My Week In Music: 28 April-2 May
Tunde Adebimpe and Viagra Boys turn in a pair of greats, while Maria Somerville explores space and Fall Out Boy celebrate a birthday
THEE BLACK BOLTZ (released: 17/04/2025)
Tunde Adebimpe
Tunde Adebimpe certainly chose the right time to release his debut solo album: in 2024, he had a minor role in the box office hit Twisters and a bigger role in the Star Wars series Skeleton Crew, making him more recognisable than ever.
Of course, the co-lead singer of TV On The Radio needed no introduction to music aficionados who’ve long known him as one of the highlights in a band that seemed set to be the greatest creative force on the planet at one time before circumstance led to a hiatus in 2019. TVOTR started touring again last year too.
As a complete work, Thee Black Boltz broadly sounds like Adebimpe’s former band. But there are creative differences. “Magnetic” shows off a vocal range and capacity that surprised me, while follow-up “Ate The Moon” leverages a synth line to create an entire track. Adebimpe has a knack for turning simplicity to melody; highlight “Drop” pares things back to a drum beat and guitar while the singer turns in a fantastic vocal performance, adding bass and strings later.
I’ve really enjoyed this one over the past week. I am sure it will be on rotate at my place for a while yet.
SEND A PRAYER MY WAY (released: 18/04/2025)
Julien Baker & Torres
Baker arrives with a new album just a couple of weeks after her partner Lucy Dacus - both romantically and musically; Dacus and Baker play together with Phoebe Bridgers in Boygenius - released her own new album.
It’s not just a Baker album though: Send A Prayer My Way is a long-form long-in-the-works collaboration with Torres (aka Mackenzie Scott), launched officially in 2024, but dating back to about 2019 when Scott reached out to Baker.
Surprisingly, while both Baker and Torres are known as indie rockers, Send A Prayer My Way is a distinctly country album, with all the features - fiddle, slide guitar - and trappings that carries with it.
The pair sound absolutely gorgeous throughout, their voices - Baker’s mezzo-soprano, Torres’ tenor-contralto - melding together into a syrupy harmony that comes and goes throughout the album; “The Only Marble I’ve Got Left” and “Tape Runs Out” are two highlights I went back to several times. Good album.
LUSTER (released: 25/04/2025)
Maria Somerville
This is my first experience with Maria Somerville, a solo indie pop artist hailing from Ireland who doubles as an early morning radio host on NTS Radio, the Femi Adeyemi-founded streaming station on the cutting edge in London.
Somerville hosts on a Monday and Tuesday morning (evening NZT) leaving plenty of time to focus on her own music; Luster is her second album following 2019’s All My People, and it finds the singer-songwriter playing in the dream pop space, lots of airy, reverby drums and guitars, her vocal work (including a range of gorgeous otherworldly harmonies) beaming in from another dimension.
The best songs on Luster - highlights like “Corrib” and opener “Rēalt” and “Spring” - are spacious and vast, the aural equivalent of a large empty room with just a couple of chairs and maybe a pot plant in the centre. Just lovely.
UNAT0NED (released: 25/04/2025)
Machine Head
I’ve probably shared this story before, but here it is again: back in 1998, I was browsing the metal section in a small record store in Whangārei called Tracks n Tapes when I spotted the cover art for Machine Head’s The More Things Change and decided to try it. It became one of my favourite albums of the 90s, and Machine Head were one of my favourite bands for years.
While I haven’t maintained that level of devotion, I have been checking out each new MH album over the years, noting slight changes in sound as the lineup changed frequently; this is the Robb Flynn-led groups 11th album - its the third with bassist Jared MacEachern, second with drummer Matt Alston, and first with guitarist Reece Scruggs, who officially joined the band last year.
I’m beating around the bush here because UNAT0NED is not a strong album by Flynn’s usual standards. It’s heavily front-loaded - tracks with names like “AT0MIC REVELATI0NS” and “THESE SCARS W0N’T DEFINE US” are obvious highlights, but the second half is a big drop in quality from the first.
I would say its bad, per se. Just not as good as I would usually expect from a Machine Head release. Disappointing.
VIAGR ABOYS (released: 25/04/2025)
Viagra Boys
There’s a legend - possibly apocryphal; it certainly sounds apocryphal - that American born singer Sebastian Murphy met the rest of the Viagra Boys while singing Mariah Carey’s “We Belong Together” at a karaoke night.
True or not, the Viagra Boys met in Stockholm, Sweden, and started playing shows together, releasing their debut in 2018, Murphy singing against conspiracy theories and toxic masculinity and pop culture idolism (‘they watch TV about a man named Chandler Bing / Who died in a freak hot tubbing accident / And spent his time drinking hot dog flavored water / On a popular TV show called Tub Girls’ Murphy sings on opener “Man Made Of Meat”).
