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POP CULTURE
Index
MUSIC, BOOKS, GAMES, COMICS, MOVIES, DVDS, TV AND MORE
CDs
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• Birthday Massacre, Diamonds B • The Sounds, Things We Do For Love C BOOKS
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• Such a Fun Age A Includes listings for lectures, author events, book clubs, writers’ workshops and other literary events.
Birthday Massacre, Diamonds (Metropolis Records)
This space was never intended to serve partly as a biennial/triennial advertisement for this girl-fronted Toronto goth-synthpop band’s second album, Violet, but funny things do happen in life. One of the greatest rock ’n’ roll crimes of the current century is Birthday Massacre’s failure to become the default background music-maker of every shlocky B-level SyFy/CW/ etc.-broadcasted vampire/were-monster TV show to have survived past its pilot (one tune made it into a Vampire Diaries episode, for the record), but, well, funny things and life and all. Visually, their trip evokes a Beetlejuice-obsessed, dark-purple-tinted Harley Quinn flanked by four Lost Boys dudes, all of which fits the music, a ghostly but brash hybrid of Missing Persons-ish ’80s-synthpop rear-loaded with simple metal guitars. Violet was scary-good, but it was downhill from there after that; the next few albums were too much leather and not enough lace, i.e., you could tell that the heavy metal delegation within the band was winning too many internal battles. This time out, the synthpop team won, which is super cool; in fact, opener “Enter” is reminiscent of Taylor Swift. But what’s missing is release: plenty of gorgeous buildups, but they never catch the big, relentless hooks that are staring them right in the face. That’s the only real bummer here. B — Eric W. Saeger
The Sounds, Things We Do For Love (Arnioki Records)
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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• The Hunt B-
This Swedish band really needs a PR person who doesn’t live in a hobbit hole. Seeing that they were billed as an “indie band,” I figured “why not,” but in my view, they’re more of a straightup (and actually quite timely) pop act. But then again, maybe not. What a bizarre little mix of influences permeates opening track “Things We Do For Love”: the guitar line from Survivor’s dingbat-’80s hit “Eye of the Tiger” (right down to the precise guitar sound), a tiny but instantly recognizable snippet from Madonna’s old chestnut “Into the Groove,” all while singer Maja Ivarsson sounds a lot like like Lorde. Meanwhile, it’s all too pro-sounding to be lumped as indie, not to be too pedantic about it. The whole thing is like this weird ’80s fever dream. “Changes” sounds like the little brother of Spandau Ballet’s “True.” The band’s been together for 22 years and been fairly successful, counting celebrities from Quentin Tarantino to Bam Margera as fans, and have had songs placed on Geico commercials and whatnot. I’m mystified by said success, but hey, whatever. C — Eric W. Saeger
PLAYLIST A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases [Editor’s note: Some album releases are being delayed. Albums mentioned here were still listed as coming out on Friday, March 20, as of March 16.] • March 20 is the next calendar date upon which random new albums of varying degrees of listenability will be released. The first one we shall discuss is Kelsea, the new album from country singing girl Kelsea Ballerini, who is usually compared to Taylor Swift, viz: “If Taylor Swift hadn’t allowed herself to morph from a poor man’s version of Carrie Underwood into a bubblegum-bling-hop, kid-centric brand with a cowboy hat necklace and a 4chan link in her internet bookmarks list, she’d probably sound like this.” That’s not to take anything away from this Tennessean, especially if you like country-pop, because that’s definitely her trip, as you’ll hear on the album’s newest single “la,” a gently finger-picked chillout that definitely sounds exactly like oldschool Tay, and she’s singing about missing Tennessee but sort of liking Los Angeles, an angle that’s been explored before by about two trillion other artists, except this is totally from the heart, man! One really annoying thing about the YouTube video for this tune is that the comments section is full of comments from bots or record-company-paid propaganda trolls, like the exact same phrases are repeated by three different fake sockpuppet accounts (by the way, those sockpuppets were the ones who told me that the song lyrics were totally from the heart, just so you know). • Morrissey was the singer for the Smiths, which is one reason I don’t care about him, but then again the Smiths were, at least to me, nothing more than Roxy Music with a dishwasher-safe level of goth, no brass section and a lot fewer hooks. In fact, I can’t remember ever remembering one Smiths song for more than two minutes, other than “How Soon Is Now,” but hey, maybe you love the Smiths, and Morrissey. Hey, why did the chicken run across the road? To replace all his scratched-up Cure albums with new copies, because otherwise he’d have nothing to listen to except the Smiths. I don’t see the appeal, but I do know that Morrissey’s new album, I am Not a Dog on a Chain, is on the way, featuring the single “Bobby Don’t You Think They Know,” a hookless meatloaf of microwaved Tears for Fears vibe. Y’all can have as much of that stuff as you can stand, I’ll pass. • Finally, Adam Lambert doesn’t need to get more famous, but he has a new album, Velvet, on the Walmart trucks now. One of the songs, “Closer to You,” is a big, maudlin piano ballad that steals the gist of the Beatles song “Let It Be.” I won’t be having any, thanks. — Eric W. Saeger Local (NH) bands seeking album or EP reviews can message me on Twitter (@esaeger) or Facebook (eric.saeger.9).
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