Category: Pop

Jahmed, Armani (Human Re-Sources Records)

I’m pretty much at the point where I rarely read other reviews of rap albums in order to formulate a proper review. It’s a waste of time. Usually, rap reviewers just toss out a random jumble of underground buzzwords that won’t age well, either that or sound ridiculously enthusiastic about something that, upon actual examination, isn’t really groundbreaking. In the case of this 24-year-old Pomona, California, dude, MTV blogged that he “spits like nitrous oxide courses through his veins,” by which I think the writer meant “helium,” being that he has a high voice (he isn’t a mumbling MF Doomer, either, far from it). No, this is really slick stuff, easy on the trap, heavy on the bass, and whatever wrongs he’s trying to address here, you root for him to get through it all. Feats are from Freddie Gibbs and Suga Free, if that means anything to you, but whatevs, if you like older underground vibe with a good amount of depth, I’m sure you’ll like this. A

Motörhead, Louder Than Noise: Live In Berlin (Silver Lining Music)

Motörhead has never been any notably present part of my listening diet, so much so that I almost didn’t bother futzing with Microsoft Word in order to find an “o umlaut“ and thus correctly spell the band’s name for this story. That said, all bets are off now, in this time of young people actually listening to bands that use xylophones and five-dollar Casio keyboards without any irony whatsoever, and so Lemmy, the band’s Hells Angels-looking leader, is missed in more ways than one. So either you like these guys or not, and we can just go over the basics. It’s a live show from December 2012, held at the Berlin Velodrom, and everything is in order: “Ace of Spades,” “Overkill,” “Over the Top,” and the crowd of drunken Germans sounds enthusiastic. Anything I’ve missed, please sign in to my Patreon, pay the (very reasonable) fee, and hurl vitriol to your heart’s content. A-

Retro Playlist

Let’s go back to almost exactly or somewhat near eight years ago — no, you have no say in the matter, and besides, it’s all just in the context of this column’s back issue files, not necessarily stuff that was “hot” and “dope” at the time. I wouldn’t force anyone to relive that. Ploonk-and-babble-indie weirdos Vampire Weekend were about to release Modern Vampires of the City, their third album, and at the time, somewhere around March 21, 2013, the only advance music was a live version of “Unbelievers,” which they performed on Jimmy Kimmel’s hilariously unfunny show. That “hookless song came off like Everly Brothers trying Tully-style twee-punk on for size, i.e. it’s a step backward.” Ah well, all things do return to the dust from whence they blah blah blah, don’t they?

Anyway, I was still something of a gothie dude back then, and was hence excited to hear the advance of Kunst, the 2013 album from industrial-monster-stompers KMFDM, because those guys kind of rule. But, ah, no. Like all the albums they’d released after 2005’s Hau Ruck, this was yet another “variation on that LP’s blueprint, a weird (and hole-filled) duality comprising a few songs’ worth of furious White Zombie ass-kickage that gets nulled out when second-banana singer Lucia wraps herself around those snaking fire-dance darkwave-vs.-hardfloor joints that always make them sound like a bunch of newbies trying to be Skinny Puppy.” Omnia est consummare, like the Latin nerds say.

Subject change. Back then, house music was getting irritating, as buzz-lords Justice were still king. The other album I talked about eight years ago was, however, a welcome break from the wub-wub stuff, the second full-length from Italian DJ Alex Gaudino, Doctor Love. “The whole album blinks its eyes at the velvet-rope beach-dance scene,” I said, and embraced neo-disco on the Jordin Sparks-guested ‘Is This Love,’ “a swirling-fog vehicle that’s pretty much all hook.” Cool record, but there was a little wub on there for balance (“Miami Penthouse”).

PLAYLIST

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• And on the fifth day, the Lord said, “Today will be a day of new music albums, in order to test the patience and gastronomic endurance levels of those who trade in Snark.” And so it comes to pass that this Friday, March 26, will be a fancy hobo stew of new phonograph records and CDs, from singers and bands and unemployed William Shatners and whatever. So let’s strap ourselves in, and see which of us will barf first, you or me (I have $20 riding on me), as we begin with Swedish hipster-folkie girl duo First Aid Kit, whose new album, Who By Fire, is in the delivery trucks, set to be dropped off at the boarded up Strawberries store. This new album is composed of covers of Leonard Cohen songs (you know how much I love Leonard Cohen, of course, nudge-wink-barf), so I’ll wager that the advance teaser sounds like something I would never buy. Yep, it’s basically like Billie Eilish doing a cover of some irritating, maudlin pop song thing that had me wishing I were a skeleton, so pay up, yo, I demand my Pulitzer this instant.

