Category: Pop

Album Reviews 23/08/24

Mariion Christiian, “Still Water” / “The Weight of Things” (EMG Records)

You’d file this new EP somewhere between Above & Beyond and Tiesto, and yes, it’s that good. Christian is known as a veteran producer who has a way with melodies that “articulate emotions in a way that words simply cannot,” which was evident on his 2022 “Bleu EP,” but it does come into sharper focus on this new release, where you’re never quite sure where the beat’s going to shift to next, but it’s singularly pleasant. The Los Angeles-based producer is big on brevity at this point, obviously; he’s more into afterparty vibe as opposed to club bangers and such. “Still Water” has a 1980s feel to it, but it’s steeped in the sort of bright, sparkly stuff you may have raved to back in the day; “The Weight of Things” is more on the Aphex Twin/Orbital side, soaring with soprano samples and a shuffling rhythm that’s pretty irresistible really. He’s been known to doof around with sub-tribal stuff reminiscent of Tangerine Dream; it’ll be interesting to see what he does next. A+

Will Butler + Sister Squares, Will Butler + Sister Squares (Merge Records)

This Butler isn’t the one who basically ruined Arcade Fire by getting in very hot water by racking up some sexual harassment charges. That’s Win, not Will; Will is Win’s younger brother, who’s teamed up here with Sister Squares, a group of four peeps with backgrounds in classical music, Broadway (Sara Dobbs had a run as Anybodys in West Side Story), choreography and such, and one of them is Will’s wife. This album opens with a mopey intro, then launches into “Stop Talking,” which could pass for an unreleased, too electro-sounding single by the Tubes (please tell me someone out there remembers those guys). “Willows” is jangly cowboy-hat indie, tuneful in its way; “Me And My Friends” has some goth-stompiness to it; “Arrow Of Time” is a campy nod to Flaming Lips, and so on and so forth. This really isn’t bad at all, and seeing that Arcade Fire is sinking fast, with bands dropping out of their tours, it’s a smart move on Butler’s part, not for nothin’. A-

Playlist

• On to the new CD releases for Aug. 25, folks, up and at ’em, let’s do this, don’t give me that face, and now for a special message. If you’re a Facebook Friend of mine, you know that I’m trying to get on Fritz Wetherbee’s show on WMUR TV’s New Hampshire Chronicle, a show in which Fritz, between costume changes to adjust the color and raw awesomeness of his bow tie du jour, talks to you, the audience who’s sitting there eating leftover KFC, about how this or that super-small town in our beloved Granite State was once visited by Gen. George Washington, whoever that is, and someone who was probably French once invented a device to milk goats or whatnot and got rich, which led to his being tried and hung as a warlock. Anyway, I expect I’ll get a message from Fritz any day now, begging me to come on, and I want to be musically prepared with the right tunes for my visit, so that he won’t freak out that I don’t only listen to scratchy 1920s Ray Noble records and kick me off his show! No, I seriously do want to be the next Fritz; if Fritz ever decides he has had it, I would be glad to take over his show.

In the meantime I’m trying to find some music to talk about in this week’s column, some dulcet tunes that’ll prove to Fritz that I should be the new Fritz, on TV, talking about goat witches and etc., so hey, everyone, remember to help spread the hashtag #MakeSaegerTheNewFritz whenever you post to your favorite social media hellscape.

OK, I did take a gander at the new releases coming out on the 25th, and there was nothing about driving around with Petunia in a Model T, but wouldn’t you know it, there’s a new album coming out that day from old-time American bluegrass/string-band throwbacks Old Crow Medicine Show! Titled Jubilee, it features the song “Miles Away,” a folksy bluegrass-gasm that perfectly fits all the song’s video’s scenery of random wooden bridges in places that remind me of Spofford Lake, N.H., which would be a great place for Fritz and me to visit when we shoot our first episode of the show, driving around in an original vintage Stanley Steamer, just waving at the locals who’ve never seen an automobile before. Remember to use that hashtag, folks, let’s make this happen, I’m 100 percent serious about this.

