Warm up with cool tunes — 01/25/24

Surprise, winter is a hot season for music! Michael Witthaus, Hippo’s music writer and local music expert, takes a look at the many music series filling schedules this season.

Also on the cover We are, issue-date-wise, a mere week away from the beginning of voting in the Best of 2024. Head to hippopress.com at 12:01 a.m. on Thursday, Feb. 1, to support your favorite places to eat, beautify, hang out and more. See page 5 for details.

And head to page 14 for another annual tradition, Hippo’s Wedding Section. Are you headed down the aisle (or headed toward heading down the aisle)? Here are some things to think about.

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Girl Power

Lez Zeppelin plays Manchester

With eyes closed, it’s hard to distinguish Lez Zeppelin from the act they’re honoring. Throbbing rhythm, frenetic lead guitar and ecstatic vocals belie the notion that four musicians are creating this audio juggernaut. Eyes wide open, it is something else entirely; even Jimmy Page couldn’t quite believe it.

As the name suggests, the group is an all-female Led Zeppelin doppelgänger. When Zep’s guitar legend watched them in London he was an instant fan, praising their “superb musicianship” and “extraordinary sensuality.” Post-show, standing with band founder Steph Paynes in an empty arena, Page was blunter.

“He turns and goes, ‘it was so sexual,’” Paynes recalled by phone recently. “It was almost like watching us, he hadn’t even realized … because he’d never seen Led Zeppelin, he was in it. It was this weird, existential moment where he was almost shocked at how sexualized we were, and the music was.”

Paynes believes her band couldn’t exist without that.

“You’re either a sensual being or you’re not,” she said. “You can learn to act a certain way, but that’s not what was happening with Led Zeppelin, [and] playing this music will definitely sexualize you if you’re doing it right.”

What’s remarkable about this she-incarnation is how disciplined they are about Zeppelin’s music, not just their look and feel. As with the original, they are a foursome; no looping or technical tricks to add elements, or special guests. This rigor extends to the studio; in 2010, they recreated Zep’s 1969 debut album with vintage gear — along with producer Eddie Kramer, who engineered five of Zep’s albums, starting with Led Zeppelin II.

Recruiting Kramer “was me with an incredibly giant set of cojones,” Paynes said with a laugh. “Maybe he’ll produce our record, like who does that? It’s moxie, you know what I mean? I’ve been known to have a little bit of that, and it couldn’t hurt to ask.”

Like Page, who sought the band out because of its reputation, Kramer “thought we could do it; otherwise he wouldn’t have done it,” Paynes continued. “Look, I think there are lots of people who feel that they’re great musicians and they can play all the parts. Guess what? That’s not what this is about.”

What it is about is essence.

“To be at that level of musicianship … it’s daunting,” Paynes said, “but [what] underlies it — the feel, the passion, the way you can go into a song and go for it even if you’re gonna hit a million wrong notes, which believe me happens; even if you’re not gonna get the riff — that is where I think our band differs from all the others.”

The latest project for the group — Paynes, singer Marlain Angelides, Joan Chew on bass and keyboards, and drummer Leesa Harrington Squyres — is tackling landmark concerts. The first was a recreation of Zep’s 1970 Royal Albert Hall show in early January.

“Talk about challenging … they were so incredible in their musicianship and dynamics,” Paynes said. “Trying to capture that [is] crazy, but it’s so rewarding when you get close.”

When Paynes started the band in 2004, “it was just an idea to have fun and really get into the playing,” she said, but it took on a life of its own. “The way that it escalated … you can be in the music business your whole life and none of that could happen, and that’s basically the norm, but then if something is meant to be, if it’s meant to strike, then everything happens, and you don’t even know why.”

The current lineup has stayed steady for the past five to six years, though Squyres now has a stand-in due to “physical issues,” Paynes said. The temporary drummer signals a departure. “We actually have a guy, Dave Richmond. Leesa is kind of irreplaceable, it’s really hard to be John Bonham … but this guy is completely and utterly into Zeppelin.”

