Category: Pop

Album Reviews 22/04/28

May Erlewine, Tiny Beautiful Things (Warner Records)

Some really gentle, very pretty stuff here engineered for comfortably settled womenfolk who enjoy sipping chai tea while gazing out the window at lazy rains. This Maggie Gyllenhaal lookalike is from Big Rapids, Michigan, and drew her inspiration for this full-length from the similarly titled book by Rumpus advice columnist Cheryl Strayed. Erlewine has the perfect voice for such a thing, wedged somewhere between Natalie Imbruglia and Jewel, and the songs fit like your favorite super-thick socks, laid-back but earning attention as they putter along. The instrumental bits are always pleasurable, with piano, dobro, acoustic guitar working pretty much perfectly together to form pieces that evoke Americana and AOR-pop at the same time. “Your Someone” is outstanding, fluttering along on silken wings and really blooming at the chorus; “He Knows” borders on Taylor Swift’s early days (when she wrote actual songs); “Could Have Been” flirts with Billie Holiday torch. I can’t find anything wrong with this album at all. A+

Meshuggah, Immutable (Atomic Fire Records)

Oh man, are these guys good, and that’s coming from someone who’s basically a newcomer to their greatness, given that I generally avoid thrash metal and missed out on their stuff for seven full albums (I’ve still got a lot of catching up to do). Immutable is their ninth full-length, and the draw is, as always, Tomas Haake, the drummer for this Swedish tech-metal juggernaut. Here it is, if you want some juxtaposition in order to grok the technical abilities at work here: Dillinger Escape Plan is first-grade math, Meshuggah is quantum calculus. If I were stuck on a desert island with only one record, this one would be in the running as my choice, since it would take a lot of listens simply to understand what’s going on here, which is, namely, very advanced syncopated patterns and polyrhythms, a lot like progressive jazz in a way, as others have noted. But the base of the recipe isn’t post-bop, it’s thrash-metal that has to be heard to be believed. If the above is all old news to you, the first Godzilla-playing-with-a-bunch-of-telephone-poles tune is “The Abysmal Eye,” taking the band’s patented approach that just never gets old. Astonishing. A+

PLAYLIST

• Ay caramba, it’s already the last week of April, and there will be new albums coming your way on the 29th! There’s so many of them for me to pick and choose from this week, so let’s start with 900-year-old bong-collector Willie Nelson, whose 900th album, A Beautiful Time, is winging its way in trucks to the five people who still buy CDs at full retail price! Funny coincidence, I asked a friend whom he thought would make a great president of the United States, and he said Willie Nelson, so maybe that really isn’t just a meme, what do you think? I’ll tell you what I think, I think it’s one of the dumbest ideas I ever heard, having a bong in every room of the White House, and would he offer the Pope cannabis gummies when he came by? I don’t like it, and I probably won’t like this upcoming album’s first single either, it’s called “I’ll Love You Till The Day I Die,” but I’m going to find out right now. So there’s a video for it, and he’s stacking some playing cards on some table in a honky-tonk bar or something, and the song is a typical country-and-western slow-burner, about some girl he once talked to for a few minutes, but that short conversation changed him forever. There is slow piano and thoughtful strumming, in case you couldn’t possibly picture what might be going on here.

• Grammy-winning country songstress Miranda Lambert is known as the other person to marry Blake Shelton, and the first person to place third in the USA Network’s Nashville Star talent show, but that placement was enough to make her into a famous singer, so keep your chins up, people who place third in things. Lambert’s ninth full-length, Palomino, features a tune called “Music City Queen,” and I was actually kind of interested to hear it, because 1980s weirdos The B-52’s are guests on that song, but naturally there’s no advance of that song yet, so it looks like I’m stuck listening to a different single, called “Strange,” which is just a normal tune. She kind of sounds like Dolly Parton when she’s singing on this tune; it’s a pedestrian joint with an unplugged guitar part, then a Reba McEntire part and so on. It’s OK!

• When it comes to stomping industrial-rock madness, I don’t think German band Rammstein is relevant anymore, what with KMFDM still putting out albums and whatnot; I haven’t heard anything from them in years, but supposedly they’re not industrial metal anyway, their style is actually “Neue Deutsche Härte,” which is German for “new German hardness,” a genre that mixes ‘Neue Deutsche Welle’ (whatever that is), alternative metal, groove metal and elements of electro-industrial and techno. Either way, I was never really crazy about them, but here they are, in front of my face, proffering a new album, called Zeit. The title track has a really disgusting video, and the tune is slow and bombastic, and of course they sing in German. It’s about pirates or something with muskets, I can’t understand anything they’re singing, so let’s move on to the next whatsis.

• Lastly we have British indie-rock outfit Bloc Party, with their sixth full-length, Alpha Games! This band is OK, with their jagged Gang Of Four-style guitars and soccer-hooligan vocals, as heard on almost-hit-singles like “Banquet” and “Helicopter”; you’ve probably been exposed to their tunes before at sports bars and beach arcades, but it probably went in one ear and out the other, like, you were like, “Is that The Police? Rancid maybe?” and decided you didn’t care. The new single, “Traps,” is appropriately spazzy; it’s sort of like “Rock Lobster” but more boneheaded. It’s OK.

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).

Tobacco Wives, by Adele Myers

Tobacco Wives, by Adele Myers (William Morrow, 344 pages)

Is there any good reason for a parochial New Englander to read trade fiction set in the South?

I’d argue yes, although the stories need to be extra compelling, such as Kathryn Stockett’s The Help, a book about Black maids in 1960s Mississippi that turned out to also be a decent movie. However, novels that draw much of their oxygen from a particular setting have to work harder to appeal to readers in distant regions.

