Category: Pop

Album Reviews 22/11/17

Enuff Z’Nuff, Finer Than Sin (Frontiers Music)

Early holiday present for me; new albums from long-irrelevant (at least in the U.S.) hair-metal bands basically write their own reviews after about a minute, unless there’s some smidgeon of off-kilterness present (there never is). This is another band I really never listened to, mostly because of their stupid name, but trust me, I’ve listened to plenty of hair-metal bands (and was in one back when I was a simply irresistible babe), so when I say really dumb band names said all there was to say about a hair-metal album, it’s true. These guys formed in Chicago and were known for their obligato power ballad “Fly High Michelle” (um, wow, this isn’t all that bad) and an obligato dance-metal tune, “New Thing” (well well, ditto). So yeah, singer Donnie Vie is gone; bassist Chip Z’Nuff runs the show now, “Intoxicated” is the obligato power ballad, “Catastrophe” is a decent midtempo rocker. It’s not bad, really, this stuff. The takeaway for me is that these guys did have the potential to become a hair metal Cheap Trick. Too bad about that dumb name. A+

Long Mama, Poor Pretender (self-released)

This Milwaukee-based band has gathered a relatable-enough bunch of tunes together for their debut album, its inherent humanness coming courtesy of singer Kat Wodtke, whose voice traverses the wintry border that separates Dolores O’Riordan from Natalie Merchant (which means it’s pretty thin, which I’d never noticed before). Standard guitar-bass-drums setup here, one that you’d picture floating the background to a k.d. laing record or something like that, but there’s also engineer Erik Koskinen, who added lap steel, electric guitar, and Wurlitzer. Don’t let the Wilco comparisons lead you into this if you happen to see any; it’s really pretty basic Americana-indie-pop, very light on the indie, although there are some punk-ish passages here and there, which is as advertised. The tunes benefit quite a bit from Koskinen’s seemingly ubiquitous steel guitar, leaving me wondering why he’s not a permanent member. Picture a country-fied 10,000 Maniacs and you’d be about there. A+

Playlist

• Uh-oh, look what’s coming, it’s Friday, Nov. 18, only like 10 seconds left for your holiday shopping before all the corporate music-streaming platforms and rock stars starve and become skeletons, all because you had to be all like, “It’s too commercial, what care I if the dude from Coldplay can’t buy his weekly Maserati?” Always thinking of yourself, do you know it’s Christmas, don’t be such a Grinch, holy crow! I mean it’s definitely a festive day for me, because look over there, it’s one of the favorite punching bags of rock ’n’ roll critics all over the world! Yes, I’m talking about none other than Canadian false-metal muttonheads Nickelback, with an album titled Get Rollin’, how could they have thought of such an original thing? Ha ha, you want to know something awesome, upjoke.com has a collection of the best Nickelback jokes, ready? “Fire alarms should just play Nickelback: Anyone who stays in the building deserves what they get,” and, “I can’t get over how cruel some people are. I had some Nickelback tickets on the passenger seat of my car, and I popped into the shop for just five minutes. When I came back, someone had smashed the window and left two more.” Now that is some good old down-home hilarity, isn’t it folks, but uh-oh, there are five or six dudes looking at me all mad right now, and they have mullets and knockoff WWE championship wrestling belts, so I reckon I’d better get a move on, huh? OK, moving on, there’s a video here for the new single “These Days,” look at them, the fellas are walking into someone’s garage, and there’s a lava lamp, a random first-generation Atari system, and now they’re playing, and it’s kind of a neo-country half-ballad that’s just lame and emo-y. It’s like they’re trying to be some sort of boy-band for soccer moms? I don’t know. Anyway, the ’Back is back folks, Nickelback, everyone.

