Five Connecticut local band recordings to rock your July
The local music scene is where you find it. Not all that long ago, if you wanted a local band’s new album, you’d have to catch a live show. Some acts are still old-school about packaging and presentation, with nice CD covers and record release shows, but you’re just as likely to come across a local band’s new material on their website, Bandcamp, or a short live set on YouTube. Here are five recent releases worth cocking an ear at.
Stephen Peter Rodgers: ‘Speck on a Clover’
In his youth, Steve Rodgers was known as the frontman of the grandiose New Haven rock band Mighty Purple, then as the founder of a vital community-based music club The Space. There have been a few low-key solo projects over the decades, some of them quite dark and introspective, but nothing like this: a beautifully produced multifaceted pop record with frisky metronomic beats, sweet strings and synths and Rodgers’ now-weathered voice bringing humanity and vulnerability to some positivistic sentiments.
“Speck on a Clover” came out of a write-a-song-a-week challenge Rodgers set for himself during the pandemic. He wrote 40 songs and winnowed that down to the dozen on this album. Some of the tunes still evoke the swirling ‘80s rock sound (think Peter Gabriel or even U2) that Mighty Purple specialized in, but they’re more focused, less diffuse, with more complex lyrics. Most of the songs are, considering recent times, refreshingly optimistic, with messages like “Don’t give up ... This life will get so much better, I promise you that.”
Warm and sentimental, with a pop heart. stephenpeterrodgers.com/home.
Perennial: ‘In the Midnight Hour’
With song titles like “Soliloquy for Neal Perry,” “I Am the Whooping Crane” and “Hey Eurydice,” you might worry that the second Perennial album is too silly to get seriously worked up about. Well, have no fear — or rather, have exactly the right amount of fear, because this is hard-charging atmospherically creepy garage-punk delivered with equal parts amusement and menace.
The title song shocks you into submission with horrific yells and frantic guitars. All the songs are disarmingly short, and with curious creepy netherworld-lounge interludes. The shared male/female vocals of leaders Chad and Chelsey obviously conjure up the band X at times, but Perennial doesn’t really sound like anybody else: moody and wihdrawn one moment, jazzy and percussive the next, then out of their minds screeching and playing the guitar equivalent of fingernails on a blackboards. It’s all brilliant, in its simplicity and in its hip style melange. They are the whooping crane. This is the shout at midnight we all need. perennialtheband.bandcamp.com
The Sparkle and Fade: ‘Summer Nights’
Just a single, but a rich, layered, exuberant yet sultry summer single. Four minutes of gently morphing pop styles and textures, driven by the husband and wife team of Lindsey Callahan (soaring vocals) and Jeff Callahan (precise guitar licks). thesparkleandfade.bandcamp.com
The Problem With Kids Today: ‘Live from the Empty Space’
This widely heralded New Haven punk trio’s “Junk” album has been out for seven months now, and the songs are so short, sharp and odd that you crave more the way you crave salt water taffy.
A 15-minute live set on YouTube opens with a new tune, “Validation,” then moves on to some of the band’s signature tunes like “The Chill One” (which may remind you vaguely of Velvet Underground’s “Murder Mystery”), “Ska Song,” the “Problem With Kids Today” theme song and “Power Ballad.” TPWKT specialize in defiant, strident talky social statements, bursts of loud brattiness that are deeply endearing. youtube com and theproblemwithkidstoday.bandcamp.com
Robot Monster: ‘Cargo Cult’
A young duo that ramps itself up studio-wise to sound like a hair or prog band of yore. Sweeping metalesque yearnings, punctuated with “oohs” and “ahs” and crashing drums and overactive bass lines. Makes you strangely nostalgic for something that doesn’t exist. The new EP includes three songs: the wind-blown “Cargo Cult,” “the punchier “Caged” and the riff-happy “Big Bad Now.” robotmonstermusic.com.
Christopher Arnott can be reached at carnott@courant.com.
