a driver’s license! No, I kid Millie Bobby Brown, here’s to many years of blissful whatever, now let’s go listen to the new rope-in single from Mr. Jovi — actually, forget that, the whole album is free on the YouTube, so I’ll just listen to the first song, “Living Proof,” and then tell you about it! Yeah, so this sounds like the new-old version of Bon Jovi, after Desmond Child stopped helping the band write songs like “Livin’ On A Prayer,” you remember, those microwaved tunes that wanted to be interesting and catchy but they were just sort of lumpy and boring (“It’s My Life,” anyone?). That’s what this song is, but Mr. Jovi is using that Peter Frampton talk box effect again, good lord. Other than that it’s truly thrilling and innovative, seriously.

• Bonny Light Horseman is something of an American folk supergroup, because the people in the band used to play in bands like The Shins and The National. Their 2020 self-titled debut album had a mix of traditional British folk songs and some originals, but since then they’ve gone more Americana. This new album, Keep Me On Your Mind/See You Free, comes to us from Jagjaguwar Records, which has always sent me good stuff, and so unsurprisingly the single “I Know You Know” is a nice, refreshing burst of ’70s cowboy-pop, the beat evoking Linda Ronstadt while singer Eric Johnson (who’s aka the Fruit Bats, by the way) lays a sort of twangy Les Claypool vocal over it. It’s really not bad at all.

• The Mysterines are a British alt-grunge foursome fronted by guitarist Lia Metcalfe, and that’s really all there is to say about them for the moment; I was drawn to the band’s name, so I have no idea what I’m even doing with this. Wikipedia doesn’t know what to say about them either, so why don’t we just mosey over to YouTube to see what this is about, that’d be great. Bazinga, there they are, their new LP is Afraid Of Tomorrows, and the featured video is for the tune “Stray,” a gothy, Joy Division-infused creep-rocker that’s got something of a Trent Reznor vibe going, except there’s a girl singer and she has a low voice because she intentionally wants to scare you, like, there should be a parental warning, because I’ll tell you, I got the shivers myself.

• OK, let’s take it home with a new album from — oh no, it’s The Eels, terrific, I have to think of something relevant to say about David Malcolm Werewolf or whatever his name is, once again! Here’s a riddle, you know what you call a Tom Waits concert with The Eels opening up? A show I wouldn’t go to for $100! I’ve got a million of ’em, folks, but whatever, I’ll go see what’s going on with their new song, “Goldy.” It’s slow and grungy and kind of messy — interesting, I don’t hate this. Wait, there’s a sample part that’s boring and dumb. Backing away slowly from this. —Eric W. Saeger

Göden, Vale of the Fallen (Svart Records)

Awesome, a sludge-metal album, such a cute sludge-metal album, who’s the good boy! The public relations person uses the confounding blurb “Celtic Frost is to Triptykon what Winter is to Göden” to describe it, because see, Göden is the follow-up project to Winter, same guy and whatnot, take from that what you will. This “slab” starts out with a really depressing instrumental with fake strings, then it moves into some super-slow Exorcist stuff with the title track. I think he’s grumble-singing about the fiery end of civilization, but it could also be about bunnies, I don’t know. The singer bro sounds kind of like Papa Satan from Ministry but he’s trying too hard. On and on it goes for 4.5 minutes, then it’s “Urania,” which sounds like the previous tune but in a different key. It’s haunted graveyard music for making sure your mom doesn’t dare enter your room without knocking super loudly. C

Clare O’Kane, Everything I Know How To Do (Pretty Good Friends Records)

It’s been too long since the last time a standup comedy album came in for inspection. I think the last time somebody sent one in, I was listening to a lot of Doug Stanhope’s stuff, but nowadays I’m into Anthony Jeselnik, the American Psycho of comedy. But I’ll get sick of him too, of course, all of which leads to the question “Why do people buy comedy albums?” given that once you’ve heard the jokes, why listen to them again? Anyway, this pansexual, polyamorous OCD sufferer from New York City riffs on her quitting the Saturday Night Live writing staff, bravo for her, and she does get plenty raunchy. Personally, I think everyone has an OCD gene somewhere in there, and her takes on it aren’t all that funny. It gets better when she equates people’s reactions to her pansexuality lifestyle to when you see some rich person riding around on one of those electric one-wheel gizmos, like what are you even supposed to talk about with someone like that? She’s a good egg, this lady. B

