Wiggly Air – Music by Kurt Gottschalk

Lucifer on the dancefloor. A new of Montreal album is always a time of revelry—nobody does dark disco quite like Kevin Barnes. For a while, though, the albums have run thin fairly quickly for me. That’s not necessarily a problem; there’s far too much pop in the world for all of it to be permanent. But for a songwriter who sings so relentlessly about himself, it has grown hard in recent years to get where he was headed. Maybe he didn’t know. In any event, I have been trying to temper my excitement for the new album (with a title that may challenge Star-Revue obscenity standards), Freewave Lucifer fck f^ck fck (out July 29 on Polyvinyl Records), but no can do. Every of Montreal album is a tawdry love affair. Some last a week, some you can’t shake for years. But this one might take a while. Barnes hasn’t indulged his every mad instinct on an album in quite some time. Freewave Lucifer is full of all the ego-driven magic and bipolar genre-hopping that made our confused seducer a star, replete with riffs on Prince and Marc Bolan and the Wizard of Oz. In “Modern Art Bewilders,” when he sings “Falling in love with you all over again inveterate troublemaker,” it’s hard not to think he’s singing to himself, which is the kind of indulgence that made the best of Montreal records so good. More importantly, though, he’s back to making psychedelic pop pastiche with dancefloor drive. I hope the infatuation lasts.

Northern beats. Remix albums tend to be clubbier than Kevin Barnes on a sugar high, so much so that they often lose the impetus of the original. Tanya Tagaq’s voice is strong enough to survive the ballistics of most any beat programmer, but even still, her Tongues North Star Remixes (Six-Shooter Records, July 22), featuring remixes of cuts from January’s Tongues, tends to get weighed down in postproduction more often than not. There are a few ambitious standouts, though. The album opens with composer Paola Prestini’s wonderful reimagining of “In Me,” adding the New Century Chamber Orchestra to Tagaq’s vocal track. Joel Tarman takes a deep dive into “Colonizer” with strings provided by the Kronos Quartet. And Ash Koosha makes a sonic feature film out of “Earth Monster.” Opinions will differ. Find a stream and see which way you drift.

The new thunder from down under. Way back in 2020, the Chats staked a serious claim. Their song “AC/DC CD” champions their fellow Australians as the second greatest band in history. The 103-second song ends with the assertion “and we are first” and I got no bone to pick. The Chats are perfectly dumbass punk, from singer Eamon Sandwith’s ginger mullet to picking a name for themselves that suggests about zero-level caring what they’re called. They’ve released a string of singles and EP’s since 2016, and as with most punk, that’s the better format for them. But their second full-length—this one sure to trip editorial policy wires—Get Fucked (out August 19 on Bargain Bin Records) is a fast blast, 14 tracks clocking in at less than half an hour. “I’ve Been Drunk in Every Pub in Brisbane,” one of the lead singles, represents one of the bands primary recurring concerns. The real keeper here, though, is the epic-length (3:42!) “The Price of Smokes,” a punk econ lesson in which 75% of the lyric is “The price of smokes has gone up again” repeated over a midtempo grind until its replaced by the repeating “Those bastards in Parliament ought to be hung by their necks.” It’s pretty much perfect.

The Brian Eno Award. At the time of co-producing David Bowie’s 1995 album Outside, Brian Eno wrote in his diary, “I wish it was shorter. I wish nearly all records were shorter.” I’m in full agreement and would like to commend the above artists for releasing new albums under 40 minutes in length.

Reed remembered (redux). One of the biggest revelations of the 1995 Velvet Underground box set Peel Slowly & See box set was that beloved songs featuring some of the biggest noise rock had known began life as folk tunes, replete with acoustic guitars and harmonicas. Turns out there was more where that came from. And while the Caught Between the Twisted Stars exhibit of the Lou Reed archive at the New York Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center should be on every summer bucket list (I wrote about the show last month; it’s up through next March), some of the best of it is being made available for home play. Words & Music, May 1965, coming Sept. 16 from Light in the Attic, makes available for the first time a set of songs Reed committed to tape with future bandmate John Cale and mailed to himself as a way to establish copyright. It’s a remarkable set, incredibly clean for a 57-year-old home recording, with the two young friends focused on laying down the permanent record. A number of the songs, generally in more raucous renditions, would end up on the Velvets releases. The album is advertised as “the inaugural title in Light In The Attic’s forthcoming Lou Reed Archival Series,” which is more than a little enticing.

Viva la gonzo. What I didn’t mention last month regarding the essential Caught Between the Twisted Stars exhibit at the Performing Arts Library is the recreation of Reed’s friend and collaborator Hal Willner’s home studio, which is a little museum of pop culture ephemera. Willner was the master of the tribute album. Alongside his productions of music by Thelonious Monk and Kurt Weil and songs from Disney films sits a brilliant realization of Hunter S. Thompson’s “The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved.” The audio-play, with a score by Bill Frisell, a band of downtown jazz all-stars and Tim Robbins masterfully playing the role of Thompson, was released on 2012. It’s been remastered and reissued by Shimmy-Disc, out July 15 on (in another challenge to Star-Revue editorial standards) “two-tone horseshit brown vinyl.” The new pressing is a great way to indulge in the all-time king of gonzo journalism, and a fine memorial to Willner, who died of COVID complications in 2020 at the age of 64. Willner’s memory might also bring to mind the fact that the pandemic is far from over. You don’t need a mandate to wear a mask. Keep yourself, and those around you, safe. It’s still the right thing to do.