Jam Sesh with Kevin, Vol. 4

APRIL 2025: Some side-project albums.

---

It’s not quite a large enough sample size to be significant, but I’ve done enough joint newsletters with

Kevin Alexander

by now that I can detect their specific vibrational energy. We are a bit inclined to wander afield and go long and wade into some random musical territories, as if we receive some sort of residual contact high from the albums we swap with each other. It has all the energy of childlike discovery each time we do an iteration of this series, and I even get some perverse jollies knowing that this exercise has prodded Kevin into reluctantly basking in the glories of Radiohead. Diving into some new albums and artists is a nice reprieve from the hell of late-winter/early-spring low-battery brain, and it’s important to take any chance you get in April to recover from the experience of being alive in February and March. So to break out of the grueling shut-in cycles, we decided to check out some side-project albums for this month’s version of “Jam Sesh.” All of which is to say that, at this anxious and ominous broader moment, I found this month’s newsletter to be a relief.

---

Check Out On Repeat!

---

MY PICK: Star Stuff - Chaz Bundick Meets the The Mattson 2

Toro y Moi goes full psychedelic jam band on this one, and his collaboration with the fairly obscure Mattson 2 adds some amazing texture to the indie and chillwave sounds he became known for. The resulting product is very 1974, with strong funk elements, psychedelic production, and a bit of a television jazz aesthetic. None of the individual tracks stand out on their own, but they mesh together into a 3D canvas of red, electric blue, and purple. It’s a musical lava lamp, all beautifully loungey and swirly, fluid with unexpected turns. It’s a feat to take jamming in a hip direction and introduce the virtue of improvisation to a wider audience.

Highlights: Just listen to it as a whole album experience

KEVIN’S PICK: Hindu Love Gods - Hindu Love Gods

My Response:

R.E.M. is a contender for my favorite ‘80s rock band, so it’s embarrassing on my end to have never heard of Hindu Love Gods. This is a cult-hero supergroup of guitarist Peter Buck, bassist Mike Millis, and drummer Bill Berry (all from R.E.M.), pianist Warren Zevon (best known for the classic “Werewolves of London”), and vocalist Bryan Cook (from Athens, GA-based Time Toy and Oh-OK). Apparently, this album was recorded during a bout of heavy drinking, and the fact that Buck, Berry, and Mills can perform to this standard in a state of inebriation is nothing short of miraculous. It’s brilliantly dilapidated, and the overriding mood is one of blurriness. The result is a fun blues-rock party album that’ll have people asking, “Who the hell is this?” But the trouble is, if you’re doing it right, you won’t be able to hear them asking the question.

Highlights: Raspberry Beret, Junko Partner, Mannish Boy

---

MY PICK: Them Crooked Vultures - Them Crooked Vultures

Supergroup is an overused and rarely accurate term, as some consist of a famous face fronting a bunch of second-stringers while others become so bloated with ego and personalities that they become as maneuverable as a supertanker. Most of them crash and burn in the studio as they are unable to set aside their overinflated sense of self-perception. But Them Crooked Vultures are different, a perfect distillation of Queens of the Stone Age, Foo Fighters, and Led Zeppelin. While Josh Homme’s blitzkrieg riffs and scorching solos take a leading role, Dave Grohl and John Paul Jones are propulsive and commanding in their own right. My theory is that Homme and Grohl came into the studio trying to impress the legendary Led Zeppelin bassist, and they came up with all this crazy-good material.

It took me three or four run-throughs before any form of melodic definition began to emerge from the murk, as a lot of this album is loud enough to shake the plaster from the walls. Initially, everything felt too long and one-paced, meandering aimlessly along a barrage of noise. Sure, some of this album is self-indulgent, but the length of the tracks allows them to develop organically. Most of the songs here are built on a progressive structure that ditches the simple verse-chorus-verse formula, which is rarely found in a rock album like this. Overall, Them Crooked Vultures combines rock, groove, and the slightly sinister to make an album that’s far cooler than you. It’s a shame that they haven’t built on this momentum to make a follow-up.

