Category: Pop

Album Reviews 24/04/04

Altin Sencalar, Discover The Present (Posi-Tone Records)

This jazz leader and his long-time co-trombonist Chris Glassman have been hailed by such major zines as Stereophile, who said they sound like “21st century grandchildren of JJ Johnson and Kai Winding.” That’ll mean very little to folks who aren’t big in trombone-jazz, of course, aside from the obvious, they’ve got a nice setup going on here. There are Latin and Vegas edges to this stuff, most eminently in a cover of Four Tops’ 1970s radio-hit “Ain’t No Woman Like the One I’ve Got,” which is jaw-droppingly clean on the production end. The proverbial fourth wall has been all but obliterated in the Big Tech era; any search for Sencalar brings up his LinkedIn page first and foremost, which kind of struck me funny; it enumerates all the colleges where he’s taught, including some in Japan. That left me with the impression I’d be hearing rote academic renditions of this stuff aimed at a particular niche, but the exuberance is really inspiring throughout. A+ —Eric W. Saeger

The Legless Crabs, “Golden Bachelor” / “Get Down” (Metal Postcard Records)

Meanwhile, somewhere on Alpha Centauri, there are bands that, like Pepperidge Farm, remember. In the case of this band, what’s remembered is the Butthole Surfers, a band I’d bet 99 percent of you folks have heard of but only 0.01 percent have actually listened to. Now, Metal Postcard seems to be something of a prank record label, given that they charge random prices for their records, like, one was $22,890, and you can purchase this band’s entire discography for $264.67 (or just the two-sided single for $2). Boy, that’s some nerve, but these guys are such full-of-baloney popinjays (sample press quote: “If the Legless Crabs had released music in the ’60s they would have been rediscovered in the ’80s and fawned over”) that I can’t think of anything bad to say about them. But yes, these tunes do sound like the Surfers: slow, messy, distorted beats and bullhorned vocals, do you need anything else? Of course you don’t. A+ —Eric W. Saeger

PLAYLIST

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• Friday is April 5, and it will mark another Friday of albums for your listening displeasure and whatnot! You know what band we haven’t talked about in a long time is Vampire Weekend, remember them, you guys? They were like a cross between Ben Folds and Paul Simon, doing yacht rock for flat-broke millennials who lived with their parents. How did they ever get so big? No, I’m asking you, how did that band ever happen? OK, fine, the polyrhythms were borderline interesting, if you’re new to this planet and had never heard people playing, you know, drums before, or something? Lyrically, they’re sort of edgy, offering “a dynamic blend between the secular and the religious,” which means zip if you don’t care about lyrics, but you know what else, Barack Obama sought their support for his 2012 re-election campaign, and since they believed that politicians actually had a say in what happens in this country, they gladly accepted. But anyway, they had legitimacy during that mercifully short Aughts era when everyone hated music and was getting their revenge by listening to this band and so many others, so what have they gone and done but recorded a new album! This one, which only came out a few hours ago, is titled Only God Was Above Us.

• For some reason — probably because I don’t really care about either of them all that much — I’m always confusing the Black Lips with The Black Keys, whose new album, Ohio Players, is on the way! No, kidding, I do like how the Lips behave like demented punk rockers, and they can be sort of cool, don’t get me wrong. The Keys, though, I thought that was just a summer thing with the skinny jeans crowd, but it did last, Gawd bless ’em, so, on the occasion of this new album, it’s time once again to try to tell them from Arctic Monkeys or Strokes or whatnot (I never could, Gawd bless ya if you can). Lol, the Black Keys subreddit has some bad reviews of this thing, never mind the stupid kiss-butt bot that pops in to say “Myeahhh, I hope this means they’ll be spending time in Ohio!” Good grief, get me out of this subreddit, why am I even doing this, let’s go listen to one of the new songs, “I Forgot To Be Your Lover.” Ack, they’re trying to be Sam Cooke, or maybe — wait, I get it now — the Ohio Players in ballad mode! Boy, I’ll tell you, I have no use for this at all, but if you’re big into hookless tuneage, go for it.

• Wait, I thought Old 97’s were all done being mean to music, but if so, why am I seeing a new album called American Primitive being released by them this week? Wait, no, forget it, Rhett Miller is still their singer, I’d gotten confused because he was doing solo albums for a few years there and had kind of dumped them, not that I was keeping track. “Where The Road Goes” sounds like something Willie Nelson should be singing, not someone who isn’t 100 years old. It isn’t a very interesting song, is writing interesting songs even part of the typical game plan for bands nowadays? Discuss.

