—Okey, Siichaq, and Ben Again play Innerspace’s Summer Series. $10. 7 p.m. (doors). 8 p.m. (show). Halfway Crooks Biergarten
— Ozzy Tribute feat. Slack Sabbath and Ozzy Crüe + multiple bands playing 2-3 Ozzy songs. Portion of proceeds goes to Let There Be Rock GA. $20. 8 p.m. Star Bar
Anne Richmond Boston, the Swimming Pool Q’s singer, possesses a voice that threads sweetness with steel. That balance is preserved with crystalline brilliance on her long-shelved second solo album, I Should Be Happy.
The album’s 15 songs were originally recorded in the early ’90s with producer Rob Gal at Atlanta’s Snack ’n’ Shack Studio, but remained unreleased for decades. In November 2025, the album arrived via DB Recs—the labels first release since 1992—proving that numbers such as I Should Be Happy’s title track, “Torn Apart,” and “Who Cares” are timeless. I Should Be Happy is a quiet and powerful reclamation for Boston, that finds grace in the wreckage of these once-abandoned tunes and turns them into something luminous.
The songs have been reshaped and enhanced by David Barbe and Jason Nesmith of Athens’ Chase Park Transduction, both of whom recast the album with a delicate touch and a clean spotlight on Boston’s supple and searching voice. Here, Boston leans into a warm palette with flashes of jangling pop that nod toward R.E.M., particularly in the crisp sway of “Give In.”
The alchemy that arises between “Carry Me” and “Bottle Of Sleep” is fraught with worry while remaining smart, sophisticated, and smooth, shifting from a troubled ambiance to a confident stride.
Other songs, such as “Torn Apart” and “Gone” carry a lived-in gravity, as their arrangements brush against folk and Americana while maintaining the melodic clarity that defines Boston’s songwriting. Elsewhere, “Dark Room” and “You Planned It” tap into a more electric current, recalling the Swimming Pool Q’s at their most fluid while allowing space for sharper emotional edges. Even the cover songs—“The Wind Cries Mary” and “The Music Weaver” among them—feel like conversations filtered through Boston’s distinct tonal patience.
Tenderness runs underneath it all, perhaps most evident in the spare moments, where piano or acoustic textures give her voice room to hover. It’s here that time becomes the album’s greatest collaborator. What once might have been a promising follow-up to 1990’s The Big House of Time now plays like an album that stands apart—a document of endurance and resolve.
Anne Richmond Boston plays Wax N Facts Records’ 50th anniversary party on Sunday, July 19, with Pylon Reenactment Society, All the Saints, the Swimming Pool Q’s, Uncle Green, Helionaut (w/ Paul Melançon), and Kevin Dunn’s Unresponsive in Malibu.$34.04. 5:30 p.m. (doors). 6:30 p.m. (show). Variety Playhouse.
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MELVINS: Dale Crover (left), Steven McDonald, and Buzz Osborne. Photo by Chris Casella.
The monolithic punk-metal speed and molasses dirges of the Melvins establish the group as both forerunners and contemporaries of the Pacific Northwestern musical underground of the early ‘90s. In the modern era, singer and guitarist Buzz Osborne, drummer Dale Crover, and current bass player Steven McDonald have continued pushing the group to creative new heights with 2022’s, Bad Mood Rising, followed by this year’s The Devil You Knew, The Devil You Know, featuring the original versions along with new recordings of the six songs from the Melvins’ debut 7-inch EP.
Now, Melvins have teamed up with Atlanta-based abstract electronic project Void Manes to unleash an homage to British industrial music luminaries Throbbing Gristle, titled Throbbing Jazz Gristle Funk Hits (Amphetamine Reptile Records). It’s an entirely electronic album—a first for the Melvins—featuring TG-inspired improv sessions and covers of songs such as “Sic Sick 60’s,” “Hot On the Heels of Love,” “Hamburger Lady,” and more. The first single is a thickened take on “Discipline 23,” which appears on the CD and on a flexi single that comes tucked inside the LP sleeve.
The video, created by Jesse Nieminen, builds on TG’s subversive late ‘70s mantra on dismantling the mechanisms of social and psychological control amid an era defined by misguided patriotism and technology gone awry. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Here, a minimalist blend of fascist imagery, made hollow under a sheen of maximum color saturation and distortion, pushes the Melvins’ vision of industrial overload to the nth degree. Press play above and get disciplined.
Throbbing Jazz Gristle Funk Hits is the latest in a loose but ongoing trend of paying homage to the confrontational and anti-commercial/pro-good-taste force that prompted British tabloids to label Throbbing Gristle “the wreckers of civilization.” “Heathen Earth” appears on the Melvins’ covers CD titled Everybody Loves Sausages. Head down the Discogs rabbit hole and there are more TG renditions by all parties involved to be discovered and devoured.
“Buzz talks a lot about giving people creative freedom and he’s right on about it,” Nieminen says. “There might be some discussion beforehand or none at all. For ‘Discipline,’ I had an idea, it turned into another, and I put it together. I didn’t ask for suggestions for it. I was free to do whatever I wanted and it was pretty close to what I envisioned from the start.”
Nieminen goes on to say: “We made the A Walk with Love and Death short film together. It was a conversation where we sat and riffed on ideas and edited it together. For Melvins TV they shot green screen in LA and sent stuff for me to do what I wanted,” he adds. “That grew from an idea where I was planning to shoot them in a studio with green screen backdrops and do a single music video in the style of those old German Beat Club episodes. Because of the pandemic it turned into Melvins TV and ballooned into 3.5 episodes.”
In a more recently released video for “Zyklon B Zombie,” Nieminen sets the songs fugue-like bouts of faux tropical rhythms and staccato electronic sounds to waves of billowing and blackened clouds, looped in a tussle of natural beauty rendered exquisitely for the simulacrum. It’s just a taste of what the album holds in store.
March of 2023 marked the 40-year anniversary of the Melvins’ first live performance. The group has spent much of the year celebrating by offering a slew of reissues and new releases, and playing shows around the world. The next Atlanta show is on Wednesday, September 27, at Variety Playhouse, where they’re playing 1991’s sprawling Bullhead LP in its entirety, along with more highlights from throughout the Melvins repertoire.
“We’ve been a band since 1983. We’ve never quit, we’ve never taken a break and stopped being a band, and I have seen people come and go from the highest heights to the lowest lows—death, resurrection, and more death,” Osborne says. “In the art world that I am in, there is a war of attrition; whomever is the last man standing is the winner. So far it’s me, with no end in sight.” READ MORE FROM MY OCTOBER 2022 FLAGPOLE MAGAZINE FEATURE STORY.
Void Manes is performing opening sets at several of the Southern Melvins/Boris shows. Keep your fingers crossed that they tear into some of the Throbbing Jazz … material on stage.
Wire is signing copies of Mind Hive across the street at Criminal Records (1154 Euclid Ave. N.E. A) between 4:30 and 5 p.m. To participate, arrive early and purchase Hive Mind on CD or LP at the shop on the day of show to get a wristband at the cash register. Criminal will have a limited quantity of alternative titles for those who have already bought the new album at the store.
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