RSSConsumer Guide: June, 2025
Speechifying from Springsteen, rockin' on the mechanism from Buck 65, disruptive noise from Lambrini Girls, and words to stay alive for from Ezra Furman.
Arcade Fire: Pink Elephant (Columbia) Long-lived, hanging-in-there, straightforwardly anthemic traditional rock band decides it generates less risk albeit also renown (never mind content) as a straightforwardly abstract electronic rock band ("I Love Her Shadow," "Circle of Trust") *
Buck 65: Keep Moving (Handsmade) Now 53 and supposedly so fat his memory foam forgot he existed, the Nova Scotia rapper turned CBC host rolls out what I count as his 20th album without showing his age much less giving up the musical ghost. After all, as he explains and illustrates simultaneously: "It's the equivalent of abstract expressionism, perfectionism when I'm rockin' on the mechanism." Rhymes that have never occurred to any other rapper include caribou-parachute, liver-quiver, phase six-basics, and to the best of my knowledge encore-John Ford. So not only could he go on if so inclined, he can't stop and he won't stop. When there's yet more, as there will be, we'll be glad there is. A
Jeff Evans Porkestra: When Pigs Dance (self-released) "Sixty-watt bulb in a 40-watt socket" documents an EP's worth of a world where "old people ain't as old as they used to be," lost dogs leave a trail of puppies where they bury their bone, the sun sinks whenever Evans leaves the girl who holds out on the loving until she gets her Sunday beer, and if it's green lights all the way to her house it's also green lights all the way home. A MINUS
Robert Forster: Strawberries (Tapete) Eight new ones, all of which postdate 2023's The Candle and the Flame with its definitive chemo song "It's Only Poison," not a dirge because the stuff saved his wife's life. Nothing that strong here because damn few songs are, although for all that the first four come close enough, with my favorite not the title number where the former Go-Between eats all of them himself, but the troth-plighting eight-minute "Breakfast on the Train," which ends with him and his wife-to-be making a racket when they finally find a suitable hotel. And somehow then there's the "alone and in need of love" "Foolish I Know," with its "I knew it at the age of 10, it wouldn't be women, it would be men." A MINUS
Ms. Ezra Furman: Goodbye Small Head (Bella Union) Flaunt though she may the gender-affirming "Ms." of the billing and the penis reference of the title, the long left-identified and now also trans-identified Furman is here to insist not that her love life is a mess, if indeed it is, but that the world is a mess, which nobody can deny. "Stop the car now! Time to jump out," she warns. "The human mind is a maze in the hedges/On the lawn of a distant king," she goes on. But if you need one to home in on first, try "Submission": "We'll see no victory day/Let's see how much I can take/Keep going a little more/I can take a little more/I'll take it take it take it." Words to live by? Maybe not. To stay alive for? Let's hope so. A MINUS
Ghost Wolves: Consumer Waste (Saustex) Woman-fronted postpunky rockers have the sense to think about money without craving the wealth that is unlikely ever to come their way ("Consumer Waste," "Wage Slave," "666 Mankind 666") **
Girl Scout: Headache (Human Garbage) Five more songs from Sweden-spawned, musically trained, female-centric, EP-prone foursome, every one sprightly yet calm, decent yet reserved, well-meaning yet emotionally a little flat. The overarching theme is explicit as can be: "I could never love you the way you deserve/And I'm so sorry." I look forward to the next installment of these not quite romantic reflections less than altogether convinced there'll be one. A MINUS
Justin Golden: Golden Country: Volume 2 (Vocal Rest) Likable country blues revivalist who's catchiest on the songs you don't recall hearing before ("Papa's on the Housetop," "Diving Duck Blues") ***
Lambrini Girls: Who Let the Dogs Out (Slang) As girlpunk and/or grrrlpunk goes, this two-woman U.K. band that was once a mixed-gender and/or all-female four-piece is remarkable not just for its specialty in disruptive noise but for its fluctuating sexuality. By that I mean not so much gender identity, although they're happy to tease that one out for you if you pay attention, but such subjects addressed and left in smithereens as police brutality, broken body cameras, filthy-rich nepo babies, workplace harassment, glass ceilings, crossed fingers, the wrong love to die on, and how could I leave out the climactic "cuntology"—which, if you'll permit me to beg your pardon, is their term, not mine. A
Willie Nelson: Oh What a Beautiful World (Columbia) Rodney Crowell songbook proves like others before it that though Willie may never make a great album again, he's highly unlikely to make a merely mediocre one ("I Wouldn't Be Me Without You," "She's Back in Town," "Stuff That Works") ***