• We’ll end this remarkably uninteresting week of new albums with Phosphorescent’s new one, Revelator. Phosphorescent is the stage name of American indie singer-songwriter Matthew Houck, who is originally from Alabama but now lives in Athens, Georgia, so people will think he’s cool or whatever. The title track has mellow, strummy acoustic guitar, and there’s Spacemen 3 reverb on Houck’s voice, which is pretty much the only thing that’s keeping me from falling asleep while it’s playing. He sounds like a bad karaoke version of José González. What on Earth possesses people to support artists like this, seriously? —Eric W. Saeger

Never Been Better by Leanne Toshiko Simpson

Never Been Better by Leanne Toshiko Simpson (G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 288 pages)

If you don’t know what it’s like to struggle with mental illness, Never Been Better offers a fresh perspective with a fun plot and a good amount of humor — which, fair warning, veers toward the dark side at times. If you have experienced mental illness, or been close to someone who has, you’ll likely relate to many of the messages in this book.

The protagonist is Dee Foster, a woman with bipolar disorder who hesitantly agrees to travel to Turks and Caicos to attend the wedding of her best friends, Matt and Misa, then decides that as long as she’s there she might as well let Matt know she’s in love with him — and has been since the three of them met in a psychiatric ward.

I think it’s important to note that, although this is fiction, author Leanne Toshiko Simpson has bipolar disorder, so her characters are drawn in part from her own experiences — which, for me, was important to know, because some of the dark humor might have felt disingenuous, almost flippant, if it had been written by someone who hadn’t lived these thoughts and feelings. And using humor to cope is certainly not uncommon. (“I’m glad depression gives me the sex drive of a ham sandwich,” Dee replies when Tilley points out an attractive man and comments that she’s glad she wore her push-up bra.)

I should mention that I’m a (relatively new) therapist, so I read Never Been Better from that perspective, as well as the perspective of someone who has dealt with depression and anxiety. I respect that Toshiko Simpson doesn’t shy away from the very real challenges that mood disorders can present, even as life goes on and people plan weddings and love triangles ensue. The story somehow feels both deeply heavy and blissfully light.

Dee’s sister Tilley plays a solid part in that lightness; she’s wild, bold and fiercely dedicated to protecting Dee. She also embodies the challenges of loving someone with a mood disorder, navigating the slippery slope between emotional accommodations and tough love. In one scene, Dee is struggling hard to get up for an early-morning barre class at the resort they’re staying at, thanks in no small part to the side effects of her medications. But this is nothing new to her, or to Tilley.

“‘After this many years of living in the same house, I should have earned a damn black belt in helping you wake up,’ said Tilley. ‘Just today I’ve pulled all the sheets off your body, turned all the lights on, licked the side of your face…’ More footsteps, then Tilley dumped a full glass of water over my head.”

As Dee struggles openly and honestly, she feels some resentment toward Misa, whose wealthy family doesn’t know she met Dee and Matt in the psychiatric ward, because she never told them she was there as a patient and continues to conceal her mental illness from them, presumably because it doesn’t “fit” into their tidy, proper world.

“Misa went on to run an entire golf tournament dedicated to bipolar disorder without happening to mention her [own bipolar disorder]. … What I really wanted was for her to … be messy in her illness, like I was in mine.”

Good days for Dee are the ones where she doesn’t crave a depression nap, she can get across town on a bus without having a panic attack, or she can make it through a first date without the guy asking, before she’s about to spend the night, whether she’ll be the same person when she wakes up in the morning. So getting through this destination wedding is all kinds of hard, as she navigates her feelings about Matt (while also trying to figure out how to confront him after she finds out he’s stopped taking his meds) and her feelings about Misa, who she felt so close with when they were in the hospital but feels so distant from now.

Along with those considerable issues, Dee is fighting to keep up with the daily pre-wedding activities among Misa and Matt’s friends and family — a whole other fun cast of characters that bring levity to this book, from a kindhearted grandma to a spunky but wise cousin.

This is the debut novel for Toshiko Simpson, who, awesomely, also co-founded a reflective writing program at Canada’s largest mental health hospital. Though at times Never Been Better edges a little too close to the line between mirth and despair, in Toshiko Simpson’s understanding hands it comes together as a heartfelt story of persevering time and time again in the face of mental illness. A-

Album Reviews 24/03/28

Warlord, Free Spirit Soar (High Roller Records)

Ha ha, I owned a Warlord album once when I was a young heavy metal incel, but I only listened to it maybe three times because it wasn’t all that good, sort of like a cross between Anvil and, I don’t know, maybe Scorpions I guess. Singer Bill Tsamis died in 2021, but original drummer and co-founder Mark Zonder is here.

