Eric Saeger Saving Abel are part of the messed-up new generation of post-Molly Hatchet southern-rockers, struggling to get porno chicks and find their way in a world where it’s not copacetic for bands to come right out and say they’re mostly in it for porno chicks and pinching out totally awesome guitar solos. There has […]
Air Traffic – Fractured Life
Eric Saeger You know what’s funny these days, you take a band like this, strip off one guitar layer and all the hooky stuff and it’d be Instant Bowery Ballroom Indie-rock with no chance in hell of ever getting mainstream love. We begin with the run-around-the-city-holding-hands makeout-rock of “Come On,” half Libertines and half Rod […]
God Fires Man – A Billion Balconies Facing the Sun
Eric Saeger Lofty street-wise hard rock blurring the lines between grunge and air-punch-indie. Arthur Shepherd’s voice is half Chris Cornell on the good side and Scott Stapp on the bad but does avoid the hickish inflections that made Creed so hateable for a large segment of the music-listening public – it’d be fair to say […]
Thelonious Monk – Brilliant Corners (Remastered)
Eric Saeger Considered the jazz pianist’s breakthrough album (a popular 1955 collection of Duke Ellington covers generally doesn’t count in the snobby view of Monk completists), this 1956 classic is one of a handful of monumental albums that recently received the 24-bit remaster treatment at the hands of Riverside Records label owner/producer Orrin Keepnews, who […]
Flogging Molly – Float
Eric Saeger One notices something a little not-quite-as-cool-as-Dropkick-Murphys about Celtic rock goons Flogging Molly, maybe something a little 80s metal. Drilling down, past the ridiculously tight musicianship and primed-for-80s-metal engineering, we discover ex-Fastway singer Dave King running the show, which explains everything, including the Dio-like scream-fest fadeout of the title track. If you can deal […]
Kevin Ayers – The Unfairground
Eric Saeger It’s been 15 years since Ayer’s coughed up an album. At 63, he’s officially a legend, having essentially started the psychedelic rock movement of the 60s with his old crew Soft Machine. Until this luring-out, he was living an obscure life in France, wallowing in his own eccentricities, lunching with Elton John, that […]
Ministry & Co-Conspirators – Cover Up
Eric Saeger So adamant are many listeners nowadays in their opinion that all hard rock made after 1978 is utter sewage that they miss a lot of good stuff. But they don’t care, so here’s to you, retro-heads: the first (of hopefully many) post-retirement Ministry albums gathers together Al Jourgensen’s favorite cover tunes, some lifted […]
Jason Spooner – The Flame You Follow
Eric Saeger It’s always refreshing to see contemporary singer/songwriters deviate from the I’m-emotionally-ruined-but-naturally-gifted steez of today. New England-based Spooner’s second album is all business with a natural steez of its own stemming from an updated Stephen Stills vocal sound and a precise grasp of just how much hookage one is supposed to cram into a […]
Black Hollies – Casting Shadows
Eric Saeger Nu-mod gets a royal nipple-tweaking from the Black Hollies’ meticulous reconstruction of the 60s sound; this stuff is way beyond genre obeisance, bordering on obsession. Given this, it’s not clear where their market is unless your grandparents are smack-dab in it, although of course the anything-goes college-music crowd may have room for them. […]
Tarja – My Winter Storm
“…Europe has yielded a few glum-faced, overly metalized coveters of the Evanescence throne – Norway’s Octavia Sperati, Austria’s hapless, underrated Visions of Atlantis for two….”
Neptune – Gong Lake
Eric Saeger In case you haven’t already done so – these guys have been around since 1995 – add Boston band Neptune to the list of art-experimentalist novelty acts whose more heavily promoted icons include Blue Man Group and Recycled Percussion. Neptune was born, innocently enough, as an experiment in sculpture in which all the […]
Baumer – Were It Not For You
“… Fresh off a one-song soundtrack appearance in the Winona Ryder vehicle “Sex And Death 101″ come North Carolina’s Baumer bearing a drywall-bucket full of curveballs….”