• So I saw that Richard Dawson has a new album coming out called The Ruby Cord this Friday, and then I was like, wait, is he even alive anymore or is he hosting some bizarre version of Family Feud in heaven for the entertainment of all the angels and whatever. OK, I found a video trailer for something that will be on this album apparently, something called “The Hermit,” which is billed as “the trailer for the film,” which means that there will be a movie featuring this dude I guess — Wait a freakin’ minute homies, that isn’t Richard Dawson, it looks more like Ricky Gervais, help me, Hippo readers, I don’t know what I’m even looking at. He’s sleeping in some bed, and the music is sort of like an unplugged Red Hot Chili Peppers B-side but there’s no singing and — wait, some YouTube review says that the opening track for this album is 41 minutes long, I’ll be taking a hard pass there, like, if it’s all like this boring snippet I’d rather eat a bowl of crickets. Another few commentators on YouTube are warning that this dude is into some sort of weird evolutionary theory and he’s sort of insane. Let’s leave this all right here and get out while we can, whattaya say?

• Boy howdy, if there’s anyone who knows how to put out two or three albums every year just to get on my nerves with their bad singing and prehistoric hippie iconography, it’s Neil Young & Crazy Horse, and it’s time for a new one, World Record! Short and sweet: New single “Break The Chain” is like a basic Tom Petty song except the guitar has heavy distortion on it, and, you know, that voice. Aaaand we’re moving.

• Finally, let’s listen to “Denimclad Baboons,” from Röyksopp’s new album, Profound Mysteries III. It’s (spoiler alert) krautrock with some mid-Aughts-house and ’70s-radio-pop vibe. I pronounce it “Fine, whatever.”

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).

Album Reviews 22/11/10

Hellsingland Underground, Endless Optimism (Sound Pollution Records)

So the deal with this album is it’s the latest from a bunch of old Swedish rock ’n’ roll guys who don’t care if you make fun of them for being old. They’ve done a ton of albums and have finally gotten tired of loud guitars, so they “decided to add more piano, synthesizers and atmosphere instead.” Admirable, isn’t it? And they wrote their press blurb sheet themselves, which is cool. Like, after a lot of blah blah blah, it says here, “We also fired our drummer Patrik Jansson, but found a new one in Johan Gröndal. He is fantastic.” So, yeah, I like these guys personally, and they admit to hating Mötley Crue, which means they’re normal, but is the music any good? Actually yes, yes it is, especially if you’re into Starz, Bowie, things like that, arena-rock tempered with honky tonk and such. They have my full blessings. A

Spell, Tragic Magic (Sound Pollution Records)

The core of this Vancouver, Canada-based throwback-prog-metal act is just two guys, guitarist Cam Mesmer and drummer Al Lester, although they’re supported here by an array of temps who should probably go permanent if they want this to be a serious project, just my two cents. Influenced by such bands as Pink Floyd, Black Sabbath, Blue Oyster Cult, Rush and (purportedly) old-school Mercyful Fate, which is slightly hard to pinpoint here, but Triumph and Rush-style stuff isn’t. Some pretty different riffing here, odd time signatures, really good engineering values and all that; in fact this might have made something of a splash back in the days when a slightly occult-ish vibe was desirable. But it does get a little hokey when they’re phoning in some obvious filler (“Ultraviolet” for example, despite its being something of an apparent push track). But anyway, there you are, something that blows away bands like The Darkness without being too obvious about it. A

Playlist

• Ho ho ho, kiddies, there’s nothing like a little early holiday cheer, which will (hopefully) be provided this week by a bunch of new albums that are officially due out on Friday, Nov. 11! The biggest news this week is something for our mainstream rock fans out there, a new album from living fossil man Bruce Springsteen, called Only The Strong Survive! Here’s a fun fact: Did you know that Bruuuce’s guitarist Steven Van Zandt (also known as Little Steven or Miami Steve or That No-Neck Dude From The Sopranos) is from Winthrop, Massachusetts? See, you learn something new every week just by checking in here! Ack, ack, whatever, furball, here we go, another full length album of rock ’n’ roll from Bruuuce and his boyeez, I can’t wait to get disappointed by the latest rock music single from this working-class hero dude who could buy a few Hilton hotels out of the loose change in his couch, let’s go see what the hubbub is all about this time (which will hopefully be better than last time, lol, remember how much people hated that last album?). But wait a minute, folks, this first single, “Do I Love You,” is pretty cool overall, especially if you’re old and often enjoy 1960s girl groups like the Supremes. Ha ha, look at Bruuuce, getting’ down with the rock and soul, just cold partying while three sets of Josie And The Pussycats dancers rock out and dance to the brass and xylophone. I’m totally inspired, I have to admit, Bruuuce has finally given up the whole “political rock” nonsense, put down his guitar and accepted his role as a really white version of James Brown and plus girl dancers! Buy buy buy!