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A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• Cowabunga, dudes, it’s the May 31 CD-release Friday, that’s pretty gnarly, isn’t it? It means that we are heading straight for the summer, on our totally tubular and bodacious day-glo skateboards, and to take us into the molten lava temperatures (and always rainy weekends, again) that are surely ahead, it’s time for y’all to stop looking at sight-gag TikToks and sneaking peeks at all the nonsense your exes are up to on Facebook, and survey the squadron of albums that are, as we speak, headed to our Pandoras and toy Apple apps, for our listening perusal and etc.! But first, I hope you’re saving your buffalo nickels and Bitcoins, because my second book will be coming out on June 10! It’s a semi-humorous “travel guide” of sorts for people who spend a lot of time on Twitter and Facebook and whatnot discussing politics! It is titled My Year In The Online Left: Social Media, Solidarity, And Armchair Activism, and you’ll be able to order it at basically any bookstore in the world, so remember to do that, please, at least one of you, out of pity, that’d be great, now let’s look at all the new albums that had the audacity and the brass Chiquita bananas to dare darken my music-journo door, expecting me to give them unbiased reviews and urge my thousands of readers to buy said albums, when in reality, as usual, said albums will have me running for the Pepto-Bismol and guzzling the whole bottle-load of its shocking-pink wonder drug elixir in one gulp after hearing to just a few notes from said whatnots! No, I’m just kidding, gag me with a spoon, let’s have a look at the new album from Australian sports-bar standbys Crowded House, Gravity Stairs! You all know the House, or at least you’ve heard the Sixpence None The Richer cover version of their song “Don’t Dream It’s Over,” because it plays at every Hannaford supermarket whenever you can afford to go in there, good for them. The new single, “Oh Hi,” is a mellow blend of MGMT and ’90s radio-pop that goes down quite nicely, thankyouverymuch.

• Some of you remember Bat for Lashes from a few years back, but I don’t, I just remember confusing her with the Fruit Bats or whatever their name was, and thinking what a stupid band name Bat For Lashes is. But that’s all water behind the bridge now, like, I can look past a lot of things, including bands that give themselves stupid names, all I ask nowadays is for bands not to sound like Pavement or Slint, that’d be great. The new album from this person, whose real name is Natasha Khan, is The Dream Of Delphi, whose title track is airy and atmospheric, except with Nintendo keyboards, which is a new one on me, I have to admit.

• British indie/baroque-pop singer/whatever Richard Hawley was raised on rockabilly, which is all anyone should be listening to these days, like my next mix for the car is going to have ’50s and ’60s music on it, like “Wooly Bully,” remember I talked about that song a couple of weeks ago, guys? Sam The Sham should have been bigger than Elvis, but that’s neither here nor there, let’s just get this new Robert Hawley album, In This City They Call You Love, off my plate so I can do some day-drinking, don’t try this at home, folks. The single, “Two for His Heels,” starts out sounding like Bruce Hornsby’s “The Way It Is,” if there are any fans of depressing music out there, then it turns into Hawley doing an Elvis impersonation over — I don’t know, some tosser track from the 1980s Fright Night soundtrack. All set with this.

• We’ll close the week with remember to buy my new book on June 10, oops, I mean the new album from Ben Platt, Honeymind! Opening song “Cherry On Top” is mildly edgy jangle-indie.

The Treatment, Wake Up The Neighbourhood (Frontiers Music s.r.l.)

Yep, it’s been a little while since we checked in at Frontiers Music Mercy Hospital, where throwback-arena-rock bands and power-metal dudes get record contracts that most of them don’t deserve. No, I kid Frontiers Music, there’s hope, rockers, and isn’t it past time for a rawk resurgence? I think so, so let’s put this one under the snark-o-scope, the latest from this Cambridge, U.K. hard rock band, which has opened for Kiss and Alice Cooper and is professed to be influenced by Def Leppard, AC/DC and Thin Lizzy. Usually these bands don’t sound like their RIYL suggestions, but this one’s in the right pew, I’ll admit. The dumbly named “Let’s Wake Up This Town” is like a lost AC/DC demo from the ’90s, you know the period; “Back To The 1970s” is more along the hair-metal lines of Poison; “This Fire Still Burns” is Skid Row prostration, and bonk bonk bonk, yadda yadda, the overall effect is Buckcherry (if you’ve never heard that band, I beg of you, don’t bother, but in the meantime this band is a hundred times better than them). B-

John Escreet, The Epicenter Of Your Dreams (Blue Room Music)

