Heartwood, by Amity Gaige


Heartwood, by Amity Gaige (Simon & Schuster, 320 pages)

“Any woodsman who says he’s never been lost in the woods is a liar. It’s inevitable,” says Maine game warden Beverly Miller in the opening pages of Heartwood, a new novel about a woman who goes missing while hiking the length of the Appalachian Trail.

“Up here, we tend to think of being lost as something you can be good at,” Beverly, who goes by Lt. Bev, explains. But for some people who get lost in the woods, panic sets in, and “loss of mental control is more dangerous than the lack of food or water.”

And with that, we are propelled headlong into the search for Valerie Gillis, the 42-year-old nurse who vanished about 200 miles from the terminus at Mt. Katahdin, where she was supposed to end her three-month trek. Valerie’s voice is present throughout the novel, however, in letters she is writing to her mother as she tries to stay alive in what’s known as the Hundred-Mile Wilderness, growing weaker by the day.

“The first thing I should say is that you were right. You didn’t want me to hike the Appalachian Trail,” she writes, acknowledging that a “thru-hike” — the insider’s term for walking the trail straight through — “isn’t a reasonable thing to do.”

“Anyone who wants to walk two thousand miles in a row does it because they find beauty in the unreasonable. All that misery, that’s the point. The high probability of failure, that’s motivation,” she writes.

Meanwhile, her parents and husband are part of a search effort that grows larger as each day passes, even as the odds of finding her alive drop as the days tick on. “Ninety-seven percent of the time, we find lost people within twenty-four hours. The other 3 percent, we know those stories like scripture,” Lt. Bev says.

The story unfolds, not only through the narration of the game warden leading the search effort, and Valerie’s letter, but also through the eyes of Lena Kucharski, a 76-year-old disabled resident of a retirement community who becomes something of an an internet sleuther, eager to help in the only way she can.

Interspersed throughout, we are introduced to people who met Valerie on the trail — members of her “tramily,” as AT hikers call each other — as well as various tips that are phoned in by psychics, do-gooders and other concerned people. While it’s assumed there has been some sort of accident that has befallen Valerie — maybe a bad fall or medical episode — there is also the concern that someone she came across in the woods harmed her, and or that even someone she knows was involved in her disappearance.

Meanwhile, we learn of a secretive facility near where Valerie disappeared, a real-life military operation identified by the acronym SERE — Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape — which is training for members of the Armed Forces and civilian contractors who might one day be trapped behind enemy lines. It sounds like the stuff of video games, but a SERE facility exists in Rangeley, Maine, among other locations.

The story has good bones, for sure, but its heart is in the development of four characters:

– Valerie, who became a nurse to “fix things” but was exhausted by the challenges of caring for patients during the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic; who had come to question her love for her husband while on the trail, where she assumed the name “Sparrow” while making new friends and writing quirky trail poetry like “Ode to My Spork.”

– Bev, one of only two female wardens in the state, an imposing 6 feet tall, but with a mother, now dying, who didn’t understand her daughter’s line of work: “It’s just so unusual. For a woman to want to drive around chasing criminals,” she’d said.

– Ruben, the 260-pound Black man who decided to hike the trail on a whim and became Valerie’s companion for a while and kept her laughing with his stories of trying to find hiking clothes and boots that fit, while also trying to fit in, so to speak, on the trail: “Man, do you have to be friendly when you are a Black man hiking. You have to start waving, like, a mile away. ‘Hey, ya’ll! Beautiful morning, innit?”

– And Lena, the lifelong voracious reader who lives alone in a retirement community, where she rebuffs the attention of other residents in favor of foraging for edible plants and chatting with an internet friend who goes by the name TerribleSilence.

Gaige gives all of these characters such warmth and depth that they could each hold up a novella on their own, but she weaves their stories together and manages to keep the tension thrumming until the last few pages.

As someone who has technically been on the Appalachian Trail but never felt the compulsion to actually hike it, I found this story compelling not only as a novel but in its ample nonfiction detail. Gaige, the author of four other novels, hung out with real-life game wardens in Maine and heard their stories while researching this book, and it is full of the language, customs and experiences of thru-hikers.

