Yo! It’s been a while! Welcome to the first 2023 installment of Newer Release Roundup … in May. I guess my desire to write about music has been trumped lately by my desire to write about literally anything else!

I really like writing these, though, and I’ve listened to quite a bit of 2023 albums so far. I just have to get more off my ass and put thoughts to computer, as it were. Enjoy my ramblings about three albums that came out in January by Iggy Pop, Belle and Sebastian, and Fucked Up.

Iggy Pop – Every Loser
(January 6, 2023)

Iggy Pop will never not be shirtless, and at age 75 that’s quite gross. But some things never change, and Iggy proves it with his 19th studio album Every Loser. He’s the same as he has been for the last 55 years. Even more so!

Wary as I might have been at first when “Frenzy” kicked in, considering Iggy is an edgelord old fart, my wariness melted away once I started banging my head to this adequately scuzzy arena rock song! And I appreciate him poking fun at his age (“My mind is on fire/When I oughta retire?“). Self-deprecation is as frequent as real deprecation, and the latter’s best example can be heard on the melodic hardcore “Neo Punk” where Iggy ridicules the new wave of punk culture and its commercialism… even though that’s been going on for decades, but still. The song rocks. And let’s not forget the anthemic hard rock banger “Modern Day Ripoff” where he goes all-in Alice Cooper on our asses. Probably deliberate, since you could slap this track onto any modern Alice Cooper album and you wouldn’t even be able to tell. Even the voice is uncanny.

It’s not all frantic rockin’ and rollin’. Iggy shows other facets of his stage presence with tracks like “Strung Out Johnny” and “New Atlantis”, both awash in dreamy synthesizers and relaxed singing. “New Atlantis” in particular has grown to be my favorite. Iggy puts on his best Sam Elliott impression and waxes poetic about Miami with gritty whimsy. A “beautiful whore of a city” that attracts, among others, “Colombian pushers and murderers, American swindlers and Slavic thugs”. There’s a sadness in the description of the city slowly sinking into the sea. It’s oddly touching from a sleazebag like Iggy Pop!

The rest of album is also fun and worth the time. Every Loser has a very classic rock feel to it too, as if it were a product of a bygone era. I don’t think Iggy is capable of dying. We’ll be seeing more from him for a long time coming, I assure you all.

Early Verdict:

Belle and Sebastian – Late Developers
(January 13, 2023)

Man, I should’ve discovered Belle and Sebestian earlier. I was quite a fan of last year’s A Bit of Previous and I like this one better. I have yet to dig into the rest of their extensive back catalog, which I can only imagine is a crime punishable by slow death if I put it off for too much longer.

Loaded with warmth and charm, Late Developers doesn’t sound like a band past its prime. It’s likely that Belle and Sebastian’s peak was somewhere in the ’90s when their twee pop innovativeness was just that: innovative. And while I’m sure there are a few stinkers in their twelve album discography, I’m confident that this one could be in the band’s top six. I can tell right away when the album opens with the somber grooves, pensive lyrics, jangly acoustic guitar, and the fuckin’ flute of “Juliet Naked” that I’m in for something memorable. Following the somber is the celebration with “Give a Little Time”, a perfect innocent power pop song with call-and-response male/female vocals and jubilant hand claps.

Speaking of power pop, “So in the Moment” is the absolute best track here, and placed perfectly to avoid a mid-album lull. Energetic, anthemic, and loaded with hooks. More call-and-response and handclaps, some fun twangy guitar, and a vocal melody that other bands would kill for. If this is twee, then I’m all in on twee. Even “I Don’t Know What You See in Me”, which is about as twee as it gets, is a guilty pleasure. The melody is bouncy and the “La-daba-dee la-dada-dee” part of the chorus is so stupid that you can’t help but sing along with it. I mean, maybe you wouldn’t be able to help it. I have restraint, see.

Late Developers is track after track of solid, consistent, and tight songwriting. Belle and Sebastian are nowhere close to hanging up the towel. I look forward to digging into what else they’ve released before I’m sentenced to a slow death!

Early Verdict:

Fucked Up – One Day
(January 27, 2023)

What a frustratingly bland album. I’ve been a fan of Fucked Up for over a decade, and I always respected how each new record brought something different to the table. The punchy hardcore of Hidden World; the anthemic rock of The Chemistry of Common Life; the epic scope of David Comes to Life; the subverted punk of Glass Boys; the experimental diversity of Dose Your Dreams; the ambitious prog symphony of Year of the Horse. This has never been a band to avoid pushing the envelope as far as it will go without maintaining its core Fucked Up-edness.

So imagine my devastation when I listened to One Day and was met with nothing but regression, regression, regression. Disappointingly straightforward. This album has no identity. It almost feels like a inferior band who was influenced by Fucked Up. I feel no urgency in Damian Abraham’s gruff vocals, almost like he’s tired of being in the band. The production is awful, with the fuzzy guitars way in front of everything else. The drums are buried so far under sludge that there might as well not be any drums at all. I read that each member of the band wrote and recorded their contribution within a 24-hour period. If that doesn’t summarize One Day in a nutshell, then I don’t know what will.

One saving grace is the penultimate track “Cicada”, which is thankfully not interchangeable with all the other tracks. Abraham bows out of this one, allowing someone else to provide vocals. This track is right out of Bob Mould’s supergroup Sugar, albeit without a particularly strong melody. And although Fucked Up don’t have a fraction of the talent of any member of Hüsker Dü (even the dead one), “Cicada” is a very good song and the only one keeping this from getting the big, mean, red angry face.

Early Verdict: