Chet Doxas, You Can’t Take It With You (Whirlwind Recordings)
Minimally accessible but solid jazz album, a straightforward mixture of progressively minded post-bop loaded with curveballs, the 12th full-length from Doxas, a New York-by-way-of-Montreal saxophone guy. A guy who has some pretty cool friends, I should elaborate; the professed theme here is inspiration, most specifically thoughts that came up while Doxas was on tour in Europe with the band Riverside and wound up sitting in a van “with the cool kids,” Carla Bley and Steve Swallow. Bley asked him why he didn’t just form a trio, et voila, it was done, so this is Doxas with pianist Ethan Iverson and drummer Thomas Morgan. The title track is as nice and friendly as it gets, and then comes the first of many self-indulgent moments in “Lodestar,” dedicated to Lester Young, one of far too many legendary saxophonists whose genius wasn’t enough to keep him from succumbing to self-destruction. Noisy noodling on “Cheryl and George”; some spazzy bumblebee-ness on “Soapbox.” Not something I’d recommend to anyone other than someone who really wanted to see inside Doxas’s head. B-
David Duchovny, Gestureland (Westbound Kyd Records)
No, you shut up, we’re doing this and that’s final. Yes, it’s the guy from The X-Files, and this is his third album. I’ll cut him some slack because he’s not one of the mega-famous Hollywood Vampires guys; he’s just a schmo with enough money and leisure time to make an album with some guys who probably help him clean up after pool parties. No, I kid, he’s still the man to all us alien-goth heads, and hey, the first song is almost OK, like Neil Young but with Mulder singing, and holy crow is the guitar solo awful, whichever one of these guys did this is a terrible human being. Ah, then there’s a mellow bit, “Holding Patterns,” boasting a guitar melody you’d imagine your uncle writing during off-hours from his accounting job. It’s kind of Tom Petty-ish I suppose — wait, “Chapter And Verse” is a monstrosity, maybe inspired by early Traffic from the 1960s. Good lord, I can’t take another minute of this. D
PLAYLIST
• Here it comes, Sept. 24, with a freshly baked basket of new album releases, some of which might actually be good — I haven’t even looked yet, because I am afraid to. When I check my Metacritic list, the “gig” acts are all in bold print, while the small fry are all non-bolded. I think it should be the other way around. Smaller acts should be bolded and more established bands should be in really small print, to give the smaller releases a chance to make a few bucks instead of all the money going to Eric Clapton’s mansion, or the Hollywood Vampires clubhouse, where the money is instantly converted to gold coins and sealed in a vault that’s guarded by a dragon that knows all the Beatles and Rolling Stones guys and just lets them scoop out piles of gold coins to buy a random Walmart or whatever for no reason at all. Anyway, I’m looking at the list and — um, guys? Why on earth is Flux, the new album from crazed shock-metal chick Poppy, not bolded? What, did they think I wouldn’t see that there was an actual cool album in the list just because it was in normal font? Poppy is a local Boston girl and had a sneak appearance a few months ago on the Grammys or whatever it was, and she makes Billie Eilish look like Marie Osmond. Talk about edgy; the only band she rips off as far as I’ve noticed so far is Meshuggah, meaning she makes music for breaking stuff, or at least she did until now. She was a bubblegummer at first, then she just wanted to freak people out, and now she’s back to bubble-pop, to go by the title track of this album. It’s basically Avril Lavigne but obviously influenced by A Perfect Circle. It’s pretty disposable, and it will definitely alienate all the fans that liked her gore-metal phase. Girl really needs to make up her mind.
• The guys in English reggae/ska band The Specials are all one million years old, but they still like to kick out the jams, or whatever I’m supposed to call it nowadays in order to fake that I’m young and can only speak in short-shelf-life crutch phrases. Yes, the same band that brought you “A Message To You Rudy” may be older than Neanderthal bones, but they know that protest music is important, especially in these final years of human existence. The band’s new LP, Protest Songs 1924-2012, is exactly what it looks like, a collection of old protest songs that tried to inspire people to Do Stuff to fight oppression and make our world a better place (no, there are no Justin Bieber songs on here). One of the covers is a drummy, rattley version of the Staple Singers’ 1965 tune “Freedom Highway.” It is not bad for a band whose members are so old they used to keep trilobites as pets.
• Oh how lovely, another album from an actor who probably should have stuck to acting instead of barfing random albums into my to-do list. This time it’s Caleb Landry Jones, with his second full-length, Gadzooks Vol. 1, which probably means I’ll have to deal with a Vol. 2 at some point. No, ha ha, I’ll just ignore it next time, but for now, sure, why not, let’s see if the guy who played Banshee in X-Men: First Class sings like a dachsund and whether or not the reviewers who gave his last stupid album an average rating of 7.5 were paid to do it. Hmm, this single looks interesting, “The Loon.” Oh geez, come on, it starts off with one of those French café accordions, so of course in the video he’s dressing up like a stupid clown, and then the song starts ripping off Pink Floyd’s “Brain Damage.” We can mark this one as done, yes?
• Finally, it’s New York post-hardcore band Quicksand, with their latest album, Distant Populations! Album-opener “Inversion” is pretty cool, like early Mastodon but with Jane’s Addiction’s singer, you might like 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).