• Let’s see, what else have we here — blah blah blah, whatever — OK, wait, Fritz will dig this, I’m sure he used to get crazy to Alice Cooper albums on eight-track back in the days, when he was in college with all the wacky weed and such, and look, gang, Alice has a new album coming out right now, called Road! The first single is titled “I’m Alice,” and it sounds a little like “Elected,” but then again, what Alice Cooper song doesn’t? There’s some fiddle in there too, and if I’m chosen to become the new Fritz, it will be the theme song for my New Hampshire Chronicle segments, the first of which will cover my investigation of the town of Stewartstown, N.H., which is so close to Canada that you can practically taste the maple-flavored poutine!

• Fritz would probably like North Carolina band Hiss Golden Messenger, because it too is indie-folk and country. The quintet’s new LP, Jump For Joy, wields the single “Shinbone,” a mellow, woozy track that sounds like a drunk Tom Petty.

• Lastly, it’s B-52s singer Cindy Wilson, with an album called Realms. The single, “Midnight,” is Berlin-ish ’80s-krautrock-dance. It’s OK, and don’t forget the hashtag #MakeSaegerTheNewFritz, folks!

If you’re in a local band, now’s a great time to let me know about your EP, your single, whatever’s on your mind. Let me know how you’re holding yourself together without being able to play shows or jam with your homies. Send a recipe for keema matar. Message me on Twitter (@esaeger) or Facebook (eric.saeger.9).

Ultra-Processed People, by Chris van Tulleken

Ultra-Processed People, by Chris van Tulleken (W.W. Norton & Co., 313 pages)

Is there anyone on the planet who doesn’t know processed food is bad for you? Probably not, but as it turns out, there’s something even worse — ultra-processed food, which Chris van Tulleken eviscerates, along with its makers, in the aptly named Ultra-Processed People.

Ultra-processed food, according to van Tulleken, is not food, but “food-like substances that we’ve never encountered in our evolutionary history” but which we are now consuming in large quantities with little thought to its effect on our bodies.

Van Tulleken is a British physician who specializes in infectious diseases; his research is on how corporations affect human health, and so yes, there’s a villain in Ultra-Processed People, and it isn’t the consumer. And in van Tulleken’s telling, it’s unclear (and possibly unlikely) that the good guys will win, so ensnared as we are in the villain’s grasp. He describes consumers as prey in the industry of ultra-processed food production, with their products the bait.

Although these pseudo-food products weren’t even available 200 years ago, they now comprise about 60 percent of the diet of people in the U.S. and U.K., van Tulleken writes. And they’re making us unhealthy and obese, he argues, saying that people don’t overeat when they are presented with fresh, healthy meats and vegetables; they are driven to overeat when their diet lacks the fresh food and nutrients the body craves.

The idea that people are overweight or obese because they don’t exercise enough and lack willpower, he says, “doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.”

“For example, since 1960, the U.S. National Health Surveys have recorded an accurate picture of the nation’s weight. They show that in white, Black and Hispanic men and women of all ages, there was a dramatic increase in obesity beginning in the 1970s. The idea that there has been a simultaneous collapse of responsibility in both men and women across age and ethnic groups is not plausible. If you’re living with obesity, it isn’t due to a lack of willpower; it isn’t your fault,” he writes.

So what is ultra-processed food, exactly? Van Tulleken describes it as anything wrapped in plastic that has at least one ingredient that you usually wouldn’t find in a typical home kitchen. That definition, taken literally, is problematic, because if 60 percent of what’s in your pantry is UPF, there’s probably some overlap in the ingredient list. So maybe he should have said what you wouldn’t find in a typical home kitchen in the 1940s, or ingredients we can’t pronounce or don’t recognize, but we get the point, which frankly isn’t new. Some years ago, I read a diet book by a chemist who stopped eating processed food when she realized that her angel food cake contained an ingredient she’d used that day in a lab.