Gaige has said she has been long haunted by the story of a 66-year-old hiker who died of starvation and exposure after getting lost in Maine in 2013. There are similarities between that hiker’s story and the fictional Valerie Gillis’ — both started their trek in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia (Valerie plans to complete the upper stretch, then the lower), and like the real hiker, Valerie is afraid of the dark and takes anxiety medication, making a terrible situation even worse.

In simple and sparse narration that blooms with lyrical descriptions of New England landscapes, Heartwood manages to be part mystery, part thriller, part how-to-hike-the-Appalachian-Trail guidebook — or it might convince you to never set foot in the woods again. Either way, start Heartwood and you’ll likely be a thru-reader, all the way to the end. AJennifer Graham

Featured Image: Heartwood, by Amity Gaige (Simon & Schuster, 320 pages)

Album Reviews 25/04/03

Michael Rudd, Going to the Mountain (Invisible Road Records)

Although one would naturally assume that Bob Dylan viewed Townes Van Zandt as a competitor, the two were quite respectful of each other; like the Stones and The Beatles, one couldn’t exist without the other. Thus we could wax hyperbolic and say that there are only two types of roots-folk fans in the world, and this K-8 school principal, an Albuquerque resident who left New Jersey to concentrate on writing, lumps into the “darker please” category, preferring muddy examinations of slovenly desperation to Dylan’s more laissez-faire, metaphor-stuffed acquiescence. Rudd’s second album begins with “Before The Demon Came,” and immediately comparisons to Eels and Tom Waits spring to mind, along with the usual suspects, T. Bone Burnett and such. In that, the tuneage is more appropriate for an American civilization that’s creaking awkwardly around on its last legs; sung in a baritone that’s both weary and indestructible, Rudd weaves a tapestry comprising dream fugues (“Going To The Mountain”), quiet soul-searching (“End Of Days”) and spidery unplugged honky-tonk (“Walk My Way”). Boy, would I like to hear local folkies lean into this approach. A+ — Eric W. Saeger

Carriers, Every Time I Feel Afraid (self-released)

This band’s leader/frontperson is Curt Kiser, formerly of indie rockers Pomegranates; in this project his focus is fixed in the direction of War On Drugs (for reference, old people should think David Essex fronting Pink Floyd). There’s a similar airy quality to these songs, and in fact Kiser’s infatuation with WOD is a little off-putting: The title track is a little too close to WOD’s “Suffering” for my comfort, not that that should necessarily dissuade you from checking this out, and besides, a little melodic helium does fit our zeitgeist a lot better than that of Bon Iver and such, especially given that the Aughts-indie period has finally been consigned to the recycle-bin of history where it belonged on Day 1. What am I even saying, you ask? I mean that it’s melodically pure if derivative in spots; where WOD’s “Under The Pressure” is more Joy Division-ish, Kiser selects A-ha’s “Take On Me” as his spirit animal for the push track, “Motion.” Hey, either way, at least I don’t have to stomach more Sigur Ros verisimilitude, put it that way, which is always a good thing. B — Eric W. Saeger

PLAYLIST

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• Hooray, the most pointless month of the calendar is over, good old March, goodbye forever, hasta la vista, arrivadertch, but oh goodie, here comes March’s annoying little brother, April, the month when we all hit Target at 7 a.m. the morning after Easter just to stock up on Reese’s peanut butter eggs at 50 percent off, what else are you supposed to do in April other than start a really inadvisable romantic relationship now that the alcoholic bars are serving their gourmet cheeseburgers outside, when there isn’t a “freak” (in other words normal for April) snowstorm? Well, OK, there’s always that other thing you can do, go to Strawberries or Rockit Records or Bradlees or K-Mart or Amazon to buy bad albums, but you can do that every week, when Friday strikes, with its Easter basket-load of new albums! Just look at this one, streeting this Friday, April 4, a collaborative album between Elton John and Brandi Carlile, titled Who Believes in Angels! Now hopefully, Elton, who recently celebrated his 3,000th birthday at his vampire pyramid-castle, had some vague idea of who Brandi Carlile is when he was doing these recordings and didn’t think she was actually Lorde or Madonna or Brenda Lee, who can even keep up with all this nonsense, you know? In case you’re also a mega-old vampire who doesn’t know who she is: Carlile’s a famous folk-rocker who wrote a bunch of tunes for Tanya Tucker, so maybe Elton’s handlers told him she was actually Alison Krauss (of frequent Robert Plant-collaboration fame) to get him on board, but either way, I’m sure the circumstances of their collaboration are bizarre indeed, but belay all that, folks, let’s go listen to the title track of this collaborative collaboration between the 3,000-year-old mummy-vampire and Carlile, whom some of us professional rock journalists refer to as “No, Not Bonnie Raitt, The Newer One.” Yikes, you should see the video for this song, they’re trying to revive Elton’s most famous antics, the stage set in the video revolves around his Captain Fantastic-era optics, you know, when he was into high nonsense-art a la Hieronymus Bosch (but nice!), and then we move to the song, which is in the same vein as “Candle in the Wind,” Elton’s famous ode to Princess Diana. What am I saying? Well, basically I’m saying that there was no need for this mutually collaborative collaboration-a-thon to ever happen, but I’m sure there are some 80-year-old National Enquirer readers who’ll love it, and Elton looks really good for someone who’s been preserved in a Dracula coffin with ancient tanna leaves since Carter was president.

