Photo of Violet Grohl by Bella Newman
First Thought Fridays is a (mostly) weekly column offering quick-hit takes on some of the albums released this week, serving up first impressions, favorite or least favorite songs, and whether or not they’re worth a second listen. Check back for more each Friday night or Saturday morning.
As promised/threatened last week, I took my readers’ requests and take a look at the recent albums from Violet Grohl and Paul McCartney, both of which I enjoyed quite a bit. (I do still owe you all a review of the new All Them Witches. Hopefully next time!) Add in my most anticipated pop album of the ear, some local flavor, a returning pop-punk favorite, and a couple promising newcomers and we’ve got a wide-ranging but generally high quality week. So let’s take a look, shall we? Here’s what I checked out, in the order in which I listened to ‘em:
Violet Grohl, Be Sweet to Me (Auroura Records/Republic Records): The term “nepo baby” gets thrown around in a lot of contexts that I find a little unfair. To me, the requirement for true nepo baby status is to be somewhat undeserving—not just that your famous parent’s name got you the audition, but that you never would have passed the audition if they weren’t your parent or, worse, that your parent did all the heavy lifting for you.
I do not get that impression at all from Violet Grohl’s debut album, which is not only strong and self-assured but also bears only the slightest passing resemblance to any of her famous dad’s work. The closest it gets is the opening track “THUM,” which has periodic bursts of driving rhythms straight out of Queens of the Stone Age but then settles into a spacy chorus. The album generally does feel very ‘90s, but it’s an unspecific vibe of grunge and dream pop not aping any one particular artist’s sound or style. This is just a good sounding alt-rock record with just the right amount of menace, all delivered in Grohl’s cool, detached delivery. Best tracks: the Lush-esque “Last Day I Loved You,” the Blondshell-ish “Big Memory,” and the breathy verses and speedy grooves of “Cool Buzz.” Will I Listen Again?: Yes.
Jeffy & the Sunken Heads, Get Sunk! (self-released): St. Louis’ own Jeffy & the Sunken Heads are a quartet that play punk rock boogie with the snarl of Dead Kennedys and X, the inspiredly simply catchiness of the Misfits, the quirkiness of early B-52s, and the oddball humor of Superfun Yeah Yeah Rocketship thrown in a blender and topped with blasts of trombone. This hootenanny of a debut crams in 25 songs, just two of which crack the two-minute mark (and five of them don’t even crack one!), with lyrical topics including the joys of heavy metal (“I Love Heavy Metal”), Atari (“Atari Your So Cool”), and rockabilly hairdos (“Rockabilly”) and the evils of bad font choice (“Live Laugh Love”). The album hasn’t hit the major streamers yet but is available via Bandcamp, or you can snag a copy at the album release show on Saturday, June 13 at Heavy Anchor. For a preview, be sure to check out their awesome performance of album opener “Satellite” on The Arts STL’s old live local music series Live from the Boom Room, which you can watch here. Will I Listen Again?: Hell yeah.
Sierra Spirit, Rodeo Clown (Giant Music): The album title and cover art may give the impression that Sierra Spirit Kihega’s sophomore EP is as cheeky as it is twangy, but while the title track opens things up in Kacey Musgraves-ish territory, the sound soon shifts into Boygenius mode on “Walls” while songs like “Devil’s Tower” and “Lift a Finger” find the middle ground between Musgraves and Soccer Mommy. An impressive sampler of an artist definitely worth keeping an eye on. Will I Listen Again?: Yes.
Paul McCartney, The Boys of Dungeon Lane (Capitol): Most musicians’ creativity is running on fumes well before they hit their 80s, but if anyone was going to buck that trend, it’s not surprising that it was the eternally melodic Paul McCartney. Sir Paul’s mood is equal parts nostalgic and romantic on The Boys of Dungeon Lane, and his songs are similarly split between folky introspection and the pre-rock n’ roll stylings that John Lennon (perhaps apocryphally?) described as “granny music,” but McCartney fortunately wears both styles well. I’m hardly a connoisseur of McCartney’s entire solo catalog, but to place this somewhere in the hierarchy, I remember liking 2013’s New and 2018’s Egypt Station just a smidge better, but it’s a pretty close contest. Favorite tracks: the rollicking “Ripples in a Pond,” the constantly shifting multi-layered sound of “Never Know,” and “Home to Us,” the duet with his ol’ pal Ringo. Will I Listen Again?: Yes.