And scientists have increasingly been sounding the alarm about artificial sweeteners that we’ve been using for decades; van Tulleken retells the story of how saccharin was discovered in 1879 by a Johns Hopkins chemist trying to make medical compounds from coal tar. When he accidentally got some on a piece of bread at dinner, the chemist later wrote, “I had discovered or made some coal tar substance that out-sugared-sugar.”

Eating should be simple, van Tulleken argues; the human body has an internal system that tells us what and how much we need, but we have thrown it out of whack by feeding it things the body is not meant to eat. And that doesn’t mean we’ve thrown it out of whack by eating sugar and carbs — when they are real food, not ultra-processed, they’re not the problem. So to demonstrate the problem, van Tulleken commits to eating no ultra-processed food for a month, and then 80 percent ultra-processed foods for the next month, all the while being medically monitored. (He also encourages readers to do the same — to “give in — allow yourself to experience UPF’s full horror” — while reading the book. Full disclosure: I did not.)

Some of what he ate is similar to products marketed as healthy in our supermarkets — for example, cereal fortified with vitamins, or high-protein granola bars. But while eating a chocolate-chip caramel bar one morning, feeling that it was certainly more healthy than a candy bar, van Tulleken investigates the ingredients and discovers that, in addition to multiple additives, one ingredient was “hydrolysed beef gelatin — cow tendons. It wasn’t enjoyable after that.” As one researcher told him, “Most UPF is not food. It’s an industrially produced edible substance.” Also, he argues, it’s designed to be addictive.

So, how do we stop? Van Tulleken’s brother, who struggled with his weight, decided that UPF was an addiction no different from alcohol or drugs, so he stopped eating it altogether. So did the author. Others may be fine eating UPF occasionally, even with the full knowledge of what it is. But knowing what you’re eating is the first step in stopping.

But surprisingly, while van Tulleken backs some government policies to improve labeling and marketing to children, he comes down on the side of freedom and says, “I sincerely don’t have a moral opinion about eating UPF. … I don’t care how you feed yourself or your child. The goal should be that you live in a world where you have real choices and the freedom to make them.”

Well, yes, but he just spent 300 pages telling us that UPF is killing us, so it seems a strange conclusion to draw.

While van Tulleken’s credentials are impressive, along with his willingness to offer himself up as a guinea pig of sorts, Ultra-Processed People is a little bit of a mess, structurally, and in its conclusions.

The best eating advice ever, it seems was, given succinctly by Michael Pollan when he wrote “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” That’s mostly what van Tulleken is saying, just more awkwardly. C

Album Reviews 23/08/17

Bluphoria, Bluphoria (Edgeout Records/UMe)

I’m late to the ball by a couple of months on this one, the debut LP from this northern California-based alt-rock band, whose guitarist/frontman Reign LaFreniere is a Black dude who grew up on stuff like Hendrix, Dylan, James Brown, Pink Floyd and whatnot; he’s all about retaking the hard-ish-rock genre back to its roots, and for that he should be thanked, sort of, I suppose. Produced by Mark Needham (Imagine Dragons, Mt. Joy, The 1975, others), it’s a mixed bag of throwback-bar-band-microwaving. Opener “Set Me Up” is blatantly ’80s, a kissin’ cousin to Greg Kihn’s “The Break Up Song” with a Lenny Kravitz buzz to it (not reaching for the handiest reference there, either, it just is); “Believe in Love” is a cross between dance-floor Prince and the main theme from Footloose. Harmless, idiotic fun throughout. The closest they’ll come to New Hampshire during their current tour is the Middle East Upstairs in Cambridge, Mass., on Nov. 9. B

James Rivera’s Metal Wave, New Wave Gone Metal (Massacre Records)

In “am I the only one who thinks the ’80s rebirth has overstayed its welcome” news, this is a project from former Helstar singer Rivera, 10 New Wave tunes re-rubbed as hair-metal versions, and the only really interesting thing about this, to me anyway, is the fact that no one’s done it before, unless they have, not that I want to find out. OK, strike that, be nice Saeger, the concept does work in some of the tries, for instance the rub of Bauhaus’s “Bela Lugosi’s Dead”; I always thought the original version was kind of lumpy and dumb, and some Ozzy-style guitar definitely breathes new life into it, even if Rivera’s campy vocals border on Weird Al level. Wasn’t a big fan of the version of The Ramones’ “Pet Sematary,” being that the original track was fine; same goes for the Cure’s “Love Song.” The band’s take on Tears For Fears’ “Everybody Wants To Rule The World” is so well-deservedly awful toward a Mercyful Fate manner that it’s the best on board. A hearty “meh” to this. B-

Playlist

• I haven’t trawled through this week’s list of new CD releases that can only be found on the top-secret list we professional music journos consult when we put on our nappy fez hats and begin writing our edgy newspaper columns (psst, Amazon.com is the most reliable place, really, but we always tell readers we use Metacritic, just so you’ll think we’re actual wizards), so I don’t yet know what rock ’n’ roll albums are coming out this Friday, Aug. 18. There’s a reason for my telling you all this; it’s because I predict that a holiday album will be in the list, being that Christmas is so close (anyone have some liquid nitrogen I could spray on myself to get a little relief from all the insane heat?), so let’s have at it, let’s look at the list and see who’s going to be the first dumb band/artiste to take the plunge this year and try to impress us rock journos with their polite renditions of “O Holy Night” and whatever, even though, ironically enough, said band/artiste is most famous for “having beefs” and/or getting arrested and publicly canceled for some totally Christmas-y act of sexual depravity or etc., let me go take a gander here, dum de dum — Ack! Ack! I win, and I’m not kidding, I hadn’t looked at the list yet: It’s actress/singer Renee Rapp, who plays Leighton Murray in the HBO Max series The Sex Lives of College Girls, with an album called Snow Angel! The title track has a happy-gloom-chill feel to it, like Lana Del Rey, except Rapp’s singing is more gimmicky/interesting than that, sort of yodel-y. OK, it’s not a hardcore Christmas tune, but it is definitely Christmas-minded, toward a calculated, corporate fashion, because the lyrics don’t include words like “Christmas tree” or “Kringle,” but there are references to frozen noses and boyfriends, so tough noogies, guys, I’m calling it, I win, so let’s hop on Yukon Cornelius’ North Pole sleigh and go be Christmas-y and independent together! Wahoooo!

• Oh, look, the guys in the garage-punk band originally named Orinoka Crash Suite have changed the band’s name again, this time to Osees! Actually, I’m a day late and a dollar short or something, because their new album, Intercepted Message, is their fourth one released under the new moniker, isn’t it the best when bands change their names and you have to spend a good 10 percent of your column explaining that to your readers instead of describing their music? I sure do, and I probably went over this whole sordid story the last time I talked about them in this space, but we’re almost out of room for talking about this new LP, so what say we take a listen to the new single, “Stunner!” OK, it’s a cross between Flaming Lips and Primus, more or less, “boasting” a bunch of whirring space-guitar-noise and vocals that are in the Captain Beefheart realm, which means — oh, whatever, I’m not going to try to get pedagogic about this nonsense, it’s a joke song, whatever, let’s move this along.

• The three dudes from The Xcerts are originally from Scotland, but now they want to be called a British band because they moved to England. Kind of sad, isn’t it? They were around 13 years old when they first formed the band, and their upcoming fourth LP is Learning How To Live And Let Go. One of the tunes, “Blame,” has some art-rock guitar to it, but the vocals are pretty Weezer-ish, if your stomach could tolerate something of that ilk.

• We’ll call it a wrap with New York City-based rocker Margaret Glaspy, whose new album, Echo The Diamond, is on the way, spearheaded by the single “Act Natural,” which features Glaspy doing a Kate Havnevik warble over a rudimentary guitar riff. Not much to say about this one really.

If you’re in a local band, now’s a great time to let me know about your EP, your single, whatever’s on your mind. Let me know how you’re holding yourself together without being able to play shows or jam with your homies. Send a recipe for keema matar. Message me on Twitter (@esaeger) or Facebook (eric.saeger.9).

Save What’s Left, by Elizabeth Castellano

Save What’s Left, by Elizabeth Castellano (Anchor, 304 pages)

When Kathleen Deane’s cardiologist husband of 30 years decides to move out because of a “paradigm shift,” she experiences her own.

She decides to move from the suburbs of Kansas City to a New York beach town where a childhood friend is happily ensconced on a 50-acre potato farm, “unironically wearing overalls and aprons” and painting everything that doesn’t move white. Ten years near the sea have made this formerly free spirit of a friend “downright wholesome.” And Kathleen is convinced that by moving there, she, too, will find the sort of bliss her husband thinks he will find on a ’round-the-world cruise and then living in an RV.

What she finds, however, is a McMansion under construction next to the ocean-view shack that she purchased on the recommendation of a real-estate agent. And a life that is not quite what she envisioned.

This is not a tragedy, however, but pure comedy, a book-length stand-up routine with a punchline every few minutes. It’s Elizabeth Castellano’s comic distillation of her life growing up in a beach town on a peninsula in New York’s Suffolk County, where, as in the novel, development threatens to swallow much of the town’s character and charm.

In Save What’s Left, the fictional town is called Whitbey, and Kathleen is unwittingly absorbed into its drama when she buys a “Save What’s Left” bumper sticker at a local shop without knowing what it really means, and donates to a “community fund” that is funding something quite the opposite of what she imagined.

Whitbey is beautiful, as promised, but upon close inspection, there is much drama seething among the locals, making the hostilities of a typical suburban HOA seem docile by comparison.

The instigators seem to be a group of women known as the “Bay Mission,” who walk by Kathleen’s house every morning at exactly 7:16, so strict is their routine. When Kathleen gets on their mailing list, she deems the group something of a cult, despite its benign activities such as cleaning up the beach and creating a community zen garden. Every time Kathleen gets an email from the group, she says, “I half expect it to include a recipe for turning all the children of Whitbey into mice.”

But Kathleen herself is turning into a different person than she was when she arrived in Whitbey. Having tired of collecting orange jingle shells on the beach, she has turned her energies to questioning the legality of the ever-growing house under construction next to hers, which is constantly raining debris in her yard. She throws herself into anti-McMansion advocacy, writing a column for the local paper (that is hilariously rewritten by the editor) and showing up at every town council meeting, aided by a local man who had no interest in her cause but apparently wanted to be on television and likes the attention.

Meanwhile, Kathleen’s husband, who had been sending her postcards and gifts during his paradigm-changing trip around the world, turns up unexpectedly in an Airstream, with nowhere else to go.

Kathleen, who had said of her husband, “I don’t want to sound unkind, but, if a man leaves you in search of adventure, you want that man to choke to death on a deep-fried cricket in Beijing. You just do,” isn’t happy about this but allows him to camp in the driveway and use her electricity, not unlike the Griswold family’s Cousin Eddie. (It is, Kathleen reflects, the secret to a good marriage or a good divorce: “Someone needs to live in the driveway.”) Soon after, the monstrosity next door is finally finished and shows up on AirBnB as “Seaside Retreat. Modern Wonder.” (It has, after all, “four outdoor showers, five bathrooms, two washing machines, two full kitchens, and a waterfall.”)

At times the hijinks threaten to devolve into National Lampoon-style slapstick, but Castellano set out to write an anti-beach read, meaning one that slyly makes fun of typical beach reads while exaggerating the foibles of beach town life. She does this spectacularly. She also is a master of hilarious apropos-of-nothing asides, such as a running storyline about a Christmas card and letter that Kathleen and her family gets every year from someone they don’t know. (After her husband left, Kathleen was quick to send the letter-writer a card with her new address so that she gets the future Christmas cards in the divorce.)