Adele Myers tries to do that in Tobacco Wives, a story set in her home state of North Carolina, where the tobacco industry reigned in the years after World War II. It’s the story of a teen, Maddie Sykes, who goes to live in a town, Bright Leaf, where almost everyone, from field hands to executives, gets their money from tobacco and worships it like a god.

Tobacco was for more than cigarettes, Maddie was told. “Farmers and gardeners misted their plants with tobacco-soaked water to keep moles and gophers away.” Doctors prescribed it for asthma attacks, “and, of course, we all used tobacco poultices to calm a croupy cough or beat back a bad cold.”

Maddie is an aspiring seamstress like her aunt, with whom she goes to live after her widowed mother decides a teenager in the house is inhibiting her hunt for a new husband. Aunt Etta, who lives alone, makes good money by outfitting the glamorous wives of tobacco executives, and Maddie dives eagerly into that world.

But she soon learns (cue ominous music) that there is an unseen danger in the community, something that seems to be afflicting everyone in the tobacco community.

There is, alas, no opportunity to be shocked at what the villain is ultimately revealed to be, not with Maddie coming home from her first visit to a tobacco factory with grainy black specks all over her hands and body. “My calves, my ankles, even between my toes, were caked in a sticky brown dust that smelled of tobacco. We couldn’t have been in the factory more than fifteen minutes and I looked like I’d been there all day.”

If that wasn’t enough of a spoiler, while Maddie was at the factory, she noted a “tall, forbidding fence covered with yellow and orange signs: AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. NO TRESPASSING. RESTRICTED AREA. VIOLATORS WILL BE PROSECUTED. I didn’t know there were so many ways to say ‘Keep Out.’”

Anyone who’s ever visited an Amazon warehouse has seen similar signs, but I digress. The point is, this is not so much foreshadowing as it is hitting us over the head with a shovel. Tobacco: Bad. Maddie: Good. We get it.

This sort of heavy-handed narration follows Maddie throughout the book, as she gets to know the people of Bright Leaf and starts to be concerned about seemingly unrelated health problems that dog them, from lost pregnancies to chronic asthma. At the same time, a local tobacco company is unveiling a new cigarette called MOMint, targeted for women. The mint-flavored cigarette is to be marketed as something that will calm nerves, ease indigestion and control appetite.

This sets up what little bit of tension there is in the novel: what Maddie should do about her increasing alarm about the effect of tobacco, given the impact it will have on the lives of the people she has grown to care about.

Tobacco Wives seems, in some way, a fictionalized knock-off of Kate Moore’s The Radium Girls, narrative nonfiction of 2017 that exposed the terrible impact of radium on young women who worked with it early in the 20th century, when the element was seen as a miracle substance, not a killer. Their story was also told in a movie and play, and I suppose Tobacco Wives is also headed to a big or small screen, although it feels stale compared to the radium story. To be fair, this is partly because the demonization of the tobacco industry is relatively new, owing to whistleblowers like Jeffrey Wigand (whose efforts were also made into a movie, The Insider, which starred Russell Crowe).

Tobacco Wives is a perfectly serviceable, middle-brow novel, and Myers adds a layer of interest by adding details about the war-related rationing that was going on at the time it was set. (Everyone knows about the tin foil, but I was interested to learn that fabric was also rationed.) But it suffers from a predictable villain made even more predictable by a debut novelist’s overenthusiastic foreshadowing. It might be a laborious read for the people of New England, particularly if they happen to smoke. The good people of North Carolina, however, will surely love the book, unless they happen to grow tobacco. C

Book Events

Author events

• WILD SYMPHONY READING AND CONCERT WITH DAN BROWN New Hampshire native and bestselling author of The Da Vinci Code Dan Brown will join the University of New Hampshire Wind Symphony to debut his classical work based on the musical album, released in conjunction with a corresponding children’s book of the same name. Sun., April 24, from 5 to 6:30 p.m. Johnson Theatre at University of New Hampshire (30 Academic Way, Durham). Free; purchase tickets in advance. Visit unh.universitytickets.com.

• BRANDON K. GAUTHIER Author presents Before Evil: Young Lenin, Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Mao, and Kim. Gibson’s Bookstore, 45 S. Main St., Concord. Wed., April 27, 6:30 p.m. Visit gibsonsbookstore.com or call 224-0562.

• SY MONTGOMERY Author presents The Hawk’s Way. Gibson’s Bookstore, 45 S. Main St., Concord. Tues., May 3, 6:30 p.m. Visit gibsonsbookstore.com or call 224-0562.

Book sales

• SPRING BOOK SALE Features thousands of hardbacks and paperbacks including fiction, nonfiction, mystery and a variety of children’s books, plus DVDs, CDs and audio books. Brookline Public Library, 4 Main St., Brookline. Sat., May 14, and Sun., May 15, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Poetry

• DOWN CELLAR POETRY SALON Poetry event series presented by the Poetry Society of New Hampshire. Monthly. First Sunday. Visit poetrysocietynh.wordpress.com.

Writers groups

• MERRIMACK VALLEY WRITERS’ GROUP All published and unpublished local writers who are interested in sharing their work with other writers and giving and receiving constructive feedback are invited to join. The group meets regularly; the next meeting is scheduled for Tues., April 5, from 5 to 7:15 p.m., and will be held virtually over WebEx Meetings. To reserve your spot, email pembrokenhtownlibrary@gmail.com.

Writer submissions

• UNDER THE MADNESS Magazine designed and managed by an editorial board of New Hampshire teens under the mentorship of New Hampshire State Poet Laureate Alexandria Peary. features creative writing by teens ages 13 to 19 from all over the world, including poetry and short fiction and creative nonfiction. Published monthly. Submissions must be written in or translated into English and must be previously unpublished. Visit underthemadnessmagazine.com for full submission guidelines.

Book Clubs

• BOOKERY Monthly. Third Thursday, 6 p.m. 844 Elm St., Manchester. Visit bookerymht.com/online-book-club or call 836-6600.

• GIBSON’S BOOKSTORE Online, via Zoom. Monthly. First Monday, 5:30 p.m. Bookstore based in Concord. Visit gibsonsbookstore.com/gibsons-book-club-2020-2021 or call 224-0562.

• TO SHARE BREWING CO. 720 Union St., Manchester. Monthly. Second Thursday, 6 p.m. RSVP required. Visit tosharebrewing.com or call 836-6947.

• GOFFSTOWN PUBLIC LIBRARY 2 High St., Goffstown. Monthly. Third Wednesday, 1:30 p.m. Call 497-2102, email elizabethw@goffstownlibrary.com or visit goffstownlibrary.com

• BELKNAP MILL Online. Monthly. Last Wednesday, 6 p.m. Based in Laconia. Email bookclub@belknapmill.org.

• NASHUA PUBLIC LIBRARY Online. Monthly. Second Friday, 3 p.m. Call 589-4611, email information@nashualibrary.org or visit nashualibrary.org.

Language

• FRENCH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE CLASSES

Offered remotely by the Franco-American Centre. Six-week session with classes held Thursdays from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. $225. Visit facnh.com/education or call 623-1093.

Vinyl destination

Record Store Day returns

By Jack Walsh

listings@hippopress.com

Each year thousands of people gather at independent record stores worldwide to celebrate the now unique pastime of collecting vinyl records. This holiday is known as Record Store Day — the festivities return on Saturday, April 23, and will often include barbecues, parades and performances from internationally known artists.

Store to store, record lovers also have the opportunity to purchase limited-edition vinyl records of their favorite bands. This holiday was created as an annual event to help maintain and boost sales at local independent shops.

There are 15 in New Hampshire that participate in Record Store Day, and more than 1,000 across the country. Chris Brown, chief financial officer of Bull Moose, proposed the idea in 2007. The indie music store chain has three locations in New Hampshire, including one in Salem.

“The general feeling out in the public, but also in the record industry itself, was really negative,” Brown said. “Chain stores had been closing and CD sales were down, but what was different was the independent stores were doing really well, and I felt that everybody should know. I also thought that we needed to do something for our customers.”

Brown never thought that RSD would be so attention-grabbing right away, but he hoped it would push the celebration of local and major bands, therefore ensuring music of all genres to be very much alive. It also seemed to have brought back the public’s interest in vinyl records, as CDs were at that time much more prevalent. The first RSD had signings by Metallica in the band’s hometown of San Francisco, which was just the start of this global celebration.

There will be a handful of limited-edition releases at each of Bull Moose’s stores, such as a remastered version of Rick Astley’s Whenever You Need Somebody on a vinyl LP, as well as David Bowie’s Brilliant Adventure and a deluxe two-sided vinyl release of Stevie Nicks’ Bella Donna. The Salem shop will likely receive a relatively diverse stock of limited vinyls, although it’s unclear yet which shipments are going to which locations. Collectors should intend on browsing on the earlier side in order to stand a better chance at seeing the records they may wish to buy. The store will open on Record Store Day at 8 a.m., according to its website. It is estimated that only one to seven copies of each vinyl will be available, and the store will not reserve anything for customers — everything is first come, first served.

Another local spot taking part in RSD is Metro City Records, on Somerville Street in Manchester. Owner Bill Proulx has been in business for 35 years, originally starting out as a record label before moving into retail wholesale distribution. Proulx said he is now down to strictly retail, due to economic factors.

“I watched, right here in this store, vinyl go away and come back again,” he said. “Trying to get the few releases that are available to our side of the country … there are a lot of these releases, [but] they sometimes only make 100 or 1,000 [vinyl copies]. Some … make as many as 15,000, but many are in very, very small quantities. Sometimes we don’t always get what we order.”

Proulx added that this year there should only be around 350 releases, as opposed to previous years, when there tended to be up to 900. For this RSD, however, Proulx believes that he will receive most of what he has requested. A special release he is looking forward to, and one he said will be very popular among record collectors, is the Grateful Dead’s live vinyl box set.

Album Reviews 22/04/21

Cypress Hill, Back In Black (Mnrk Records)

You have to admire the timing of this ’90s rap group’s latest release, given that the last Super Bowl halftime show was a showcase of that genre, and the rush will surely be on to revive the whole thing. And that’s OK with me, at least in the case of this crew, whose Latin-tinged cannabis anthem “Insane in the Brain” became a meme before there were memes (my favorite use of the song was its appearance in the movie Bulworth, if that matters to you). They released an album called Elephants on Acid a couple of years ago, in case you were too stoned to notice, but this LP brings them back to their OG roots. The songs aren’t total cartoons, which kind of detracts from the half-joke tunes I’d expected, but they’re definitely old-school, meant for sitting in a 1964 Lowrider and hoping there isn’t a cop within smelling distance. OK, there’s “Open Ya Mind,” which is more plugged into their sillier side, but the subject matter is serious, at least to them: Did you know that weed is still illegal in some parts of the U.S., which means some people will go to jail for it while others will make mad bank selling it? It’s true! B

Nazareth, Surviving The Law (Frontiers Music s.r.l.)

Holy crow, Scottish arena-metal dudes Nazareth, who are like one million years old, now hold the distinction of having the coolest album cover in history (the one for Hair Of The Dog, which is just endlessly fascinating) and the worst (this one). I was just Twittering with a few folks who agreed with me that the fadeout solo to HOTD’s “Changin’ Times” is the greatest solo ever, but that was back when this band was actually Nazareth. The only surviving original member is, as is always the case, the bass player, Pete Agnew; crazed-banshee-voiced singer Dan McCafferty died a couple of years ago and has been replaced by Carl Sentence, who sounds like a cross between Paul Stanley and David Whatsisface from Whitesnake. The guitar sound, courtesy of long-time new guy Jimmy Murrison, is blissfully heavy, and as for the tunes, they’re OK: Opener “Strange Days” is rote hair-metal; “You Gotta Pass It Around” wants to grow up to be Zep’s “When The Levee Breaks”; “Runaway” reminds us that band Fastway was once kind of awesome; “Better Leave It Out” pickpockets Living Colour’s “Cult Of Personality.” Above average stuff, all hail Naz (RIP). A-

PLAYLIST

• April 22 is a Friday, which means a bunch of new albums will be out, for your perusal, enjoyment and, mostly, general disappointment. But that’s being cynical, and I won’t be that today, because the summer is all but here, and when it comes I will be content, eating clams and french fries and random Doritos by the seashore, just looking at all the peeps and judging. But there is news in the world of rock ’n’ roll, because the quirky, half-cocked Australian psychedelic rock scene that was spearheaded by King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard has another contender you’ve probably never heard of, namely the Psychedelic Porn Crumpets! Let’s welcome these Crumpets to our pages with our traditional first question, folks, ready: Just how bad is this band anyway? Well, I don’t know yet, but if they’re anything like King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, we can expect a band with the brains of Black Lips, the sloppiness of the guy who sings the “Rock ’n’ Roll McDonald’s” song from the documentary Supersize Me, and a lot of sub-Flaming Lips pseudo-psychedelic nonsense. But I’m getting ahead of myself, not that I don’t want this part to be over already, so let’s put this new album, Night Gnomes, on the barbie, like an Australian shrimp, and see if I can stand more than 10 seconds of whatever these guys are doing, what do you say? They’re influenced by Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, and The Beatles, which would normally herald a depleted-soil disaster if a bunch of millennials were trying to do it, but no, the single “Bubblegum Infinity” is pretty cool indeed, a grungy, high-octane cross between Oasis and early Soundgarden, kind of. Welcome to the pages of The Hippo, Psychedelic Porn Crumpets, I’m glad to have you aboard, but do keep in mind that it’ll be all downhill from here.

• I never really liked Bon Iver at all, but too bad for me, because here’s a new album from Bon Iver’s drummer and second-banana singer, S. Carey! His singing has been compared to — I hope you’re sitting down, folks — Beach Boy singer Brian Wilson, so I am sitting here with a barf bag nearby, ready to listen to the 42,000th hipster singer to ruin Beach Boys music for posterity. No, let’s not be like that, for all I know, this guy’s new album, Break Me Open, will amaze me; maybe it will dazzle me with totally not-awkward existentialism as experienced by overeducated dunces and enthrall me with its acumen. Here’s one of the songs, the title track, are you ready? OK, it’s sad and floaty and chill, and Carey sings like the Beach Boys of course. It is morose and sad, a tune that should be playing in the background as your girlfriend drives off in her 3-foot-long electric vehicle, looking at you sadly but determinedly, never to see you again. Brings a tear to my eye, folks, let’s move on.

• Right, then, here’s another Australian, a dream-pop singing girl called Hatchie, with her latest album, Giving The World Away. The single is called “Quicksand,” and it’s kind of nice, especially if you like Echosmith, because she sounds exactly like Sydney Sierota during the hook. I would call it influencer-technopop; it’s dreamy and catchy, meaning most people would like it, which of course makes me very suspicious.

• We’ll wrap up this week with Skinty Fia, the third LP from Irish post-punk band Fontaines D.C.! If you’re one of the five people who actually still watch the Tonight show, you saw these guys perform “Boys in the Better Land,” in 2019, but as for the here and now, the band’s new single “Jackie Down The Line” is a cross between Violent Femmes and Blur in mellow mode, meaning I have no use for it whatsoever.

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 Kaiju Preservation Society, by John Scalzi

The Kaiju Preservation Society, by John Scalzi (Tor, 258 pages)

What kind of creature is Godzilla? If you answered “giant lizard,” you’ve got lots of company, but you’re wrong.

Godzilla and other movie monsters out of East Asia have a formal name — kaiju — which translates roughly to “strange beast.” And kaiju are at the center of the new novel by John Scalzi, a popular writer of science fiction who lives in Ohio. The Kaiju Preservation Society is a fun and engaging story that perfectly entwines the real life of the past two years with an alternative universe where kaiju dwell.

It begins with the untimely firing of Jamie Gray, a well-educated employee of a DoorDash-type startup that calls its gig workers “deliverators” and requires them to announce that it is their “passion” to deliver their customers’ vegan egg rolls and Korean fried chicken.

Jamie loses his job at the start of the pandemic and can’t find anything else, so he’s reduced to delivering for his former employer to pay his bills. One of his regular customers on the Lower East Side of New York turns out to be someone he vaguely knew, and they strike up a conversation about why a former Ph.D. candidate is now delivering food. (The sly punchline: “I was looking down the barrel of adjunct professorships for the rest of my life.”)

