Meg Baird, Furling (Drag City Records)
This singer and drummer is well-known in the indie/retro-folk scene, having helped to form the psychedelic rock supergroup Heron Oblivion after a several-album stint with Espers. The New Jersey-born, San Francisco-based hipster has other projects on her resumé, too, including three albums with her sister Laura as the Baird Sisters, and one with harpist Mary Lattimore, titled Ghost Forests, that reached No. 3 on the Billboard New Age chart. This one starts with “Ashes, Ashes,” an appropriately titled tune recalling Dark Side of the Moon-era Pink Floyd in its somber, piano-driven, slow-march-to-oblivion po-facedness; thankfully layered with cool things, it’s made quanta more fascinating through Baird’s use of ghostly, wordless warbling. “Star Hill Song” carries on similarly but on a more folk-pop bent; it’s here we first encounter her Joan Baez-ish soprano, a thing that’s about as folkie as it gets. This stuff is great Coachella bait, but it’s a lot more compelling that what one usually gets from that crowd. A+
Scott Crow, Of Everything and Nothing (Emergency Hearts Records)
This Texan is becoming something of a Hunter S. Thompson of the alternative politics scene. A long-time anarchist author and activist in the anti-fascist, environmental and mutual aid movements, Crow presents here a mishmash some of his first musical recordings since 1992, a collection of recent collaborations, some of which feature guest appearances from other artists and producers recorded in 2016 and up through the present. He’s had several projects over the years, ranging from darkwave to noise rock, but this one opens with a surprisingly melodic New Wave/art-rock tune, “Stardust Supernova,” that recalls New Order’s late-’80s recipe. “Crown Slow 2.0” is a dirgey drone-a-thon that’s more in a Swans vein; the very pretty “R34L Falling Into Sleep” is super-refined krautrock if you ask me. Really impressive, nearly all of this, save for several remixes tabled by Portland, Oregon-based producer Televangel, whose technique is a bit messy-muddy for my tastes, even if many would probably hear a lot of Throbbing Lobster in them. A
Playlist
• It’s your boy here, takin’ a jaundiced look at the stinky batch of music CDs coming out on Feb. 3, regardless of whether or not they should! Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist John Frusciante is releasing two albums, but it’s complicated, ready? The albums are different versions of the same album, one for vinyl and the other for CD and digital. The former, . I : (pronounced ‘one’), spans seven tracks, while : II . (pronounced ‘two’) spans 10. OK, did you get all that? He wrote the music while he was listening to experimental artists like Oren Ambarchi, Klara Lewis and Ryoji Ikeda, and the melodic parts take inspiration from John Lennon, David Bowie, Iggy Pop, Jimi Hendrix and Brian Eno. I say all this only for the interest of RHCP fans, who wouldn’t care if the tunes were all inspired by the background music to Pac Man Cereal commercials (did you know that one of the Batmans, Christian Bale, was in one of those?), because as long as it’s RHCP, with the real Flea actually playing bass and the music is sort of like Frank Zappa but not actually funny at all, forget it, it’ll be a huge album for RHCP completists to buy and put away carefully without ever listening to. Just my luck, of course, there are no advance singles to listen to, but it’ll be ambient stuff, according to what I’m reading on the internet, and it’s likely there’ll be some jungle rinseouts, because he’s into that kind of thing these days, literally for no reason whatsoever.
• So you thought Shania Twain had given up singing goopy Top 40 songs and retired to some 50-acre horse farm to grow petunias and count hundred-dollar bills, did you? Well you’re wrong, those petunias and horsies cost a lot of hundred-dollar bills, so she’s putting out a new album this Friday, called Queen Of Me! Her 1990s heyday is over, so she’s been playing at Caesar’s Palace for mobsters and all those kinds of people, then she went through a horrible divorce with her producer, Mutt Lange, so the producer for this album is not Mutt Lange. But before I run out of room, let’s go take a listen to “Waking Up Dreaming,” since it’s probably the push single, given that it already has 2.5 million YouTube views from bots and people who accidentally landed on the video while searching for “We Will Rock You” or whatnot. The song starts off with a “Footloose”-style drumbeat, and then Shania starts singing, sounding kind of bored, for which I wouldn’t blame her, because as feisty and catchy she wants this song to be, it isn’t, it’s just kind of phoned-in and limp, which means she’ll probably sing it on some daytime TV show, causing IQ levels to drop worldwide, and that’s the only time you’ll ever hear it again, not that the song is completely worthless. OK, it is, but where would we be with hilariously disposable pop art, you tell me.
• British six-piece indie-rock band The Go! Team are releasing their newest full-length, Get Up Sequences Part Two, this week. The entire album is available to listen to on YouTube right now in one big lump without separation between song titles, and the first song is kind of dumb, like Flaming Lips but with a full brass band. I hate it, but your mileage may vary, lord help us.
• We’ll call it a column by checking out British pop songstress Ellie Goulding, whose new LP, Higher Than Heaven, has a single, called “Let It Die.” It’s an OK tune, like Avril Lavigne for soccer parents, not too energetic or listenable, just right for cranking in the minivan while you drop the kid off for practice, where the other kids will give you funny looks for being cringe.
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).