Such dedication is still the group’s focus.

“It’s about capturing the unknown … the passion, the fury of this music, and the dynamic of it,” Paynes said. “Without sounding obnoxious, if you’re a good enough musician to understand that you really start to get close to what Zeppelin may have done on any given night. I think that when Jimmy saw us do that in London, he wasn’t expecting it. When he saw it, he was just like, ‘Yeah, that’s it; that’s how it should be done. You get it.”

Featured photo: Lez Zeppelin. Photo by Maia Kennedy Photography.

The Music Roundup 24/01/25

Local music news & events

  • Rising sounds: Celebrating its 30th anniversary last year, taiko drum group Drum Tao continues a world tour with an area stop. The show features traditional Japanese instruments, including the large o-daiko and other drums, shinobue flutes and koto harps, woven with elements of rock, pop and classical music, along with exciting sword fighting performances. Thursday, Jan. 25, 7 p.m., Capitol Center for the Arts, 44 S. Main St., Concord, $44 and up at ccah.com.
  • Sibling tribute: A multimedia look at Matthew and Gunnar Nelson’s father is the focus of Ricky Nelson Remembered, including hits like “Hello Mary Lou” and “Garden Party.” Friday, Jan. 26, 7:30 pm., Rex Theatre, 21 Amherst St., Manchester, $45 and $55 at palacetheatre.org.
  • Local showcase: Five regional bands gather under the moniker Jamuary for an evening of classic rock and original songs. The bill has Eljer P. Sloan playing a brand of music called Super Groovy Werewolf Rock, the new-ish band Burn Permit, SumWat Lucky, Corduroy and Diamond Edge. Saturday, Jan. 24, 6 pm., American Legion Post 51, Route 125, Epping. See eljerpsloan.com.
  • Good laughs: A night of standup features comic triathlete Dave Rattigan, who tells jokes, runs the shows and once taught comedy as a college course. Hometown favorite Jay Chanoine offers his humorous brand of cranky consternation, and Kathy Gilmour, who claims she conquered her weight problem with the magic words “I now identify as skinny,” rounds out the evening. Saturday, Jan. 27, 8:30 p.m., Murphy’s Taproom, 494 Elm St., Manchester, $20 at eventbrite.com.\
  • Rock show: Before their hit “Cult of Personality” broke on MTV in 1988, Living Colour got help from Mick Jagger to get a deal with CBS Records. “It literally took the intervention of the most famous rock star,” Vernon Reid, the band’s co-founder and guitarist, said a few years ago. Sunday, Jan. 28, 7 p.m., Angel City Music Hall, 179 Elm St., Manchester, $30 ($40 day of show) at ticketweb.com.

Napoleon (R)

Joaquin Phoenix has some fun with the hat in the Ridley Scott-directed biopic Napoleon.

It’s not a practical hat, that big angry taco of a bicorn Napoleon wears, and figuring out what to do with it seems to be part of the “in this scene, I’m feeling…” prep for building the character. Sometimes it falls off, sometimes he yanks it off, sometimes he puts it on top of an Egyptian sarcophagus. The hats are busy in this movie.

Headwear in general is a thing here, from the frizzy hair of a guillotined Marie Antoinette to the Caesar-like golden laurels Napoleon wears as he crowns himself Emperor of France. When he first meets Josephine (Vanessa Kirby), she has the hairdo of an aristocrat about to be beheaded. It’s a whole spikey hair thing and she’s sporting it at a Survivor’s Ball, which I Wikipedia-ed and it is apparently a rich-kid party of people who inherited the fortunes of their Reign of Terror-felled relatives and these events may or may not have actually happened. I did a lot of Wikipedia-ing after (and occasionally during) this movie, which assumes I know a lot more about the French Revolution and its aftermath than I do.

