Dick Dägger haven’t even released their debut full-length album yet and they’re already planning a second. They’d like it to be a concept album.

“There have been a few good concept albums lately, but it’s one of those things that always gets lost,” says Mick Dägger, the band’s singer, guitarist, and main lyricist. (The band keeps its true identities secret, taking on Dägger as a Ramones-style shared last name, and Mick even uses the Dägger name for his solo project Sandy Ego.)

Indeed, the legacy of the concept album has largely been passed down from rock to hip hop, which seems to be producing most of the operatic album-length statements these days. The rock concept album seems a bit absurd in hindsight.

But Dick Dägger aren’t afraid to be absurd. They’re called Dick Dägger, for crying out loud, and just look at those umlauts in their name.

When asked about the mixing of the album — entitled Yoni Moni Money Man and set to drop Friday, Sept. 23 on BandCamp — Mick says they did it all themselves, with the help of two mysterious characters named Miguel Taco (Mick points to himself) and Mitch Todderson (he points to himself again). These guys like their mythology.

Though self-produced, Yoni Moni Money Man represents a sonic step up from the band’s first release, the 21st Century Bipolar EP, which they dropped back in July 2014. Bipolar’s production values were markedly muddy, while Yoni Moni Money Man sounds more like the mid-fi garage rock of bands like Thee Oh Sees and King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard – both professed influences.

They’ve also added a new guitarist, Sven Dägger, in the interim between the two albums.

“We’ve become more guitar-centered, more in-your-face,” says Mick. “It has a little bit more edge versus just being stagnant.”

Dick Dägger currently rents a room at Space Eugene, a practice space located in far-west Eugene, on a monthly basis. Nearly all of their prior gig posters adorn the walls. They recorded all of Yoni Moni Money Man there, and they also host an open jam session, “Space Jam,” at the space on Sunday afternoons.

They’ll be promoting the album with two shows this coming weekend. The first is a house show this Friday the 23rd at Whiteaker basement venue the Ant House, where they’ll perform with Eugene bands Egotones, Jargon, and Free Beard. The second takes place the next day at Luckey’s Club downtown with local glam rock band Steel Kitty.

Dick Dagger plays Luckey’s Saturday, Sept. 24. Doors open at 9 p.m., show begins at 10 p.m. $5. 21+. The Ant House is shy on publicity, so readers are advised to seek their show at said venue out for themselves. 

Upon entering I Love Rocks on the corner of East 15th and Oak, the first thing you’ll notice is the hundreds of rocks, from dull grey ones to vibrant gems and crystals. Each one has a little tag with its name and — often — its “metaphysical properties.”

But Crowbar (as he insists on being called), owner of the I Love Rocks collection, doesn’t adhere to the school of thought that a bit of labradorite by the bed will make you feel fresher in the morning. He just really loves rocks.

Then why the metaphysical tags? The answer lies in I Love Rocks’s business model. It’s a non-profit, net-neutral business, and all the workers are unpaid volunteers who “take it upon themselves to give to the business in the way they see the most apt.” As such, the tags on the rocks reflect the beliefs of whichever volunteer made it.

Barr and his co-workers constantly buy new rocks, and they have inventory from “anywhere you can name,” as Crowbar puts it. They even have rocks from the disputed tribal regions between Afghanistan and Pakistan, one of the hardest places in the world to access.

But this constant drive to obtain new and exciting rocks means I Love Rocks currently has approximately 2,000 pounds of unsold rocks sitting in a storage room in the back of the building.

They’ll sell them off in a yard sale this Sunday, August 21.

“We have so much more rock than we can display,” Crowbar said. “The yard sale’s just us continuing our business model of slinging rock on the corner.”

More than 250 people have clicked “attending” on the yard sale’s Facebook event page, and 1,100 more are “interested.” Rocks are clearly on a lot of people’s minds in this town.

One may wonder what draws people to rocks, especially people like Crowbar who aren’t too keen on their supposed benefits. Crowbar has clearly given it a lot of thought.

“Every rock is individual, just like every person I’ve ever met,” he said. “If you treat a person poorly, just like if you treat a rock poorly it’ll come out looking worse. If you smash a quartz crystal there’ll be all these sharp bits, like if you have a friend and you emotionally break them, you have a lot of sharp bits. Rocks are a good reminder of what we need to do to be good people.”