DOGGOD also comes out on Friday; it’s the third album from L.A. Witch, an all-girl garage band that launched when the singer’s boyfriend forbade her from playing with male musicians, and instead of dumping him on the spot she decided to go with it, because boyfriends don’t just grow on trees, you know. “The Lines” is a cool ’80s-goth-dance thingie, evincing the band’s love for The Gun Club (and by extension X-Ray Spex, but don’t tell them that). It’s fine, sure.

• And yadda yadda, here’s another one, The Ophelias, with their new LP, Spring Grove! Oh, it’s not the California psychedelic band, it’s the Ohio indie band, what are we even doing right now? The single, “Salome,” is a grungy filthy indie-grinding mess with a really catchy groove, I approve of these people, whoever they are.
• We’ll put this week to bed with New York noise-poppers Sleigh Bells, who are selling a new album, Bunky Becky Birthday Boy! The single, “Bunky Pop,” is like a Nintendo-ized ripoff of Outkast’s “Hey Ya,” and yes, it’s as artistically important as it looks. — Eric W. Saeger

How to Win at Travel, by Brian Kelly


How to Win at Travel, by Brian Kelly (Avid Reader Press, 304 pages)

It’s hard to say whether Brian Kelly really founded the travel website known as The Points Guy, or whether his father actually did, because it’s Kelly’s father who set him on this path. When Kelly was 12, his dad let him arrange the family’s vacation using points he’d accumulated from airlines and hotels, and a traveler influencer was born. Before he even had a driver’s license Kelly was hooked on the game: how to travel the world, in style and at minimal cost.

As an adult, he went on to start a website in order to share his strategies, and “The Points Guy” took off after he was featured in a New York Times article in 2011. Now Kelly is a dad himself, he’s sold the website, and he has compiled a couple of decades of travel wisdom into a book that arrives just in time to help navigate your summer vacation.

Kelly calls this the “platinum age of travel,” arguing that it’s never been cheaper and easier to go so many different places if you know what you’re doing. Problem is, he says, most people don’t — unless they travel a lot for business, or grew up in a family that had the resources to travel, most people have never learned to travel well — it’s not something that’s taught.

“You may think travel is horrible across the board, but it’s amazing when the system works for you. When I travel, I rarely wait in lines. I don’t pay for food and drinks in airports. You can do the same, and I’ll show you how,” he promises.

Kelly begins by inviting readers to decide on “travel goals” and to set a travel budget, which right away may lose him some readers whose travel budget allows a day trip to Worcester, Mass. There is a smattering of generic advice in this section, some of which seems obvious (“Stay at hotels if safety is a concern or if you’re traveling alone”), but some of which is surprising (he advises travelers to wear backpacks on your front in crowded areas lest a thief slice the bottom of your bag without you knowing it). There’s high season and low season for travel, but there’s also “shoulder” season, the bridge between the two that is often the best time to go. And so forth.

From there, Kelly organizes the book into how to win at different aspects of travel: booking, earning and redeeming rewards, accessing perks, navigating lines, traveling with family, staying healthy, dealing with problems that arise, and managing fear of flying.

Again, some of the information he shares is intuitive: Your odds of having a flight delayed or canceled are the lowest earliest in the morning, for example. The more prestigious airlines (read: Delta) are usually more reliable. Where he gets into the granular stuff is where it gets interesting, as in one of his tips for booking cheaper flights. If you are, for example, in Oklahoma City and want to go to Tokyo, he advises that you buy a ticket from Oklahoma City to Los Angeles, and then book a separate flight from Los Angeles to Tokyo, thus (by his calculations) making the trip half of what it would have cost booking from Oklahoma City to Tokyo. This is a practice that travel junkies call repositioning flights.

The points and miles redemption chapters are where Kelly gets deep into the weeds, and readers will need to already have some knowledge of this game, or a burning desire to learn, or a couple of over-the-counter headache relief pills to keep up. He describes the machinations involved in getting the best values by accumulating points and moving them around and looking for “sweet spots” and planning “open-jaw” itineraries. (To be fair, Kelly does acknowledge, “If you’re a beginner, this chapter may get confusing.”)

Nor did I particularly enjoy reading about all the luxuries that all you people with access to airport lounges are enjoying while I’m waiting outside my gate. (You have showers? And buffets and VIP customer service?) I’m getting a bit grumpy at this point, I will acknowledge, since Kelly had promised me that I, too, could enjoy all the perks he’s enjoying, but he didn’t mention that I might need a Platinum Amex and elite status on Delta (which requires spending $28K a year).

As for easing the pain of lines, his advice is not novel (TSA PreCheck, CLEAR and Global Entry), and there have been reports lately of PreCheck lines being longer than regular since so many people have it, so that’s not even guaranteed to help.

Things get interesting again in the “flying with families” section because, despite having flown with four kids over two decades, I did not know that there is a debate over whether children should fly in first class (Kelly has done so) and that some people fly with “sorry gifts” to offer people who are upset by their crying or misbehaving children — like George and Amal Clooney, who once gave noise-canceling headphones to others seated near them on a flight. (Kelly’s against it — “Babies have a right to fly just like anyone else, and these types of gifts set an unnecessary precedent that we need gift packages to tolerate small humans.”)

Finally, Kelly offers some valuable nuggets on dealing with the inevitable problems, such as politely asking to be upgraded to first class on a flight to make up for the inconvenience if you are bumped from a flight or miss a connection because your flight was delayed. He also suggests contacting the airline via a DM on X if your flight is running late, asking them to “protect” you (hold a seat) on another flight in case you miss your connection. “Not all airlines will do this, but it never hurts to ask. Plus, asking to be protected makes you sound like a pro traveler and someone they want to keep happy as a customer.”

Kelly is a likeable guy who is enthusiastic about what he does, and he can make you think a little harder about how to improve the travel experience for you and your family. It’s unlikely that this book will overhaul the travel experience as promised for the casual traveler, and it feels a bit long for the amount of useful information gleaned. But at least those of us still without lounge access can save money by dispensing with the “sorry” gifts. B-

Featured Image: How to Win at Travel, by Brian Kelly

Album Reviews 25/03/27

Idle Heirs, Life Is Violence (Relapse Records)

Relapse continues to be one of the two or three (tops) metal-focused record labels I actually appreciate getting new stuff from, and the debut LP from this Kansas City crew is yet another spine-crunching assault, if you’ll pardon the metal-centric hyperbole. The “RIYL” (“Recommended If You Like”) list, so they told me, includes Deftones, Mogwai and Cult of Luna (in all honesty I was pleased that anyone knew Cult Of Luna even existed) and that’s right on target. I’d also add Isis as a more-or-less-soundalike, not that this record is as, I don’t know, polite as those guys; what I refer to is the raw intensity. We start with “Loose Tooth,” which lifts off with one of those balladic-acoustic patterns, with Coalesce singer Sean Ingram floating in mellow mode for a bit, and then the thing just explodes as Ingram lets out a Crowbar-worthy yowl that seems to go on forever (it sort of made me chuckle insanely, thinking about the last time a tooth was bothering the heck out of me). Anyway, it’s all overhead-speaker ambiance for Hell, as promised, not for the squeamish. A+

Roi Turbo, Bazooka [EP] (Maison Arts)

