Author: Michael Witthaus

Latest from Donaher a throwback time capsule

There’s a clear ’90s vibe to Donaher’s second long-player. The Manchester quartet signals its intentions with leadoff track “Fixer Upper” — with its angsty lyrics, floor-shaking guitar and a vocal that straddles the line between an angry growl and a heart-wrecked moan, it’s something Nirvana might have done had Kurt Cobain walked out of his Seattle garage.

That’s no accident.

“Kurt’s the reason why I picked up a guitar when I was 15 years old,” singer and main songwriter Nick Lavallee said recently. Though adulthood, sobriety and a bit of therapy have mellowed him, “I remind myself that I need to continuously do things that would make my 15-year-old-self smile.”

The mood of Gravity And The Stars Above veers from their sunny 2017 debut I Swear My Love Is True, though it shares its sheen — and then some. There’s “Lights Out,” a hook-tastic breakup song brimming with pain, and “Sleepless in New England,” with a protagonist who needs “to remind [his] lungs to keep on breathing.”

The latter track paraphrases a line from the movie Castaway — “tomorrow the sun will rise and who knows what the tide could bring?” — that Lavallee feels could reach the shipwrecked or the dumped.

“I think in many ways the character in that Tom Hanks movie was put on that island to almost slow down time… he had to learn how to be grateful for the things he had,” he said. “There’s some running themes like that on a couple of the songs.”

While there is more than a little romantic misery, a few moments of hope peek through.

“Worth The Wait” is a duet with Noelle Leblanc of the Boston band Damone that recalls both Iggy Pop’s “Candy” and the Foo Fighters’ wall of sound. Lavallee said he was reaching for layers of meaning in songs like Semisonic’s “Closing Time” when he wrote it.

“It sounds like a couple singing about each other, but it’s about [them] having a baby,” he said. “I was like, can I write a song that might be about one thing to me, and mean something totally different to the listener?”

Sweet and wholesome, “Circle Yes Or No” is another highlight, a grade-school romance laid atop a brisk power pop beat. “I basically envisioned, what if The Descendants covered The Lemonheads?” Lavallee said. “They actually backed up Evan Dando on a record once … that’s what I was going for.”

Another throwback move was how the new record dropped. One week prior to hitting streaming services, it came out as an oh-so-retro compact disc.

“I love vinyl, but we weren’t listening to records in the ’90s, we were listening to CDs and tapes,” Lavallee said. “I wanted the first image of this album to be a shrink-wrapped CD, and those feelings of ’90s nostalgia to hit hard.”

Donaher — Lavallee, lead guitarist Tristan Omand, bass player Adam Wood and drummer Nick Lee — will celebrate the new disc with three area shows. The first is Feb. 11 at Newmarket’s Stone Church, followed a week later at Shaskeen Pub, the band’s home court. Opening there is Colleen Green, a singer-songwriter signed to original Nirvana label Subpop’s affiliate Hardly Art. The final show happens Feb. 26 at Lowell’s Thirsty First Tavern.

A self-described “obsessive creative” who’s also a lapsed standup comic and creator of the Wicked Joyful line of pop culture action figures, Lavallee said the presence of two other songwriters in the band, Wood and Omand, helped steady him.

“I’m challenged by them. They don’t let anything slip by,” he said. “I’m doing some stuff that’s very different compared to the first record lyrically, and that’s definitely Tristan pushing me to not just repeat myself.”

As with the first record and last summer’s Angus Soundtrack 2 EP, a favorite band from the decade still influences him.

“This album sounds like it could have been recorded between the Blue Album and Pinkerton,” he said, referring to a pair of Weezer CDs. “It’s no secret that I’m a big fan of Rivers Cuomo and his songwriting, and people would expect our take on Pinkerton, but a little darker, a little louder, little messier. … I think some of those elements are definitely there.”

Donaher w/ The Graniteers

When: Friday, Feb. 11, 9 p.m.
Where: Stone Church Music Club, 5 Granite St., Newmarket
Tickets: $12 in advance, $15 day of show at stonechurchrocks.com
Also Feb. 18 at 9 p.m. at Shaskeen Pub, 909 Elm St., Manchester with Colleen Green & Monica Grasso ($10 at door)

Featured photo: Donaher. Photo courtesy of Jessica Arnold.

A.J. Croce’s family crossroads

Fittingly, the first song A.J. Croce ever recorded from his late father Jim Croce’s catalog was “I Got A Name.” He’d done hits like “Time In A Bottle” and “You Don’t Mess Around With Jim” during Croce Plays Croce concerts for a few years, and a bit reluctantly at that. The decision to truly embrace the tribute show after a long and successful solo career involved some divine intervention, A.J. said recently.

When Jim Croce died in a 1973 plane crash, his son was 2 years old. One way he got to know him was as an archivist, poring over reels of tape for clues about his artistic process.

A fourth-generation musician on both sides of his family, A.J. Croce was destined to perform, but his apple landed away from the tree. He grew up playing piano, not guitar like his dad, and his tastes leaned toward blues, jazz and R&B instead of lyric-driven folk rock. A.J. went on to make multiple acclaimed albums rooted in a style one writer described as “part New Orleans, part juke joint, part soul.”

One day a few years ago A.J. Croce stumbled upon a crossroads while listening to his father’s writing tapes. When he wasn’t touring, Jim Croce would record ideas into a Wollensak recorder, and one particular reel was filled with material his son recognized immediately — they were selections he’d been performing for years.

