Four of the absolute worst (and richest) men in America have a poker weekend at a mountaintop rich-dude compound in Mountainhead, a dark satire that maybe doesn’t know where to go with its joke.
Shortly before the weekend begins, Venis (Cory Michael Smith) and his social media company have released AI and associated Deep Fake-ish tools that are now fueling violence across the world. Jeff (Ramy Youssef) has crafted software that can maybe help tell the real from the fake and doesn’t particularly want to sell it to the untrustworthy, probably psychopathic Venis. Randall (Steve Carell) is, at least at the start of the weekend, the richest of the four men. He is dealing with a difficult health diagnosis and has become obsessed with post-physical-world eternal consciousness tech. And then there’s Jason Schwartzman’s character, referred to occasionally as Superman and sometimes Super — though we eventually learn the nickname is actually Souper, as in Soup Kitchen because, with his merely hundreds of millions instead of billions, he is the “poorest” of the group. Despite the gang’s “no deals” rules for the weekend, his goal is really just to raise money for his new meditation app.
Even at the Utah mountaintop retreat, the men soaking in the pool can occasionally hear gunfire from below and they watch clips of news feeds where, for example, they learn a mob has burned a group of people to death in a community center or that the mayor of Paris has been assassinated. But Venis is convinced it will all be fine, that the violent mobs are mostly doing it for the LOLs and eventually people will learn to be chill. Or maybe he’s just trying to convince himself of this, as his board breathes down his neck and the U.S. president is calling him. Or maybe, the men start to think, the best course of action would be to “coup out” the U.S. and divvy up control of the world between themselves.
With all their bro-y tech speak, their sky-high levels of self-delusion and obvious inability to, like, do things (three of the men attempt a gruesome task with two chickening out entirely and one half-heartedly participating), the four are easy pickings, comedy-wise. I feel like writer/director Jesse Armstrong (series creator of Succession) relished shredding these rich idiots and their specific brand of algorithm-and-venture-capital-based rich idiocy. I also feel like he didn’t entirely know where to go with these goobers in the limited time frame of a movie versus a TV show. The final third of the movie turns into a farcical thought exercise and then just sort of fizzles out. The writing and performances are sharp enough to basically make it work. BStreaming on Max or HBO Max or whatever we’re calling it today.
Deaf President Now! (TV-MA)
Focused on about two weeks of events in February and March 1988 at Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C., this documentary tells the story of the students who organized a massive protest after learning that a hearing woman was appointed president by the school’s board over two qualified deaf candidates for this university for deaf students. Fast-paced and well-edited, the movie features the student leaders, now middle-age Gen Xers, fondly looking back on their college selves and what they accomplished. The movie is a rousing tale of a group of people demanding visibility. AStreaming on Apple TV.
Fear Street: Prom Queen (R)
The R.L. Stine-inspired teen horror continues with this Shadyside-set 1980s slasher movie homage. Prom Queen feels more like a faithful recreation of a B-movie horror from the time of big hair than a satire. And other than “Sarah Fier lives!” bathroom graffiti and a mention of the 1978 Camp Nightwing massacre, this movie is more adjacent to the 2021 Netflix trilogy of Fear Street movies than a sequel. Here, we have an old-school red-raincoat- and mask-wearing murderer walking toward one prom queen candidate after another and axing them to death. After the first victim, a popular stoner girl, goes missing, the remaining potentials are part of a gang of popular mean girls led by Tiffany Falconer (Fina Strazza), who is sort of Heathering them into accepting her win as inevitable, and Lori Granger (India Fowler), an outcast because her mother was suspected of murdering her father around the time of their prom and who is looking to change her rep. Lori is supported by her buddy Megan (Suzanna Son), a horror-loving proto-goth girl who is fine with her fringe status. Though general creepiness sets in when the first prom queen candidate disappears, it isn’t until prom night that the disappearances really pick up.
And become more gory! Like, so, hilariously, severed-limbily gory in a nearly comic corn-syrup-fountain way. But the movie is so straightforward that even a boy with two hand-less wrists squirting stage blood as he tries to turn a door knob doesn’t register as particularly comic or horror-y. The movie doesn’t do satire or have a take so we’re just watching a straight-down-the-middle slasher where even the red herring potential killers aren’t given much attention. This is particularly strange as one of the side characters, the school’s stern vice principal, is Lili Taylor, which feels like it should be the movie doing a thing, Taylor being of the Yellowjackets-ish Gen-X indie girl all-grown-up variety. But Prom Queen, while perfectly adequate as a slasher, just isn’t doing enough to do anything more. C+Streaming on Netflix.
This weekend marks the ninth annual Bacon and Beer Festival, a major fundraiser for the High Hopes Foundation (931-4999, highhopesfoundation.org), a New Hampshire charitable organization dedicated to making life a little easier for the state’s children with special needs.
“We help kids who need stuff that is deemed non-essential by insurance companies and we believe is essential,” said Lisa Rourke, a High Hopes board member. “For example, today we just threw a post out there about a little boy whose diagnosis leads him to not be able to ride a traditional bike but of course he wants to ride a traditional bike with his twin sister. There are adaptive bikes out there, but a bike [like that] is about $5,000.” Although it would significantly improve the quality of this boy’s life, Rourke said, it’s not something that insurance would cover.
That’s where the bacon and the beer come in.
This year’s Bacon and Beer Festival, which will take place Saturday, June 7, at the Anheuser-Busch Field in Merrimack, will feature dozens of area restaurants and breweries providing Festival-goers with beer and bacon-centric foods. The restaurants will compete to win bragging rights and a trophy for a People’s Choice Award for this year’s most popular bacon dish. “It’s actually a really cool trophy this year,” Rourke said.
“North Country Smokehouse is our biggest sponsor for this event,” Rourke said. “A fun fact: they donated 1,500 pounds of bacon this year for the festival, three different types. So the bacon samplers can either use chopped, chunk, or slices [of bacon]. Then they [the participating restaurants] can do something savory or something sweet, but they’re all competing for the People’s Choice Awards.”
“A bunch of restaurants and food trucks all agree to sign up to do this,” Rourke continued. “North Country Smokehouse will donate the bacon, but then they do everything else. So, for instance, if they’re pairing their dish with something like french fries or whatever they’re doing, they do that on location.”
According to Rourke, the event is expected to draw 1,800 attendees, each of whom will receive an attendance wrist-band. “And they’re not the annoying type!” she said emphatically. “They’re the kind that clicks on instead of sticks on. It’s a game changer! On the wristband, there are four voting tickets and you use those [to vote]. So if you like a bacon sample, you take one of those tickets off your wristband and throw it in there and vote. You can put all of your tickets into one guy if you really were blown away, or you can spread it out to four different bacon samplers and spread the wealth. And it’s just kind of, it’s open — you can go to a bacon sample, then go to a brewer and then go to a bacon sample, then go to a brewer, and then go to a bacon sample. You can go straight down the bacon line. You can go straight down the brewery line, however you see fit.”
“The really cool thing,” Rourke continued, “is what these guys bring to the table. They’re all different types. We have guys that come who are food trucks that make New England comfort food. And then we have Greenleaf in Milford that’s an exquisite farm-to-table classy restaurant. From a sampling perspective, that’s really amazing.”
For the most part, Rourke said, the participating breweries will be locally based.
“We have about 60 local craft brewers,” she said. “We try to keep it as local as possible. So we really try to keep it … open to those places that are within New Hampshire, New England. We have 60 breweries, but many of them will bring three or four different samples. So you can sample a ton of things and then decide what you love and sip on that all summer.”
NH Bacon & Beer Festival When: Saturday, June 7, from 1:30 to 5 p.m., with last pours at 4:30 p.m. Where: outdoor fields of the Anheuser-Busch Brewery, 221 DW Highway, Merrimack. Tickets: General admission tickets are $70.90 through nhbaconbeer.com. Designated Driver tickets (no alcohol) are $39.07. If there are any tickets left on the day of the event, they will cost $55 at the door. This event will take place rain or shine. This is a 21+ event — no children or pets allowed in the event area.
Featured photo: The trophy for the People’s Choice Award at the Bacon and Beer Festival. Courtesy photo.
As a child growing up in Houston, Texas, Aris Moore was fascinated by creatures.
“I spent a lot of time with toads and cicadas and lizards, just looking at small things and finding comfort in them,” she recalls. “Looking at a frog … was just so different than looking at another human. There was something so pure about it. I always found them wise and beautiful.”
Moore leaned in to her childhood impulses and made them a successful career. Her drawings of both invented creatures and people that resemble what Diane Arbus might have done had she been a sketch artist and not a photographer have hung in galleries and appeared in publications like New American Paintings and The Creative Block.
Though her creative spark started in Texas, Moore has lived in the Granite State for most of her adult life, raising twin daughters here. She’s currently a Teaching Artist at Portsmouth Music and Arts Center (PMAC).
Recently she received a $25,000 grant from the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation, part of their Piscataqua Region Artist Advancement program. “This grant enables artists to advance their work and careers while remaining in the area, mutually benefiting individual artists and the region as a whole,” NHCF said in a recent statement to promote Moore’s exhibit to celebrate the award at 3S Artspace in Portsmouth.
Moore will show larger works at the exhibition, something the award allows her to do.
“I really wanted to work large, and I really didn’t have the time to take that on … this afforded me that,” she said. “I could worry a little bit less about selling my work and just really immerse myself in making these larger drawings. It definitely gave me time and, honestly, it gave me confidence. It was really amazing to feel supported like that.”
A unique aspect of Moore’s art is the way it combines drawing with assemblage. In her classes, students work in layered sketchbooks, laying noses, eyes, ears and such onto a face, sketching and experimenting to find a form.
“I like it content-wise, and then I also just like physically the look of it,” she said. “Things sort of coming together but being disjointed, but then also sort of seamless. I think it’s an interesting place to play.”
Play is a concept that informs all of Moore’s work.
“The best work I make is when I don’t feel like I’m working,” she said. “I don’t have a goal in mind, and I’m just really at a point where I’m like a kid and I’m just playing and just moving things around. I guess that’s what being in flow would be. That’s the truest place where I create from. ”
She looks forward to unveiling her new works at 3S Artspace. The June 6 event is also part of the regular First Friday Art ‘Round Town happening throughout downtown Portsmouth.
“I’m interested in how people are going to relate to larger figures,” she said. “Are they going to be more unsettling, or are they going to go to the point of being sort of humorous because they’re larger? It’ll be interesting to see. I live in a small condo, so I don’t have them all hanging up. I’m excited to see how I’m going to feel about them in a larger space.”
NH Charitable Foundation Artist Advancement Grant Exhibit by 2024 recipient Aris Moore When: Friday, June 6, 5 p.m. Where: 3S Artspace, 319 Vaughan St., Portsmouth More: 3sarts.org
Featured photo: Jonathan Vail, resource manager of the electronics department at MakeIt Labs, on the Lobster Roll Kinetic Vehicle.
There are significant differences between the terms “grilling” and “barbecuing.”
It has to do largely with what kind of meat you are cooking. If it is a tender, juicy cut of beef, for instance, you will probably want to grill it — cook it quickly, over fairly high heat.
Dan DeSouci is the owner of the Up in Your Grill Food Truck (493-3191, upinyourgrill.com) and a competitive griller. Barbecuing, he said, is something very different.
“Classic Southern barbecue is low and slow, typically,” he said. “There are other methods — hot and fast methods — but typically, it’s low and slow. And it’s usually the bigger and tougher meats. Originally, these larger cuts — like say a pork butt or brisket — if you try to cook them on a grill they usually come out very tough. If you cook it low and slow in a smoker or really any low and slow method, it’s going to break down all the fat and connective tissue. The meats are just going to kind of stew their own juices and become very, very tender. That’s the goal of barbecue.”
And then there’s grilling, he said.
“Grilling is hot and fast where [the meat is] direct over fire — like steak or a pork chop, any kind of chop, fish filets or something you want to expose to high heat. That’s grilling. I have trophies for grilling, so I have opinions about this. My nickname is actually Grill Man Dan.”
One of the most popular grilling techniques in recent years, DeSouci said, is something called a “reverse sear.”
“So there’s direct searing,” he explained. “An easy example is that you take a New York sirloin strip steak, right? You put it on the grill. You put it directly on the fire, you’re just grilling it, right? Put it on there, you get some grill marks, then put it over indirect heat until it cooks to the temperature you like, and it’s wonderful. But there’s some people who swear by what’s called the reverse sear. They’ll put [a steak] over the cold zone of the grill, close the top, let it cook a little bit. When it’s cooked to the temperature they want, they open the top and put it onto the direct heat, get those grill marks and finish it really fast.”
There are any number of steaks that are well-known for how well they grill — T-bones, porterhouses and rib-eyes come to mind — but it’s easy to focus on those and miss out on a world of things to grill.
One category of meat that gets overlooked for the grill, DeSouci said, is fish.
”I actually love trout,” he said. “You can cook trout with the skin on, which helps it hold together better. You can grill right on the grill with the skin, but a lot of people [use] fish baskets for the flakier fish.” These are the black steet baskets you find where you buy grilling equipment, he explained, the ones with lots of medium-sized holes in them. “You can do like what some folks will do,” DeSouci continued, “steaks like a tuna steak or a swordfish steak — a firmer fish. You can even grill salmon steaks that are cut the other way [cut the long way, with the grain of the flesh, giving the fish a firmer texture]. Those are going to hold up better to direct grilling and direct heat, whereas with flakier fish you’re better off in a basket.”
Ribeye. Photo by John Fladd.
Picanha. Photo by John Fladd
Home grillers don’t necessarily have to invest in special equipment to begin with, DeSouci said. “There are other tricks too,” he said. “There are some wonderful recipes out there where you put everything in some foil and wrap it. So you’ll put something like a cod fillet, some lemon in there and some herbs, and a little bit of oil, and then you wrap it up in the foil and put it on the grill and flip it a few times and take it off the grill. It comes out wonderful.”
When he’s at home, DeSouci loves to grill pork.
“I can’t get enough of pork chops,” he said. “Chicken and pork are going to be a lot cheaper than beef or fish. And the best chops have a little bit of the tenderloin on them. In most grocery stores, it’s just going to be called something like ‘center cut pork chop.’ Look for the ones that are almost like a T-bone steak where on one part you have the pork sirloin and on the other part you have the pork tenderloin, which is very, very tender.”
Jay Beland is a butcher at Lemay and Sons Beef in Goffstown. He is a big proponent of grilling sausages.
“It’s a great way to cook,” Beland said. “Do a sausage. It’s an easy thing to do. You pretty much just put it on the grill, usually for 10, 15 minutes at most, and you get a great turnout on pretty much any of the sausages we make — everything from sweet Italian sausages to Chinese to garlic and cheese.”
The key, Beland said, is to watch your sausages carefully.
“Grilling,” he said, “versus any other way of cooking, gives you more of that char-type flavor to the surface of what you’re cooking. Plus, the thing to be careful of when you’re grilling sausages is not to grill it at a high temperature because it creates scorching. And if your sausage has a natural casing, it may not be as resilient to the heat like it would be if it was an artificial casing. So low and slower may be more preferred when it comes to grilling a sausage. So when you’ve got different [heat] zones over the coals, you cook it out toward the outside where it’s a little cooler. It’s not like a steak where a steak can take the heat, you sear it, and then you move it to a lower temperature so then you finish cooking it. What you want to do with a sausage is more of a slow, even cook, all the way through.”
Beland and the other butchers at LeMay and Sons enjoy grilling with gas grills, as well as over charcoal, but are emphatic about what type of charcoal to use. “LUMP!” they said in unison when asked. Lump charcoal is made from chunks of wood that have been carbonized in a low-oxygen environment. Many grillers like the quality of the heat they get from it.
Shop manager Rick LeMay explained his opinion about the difference in quality between lump charcoal and briquettes.
“The problem with a lot of charcoals today,” he said, “is you’ve got manmade, artificial stuff. They try to simulate what our parents or ancestors used to do when it came to burning wood, but that was cooking with wood coal, versus an artificial [briquette] that somebody’s decided to make something out of something else. Why can’t you use charcoal that looks like charcoal? I got my neighbor going with lump charcoal. It’s more like cooking with wood.”
“Plus,” LeMay added, “with charcoal, you can always inject some smoke. You know, put a little piece of hickory in there. If you want lighter, go apple. You can always inject a little smoke flavor.”
LeMay particularly likes the versatility of flank steak.
“It’s a more grainy, textured steak, like steak tips would be,” he said. “It’s what’s used in a Chinese restaurant when you get steak on a stick, the teriyaki steak, if you will. It can be sliced thin. You could use it for fajitas. Or you can slice it a little thicker. You can dry rub it. You can grill it openly, as a whole piece. It’s not very thick, but it’s like a sheet of paper in such a way where you can grill both sides. You sear it, you leave the inside medium to rare, and then you slice it afterward, after letting it rest for a bit, like any beef cut, and then you can slice it paper thin like a shaved steak, or you can slice a little bit thicker like a fajita or you can slice a little bit thicker than that like a steak tip.”
LeMay said it’s important to remember to slice any beef — especially something like flank steak, which has a lot of texture — against the grain of the muscle fibers. “Otherwise,” he said, “you’re dealing with jerky. It’s a great thing to do for the in-laws if you don’t want them to come back.”
Another cut of beef that has been growing in popularity is one called “picana,” which comes from the hip of a steer.
Flank steak. Photo by John Fladd.
Strip steak. Photo by John Fladd.
“It’s part of the sirloin,” LeMay said. “You won’t see it for sale up here in the Northeast much, because it’s more of a southwestern item. The pincana is comparable to a sirloin steak in its texture, but it has a nice fat cap on it. It has some marbling, but it’s not intense like a rib-eye. It’s a tender piece of meat that has a pretty good flavor to it for its price point. It’s commonly done as a whole piece. It’s not a large piece. It’s usually three pounds or less as an entirety. So it allows you to cook a whole muscle on the grill or the smoker without having a significant poundage for a family where you can smoke that and slice it and have it for a meal rather than doing something that would be significantly [larger] in size like a 10-pound sirloin.”
Lemay said home grillers should not be afraid of a little fat on their beef.
“The marbling on a steak is good,” he said, “because it’s forgiving. If someone overcooks it, it will still be tender if it’s got enough fat. That’s why steak tips are popular with a lot of people, because they are pretty much foolproof for grilling.”
Some hobbyist grillers are experimenting to find ways of cooking “low and slow” with their grills, LeMay said.
“Can you use your grill as a smoker?” he asked. “You can. It takes a little bit more effort to do so, but it’s possible. More people nowadays are turning their charcoal grills into smokers. My neighbor, he’s got a Weber kettle [grill]. He lights the lump coal in the back, puts the wood [for smoking] on one side, and then just lets it smolder and puts all this food on the side where [the heat] is indirect.”
Keith Sarasin, the head chef and owner of The Farmer’s Dinner (thefarmersdinner.com) pop-up restaurant, is the author of Meat: The Ultimate Cookbook (2021, Cider Mill Press). He said a home cook should use whatever type of grill makes their life easier.
“Really what I’m looking for,” he said, “is something easy. I think a lot of times people associate cooking with this laborious task, and grilling should be fun. Propane is obviously really great. If you’re looking at two-zone cooking, with one side for hot searing and the other for cooling and finishing, propane has a more regulated heat. It allows you to regulate and keep a consistent temp. It’s one of the reasons it’s been so popular throughout all the years.”
“Charcoal will give you kind of that more backyard barbecue taste,” Sarasin said, “as opposed to propane. It’s delicious and it’s a great medium and I cook on it a lot. But when you’re starting to [experiment with] woods and charcoals, you’re dealing with a tremendous amount of fluctuation in temperature.”
“There are a number of things that I like to consider when I’m looking for a charcoal grill,” Sarasin continued. “First and foremost is airflow. I need adjustable vents on both the intake and exhaust for that. That gives me control over the temperature. The better the control, the easier it is to go low and slow or hot and fast, depending on what you need. The other thing that I’m looking for is a coal management system. Basically, I’ll look for, ‘How easily can I move these coals around? Is there a charcoal grate that allows for indirect and direct zones?’”