Billy Nomates: Metalhorse (Invada) You may not want to face up to the hard truth, Billy, but seldom does a person get much luckier as she or he passes 35 ("Plans," "Dark Horse Friend") **
Eli "Paperboy" Reed: Eli "Paperboy" Reed Sings . . . "Walkin' and Talkin'" (20th Anniversary Deluxe Edition) (Yep Roc) The first dozen tracks identical to those this Massachusetts Yankee then surnamed Husock shopped as a Brookline High School grad who'd woodshedded in Mississippi, stopped off to study sociology at the University of Chicago, and then returned to Boston with an eye to storming the music business on a team of 12 committed soul-blues winners I figure you've never heard of because they weren't in my recall memory either: "Walkin' and Talkin' (For My Baby)," "I Just Got to Know," "The Tips of My Fingers," "Fat Mama Rumble," no not the Beatles' "Don't Let Me Down," and I could go on because 20 years later Reed definitely is. He didn't conquer the music business, obviously. But one way or another he's made a likable career of it, and to brag a little he starts off with those obscurities and adds 15 more, some borrowed from the likes of Sonny Boy Williamson, Otis Rush, James Cotton, and the Five Royales, others previously unknown to me, with just about every one worth your time. Vocally he's a little more polished here, emotionally a little more congenial. Either way he's likable and committed to his roots aesthetic. There isn't a dud in the bunch. A MINUS
Bruce Springsteen: Land of Hope & Dreams (Columbia) Not much new musically on this live, six-track, four-song, born-in-the-U.K. EP. For one thing, many Springsteen fans already own live versions of "Land of Hope and Dreams," "Long Walk Home," "My City of Ruins," and the Dylan hymn "Chimes of Freedom." What is new—newer than you'd figure, given how long and hard Springsteen has preached his democratic leftism—is that a third of the record is devoted to the unabashed speechifying that peeved our plump, trusseted prexy so much he devised the witticism "dried-out prune" to pin on Springsteen, thus, said prexy is stupid enough to "think," putting the quietus on Springsteen's half-century career. Instead what happens is that the speechifying vitalizes what even nonobsessives like me and you might otherwise file away as extraneous remakes of honorable but not necessarily classic protest songs that work in tandem with the speechifying to drive home their stubborn determination to "make America great again" before it's too late. And with all respect to Rachel Maddow, for instance, the way Springsteen's spoken words beef up the already political songs is even more vital and heartening. A (For further elucidation, see below.)
Tune-Yards: Better Dreaming (4AD) Having long both admired and enjoyed this Oakland pair-plus's eccentric world folk-rock, I'm mildly dismayed to be less charmed now that Merrill and Nate have elected to beef up their pop appeal structurally. Even so, however, I wish their somewhat more conventional songs the sales the pair have every right to aim for. Is this shift in strategy in part because there seems to be a baby in the house? Of course it is. Fuck you if you can't take a cuddle. B PLUS
Inspirational Stage Patter: Now, there's some very weird, strange, and dangerous shit going on out there right now. In America they are persecuting people for using their right to free speech and voicing their dissent. This is happening now. In America the richest men are taking satisfaction in abandoning the world's poorest children to sickness and death. This is happening now. In my country they're taking sadistic pleasure in the pain that they inflict on loyal American workers. They're rolling back historic civil rights legislation that led to a more just and plural society. They're abandoning our great allies and siding with dictators against those struggling for their freedom. They're defunding American universities that won't bow down to their ideological demands. They're removing residents off American streets and without due process of law are deporting them to foreign detention centers and prisons. This is all happening now. A majority of our elected representatives have failed to protect the American people from the abuses of an unfit president and a rogue government. They have no concern or idea of what it means to be deeply American. The America that I've sung to you about for 50 years is real and regardless of its faults is a great country with a great people. So we'll survive this moment. Now, I have hope because I believe in the truth of what the great American writer James Baldwin said. He said, "In this world there isn't as much humanity as one would like. But there's enough." Let's pray.
And It Don't Stop, June 11, 2025
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May 14, 2025 | July 10, 2025 |  |