Well into the second half of 2023 and I’ve only done TWO of these this year. TWO! Inexcusable! I’m going to try my darnedest to try and rectify this for the rest of the year, since I have listened to a lot of new albums and I do have opinions!
Who am I kidding? This is going to be a lean year for Newer Release Roundups, isn’t it. I’m such a failure! *cuts wrists* *gets angry emails about my insensitivity toward suicide, a serious subject to be sure* *cuts cheese*
Here are reviews for Yo La Tengo, The Men, and Fever Ray.
Yo La Tengo – This Stupid World
(February 10, 2023)
My relationship with Yo La Tengo is conditional and somewhat tenuous. I love about half of their schtick, and I’m underwhelmed and bored by the other half. When they’re good, they’re fucking good. Scratchy guitar and feedback noise over steady, addictive rhythms? Great! Ambient, plodding soundscapes with Ira Kaplan’s sleepy voice? Not great!
I haven’t loved a Yo La Tengo album since 2006’s I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass (or an album title, for that matter). Everything since has been good, but underwhelming, at best. Dreadfully dull at worst. Don’t even get me started on 2020’s snorefest We Have Amnesia Sometimes. It just seemed like the band was drifting more into this background music direction. I was expecting more of the same going into This Stupid World, so imagine my complete delight that it was a return to form! Scratchy guitar and feedback noise over steady, addictive rhythms! Give me more of what I want, shitheads!
“Sinatra Drive Breakdown” is a great start. That tasty motorik beat plods along while Ira Kaplan forgets how to play guitar for two minutes in the middle. It’s like he’s fighting with it and it’s winning, until he slowly locks back into the groove. It’s such a fun listen, and the highlight of the album for me. But the rest of it ain’t no slouch! I also really, really like the next track, “Fallout”, and “Brain Capers” later on. Gimme some more of that ’90s hipster post-rock-adjacent lively-slacker nostalgia, please. “Aselestine” is entirely Georgia Hubley, and it’s beautiful, lazy, and relaxed. Even the slow burns are nuanced and interesting. Like “Until It Happens”, which has these cool little, happy slide guitar notes during the, uh, “chorus”.
Even though This Stupid World was dropped in February, the record gives me some strong hazy, summery vibes. Like an open fire hydrant and ice cream melting on the sidewalk. Maybe I just wish I were outside right now instead of stuck at work where I’m writing this instead of doing my job!
(If my boss is reading this, I promise that I’m doing my job.)
Early Verdict:
The Men – New York City
(February 3, 2023)
I stopped following The Men after their 2014 album Tomorrow’s Hits, which I loved. Starting out as noisy and raucous as a band like Flipper, The Men mellowed out progressively with each subsequent album. The ironically named Tomorrow’s Hits felt like an Americana classic rock pastiche, channeling artists like Bruce Springsteen, Elvis, and Tom Petty with not much room for raucousness (except for the hyperactive blues of “Pearly Gates” — the Rolling Stones on speed).
So, I don’t know what The Men did for three more albums, but New York City can’t be anything but a continuation of evolution. We have gone back to the punk edge, still with a lot of early rock-and-roll influences. A lot of this album sounds like Black Flag playing Jerry Lee Lewis or the Stones, with hard-hitting guitar riffs over fast-paced piano. But they keep it interesting with different approaches: the slow, sludgy groove of “Eye”, or the Meat Puppets cowpunk of “River Flows”, or the Petty-esque balladry of “Anyway I Find You”. Maturity graces the tracks like a band that has had many years under its belt to refine its identity. The Men prove to be brawny and melodic, sticking to catchiness over the unbridled noisiness of days gone by.
Like I said, though, I haven’t listened to the previous three albums. Perhaps one of them is a whole tracklist of ABBA covers! Perhaps this is actually some sort of return to form after nine years of experiments! New York City is a fun album, a timestamp of The Men’s settled-in existence, and evidence that there’s a long way to go before their formula gets tired.
Early Verdict:
Fever Ray – Radical Romantics
(March 10, 2023)
Karin Dreijer does it again! And by that I mean, they upped the ante on the creepiness factor. Feast your poor eyes on that cover. It’s like Uncle Fester’s collagen injections got botched.
Fever Ray’s second album, Plunge, made it to my list of the best albums of the 2010s, so I was reasonably excited for Radical Romantics. It did not disappoint, although I didn’t feel the same VISCERAL REACTION that I felt with songs like “Falling” and “This Country”. They certainly have one of the most original and recognizable sounds in indie rock, I’ll give them that, and this time around it seems to be less angsty and more subdued. Gone are the ranty “THIS COUNTRY MAKES IT HARD TO FUCK!” outbursts, because Radical Romantics is all about the SOFTER side of how the country makes it hard to fuck! But no, in general, this album is a little bit more vulnerable. They have something to say, but they’re shy, and they’re trying to delve deeper into it.
The recognizable snakey synths are ever present. Songs like “Shiver” and “Looking for a Ghost” are reminiscent of old school Fever Ray or the Knife and shows Dreijer’s relatable sexual desires with a playfulness and yearning. “Carbon Dioxide” bubbles and pops along with the fizz and effervescence of a CAN OF DELICIOUS CREAM SODA. It makes for a fun listen throughout, although I could do without the seven-minute slog of a closing track “Bottom of the Ocean”. An apt name, sure, because the bottom of the ocean seems to be repetitive and boring. Dreijer just does this “oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh” thing over and over again. Skip this track.
A highlight is “Even It Out”, which is justifiably aggressive due to its… um… subject matter. I’ll just leave you with this: “This is for Zacharias/Who bullied my kid in high school/There’s no room for you/And we know where you live/One day, we might come after you…”
Early Verdict:
