Teen Jesus and the Jean Teasers - I Love You Too (2024)

Country: Australia
Style: Alternative
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 20 Sep 2024
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | Wikipedia | YouTube

I'm always on the lookout for what's coming out from down under and here's a gloriously named band who I'm listing as alternative but play a cross of pop and rock with a garage rock mindset and sometimes a punk urgency too. Their first album, released last year, was called I Love You, so this is naturally I Love You Too. I don't think I'm quite ready to declare unconditional love for them yet but this is bright and engaging and agreeably varied. It's very easy to listen to and its energy has an agreeably positive effect on the day.

That begins with I Used to Be Fun, which opens up the album with a perky form of energy, but it's Treat Me Better which really elevates the album. In fact, while I could (and will) pick out a host of favourite tracks, this one sits above them all. It starts out calmer but builds with serious effect in immaculate fashion. I love how this one bulks up and shrinks down again. It's a more imaginative song than the opener and it plays with some neat contrasts. The guitar tone as it bulks up is very tasty too, courtesy of Scarlett McKahey.

The bad news is that nothing else here matches Treat Me Better. The good news is that nothing is particularly interested in trying because the other songs have other things to do. The heaviest is a forty second track called Cayenne Pepper which rather hilariously, is artificially bulked up. Twenty seconds of it constitutes a slice of studio reality. The second half is a blitzkrieg of a punk song. The lightest is Your House My House, which is entirely unplugged, mixing vocals and acoustic guitar. If that gives a particular impression, I should add that the vocals sound like everybody in the band is harmonising together and the guitar is almost hiding in the background.

As you might imagine, songs like that rely on their melodies and hooks and, quite frankly, so does everything here. That holds for a pop rock song like I Love You, which is infuriatingly catchy with a kick to it. It holds for the songs that find and milk their grooves, like Backseat Driver, I Don't Want It and Kissy Kissy. The latter especially reaches a big singalong at the end, which somehow works even though some of those singing appear to be cracking up at the same time. And it holds for the odd tracks, like Never Saw It Coming, which is soft enough to feature strings, acoustic guitar and yet more harmonising. The lyrics are more visceral and the contrast is impressive.

The lead vocalist is Anna Ryan, whose Aussie accent shines through even when she's singing. It's a flavour for these songs that's unmistakable on a bunch of them, especially Backseat Driver and I Don't Want It. She also handles rhythm guitar, but McKahey handles lead. She's the primary way that these songs get different tones, hulking up for the powerful songs, coating everything in grit and grunge or finding a melodious chiming tone that almost reminds of surf music on mid-power songs and either dropping into acoustic mode or vanishing entirely on the softer poppier tracks.

That leaves Jaida Stephenson on bass and Neve van Boxsel on drums. As the rhythm section, they aren't there to do anything flash but the former manages it anyway on a few tracks. There's some wonderful prominent basswork on Backseat Driver and I Don't Want It. Everyone joins in on songs that need communal vocals and I believe van Boxsel occasionally sings lead as well. It always feels redundant to call out how a band works together because, of course, everyone in the line-up plays a part. However, there are bands dominated by vocals and others dominated by guitars. Here, it's very much a team effort; nobody dominates because everybody shares the spotlight throughout.

With acknowledgement to a couple of guest groups, Softcult and the Linda Lindas, who guest on a track each, I'll cheesily riff on the title of the final song, We Thought It Would Be a Good Time But It Was a Bad Time. It might have been for the singer or the character she's portraying in that song but it isn't for us. This is a good time album. Even at its grungiest, it's a happy album and would be even if there weren't so many glimpses of how much fun the band were having when they recorded it. It's not just the first half of Cayenne Pepper or the laughter in Kissy Kissy, it's all over the place, starting with the end of the opener. These are riot grrls with more than one meaning to riot. And this is a good time.

Jason Bieler and the Baron von Bielski Orchestra - Postcards from the Asylum (2023)

Country: USA
Style: Hard Rock
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 14 Apr 2023
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | Twitter | YouTube

If there's anyone working in the rock/metal genre who has a better understanding of melody than Jason Bieler, I have absolutely no idea who it might be. This is a double album of new material with fifteen songs on offer and they're so loaded with melodies and harmonies that we start to believe that everything is a hook. Sure, the choruses are hooks but the verses are also hooks and the riffs and often the beats too. He's so apparently effortless at this that it can be hard to believe that it's new material and we didn't just grow up with all these songs as cultural atmosphere.

Bombay is a particularly strong opener, a lively and bouncy alt rock piece with all those hooks and plenty of harmonies too. The bookends are as steampunk as the cover art suggests yet again and they set a scene that I was surprised not to see visited more during the album. However, the style in between that reminds us how much Bieler enjoys the Beatles is consistently explored across the other songs. The question often comes down to how much he wants to rock out at a point in time, as he does on Heathens or Sic Riff, and how much he doesn't, as on Mexico, which is layered hooks and strings, even though he adds a tasty guitar solo.

Well, I say he adds a tasty guitar solo but I'm not sure who does what here, beyond expecting that Bieler does most of it. There are guests, most obviously Andee Blacksugar and Edu Cominato, who are currently touring with KMFDM and Geoff Tate respectively. Both of them appear on a slew of tracks, the latter for drums and the former for "extra guitars, noises and solos". There are a whole lot of others, but I'm thinking the vast majority are Bieler under various wild and wonderful noms de plume, such as Wormsby Troutlick and Stralinksi Waka-waka. Quite a few of these names have a connection to food, like Baklava Jones and Stilton Shoebaggies, so I'm guessing Bieler was hungry when he conjured them up.

The actual other people lean towards multi-instrumentalists who perform with a broad variety of artists but only appear on one track, usually Beneath the Waves. That includes two bassists, Chris McLernon, formerly of Bieler's primary band, Saigon Kick, and Todd Kerns, currently working with Slash; as well as Ryo Okumoto of Spock's Beard on piano and keyboards. Elsewhere, there's Marco Minneman, a German drummer who's played with everyone from Nena to Necrophagist, and Ricky Sanders, also ex-Saigon Kick, who was on the previous Baron von Bielski Orchestra release, Songs for the Apocalypse.

It doesn't surprise me that Bieler should attract such a versatile set of musical partners, but they aren't here to do anything particularly flash. They're here to collaborate with him in ways that are reliant on having an open musical mind. That works gloriously on the first of the two records, with everyone making wonderful contributions across the board that always fit with Bieler's melodies. Bombay is only the first of a number of highlights, because Heathens bounces with edges, Birds of Prey is beautiful and elegant, Flying Monkeys is full of fascinating rhythms and Sic Riff grinds.

That's not to say that the second disc doesn't work because it does, just not quite so effortlessly as the first. Deep Blue is probably my favourite track there, with its prog pop rhythms and langurous drive, but I'd put that behind all five of the earlier highlights that I mentioned above. Other songs stand out in other ways too, often lighter ones. There are keyboard touches that elevate 9981 Dark and electronica is even more fundamental to Bear Sedatives, with its delightful vocalisations that serve as both rhythm and backing vocals. Human Head closes out in an uncharactistically folk vein, the most unique song here and my second highlight behind Deep Blue.

That uneven balance between discs doesn't help the album, but nothing really lets it down. Quite frankly, the worst songs here would seem good on someone else's album because everything that Bieler does is worth hearing. It goes without saying that everything here is instantly recognisable as his work because his style is not easily mimicked and nobody else does it quite like him. I think I would award the first disc a 9/10 but the second only a 7/10, so this averages out to a second highly recommended 8/10 album in a row for Bieler. Just buy everything he's ever done and absorb it.