Touted as a best-in-class practitioner of Myra Melford et al.’s “free-bop post-Cecil Taylor aesthetic,” this modern jazz pianist herewith tables his second album for Blue Room, a small Korea-based label. It’s not often I’m compelled to use an adjective like “relentless” when covering jazz, but there’s no better one to describe opening track “Call It What It Is,” in which Escreet’s keys alternately explore mechanically precise syncopation and busy waterfalls of 64th notes. Returning to this quartet from Escreet’s 2018 Seismic Shift album are bassist Eric Revis and drummer Damion Reid, tenor saxophonist Mark Turner adding the final piece to a world-class group. The arrangements are bold and dominating except when they’re not, in gentle but resolute chillouts like the title track. Don’t miss this one. A+

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A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• Here we go, kids, summer’s a-comin’, we’re staring down the barrel of the May 24 music-CD release date, doesn’t it seem like it was 10 degrees out like a couple of days ago? Boy, this climate apocalypse really is the dickens, am I right, fam, but let’s see what craziness is in the list for today, my super-secret list of new album releases that cements my status as the greatest CD reviewer in the history of this Granite State, unless Dr. David Thorp moved here because he couldn’t afford the rent in Boston anymore, which has to be, what, $8,000 a month these days for a tool shed in Dorchester? Tell me when everyone’s gotten a grip on reality, but meanwhile let’s talk about music albums, like this new one, Frog In Boiling Water, from Brooklyn slacker-indie quartet DIIV! These guys look like Kiss, if Kiss were 98-pound weaklings and all of them except for the Peter Criss wore $5 mail-order eyeglasses from EyeBuyDirect.com. But eyewear fashion aside, what say we go investigate this nonsense and plumb its depths for aesthetic verisimilitude, in other words let’s see what bands they rip off, I’m as excited as you are, trust me. I’ve got a simply capital idea, folks, let’s listen to the title track to get a general gist of what the dilly is, by all means let’s. Wait a second, actually, this is cool, really grungy, like Nirvana, which makes me want to go on a rant about how ’90s music is going to be everywhere before you know it, but you must have figured that out by now. It’s low-slung, muddy and metallic, with an extreme emo-metal tinge to the guitar sound. You’ll probably love it, I’d hope.

• Ha ha, oh no, it’s Old Man Luedecke, with a new album called She Told Me Where To Go! There is no person named Luedecke, by the way; that’s the stage name of alt-country banjo-picker/singer Christopher Rudolf Luedecke, who has won multiple Juno awards, the Canadian version of the Grammys, and shouldn’t they be spelled Grammies, what the devil is going on here. Anyway, the single from this album, “She Told Me Where To Go,” is a jolly good one from this Canadian soy-boy. It definitely borders on Muddy Waters territory, except with, you know, kind of wimpy singing. He’ll probably win another Juno for this, and I wouldn’t begrudge him for it.

• You may recall that America started swirling down the cosmic drain when reality TV shows started getting 100 times worse than they’d ever been, and House of Carters led all those shows straight to the vortex, like some sort of demented pied piper. It only lasted eight episodes but hoo-wee was it awful, lol. Along with former Backstreet Boy Nick, all the other Carter siblings were there, being cringe, including Aaron Carter, whose new album, The Recovery Album, is a posthumous affair, because he died in 2022. “Blame It On Me” is a heart-tugging boyband ballad that isn’t completely awful, may I go now?

• We’ll bag it this week with Columbus, Ohio-based alt-hiphop/indie/electronica/whatever duo Twenty One Pilots, whose new LP, Clancy, continues the dystopian-fantasy conceptual trip they’ve dabbled in for years now (they promised to stop after this one, but I don’t believe them). Once again the lyrics are set in the metaphorical world of Trench and the horrible city of Dema; the single, “Backslide,” evokes a futuristic Eminem with enough underground hip-hop vibe to make it non-barf-inducing.