Olivia Rodrigo, you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love (Geffen): Olivia Rodrigo is really swinging (get it?) for the fences on her third album, tossing in a few of her typical piano ballads but otherwise eschewing the punk-pop stylings of much of her excellent sophomore LP Guts for a wide variety of indie rock sounds.
When Rodrigo announced the album’s tracklist, she split it into a “girl so in love” side and a “you seem pretty sad” side, but the album is not so cleanly bifurcated. Rodrigo and her producer/songwriting partner Dan Nigro clearly take heavy inspiration from the Cure throughout, albeit less as a sonic template and more as a guiding light for how to write melancholy songs that still warm your heart. Interestingly, arguably the least Cure-y song is the one Robert Smith actually sings on, the straightforward pop of “What’s Wrong With Me.” (That is co-written by the amazing singer-songwriter Sasha Alex Sloan, and I’ll pretend I willed that collab into existence by putting her and the Cure as the top two in my fave albums of 2024 list.)
Speaking to the album’s sonic variety, “maggots for brains” is a driving modern indie rock track that feels like it has bands like beabadoobee, Bel, and Vacations in its DNA but still hits that big Broadway energy Rodrigo is so good at tapping into. “the cure” is driving yet downtrodden, sounding like Foo Fighters’ “Everlong” crossed with Smashing Pumpkins’ “Disarm.” (Olivia Rodrigo covering “Disarm”…now that’s just crazy enough to work.) The late-album highlight is “less,” a devastating piano ballad with Rodrigo’s finest vocal performance ever, her voice rich yet tender way worthy of soundtracking a classic movie musical. It’s followed by “expectations,” a 180° into icy, synth-y new wave. The album as a whole isn’t as immediately ear-grabbing as Guts, but the songs that hit, hit hard, and there’s so much meat on the bone here that I look forward to listening again and again. Will I Listen Again?: Absolutely.
Piebald, Tales for the Rages (Iodine): Massachusetts emo quartet Piebald return with their first album in nearly two decades, and while some things have changed—Travis Shettel no longer delivers his vocals in a raspy shout (for the most part)—but the band’s snarky American hearts are still very much intact. The punkier tunes are mostly front-loaded, but even the ones that are more on the mid-tempo side still have a nice bounce to them; check “More Month Than Money,” for example, a rent-is-too-damn-high ode in an Elvis Costello style. While nothing here hits the anthemic, singalong heights of their 2002 classic We Are the Only Friends We Have, it’s still great to have them back. Will I Listen Again?: Probably.
PRiot, CYKA (Stem): I guess I was mistaken: I had assumed PRiot, the infamous all-woman, aggressively political, balaclava-clad, enemy-of-the-Russian-state collective, was a punk outfit. And yet, outside of the oi-punk of “FACELESS PIGS” and the throat-shredder “DISOBEY,” there’s not really a whole of that on this, their official debut full-length after a variety of singles and mixtapes. Instead, a lot of it sounds like the hip hop-inspired hyperpop of KATSEYE; it’s perfectly solid for that sort of thing but not really my bag. There’s also some unexpected features worth noting, though, with Cypress Hill’s B-Real popping up on “GORE,” Avenged Sevenfold giving some metalcore heft to “CANDY DOPAMINE,” and news interview recordings of no less than Vladimir Putin on the title track. (I don’t speak or read Russian, but I get the idea that he and the band are not fans of each other, he said sarcastically.) Will I Listen Again?: Probably not.
Telescreens, Why the Lights Flicker (+1 Records): NYC quartet Telescreens’ new album (their third) clocks in at 20 tracks across a staggering NINETY-SEVEN MINUTES, with six songs clocking in at six minutes or longer. It’s a minor miracle that despite all that, this is not a bloated slog of a listen; instead it manages to be insistent and captivating from beginning to end, with even the slowest burning of tracks (like the 7-minute centerpiece “Eternity”) gradually building to a nice, satisfying catharsis. The general sound is that sort of surging, yearning post-U2 alt-rock sound, a little reminiscent of Gang of Youths, or Fontaines DC combined with the arena-sized ambitions of Oasis, the vocals flecked with just a dash of Hamilton Leithauser. Will I Listen Again?: Yes. | Jason Green