Bush - The Art of Survival (2022)

Country: UK
Style: Alternative
Rating: 6/10
Release Date: 7 Oct 2022
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | Twitter | Wikipedia | YouTube

I thought Bush would be the latest in the list of mainstream alternative British bands that I hadn't heard before, mostly because I can't grok the concept that an alternative band can break into the mainstream and remain alternative. Bush's debut album, Sixteen Stone, has sold six million copies in the States alone. That's the definition of mainstream to me. So they don't sound like Madonna? Alternative should mean more than that. Anyway, I checked out Sixteen Stone and realised that I'd heard it before. I knew Everything Zen and Comedown and just hadn't associated the songs with a band name. I'd just dumped them in the Nirvana clone bucket, even though they did it well, and I'd moved it to the back of my mind.

Now, that was 1994. This is 2022 and grunge isn't the flavour of the month any more, but it's still a key part of Bush's sound. It seems to me that they've built on it rather than replaced it, with some more progressive elements added to the mix, especially in songs like May Your Love Be Pure. That means that what you get out of this may depend on where you're coming from. If you're a grunge fan, as most old school Bush fans presumably were, then this will feel familiar but adventurous in its way, so post-grunge if that's a thing.

If, however, you're coming to this from the hard rock side, you'll find much to like but you may also find it a little restrictive, only hinting at where it could go. You wouldn't find any of the keyboards here on an early nineties grunge album and some of the riffs wouldn't fit either, because they're a lot closer to other genres than traditional grunge. Kiss Me I'm Dead shifts towards the traditional hard rock sound but Identity goes full on nu metal, albeit without changing Gavin Rossdale's vocal delivery.

I'd noted down that I was surprised at how heavy this feels long before that song arrived eight into the album. The opener is appropriately called Heavy is the Ocean, because it's a heavy song, not a fast song or a particularly urgent song, but it's heavy from the outset, especially through the tone of Chris Traynor's guitar. It remains heavy all the way to Identity, after which Creatures of the Fire underlines how heavy it was by taking it away. It returns for Judas is a Riot.

Just like the Slave New World album I reviewed right before it, this isn't metal, but it's surely had thoughts about going there, as if it might be a future option. Of course, Occam's Razor would say that this is merely more Smells Like Teen Spirit than anything else on Nevermind, which wouldn't be unfair, but maybe it's just current trend in production. 1000 Years isn't the only song that hints that they could move more into commercial alternative rock, in the vein of Radiohead. However, I wouldn't expect them to do that either.

Bush are clearly very good at what they do, explaining those six million sales for their debut, even though Rossdale is the only founder member left. While that suggests another band in flux, there have been very few line-up changes over the years, each instrument only swapping hands once. In fact, the only change before the band split up in 2002 was Traynor stepping in when Nigel Pulsford left to spend more time with his family. Bassist Dave Parsons didn't return when they reformed in 2010, Corey Britz joining in his stead. The only change since then was Robin Goodridge leaving and Nik Hughes replacing him in 2019. That's pretty stable.

And maybe that explains that, while 1000 Years reiterates that they're "slowly sinking", it would be fairer to say that they're slowly evolving, at a steady enough pace that this doesn't sound entirely like that debut album eighteen years ago but hasn't pissed off band members left and right. And, if that suggests comfortable then that's probably a fair word to use. Appropriately, given its title, Identity hints at a paradigm shift into nu metal, which I wouldn't recommend, but this is otherwise pretty safe territory for a band who sounded like Nirvana eighteen years ago. Is the fact that they don't know enough? How you answer that question may determine what you think of this album. I see it as decent and capable but ultimately safe and forgettable.

Jerry Cantrell - Brighten (2021)

Country: USA
Style: Hard Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 20 Oct 2021
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | Twitter | Wikipedia | YouTube

I'm not the world's biggest fan of Alice in Chains, though I did appreciate their take on grunge, as it was a bit more diverse and bit heavier than most of their peers. I'm actually surprised to realise that they're still together and with hardly any line-up changes, given that two out of four original members are no longer with us. In fact, Alice in Chains have been more prolific in the 21st century than Jerry Cantrell has on his own, this being his third solo album, his second this millennium and his first in the nineteen years since 2002's Degradation Trip.