• Gold Panda is the stage name of English electronic record producer and songwriter Derwin Schlecker, who loves making weird electro music in genres that have short or non-existent shelf-lives, like “post dubstep” and “micro-house,” don’t you love it when techno dudes just make up a genre that might loosely describe their beats, which usually just come from random loops that came out of their playing with their ProTools or whatever for 10 seconds? But wait a minute, hold up homies, forget everything I just said because I’m listening to “The Corner” from the new Gold Panda album The Work, and it’s pretty usable and kind of neat or groovy or whatever they say nowadays. The beat is a trippy ’70s sample, sounds like, and the dude’s voice is a dead ringer for the singer from Pet Shop Boys.

• British singer Louis Tomlinson originally rose to fame as a member of the English-Irish boy band One Direction. Faith In the Future is his new album; “Bigger Than Me” is its tire-kicker single, basically Hoobastank without any training wheels (or originality for that matter, but it’s OK).

• We’ll end with certified weird person Jimmy Edgar, a conceptual artist and sound designer from Detroit, Michigan. This dude is influenced by minimalism, Yves Klein and Immaterialism, the doctrine that material things do not exist. Would that that were actually correct and this guy’s new album, Liquids Heaven, weren’t staring me in the face right now, but here it is, so let’s get this over with. Right, right, so the first “single” is “Slip n Slide,” a tattered electro mess with a lot of wub-wub vibe. Starts out kind of dumb but then becomes workable enough. If you like weird cyborg-pop patter this would be the place.

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).

Survival of the Richest, by Douglas Rushkoff

Survival of the Richest, by Douglas Rushkoff (W.W. Norton, 212 pages)

Five years ago, Douglas Rushkoff was offered a large sum of money (half of what he makes each year as a professor) to give a speech at a secluded resort somewhere in the West. He arrived expecting his audience to be “a hundred or so investment bankers” who wanted to hear his thoughts on the future of technology. Instead, he had an audience of five hedge-fund billionaires, and they were only peripherally interested in technology. What they really wanted to talk about was how they can better survive the coming apocalypse.

Writing about this experience in 2018 on Medium, Rushkoff said that the billionaire preppers didn’t have a particular apocalypse in mind, just a general collapse of the world as we know it, which they called “the event.” “That was their euphemism for the environmental collapse, social unrest, nuclear explosion, unstoppable virus, or Mr. Robot hack that takes everything down.”

The men were already building their apocalypse-proof compounds, but needed guidance on how to protect themselves from people: not only the mobs who would want to get in, but the security forces they’ve already hired and have on standby at this very moment. How do they keep their post-apocalypse employees from turning on them? How will they deal with the uncomfortable moral dilemma of shutting doomed people out?

It’s a safe bet that Rushkoff hasn’t been invited back for a follow-up session, as he takes a dim view of the billionaires’ worldview and suggests that some of their business practices are what make an apocalypse possible in the first place. He expounds on that criticism in Survival of the Richest, the book-length expansion of that initial Medium essay. It’s a relatively short but compelling look inside the apocalypse industrial complex, even if it does make your bug-out bag look woefully insufficient and the billionaires look morally bankrupt. (For the record, he’s not talking Musk and Bezos billionaires, but “low-level” billionaires, meaning they’re probably guys we wouldn’t have heard of even if Rushkoff had named them.)