As it turns out, the customer, named Tom Stevens, has a job opportunity for Jamie, because one of his team members had just come down with Covid-19. He doesn’t explain much about the job — only that it’s for an “animal rights organization” that works with large animals, and that the job requires only “a warm body that can lift things.” It turns out to be a job that pays extremely well, includes a $10K signing bonus and even covers his monthly rent and student-loan payments.

Jamie is desperate enough for a reliable income that he accepts the position with no further information. And he doesn’t back down even when the recruiting officer tells him that the animals are “very wild, very dangerous” and that death is a possible outcome of employment, so he would need a will, an alarming number of shots and a Covid test involving a “a cotton swab through my nostril all the way back to my brain.”

By this point, Jamie has established himself as a totally endearing narrator, possessed of a snarky sense of humor that could have gotten him a job as a writer for late-night TV. (When the recruiter asks if he has any dietary restrictions, Jamie says he disdains vegan cheese because it is “orange and white sadness that mocks cheese and everything it stands for.”)

And Scalzi is a master at crafting snappy dialogue seeded with bon mots, making the story flow easily, even when it leaves the solid footing of early pandemic life in the U.S. and flies into another dimension enabled by nuclear explosions, where an Earth look-alike is populated with strange flying beasts the size of small mountains and other strange animals.

Yeah, it’s weird, and it gets even weirder when there are billionaire tourists who come to this alternative Earth to “pet the monsters.” And when a complication is revealed that threatens life on the “real” Earth, requiring Jamie to do much more than the “lifting things” he signed on to do.

It’s pretty astonishing that Scalzi was able to craft a science-fiction story that so perfectly aligns with the pandemic, while even throwing in a lot of talk about nuclear bombs, which definitely weren’t in the conversation in March 2020 but suddenly are now a foreboding part of the news. It’s even more astonishing that Scalzi wrote this one in the span of two months — February and March 2021. (There’s a super interesting back story to how that happened that Scalzi reveals in his author’s note, and that alone is worth the price of the book, especially if you’ve ever had a malign computer eat your work.)

Although there are shades of Jurassic Park here, The Kaiju Preservation Society is not preachy or brooding; it’s more like a timeline cleanser on Twitter, something light and fun and memorable. I wasn’t surprised to learn that it’s already been picked up by Fox Entertainment for serialization.

B+

Book Notes

At the recent Grammy Awards, rapper Jay-Z became the artist with the most lifetime nominations, with a total 83. The person he surpassed is Quincy Jones, who had 80 nominations between 1961 and 2019.

But Jones is far from retired and is out with a new book. 12 Notes: On Life and Creativity (Abrams Image, 192 pages) is described by the publisher as a “self-development guide,” which sounds a couple of bars better than self-help. The youngest millennials may not be familiar with Jones, but they’ll know the artist who wrote the foreword, The Weeknd, who says that Jones “changed not only the course of my life, but the course of history.”

On the subject of history, there are also two new books about royalty — the American kind, and the British monarchy.

American royalty, of course, would be the Kennedys, and journalist Neal Thompson has written what looks to be an engrossing account of the first couple of that lineage to arrive on U.S. soil. Bridget and Patrick Kennedy were poor Irish Catholics, and when Patrick died of tuberculosis at age 35, his body had to be carted outside of Boston because the city didn’t allow his kind to be buried in its cemeteries.

Thompson began researching the couple after covering the plane crash that took the life of John F. Kennedy Jr. in 1999, and early reviews of The First Kennedys (Mariner, 352 pages) are great.

Then there’s Queen of Our Times, a biography of Queen Elizabeth II, by Robert Hardman. You’ll have to be a serious fan of the monarchy to get through this, coming in at 690 pages (Pegasus Books). Then again, she’s been queen for seven decades, so there was a lot to write about.

For less history and more gossip, you’ll have to wait a few weeks for Tina Brown’s The Palace Papers (Crown, 592 pages), a follow-up to her 2007 bestseller The Diana Chronicles. It releases April 26.

Book Events

Author events

• MAGGIE SHIPSTEAD Author presents The Great Circle. Virtual event hosted by Gibson’s Bookstore in Concord. Wed., April 13, 6 p.m. Visit gibsonsbookstore.com or call 224-0562.

• EMMA LOEWE Author presents Return to Nature: The New Science of How Natural Landscapes Restore Us, in conversation with author Hannah Fries. Virtual event hosted by Gibson’s Bookstore in Concord. Wed., April 13, 7 p.m. Registration is required. Held via Zoom. Visit gibsonsbookstore.com or call 224-0562.

• MARIE BOSTWICK Author presents her new book The Restoration of Celia Fairchild. Bookery, 844 Elm St., Manchester. Fri., April 15, 5:30 p.m. Visit bookerymht.com or call 836-6600.

• ANNE HILLERMAN Author presents The Sacred Bridge. Virtual event hosted by Gibson’s Bookstore in Concord. Tues., April 19, 7 p.m. Held via Zoom. Registration is required. Visit gibsonsbookstore.com or call 224-0562.

• BRANDON K. GAUTHIER Author presents Before Evil: Young Lenin, Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Mao, and Kim. Gibson’s Bookstore, 45 S. Main St., Concord. Wed., April 27, 6:30 p.m. Visit gibsonsbookstore.com or call 224-0562.

Poetry

• DOWN CELLAR POETRY SALON Poetry event series presented by the Poetry Society of New Hampshire. Monthly. First Sunday. Visit poetrysocietynh.wordpress.com.

Writers groups

• MERRIMACK VALLEY WRITERS’ GROUP All published and unpublished local writers who are interested in sharing their work with other writers and giving and receiving constructive feedback are invited to join. The group meets regularly; the next meeting is scheduled for Tues., April 5, from 5 to 7:15 p.m., and will be held virtually over WebEx Meetings. To reserve your spot, email pembrokenhtownlibrary@gmail.com.