• Whoa, I’d never heard of The Antlers, so my brain automatically assumed they were either room-temperature hipsters like Deerhoof or shoegaze also-rans like Deerhunter, you know, because I associate antlers with animals who scatter when they hear annoying noises. But behold, this is a German black metal band, a fact that I predict you will forget in exactly five seconds, as I certainly will. But as long as we’re here, the new Antlers album is titled I Green To Gold, and the single is called “Solstice.” But wait, droppin’ the needle on this slab shows that the band has totally given up on black metal, as this is totally a shoegaze ballad, like Raveonettes, big guitars with huge reverb and all that stuff. Of course, maybe that’s the new thing with black metal bands, like, do a ballad that’s slow shoegaze, and then go back to yelling about goat monsters or whatever their deal is these days. Should I investigate further, or do we just assume these guys have gone shoegaze? You don’t care, you say? Wait, hold it, this thing here says these guys aren’t the German black-metal Antlers, it’s the Brooklyn indie band that sounds like Deerhunter. OK, my bad, my perfect record of encyclopedic omniscience about all things music has finally been broken, maybe, but I still want my Pulitzer (scowls, looks at invisible wrist watch).

• Uh oh, here’s something I can’t sling any hate at, it’s tech-mud-rockers Tomahawk, with Tonic Immobility, their new album! These guys have real problems, and so I like them, remember to follow my Twitter for more fast and simple recipes! The roll-out single, “Tonic Immobility,” is already here, if you want to swipe it with one of those YouTube-to-MP3 programs that you should totally not use, especially if it hurts billionaire greed-monsters like Paul McCartney. FYI, “tonic immobility” is basically the smart-person way to say “playing possum,” but this tune sure isn’t. It’s a little like Battles, with a heavy Jane’s Addiction-style groove, and then it’s sort of like Rage Against The Machine. If I could go back in time, I would join this band, no question.

• Lastly, it’s sexy opera-metal stalwarts Evanescence, with The Bitter Truth, an album whose single, “Yeah Right,” kicks butt, but politely and opera-y. This band should have soundtracked that last awful Wonder Woman movie, which, come to think of it, is, unintentionally, faint praise, so never mind.

Kristian Montgomery and the Winterkill Band, Prince of Poverty (self-released)

Catching up with a couple of local-ish releases, things that have sat in my Facebook messages for a while, mostly because there’s always a hassle dealing with local guys. Take note, bands, just send direct links, OK, because I hate Dropbox, and now that that’s out of the way, let’s look at this (very good) album from Montgomery, a Danish alt-country-hippie who’s now based in Boston, working as a fisherman in Brewster, Mass. Although the biographical materials claim the album’s a genre-goulash, I didn’t find that to be true, more like something between ’70s country-pop and Hank Williams III, i.e. there’s a discernible punk influence afoot. Lots of throwback southern rock going on here, too: The LP starts out with “American Fire,” which will immediately have you thinking of The Outlaws, a sound, when done well, that’s always welcome at this desk. And so on and so forth, some things that evoke Amos Lee, Rascal Flatts in afterparty mode, stuff like that, all of it memorable and never annoying. A+

Amber Dust, Nothing Is Lost (self-released)

Another local release, this time a sort-of-compilation album (actually an audiophile’s take on the movie Boyhood, in many ways) from Sandown-based Jesse Nickerson, whom we’ve talked about before. Nickerson’s obviously a gentle soul, and his nicely lived life is documented here in the form of a sequence of alt-Americana tunes that were written for friends and family and such. For the most part, the record Krazy-Glues your basic Sufjan Stevens patter to Steve Winwood-level notions of songwriting, which means you’ll hear billowy melodies spiced with Wilco-ish experiments that are guaranteed not to get on your nerves. The music itself was salvaged from a personal collection of cassettes, spanning from 1985 to 2000; it all had to be digitally rescued, and thus it’s hilariously casual overall, with songs often introduced by background chatter from various bystanders and cohorts. I particularly liked “Tethered,” wherein a ’70s stun-guitar line matches up nicely with a trashcan-bashing drum line during one segue. A

Retro Playlist

In this space 10 years ago today, I wrote about America’s favorite Honey Boo Boo singing lady Britney Spears and her then-new album, Femme Fatale. Back then, it was de rigueur for pop divas to use trance techno in their beats. Remember those days? It was like the three hacks who write all the lousy, interchangeable pop songs for America’s smarmy, Nerds-gobbling tweens were listening to nothing but Tiesto, and life wasn’t all that bad. I’m sure you’ve forgotten by now, but “Till the World Ends” was the single, and it was pretty decent, except for this one stupid “hiccuping” Auto-Tune effect that was added to her voice, an unsurprising move by the corporate Borgs who’ve ruined everything else in music to date.

Ho ho ho, know what else was released that week? The soundtrack to the famous TV show NCIS, delivered in the form of a CD titled NCIS: The Official TV Score. My Stupid-O-Meter had to be put in the shop for a week after that one, but before the poor device fritzed out I was able to get off a quick “it’s such cheesy horrible music that I automatically went to the kitchen to make a horrible cheese sandwich when I heard it just now.”

It was a tough week, that week. I had to pretend to give a fair examination to The King Of Limbs, the album Radiohead had just put out. I have no problem admitting that I absolutely detest Radiohead, probably just as much as does fellow music snarkician Dr. David Thorpe, former editor of the “Your Band Sucks” page on the Something Awful site. Thorpe once commented that, oh-so-fittingly, Radiohead’s singer, Thom Yorke, has two superfluous letters in his name. And so on, hate hate hate. My take on the album was that along with a couple of Aphex Twin-style moves, most of the sounds “came from the same old pit of eye-rollingly mournful slowbie-slug nonsense in which they traditionally wallow.”

The other album on the slab that week was Grails’ Deep Politics, a band that’s essentially a work in progress, given that they have no singer. Nonetheless, I submitted, “If you’re into penny stocks, there’s actual potential here.” (I may have been lying, though, just to keep the PR person from getting too bummed out.)

PLAYLIST

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• Blessed be, y’all, blessed be, because guess what, new albums are coming out this Friday, March 19! I love seeing what’s in the weekly list, guys. It’s a surprise every week, like going into a haunted house at the circus, except the ghosts and goblins and mummies who used to play bass for REO Speedwagon and assorted talentless hipster phonies are real, and they’ll totally get me if I don’t have my trusty snark-hammer at the ready, and I am fully prepared to smite them! Now take my hand, random person who’s reading my genius at the diner, yes, take my hand, strap yourself in for safety, and let’s see what’s goin’ on, in the crazy haunted house world of rock ’n’ roll and whatever! Yikes, looky there, folks, the first creature to pop out from behind the spooky gnarled trees is ancient cowboy-hat sorceress Loretta Lynn, whose new album, Still Woman Enough, is on the way! This is her 50th album, and no, I’m not kidding, she’s made 50 albums, not even including her duet albums with Conway Twitty. How does she do it? I don’t know! But I’ll bet she’s got to be playing thrash metal by now, so let’s see what the dilly is with the new single — wait, stop the ride, there’s no single! There’s just a “trailer” that’s 20 seconds long. If there’s anything on earth I detest to the core, it’s album trailers! But there’s banjo being plucked slowly, and she rap-sings about being a coal miner’s daughter, so it’s safe to say she still sounds like Reba McEntire. OK, that’s it, the first stop is always a fail in these cheap haunted houses, so keep your arms and legs safely inside as we press onward!

• Hope you took your heart medication, guys, because look, the next stop in our ride through the poorly maintained ghost house is a Canadian act, some indie-rock imbecile named Chad VanGaalen! Look out, it’s a moose with a knife, ha ha, so scary! The new album is World’s Most Stressed Out Gardener, and maybe you’ve already heard the single, “Samurai Sword.” If so, I’ll bet you wish you hadn’t; I mean, I sure didn’t need to hear this numbskull sing really bad harmony with some edge-lady girl he probably met on TikTok through some “Really Bad Music” search. They literally sound like they’re drunk, or just really stupid, and the beat is a rickety messy joke, like something the Rolling Stones recorded just to troll their manager into thinking they’d lost their minds. OK, next stop, gang, choo choo!

• Here we are at the spooky graveyard part of the ride, guys, with an album from Bell Orchestre, called House Music! The horror angle here is that this is a six-piece “avant-garde” band from Montreal, and there are fiddles and other trappings used by hayloft bands that have never been inside an actual hayloft. These guys opened for Arcade Fire early on, and the first single here is called “V: Movement.” It is, of course, awful, sort of Eno-style ambient, with some disparate layers, like belled trumpet, cheap synth, and bad singing. Moving on.

• Last stop, kids, with the big showstopping gorilla monster, Sting, and his new album, Duets, which, I’ll bet you anything, doesn’t include a duet with anyone who doesn’t own a few Ferraris. Italian singer dude Zucchero adds his voice to a clunker song called “September.” It’s almost OK, but then it turns into a song you swear you’ve heard before on every lousy Sting album. OK, out, everybody out, single file, let’s go.

Decouplr, Digital Bonfire (self-released)

Debut LP from this boy-girl electronic music duo, who, I’m advised, have been duking it out on the “DIY scene” in Philadelphia for a decade or so (I could be a real jerk with regard to translating that particular claim to fame, but let’s just proceed). Singer Bailey Walker’s soprano is chill and breathy, sort of a cross between Goldfrapp and Billie Eilish, not something you haven’t heard before, but mildly interesting in the settings in which it basks, a series of low-intensity, subterranean trip-hop beats that pulse, twinkle and cross rhythms here and there. There’s nothing here that has the sheer depth of Portishead, let’s say that, but by the same token the songs hold their own and do aim for the same sort of broke-down subway ambiance as Dummy, an album that’s — my stars, around 27 years old now. Much as I’d love to recommend it, then, the record seems a little, I dunno, underdone. B+

King Yosef and Youth Code, A Skeleton Key in the Doors of Depression (self-released)