Willits + Sakamoto – Ocean Fire
“…In this, Grammy award-winning piano soloist Ryuichi Sakamoto hooked up with newcomer guitar experimentalist Christopher Willits in one-take improvisations bent on soundtracking the ocean world….”
Air Traffic – Fractured Life
“…You know what’s funny these days, you take a band like this, strip off one guitar layer and all the hooky stuff and it’s Instant Bowery Ballroom Indie-rock with no chance in hell of ever getting mainstream love…”
Tangria Jazz Group – Tangria Jazz Group
“…An oddity in terms of both jazz stylings and band makeup, TJG is headed up by dreadlocked drummer Sheryl Mebane, an experimentalist in the arts of smoky-bar-jazz and African beats…”
Vampire Weekend – Vampire Weekend
“…There’s a segment of the accounting-undergrad listening class that can’t get enough Death Cabs and Belles & Sebastians, and, with tax time nearing, we owe it to these people to acknowledge the fact that they have ears…”
Hanzel und Gretyl – Zwanzig Zwolf
“…This jackboot-industrial twosome look and sound like they come from the wrong side of the German political tracks, but they’re in fact New Yorkers dressed in the fetish-club duds you’d kill to see at your local karaoke bar. Slowly but surely, more acts are partaking of the noxious Hitler-doom atmosphere first stolen and transmogrified from Skinny Puppy’s genius by Marilyn Manson, ie KMFDM, Combichrist, half of what Dancing Ferret Records is releasing…”
Raveonettes – Lust Lust Lust
“…It’s not enough simply to let off wall-of-sound grease-fires over pretty 1960s pop songs – anybody can do that. But after listening to Lust Lust Lust with an open – okay, reverent – mind, one could argue that Dutch coed duo Raveonettes have created something not just important but essential…”
Gram Rabbit – RadioAngel & the RobotBeat
“…At first listen, Gram Rabbit’s new LP sounds veritably commercial in comparison to their last two albums, which bet their futures on weird psychedelic quasi-electro. In particular, their 2006 Cultivation album was strangely captivating – no, I’ll just say it, great – on the strength of Jessika von Rabbit’s sexy but unattainable teasing…”
Black Mountain – In The Future
“…Indie pseudo-stoner bands are forever treating your average suburban Zep/Sabbath/GNR listener the way Lucy treats Charlie Brown, pulling the football away just when the potential record buyer is about to take the plunge…”
Dub Trio – Another Sound is Dying
Eric Saeger The brazen title for this mostly instrumental album could be interpreted as a tolling of the bell for many genres, not dub in particular (or barely even in passing, really; if anyone should be hearing a call-out it’s the Melvins, not Satori). The songs are genre-shish-kebabs that would in less competent hands be […]
Insane Clown Posse – Jugganauts
Eric Saeger Try as you might, you may not have the right stuff to become a Juggalo, ie a card-carrying Insane Clown Posse fan capable of displaying the proper head-trauma behavior. ICP connoisseurs won’t give this best-of the time of day because it’s comprised only of songs featured in the three Island Records releases, and […]
Lisa Loeb – The Purple Tape
Eric Saeger 90s geek-pixie Lisa Loeb kills a few birds by including a full CD’s worth of softball NPR-style interviews along with the first-ever digital release of The Purple Tape. One: yes, even she looks back in horror at the white dress with cowboy boots ensembles; second, back in the day, she didn’t know what […]
Dengue Fever – Venus on Earth
Eric Saeger World-music albums come and go, but virtually none get handed a fluke editor’s choice pick on Amazon.com and explode the way Dengue Fever did, winning over many bored critics in the US hipster community in a similarly inexplicable series of events. The band’s first album and Venus, their third, differ only in that […]
Patty Larkin – Watch the Sky
Eric Saeger Senior citizen Patty Larkin once wrote a song called “Not Bad for a Broad” to poke fun at the Guitar Player nerds who fawn over her talent, but the Berklee grad’s songwriting – nay, album-writing – sense far overshadows her technical ability. What a rare thing that is, and what a velvety, dense, […]