Writer submissions

• UNDER THE MADNESS Magazine designed and managed by an editorial board of New Hampshire teens under the mentorship of New Hampshire State Poet Laureate Alexandria Peary. features creative writing by teens ages 13 to 19 from all over the world, including poetry and short fiction and creative nonfiction. Published monthly. Submissions must be written in or translated into English and must be previously unpublished. Visit underthemadnessmagazine.com for full submission guidelines.

Book Clubs

• BOOKERY Monthly. Third Thursday, 6 p.m. 844 Elm St., Manchester. Visit bookerymht.com/online-book-club or call 836-6600.

• GIBSON’S BOOKSTORE Online, via Zoom. Monthly. First Monday, 5:30 p.m. Bookstore based in Concord. Visit gibsonsbookstore.com/gibsons-book-club-2020-2021 or call 224-0562.

• TO SHARE BREWING CO. 720 Union St., Manchester. Monthly. Second Thursday, 6 p.m. RSVP required. Visit tosharebrewing.com or call 836-6947.

• GOFFSTOWN PUBLIC LIBRARY 2 High St., Goffstown. Monthly. Third Wednesday, 1:30 p.m. Call 497-2102, email elizabethw@goffstownlibrary.com or visit goffstownlibrary.com

• NASHUA PUBLIC LIBRARY Online. Monthly. Second Friday, 3 p.m. Call 589-4611, email information@nashualibrary.org or visit nashualibrary.org.

Album Reviews 22/04/14

Julieta Eugenio, Jump (Greenleaf Music)

Sorry, but the first thing that jumped out at me is how huge this Argentinian jazz up-and-comer’s tenor sax is. That thing is huge, like she could probably use it as a decoy in order to use the carpool lane. But I digress already, which isn’t fair, because lest we forget, the music’s the thing in jazz, and what a masterful collection this is, single-handedly helmed by nowadays-New Yorker Eugenio, accompanied by an upright bassist guy and a drummer. That may look a bit sparse on paper, but Eugenio fills all the space with divine runs and passages, like a kid trying to cover an entire page with their favorite crayon, rub rub rub. The CSI mostly reveals various shades of utterly charming post-bop of course, some neo-swing (“Snowbirds”), and a ballad that isn’t too obligato (“For You”). She got her master’s degree at Aaron Copland School, if that makes any difference to you, but this is far from any sort of trite academic exercise. A+

Roland & Albert & The Orb, Roland & Albert Meet The Orb Upcountry in Uganda (Orbscure Recordings / Cooking Vinyl)

Well, what a stop-the-presses moment this is, folks. If you and I were just being casual and you asked me what the weirdest band in the world is, chances are very good that I’d say it’s London afterparty club act The Orb, unless — OK, no, The Books are weirder, but they’re broken up. And that’s all moot anyway because of this project, which finds the Orb guys futzing with an EP’s worth of traditional blues and Ugandan rhythms originally recorded by (spoiler alert, these guys are obscure) Roland & Albert. I know, I know, who cares, but I’m telling you, these beats are completely addictive, right from the EP’s leadoff track “Squirrels In Jumpsuits,” whose mellow, urban vibe is driven by plinky guitar, ’70s synth and — because it’s The Orb, a constant stream of random dialog. It’s stuff that even I could fall asleep to on a plane, which says something, because all I think about on planes is, you know, gravity’s effect on large metal objects. Curiosity-seekers will thank me for this. A+

PLAYLIST

• April 15 is this Friday, I hope you will not be arrested for doing anything untoward with your tax documents. It is also a day for new albums, like the newest one from indie-rock fixture Kurt Vile, a guy I’ve been meaning to look into a little bit, and now I have no choice, because at this writing there isn’t too much else for me to talk about in the way of new releases. His influences range from the unassailable (Neil Young, Tom Petty, Dinosaur Jr.) to the unbearable (Pavement); all I really know about him is that he helped launch the band The War On Drugs in 2008, and they are still around, floating Guster-ish tunes that I have no interest in whatsoever. That doesn’t bode well for the proceedings at hand, I know, but life is always full of surprises, so I will surf over to YouTube to check out “Hey Like a Child,” a song from his new album, (watch my moves), and yes, the album title is stylized precisely like that, because tiresome gimmicks are an important ingredient in good rock ’n’ roll. Here, you’re near a phone or a computer, let’s listen to this song together. Hmm, it’s sort of Bob Dylan-ish I suppose, but he uses a weird “wobbly guitar” technique when he strums, which isn’t something I’ve heard before. That’s kind of cool, and the song is OK, if you like music that basically drones on without any ambition and has no drop or “cool part.” OK, that was enriching.

• Drum-playing human Evan J Cartwright had a good thing going with Canadian experimental-pop band U.S. Girls, whose specialty is quirky but mellow disco/soul-indie. He also had a pretty good thing going with the similarly girl-commanded quirk-folk band Weather Station, but he apparently got tired of being in good bands and has struck out on his own to release his first solo album, Bit By Bit. Ha ha, I actually like the first single, “And You’ve Got Nobuddy,” because the video has him just sitting down playing his drums, but there are no drums in the song, just a sleepy guitar, and his mouth moves along to the words, which are perfect for your favorite Generation Z doomer to laugh-and-cry-at-the-same-time to, viz: “I always had it in my mind that life was kidding this whole time.” I hope this strange little man gets his music on an episode of Euphoria someday, because it’d be fitting, and I’m sure he’d call it a successful career right afterward and, with any luck, never darken my door with his joke songs ever again.