If I've heard that, it would have been around its release and I've completely forgotten it, so I have to say that I'm coming into this pretty much without expectations, any that I have shaped by early Alice in Chains. And, while there's definitely a gritty tone to proceedings, it manifests more as alt country than it does grunge. That more modern tone aside, this feels much older than grunge, as if it's a covers album of country rock and classic rock deep cuts from the seventies that I've never heard before.

In truth, there's only one cover here, the short closer, which is of Elton John's Goodbye, the final track on Madman Across the Water, which was released in 1971 when Cantrell was only five and I'd maybe figured out how to stand up on my own. It's delightfully stripped down and resonant.

Perhaps the country flavour is made more overt by Atone, the opener and opening single. It's the most grunge song here too, reminding me of Mary My Hope as well as Alice in Chains but with an impactful drum sound that carries a stomping feet vibe, as if this was playing at a revival in a tent. A more traditional country flavour shows up on Siren Song, again an alt country rock number built off power chords and a much more laid back vibe. There's alt country too on Prism of Doubt and a lot on Black Hearts and Evil Done, a song that I could hear covered by Son Volt or Uncle Tupelo.

While the cover is of an Elton John song, the most frequent vibe I got here was Tom Petty, mostly in the credits that Cantrell can claim for his own: the guitar work, the songwriting and in some of the vocal melodies, if not the tone. His favourite song is apparently the title track and whenever it doesn't sound like Tom Petty, it sounds like ELO, especially in the changes and the Jeff Lynne-like chorus of "You only reap what you sow." Lynne, of course, wrote, produced and performed on the Full Moon Fever album for Petty, which has only grown over the years.

There would have been a member of the Heartbreakers here, keyboardist Benmont Tench, but he had other commitments that prevented him playing on Siren Song. His inclusion would be far less surprising than some of the people who are here. On bass is Duff McKagan of Guns n' Roses, who don't spring to mind as an influence at all. There are two members of the Dillinger Escape Plan at points, Gil Sharone contributing about half the drums and Greg Puciato adding backing vocals, again far from their genre of choice.

It's the other major contributor who seems to fit most logically and that's Abe Laboriel Jr., who's been Paul McCartney's drummer for the past couple of decades. There are Beatles moments here but a lot fewer than there are ELO or Lynyrd Skynyrd moments and far fewer than there are Tom Petty moments. By the time we get to Had to Know, it's impossible not to see Petty's hand all over this album, even if he had absolutely nothing to do with it. I wonder what Cantrell has been listening to most lately.

And so this was a bit of a surprise for me. It's recognisably Cantrell but it's Cantrell channelling a seventies vibe that I didn't expect, trawling in alt country, southern rock and classic pop/rock, over which he layers his grunge heritage as much as attitude as tone. And I like it, more than I expected to, which is always a good surprise for an album to bring me.

Psychotic Apes - Psychotic Apes (2021)

Country: Brazil
Style: Hard Rock
Rating: 6/10
Release Date: 28 May 2021
Sites: Facebook

Here's a really interesting album, because it was made from a new band from Brazil who don't have a particularly wide presence on the web—I had to dig in Portuguese to find out who the members were—but it covers an wide sonic landscape. Initially, it seems like a heavy metal album, but it's a lot easier to classify it as hard rock, but even there it's rarely static, a band like Faith No More clearly being a major influence.

The heavy metal comes from the opening instrumental, Cosmic Silence, which kicks off the album with serious intent. That buzzsaw guitar reminds of Iron Maiden's Back in the Village and that's before the drumming goes all double bass and the guitar sears through a solo. Even the quieter and slower coda says metal and it seems obvious to me that one of the two guitarists is a metalhead because most of the metal here comes from one guitar, while the other one is far grungier.