Given that I’m all up into horror-techno in general and KMFDM in particular (with caveats), I was pleasantly surprised by this collaborative EP from a trio of underground industrial/hip-hop artists. Portland, Oregon-based Yosef (real name Tayves Yosef Pelletier) has produced songs for Billboard Hot 100-charting rap artists like the late XXXTentacion and Ski Mask the Slump God, while Youth Code is a boy-girl pair-up from Los Angeles. The latter act’s singer Sara Taylor is the broken-glass-gargling singer in front here, sounding every bit the Lucia Cifarelli worshipper, and maybe even better, and the grinding, crazily angered beats are up there with Terrorfakt, if you have any idea who that is. The Skinny Puppy/Front Line Assembly cabal is big into them too; having Pelletier along to provide a little underground-rap sensibility makes this a tough one to top, I don’t care who you are. When you absolutely, positively have to get everyone on Elm Street running for the safety of the shops. A+

Retro Playlist

Wow, exactly (almost) 10 years ago, we had a couple of real doozies to talk about on this page, and the Playlist stuff was full of big-album news too. There was F.A.M.E., the then-new LP from Rihanna’s ex, Chris Brown. Ha ha, remember that one, with the song “Yeah 3X,” where Brown tried super-hard to dance like Michael Jackson? Unfortunately for me, it wasn’t that bad, and there wasn’t even a lot of Auto-Tune on there, so I really didn’t have anything bad to say about it, except for, of course, “ha ha, look, it’s Chris Brown!”

Anyway, of the two albums I talked about in this space the week of March 14, 2011, Angles, the album from The Strokes, was the biggest disappointment. Granted, the band ran into a ton of problems during the making of Angles, not the least of which was singer Julian Casablancas’ total absence from the planning of it, but nevertheless some critics claimed to think the album was good, a “return to form” (what, they’d actually left the form at some point?). The press’s praise, I noticed, was of the sort parents gush in the direction of their kids on Christmas morning, when the little dears finally break down and put on the pink bunny pajamas Grandma sent them. But I was free. I wasn’t trying to sell my opinion to Rolling Stone or Nylon editors, so I was able to snark at will: “Five years it took these guys to barf out what amounts to Second Impressions of Earth? Five years?” And etc., viewer discretion advised.

Now, the other album that week, Pet Shop Boys’The Most Incredible Thing, was another matter entirely. “There’s likely no band other than PSB,” I blowharded back then, “more culturally credentialed and intellectually licensed to combine techno and classical toward the creation of a modern ballet, as this is — the stage production is a modernization of the Hans Christian Andersen story, which grew from his disgust with the pointless conflict of his own time, the Franco-Prussian War.” Yes, it was a technopop/classical “soundtrack” album of sorts, from, yes, the same guys whose first hit single, “West End Girls,” substantially lowered the bar for pop music in 1984. My, what a terrific band those guys grew up to be, really.

PLAYLIST

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• The next general CD release date is this Friday, March 12, and now for a message about the rumors of my selling out to the corporate matrix! For months I’ve been amusing myself with a mutual dragging contest over email, with a mysterious cabal of underground-music guys, all of whom have a nicely warped sense of humor but who don’t seem to understand that you can’t ask for publicity in this fine upstanding newspaper while also remaining completely anonymous and — here’s the key — not having an actual, official album/mixtape/EP/single available for sale (or whatever, free download, I don’t care, anything that loosely resembles a finished product). In other words, to tweak the old, stale Game Of Thrones meme, “One does not simply send Uncle Ewic an email demanding coverage for a music release that is not a release and then spazz about the fact that he doesn’t take you seriously.” We’ll start with Zach and Emily, an “artist-promoting” couple who, under the corporate name of Cupcake Kamikaze, promote bands that are, you know, different. When last I heard from them, they were pushing a “band of meatheads” from Maine, The Imbosills, which had just released The Imbosills Sing Your Favorite Marvel Theme Songs on YouTube only. This fine collection kicks off with some joke song about Marvel superhero Scarlet Witch, and I had to shut it off about 30 seconds in, because it sounded like two 4channers singing in joke voices over a boombox recording of a guitar riff and nothing else. They also sent along a demo of “all-disco versions” of King Crimson songs that weren’t horrible, which isn’t to say they were good. So there you have it, guys, whoever you are; you have officially gotten some press in the Hippo. If this is all a troll, I technically won, because you spent a lot more time making these nonsense-songs than I did writing about them. I. Win.

• There’s really not a lot else to chat about this week, but we can discuss Louisiana sludge-metal band Eyehategod’s first LP in seven years, A History Of Nomadic Behavior, just so I’ll have a reason to go listen to them, which I’ve avoided doing for years. Ah, yes, here we are, the first single, “High Risk Trigger.” The band is like Crowbar with Trent Reznor singing. OK, moving along.

• Wow, more fringe-metal, might as well: it’s Rob Zombie, with new LP The Lunar Injection Kool Aid Eclipse Conspiracy! I haven’t cared about this dude since his “Drag-U-La” days, but maybe this is good, I’ll go listen to his new song, “The Triumph of King Freak.” Whoa, this is cool, an Arabian-metal trip, sort of like Ministry’s “Khyber Pass” (the tune at the end of Hurt Locker). It is OK!