• OK, hold it, no, here’s an actual band folks, look, it’s Cancer Bats, with a new album called Psychic Jailbreak, I can hardly wait to talk about an album made by an actual band that does something more than joke songs and ringtones for dairy farmers! I’d say something critic-ish like “You’d have to have been living under a rock to have never heard of Cancer Bats before,” but that wouldn’t be fair; I’m probably the only person in New Hampshire who knows that the band is a semi-cool southern-rock/sludge metal outfit. But now you know, so let’s lend an ear to the album’s title track. Hmm, it’s got some doom-metal parts, and the singer basically just yells, and then it rips off Alice in Chains’ “Would.” Yes, this is the best thing on board so far this week.

• No, don’t leave yet, I have to tell you about Los Angeles-based singing girl Primer, whose new album Incubator is already getting press attention, because I’m about to pay attention to it now! The single, “Warning,” is really cool, an ’80s-tinged chillout with really nice syncopation courtesy of a tabla sample, or so it sounds. Her voice is kind of low and really listenable. (I’m glad there was one thing I could actually recommend out of this week’s really stinky barrel of fish.)

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).

Heartbreak, by Florence Williams

Heartbreak, by Florence Williams (W.W. Norton & Co., 279 pages)

Like termites and prairie voles, human beings seem made for monogamy or, to be precise, “pair-bonding.” We are among the 2 to 10 percent of animals who organize their lives in pairs, even if there is some occasional straying involved. (Even more remarkably, about 90 percent of birds have lifelong mates.)

But bereavement happens, either in death or divorce, and as the Irish rock band The Script told us, when a heart breaks, it don’t break even. That was the experience of journalist Florence Williams, whose 2017 book The Nature Fix explored why being outdoors makes us happier and healthier. Her new book is a “personal and scientific journey” into why breakups hurt so much, and while she’s primarily talking about divorce, the science also applies to grief over the death of a loved one.

Between 10 and 15 percent of divorced and bereaved people experience a debilitating inability to get past their heartbreak, a condition known as bereavement disorder or complicated grief. Williams doesn’t put herself into that category, but she was devastated when her husband of 25 years announced that he was moving out to find his soulmate when she was 50.

While she was able to function well enough, taking care of her children and continuing her work, she was shocked at the depth of her pain. She stopped eating and lost 20 pounds. “I felt power-washed by sadness and anxiety. I looked like a stray animal who was trying to paw her way out of a kill-shelter,” she writes.

Trying to understand why it was so difficult for her to recover, Williams began doing research, interviewing therapists and researchers who study love and loss. She learned that love is as much of a survival drive as it is an emotion, and that stress hormones increase even when monogamous partners are separated for a short time. When a longtime partner vanishes forever, the loss kindles ancient and evolutionary responses: the loss of safety and inclusion that are necessary for our well-being, the loss of connection to extended family, the loss of resources.

Having a stable relationship is even integral to our physical health: “Scores of robust studies across different cultures have shown that married people live longer, experience fewer cancers, strokes, and heart attacks, are more likely to survive serious illnesses, and are less likely to be depressed and overweight.”

Learning all this, of course, made Williams feel even worse. (“I was like, Please stop talking,” she wrote.) So she went to therapy. She gave lots of speeches. She accepted the invitation of a scientist — a divorced friend of a friend — to make out after a party under a cottonwood tree.

Here, Williams is able to show off that she is not just an able investigator and reporter, but an elegant wordsmith. She writes of that encounter with the scientist: “My hard little heart hiccuped and started to soften, along with everything else.”

Unfortunately, Williams’ first post-divorce swim in the dating pool didn’t end well, for deeply uncomfortable reasons, and her continued contact with this man may cause the reader to question her judgment. So, too, her inability to keep up with small things in the aftermath of her husband’s leaving. (She drove for months with an expired car registration, she admits.)

But an even harder reality arrives when Williams’ continued weight loss is finally diagnosed as Type 1 diabetes, which is most commonly diagnosed in children. She learned that high levels of cortisol can affect the production and regulation of insulin, and inflammation markers rise with sustained stress. One researcher told her of the “cellular carnage” of heartbreak, “This is one of the hidden landmines of human existence.”

At this point, the narrative becomes a confluence of Cheryl Strayed’s Wild and Williams’ own The Nature Fix. She resolutely sets out to heal her heart before her heartbreak kills her, on a wilderness trip in search of awe. This wasn’t just an emotional experiment, but a scientific one: She had her blood drawn before and after the trip to see if her health measures had improved.

Williams set out looking for prescriptions to easily fix her broken heart; readers who go to this book looking for the same might be disappointed. There’s no broken-heart pill; that gold mine still awaits anyone who might invent it, and even her experiments with psychedelic drugs didn’t seem to help.

But Williams’ journey is interesting and her research solid, and anyone suffering from a heartbreak of their own might benefit from her story. Just stay away from any scientist named Ennis who wants to kiss you under a cottonwood tree. B+

Book Notes

It’s probably no surprise that a memoir released in November was near the top of the charts on Amazon last week.

The author: actor Will Smith (assisted by a co-author, Mark Manson). Last year, Oprah Winfrey called it “the best memoir I’ve ever read,” and as everyone knows, she reads a lot. I read the opening when it first came out, but just re-read the first chapter in a new light, after Will’s assault of comedian Chris Rock at the Academy Awards.

The opening sentences of Chapter 1: “I’ve always thought of myself as a coward. Most of my memories of my childhood involve me being afraid in some way — afraid of other kids, afraid of being hurt or embarrassed, afraid of being seen as weak.” The memoir, Will, is from Penguin Press, 432 pages.