Napoleon distinguishes himself at the siege of Toulon, recapturing a port from the British (who were supporting the Royalists). All flush with victory, he wins over Josephine, who seems like she knows how to pick boyfriends on the come up, and then heads off to I think Italy and Egypt. Going on a prolonged work trip right after getting married isn’t great for their relationship — Josephine starts an affair with some handsome young rake. Napoleon returns to France to pout about it — he puts her stuff on the lawn of their house and then they yell at each other for a while — but this visit home also gives him an opportunity to participate in a coup. After getting himself elected as in charge (with the help of some soldiers pointing guns at the representatives doing the electing), he allows himself to be talked into taking a more kingly title to better hang with the other heads of state in Europe. Also, clearly, republican loyalties aside, he wants to be solo ruler. He crowns himself Emperor and crowns Josephine Empress and they live happily ever after for like 10 minutes until he decides that since no amount of sex is leading to a Josephine pregnancy, it’s time for him to find a new, more fertile wife. But he also still likes Josephine, who maybe still likes him? I’d say the jury is out, in the way this movie portrays it, as to whether she was ever all that deeply in love with Napoleon or she just liked the proximity to power and doesn’t like the humiliation of being set aside.

The movie is all over the place with how it feels about this relationship. On the one hand, it uses Napoleon’s letters to Josephine before, during and after their marriage as a way to narrate both military events and his thoughts and feelings. After their divorce and then later after she dies, the movie seems to indicate that Napoleon is increasingly lost without her.

But the movie also doesn’t really seem to care much about their relationship. We don’t often see them relate to each other as husband and wife, and her great influence on him is never really explored. Napoleon’s real interest is in the battle scenes. And they are cool — whether it’s a sneak attack on a fortress or an open infantry charge in a snow-covered clearing, the movie is great about building tension and excitement with these battles. There are times when everything that’s not a battle feels like just time-killing until we get to the next battle.

There is about an hour of movie after the Napoleon/Josephine divorce and I feel like the movie gets a little more unhinged but also more interesting in that hour. While we get two great Phoenix “Napoleon as angry baby” line readings before this point — him yelling “you think you’re so great because you have boats” at a British representative and him snotting that “destiny has brought me this lamb chop” during a dinner fight with Josephine — it’s this last hour where he really starts to flail around in his alternative truth world and become more of a compelling character: his “we’re winning” statements to his troops while they Eeyore around in the rain at the Battle of Waterloo, his holding forth about his greatness with a group of young boys while he’s being held captive. The movie gives us a portrait of a man who, whatever his actual skills and strengths, is being consumed by his ego and his inability to look beyond himself at the objective truths of a situation. Not surprisingly, it’s in these moments where Phoenix feels like he has the best handle on what he wants to do with the characters.

At two hours and 38 minutes, it’s hard to recommend Napoleon for just its weirdo aspects and lovingly constructed battles. But I’m also not sorry I watched it. C+

Rated R for strong violence, some grisly images (for people who can’t take bad stuff happening to animals, be warned that this movie features some real bad days for a lot of horses), sexual content and brief language, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Ridley Scott with a screenplay by David Scarpa, Napoleon is two hours and 38 minutes long and distributed by Apple Films, which means that while it is currently available for rent or purchase it will probably eventually be available on Apple TV+.

The Color Purple (PG-13)

The life of Celie Harris gets the all-singing, all-dancing, full Technicolor treatment in the film adaptation of the stage musical The Color Purple, based on the Alice Walker novel.

Celie (Phylicia Pearl Mpasi as a teen, Fantasia Barrino as an adult) and her younger sister Nettie (Halle Berry as a teen, Ciara as an adult) are growing up in the very unhappy home of their father, Alfonso (Deon Cole). A widower since their beloved mother died, Alfonso has been raping Celie for so long that when the story starts she’s pregnant with his second child. Though Celie longs to have these children with her, Alfonso “gives them to God” after they’re born — with the sisters uncertain of exactly what that means until Celie happens to see a baby girl in town wrapped in a blanket she made. Alfonso basically sells Celie in marriage to Albert Johnson, who calls himself Mister (Colman Domingo), a widower with three small children he doesn’t take care of and a house that’s a wreck. Mister had wanted Nettie, but Alfonso refused and sort of strong-arms him into taking Celie, who is unwanted for anything other than her labor.