The promo sheet on this one claims that this U.S. band was an early epic-metal band. Funny it should say that, because album-opener “Behold a Pale Horse” is definitely epic-metal. It has caveman-ren-faire drums a la Corvus Corax, and the singer is really serious, singing about witch-kings and prophets or something. Yeah, no, this stuff has a Savatage bend to it. “Conquerors” is street-metal in the vein of Riot, except the dude’s singing about giant cyclops or something. A

Marc Valentine, Basement Sparks (Wicked Cool Records)

This guy, whom Vive Le Rock magazine anointed as “the new king of British power-pop,” qualifies for that “prize” I suppose, for what it’s worth. This is the follow-up full-length to his debut album from last year, and he comes storming out of the gate on this one, with the They Might Be Giants-like “Complicated Sometimes,” which breaks the emo mold a bit by using a Mister Roboto effect on his voice (you never hear that anymore, not that anyone cares). The overall vibe tenders a cross between Dashboard Confessional and a slightly cartoonish version of eastern European grog-punk bands like Korpiklaani, which means the listener is in for a fun ride (I never understood how people could take “power pop” bands seriously, so it’s refreshing to note that this guy takes a lot of his cues from 1970s glam bands). Speaking of Marc Bolan, the tune “Tyrranical Wrecks” is a ton of fun, with Valentine trying on-the-phone patch on for size. I hope this guy breaks big. A+

Playlist

• Uh-oh, Friday, March 29, is a big day, because it is the last CD release day of our Antarctican winter, meaning that spring is definitely here! Sheryl Crow’s new album, Evolution, is the first one we will laugh look at today; you all remember Crow from her multi-platinum-whatever soccer mom hits, but did you know that she contributed her singing talents to William Shatner’s 2011 joke album, Seeking Major Tom, covering the song “Seeking Major Tom” originally rendered on the K.I.A. album Adieu Shinjuku Zulu, did you even know that? Of course not, who would, but this new one is her 12th album and features the single “Digging in the Dirt,” featuring Peter Gabriel, whom we discussed in this award-winning column just a few weeks ago. He originally released the song (which won the Best Video Grammy) in his 1992 studio album Us. How will Sheryl Crow improve on this song? Will she even try to? Let me go to the YouTube and listen to it, so you don’t have to. OK, it’s basically the same thing except with Sheryl Crow singing all the lines, like, “This time you’ve gone too far” and all that stuff, and every once in a while Gabriel pops in like Punxsutawney Phil the groundhog in order to ensure that it’s as boring as the original. This is a very clever marketing strategy, I have to admit.

• Slovenly chamber-pop singer and Libertines hanger-on Ed Harcourt is back with a new album, called El Magnifico, please stay calm, there will be enough MP3s of this album for all of you to pirate at your favorite pirating website, and no, I have no idea where to find those, because I am an upstanding citizen; now, quiet, you guys, while I try to enjoy the new single, “Deathless,” from this new album. It opens with an indie-folk fractal with some dubstep drums underneath it for some reason, and then it turns into a not-really-bad tune that sounds like Imagine Dragons covering a Conor Oberst B-side. Things could be a lot worse, I suppose, even if the video is really boring, something about standing in a dangerous-looking field of cacti, not that there are any cacti in England, which is where Harcourt is from. And let’s keep moving.

• Brooklyn, N.Y.-based artist Kelly Moran’s music, according to Wikipedia, is a mixture of electronic, jazz, dream pop and black metal, and her record company is Warper Records, which tells me I’m not going to enjoy listening to her new album Moves In The Field at all, not that I’m going into this with a negative attitude or anything of the sort, and besides, she used to play bass for the no-wave punk band Cellular Chaos, so let’s give this LP the benefit of the doubt going in, that’d be great. OK, so the video for the single “Butterfly Phase” features a figure skater interpreting this excitable but sad piano-driven melody, and then it gets sadder and sadder, and all the YouTube commentators are saying they’re crying, and then I started crying myself because I couldn’t understand why a bunch of people were getting emotional over the song, which just sounds like a bummer-piano thing. Maybe they were crying because the figure skater wasn’t doing triple-salchows or pratfalling onto the ice, the latter of which is the only reason people watch figure skating in the first place. I mean, I’m openly sobbing right now.

