CDs
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• Cecilia Zabala with Don Davis and Joe Deleault, Foolin’ in Time A • Jean Chaumont, The Beauty of Differences A BOOKS
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• Sunburn B+ • Book Report Includes listings for lectures, author events, book clubs, writers’ workshops and other literary events. To let us know about your book or event, email asykeny@hippopress.com. To get author events, library events and more listed, send information to listings@ hippopress.com. FILM
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• RBG A• Adrift C+ • Action Point D Looking for more book, film and pop culture events? Check out Hippo Scout, available via the Apple App Store, Google Play or hipposcout.com.
POP CULTURE
MUSIC, BOOKS, GAMES, COMICS, MOVIES, DVDS, TV AND MORE Cecilia Zabala with Don Davis and Joe Deleault, Foolin’ in Time (self-released)
This review’s way overdue, given that sax/winds guy Davis hit me up about this release when this trio (with Zabala on voice and guitar and Deleault on keys) had a couple of gigs lined up in New Hampshire back at the end of March. Because my email box is utterly, hopelessly grassed, I’ll simply have to apologize and pick up the pieces from here. These guys are all deeply seasoned session players, wielding credits which range from Jon Bon Jovi to LL Cool J and tons of artists in between; the occasion that brought this LP into existence was a semi-annual visit from the Argentinian songstress, that prompted a tour, between dates of which they recorded these Latin-flavored confections. The mixture here works, if unconventionally, combining Davis’ fetish for things avant and honking and Zabala’s girl-crush on the folklore of her homeland, meaning this isn’t a bossa nova or tango thing at all, but instead a set of lilting, innocently sweet songs that enchant without being the least bit sickly sweet; think French café, to sum it up. A — Eric W. Saeger Jean Chaumont, The Beauty of Differences (MisfitMe Music)
It’s refreshing for me to put on a guitar-jazz record and not immediately have to start thinking of ways to avoid saying “Al Di Meola.” First of all, this New Jerseyite-by-way-ofFrance prefers to let his sax guy (Sam Sadigursky) take the reins and lead the charge on such pieces as the chillloud-chill crooner “Audrey’s Code,” which hints at Yellowjackets in terms of technical muscle-flexing. I have to say I’m not big on well-trained singer ladies showing up to do some too-perfect scatting just in time to ruin my instrumentally evoked reveries, so Tierney Sutton’s dee-yah dee-dada contribution to “Prayer for Creation” wasn’t my bag, but that’s of course a taste (or lack thereof) thing. But as I’ve hinted at already, one of Chaumont’s biggest strengths is his non-standard setup, specifically a close-miked Eastman hollow-body guitar in the main and steel and nylon strings in general; the difference may not be shocking but it does lend a slight rawness to his sound. A — Eric W. Saeger
HIPPO | JUNE 7 - 13, 2018 | PAGE 38
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PLAYLIST A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases
• We begin June 8’s list of new stuff with British comedy-popdiva Lily Allen’s new album, No Shame, her first album since 2014’s Sheezus, after which she kind of lost her mind as quickly as she could, racking up all sorts of personal disasters even though Taylor Swift would have deserved it more. There are a few singles making the rounds, like “Apples” (a minimalist bummer-chill thing about messing up her marriage, co-written with that weird dude who goes by the stage nym Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly) and “Come on Then,” which begins with an almost Death Grips-style doom-pop vibe and eventually jumps into a dubstep chorus. • Look, a new EP from Kansas City on-again off-again emo band Get Up Kids, called Kicker! When last we left this cookie cutter act, they still hadn’t topped the success they’d had by breaking up, which was a slightly more popular move for them than soundtracking the car crash scene on One Tree Hill with their Linkin Park-on-downers single “Like a Man Possessed,” in case anyone’s keeping track. Anyway, Good Charlotte, I mean Fall Out Boy, I mean whoever these guys are have a sample track from this EP available right now called “Maybe.” This doubletime nerd-punk anthem has it all: a pinched-harmonic guitar riff and nerdy singing, that perfect combination of freeze-dried conformist-metal that wants you to think about jumping into a roller coaster with your girl while you’re eating cotton candy and the candy gets in her hair but you’re too much of a nerd to tell her, so of course you end up playing foosball with your friends in mom’s basement while mom wonders if you’ll ever do something right. I’m sure “their fans” will love it. • Gruff Rhys, the singer from Welsh psychedelic band Super Furry Animals, is one of those guys who wears ski caps all the time, even in summer, possibly because self-inflicted baldness prevents hipsters from being required to commit to military service. He has also done electro-pop with Boom Bip in the project Neon Neon, but I have the dreadful feeling that his new album, Babelsberg, will have a dreadful single, so let’s just get this over with. Oh great, the single, “Frontier Man,” sounds like a very sleepy Neil Diamond trying to write an opening credits theme for a 1970s John Wayne movie. This is an affront to my senses, I’m closing this YouTube window and not commenting further on this nonsense except to say “Really?” • Hmm, this might be good, a new album called So Sad So Sexy from Swedish model and dream-pop singer Lykke Li, due June 8. Wait, the single “Deep End” isn’t dream-pop, it’s disposable trapbling snap-dance that sounds like that Beyonce lady. They do this stuff to me on purpose, I’m serious. — Eric W. Saeger
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