Save What’s Left is a romp in the sun and sand, albeit without the physical irritants of sun and sand. It’s all fun, especially if you’ve ever loved a beach town, or thought about moving to one. And in that case, it’s also a warning.

As Kathleen says in the opening of the book: “I’m now the kind of horrible person who genuinely cares about what so-and-so had to say about the traffic from the chowder festival. I’m the kind of person who has an opinion about whether the beach sticker should be placed on the front or rear bumper of the car. I know more than one person named Bunny. … I’m that kind of person. The worst kind of person. I’m a beach person.” A

Album Reviews 23/08/10

Huey Lewis & The News, Sports [vinyl reissue] (Capitol Records)

I know right, 40 years late, but hey man, this is an actual reissue on vinyl, and another notable aspect of this occasion is the fact that I’ve never reviewed a Huey Lewis record, unless I have, but I doubt it. Anyway, Lewis’ pull quote from the press release for this one goes, “In the early ’80s, there was no internet, no alternative scene, and really only one avenue to success; a hit single on CHR (Contemporary Hit Radio)” and blah blah blah, out of touch much, and plus some nonsense about the band producing this album themselves and such, which I don’t believe for a millisecond, but at any rate, for the benefit of all the millennials I see grumbling on social media about how much better the ’80s were, this album is solid proof that they weren’t, because you had to hear this album’s singles everywhere you went on this planet, from the beep-beep dingbat-pop megahit “Heart Of Rock n Roll” and its evil twin, “I Want a New Drug” to the mindless heavy rock-riffed “Heart and Soul” and the doo-wop pandering of “If This Is It.” So, young folks, if you want to know what 1985 sounded like, it was this: If you weren’t being subjected to the eleventy-zillionth listen of one of the singles from Michael Jackson’s Thriller (the only album to beat this one, sales-wise, that year), it was one of these monstrosities, so really, count your blessings. B

Girlschool, WTFortyfive? (Silver Lining Music)

No, the titular “forty-five” here doesn’t reference Donald Trump, it’s a reminder that this British all-female heavy metal band has been at it for 45 years, exhibiting a knack for technical-enough riffing of a Judas Priest-ish bent all the while, meaning that they’re better musicians than the guys in, say, Saxon, for example, which isn’t supposed to matter anyway in this era of so-called “another politics,” in which activists and such are expected to stop disrespecting others based on anachronistic power levels and whatnot, in other words it doesn’t really matter whether it’s a guy or a girl shredding on guitar, it just is. A noble thing, that, but opening tune “It Is What It Is” is the most generic ’80s-metal track I’ve heard since the entire B-side of the original Fright Night soundtrack. “Cold Dark Heart” is cool, though, a grinder about vampires I think, but, in a move to negate any credibility they could have attained otherwise, the band brought in Saxon frontman Biff Byford to holler a few syllables in the tosser “Born To Raise Hell.” Ah well. B

Playlist

• Aug. 11 is a Friday, which is as good an excuse as any for bands and artistes to put out albums, like the ones we will discuss today in this multiple-award-winning column! I haven’t won an award for my in-depth music journalism since 2007 or thereabouts, so if any reader out there is up for handing out an award, I’d be glad to hear from you, but what would be even better would be someone from New Hampshire Chronicle getting in touch with me for a long-overdue interview; I’d be glad to talk to them and discuss my decades as a rock journalist, especially if it meant that I’d get the chance to maybe run into Fritz Wetherbee at the WMUR snack machine and “totally accidentally” touch his awesome bow tie, and maybe chat with him about my adventures hunting antiques in Warren, N.H., and all the chickens that run around loose in the town, anecdotes I’d gladly allow him to use on his show! With regard to what new rock ‘n’ roll albums I’d suggest Fritz listen to, it’s hard to say, because if he insists on listening to proven great music like Jerry Lee Lewis and Bo Diddley, there’s not much I could offer the esteemed Nashuan this week aside from the latest record from The Hives, The Death Of Randy Fitzsimmons! The Hives are, of course, one of the few bands born during the aughts that’s worth even listening to, mostly because, hey, imagine five Swedish dudes who think they’re Jerry Lee Lewis, or the guy from The Cramps, or whichever. Honestly if Fritz and I were at the beach enjoying some cheap beach-stand chop suey right now, I would play the new single from this album, “Bogus Operandi,” in the car, and just crank it until he started bobbing his head over its post-Black Flag punkness. It’d be rad, and then we’d talk about all the ghosts and chickens he’s encountered in our beloved Granite State.