• Lastly it’s alt-rock band Chastity Belt, from Walla Walla, Washington, and yes, that’s a real place. Live Laugh Love is the all-girl band’s new album, and the single is part folk-indie and part psychedelica. It is gentle and catchy enough; the main verse part is boring, the bridge is OK.

Unshrinking, by Kate Manne

Unshrinking, by Kate Manne (Crown, 277 pages)

The national airline of Finland announced recently that it would ask passengers to step on a scale with their carry-on luggage in order to get an accurate assessment of the plane’s load and ensure a “safe takeoff.” It’s voluntary, inasmuch as is possible with the airline essentially saying we could crash if you don’t comply.

There was immediate backlash, with some calling the policy “fatphobic,” which is the popular catch-all term for any sort of perceived discrimination or cruelty against people with overweight or obesity (to use the preferred medical terminology these days). But it’s great timing for Kate Manne, a philosopher and associate professor at Cornell University, who has taken up the crusade against fatphobia in her third book, Unshrinking: How to Face Fatphobia.

In Unshrinking, Manne brings a philosopher’s take to a subject that Roxanne Gay, Lindy West and other writers have tackled: the hardships and cruelties that people with large bodies suffer as they navigate a world that prizes thinness. The solution that fat people (her preferred term) are usually offered is the suggestion to lose weight. But Manne believes it’s the world that needs to change, not people who are overweight. People should have the right to be any size they choose without the expectation of discrimination or mockery, she says; in fact, she argues, being a hundred, or a couple of hundred, pounds over what the doctor says we should weigh is another form of diversity, like skin color or the shape of our nose.

While Manne has been a range of sizes over the course of her life — she says almost apologetically that she is not currently significantly overweight — she was overweight enough as a child to endure the frequent casual cruelty that can stay with a person for a life. She recalls, for example, the boy in fifth grade who said “Fat little Kate-lyn” to her in P.E. class and another boy who ranked her attractiveness saying her figure “left something to be desired.”

Internalized, these sorts of insults convince a person that their body is something to be ashamed of, leading grown women with graduate degrees and good careers to still feel inferior when it comes to their body.

“I have been swimming just once since the age of sixteen. (I wore leggings and an oversized T-shirt.) I haven’t been dancing since I was twenty. And nobody, save my husband and doctors, has seen the dimpled, stretch-marked backs of my knees over the same time period,” Manne writes.

It wasn’t that she hadn’t tried to lose weight, and at times, she had done so successfully — as when she developed an Adderall addiction and once didn’t eat for a week, causing her to nearly pass out during a doctor’s appointment. But her weight would go up and down, and when in 2019 she was offered an all-expenses-paid book tour in Europe in conjunction with the paperback release of her book Down Girl, she refused to be photographed. It was a time when her doctor’s chart categorized her as “severely obese” and she couldn’t bear for photographs of her at that weight to go out into the world.

Then came the pandemic, during which she began to imagine a world in which she didn’t always feel the need to hide. This did not involve a diet — Manne argues, with lots of science to back her up, that diets don’t work and instead inflict suffering. Instead she imagined a world in which the word “fat” is a neutral term, not an insult, and in which large bodies aren’t judged.

Fatphobia, Manne says, is a “feature of social systems that unjustly rank fatter bodies as inferior to thinner bodies, in terms of not only our health but also our moral, sexual, and intellectual status.” The book catalogs many of these from Jordan Peterson’s “Sorry, not beautiful” pronouncement about a Sports Illustrated swimsuit model to examples of professional women viewed as less intelligent than their peers because of their weight. In these sorts of stories, Manne has a slam-dunk case; there is no question that fat-shaming is one of the last kinds of shaming that are permissible and Hollywood has helped perpetuate this idea.

Manne also deftly pokes holes in the arguments that defend treating large people differently from others. Her fellow Australian philosopher Peter Singer, for example, argues that airlines should set fares based on the weight of the passengers. “In terms of the airplane’s fuel consumption, it is all the same, whether the extra weight is baggage or body fat,” Singer has written. Manne counters with a calculation that shows it would cost just a few dollars more in fuel to transport an overweight man than a thin woman. She is at her best with this kind of sparring, and Unshrinking is thoughtful and deeply researched, belying a cover that suggests otherwise.

Ultimately, though, this is not a book that solves arguments, but rather raises them. Obesity is surging not only in America but in other parts of the world, and health experts say that excess weight is a factor in many types of cancer and other diseases. Yo-yo dieting is certainly not the answer, and weight-loss surgeries and drugs carry risks, as Manne points out. She wants a society where there is no pressure for people to lose weight — even at the doctor’s office — and where we don’t have to feel shame for succumbing to our appetites, for choosing lasagna over grilled vegetables. But with mounting evidence that restricting calories improves health outcomes — even for people who are not overweight — it will be hard for some people to accept her defense of hedonistic eating. Grilled veggies are better for the human body than lasagna, and no amount of fat acceptance can change that. B —Jennifer Graham

Album Reviews 24/03/21

The Church, Eros Zeta and the Perfumed Guitars (Communicating Vessels)

Some things never change, especially when they really should, but different strokes and all that. I’ve never been big into this ’80s-born band, even if The Cure’s Robert Smith stole the dreary, depressing vibe for “Lovesong” from this band’s 1988 tune “Under The Milky Way.” These Aussies have always been a sort of middling punk-influenced rawk band, but despite that, they do try to innovate and otherwise keep things relatively lively. Their last LP, The Hypnogogue, was a concept thing aiming for epicness, which I thankfully don’t have to deal with here. “Pleasure” is pretty uneventful, the same flavor of Lost Boys soundtrack filler they’ve specialized in since the beginning: sparkly guitar, low-end-Bowie vocals, that sort of business. “Song 18” is confounding, a chill-down that nicks Bowie in spaceman mode (yes, there’s a discernible pattern here). They’ll be at Royale in Boston on June 21. A- —Eric W. Saeger

Sam Wilson, Wintertides (Communicating Vessels)

Professed to be a meditation on how landscape and environment inspire her tuneage through her love and empathy for natural places, this is a sparse, gentle release from the jazz guitarist, nestled into a trio setting touching on post-bop. This LP grew organically: In 2020 Wilson made the decision to move out to the rural community of Scotsburn, Nova Scotia. It was a change that would soon prove both trying and isolating as pandemic restrictions came into play — especially once she hit the province’s notoriously grueling winter season. Jen Yakamovich’s drums are smooth and sublime, delivered with a lot of brushed snare; Geordie Hart’s upright bass stretches out now and then for the sake of eerie acoustics. It’s all quite absorbing; the RIYL comparisons here would include Ralph Towner and Michael Hedges. A —Eric W. Saeger

Playlist

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• Like every Friday, March 22 will be a day of new album releases, because we love our routines, oh lovely, I get to rant about Tool this week! Yep, look at this, folks, Tool’s singer, Maynard James Keenan, is putting out a new live solo album on Friday, called Cinquanta: A 50th Birthday Celebration For Maynard James Keenan. Cinquanta means “fifty” in Italian. Why did he do that? Well, I’m glad you asked. It’s because he turned the big five-oh and there was a celebration concert for it, and plus he posts about tacos a lot on Instagram, no, I’m not kidding, guys. When I turned 50 I quit butts for my vape. I can’t even believe what butts cost now, like 10 dollars a pack, that’s insane. But you know what else is insane is Tool fans, like, if you don’t like that dumb band, their fans shun you like you kicked their dog or something. Talk about a hilariously overrated band, but even worse is Maynard’s other band, A Perfect Circle, which I’d heard was supposed to be one of those cool goth-industrial bands like Collide, but when I tried to listen to one of their albums I was like, “What’s the big deal here,” and never really tried again. I mean, if you like them, all I have to say is “I don’t care!” the same way Tommy Lee Jones did in The Fugitive when Harrison Ford told him he didn’t moider his wife. Get what I’m saying, see, I’ve never heard a Tool song I liked, but I haven’t listened to all their albums, just the ones that aren’t anywhere near as good as any random Pendulum album, so if you like Tool and didn’t moider anyone, we can still be good friends, just don’t try to get me to go to a Tool concert, see, because I won’t go, even if it’s free, which is about the right price for a Tool concert ticket if you ask me.

OK so anyway, back to Taco Man here, and his new live album, do I really have to do this? Yikes, the cover is Maynard wearing a diaper and yelling in a crib, may I go now? OMG this performance is from 2014, and there’s a live version of Tool’s “Sober.” Huh, I always thought that song was by Live. I never liked it, probably because I’m stupid, right, Tool fans?

• All this yelling about Tool, leaves me barely any room to talk about Tigers Blood, the new album from indie-folk fixtures Waxahatchee. If you can picture Alanis doing a cover of a Bonnie Raitt song you’re in the ballpark with the latest single, “Bored,” a strummy, upbeat, listenable tune that I don’t detest in the least.