As the album settles down and we find some consistency, we find a lot of grunge. The Storm kicks off in grungy style with a neat riff and what sounds like Jew's harp. The vocals are harsh and raspy but soft too, while the bass rumbles, as if these Brazilians are really a Seattle band in the early nineties trying something unusual to delineate themselves from all the other Seattle bands in the early nineties.

Much of the unusual comes in the form of intros and outros, which usually match because most of the songs here have bookends. Inside the Shadow starts bluesy with acoustic guitar and sassy maracas as if these are street musicians. The Shadow Inside starts with vocal harmonies and psychedelic guitar. Wheel of Fortune starts with a vinyl recording of Carl Orff's O Fortuna. In all instances, those sounds return much later in the song, usually to wrap them up, so, while they're notably different, they serve a similar purpose.

Just as we start to get used to thinking of the Psychotic Apes as a grunge band who like to experiment outside their genre, the songs start to diverge again. It's All About Puppets alternates between two voices, one floaty and clean but the other harsher and almost a rap, but it reminds more of a Suicidal Tendencies approach than anything from a chart rapper. This one speeds up too and that metal guitar comes back for another solo.

However, it's followed by Lovely Dirty Words, which sounds more like an acoustic Guns n' Roses ballad, like Patience. And then the album wraps with a song sharing its name with the band and the album, so I presume it's their anthem. It kicks off with ethnic rhythms and a playful bass that sets up the riff the guitars promptly take on but just as promptly avoid so that the focus can shift to the vocals that work some interesting harmonies.

Apparently, the Psychotic Apes were formed in 2019 by Ramiro Barros, one of the two guitarists, and Alax Bezerra, who's the band's vocalist. Later came Tadeu Marinho on second guitar, Miguel Dorcino on bass and Rafael Franzon on drums. Their goal is to merge grunge, metal, punk and regional music, which is exactly what they do, especially on the closer.

I'd love to hear this sound develop as they find a balance between those different styles. As it stands, grunge is easily the most obvious ingredient, with metal next and the other genres heard clearest in the bookends, but they do mix effectively in songs like Psychotic Apes and It's All About Puppets. This band just needs time (and maybe some better production) to truly find themselves because they're already interesting.

Mudhoney - Morning in America (2019)

Country: USA
Style: Alternative
Rating: 6/10
Release Date: 20 Sep 2019
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | Twitter | YouTube

I remember Mudhoney from their earlier days, though I never kept up with the band. I loved their 1988 single Sweet Young Thing Ain't Sweet No More, which I probably heard on the John Peel show and which featured a style I'd never heard before. It was really garage rock but so raw and so achingly slow that it tripped a lot of the same buttons that doom metal does. Of course, before long, it would evolve into grunge and the rest is history.

I had no idea that Mudhoney were back and I was even more surprised to find that they'd never gone away. They've been together since 1988 and their most recent album, their tenth, was last year's Digital Garbage. This EP seems to be a set of outtakes from that album with a few other obscurities. It's not as raw as I remember, but then that single predated any of their albums and they've cleaned up a bit since then. Fortunately, I'd say, not much. This is garage rock not much rawer than the Alice Cooper EP I reviewed yesterday.

There are seven tracks here and four of them tie to that album in some form.

Three are outtakes and my favourite is easily Creeps are Everywhere. It has an effortless nature to it but it's outstandingly catchy. This is what punk pop really ought to be: loud and sneeringly obnoxious but with a fantastic hook. If Digital Garbage was like this, I need to seek it out! I'm less fond of the other two, Morning in America and Snake Oil Charmer, but they're good songs. The former has that agreeably slow burn and is very much of its time, starting out with "America hates itself."

The fourth is Let's Kill Yourself Live Again, which is an alternate take of a Digital Garbage song called Kill Yourself Live; it had previously been the bonus track on the Japanese release. I liked this and caught many influences from Iggy Pop to Joy Division. I'd always heard that grunge's influences all had to be from Seattle, from the Sonics onwards, but I was never quite happy with that propaganda.