There are, living among us, people whose everyday lives are all about imminent annihilation — not for them maybe, but for the rest of us. In New York, for example, there’s a venture called American Heritage Farms that is designed as communities where people can thrive after a grid collapse. In Texas, a company called Rising S is selling luxury underground bunkers in which people who can afford the $8.3 million can ride out a nuclear strike with their own underground pool and bowling setup. And perhaps weirdest of all, there’s an entire “aquapreneur” subset of billionaire preppers who are planning a Waterworld-type escape by living on their own seagoing city-states. “Why fear rising oceans if you’re already living on the ocean?” Rushkoff asks.

Rushkoff, who is a professor of media theory and digital economics at Queens/City College of New York, explains his theory of how the billionaire prepper mindset evolved contrary to the promise of the internet, which was supposed to unite humanity. Instead, he argues, it created the techno-bubble that drove us further apart, not only in terms of income inequality but also in how we see the world and our place in it. The billionaires, he says, see themselves as uniquely valuable, which forms the moral basis for their plans for self-preservation. “The would-be architects of the human future treat the civic sector as antagonistic to their grand designs. They believe they can do it better,” Rushkoff writes. As an example, he devotes one chapter to the “Great Reset” promoted by World Economic Forum founder Klaus Schwab, who promotes sweeping technological changes such as biometrics, mass surveillance and geoengineering in order to repair the sins of capitalism. Some of our political and technological overlords, he argues, are not only preparing for doomsday but actively trying to bring it on.

Despite the grand talk of building a better world with or without a life-as-we-know-it-altering event, Rushkoff says the billionaires see the rest of us as “little more than iron filings flying back and forth between the magnetic poles set up by the rich and powerful.”

But he doesn’t let the rest of us off the hook. All of us suffer to some degree from the apocalypse-now mindset. “We either mirror the mindset or rebel in a way that reaffirms it,” Rushkoff writes.

It’s only in the last pages that he offers hope: “We are not yet over the cliff. We still have choices,” he writes, then throws out a few pages of suggestions, many of which seem to have nothing to do with the various doomsday scenarios at the fore of the conversation today. (It’s hard to see how “buy local” and “promote the rights of gig workers” relate to Vladimir Putin launching nukes at Ukraine.) But he has a powerful message in his indictment of the billionaires whose strategy for armageddon is leaving the rest of us behind. “Our nervous systems do not operate independently but in concert with other nervous systems around us. It’s as if we share one collective nervous system. Our physical and mental health is contingent on nurturing those connections. Leaving others behind is futile and stupid.”

It’s a bit of a kumbaya ending to a generally incisive book. More hopeful is a quote he includes from an interview with aboriginal scholar Tyson Yunkaporta, who said, “Apocalypses are never just complete extinction, you know. My people have been through heaps of apocalypses and they’re quite survivable, as long as you’re still following the patterns of the land and the patterns of creation. As long as you’re in touch and moving with the landscape.” So even if you can’t afford an underground bunker, there’s hope. B+

— Jennifer Graham

At the Sofaplex 22/11/03

Wendell & Wild (PG-13)

Voices of Lyric Ross, Angela Bassett.

As well as the voices of Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele as Wendell and Wild, respectively, two demons that find a human Hell Maiden, Kat (Ross), to help them visit the land of the living in this animated feature.

Kat is a girl consumed with anger and guilt about the death of her parents when she was a child. Certain that she was the cause of the car accident that killed them, she carried that with her to profit-focused group homes, unkind schools and juvenile detention. She returns to her home town as a teen to go to a private girls school and finds that the death of her father and the destruction of his brewery ushered in the downfall of the town of Rust Belt — a downfall cheered along by the Klaxon family who own Klax Korp. The snakey Klaxons (voices of David Harewood and Maxine Peak) want to bulldoze the town entirely to make way for a corporate prison. Dogged activist and local council member Marianna (Natalie Martinez) is attempting to stop Klax Korp and to prove that they’re behind the fire at the brewery. Her son, the artistic Raul (voice of Sam Zelaya), a trans boy who also attends the school, refuses to listen when Kat says she’s not a good person to be friends with.