• Randomly famous Colombian person Shakira has a lot of fans and isn’t as annoying as P!nk, and that’s all I’ve ever really cared to know about all this. Her new album, Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran, is on the way. It has an old-school ’80s technopop beat punctuated with her hiccuppy singing and a millennial whoop chorus. It’s catchy.

• Lastly, it’s the one I’ve been waiting for, the new album from British art-rockers Elbow, Audio Vertigo! The band is led by singer Guy Garvey, a working[-class dude who nowadays is also a radio personality on BBC 6. I first got into them in 2011, when they released the LP Build A Rocket Boys; I’ve lost track of them the last few years, so it was nice to hear their new single, “Balu,” with its Coldplay-informed ’80s-goth-ish vibe. The spidery bass line is super-neat. Big ups to this. —Eric W. Saeger

Mayluna, by Kelley McNeil

Mayluna, by Kelley McNeil (Lake Union Publishing, 399 pages)

It’s tempting to compare Kelley McNeil’s excellent second novel to Daisy Jones and the Six, but Mayluna is more than rock history. Its story revolves around a fictional chart-topping rock group but is more focused on the emotional lives of two main characters: Carter Wills, the eponymous band’s creative force, and Evie Waters, a music journalist who becomes Carter’s lover and muse.

One key Daisy Jones divergence is that Mayluna the band doesn’t easily hew to any other group of the era; they could be Coldplay as easily as Radiohead. Also, and more importantly, it’s a tautly written and engaging story, full of highs, lows, passion and agony, not emotion-flattening oral history.

Carter meets Evie, who writes using a gender-neutral pseudonym, when she attempts to do a backstage interview at Jones Beach Amphitheater. McNeil’s past career in the music industry lends authenticity to Evie’s interactions with the press-averse band’s leader, and to their late ’90s pre-Napster milieu.

Their banter includes business advice from Evie to lean into the band’s mystery, make their reticence a marketing tool. There’s also plenty that could be cut and pasted into the movie version of the novel, which one hopes will come. Their connection is well-crafted by McNeil, but this love won’t last — Mayluna is a look back at what might have been.

In a clever narrative device, Evie tells her story in the present day to her married daughter, who’s returned home for her father’s funeral; he died after a bout with cancer. She stumbles onto a trove of memorabilia in a closet, and in a magazine story about Mayluna spots a bracelet on the arm of someone who looks a lot like her mom.

Evie, who wrote the article as Cameron Leigh, decides it’s time to raise the curtain on her past life.

At the same time, the members of Mayluna are on a private jet, winging to a South America stadium gig, and sharing “the whole story” with another journalist. There’s a sense that their 25-year Rock & Roll Hall of Fame eligibility date is near, and it’s time to come clean. Carter alludes to but never identifies Evie, while the rest of the group drop clues to who she is and what she meant to him — and them.

Carter and Evie’s entanglement is presented as destiny — “There are signs everywhere, Ev,” he tells her. “You just have to pay attention” — and as children they both witnessed the strange celestial phenomena referenced in one of his songs, of a star twinkling through a crescent moon. Evie saw it from her home in Pennsylvania, Carter from the English shore.

So when the relationship abruptly ends a third of the way through the novel, one wonders what will carry the story to its conclusion. McNeil handles it perfectly, giving clarity to the decisions made by Evie while watching Mayluna from a distance, until an unwitting friend’s invitation to see the band at a local football stadium, and a surprise seat upgrade, put Carter and Evie back on a collision course.

The rest of the novel revolves around reconciling, in Evie’s words, having “been gifted with the mating of souls with one man and a lifetime of loving companionship with another,” and eventually realizing that “the one we love most in life may not be the one we love the best.” Mayluna’s greatest strength is the balancing act it achieves between being about a band bound for glory and being about two star-crossed lovers.

It’s to McNeil’s credit that Carter and Evie’s meet-again-cute development doesn’t turn the novel down an easy path; rather, it never stops exploring the hard choices, and often heartbreak, that face both artists and those in their orbit. The drive to create is summarized brilliantly during their initial backstage conversation.

Evie shares with Carter her hope to “write something that isn’t terrible so that I can get the chance to do more interviews with more bands and write even more words and do more films and somehow eke out enough of a living to not worry so much about paying my rent and hope that somewhere along the way, someone will think that the stories I tell matter.”

“So we’re the same, then,” an impressed Carter answers, “That’s us. That’s our band. And our future, all in one sentence.” A-

—Michael Witthaus

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