That leaves three more. One Bad Actor and Vortex of Lies are both taken from singles. The former was formerly half of a split 7" with Hot Snakes and the latter was a limited tour release in the EU. One Bad Actor has a lot more of that Iggy Pop vibe, Mark Arm snarling in that recognisable way while turning out riffs on an outrageously fuzzy guitar. Vortex of Lies is slower and less effective for me which makes it an odd opener for the EP. It feels like Cake but wilder and less controlled.

And that just leaves Ensam i Natt, which is a cover of a song by the Swedish band known as the Leather Nun. Even though the title is in Swedish, the song is in English, revealing that it means So Lonely Tonight. It's another solid garage rock anthem. It's my other favourite here, even though it's over too quickly at just a breath over two minutes. In fact, this whole EP could have been longer, these seven songs amounting to only twenty-two minutes. If only Mudhoney had had more outtakes!

L7 - Scatter the Rats (2019)

Country: USA
Style: Grunge
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 3 May 2019
Sites: Facebook | Official Website | Twitter | Wikipedia

This year has seen a whole slew of unlikely returns to the studio, running the musical gauntlet from death metal pioneers Possessed to Italian prog rock legends Banco del Mutuo Soccorso via seventies rock icons Black Oak Arkansas, but somehow the most unlikely is L7. Grunge is old enough now to fall into the nostalgia sweet spot but it hasn't and, frankly, it hasn't even shown any signs of returning to favour. L7's return doesn't look like being the spark to a trend but it could be, because this is a pretty fun album.

While we might think back at grunge sounding all downtuned and depressing, that's never been what L7 are. I'd describe this as pop punk, if I could keep inappropriate ties to bands at the more commercial end of that genre out of the picture, like the Offspring and Green Day. That's not what this is. It reminded me a lot more of early Adam and the Ants. Many songs here, especially Uppin' the Ice, feel like the grandchildren of Cartrouble and Physical (You're So) and others from the Dirk Wears White Sox era.

On Scatter the Rats, L7 do what Adam Ant did so well back then, singing no end of catchy tunes over simple hooks that all have a grungy twist to rock 'n' roll roots but are coloured through little responses from guitars and effects. Add in some Ramones and some Blondie and maybe some Bangles on Holding Pattern and this is as much a throwback to 1979 as it is to 1992 and that made for an interesting ride. What's different, of course, is modern production and pissed female vocals. Ouija Board Lies wouldn't sound too different if it was recorded by Adam Ant and Debbie Harry.

It's hard for a while to determine which the catchiest tracks are, but I'm pretty sure that Fighting the Crave has to top the list. It's driven by a delightful bass riff from Jennifer Finch and a callout style vocal from, I presume, Donita Sparks. It's worth mentioning here that this version of L7 features the entire classic line-up that existed from 1986 to 1996 and ever since they got back together in 2014 after thirteen years apart.

Album opener Burn Baby and Uppin' the Ice are the most obvious candidates to battle Fighting the Crave for the catchiest song here, but most of the rest aren't too far behind. Everything here is at least mildly catchy and I have to include Proto Prototype in that, even though it has the simplest and most repetitive riff I've heard in a long time. Stadium West relies on a catchy vocal line and meows, of all things, because it flaunts another simple riff that needs enhancement.

The majority of the songs here run from two and a half to four minutes, the band clearly not interested in anything that isn't short, sharp and to the point. The only exception to that is the title track which closes out the album, which is wilder and punkier. I quite liked it but it's a little out of place with the ten tracks that preceded it.

It's good to see L7 back and on form too. After all, grunge grew out of a rejection of the artificial music that was dominating the mainstream. Few would disagree that what's in the charts today is even more artificial than what was in the charts as the eighties became the nineties. Most songs are written by the same two or three songwriters and, hey, we have autotune now to make musicians cringe.

I'd dearly love for someone to crash that party and I'd grin like an idiot if that someone turned out to be a band of women in their fifties singing lines like, "My love is like a garbage truck." Let's turn the charts into a Celebrity Deathmatch between L7 and Justin Bieber with music winning.