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Albuquerque singer/songwriters continue to release original work that deserves wider attention. Here are two completely different takes on reality: the sublimely ridiculous Get It Up from Sage and Jared’s Happy Gland Band, and the earnestly searching Stubborn Heart from Kevin Herig.

Sage and Jared’s Happy Gland Band
Get It Up (indie)
A review
The happy glands of singer/songwriters Sage Harrington and Jared Putnam have once again been secreting their singular shenanigans, which the two multi-instrumentalists have somehow magicked into a new and charmingly demented album, Get It Up. Sage and Jared’s Happy Gland Band writes children’s music for adults (to steal a line from my review of Zoltán Székely’s 2018 release, Mad as a Hatter). That is to say, they write accessible, though not necessarily simple, tunes that present serious subjects in off-center packages (suicide, for example, in “At the Top of the Hill”), or that unpack the wackiness in the mundane (marital skirmishes in “I Am Angry”). The lyrics are clever (even better when the rhymes are forced); the melodies, memorable; the harmonies, delectable; and the performances, fun. Sage and Jared’s ukulele, bass, keyboard, and electric and acoustic guitars form the instrumental backbone (with occasional glockenspiel), with contributions here and there from a host of friends: Greg Williams (drums), Alex McMahon (electric guitar), Meredith Wilder (vocal), Ashlyn Harrington (piano), and on the final listed track Micah J. Hood (trombone), Michael Christmas (alto sax), Jesse Van Dam (trumpet), and an ad hoc choir from Rock 101. The songs cover a wide range of genres—Western swing (the hilarious “I’m So Good Looking”), Latin (the exasperated and loving “You Snore”), folk (the Gorey-esque “Fallen in the Sun”), macabre indie rock (“At the Top of the Hill”), ’80s girl band rock (“Vegetarian”), and a classically inflected political diatribe (“Pretty Bird”). You may have some trouble picking up the lyrics on the opener (“Kitten’s Tiny Hiss”), which rides on a rock and roll ukulele, and in a few other places, but thankfully, you can look them up on the band’s bandcamp page. They’re worth the effort.

Kevin Herig
Stubborn Heart (indie)
A review
Singer/songwriter Kevin Herig’s new release, Stubborn Heart, confirms that he knows his way around a hook and a groove. The first draws you in, and the second keeps you there while the melody and lyrics do their work. He’s a songwriting craftsman who can compress big ideas and feelings into the space of a few words. As a producer (with assistance from David Tanner and Matthew Tobias), he has an ear for the right thing in the right place at the right time. His warm, relaxed vocals, which, as on his last release, All You Can’t Control, call Paul Simon to mind, deliver the goods without histrionics. On Stubborn Heart, Herig tastes the bitterness of false love (“Matchbox”) and finds healing after lost love (“SS Palo Alto”), wrestles with destiny (“Rigmarole”), considers a dying planet (“Lost Boy”), notes how delusion dilutes truth (“In the Shade”), and urges cosmic patience (“Patience, Kid”). In “Honey-Less Bee,” he notes the paradox of getting what you need when you let go of what you need: “The first thing to go’s the need for answers that we needn’t know / Then it’s what your hands hold / Truth will be as patient as she needs to be / Her whisper is loud, but only when you’re listening. . . . Not an ounce of what you thought you’d need / And you found everything.” The lyrics on Stubborn Heart (you can find them on Herig’s website) can be a bit opaque at times: song puzzles that conceal as much as they reveal. Whether that is a failure of imagination on this listener’s part, a misjudgment on Herig’s, or his intention is an open question. Still, the obscurities are regularly interrupted by bright kernels of insight. The songs invite repeated listenings, so maybe, over time, they’ll fully reveal their own stubborn hearts.

© 2019 Mel Minter