He first discovered the joy of rocks growing up in fossil-rich southern Indiana, where he and his siblings would collect fossilized sea sponges and smash them open.

“The fact that we were three days away from the ocean and we were smashing sea fossils opened up my whole perspective,” Barr said. “I think nature makes the most beautiful art and i see the rock store as an art gallery for rocks.”

If you’re sick of college bands writing about doing drugs and being lazy — and it seems like just about every college band on earth can’t think of much more to write about — it’s easy to dismiss Face for Radio. Couches, booze, pot, girls, jobs, Netflix, quarter-life anxiety, copious usage of “fuck” and “fucked up”: it’s all here on the Eugene band’s debut album I Can Explain…

What’s different is the almost virginal purity of the music. There’s hardly any distortion and though horns are one of this band’s big selling points, they mostly just toot contentedly in the background. Singers Spencer Tanner and Billy Zimbrick sound like choirboys. Though they’re inspired by ska-punk, there’s no grit — none of that rough-throated Tim Armstrong shit. In fact, mercifully, they rarely sound like they’re trying to be manly. I was reminded often of early pop-punk bands like the Descendents and the Undertones, who understood it was more punk to be wimpy and soft-spoken than to wave your middle fingers in everyone’s face and start fights.

Another tie to punk is how uniform all the songs sound here. They use maybe two guitar tones on the whole album. The horns pretty much do the same thing on each song. There are few frills, enough that when they make use of the studio in any particularly experimental way — like when “Cosmos” disappears into the void and revs back up with a digital whirr — it’s jarring.

I like to joke that college bands should be judged by how much their albums sound like the Chili Peppers. Too many young rock bands go into the studio with a mainstream-rock idea of how their work should sound and come out with disheartening, bone-dry EPs. Not these guys; it was refreshing hearing how warm this music sounds. The compression enhances the texture rather than subtracting from it and the instruments are mixed to roughly equal volumes (quiet). At one point on “Educated Guess,” Tanner shouts “Fight back!” and the instrumentation gets…quieter.

The main flaw is that, yeah, pretty much this whole album is about being a lazy 20-something, which is impossible to write compelling songs about unless you’re Curren$y. College is a hermetic place, and it’s nowhere near as inspiring as high school with its pointless drama and endless awkwardness. It’d be one thing if they found clever ways to talk about college, but lyrically, they seem to be going for the hashtag-relatable route: “I tried to write a song, but I got too high and watched Criminal Minds instead,” they sing on “Criminal Minds,” undoubtedly hoping to elicit a smirk of recognition among the friends who might be listening.

But if they’re not so bold with their lyrics yet, they’ve displayed remarkable chutzpah just by making such a perfectly listenable, understated, likable and quiet record in spite of possessing all the tools they need to be a lean, mean rage machine. And this really is one of the most phenomenally produced albums I’ve heard from a college band: It’s like they’ve deserted the Loudness War to go find a pub or tree to smoke under. Even more remarkably, the guy who mixed this album is their trumpeter, and the trumpet isn’t even the loudest thing in the mix.

Listen to “Cosmos” from Face For Radio’s debut album I Can Explain… below:

In retrospect, it’s hard to see Revolver as anything but transitional. “Strawberry Fields Forever” was still six months off — an eon by the standards of the assembly-line pace at which the ‘60s pop industry worked. Its studio experiments, exemplified on “Tomorrow Never Knows,” were only baby steps compared to the leap the band would make on follow-up Sgt. Pepper. Many of its ideas would be taken to their logical conclusions later — “Love You To” would become “Within You Without You,” “Eleanor Rigby” would become “She’s Leaving Home” (and had already been “Yesterday”).  And only a small portion of the album was particularly experimental at all. In fact, much of it remarkably conservative.

Yet there’s nothing else in the Beatles catalog quite like it. It’s the band’s darkest album, for one. John’s paranoia reached new depths on his five songs, while Paul, who also brought schmaltz like “Good Day Sunshine” to the table, delivered two grade-A bummers in “For No One” and “Eleanor Rigby” (the latter’s said to be an even group effort, but it’s obviously dominated by Paul). And where else in the band’s catalog can one find anything like the exuberant horn-pop of “Got To Get You Into My Life,” the amniotic harmonies of “Here, There, And Everywhere,” the hyper-specific protest rock of “Taxman,” or the gothic heavy rock of “She Said She Said?” In its eclecticism, creepiness, and stylistic wantonness, its closest kin is perhaps The Beatles (1968).