Though she cares for Mister’s children and brings order to his home, he is abusive to her and unkind even when they are in bed together, always pining for his mistress, the blues singer Shug Avery (Taraji P. Henson). When Nettie comes to live with Celie — escaping Alfonso’s attempts to rape her — Mister is equally awful to Nettie. He attacks her, she fights him off and he throws her out of the house, thus depriving Celie of the only kind person in her life. Which is perhaps why Celie daydreams about Shug, whose photo is on the table next to their bed. When, years later, Shug comes to town, Celie is just as excited to see her as Mister is.

Though plot descriptions call Shug Mister’s mistress and in the movie he makes some statement about how she’s the woman he should have married, you don’t get the sense that Shug feels at all this way about Mister. He is her extremely occasional fling who she can only stand so much of. As such, she seems to take a shine to (and take the side of) Celie, with the women even ending up at a movie theater enjoying some very sweet makeout time.

Though Celie is besotted with Shug, Shug eventually leaves to continue her music career and Celie remains stuck in her soul-crushing life with Mister, whose family now includes Sofia (Danielle Brooks), wife of Mister’s son Harpo (Corey Hawkins). Sofia’s take-no-poop attitude very slowly teaches Celie that she can also stand up for herself.

That song is called “Hell No!” and it’s peppy and upbeat and features some nifty choreography and the whole sequence is, like so many of the musical sections of this movie, fine. Not objectionable, not spectacular, fine. As with several of the musical numbers, the scene is of the “crowds of people singing and dancing along as a character delivers story information” variety. For me, much more successful were the sequences where the songs and settings were expressing something that Celie was feeling, as though we were going inside her head to see her, for example, falling in love with Shug while she helps to bathe and dress her. These songs, usually more intimate and featuring only Barrino singing, pull us close to the character in a way that is the opposite of the “scene on a big stage” feel of the crowd numbers. While those are pretty to look at they don’t offer quite the same charge. The one exception to that is maybe “Miss Celie’s Pants,” a group song about Celie’s pants store (selling some pretty awesome pants, by the way; I will take at least one pair of the red ones Barrino is wearing). Everybody in the scene has a narrative purpose beyond just filling out the stage.

I haven’t really sketched out all of the story here or even all of the significant characters. There is so much story packed into this movie that I feel like we’re speed-walking from this run-in with the corrupt legal system to that tale of early 20th-century colonial oppression in Africa to domestic abuse, picking up speed because we have to get to that long-buried family secret over there before the next big musical number. Which means that nothing feels like it has room to breathe or really leave an impact.

These criticisms aren’t a reason not to watch the movie, more an explanation of why I found myself not feeling more enthusiasm as the movie got to its (soulful, moving) conclusion. From the performances — Barrino, Henson and Brooks in particular — to the very lovely cinematography, The Color Purple is a movie worth experiencing. B

Rated PG-13 for mature thematic content, sexual content, violence and language, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Blitz Bazawule with a screenplay by Marcus Gardley, The Color Purple is two hours and 21 minutes long and distributed by Warner Bros. It is available for rent or purchase.

Past Lives (PG-13)

Childhood friends reunite in their 20s and again in their 30s in Past Lives, a charming story about memory and connection.

Twelve-year-olds Na Young (Seung Ah Moon) and Hae Sung (Seung Min Yim) are best friends and sort-of sweethearts in Seoul. Na’s mom (Ji Hye Yoon) suggests they go on a “date” — which is more playdate than anything else, with the kids running around a park while the moms watch. As Na’s mom explains, the family is emigrating and she wants Na to have some happy memories of her friend in Korea. And then, abruptly, Na says goodbye to Hae Sung after school one day and the family moves to Canada, where she becomes Nora.