• We’ll wrap up this week with alt-blues/folk singer Valerie June’s The Moon And Stars: Prescriptions For Dreamers, in specific its single, “Call Me A Fool [feat. Carla Thomas].” It’s a nice little soccer mom song, sort of like “Blue Bayou,” a decent vehicle for June’s Kate Havnevik-ish sour-pickle voice. Norah Jones fans would like this I think.

Scolex, “Black Pyramid Ritual,” and Mortuous, “Dessicated”(Split Single) (Carbonized Records)

As every underground metalhead in New Hampshire knows, I’m pretty worthless as far as covering the DIY end of the genre with any real dedication. If I can remember to, I’ll be talking a bit more about that next week and defending myself, but for now, let’s kill two relevant birds with one stone by giving a cursory glance at this split single from two bands slugging it out in California’s Bay Area. This split single (released on cassette only) first spotlights “Black Pyramid Ritual,” a tune by Oakland boy-girl outfit Scolex, which aims at a cross between early Mastodon and Cannibal Corpse. I assume it’s the dude who’s singing, but hey, ya never know, but either way, the singer sings in a Cookie Monster glubber-growl, but not just any glubber-growl. This singing means business, folks, like, if you have any cookies, you best fork ’em over, toot sweet! San Jose band Mortuous is the band on the flip side, with the song “Dessicated.” That one’s mid-tempo doom-metal stuff, but metal dudes probably don’t call it that anymore (like I care), and the Cannibal Corpse-style vocalizing is totally jacked, man, like, I think he’s just literally gargling Listerine and trying to scare his mom, not singing. As always, your mileage may vary! B

Rest Easy, Sick Day EP (Mutant League Records)

This Vancouver-based four-piece is more punk than 99 percent of the stuff that comes my way for review. What’s that? No, I’m saying that’s a good thing, after all that’s come before, the Green Day phase, the “power pop” phase, and all that stuff. And no, I’m not saying dishwasher-safe corporate punk like that stuff is doomed, nor is this little four-songer something with which I can’t find fault. It does have a hint of mid-career Weezer and all that stuff, but the brain-damage is front and center, not just in the frenzied tuneage (imagine some band like Panic! At The Disco lowering the fakeness enough to convince fans they’ve actually listened to the Ramones’ Animal Boy at least once) but in their imagery as well: the video for the straight-edge dipped “Bad Idea” touches on puerile, vitally important things like Jackass, as they play N64 in the bathtub and make Evel Knievel jumps over each other while riding mopeds. More of this, please. A+

Retro Playlist

I’ll bet you forgot about the awesome jokes I made at the beginning of the column from six years ago this week, cracking wise about the then-upcoming new album from Kid Rock: “Yee ha, it’s a new Kid Rock album, titled First Kiss! I have to say, talk about soft targets, this imbecilic phony is even driving a big gas-guzzling pickup truck in the video for the title track! This is AWESOME, ladies and germs! Why did the chicken run across the road? Because there was a pickup truck next to the chicken playing Kid Rock songs!”

Maybe that was a little mean, but I was nice that week to the self-titled album from Nashville-by-way-of-New-York-by-way-of-Boston indie-rock girl Liz Longley, who at the time was scheduled to play at ye olde Tupelo Music Hall after the album came out. Geez, remember when we could just bop down to Tupelo and not have to worry about the ’rona? I sure miss those days. But whatever, Longley had spent a lot of time opening for acts like Paula Cole and Nancy Griffith, the latter of whom she nicked on the tune “You’ve Got That Way.” Another “RIYL” match for this record was Lisa Loeb, so it’s a good one to check out if that kind of stuff is your thing.

The other album strapped to the examination table that week was Revisionist, from Oakland composer William Ryan Fritch, who’s soundtracked a few snobby documentaries and such. The album was a bit contrived, in that it was relevant to the Beach Boys-inspired zeitgeist in indie rock back then: “[Fritch’s] wobbly, over-acted voice looms over these sweeping, ghostly tracks, much of it remindful of Bon Iver — OK, imagine Bon Iver trying to re-envision Yes’s Tales From Topographic Oceans, but with less self-indulgence and a bigger percussion palette.” The fact that Fritch doesn’t read music won him a few bonus points, so I gave him an A-.

PLAYLIST

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• The new CD releases for March 5 are here, gather ’round, my little cacodemons, come and get it! Looky there, it’s skinny-jeans fabulosos Kings of Leon, with some new album called When You See Yourself, betcha can’t wait, can ya? When last we left this indie band that puts out albums on big major labels (which is sort of like when baseball stars join the minor leagues, just to pad their stats), they were … whoa, that was way back in 2016, when they put out the Walls album, which the snobs at Pitchfork rated a 4.5 out of 10, because it didn’t fit into Pitchfork’s dream of a music world owned and operated by white hipster fellas who make sucky songs on purpose, which is still their idea of Xanadu (totally not referring to the Olivia Newton John song, just saying), to this day! Of course The Independent hated it too, which also makes sense, as people in the U.K. only like their “indie rock” albums to be decent, like Elbow and all those guys. What am I getting at? I don’t know, maybe I’m saying that I hated Walls even more than I let on back in 2016, but then again, to me, hearing a disappointingly bad album from some bunch of hilariously overrated dingbats is no more memorable an event than seeing a skunk hanging around in my backyard, like, I just kind of go “hm, a skunk” and go about my business. At any rate, the new single is “The Bandit,” and OMG, it’s boring and worthless, but still Kings of Leon-ish, like maybe the Martians from Mars Attacks took control of the Followill brothers’ bodies and tried to make a song that was mostly ’90s-rock but with that rich and delicious hayloft-rock angle they use. I SEE you, Martians!