Viagr Aboys is the groups’ fourth record and it feels like they’ve managed to make their sound click, balancing between the instrument work - very evocative of an edgier Hives/Royal Republic - and Murphy’s consistently off-kilter lyricism and delivery, wailing, singing and occasionally burping his way through semi-nonsensical lyrics like ‘I found a crouton underneath a futon / Mama said I couldn't eat it 'cause all my teeth are gone / My personality is based on food now’ on “Uno II”, or ‘I stole a shrimp from the local zoo / I've got a tank at home, what about you?’ on “Store Policy”. The lyrics are hilarious.
I really enjoyed this album, and I’m looking forward to delving deeper into it.
Also released this week … uh, fortnight:
The title sounds dark but Sunflower Bean’s Mortal Primetime is a half hour of fuzzy indie rock goodness.
I loved last year’s A Chaos Of Flowers, but Big Brave's OST is a bit of an oddity and too far on the experimental side for me.
Nostalgia is a helluva drug. I don’t know if anyone was asking for Stereophonics's Make 'em Laugh, Make 'em Cry, Make 'em Wait but we have it now and it’s all just a bit meh.
Is it Melvins or Melvins 1983? Either way, Melvins's Thunderball is a mid-tier slice of grunge-metal by the group’s standards.
The title is the best thing about Hieroglyphic Being's Dance Music 4 Bad People; under-produced and too old-fashioned.
Now up to album #37 since forming in 1969, Hawkwind's There Is No Space For Us is certainly, um, something.
If you miss The Rock playlist from the early 2010s, then Mayday Parade's Sweet is for you.
I think Ghost's Skeletá is further proof that the gimmick - the costumes, the changing names, the anonymous backing band - was the whole thing.
An experimental and conceptual collaboration, SUMAC & Moor Mother's The Film is actually really good as a listening experience.
Indie rock darlings Deerhoof's Noble And Godlike In Ruin is an indie rock experiment that pulls them further from where they started out.
Self Esteem's A Complicated Woman felt kind of self-indulgent, if I’m honest, and I found myself a little put off by that.
I didn’t necessarily enjoy William Tyler's Time Indefinite, but it was certainly a mood. Or a vibe. Are those the same thing?
I find jazz challenging, even when it’s in jazz-pop form like Emma-Jean Thackray's Weirdo, so I didn’t get too engrossed in this one.
The best album I didn’t review this week, Samia's Bloodless veers from pop to folk to rock with ease. Pretty good album, honestly.
Are we still doing 80s new wave beats? Rialto's Neon & Ghosts Signs didn’t get that memo, apparently.
Undeniably fun, Beach Bunny's Tunnel Vision is a brisk listen and you’ll be bouncing around in your chair the whole time.
The 7th album from the Denver duo, Tennis's Face Down in the Garden was mostly fine, but I feel no urge to go back to it.
Happy Birthday:
FROM UNDER A CORK TREE (released: 2005)
Fall Out Boy
Back in my cover band days, one of the most popular songs we played in the late 2000s was a cover of “Dance, Dance” the fast paced radio-ready pop-punk track that was released as the second single from this, Fall Out Boy’s second album. I played the bassline, which is a classic nowadays, and sang lead vocal. And that might seem hard, but its actually not too bad because Pete Wentz, FOB’s bass player, writes all the lyrics for the band and hands them to singer Patrick Stump.
I remember hearing From Under A Cork Tree in its entirety for the first time and, being the music snob I was at the time, dismissing it as pop-punk rubbish. It wasn’t until I learnt it for that cover band that I properly listened and discovered an album and band whose pop star facade belied some really clever writing. “Sugar, We’re Going Down” is the other big hit here.
The album is also known for its titles: “Champagne For My Real Friends, Real Pain For My Sham Friends” and “I Slept with Someone in Fall Out Boy and All I Got Was This Stupid Song Written About Me” and “A Little Less Sixteen Candles, a Little More ‘Touch Me’” and “Our Lawyer Made Us Change the Name of This Song So We Wouldn't Get Sued”.
Fall Out Boy went in a surprising direction afterwards: as good as it is, their next album Infinity On High starts a push into pop territory that I found less and less interesting as it went along. We’ll always have the Cork Tree, though.
From Under The Cork Tree turns 20 years old on May 3.
Thanks for reading, everyone - have a great weekend!
Chris xo
I once heard a mobdernish Hawkwind song on RNZ which was the absolutely most perfect metal song I've ever heard.
But they've released so much music I could never find it again.
Such is life.