“It gave me chills,” Croce said. “It wasn’t just obscure old jazz and blues and early country artists, but the exact, very obscure songs. So it was Fats Waller, who’s not obscure; but it wasn’t ‘Ain’t Misbehavin’’ or ‘Honeysuckle Rose’ — it was “You’re Not The Only Oyster In The Stew,” which was one of the first songs that I played on a demo for Columbia way back in the late ’80s, early ’90s.”

Twelve of 15 were songs he’d done; Croce began to look at the connection to his father as more than biological.

“I’d probably been asked my whole career to perform his music, and as much as I love his songs, I was first and foremost a piano player,” he said, “and I was also more likely to play a song by Ray Charles or the Rolling Stones than something by my father. That really inspired me to look at the concert not just as a tribute to his music but to the connection that we have to music in general.”

Thus, the upcoming Croce Plays Croce concerts in New Hampshire and across the river in Vermont will blend selections from Jim Croce’s brief but prolific career — three albums made over 18 months in the early ’70s — and A.J.’s genre-crossing catalog, along with the music that inspired them both.

“The influences that we both share are so vast, it could be so many different things,” Croce said. “You can hear Jimmy Reed on songs like ‘You Don’t Mess Around With Jim,’ and Lieber & Stoller’s songwriting on many of the others, whether it’s ‘Leroy Brown’ or ‘Car Wash Blues’ — those sort of R&B influenced things.”

The show also celebrates Jim Croce’s innovative songwriting approach, which A.J. believes came into its own with his most enduring hit, “Time In a Bottle.” His dad wrote the song for him.

“It was sort of a musical epiphany that happened,” he said. “I think he felt like, ‘This is my last chance to do this for a living; I have a son now, I have a family,’ and he really went with it.”

Croce knows the foundational elements of his dad’s work, but believes it’s the relatability of hits such as “Operator (That’s Not the Way It Feels),” “Lover’s Cross” and character songs like “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown,” “Rapid Roy” and “Speedball Tucker” that ultimately set him apart.

“Being a record collector and sort of a musicologist, I think I can hear where those influences come from,” he said. “But what he does is so unique, different than almost anyone I’ve heard. He personalizes it from the perspective of not just him seeing these people, or being present around these people, but also making heroes out of sort of everyday folks.”

Croce Plays Croce

When: Thursday, Feb. 10, 7:30 p.m.
Where: The Flying Monkey, 39 Main St., Plymouth
Tickets: $39 and up at flyingmonkeynh.com (13+)

Featured photo: A.J. Croce. Photo by Joshua Black Wilkins.

Prog rockers ready new album

After a long break since releasing 2015’s Oceans, Mindset X is readying Human^z— the band’s first album with guitarist Lucian Davidson. The son of bassist and keyboard player Paul Davidson, he joined in 2018, and his presence is noticeable on the new disc’s first song.

“For The Love Of War” is a hefty, toothsome number that recalls early Black Sabbath and proto Metallica; the single will drop on Feb. 22. Ahead of that, the Manchester quartet will celebrate a milestone on Jan. 29 at Angel City Music Hall.

“Eighteen years together,” singer, guitarist and primary songwriter Steve Haidaichuk said by phone recently. “It feels like we’re 22 again — just a little more achy.”

The new addition has refreshed the group.

“We fell in that prog-rock niche over maybe the past 10 years,” Haidaichuk said. “Lucian’s background is a lot more metal, so it brings our aggressiveness to the forefront. Not to say that I’m not a metal guy, but, like, I dabble. … Lucien grew up on the big metal bands.”

“We were looking to add more to the sound of Mindset X,” Paul Davidson said. “A guitar player seemed to be the natural of what we’re looking for, which actually was great — it brings Steve to the front of the stage, instead of hanging back with us. So he’s more of a front man now.”

While Oceans was a concept album featuring a primary character, Human^z has other ambitions.

“It kind of ties back to the square root of what we are as a species,” Haidaichuk said.

“It’s almost like part two, but it takes it in a little different angle,” Paul Davidson said, adding that the new effort reflects the many challenges of the recent past — lockdowns, dread and endlessness. “You’re caught in a box for so long; you just want to break out of it, just let it all go.”

“I think every soul has probably written about their time in Covid-town,” Haidaichuk said. “This really isn’t about that, but it did make me reflect on the way society handled it, from an outsider looking in perspective [of] us as a species; really seeing our good points and our bad points.”

Keeping with the math-themed title of Human^z, the release of “For The Love Of War” on 2-22-22 will be followed by a video of the song two weeks later, with a “two by two” cycle repeating every other week until the full record is out.

“When we first started doing this, we released too much music over the course of a year, then as we got farther down the line as a band we released too little,” Haidaichuk said. “I think we learned from both of those experiences what kind of works and what doesn’t. … Some people still like CDs, and some people don’t even own a CD player anymore.”

They’re excited to perform at Angel City, one of their home city’s newest venues.

“It’s a classic club and for Manchester to have one of these, I think it’s about time,” Paul Davidson said. “Especially because you’re limited when you’re playing original music as well … it’ll be nice to have almost like a welcoming show.”

They’ll play two sets, featuring new songs mixed with old favorites, occasionally reworked. Haidaichuk stressed that their aim is to shake things up and remove expectations.

“At the end of the day, we’ve always taken the music side of us extremely seriously; we like to write things that we feel mean something, and maybe make a statement or two,” he said. “But on the flip side of tha t… we want you to have fun while we get you to think; that’s pretty much what Mindset X has always been.”

Mindset X w/ The Graniteers

When: Saturday, Jan. 29, 7 p.m.
Where: Angel City Music Hall, 179 Elm St., Manchester
Tickets: $10 at the door, 21+

Featured photo: Mindset X. Courtesy photo.