Unearthly Rites, Ecdysis (Prosthetic Records)

You know, I don’t know if I’ve ever reviewed an album from the Prosthetic imprint in this space, but they’ve stuffed my emailbox for so long now that it’d be weird if I didn’t hear from them. It’s like that viral video that made the rounds a few months ago, where a little boy’s getting off the school bus and an all-black chicken comes running over to him to get hugs; Prosthetic is one of my favorite hug-seeking chickens, so let’s do this thing. If you haven’t guessed by now, we’re talking about a death metal band, one that comes to us “from the death metal caves of Finland,” and this is their first full-length. They love to brag about their DIY roots, which are verified through their really raw overall sound, which one critic didn’t like, but I do: It’s very punky, folks, just a dilapidated wall of hate atop which sits a workable-enough singer who does a fine Cookie Monster imitation. For what it is, it’s awesome. A-

High On Fire, Cometh The Storm (MNRK Heavy Records)

The mainstream rock press’s love for this mud-metal band has mystified me since the release of their first album, never you mind how long ago it was. I know some people love them some Motorhead, and I appreciate that, but that’s what ex-Sleep guitarist Matt Pike and his boys have always sounded like to me, Motorhead with a side of — well, nothing else really. By the way, they won a Best Metal Performance Grammy in 2019, the last time they could be bothered to put out an album, which speaks more to the distracted, half-informed mindset of the Grammy people than anything else, but let’s get to this one, which opens in fine fettle with “Lambsbread,” a riff clinic that sounds like Motorhead crossed with early Slayer, then the distinctly Crowbar-like grind-a-thon “Burning Down,” which does peg the coolometer. Bassist Jeff Matz (formerly with Zeke) adds some trippiness to the proceedings, specifically by playing a Turkish lute, so some of this sounds like Motorhead playing with Ravi Shankar. OK, anyway, there we are, Motorhead, um I mean High On Fire everyone. A

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A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• Hoo-rah, look alive guys, the May 17 music-CD drop-date, and look at this, I’m already out of my element, because the first thing I have to deal with in these proceedings is a new album from Cage the Elephant, called Neon Pill! I am one of those professional music journalists who was sent the first Cage The Elephant album and thought it was boring and stupid, which led to a 20-year journey of having no friends, but it was worth it just to see the look on people’s faces. I still don’t get it, and I still don’t like this band or Portugal [curiously placed period] The Man either. But one of my associates really likes Cage The Elephant, and so for them (because I really, really care) I will heretofore forthwith proceed to put my current stomach contents at risk by listening to their new single to see if they’re still the emperor’s new clothes of skinny-jeans bands. Are y’all ready, that’d be great. OK, so I’m now reporting to you live from YouTube, guys, where I’m about to listen to the title track. Uh oh, wait, is this actually Cage The Whatever, or is it Guster? It sure sounds like Guster, talk about boring. Wait, this just in, folks, there’s some skronky noise in the mix, probably added so people would think the song’s important, but it’s better than nothing. Once again, I’m Eric Saeger, everyone, and this is “Listening To Really Pointless Music.”

• Carefully manufactured fashion-victimizer Billie Eilish is still around, being an unintelligible one-person Insane Clown Posse and doing annoying stuff like resembling my least favorite ex, and plus making albums, like her new one, Hit Me Hard And Soft! No, I don’t mind Billie Eilish, if people want to believe the record company’s story about how they found her in a Dumpster eating stale saltines or whatever the deal was, I cannot prevent them from falling for marketing ploys, but either way, let’s trudge back over to the YouTunes to see what’s going on with this ridiculous post-postmodern whatever. So, dum de dum, let’s see, here’s a tune from the new album, called “Chihiro.” She is half-whisper-singing, of course, because that’s her brand, heaven forbid she should just sing like a normal — wait, hold it guys, this is just a bunch of snippets from the song, because she knows all the 9-year-olds who listen to her would just pirate the tune through YouTubeToMP3, isn’t that clever? The song is slow, with an upbeat afterparty vibe, sort of like if Sade were a 15-year-old who smoked cigarettes and skipped school a lot. We’re just plain doomed, fam.

• There are a lot of albums for me to ignore this week, look at ’em all. There’s massively annoying ’90s person Ani DiFranco’s Unprecedented Sh!t; massively boring Canadian indie band Of Montreal with some stupid album, who cares what it’s called; and get this, guys, smirking nepo baby actress Kate Hudson is putting out an album titled Glorious, for some reason, which I only mention so you don’t accidentally buy it at Strawberries or Service Merchandise or who even knows where you’re supposed to buy albums now! Jeez Louise, everyone’s putting out an album this week, including mummified ’90s boyband New Kids on the Block, with their new one, Still Kids!

• And finally, it’s Portishead singer Beth Gibbons, with her new LP, Lives Outgrown! She of course is a trip-hop goddess, so there will probably be nothing to dislike about this. Yup, nope, “Reaching Out” has some really cool samples, a Florence Welch part, just badass stuff that you should listen to.