It’s also cousin to The Beatles in how rocky a listen it is. It doesn’t flow all that well as an album, in part because of the amount of drastically different material in a short timespan (Revolver features 14 songs, and the three longest are all three minutes on the nose). Take a gander at the first six tracks: “Taxman,” political hard rock. “Eleanor Rigby,” sad string ballad. “I’m Only Sleeping,” psychedelia. “Love You To,” Hindustani classical. “Here, There, And Everywhere,” Everly Brothers harmony-pop. “Yellow Submarine,” children’s song. It finds more consistency in its smoother, more pop-oriented back half, but this is an album that takes a while to get going.

But once it gets going, it’s something else. Save “Doctor Robert,” home to maybe the most groan-inducing use of homonyms ever committed to record, the songs from “Here, There, Everywhere” are all winners. “Yellow Submarine” is delightful and guileless. “Good Day Sunshine,” with its sprightly, confident piano lope, is irresistible. And George, developing a bit more as a songwriter with each album, delivers his first truly great song: “I Want To Tell You,” a weird little love song that uses skin-crawling discord (if you think that two-note piano riff is scary, wait until he starts wailing on the fadeout) to communicate romantic anxiety.

Some of the band’s best work can be found here. But, compared to some of the Beatles’ other classics, it’s underwhelming and doesn’t really gel into a complete statement. Its psychedelic flourishes were stunning for the time, especially on “Tomorrow Never Knows,” which is arguably the most influential psych-rock song of all time. But those spoiled by the band’s later work or the more extreme psych artists that elaborated on the Beatles’ innovations (Hendrix, for one) might find Revolver too tame. And Sgt. Pepper translated a lot of the ideas hatched on Revolver into a better album.

But even a lesser Beatles album is wont to contain some of the best pop music ever put onto earth, and Revolver has enough going for it that anyone could be in the mood to put it on over one of their more satisfying albums. Even its worst songs have charm, and there are great arguments to be made for “Doctor Robert” and “Taxman” — which I’ve always found petulant — as fine songs. I don’t blame anyone for naming Revolver as their favorite Beatles album. I also don’t blame anyone for listening to it once or twice and wondering what the big deal is.

It’s been ten years since the first Whiteaker Block Party. Since then, it’s blossomed from a small community gathering to “Eugene’s Biggest Summer Event”: an extravaganza with 11 (!) music stages and everything else from carnival games to spoken word to lots and lots of beer.

This year’s event will take place on August 6.

Ninkasi’s sponsoring the event, as always. Falling Sky created its own beer, the Whiteaker Wheat IPA, specifically for the event. Pabst will be available en masse, and the Block Party issued an open challenge on its Facebook page for the neighborhood to consume an entire pallet of the hipster-beloved beer. (If you’re wondering what a pallet is, just know you need a pretty big forklift to lift one.) Other breweries represented at the Block Party include local faves Hop Valley, Planktown and 2 Towns Ciderhouse.

Check out pictures from last year’s Whiteaker Block Party here.

The list of bands, both local and otherwise, performing is exhaustive. The Critical Shakes, Pancho and the Factory, Soul Vibrator, Dick Dägger and Sugar Beets (not to be confused with Ashland EDM duo SugarBeats) are just a few of them. The lineup appears to be band-oriented, but don’t leave your glowsticks at home: there’s no shortage of electronic acts, including Northwest heroes Medium Troy and the Bohemian Dub Orchestra.

There’s a remarkably high level of female representation among the Block Party lineup this year, which is a breath of fresh air in the often uncomfortably male-dominated music-festival world. Grrrlz Rock, they of the festival of the same name, will be hosting an entire stage in the Red Barn parking lot devoted to celebrating women in music.

As always, the Block Party is free, but an afterparty will be held at the WOW Hall from 9 p.m. to 2 a.m., featuring eight of the day’s performers. Tickets are $10 presale, $15 at the door. A portion of the proceeds will benefit Womenspace, a non-profit Eugene-based organization seeking to end domestic violence.

There will also be an Art Zone, which is more or less what it sounds like, and a Kid Zone where you can let your little ones indulge.

The Whiteaker is an event in itself, filled with all manner of folk art and fascinating architecture. Be warned, though: it’s a neighborhood. People live there, and not all of them are out partying; some are just trying to watch TV and sleep. Those of us who get a bit too turnt are recommended to keep their voices down and – please – refrain from peeing on residents’ lawns.

