January new releases are the trickle before the flood every year. Labels and artists assume everyone has shot their financial wad during the holiday season and/or suffering from shopper's fatigue. The first few weeks of the year don’t see a ton of new titles hitting the racks. But there are some, and a handful are definitely worth your time, especially if you’re feeling mid-winter adventurous.
• Iggy Pop, Every Loser (1/6) - What's it like to be Iggy in 2023? Everybody, even his still-rabid fans, knows that he made his most groundbreaking, visionary music as a completely out of control young man, riding on the highway to hell, and for a brief time after pal Bowie pulled him out of the gutter and put him back to work. All of that by 1977, every note of his catalog to that point a seismic influence on rock music to come. You did it, pal, you can’t do it again without killing yourself, so you might as well have some fun in your 70s. Every Loser is Iggy having fun.
Iggy’s playing a role now, but it’s his role and arguably none of his thousands of acolytes can play it as well. His lyrics still sound tossed off, occasionally profane, occasionally goofy, but not really capturing the drug-haze profundity of “I Wanna Be Your Dog,” “TV Eye,” or “Search and Destroy.” The music still slams when it needs to - in a more heavily compressed, modern-sounding way. Iggy hired some great guitarists for Every Loser, pulling in guys from Guns N Roses, Pearl Jam, Jane’s Addiction, etc. Even if none have the brilliantly twisted sensibilities of Ron Ashton or James Williamson, memorable rock riffs litter the landscape. An essential Iggy album? Nah. A fun one with a little unexpected juice? That’s how I hear it. You may not be a street walkin’ cheetah with a heart full of napalm any more, Jim, but the next generations don’t know what napalm is anyway.
EARWORM: "Strung Out Johnny" - My favorite Iggy song in several years.
• Margo Price, Strays (1/13) - Only the appealing soft twang in Margo's voice takes you back to her first records of Loretta-influenced country music. She's become a cosmic country explorer since then. Her rock and pop influences are more prominent on Strays, even her remaining country sensibility veers closer to folk than CCM. "Country Road" is way closer to Fleetwood Mac than Carrie Underwood, for example, and opener "Been to the Mountain" grinds more than it two-steps. My fave track, "Light Me Up," is an impressive folk-into-rock Zeppelin turn. She's a restless, adventurous songwriter, which keeps me following her career. Is Strays a masterpiece? Maybe not quite - it's intriguing, even impressive, but in the end feels a bit disjointed. I'm thinking she's on the path to one, though, so I'll keep listening.
EARWORM: "Light Me Up" - Co-writer Mike Campbell gives this one a Zeppelin-ish kick in the pants.
• John Cale, Mercy (1/20) - Not so much a collection of songs as claustrophobic, gothic-y electronic soundscapes with vocals, like his old pal Brian Eno on a particularly bad acid trip. I find it compelling, you may find it completely self-indulgent. We’d both be right. There are beautiful moments here. The title song, for example, with its gothic ballad atmosphere and bass like waves lolling against a shoreline, is a mind-stretcher and calmer at the same time. The only cut that misses for me is the one he wrote for his old Velvet Underground bandmate Nico. It’s the most unfocused and emotionally distant track on Mercy, which may very well have been the point.
EARWORM: "Night Crawling" - Could almost pass as a radio single in an alternate universe.
• Joe Henry, All the Eye Can See (1/27) - After a long and rich career as a musician and producer, Joe had a stage four cancer diagnosis dropped on him in 2019. It’s been a tough road coming back, fortunately his current prognosis is optimistic. The man has the right to sing the blues, but that’s not what he’s chosen to do.
Like 2019’s The Gospel According to Water, All the Eye Can See is a deep, ruminative reflection on life’s curveballs, redeeming moments, and remaining hopes. It’s too slow and weighty for casual listening; it’s missing the light funk, dusty Americana, and sly humor of albums like 2001’s wonderful Scar, but his singing voice remains a remarkably expressive instrument and his lyric writing razor-sharp. Probably not a record for playing in the background to soundtrack life’s daily routines, but if you’re in the mood for a deeper kind of dive it’s quite lovely. Moving, even.
EARWORM: "God Laughs" - One of the album's most obvious melodies (and titles, considering the theme), and a pretty one at that.
• Bass Drum of Death, Say I Won't (1/27) - This band from Mississippi is really scratching my itch for some smart, catchy headbanging these days. There are some deft touches added to their dirty metal - the scratchy, thumping guitar/drum combo on "Say Your Prayers," the ominous buzz and winding snake guitar solo in "Head Change." I don't know for sure, but these guys sound like they listened to some Gang of Four along the way, and took their idea of jagged but danceable guitar arrangements to heart. That's a big plus in my book.
EARWORM: "Say Your Prayers" - Opens with a flash of Queen vocalizing, marches forward as heavily mutated funk.
Do you realize the image on the cover of the Joe Henry album is a Victorian era post-mortem photo i.e. a picture of a dead kid all dressed up and propped up? They were all the rage in the late 1800s. The music is equally morose. RE: "The Others" film with Nicole Kidman.
I found the Cale unlistenable and dated sounding. Margo getting her best Patti Smith on I love but Joe Henry was digging too deep on the day I tried it. I liked the rockin' tracks on the Iggy but the spoken word pieces, not so much. Hadn't hear of Bass Drum of Death until now and...OMG!