Sarasin admitted that charcoal grills involve a certain amount of maintenance: “I think cleaning and ash removal is a really important thing. A lot of people don’t clean their grills properly. They’ll do an entire summer of grilling and they’ll never empty the coal pan or the ash tray, so you get all this buildup, and that’s one of the things that contributes a lot to fires.”
As a griller gains experience and gets more confident, Sarasin said, a natural next step is to play around with different woods that produce different levels and flavors of smoke.
“As you start to get into woods, that’s when things go very, very different,” he said. “I’d start with applewood because it’s something that we have an abundance of because of the farms here. And applewood has a very sweet and mild taste to it. It is fantastic for poultry and for veggies. I smoke with applewood quite a bit.”
“If you’re starting to get into brisket and ribs and all of those things,” Sarasin said, “you can go a couple of ways. In Texas they use post oak because it’s literally the greatest wood for smoking brisket. Hickory and mesquite also work really, really well. Then you have things like pecan and maple woods. Those are really good for poultry as well. I like maple and salmon and anything delicate because it does give a sweet and subtle flavor to it, as opposed to mesquite, which is very earthy and sharp.
Chef Sarasin said that when he grills at home he defaults to a particular cut of beef.
“For grilling,” he said, “I am a huge fan of just flap steak. The reason I like it is because flap has a lot of wonderful marbleization to it. It’s not too tough. It works wonderfully for steak tips. And we’re a New England culture, and steak tips are part of our New England culture. Steak tips are part of our backbone and DNA.”
“I think that’s what I’m going to do for dinner tonight,” he said after a moment of reflection.
Granite Edvance, a nonprofit that supports New Hampshire students and their families through free career and higher education counseling and resources as well as scholarships and private student loans, has donated $100,000 to a fund at the Foundation for New Hampshire Community College students to help with short-term non-academic expenses such as food, housing, child care and transportation, according to a press release. The new donation comes in addition to an initial $80,000 donation to the Foundation’s Student Emergency Aid Fund, which has helped more than 100 students at the state’s seven community colleges, the release said. See givenhcc.org.
Get kids outside
New Hampshire Environmental Educators is offering grants of $200 to $2,000 to help with outdoor learning experiences for New Hampshire students in grades K through 12, according to nhee.org/about-us/we-nheed-to-get-outside-grant. Grants can be used for transportation costs, student fees or equipment for outdoor exploration for experiences where “students observe, explore and interact in outdoor settings,” the website said. Grants for the 2026 cycle will be accepted Sept. 15 through Nov. 20, with funds slated to be distributed in January 2026, the website said.
National Trails Day
Celebrate National Trails Day on Saturday, June 7, with a guided sculpture hike at the Andres Institute of Art (106 Route 13 in Brookline; andresinstitute.org) at 10 a.m. The hike will be approximately 2 miles, meet at the welcome center, no registration necessary, according to an Andres newsletter. Find more on National Trails Day at americanhiking.org/national-trails-day.
Stars for CMC
HCA New England Healthcare’s Catholic Medical Center in Manchester and Portsmouth Regional Hospital “have earned the top rating from The Society of Thoracic Surgeons for patient care and outcomes in bypass surgery and in a new multi-procedure category,” according to a press release from HCA New England Healthcare. Both locations were awarded a three-star rating, the release said.
Help pets
During June, the New Hampshire Department of Safety’s Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management will be recognizing National Pet Preparedness month with information on ways to keep pets safe posted on the division’s socials, according to a press release. Steps to keep pets safe include stocking at least three days worth of food, water and medicine for pets, finding pet-friendly places to stay in an emergency and having a friend or neighbor who can care for a pet if needed, the press release said. See ReadyNH.gov.
NAV Arts will host George Wallace, Writer in Residence at the Walt Whitman Birthplace, followed by an open mic at Bookery Manchester (844 Elm St.; bookerymht.com) on Wednesday, June 11, 5 to 7 p.m.
Tailgait Transport and Rescue will hold a plant sale on Saturday, June 7, from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Burger King, 737 DW Highway in Manchester, with all proceeds going to Tailgait. See tailgaitrescue.org.