• Ha ha, speaking of Johnny Rotten and whatever, someone tell Fritz Wetherbee that Public Image Ltd. has a new album coming out this Friday, titled End Of World! Boy, I’ll bet my homeboy Fritz would suddenly find his bow tie spinning around like a cartoon Elmer Fudd pinwheel if he heard this new single, “Car Chase,” because it’s a combination of ’80s krautrock and Ozzy Osbourne, sort of, and Johnny’s voice is cracking worse and worse every minute, which actually makes it cool.

• Ack, it’s a day that ends in ‘y,’ so there’s another Neil Young album for me to deal with. Chrome Dreams was supposed to be released in 1977, but it wasn’t. Or not, it seems like YouTube has plenty of video versions of the gentle, breezy, strummy snore-along “Will to Love,” a song that’s decent enough but doesn’t go much of anyplace, not that that’s ever been part of the plan with that dude. Aside from “Ohio” and “Southern Man” I guess. Oh, forget it. Next.

• We’ll end with indie-whatever stalwart Bonnie Prince Billy, who has a new album, Keeping Secrets Will Destroy You, coming out in like 10 or 15 minutes! One of the songs is “She Is My Everything,” and in it he sounds like an off-key Peabo Bryson, and he’s singing over a folk guitar, and then he adds some oboe to make it completely unpalatable. I love all the hot new music jams, folks!

If you’re in a local band, now’s a great time to let me know about your EP, your single, whatever’s on your mind. Let me know how you’re holding yourself together without being able to play shows or jam with your homies. Send a recipe for keema matar. Message me on Twitter (@esaeger) or Facebook (eric.saeger.9).

The Heat Will Kill You First, by Jeff Goodell

The Heat Will Kill You First, by Jeff Goodell (Little, Brown and Co., 385 pages )

The effects of a warming planet seem less obvious in New England than in, say, Phoenix, Arizona, where it is 115 degrees Fahrenheit as I write. Except, of course, for the recently flooded towns in Vermont. And the hazy smoke that keeps drifting down here from Canada.

We can argue until the cows come home about whether we sit on the precipice of weather-driven, man-made calamity, but Jeff Goodell’s mind is made up. Heat, he says, is “an extinction force that takes the universe back to its messy beginnings. Before there was light, there was heat. It is the origin of all things and the end of all things.” And he is 100 percent certain about what is driving recent extreme weather: “250 years of hell-bent fuel consumption, which has filled the atmosphere with heat-trapping carbon dioxide.”

Goodell is a journalist who has been writing about climate for more than a decade. The cover of his 2017 book The Water Will Come looks like a still from a dystopian movie, with a trio of skyscrapers nearly submerged in seawater. Now Goodell is back with the equally alarming title The Heat Will Kill You First. His timing is impeccable.

Smart people on either side of the debate can disagree about whether recent record-setting heat waves are blips in time or a uniquely dangerous threat to humankind. But there’s no disputing that Goodell is an engaging writer at the top of his game. He’s like the love child of Ed Yong and James Patterson, with a little bit of Rachel Carson thrown in, which is to say he writes science-based, dystopian thrillers.