Suffice to say, keeping an event this big free isn’t easy. Attendees or sympathetic members of the community can help out by donating or volunteering (links to do both are available on the website, whiteakerblockparty.com) – or just by buying a shitton of beer.

At 48 pages, Alan Moore’s The Killing Joke — often hailed as the definitive Batman/Joker story — is slim by graphic novel standards. It’s also long been criticized for not allowing its main female character, Batgirl, to function as anything more than a MacGuffin to motivate Batman’s quest. DC’s new film version of The Killing Joke attempts to rectify these problems, but it ends up only making more of a mess out of a comic that’s arguably unsuitable for the feature-film format.

The biggest break from the comic is the addition of a lengthy prologue explaining the relationship between Batgirl and Batman. It’s ostensibly an attempt to flesh out Batgirl’s character, but she comes across as a daft newbie primarily motivated by sex. Her crush on the mafioso she’s supposed to be trying to take down gets her in enough trouble that Batman smartly takes her off the case. “You haven’t been to the abyss,” Batman says. She finds it soon enough; after beating her beloved mobster half to death, she hangs up her cape, traumatized.

This seems like an interesting character development. But when the actual graphic novel part of the movie starts, she’s wiped off the map entirely. The Joker shoots her, she collapses, he kidnaps her. She barely has enough time to speak, let alone reflect on the abyss.

If they really wanted to flesh out Batgirl, why not show her ordeal at the hands of the Joker? This would have solved one of the major problems with the material, which is that Batgirl’s pain ultimately matters less than her father’s. Let me explain: the Joker is trying to prove that “one bad day” could drive even the most upstanding citizen insane. That citizen is Batgirl’s father, Jim Gordon, who’s forced to view pictures of his bound and mutilated daughter. We’re meant to feel less bad for Batgirl (who’s clearly had unspeakable things done to her) than for her dad, who’s shown traumatized but ultimately comes out of the ordeal better than the now-paraplegic Batgirl.

More Batgirl material also would have provided some much-needed extra padding. After the prologue is over, not much happens in The Killing Joke. Batman finds the Joker more or less instantly. There are some played-out creepy-carnival aesthetics. There’s one fight scene. They share some expository dialogue. Then it ends before you feel like you’ve even seen a movie.

In parts, the movie goes to great lengths to replicate the comic. There are some shots that are identical to certain panels, including the first appearance of the Joker. It seems director Sam Liu wanted to stay as true to the comic as possible while adding only what he deemed necessary. It’s too bad he didn’t add what he needed to make this mess into a good movie.

Follow Daniel on Twitter @bromf3

Have you ever watched Star Trek and wondered: “Why is no one singing? Why is no one dancing?” If so, you’re in luck.

Trek Theatre, the beloved Eugene theater troupe known for its public performances of Star Trek episodes, is about to debut its first musical.

Pon Farr: A Green-Blooded Musical Love Story is an adaptation of “Amok Time,” a 1967 Trek episode in which the half-alien, half-human Spock undergoes the titular hormonal explosion. He must find a mate within seven days or die – pretty typical Broadway stuff.

The creative minds behind Pon Farr are Jason Heald, director of music at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, and Chryss Allaback, Artistic Director at Trek Theatre. The two met three years ago while Allaback was working on a musical for UCC and hatched the idea as a way to celebrate Star Trek’s 50th anniversary, which falls on Sept. 8 of this year.

The episode was selected via popular vote through Trek Theatre’s Facebook page. Trek Theatre generally performs material from The Next Generation, the philosophical series that aired 1987 to 1994 and followed up the Original Series (1966-1969) from which Pon Farr was sourced. This was no issue for Allaback – and certainly not for Heald, who claims he “never followed the spin-offs as much.”

In writing material for such iconic characters as Spock and Captain Kirk, Heald struggled to portray the characters in ways that would feel new to the audience.

“You have characters that are already in people’s minds,” said Heald. “You don’t want to redefine them, so you have to really think about that character and how they would express themselves in song. What kind of language might they use?”

It helps that the cast is familiar with the material. “I’ve never had a cast before so totally dedicated to the subject,” said Heald.

In another unexpected twist, the songs in Pon Farr are all arranged for surf band. Heald found that, in addition to adding retro flavor, the minimal sound of surf music complemented Trek Theatre’s stripped-down style. It’s also convenient in that it uses fewer musicians than a typical pit orchestra.