• Since 2005 British indie-electro guy James Mathé has been more commonly known by his stage name, Barbarossa. That trip is minimalist techno, but going by what I’m hearing on “Iris2Iris,” a single from his new album, Love Here Listen, it’s not wildly minimalist; in fact I’d call it progressive house. But you don’t care about genre labels, or at least I hope you don’t, for both our sakes, so let’s just leave it that it’s a very pretty, nicely layered song, and if I actually cared about house music anymore, I’d probably be trying to mooch a promo CD out of this guy. It’s cool, is what I’m saying.

• So it says here that one of the two dudes who compose Scottish slowcore/indie band Arab Strap has some sort of connection to Mogwai, but I really just lost interest in tracking the association after like five minutes, so the heck with it, let’s just roll and talk about the band’s new album As Days Get Dark, spearheaded by the single “Compersion Pt. 1.” You’ll note that these guys originally got together in 1995, after bonding over lo-fi nonsense like Smog and Will Oldham, and this tune is indeed possessed of that sort of sonic patois, except it’s more metal, like if Silkworm suddenly decided they loved Lou Reed or something, in other words it’s like Pavement but less awful (which obviously isn’t a high mountain to climb).

• And finally, we have Fruit Bats, with their new LP, The Pet Parade! The single, “Holy Rose,” isn’t the insufferable indie-folk I was expecting, more like Harry Nilsson meets Tom Waits, but you could dance (awkwardly) to it. Bon appetit, please do get this out of my face.

Sana Nagano, Smashing Humans (577 Records)

Hey man, if I have to get introduced to an avant punk-jazz record by the most sterilized, LinkedIn-style jumble of words I’ve ever read, you do too: You see, on this album, the “compositions are naturally motivic with grid-like melody lines underpinned by relentless rhythmic intensity.” What does this mean? It means that the music of this NYC-based band (i.e. Smashing Humans), as led by Nagano, is probably the most interesting — even agreeable — cacophony to which I’ve ever been exposed, not that I ever honestly seek out avant jazz (it’s more like that stuff finds me). I d_)on’t believe this is actually improvisational; “Humans In Grey,” unhinged and spazzy as it is, goes on a long tear that bespeaks progressive head-drug jazz from the ’80s, and like the designated genre would indicate, the sax, guitar, drums, bass combine with Sana’s battered violin to render pure, raucous expressionism that you could actually groove to. Like the impulsive eight-bit cover art hints at, it’s perfect for clearing your head of any stupid but manageable frustration du jour. A+

Yoko Miwa Trio, Songs of Joy (Ubuntu Music)

At this writing, Jazz Times hasn’t weighed in on this (by my count) fifth LP from the long-time Berklee college instructor’s trio, a pianist who’s been touted by the legendary Ahmad Jamal and has been a regular fixture at festivals and Boston jazz clubs (if you’re a regular visitor to that scene, Les Zygomates Wine Bar & Bistro in Boston closed as a casualty of Covid last year). With regard to her last album, 2019’s Keep Talkin’, the Jazz Times guy noted that Miwa’s work possesses a certain prettiness that jazz snobs tend to snub (“even some of Oscar Peterson’s work was dismissed for being too beautiful”). She won’t get that sort of nonsense from me; not that I’d ever pretend to be a Mingus-head, but I find stuff like this album’s intricately woven rub of Richie Havens’ “Freedom” really just cool. Like Havens’ original Woodstock-hippie outcry, it rushes to say a lot, but in this case Miwa’s expansive wanderings are slowly counterpointed by Will Slater’s upright bass in a boss move. This ain’t lounge stuff, no, it’s way too bold, but it wouldn’t be out of place at one. A

Retro Playlist

Let us go back, friends, back to the year 2013. Do you even remember what it was like before Covid and the Q-Shaman guy who’s part yak and part human, back when everything wasn’t so messed up that you had to hold Zoom meetings with your friends in order to get some semblance of communal togetherness? Oh, wait, for young people, that was how most interpersonal relationships were maintained anyway, so what’s all the fuss about, again?