Raul joins Kat on a trip to her parents’ gravesites when Wendell and Wild, demons with whom she is newly acquainted, promise to revive them. But Sister Helley (Bassett), one of the school’s teachers, has tried to warn her about doing business with demons.

A harebrained brother duo with a plan to build a real-world amusement park, Wendell and Wild might have a connection to Kat but they’re willing to do business with the Klaxons to make their Dream Faire a reality. Making deals with the devil (or in this case a devil’s goofy sons) is one of this movie’s themes, along with the greed behind services that should be helping people. It’s a surprisingly complex kind of villainy for a kids’ movie (Common Sense pegs it at age 11 and up; I’d say at least that). And Kat’s redemption arc is only partly about magical powers or demons — it’s mostly about learning to forgive herself.

The movie delivers all of this thoughtfully and with some truly lovely visuals. The animation here is stop-motion (we see Kat in the real world with a filmmaker at the very end of the credits) and everything from the characters themselves to the clothes they wear or their surroundings has texture and heft. The people have a slightly angular quality with almost hinge-like features on their faces that call to mind marionettes but with more fluid movements. The movie is able to give us personality and emotion in the characters’ faces that give them a depth beyond their stylized look. A Available on Netflix.

The Good Nurse (R)

Jessica Chastain, Eddie Redmayne.

Nurse Amy Loughren (Chastain) struggles to work while dealing with a heart condition but comes to suspect friend and colleague Charlie Cullen (Redmayne) isn’t just bending the rules by helping her in this movie based on a real-life story of a serial killer. The movie makes it fairly clear early on that Charlie is a killer, even if we don’t know the extent of his crimes going in (though I feel like I’ve read a couple of People magazine stories about it).

Amy doesn’t suspect Charlie right away but she does suspect something is going on when a patient who had been recovering suddenly dies. The hospital later investigates, but does so in such an aggressively unhelpful manner that the police detectives (Noah Emmerich, Nnamdi Asomugha) seem pretty sure from the jump that something has gone wrong.

Chastain does a good job of radiating competence — something she is often very good at doing with her characters. Redmayne is mostly a collection of oddball behaviors and twitches, which is a thing I often believe to be true of his performances. Overall, The Good Nurse has the feel of an extremely well-made TV crime drama. B- Available on Netflix.

Shuna’s Journey, by Hayao Miyazaki

Shuna’s Journey, by Hayao Miyazaki (First Second, 160 pages)

At a glance, Shuna’s Journey feels like well-mapped territory for author and acclaimed director Hayao Miyazaki. Originally published in 1983, the story about a prince who leaves his home on an ungulate steed for parts unknown bears a striking resemblance to Miyazaki’s 1997 film Princess Mononoke. Assumingthe graphic novelis only a springboard for the acclaimed animator’s later film, it would only seem accessible to mega-fans of his work. Assumptions are often proved wrong and Shuna’s Journey is much stranger than anyone could hope to assume.

The book itself is not laid out like a traditional comic or manga, stereotypically filled with sliced and diced frames meant for frenetic page-turning. In fact, the layout of Shuna’s Journey shares more commonality with a children’s book of myths and legends. Pages primarily consist of large single-columned panels, the maximum being only three per page. They bleed over onto the corresponding pages in uneven hand-painted watercolor, bringing humanity to the larger-than-life renderings.

