Radiohead's Ed O'Brien finally steps out, Nashville Pussy break an 8-year silence, Armored Saint return to the factory floor, and a Boston alt-rock lifer climbs inside a whale.
Plus the Hummingbirds episode that uncovered a Lemonheads connection, the Hopper just got Fields of the Nephilim from Chip, and the Hatebreed deep dive is finally landing.
This Week on Dig Me Out
The Hummingbirds Gave the Lemonheads Their Biggest Hit
J Dziak, Tim Minneci, and Chip Midnight,
loveBUZZ (1989) is geo-locked to Australia, produced by Mitch Easter, and responsible for one of the most surprising songwriter credits in 90s alt-rock. The Hummingbirds were the Sydney jangle-pop band who never quite made it out of the Southern Hemisphere, but their song “Into Your Arms” became Evan Dando’s biggest single. This week we dig into the album you can’t stream and the story you’ve never heard.
🤔 Know a lost or forgotten album that deserves the spotlight? Suggest it for a future episode.
Coming Up Next
Kashmir – No Balance Palace (Tuesday, May 26)
Danish art-rock from a band that briefly had Tony Visconti’s full attention. No Balance Palace (2005) was Kashmir’s fifth album, the one that won the Danish IFPI Awards’ Best Album of the Year and got David Bowie himself to guest on the track “The Cynic.” Picked by Jason Pan from the Board of Directors as a follow-up to the band’s Travelogue episode.
Give it a spin before Tuesday and come ready with what works and what doesn’t.
Want to hand-pick an album for a future episode and join us on the show to dig into it? Join the Board of Directors at dmounion.com.
New Releases
Ed O’Brien – Blue Morpho
Close your eyes and you can hear it: the gliding, chiming guitar lattice on “Karma Police,” the warmth Ed O’Brien quietly poured into every Radiohead record for three decades, never the loudest player on stage but the one who kept the room from collapsing. Blue Morpho is his first album under his own name, out May 22 on Transgressive after his 2020 EOB debut Earth. O’Brien made it with producer Paul Epworth and Dave Okumu’s 7 Generations players in what he describes as a healing period centered on nature, birdsong, and reclaiming his sense of self.
What works: Chris DeVille at Stereogum frames the recording as “three what I consider sort of utopian days,” with collaborators including Dave Okumu, Dan See, and a guest spot from Radiohead drummer Philip Selway on two tracks.
What doesn’t: Fans on the r/radiohead discussion thread are split, with some calling it “splendid” and “exceptional,” while others note O’Brien’s vocals sit so far back in the mix you find yourself straining to hear the words. A choice, but one that won’t land for everyone.
Nashville Pussy – 10 Inches of Pussy Season 1
You remember the first time you heard “Go Motherfucker Go” and realized somebody had taken AC/DC, Motorhead, and the entire Stooges catalog, run it through a Confederate-flag-on-the-wall dive bar, and pressed go. Blaine Cartwright and Ruyter Suys made an entire career out of supercharged sleaze-rock that Lemmy himself called “America’s last great rock ‘n’ roll band.” This 4-song EP is their first new music in 8 years since 2018’s Pleased To Eat You, recorded fully analog at Wire To Wire in Lexington with new drummer Dusty Watson (The Sonics, Agent Orange) and longtime bassist Bonnie Buitrago.
What works: Metal Mantra names the tradeoff for what it is: “Nashville Pussy are coming back with a short vinyl EP that sounds like it was made to be played loud and sold at a merch table.” Track titles include “King Shit Of Fuck Mountain” and “Hard Road,” which tells you exactly what lane they’re driving.
What doesn’t: Four tracks under 20 minutes after an 8-year wait is more of a tease than a comeback. Metal Mantra calls it a “Season 1” concept, which leaves the door open for more, but the first installment is short on substance for anyone who wanted a full record.