Highlights: No One Loves Me and Neither Do I, New Fang, Elephants, Dead End Friends, Scumbag Blues, Warsaw or the First Breath You Take After You Give Up, Gunman, Spinning in Daffodils

KEVIN’S PICK: Electronic - Electronic

My Response:

This is another blind spot, as I have also never heard of Electronic—which consists of Joy Division’s/New Order’s Bernard Sumner and The Smiths’s Johnny Marr. Since these are also two of my favorite ‘80s bands, I was immediately intrigued. There’s nothing particularly groundbreaking here, and it exists in the shadows of the work from their previous bands, but Sumner and Marr captured the ‘90s Manchester sound in a way that’s irresistibly tuneful. There’s a distinct contrast between the pounding beatbox and the fragile sadness of the vocals. I also dig the symmetry of synthesizers and samples versus the sheer physicality of Marr’s guitar—although, I was a little disappointed in how his legendary arpeggios and riffs are conservatively deployed amidst the amass of electronic programming. The majority of the track list wouldn’t be out of place on a New Order record, but overall, this is a nice batch of happy-go-lucky synthpop tunes, coupled with a few rock-sounding dance moments.

Highlights: The Patience of a Saint, Try All You Want, Some Distant Memory

---

MY PICK: Cutouts - The Smile

Radiohead fans like me were already grateful to get two new albums from Thom Yorke and Johnny Greenwood in two years, so when The Smile dropped their second album in 2024, it felt pleasantly gratuitous. In contrast with Wall of Eyes (my #8 LP of 2024), Cutouts focuses on math rock-style riffing and jittery jamming—like the Windows 95-referencing “Zero Sum,” or the “National Anthem” callback “Colours Fly.” Like its sister album, there are also plenty of gentler and woozy tracks, like “Foreign Spies” and the Bends-era “Instant Sounds.” They also veer into Tool-like prog territory with the jerky and anxious “Don’t Get Me Started,” and “Tiptoe” could be an outtake from the elegiac A Moon Shaped Pool. Tom Skinner’s drums bring a fresh dimension to Yorke’s and Greenwood’s songwriting, a much lighter touch that liberates them in a way that wasn’t possible due to the constrictive expectations fans and critics place on what they want Radiohead to sound like. But Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood seem to have a renewed vigor since forming this jazzier and more louche side-gig, pumping out 31 great songs since 2022; at this point, I’m nearly just as excited for a new album from the Smile as I am from Radiohead.

Highlights: Foreign Spies, Instant Psalm, Zero Sum, Colours Fly, Don’t Get Me Started, Tiptoe

KEVIN’S PICK: Pod - The Breeders

My Response:

Kim Deal should be viewed as some kind of National Treasure Stateside, and the influence of producer Steve Albini is also fruitful here. While the songs sound like demos, the tracklist is a sequence of non-stop brilliant pop songs that don’t need any fancy pretenses or overdubs to complete them. But there’s something weird about this album, something a little off. It’s like I’m listening to the performance from denizens of a trailer park that’s a little too close to a toxic waste dump. The songs fragment more than they cohere, and the recording is strangely misaligned, like a snapshot where the subject is blurry or off to the side. This weirdness is bent to an advantage, much to what Deal was doing with the Pixies. Their rendition of “Happiness is a Warm Gun” is a diabolical Beatles cover. At the very least, Pod is a great companion piece to the Pixies discography, but it holds up on its own. Kurt Cobain has praised this album, and indie freaks like myself should be all over this.

Highlights: Doe, Happiness is a Warm Gun, Oh!, Hellbound, Iris, Only In 3’s

---

That’s it for the April 2025 edition of Jam Sesh! Let us know what you think about our picks in the comments.

---

PREVIOUS:

Jam Sesh with Kevin, Vol. 3

---