The book opens peacefully among the mountains that tower over Shuna’s village with the lines, “These things may have happened long ago, they may be still to come.” and it could almost serve as an excuse for an unrealized, undeveloped setting. Instead, the stage is set with background art portraying an environment triumphant over human civilization. Empty ruins look like dry bones against barren plains and the desert lands stretch endlessly into the horizon, marbled in red and blue hues. Even human creations feel alien in this land. As Shuna makes his way west he takes shelter under giant abandoned robots as well as a colossal battleship, grounded and wasting in a sea of sand. All serve as breadcrumbs of a mythic past where humans thrived, making the reader wonder what happened to make Shuna’s world this way.

There is also an anthropological element that helps flesh out Shuna’s world. In his home village, walls painted with cosmological designs hint at a culture with deep-rooted beliefs and customs. The fur hat Shuna wears marks him as someone of high status, and other characters who also wield power wear similar headgear. Some of the bigger antagonists in the story, those participating in the slave trade have their own menacing iconography differentiating themselves from the small village kingdoms. These details help cut down on exposition that could cramp the page. The narrative does not need to slow down with backstory exposition when Thea (a character whose perspective takes over for the final third of the book) is introduced. Her distinctive hair ornaments tell everything about how she treasures her past and fights for her individuality even as the slave trade tries to take it from her.

Storywise, the book follows the archetypal hero’s journey, making the narrative easy to follow. Shuna and his people are caught in a cycle of hunger and scarcity. There’s not enough food for the people and animals, so when there is a chance to break the cycle, the hero sets off on his quest for a crop that will sustain his people. Miyazaki makes sure to impress upon the reader the constant looming state of desolation in which the characters find themselves. While Shuna must overcome physical challenges to survive, he needs more than muscle to accomplish his goal. The trials during the story test his resolve to complete the journey, making him learn what it means to both help and hurt others.

The pacing is even; the climax hits when Shuna finally makes it to the land of the god-folk. This is where the graphic novel’s art and story both reach their peak. The environment, with its vibrant forests filled with animals and large cultivated fields, is completely different from the wastelands Shuna previously journeyed through. The land of the god-folk is more than paradise and it is here where Shuna’s Journey dips into the realm of cosmic horror. The creatures that make the land their home look like they come straight from the Cambrian explosion, while the mechanisms that cultivate grain are beyond human comprehension. When the truth is finally revealed the reader may find themselves so horrified and filled with existential dread that they wonder whether it was worth it for Shuna to have left his home after all.

The story does not end in the land of the god-folk, but comes to a satisfying, if not complete, conclusion. The final third of the book, with Thea at its center, feels slightly disjointed from the first two-thirds of the story, but it would be much more disappointing if Thea’s section were not included. Since the core of Shuna’s Journey focuses on the quest to cultivate grain it makes sense that part of the story should involve farming. After all, the problem of hunger in Shuna’s world will not solve itself with force, but instead with patience, understanding and kindness. A

— Bethany Fuss

Album Reviews 22/11/03

Brothertiger, Brothertiger (Satanic Panic Records)

If you were around in the late ’80s, you probably heard your share of corporate metrosexual chill-techno music by Tears For Fears, Scritti Politti, Spandau Ballet and all that junk, usually at the most inopportune times, like when you were stuck someplace where it was being played loud enough for you to hear it. No, I kid this kidder, because you could do a lot worse these days than this kind of thing, Perry Como makeout tunes for the generation who thought John Waters was the greatest filmmaker of all time. This guy — the mononymed Jagos, who’s done four other LPs with this project — has really nailed the vibe; there’s pretty, slick synth-cheese all over the place, as well as the staple fake-bell sounds that signified ’80s-pop more than basically anything else if you think about it. It’s all well done, the vocal lines smooth and low-slung. There’s no reason for this kind of music to exist in current-year, but it is what it is. A

Amanda McCarthy, “Lifeline” (single) (self-released)