Anyway, warping back to late February 2013, one of the new releases that week was What About Now, by Bon Jovi. As I noted that week, the title track “starts out with an ’80s-new-wave shoegaze sort of guitar line” and then it devolves into the usual epic throwback radio-rawk fail to which his fans have long been accustomed. That’s nice and all, but one of that week’s column’s main focus points was Flowers, a solo record from Seabear leader Sindri Már Sigfússon, under the stage name Sin Fang. Naturally, since it’s by an Icelandic dude, someone from Sígur Rós had to be involved, in this case their producer, Alex Somers. The album, thankfully, wasn’t the expected Slushie mix of Animal Collective and Raveonettes; some OK Go-style rocking out was present, and so I didn’t just whip out my handy bag of insults when I talked about it.

That week there was also the album The Fire Plays from Ari Hest, whose approach is, in general, stripped-to-the-hooks radio-folk a la Paul Simon. I don’t think I’ve so much as mentioned the guy in the eight years that have passed since my review of TFP, so you probably know more than I do, but regardless, on this album Hest did a decent Seal impersonation on “Set In Stone,” but otherwise it comprised things like hayloft indie (“All Because”) and halcyon-cowboy haze (“Couldn’t Have Her”), which automatically got my approval because Hest mostly sounded like Warren Zevon. Man, does the world need another Zevon, seriously.

PLAYLIST

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• The first thing I see in this list of new CD releases for Feb. 26 is Willie Nelson’s That’s Life, and of course I can’t resist putting in my two cents, because it’s always fun to make fun of 87-year-old dudes who drive Cheech and Chong vans powered by nothing but pot smoke! What’s interesting is that he is 5’6” tall, which, as his Wikipedia entry specifically notes, is the same height as Patsy Cline. I hope that if I ever get an actual Wiki entry instead of the stupid “Wikipeople” thing or whatever it is, they will make note that I am the same height as George W. Bush. I think it’s important to know that about me, so that you won’t ever mistake me for Danny DeVito. Anyway, with all the important stuff out of the way, we can proceed to the contents of this new album, one that consists solely of covers of Frank Sinatra songs. I sort of don’t blame Willie for doing a victory lap for having lived so long, like, he totally dunked on James Dean and the dude from Nirvana and all those guys, so really, he does have every right to imprison a few musicians in a studio while he warbles old Rat Pack songs in his hoarse grandfatherly tenor. This is actually the second time Willie’s done an album of Sinatra tunes, but unlike the last one, this new album features a cover of “Luck Be a Lady” as well as a duet with none other than famous jazz singing lady Diana Krall (“I Won’t Dance”). OK, I know this has been a lot to unpack and wrap your head around, so let’s move to the next thingie after you gulp down some Pepto Bismol in order to settle your stomach, which got violently upset over my use of the buzzspeak word “unpack.”

• Ha ha, speaking of albums from old and crazy rock stars, look there fam, it’s famous Halloween decoration Alice Cooper, with Detroit Stories, just when we needed it, or at least I did! OK, I know Alice grew up in Detroit, so these tunes are probably about the times he used to play pranks with Jack White? No, Jack White’s young enough to be Alice’s great-grandson, so maybe it’s about the old days with another Detroit guy, Iggy Pop? Nope, Iggy is way cooler than Alice, so they probably never hung around either. In that case, I’ll just ditch this exercise, bite the bullet and go listen to the new Alice single, “Rock & Roll!” Nope, it’s not the Led Zeppelin song, it’s the old Velvet Underground song, so apparently the album title refers to Alice’s favorite songs that have the word “Detroit” in the lyrics. Say, guess who plays guitar on this? That’s right, it’s Joe Bonamassa! This rocks so hard, like, if you had just arrived from another planet and this was the first rock ’n’ roll song you’d ever heard, you’d be like, “Ha ha, wow, dig this crazy music!”

• Blub blub blub, I’m drowning in awful music that never should have — wait, belay that order, leftenant, it’s a new Melvins album, called Working With God, we’re saved! One of the songs, “Brian the Horse-Faced Goon,” is part joke song and part early Ministry, I love it so much I’d marry it if I were single.

• To close the week out, it’s one-man U.K.-based electronic-drone-whatnot project Blanck Mass, with In Ferneaux, his fifth album! The single, “Starstuff,” is just fine I suppose, if you like krautrock and ’80s sci-fi soundtrack music mixed together. I don’t, but then again, I have become biased against music that sucks, so don’t mind me.

Disco Shrine, xxoo Disco (self-released)

Man, the world just needs to stop a second so I can catch my breath. This week I had to deal with a string of disasters, including two different hacks of critical life stuff, then it was the news about the “Robin Hood” subreddit Wallstreetbets helping desperate people make big money by trolling hedge funds, and today, this came into my emailbox with little explanation, the first EP from a day-glo Los Angeles-based girl who, I’m told, “bops,” in other words writes songs that have a lot more to offer than most of the corporate-run ridiculousness you usually hear on dance radio. The Iranian immigrant does have a great formula if you can get past the many trap beats (I still can’t, I’m sorry); the song structures and hooks are more like MIA and Gwen Stefani than anything else, marinated in hip-hop but with an eye toward ’90s-throwback radio. She’s getting big overseas and will probably take down a good number of slow-moving Taylor Swift fans as things progress. A-

Trance Wax, Trance Wax (Anjunabeats Records)