The Derry Parks & Recreation summer concert series kicks off Tuesday, June 10, at 7 p.m. at MacGregor Park (12 Boyd St. in Derry) with Pizzastock presents The Hand Me Downs. See derrynh.gov.
Spend some time with Couch, the band playing the Concerts on the Common at the Londonderry Town Common (265 Mammoth Road in Londonderry) from 7 to 8:30 p.m. on Wednesday, June 11. See concertsonthecommon.org.
In January, with some new songs done, but not enough for a studio album, the Faith Ann Band chose to put out their first live EP instead. Recorded at the Stone Church in Brattleboro, Vermont, it’s a blistering collection, a solid document of a hard-charging quartet hitting its stride, driven by feral frontwoman Faith Ann Mandravelis’s raw energy.
It kicks off with “Route 2,” its lead-in strum giving way to bashing and growling. With provocative lines like, “your breath on my neck is a whole kinda mood” — a studio version released in March ends with heavy metal vocal jousting — it captures the many vibes convincingly struck by the band on the live record.
There’s a proto-metal cover on Live at VT Stone Church: “The Wizard,” from Black Sabbath’s 1970 debut. The show was on Good Friday 2024, and while the song’s selection wasn’t intentional, one audience member noticed. Faith Ann said in a recent phone interview that included bassist Nate Sanel and drummer Nick Johnson, “This guy rushed right up to us right after we played it. He was like, ‘Black Sabbath on a Good Friday in a church — that’s so metal!’”
A show at Manchester’s Shaskeen Pub on Friday, May 30, will give New Hampshire fans a chance to hear where the band is landing these days — a more collaborative creative process that will be displayed on Say Less, the upcoming follow-up to 2022’s In Bloom.
“It’s definitely a different sound … a bit more poppy, more driving, maybe a little more funky,” Nate Sanel said. “With a different band and a different lineup. Faith is still writing the lyrics and the songs, but now there are three different people contributing overall — and we have a different producer on this album, too.”
Faith Ann said her songwriting these days was removed from the take-no-prisoners stance on In Bloom. Lyrically, that LP was an immediate, often visceral response to leaving corporate life and other complications. At the time, she called it a healing journey and talked about stepping out of the shadows from a toxic relationship.
That’s changed.
“I’m trying to be more whimsical,” she said, adding that the group’s new dynamic is a contributing factor. “Although I’m still bringing songs that I’ve thought of, the band is taking up space now; that’s a cool thing. [Also], we’re concentrating more on the performance, getting people dancing and invested into the set.”
The Shaskeen show will feature the newest member of the group, Eric Shea on lead guitar. While not exactly the same as Spinal Tap’s drum chair, the Faith Ann Band has had its fair share of guitarists over the years. “We’ve talked about that a lot,” Faith Ann agreed. Lately, they’ve carried on as a trio, and are looking forward to the extra power Shea will add.
Sharing the stage in Manchester is Andrew North & the Rangers. Faith Ann admired the Concord band’s efforts to support its local scene, like the monthly open mic it hosts at BNH Stage. “You’re getting the passion and the talent … they’re trying to push it,” she said. “When I think about who’s going to put the effort in to bring a crowd, it’s a good choice; and it’s been a while since we’ve played with them.”
Between their leader’s frequent solo gigs and other shows that are set for the coming months, the group is keeping busy. At the end of June they’ll be on the main stage for this year’s Concord Market Days. They’re also booked for Troutstock 2025 in Montague, Mass., July 25-27, and the Barefoot Festival in Greenfield on Aug. 2.
On June 22 they’re leading an all-day Summer Kick-Off at Auburn Pitts, a show Faith Ann organized.
“Some people just want a day of it, and they don’t want to be committing their whole weekend,” she said of the event, which also has Glitter Tooth, The Whole Loaf, Tumbletoads and Jesse Rutstein. “I’m trying to bring more of the day-fest vibes to the Manchester area, because it’s a bumping city.”
Faith Ann Band w/ Andrew North & the Rangers When: Friday, May 30, 8 p.m. Where: Shaskeen Pub, 909 Elm St., Manchester Tickets: $20 at eventbrite.com