He acknowledges that small changes in global temperatures in recent centuries (overall, we’re up 2.2 degrees) don’t seem particularly scary. “Who can tell the difference between a 77-degree day and an 81-degree day?” he asks. … “Even the phrase ‘global warming’ sounds gentle and soothing, as if the most notable impact of burning fossil fuels will be better beach weather.”

But heat is deadlier than most of us think, he says. The human body is generally a well-regulated heat-generating machine, but it doesn’t take a whole lot of excess heat to kill us. Internally, there’s less than 10 degrees difference between our normal, everything’s-fine temperature of 98 degrees and the catastrophic cell death and organ failure that can occur at 107 degrees. And tragically, we get new examples of this almost every year when another fit athlete dies from heat stroke that occurs during a run or a football practice.

To drive this point home, Goodell recounts the story of the California couple who died with their baby and dog on an otherwise unremarkable day hike close to their home. The deaths, which made national news because they were originally so puzzling, were eventually determined to be from hyperthermia and dehydration. It had been in the 70s when they started the hike going downhill, but temperatures exceeded 100 on their way back up, and all appeared to have died of heat stroke.

“Just being alive generates heat. But if your body gets too hot too fast — it doesn’t matter if that heat comes from the outside on a hot day or the inside from a raging fever — you are in big trouble,” he writes. As our internal temperature rises past 103 degrees, blood pressure falls and people pass out. Interestingly, “This is in fact an involuntary survival mechanism, a way for your brain to get your body horizontal and get some blood to your head. At this point, if you get help and can cool down quickly, you can recover with little permanent damage.” But if you fall in a hot place and there is no one to help, you may never wake up.

Of course, people freeze to death when they fall unintended in cold places; falling and extreme temperatures are bad generally. But heat, Goodell says, is an “extinction force” and “the engine of planetary chaos, the invisible force that melts the ice sheets that will flood coastal cities around the world. It dries out the soil and sucks the moisture out of trees until they are ready to ignite. It revs up the bugs that eat the crops and thaws the permafrost that contains bacteria from the last ice age.” The next pandemic, he predicts, may come from some recently thawed ancient bacteria.

It’s not just humans at risk in extremely hot temperatures; others struggle in ways we normally wouldn’t think about. In the heat wave that hit Portland in 2021, for example, people were finding an unusually high number of injured baby birds on the ground. They weren’t dehydrated. They were leaving their hot, crowded nests before they were old enough to fly. And yes, dogs pant in heat since they can’t sweat like humans or plants, but some dogs fare better in heat than others, and not just because of differences in their fur. “Dogs with flat faces and wide skulls, such as English bulldogs, are twice as likely to succumb to heat as beagles, border collies and other breeds with more pronounced snouts.”

There is hardly a page without an odd, memorable fact like that, and a beautifully crafted paragraph that, as an added bonus, kindles a vapor of fear. Goodell, a longtime writer for Rolling Stone, is a pro at the dialogue-rich narrative style that keeps readers turning pages. Also, he’s really, really worried about us. From the sea creatures dying in warming oceans to deliverymen and farm workers passing out from heat stroke, he sounds the alarm on every page: you don’t know what is coming, you don’t know what is here.

In air-conditioned offices and homes, it can seem a bit overwrought, but, as he points out, there is a big divide between “the cool and the damned.” The affluent have central air conditioning while the poor swelter in homes without AC, or with old, inefficient units they can hardly afford to turn on. The disparity is worse in poorer countries. “Two hundred and twenty million people live in Pakistan, but there are fewer than a million air conditioners in the country,” Goodell writes. Economic inequality will be manifest in a “thermal gap,” he said, in which some people will fare better than others.

Goodell seems doubtful that things will improve; he notes that, were carbon emissions to cease today, carbon dioxide remains in the atmosphere for hundreds of years, but also acknowledges that human beings are adaptable and are already coming up with new ways to live; some cities, for example, are painting streets white to deflect heat. In other words, most of us can probably survive this — if the heat doesn’t kill us first. A

Stay in the loop!

Get FREE weekly briefs on local food, music,

arts, and more across southern New Hampshire!