Fun act here, comprising two brothers named McCarthy, who grew up in Cape Town, South Africa, with music-loving parents and abandoned their drum lessons for autodidactic strategies (Conor played along to Bloc Party records; Ben learned via YouTube). I liked ’em already just based on that, but what’s even more hilarious and exhilarating is the underlying gay-disco-but-not-quite-gay-disco vibe of “Super Hands” on this five-songer. It’s pretty relentless, really, semi-seriously dabbling with Afrobeat and subsonic Aughts-era house cavitation; it made me think of YouTube’s Hulett Brothers, you know, the guys who do the trick shots with ping-pong balls and whatnot. These are party jams for sure, mildly gritty, slightly Ed Banger-ish instrumentals guaranteed to get heads a-bobbin’, for example “Dystopia,” with its faux-yacht-techno steez, which is punctuated with monkey sounds and ’70s-pop sweetness. They’ll be (very appropriately) supporting Empire Of The Sun at The Music Hall in Boston on May 24. A+

PLAYLIST

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• And lo, unto the masses the lord (or someone pretending to be Him) commanded from his brunch table, “Let there be new albums dumped unto those peeps on March 28,” and thus it will be, this Friday, because I have no say in the matter! Yes, it’s another new release Friday, as we await “second winter” after a bunch of 60-degree days, but I’m ready for it! Why, you ask? Because I stored a turkey in our freezer in January, back when Market Basket was charging negative ten cents a pound for them or whatnot, so when this year’s Second Winter’s cruel frost sets in, I am going to be eating Second Thanksgiving Dinner, in my house, and then an entire blueberry pie, and then Petunia and I are going to go Christmas caroling in our neighborhood, dressed like Grinches, for the amusement of all the little children! Important note, I saved last year’s Detroit Lions’ Thanksgiving Day game on DVR, so I could watch it on Second Thanksgiving, so please don’t message me to tell me what the final score was, that’d be great, I just want to enjoy Second Winter in style, snoring on the couch! But where were we, oh yes, albums, and look at this, guys, the first thing to hit my radar is none other than Based On A True Story, the first album in 20 years from insane slapping person Will Smith! Wow, so that explains why he keeps coming up in “my socials” and by extension why my Twitter is full of slapping jokes! I was like, “Why is everyone suddenly making fun of the stupidest moment in the history of awards ceremonies, isn’t that old news,” but this explains it: The guy actually thinks we forgot about that incident with Chris Rock, my third favorite comedian after Doug Stanhope and Elon Musk! Well I’ll tell you, I haven’t forgotten, but I suppose there’s always the possibility that his new duet with Big Sean, “Beautiful Scars feat. OBanga,” will be so awesome and underground-hip-hoppy that I’ll be like, “Maybe Chris Rock actually deserved it for all his rotten ‘literally being a funny person’ antics, can’t we just pretend it’s 1990 again?” Nah, it’s awful; as you know, Big Sean peaked with Detroit 2, this is just corporate-hip-hop nonsense, with Auto-Tune, because of course there’s Auto-Tune. Some online person just said something about “Will should do a diss track of Jada Pinkett Smith and have Chris Rock spit some lines.” Ha ha, wouldn’t that be funny, OK, let’s move on from this horror, I’d love that.

Mumford & Sons, they’re still relevant, aren’t they, or are we already past believing any good music came out in the 2010s? Well, doesn’t matter, the Mumfords’ new album, Rushmere, is getting uploaded to your Spotifys as we speak, and it will include the title track, which is another one of those urgent-sounding galloping-horsie indie-meets-bluegrass tunes those guys specialize in, so yes, it’s cool, if hilariously redundant. You know, they really need to make up their minds about what to do next while they figure out which Vegas theater will give them a residency after their inevitable Grand Ole Opry phase (ack, did that sound cynical, I can never tell).

• Speaking of horsies, there’s pop-metal band The Darkness again, with a new album, called Dreams On Toast, featuring their horsie-voice singer, Whatsisname! The new tune, “I Hate Myself,” sounds like 1970s-era Sweet but super-boring, has anyone ever actually cared about this band, like really seriously, pinkie swear?
• In closing this column, I’d like to say that Deafheaven is still around, as they have a new album coming out momentarily, Lonely People With Power! “Heathen” starts off sounding like Sigur Ros, and then they do their usual black-metal nonsense. I don’t actually hate it, make of that what you will.

We Do Not Part, by Han Kang


We Do Not Part, by Han Kang, translated by E. Yaewon and Paige Aniyah Morris (Hogarth, 256 pages)

It was inevitable that after K-pop, or Korean pop music, conquered America, K-lit would soon follow, with a suitable time for translation. But one of these things is not like the other. Unlike the frothy music genre, the latest Korean novel to be published in the U.S. is a serious work that challenges readers to confront evil and pain, while not closing our eyes to love and beauty.