Here we have a Belfast-based DJ specializing in more-or-less throwback trance and meanwhile being touted as an innovator. That didn’t sit well with me for obvious reasons, but I was going to inspect this album anyway, being that it’s on my beloved Anjunabeats imprint, the home of the Above & Beyond dudes, whom I’ve talked about plenty of times here. It is a throwbacky record for sure, made of ’90s rave afterparty chill as opposed to more modern, immersive hypnotics. And that’s OK; if you’re big on slightly stripped-down electro, you came to the right place. Toward that, it can feel a bit cheesy here and there, not that that’s necessarily a bad thing. Wish they had put the single Clannad’s Moya Brennan. I’m sure it’s gorgeous, which I’m off to verify now, but again, that tune’s not on here, so it doesn’t even apply. B+

Retro Playlist

Going back to Feb. 17, 2011, your not-so-humble Playlist guy here (moi) was babbling something about Boston oi-pop band Dropkick Murphys, who “have made a career out of making Jonathan Papelbon into a tutu-wearing dancing bear.” The new album at the time was Going Out in Style, a concept album about some Irish guy, because as we all know, there are no other types of people in Boston except for Irish mill-workers who work 78-hour shifts. Thus a departure, more or less, but I did note that there were a few songs Bruins fans could sing at the top of their lungs “while the Bs get pasted by horrible teams like the Panthers” (that sentiment has changed now, of course, being that the team has no good scorers these days except for a few 40-year-olds and maybe the mascot).

Not that my B- grade reflected it as much as it deserved, but truly the loser album up for discussion that week was Native Speaker, from Montreal-based indie band Braids. The buzz over this, their debut album, was deafening, which made me instantly suspicious. And they did get some blowback from the press, which surprised me. The haters (I was one of them) thought these guys were too much like Animal Collective, “indulging in the sort of repetitive robot arpeggios you hear during the happier moments of nature documentaries.” In other words it was nice, sappy and disposable. I mean, it’s not a horrible album; I guess what surprised me was that no one jumped on the band for the album’s title track. It sounded too much like a Fever Ray tune, which is, admittedly, not shocking, being that the band’s singer sounds so much like Karin Dreijer Andersson (i.e. part Sinead, part Bjork).

PLAYLIST

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• Just like every Friday, Feb. 19 will see a few new albums, from bands and people and self-aware robots with Soundcloud accounts. One of the albums is from The Fall, and it is titled Live At St. Helens Technical College ‘81. If I’m still the professional music critic I’ve always been, the consummate tastemaker who can identify what an album is going to sound like just by looking at its title, I predict that the songs will all be live versions of old Fall songs, probably at a technical college of some sort, recorded circa 1981, or perhaps 1881, when this music was relevant to people other than those brothers who made the Stranger Things TV show. I don’t like The Fall and, um, uh, never really did, like it was always too messy, like Captain Beefheart on mood stabilizers. Feel me, guys? I know, I know, I’m supposed to be the noise-rock connoisseur around here, but The Fall isn’t noise rock, it’s just awful and gross. It’s OK if you like them, and if you do have that particular brain malfunction, I hate to tell you, but you’ll be sad to know that their landmark tune “Hip Priest” is not part of this package. Bummer, dude, but lots of other stupid Fall songs are on there, like “City Hobgoblins” and blah blah blah whatever, I don’t know.

• I think Brooklyn indie-rock band The Hold Steady sounds like They Might Be Giants with a Pennywise (lack of) personality, at least going by the only song of theirs you’ve probably ever heard, 2013’s “The Bear and the Maiden Fair,” the punkish spazz-out that was pretty popular back then. Fast forward to today, and their eighth album, Open Door Policy, which streets on the 19th and is propelled by the Mighty Mighty Bosstones-ish horns of leadoff single “Family Farm.” It’s more along the lines of Barenaked Ladies, that kind of thing, stompy and danceable. I can deal with it.

• Scottish post-punk crew Mogwai have always been pretty cool, don’t you think? Buzzy, loud and all that stuff. But it is a new year, and a new album, As The Love Continues, which has a single, called “Dry Fantasy.” This tune is something of a surprise, like ’90s radio-techno-chill, not a lot of meat to it, but that’s OK, it definitely works if you want to relive all those afterparties where you passed out on your roommate’s futon while talking about French philosophy, and then talk turned to how much the both of you love Ren & Stimpy, which is basically the same concept as Foucault but with better graphics.

• Lastly, it’s Australian indie-folkie Julia Stone, who often records albums with her brother Angus, but not this time. She had some modicum of fame last year when she re-did the Midnight Oil song “Beds Are Burning,” but it didn’t save her from the fate that befalls all decent Australian musicians, specifically the problem with American audiences taking Australians seriously unless they’re in the band AC/DC. Her third solo record, Sixty Summers, will include the song “Dance – Alone,” which I assume is a variation on the wispy, angelic tune “Dance” that was on her last EP, a romantic trifle about picking someone up at a bar. It’s music for moonbats, but it’s nice.