Pon Farr debuted on July 28 at UCC.

Trek Theater will head to Eugene on Sept. 8 for a 50th-anniversary celebration at Amazon Community Center, where they’ll perform both Pon Farr and the Next Generation episode “The Drumhead.” They’ll perform Pon Farr there again on Sept. 10, then wrap up in Corvallis on Sept. 11.

Trek Theatre often picks episodes with timely themes. Star Trek has long been known for its social-justice bent, and Allaback found “The Drumhead” — an episode she describes as being about “witch-hunting people based on their race” – particularly resonated in a post-9/11 era.

This proved particularly prescient given that Trek Theater planned to perform Pon Farr at the Festival of Eugene on Aug. 21, which was cancelled after founder Krysta Albert’s history of racist comments was exposed. 

Amid what’s already been termed the Summer of Shit by the Internet, “The Drumhead” should prove to be more relevant than ever. Audiences seeking to confront these issues head-on could do worse than to catch “The Drumhead.” But if you want to distract yourself with a singing Spock, check out Pon Farr this September.

The Avalanches’ second album Wildflower will invariably be compared to its predecessor, Since I Left You, which came out 16 years ago and has since become one of the most revered electronic albums of all time. But Wildflower is more concerned with erasing that record’s baggage than reinforcing it.

It strips away the band’s mystique by being a party album rather than an opus; this is a bigger, dumber, dirtier album than SILY. But an album like SILY could not have been made by anything but an exceptionally talented group of musicians, and Wildflower makes it clear that the Avalanches are still capable of music of remarkable vision.

Listen to “Colours” from Wildflower below.

The most obvious new turn in the band’s strategy is the use of guests. Some of them, like Danny Brown and Ariel Pink, don’t seem to be there for any reason besides appealing to the list-browsing crowd. But some kill: Toro Y Moi drifts placidly through “If I Were A Folkstar,” and Jennifer Herrema creaks her way through “Stepkids” like a warped Wanda Jackson. They’ve also found a full-time frontman in Mercury Rev’s Jonathan Donahue, whose wide-eyed, wounded voice perfectly fits the vibe “between happy and sad” for which the band claimed to be reaching.

Wildflower is a stoner album. Toro Y Moi allegedly wrote the lyrics to “If I Were A Folkstar” about doing acid with his wife. There’s a sample of a bong rip, which comes right after an ad for a cereal whose name I guarantee will split your head wide open if you’re high. The cover’s a nod to Sly and the Family Stone’s There’s A Riot Goin’ On, perhaps the most pot-addled album ever made. And the whole thing’s inspired by classic psychedelia, especially acid-era Beach Boys, whose rich textures and searing chord changes shine through in the album’s ambient sections.

Everyone has talked and will talk about “Noisy Eater,” the song with Biz Markie, because it’s the album’s biggest risk – and the one most obviously a goof. But it’s a funny one, even if you don’t know who’s doing the rapping. It’s also quite psychedelic, and when the Avalanches bring back the spoken-word sample from the beginning to chop it up a bit more, it’s a genuine mind-melt.

Wildflower drags at times. It’s not as packed with content as its predecessor, and as a result it feels a bit too long, whereas Since I Left You justified its hour. Some of the guests, like Danny Brown and Ariel Pink, don’t seem to be there for any reason other than to appeal to the list-browsing crowd. And the album doesn’t hit nearly the same emotional notes as Since I Left You, though it doesn’t try; there’s no crime in making a mindless feel-good album. At the end of the day, it’s no masterpiece. But it is very good, and once the Avalanches shake off the expectations attached to them, they just might make something that we didn’t know they were capable of making.

Check out our Emerald Recommends list, in which we pair albums like The Avalanches’ Since I Left You with a drink to match.

Swiss Army Man’s overarching theme is simple but poignant: just how banal, unnecessary and ultimately alienating so many practices that we take for granted in society are. No culture is free from arbitrary taboos and customs which, if you pull back, reveal themselves as completely useless, if not harmful.

One of the key scenes in the film comes when Hank (Paul Dano), lost in the woods with a resurrected corpse (Daniel Radcliffe – more on the absurdity of the whole thing later), puts on crude drag to jog his buddy’s memory of a past love. Tiring of this, he tells Radcliffe: “Do you know what people back home would think if they saw me in this?” Then he remembers he’s not home. He keeps the drag on for much of the movie.