At the center of Han Kang’s We Do Not Part are two friends who had fallen out of touch, an urgent request and a small white bird.

The events of a short but precarious journey are woven into a larger tapestry of a horrifying period in the history of South Korea, in which an estimated 10 percent of the population of Jeju Island were murdered in a violent campaign in 1948 that, like 9/11, came to be known by its date: Jeju 4.3.

The story begins with the nightmare of the narrator, Kyjunga, who repeatedly dreams that she is seeing a graveyard about to be overtaken by water. In her dream she is desperate to save the remains. She is unsure whether the nightmare — a “black-blue sea billowing in to dredge the bones away beneath the mounds” — is her mind processing a book she had written in the past, or an omen of horrors to come.

Kyjunga once had a family — people to cook for and dine with — but now lives alone in Seoul in poor health and suffering from insomnia and migraines. She is spending her days writing, and perpetually rewriting, a will and letters to be sent after her death. It is all she can do to summon the energy to leave her home and get a meal every now and then. It is all she can do to go on living.

One day, however, she gets a text from a friend she has not communicated with in a while, asking her to come to a hospital and bring an ID. Kyjunga leaves immediately and goes to her friend, who is being treated after a horrific accident. The friend, named Inseon, asks Kyjunga to travel to her home in Jeju to feed her bird, a white budgie (or parakeet) that has now been alone for several days and is likely near death without food or water.

It is an enormous ask. A fierce snowstorm is moving in, Inseon’s home is not easily accessible, and she wants Kyjunga to not just check on the bird but to stay with her for several months, until her treatment is complete. But Kyjunga cannot say no, not only out of pity for her friend and the bird, but also because she is, in a convoluted way, partly responsible for the accident her friend suffered.

And so she sets out in a snowstorm that is rapidly shutting down public transportation, leaving her friend to endure an agonizing treatment alone, and hoping she can find the house, which she has not visited in some time, and that the bird will still be alive.

Along the way, we learn more about the two women’s lives — how they met on a work assignment (Kyjunga is a writer, Inseon a photographer and filmmaker) and supported each other over the years. Kyjunga knows a little about Inseon’s complicated relationship with her mother, whose immediate family members perished in the JeJu Massacre. She had met her mother, at a time when the mother was descending into dementia. But neither woman had a complete understanding of what Inseon’s mother had suffered as a child, a story that is revealed in slow-motion over the course of the novel.

Snow is a secondary character in this novel — coating the faces of the dead, clinging “desolately” to Insenon’s hair as the friends walk together, and providing an eerie and tangible link from the present to the past. At one point Kyjunga reflects on how the snow falling around her is the recycled water from decades past and might well have fallen on the mounds of bodies bloodying the ground in 1948: “Who’s to say the snow dusting my hands now isn’t the same snow that had gathered on their faces?”

Kang, the first Asian woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, was honored in 2024 for her “intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life.” Kang has said that she herself had the dream that haunts Kyjunga, and that We Do Not Part came from it. She wrote the novel over two years while living in a rented room on Jeju Island. The questions the novel is probing, she said in her Nobel speech, are “To what extent can we love? Where is our limit? To what degree must we love in order to remain human to the end?”

We Do Not Part arrives in the U.S. four years after it was first published in Korea — late, perhaps, but exceedingly welcome. Kang and her translators have crafted an achingly beautiful story that will send readers to her previous novels, which include 2017’s Human Acts and The Vegetarian, published in the U.S. in 2016. Bring on the K-lit. A

Featured Image: We Do Not Part, by Han Kang

Album Reviews 25/03/20

Diane Coll, I Am Fire (Happy Fish Records)

Musically, Coll, a professional couples therapist from Atlanta, Georgia, is a true DIY warrior, having released three full-length albums since 2022 along with several EPs and singles, the latter of which this is, a three-songer released in honor of International Women’s Day (March 8). Coll’s muse for these songs is the goddess Kali, “destroyer of ignorance and liberator of the ego; a benevolent and unapologetic warrior who takes on the torment caused by those who operate from their own ignorance and the need to dominate others.” Sounds like my gender for sure, yes, and if you want to know (or don’t, it’s all good), I’m considering wrapping up my trilogy of internet-culture-focused nonfiction books with one about how women are subliminally oppressed on social media. Anyhow, to the music, tally-ho: In short, I’m very impressed. “Starting a Fire” is a brilliant deep-house-rooted exercise, its beat consisting of AM radio patter and a synth that becomes more menacing by the moment while Coll incants various warnings and calls for “accelerated action,” which was the theme of this year’s IWD observance. “Timeline Shift” is yoga-class soundtracking, reminiscent of Anugama, if you have any idea who that is; “Je Suis Feu” ends the set with a polyrhythmic tribal dance-along that’s both hypnotic and, well, catchy. Very nicely done, great-sounding stuff. A+

Luke Marzec, Something Out of Nothing, Side A (Swift Half Records)

Technically, this odd bird submits this as the “first half of his debut album,” which might play in Poughkeepsie but not with me; nevertheless I’ll play along and not tell you it’s an EP; let’s just proceed. Marzec’s a multi-instrumentalist Londoner who led a bunch of classical and jazz bands during his high school days, nowadays he’s a reformed music-academic who put out several other EPs prior to this release. He’s a terminally hip white kid whose gravelly singing voice evokes Satchmo and Little Richard, which screams “cultural appropriation” if you’re nasty, but you’d better be dissing Jamie Lidell too if you’re going to do that, not that this is the proper place to get into that. So what we have here is a jambalaya consisting of funk (“I Can’t Get You Out Of My Mind” is pure James Brown-ness), deep soul and random jazz phrasings that sound antiquated in all the right ways. Given that he’s racked up well over a million Spotify listens (and really knows what he’s doing) he’s certainly one to watch. A

PLAYLIST

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• Our country’s next “New CD Release Friday” is March 21, isn’t that the wackiest thing you’ve heard all week? We’ll get into it, but before I forget, everyone’s favorite local historian Fritz Wetherbee officially retired from his New Hampshire Chronicle post at WMUR TV, and so I am once again asking you, my loyal readers, to demand that the station hire me as his replacement and keep the tradition going! Hassle them on Facebook and MySpace or whatever, that’d be great!

But rather than delve into that any longer than my editors would want me to, it’s probably best to chat about the fact that Selena Gomez and Benny Blanco are releasing an album this Friday called I Said I Love You First! Those two are married, in case you didn’t know, and between Selena’s $1.3 billion fortune and Benny’s measly $50 million emergency fund, it’s safe to say that they’re able to afford to eat eggs every Sunday, in case you were worried about them. Where does this all lead us, fam? Well, where else: directly into the bizarre alternate universe of Bieberland. You see, Justin Bieber used to go steady with Selena, and they broke up (probably because he is insane) and last month the Biebs unfollowed former collaborator Blanco on Instagram, but not because he was envious of Blanco’s dating his ex, or so Bieber nation claims. That leaves only other two possibilities: Either he was hacked (in January he claimed he got hacked and the hacker unfollowed Biebs’s wife, Hailey) or Biebs is insane. You see, he (or the hacker) also unfollowed a bunch of other vacuous pop-culture celebrities, including Drake (who hasn’t?) and The Weeknd. Whatever, the title track from those two lovey-doveys’ new album is a chilled-down reggaeton thingamajig, featuring Selena singing like Lady Gaga like always. It’s cool, if anyone actually cares about this!

• You guys all know that English band The Horrors tabled the most disappointing sophomore album in rock history, but they’re back! Night Life, the band’s new LP, features the single “More Than Life,” a decidedly Depeche Mode-sounding thing. It’s very kyewl. They’re back!

• Louisville, Kentucky’s My Morning Jacket is also back, with Is, their new album! The single, “Time Waited,” sounds like Spandau Ballet trying to be Lynyrd Skynyrd, and if you have no idea what that might sound like, count your blessings.

• Aaand lastly it’s dream-poppers Japanese Breakfast with their new LP, For Melancholy Brunettes (& Sad Women)! The single, “Mega Circuit,” is really mellow for a dreampop tune, kind of like Lana Del Rey meets Wilson Phillips. They’ll be at The Music Hall in Boston on May 7.

Featured Photo: Diane Coll album I Am Fire and Luke Marzec album Something Out of Nothing, Side A.

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