Some 12 years later, after Nora (Greta Lee) has moved to New York City and Hae Sung (Teo Yoo) has finished his mandated military service, she discovers a note on the social media page of her father, a filmmaker, from Hae Sung. He’s looking for Na Young, his childhood friend. She looks him up and responds. They begin a Skype relationship, talking about their lives and just sort of happy to see each other and the grown people they’ve become. Neither seems particularly able or willing to cross half the globe to visit the other and soon Nora decides that they need to take a break. She goes to a writers retreat and meets Arthur (John Magaro); we see Hae Sung meets someone too.

Another 12 years later and Nora and Arthur are married, with Nora attending casting sessions for the play she wrote and Arthur attending readings for his book. They live in New York City and Arthur is trying to learn Korean. Hae Sung comes to New York “for a vacation” — as he tells his friends and Nora tells Arthur. But Arthur, Hae Sung, his friends and maybe even Nora know that he’s coming to see her, even though he knows she’s married and he has no particular plans for, like, whisking her away.

At one point, Arthur talks about how in a story, Nora and Hae Sung would be lovers fated to be together. They weren’t lovers, Nora reminds him, and she’s meant to be where she is, in New York, with Arthur. And she means this, and yet it’s undeniable that Hae Sung is something to her, he’s connected. Maybe not, as Hae Sung says, in this life but in other lives. Their relationship gets to the heart of how people and our connection to them, especially if there’s a physical break in the relationship, get all tangled up in who we were when we knew them, where we were in life. Hae Sung is Nora’s childhood sweetheart, a boy she liked for a certain set of reasons then, but he is also herself at 12 and her life in Korea and how she felt before emigrating. When she sees him, first in her 20s and later in her 30s, she says a sort of astounded “whoa,” which feels like a “whoa” not just at seeing Hae Sung but at seeing that version of herself again. It’s some delicate work, getting us to see that story and perspective, but the movie and Greta Lee do a masterful job. There is a sweetness and kindness and sadness between these friends at every point in their lives (so far) and the movie gives both of them their emotional due. Lee and Teo Yoo have excellent chemistry, as do Lee and John Magaro, who have conversations that sound like real things married people might say to each other (a movie/TV rarity).

Past Lives is a soft, bittersweet story that has a joyfulness about it as well. A

Rated PG-13 for some strong language, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Written and directed by Celine Song, Past Lives is an hour and 45 minutes long and distributed by A24. It is available for rent and purchase.

Featured photo: Napoleon.

Album Reviews 24/01/25

Oneohtrix Point Never, Again (Warp Records)

Recently I had a sudden burst of people messaging me on Facebook, writing hundreds of words berating me as a music snob. I’m really not. I’ve earned my wings by reviewing so many horrible albums over the years, and lately I’ve been listening to a ton of old Kiss, which makes me the diametric opposite of a music snob. Music snobs are sick in the head, like the fictional Loudermilk from the same-named Prime show. My wife shot me a “don’t you start” after I cursed upon hearing Sam (whom I love for the most part) say he liked Pavement. Pavement sucks so loud it deafens aliens on Alpha Centauri, and so does this dude, Daniel Lopatin, a bleep-and-bloop electronic “experimentalist” who, if he weren’t on the crazily pretentious Warp Records label, would be totally un-freaking-known. There are moments of melody here, “remembered from his childhood,” but sorry, it’s all dumb, intended for wannabe music snobs who are actually music haters. This album can go bake itself in a pie, and don’t write me for saying it because I’ll just yell right back at you. F —Eric W. Saeger

Afro Peruvian New Trends Orchestra, Cosmic Synchronicities (Blue Spiral Records)

This instrumental music project of multi-project artist Corina Bartra is multi-rhythmic and multidimensional, filled with swing and danceable South and Latin American rhythms. Corina Bartra originals, a majestic, Afro-Peruvian Festejo modulating to a swing groove, “Osiris,” the exuberant, Amazon-inspired “Ecstasy Green,” the moving Landó Ballas “Purple Heart,” “Bailan Todas las Razas” and “Ebano Sky” are full of beautiful melodies, exciting and colorful rhythms. “Baila y Goza” modulates between a Cuban Guajira and an Afro-Peruvian Festejo. The Cuban-inspired “Vinilo y Café” and “Latino Blues” are composed of catchy, danceable hooks, while “Far Away” tables a Brazilian-inspired tune doused in swing rhythm, a breath of fresh air full of pleasantly surprising moments. There are also three tracks that feature the Marinera style of Peruvian Creole music: an original (“Marinera Jazz”), a traditional (“Palmero Siguayayay”) and a medley from Chabuca Granda. For the smartypants out there, there’s “Tun tun tun,” filled with challenging grooves and rhythms to play, which all these top-notch players handle with relative ease. A —Eric W. Saeger

PLAYLIST

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• Tons of new rock ’n’ roll CDs come out this Friday, Jan. 26, because you demanded it! Holy cats, guys, look at ’em all, where were all these music CDs a month ago, when I had literally nothing to talk about in this space, except for metal albums, metal albums and did I mention metal albums? But those days are gone, at least until next year, when I will once again suck wind in public, praying that King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard will release some album with a super-long title, comprised of a bunch of nonsense druggie songs that took them two hours to write and record while they were on drugs, so I can fill up half this space with words simply by repeating the title a few times! Yes, but for now I am safe, just look at all these freakin’ albums, fam, let’s start with a few words about Ty Segall’s forthcoming new album, Three Bells! I know I’ve written a few thousand words about that guy, but for the life of me I can’t remember anything about him or his music. You see, when you’ve reviewed thousands of CDs over your lifetime, selective amnesia sets in, and every week it feels like you’re Drew Barrymore in 50 First Dates, rediscovering the special or horrible qualities of bands and artistes whose names ring bells but you can’t for the life of you remember a gosh darn thing about them, which is usually for the best! Anyway, Whatsisname here is one of those people, so I’m sure this’ll be an exercise in disappointment, as I sally on yonder to the YouTube and try to find out what in tarnation this album is about. OK, the first song on this LP is “My Room,” let’s run it down, fam. It’s sort of Nilsson-ish but really boring and un-tuneful; neo-’70s claptrap that would probably be borderline OK if the video had a cheap, trippy cartoon to watch, maybe. OK, that’s it, Ty Segall everyone, that oughta take care of — wait, wait, come back everyone, the next song on the album is called “Eggman,” and it features Whatsisface, dressed as a clown, sitting at a table eating an entire gigantic bowl of eggs! The music is loud and skronky and not completely boring! And plus, a one-man egg-eating contest! I approve of this message!

• You know, faced with a band named Frank Carter & the Rattlesnakes, I expected to see a bunch of rib-eating-contest winners from Alabama, but no, this is an English punk band! Predictably, as if I weren’t already feeling anxious about that, it turned out Carter was in a band called Pure Love with a guitarist named Jim Carroll, who, it turns out, wasn’t the Jim Carroll, you know, the “People Who Died” singer from the 1980s, and yes, I’m so old that I had to do some journalism research whatever work and make sure of that, and now I feel like Rip Van Winkle, I hope you rotten little scamps are all happy. Dark Rainbow is the new album from this band, and the single, “Man Of The Hour,” is, of course, totally not punk, more like Spandau Ballet, you know, gentle cocktail lounge pop. I have no idea what these people are even doing, honestly.

• Wait a second, it’s not-completely-awful emo band Alkaline Trio, with a new album, Blood Hair And Eyeballs! Huh, maybe it’s because of the video, but the title track is OK, if you like Hoobastank etc. You do, right? No? OK, that’s OK.

• We’ll end the week with Baltimore-based synthpop band Future Islands, whose new LP, People Who Aren’t There Anymore, should be decent, please lord, let me have something nice to say. Wow, the opening track, “The Fight,” is cool, the singer sounds like the guy from Elbow, which makes up for the disposable Fright Night-soundtrack-style tuneage. It’s OK! —Eric W. Saeger

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