Armored Saint – Emotion Factory Reset
Anyone who came of age in the 80s metal scene knows John Bush’s voice, that grown-ass man growl that made Armored Saint the band metal nerds kept defending while everybody else moved on to grunge. Joey Vera kept the band intact through every label collapse, every Bush detour into Anthrax, and every shift in what people thought metal was supposed to sound like. Emotion Factory Reset is their ninth studio album, out May 22 on Metal Blade, with the same core lineup that’s been together since 1989.
What works: Dom Lawson at Blabbermouth calls it “a glowing example of what happens when a band of brothers block out the rest of the world to plough their own musical furrow,” and lands on the word “triumph.”
What doesn’t: Rich Oliver at The Razor’s Edge calls it “another great album chock full of hard rocking metal anthems,” which is exactly the appeal and exactly the limit. If you came in cold, Armored Saint will sound like what they’ve always sounded like: 80s metal that never bent for any era. Whether that’s a feature or a bug depends entirely on your relationship with John Bush’s voice.
⛏️ If you want to hand-pick an album for a future episode and join us on the podcast to dig into it, that’s exactly what the Board of Directors is for. Join at dmounion.com.
The Sheila Divine – The Middle Ages
If you spent any time in Boston alt-rock circles in the late 90s, you remember the Sheila Divine: Aaron Perrino’s wrestling voice, those guitars that sounded like they were always one degree from breaking, and a band that lived in the second tier just under Buffalo Tom and the Neighborhoods. The Middle Ages is their sixth album, out May 22 on Trash Casual, recorded by David Minehan (The Neighborhoods, Buffalo Tom) and Steven Lord, with mixing by Wally Gagel (Sebadoh, Folk Implosion) and Paul Kolderie (Hole, Radiohead).
What works: Alt Recess frames the lead single this way: “Perrino still has that voice, the kind that doesn’t just sing over guitars but wrestles with them,” and calls the album “not a reunion lap, a statement.” The themes are middle age, fatherhood, fractured relationships, and rage at what the country has become.
What doesn’t: Alt Recess also notes the band is “owning their age instead of fighting it,” which is the right move for the people who remember them and a harder sell for anyone discovering them now. The Sheila Divine were always a band you had to find. The Middle Ages is still that band.
Also Out This Week
Criteria – SEIZE!: Stephen Pedersen of Cursive returns with his post-emo project’s follow-up to 2020’s Years, recorded in Omaha at ARC Studios with producer Matt Bayles. Punk Rock Theory quotes Pedersen calling the songs “alchemy under pressure, love as the undertow, empathy as survival.”
Pig – Hurt People Hurt: Raymond Watts’ long-running industrial rock project returns on Metropolis Records, co-written with Jim Davies (The Prodigy, Pitchshifter). Side-Line Magazine quotes Watts describing it as “the shepherd to pain, shoehorned between the masochist and the drama queen within.”
Fresh in the Hopper
The queue keeps stacking. Here are the picks worth bookmarking.
Fields of the Nephilim, Dawnrazor (1987), submitted by Chip. He bought the cassette at 16 in a Florida record store after spotting them as a Black Sabbath tour opener in a UK metal magazine. The spaghetti-western instrumental that opens the record scared him. Carl McCoy on the cover, no face visible except the yellow eyes. Chip says you can hear exactly why Sabbath tapped them.
Bison of Disorder, (the green drip record) (1996), submitted by Keith Tasker as the third of his four-album hardcore drop. Long Island metalcore before metalcore existed, with the earliest examples of the harsh-and-clean vocal split that defined the 2000s. Keith calls “Suffer” the standout, a Gen-X reckoning delivered like a 20-round Tyson fight.
Bob City, Bob City (2000), submitted by Tim M. Columbus punk/metal/hard rock band makes a Southern boogie-rock inspired album. Tim is digging deep into a regional scene the rest of the country never noticed.
Alta May, Dark Days (2003), also from Tim M. Obscure stoner/grunge band, second album, Tim’s personal favorite. Not on streaming. The kind of suggestion that’s exactly what the Hopper is for.
Got a lost or forgotten album that deserves the spotlight? Drop it in the Hopper.
Join the Board of Directors at dmounion.com for polls, picks, and deeper dives.