“Evil Love,” Kate Pierson
Fans of the B-52s have known for years that Kate Pierson is a world-class belter, but here she is at age 76, still singing like she has something to prove. “Evil Love” was one of the leadoff singles from her second solo album, and it’s a miniature pop gothic mansion of passion and intrigue. It’s a theatrical song; there’s real feeling here, but Pierson’s also playing a role, occupying an emotional space like any great singer would.
“Giving Up,” Michigander
Michigander is the nom-de-project of singer-songwriter Jason Singer; his specialty is spacious, catchy pop-rock, constructed around his distinctive, yearning vocals. There’s a distance in how Singer arranges the pieces of his musical constructions; you can imagine yourself climbing into the song and wandering through for a while, but there are clear boundaries, and you’ll eventually make it home okay. Here he interpolates an opening riff from Billy Joel’s “It’s Still Rock ‘n’ Roll To Me” and points his band straight toward the sun for 3 minutes and fifteen seconds of big hooky heartbreak. Like all those who came before, he’s able to make it sound committed and careless, an off-hand kiss-off that masks the usual bitter sorrow.
“Seven Out,” The Lemonheads
If Michigander is an artist chomping at the bit to claim his corner of the modern pop landscape, then Evan Dando is perennially lost around the fringe, wandering through the wilderness as he assembles twigs and berries into something that resembles a song. He can’t help but craft catchy guitar-driven alternative tunes, even when there’s little lyrical clarity and the vocal borders on exhausted. “Seven Out” is a compelling listen because of those aforementioned hooks, but also because you can almost hear Dando losing interest in his own song as he plays it.
In recent years, Dando has performed at varying levels of coherence as he plays his way through his own never-ending tour. His last album came out in 2020, and he’s spent most of the past few years trying to capitalize on the recent anniversaries of some of the Lemonheads’ iconic 90s releases. It’s hard to understand why a single like this exists–scratch that, why a “b-side” like this exists; it’s not even the A-side. (The A-side, “Fear of Living,” has more of a pulse but also feels like more of a failed attempt to capture old lightning in a bottle.) “Seven Out” gives one pause, if you give it a few minutes, because the same indie nonchalance that made Dando a 90s alternative darling now reads as outright exhaustion.
Oonta Goota 