REVIEWS

Stress Dolls Queen of No (Sun Pedal Recordings) Queen of No, the new Stress Dolls album, lives up to the band name. It is a journey through head Stress Doll Chelsea O’Donnell’s anxieties, ranging from health issues (she suffers from Crohn’s Disease), relationships, social media and more existential questions. Though the music is firmly based in pop-punk, a variety of styles illuminate the various themes which run through the album. In general, the more declarative songs — where she directly...

Cool Club and the Lipker Sisters Dancing Into Your Dreams (CD Baby) One of the recurring pleasures I’ve experienced over the past few years has been attending concerts by Cool Club and the Lipker Sisters. It’s always fun, always energetic, always a tremendous display of musical talent – I catch them whenever I can and, luckily, they play locally often. So I eagerly awaited their new album, Dancing Into Your Dreams, which was released on September 4 and, for the...

Sarah De Valliere The Healing (independent) The Healing is one of the most beautiful albums I have heard in a long time. De Valliere’s vocals and piano are sweet and lush. Her melodies caress the ears. The music is soulful pop, with touches of blues and jazz, as well as orchestral flourishes. The recording is exquisite; every instrument is clear and crisp. More important, it leaves you feeling beautiful. This is not just an album about healing, as the title...

Creation Rebel Hostile Environment I thank the Clash for many things, and one of those things is getting me into Reggae. I grew up in a tropical island where reggae was a soundtrack to your day, not something you actively sought out. Why would you? Is there anything besides Bob Marley? Yeah, that’s the mentality I had, Then I heard the Clash, and I didn’t get it. Then I dug deeper and I had a revelation. Listening to the...

A deeper look at the grooves pressed into The Drowns’ Blacked Out LP. While the number of ways that a band may choose to change their sound in the name of refreshing it or updating it are almost innumerable, what The Drowns have done on Blacked Out is genuinely impressive. This time out, the band has left most of the punk and hardcore are forms that the band has been developing and refining over the last few years behind and...

Son Henry & T. Rogers Band Grace (Twang House Records) In 2009, American blues musician and lap steel virtuoso Son Henry arrived at a music festival in Estonia with only his lap steel. The rest of his equipment was stuck at Heathrow Airport, where it remained for six months. He was rescued by T. Rogers band, “a group of mad Hungarians,” as he put it. They loaned him equipment and gave him stage time. A lifelong connection was established. Ten...

Claudia Hoyser Red Lights Turning Green (GFI Music) Every now and then, an artist takes you by surprise. Who would expect the Aging Punk to love a Country singer? And not an alt-country artist, either; a pure, down-home Country artist. I am now officially a Claudia Hoyser fan. A local record store (Record Archive — if you’re ever in Rochester, NY) provides pizza and beer and free music every Wednesday. I often stop in to see what they have. Hoyser...

Neutral Milk Hotel Collected Works (Merge Records) I confess I never listened to Neutral Milk Hotel before. I knew it was considered one of the great alternative bands, but I never heard anything else that made me want to listen to them. There were moments I definitely felt I should check it out, wishing, as I do, to be well informed about music. But I never made the move. Until now. Offered the chance to review their Collected...

Iggy Pop Every Loser (Atlantic/Warner Bros.) I’m never sure what I’ll get when I get a new album by Iggy Pop. Usually, there’s some version of the standard Iggy — rocking hard, with some social criticism, and a ballad or two – but every now and then he throws us a curve ball; a Preliminaires or an Avenue B. With all of that said, Every Loser pretty standard for him. If there is a surprise here, it is that Iggy...

Weyes Blood And In the Darkness, Hearts Aglow (Sub Pop Records) In her current incarnation as pop songstress, musician Weyes Blood may have produced the definitive post-Covid album. Sweet melodies, lush orchestration and a beautiful voice combine to express the relief and pleasure of passing through the crisis. The instrumentation is standard pop — piano, guitar, synthesizer washes, arranged into sweeping waves of music. Weyes Blood has claimed “church music” as a great influence on her work, which is a...