When last we left this New Hampshire-based country-pop singer-songwriter, she’d released her 14-song debut LP Road Trip, which, now that I’m re-listening to it for the first time in forever, actually has almost a Christian-pop feel to it, but that’s probably mostly owed to my listening to a lot of church-rock nowadays for some reason. Anyway, she’s in Nashville or thereabouts now, shooting for the bigs, and to make it in the bigs, one needs big-sounding – and, yes, I hate this word as much as anyone — production. This song does have that, let’s get that out of the way; it’s got as much a Tegan and Sara feel as it does a slight Faith Hill twang to it. It’s a very catchy rock-ballad-ish tune, one she “tried to write for years,” so she says”… my brain kept coming back to this song.” Good thing it did. There’s nothing amiss here. A

Playlist

• Like Zippy The Pinhead always says: Yow, look at all the new CDs that are coming out! Yup, it’s a huge pile of new albums due out on Friday, Nov. 4, and the worst, I mean first, one is Aughts-indie stalwarts Phoenix, with their new album, Alpha Zulu! You know, back when I first started writing this column — before the Best Of New Hampshire CD Reviews award and the other one, I forget which it was — I was really intimidated by Phoenix and their musical meatloaf of Kaiser Chiefs and whatever else, like, it was kind of heavy but also kind of awkward and badly done, which was all the rage back then, so I had to watch what I said about them because I was afraid some 98-pound hipster with skinny jeans and a flavor-saver patch under his lips would tell my editor to fire me because I just wasn’t sufficiently plugged into the zeitgeist. Of course, the happy ending came years later, when music journalists who’d suffered under the whip of utterly incompetent Brooklyn scenesters who pretended to like bands like Pavement and Air — you know, the really bad stuff — finally decided enough was enough and that it was OK for us writers with a bare modicum of taste to admit that we couldn’t stand any of those bands. It was kind of organic for me, like, I had gotten to the point where I just couldn’t take it anymore and had started dragging some of them (ha ha, remember Snow Patrol, how they couldn’t quite write a song that Gin Blossoms wouldn’t laugh at? Write those weak, unsellable B-sides, Snow Patrol! Write!). OK, and whatever, I’ll go listen to this dumb Phoenix album so that you don’t have to. I assume they’ve improved by now, seeing as how they’ve had what, 15 years to think about all the damage they’d done to rock ’n’ roll? I have no expectations at the moment, I just hope it isn’t completely unlistenable, whatever it is — ah, there it is, the title track. Oh jeez, they’ve gone the Yo La Tengo/Chk Chk Chk route but (and you’ll never believe this) less interesting. Kind of mellow, a sneaky little hook in there halfway through the song, vibe with no purpose other than ordering avocado toast or something. Anyway, there you go, Phoenix, everyone.

• For whatever reason, some of you are really big into Queens Of The Stone Age and buy all their albums, and for that, they thank you, and you’ll want to know about Tropical Gothclub, the new solo album from QOTSA multi-instrumentalist Dean Fertita, streeting this Friday! This fellow also played with Dead Weather, so he’s supposedly seen Jack White eat an entire bag of Wendy’s hamburgers in one sitting, a story he can tell his grandchildren. I expect this will be a set of stoner-rock songs, given Fertita’s liking for stoner rock, but let’s do a quick CSI just to be sure. So the first single, “Wheels Within Wheels,” is, you guessed it, basically a QOTSA song, but with a more boneheaded, King Gizzard-ish psychedelic angle. Good lord, it’s noisy and pointless, I’m unimpressed but will admit it’s better than a lot of the trash out there.

• What in tarnation is the Ezra Collective, fam? I don’t know, I have no idea, let me Google it. Ah, OK, I get it, they’re a jazz band of some sort; their 2019 instrumental single “Quest for Coin” was premiered as a “Hottest Record in The World” on BBC Radio 1’s Annie Mac show. Where I’m Meant To Be, the new album, features the single “Life Goes On,” a weird but irresistible thingamajig combining breakbeat, ska and Fela Kuti. Simply too cool.

• We’ll wrap up this nonsense with Swedish folk-rock girls First Aid Kit’s new LP, Palomino! Not much to say other than if you ever wanted to hear a slightly depressing version of ABBA, you’ll love this. Great stuff.

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).

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