Radcliffe is clueless. He doesn’t remember anything about “home,” and the more Dano explains it, the worse it looks. You can’t fart around people. You can’t talk about masturbating. You can’t look certain ways, talk certain ways, for reasons Dano is often at a loss to explain. For a brief moment, they consider staying in the woods and making a life for themselves. Then they accidentally stumble into a suburban backyard, and society’s shit comes tumbling down on them.

The movie’s smart about what behavior it condones and doesn’t condone. Dano finds himself using the word “retarded” and castigates himself, knowing it hurts people. He talks often about a girl he fell for on the bus, and he’s got a discreet picture he took of her on his phone. The movie doesn’t approve of this, as it shouldn’t. But it’s implied that he might have been able to work up the guts to talk to her if not for all the little social nuances that trip us up. These things are impossible to learn, as Dano’s attempts at “teaching” Radcliffe show. Some people never learn them. Radcliffe hasn’t, and Dano barely has a grasp on them.

This is a film that will resonate with underdogs. A queer reading is easy too. Radcliffe finds himself attracted to Dano (albeit in drag), and there are many homoerotic moments including several kisses. They might well have been happier with each other than with the women back “home” they long for. And, of course, why shouldn’t Dano be able to wear a dress? There’s no gender out in these woods.

But Swiss Army Man certainly won’t be to everyone’s tastes, in part due to how ridiculous it is. Even its most tear-jerking moments are absurd; the emotional climax of the film comes as Dano’s being dragged off by a bear, smiling. Radcliffe is capable of using his enormous penis as a compass, dispensing unlimited quantities of water from his mouth, and propelling himself through the ocean with his own flatulence – a veritable Swiss Army Man.

It’s also very much in line with indie aesthetics, and anyone who winces at the mere thought of Juno will find much to gripe about here. The soundtrack’s mostly twee clapping and harmonizing (no whistles, thank god), there are some irritatingly quirky fantasy sequences, and yeah, they’re in the woods for most of it. But Swiss Army Man doesn’t speak to the part of the brain that craves satisfying aesthetics. It speaks to the soul.

The three sisters in A-WA share the last name Haim, which might lead one to make premature comparisons with another group of three sisters named Haim. But finding a Western reference point for their debut album Habib Galbi is futile and, frankly, beside the point. Tair, Liron, and Tagel Haim are Israeli, of Yemeni-Jewish descent, and their music is firmly rooted in this identity.

Essentially, the twelve songs here are folk with electronic beats, sung in Yemeni Arabic. Sure, there are ska rhythms every now and then, even a hip hop beat or two towards the end. But if you’re looking for all-one-world globalist pop, try Manu Chao. Habib Galbi is hyper-specific.

Funnily enough, A-WA has been massively successful throughout the Arab world, which is, as Foreign Policy’s Gaar Adams writes, “a market where even the slightest hint of Israeli involvement in a commercial project could incite boycotts.”

The sisters see their music as a way of bridging national and cultural gaps. This isn’t quite accurate. It’s something specific with broad appeal. The same way bros might flock to see Big Freedia at a festival and shout slurs at a gay couple the next day, or the way a perfectly committed racist might be able to get down to a Hendrix song, those who hate Israel and even Jews might be able to make an exception for the 43 minutes Habib Galbi is on and then get back to their usual vitriol.

It’s not hard to see why they’re so successful in their neck of the woods. This is pop. From what I understand, their lyrics are pretty standard Top 40 fare about love, and even if you didn’t know that, it’s easy to tell; there’s a palpable happiness in their voices, as if they’re dancing in sunshine. Their harmonies and call-and-response chants are wonderful, especially when they stack their voices on top of each other, and they give us a demonstration of what they’re capable of off the bat, interlocking their voices on the opening “Yemeni Lullaby.” And the production has an appealing chintziness. Everything’s tinny, dry, and fake-sounding except for occasional guitars the warm electric bass that courses through the whole thing.

Those unfamiliar with the Arabic language and its pop traditions might find Habib Galbi difficult to get into. The songs more or less follow the same sonic palate throughout, and their stylistic detours are subtle. They’re probably not gonna dial up any rappers or Swedish superproducers anytime soon. But there’s plenty to enjoy here even on a surface level, and it might pique some American listeners’ interest in the vast and storied tradition of Arabic pop.