Not taking a side here, but Chris Rock has written a book, too. It came out in 1997, and Winfrey didn’t say a word, although the first page is literally a bit about her leaving a message on his answering machine declining to feature it in her book club. Rock This! is from Hyperion, 224 pages, and also in paperback.

Meanwhile, there’s a new book out about the Academy Awards that necessarily omits the most interesting thing that’s happened in years, as it was published in February. Best Pick (Rowman & Littlefield, 332 pages) has three authors: John Dorney, Jessica Regan and Tom Salinsky. They take us on a history of Oscars beginning in the 1920s, with close-ups of the best pictures and the authors weighing in on whether the Oscar was deserved. Looks like a winner.

If you care nothing about film and would rather be outdoors, you might be interested in Riverman, An American Odyssey (Deckle Edge, 272 pages) by Ben McGrath. It’s about the life of Dick Conant, a folk hero who traversed the country’s rivers alone in a canoe before disappearing in North Carolina while he was on his way from New York to Florida. McGrath has written about Conant before in The New Yorker; he expounds on those stories to fill in the details of Conant’s life, if not his death, which remains a mystery.

Book Events

Author events

• MAGGIE SHIPSTEAD Author presents The Great Circle. Virtual event hosted by Gibson’s Bookstore in Concord. Wed., April 13, 6 p.m. Registration required. Visit gibsonsbookstore.com or call 224-0562.

• EMMA LOEWE Author presents Return to Nature: The New Science of How Natural Landscapes Restore Us, in conversation with author Hannah Fries. Virtual event hosted by Gibson’s Bookstore in Concord. Wed., April 13, 7 p.m. Registration is required. Held via Zoom. Visit gibsonsbookstore.com or call 224-0562.

• MARIE BOSTWICK Author presents her new book The Restoration of Celia Fairchild. Bookery, 844 Elm St., Manchester. Fri., April 15, 5:30 p.m. Visit bookerymht.com or call 836-6600.

• ANNE HILLERMAN Author presents The Sacred Bridge. Virtual event hosted by Gibson’s Bookstore in Concord. Tues., April 19, 7 p.m. Held via Zoom. Registration is required. Visit gibsonsbookstore.com or call 224-0562.

• BRANDON K. GAUTHIER Author presents Before Evil: Young Lenin, Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Mao, and Kim. Gibson’s Bookstore, 45 S. Main St., Concord. Wed., April 27, 6:30 p.m. Visit gibsonsbookstore.com or call 224-0562.

Poetry

• REBECCA KAISER Poet presents Girl as Birch. Virtual event hosted by Gibson’s Bookstore in Concord. Mon., April 11, 7 p.m. Held via Zoom. Registration is required. Visit gibsonsbookstore.com or call 224-0562.

• DOWN CELLAR POETRY SALON Poetry event series presented by the Poetry Society of New Hampshire. Monthly. First Sunday. Visit poetrysocietynh.wordpress.com.

Writers groups

• MERRIMACK VALLEY WRITERS’ GROUP All published and unpublished local writers who are interested in sharing their work with other writers and giving and receiving constructive feedback are invited to join. The group meets regularly; the next meeting is scheduled for Tues., April 5, from 5 to 7:15 p.m., and will be held virtually over WebEx Meetings. To reserve your spot, email pembrokenhtownlibrary@gmail.com.

Writer submissions

• UNDER THE MADNESS Magazine designed and managed by an editorial board of New Hampshire teens under the mentorship of New Hampshire State Poet Laureate Alexandria Peary. features creative writing by teens ages 13 to 19 from all over the world, including poetry and short fiction and creative nonfiction. Published monthly. Submissions must be written in or translated into English and must be previously unpublished. Visit underthemadnessmagazine.com for full submission guidelines.

Book Clubs

• BOOKERY Monthly. Third Thursday, 6 p.m. 844 Elm St., Manchester. Visit bookerymht.com/online-book-club or call 836-6600.

• GIBSON’S BOOKSTORE Online, via Zoom. Monthly. First Monday, 5:30 p.m. Bookstore based in Concord. Visit gibsonsbookstore.com/gibsons-book-club-2020-2021 or call 224-0562.

• TO SHARE BREWING CO. 720 Union St., Manchester. Monthly. Second Thursday, 6 p.m. RSVP required. Visit tosharebrewing.com or call 836-6947.

• GOFFSTOWN PUBLIC LIBRARY 2 High St., Goffstown. Monthly. Third Wednesday, 1:30 p.m. Call 497-2102, email elizabethw@goffstownlibrary.com or visit goffstownlibrary.com

• NASHUA PUBLIC LIBRARY Online. Monthly. Second Friday, 3 p.m. Call 589-4611, email information@nashualibrary.org or visit nashualibrary.org.

Album Reviews 22/04/07

Jizzy Pearl’s Love Hate, Hell CA (Golden Robot Records)

I must have missed when this Hollywood hard rock band was making waves in Europe and elsewhere, like, apparently in 1990 they won Record Of The Year in readers’ polls put forth by magazines Kerrang and Metal Hammer. That of course doesn’t bode well for the here and now, this electronic zeitgeist wherein every song seems to have a trip-hop part, a noise part, a Mario Bros. soundtrack part, and then everyone goes back to not knowing the band even exists. OK, I’m riffing, but I’m so far behind on this column you’ll just have to deal, and whatever, we’re talking about a street-metal band that still sounds like Skid Row (anyone remember them? Anyone?) as we hear in album opener “One Hot Minute.” These guys are aware that Greta Van Fleet are huge right now, solely on the strength of ripping off 50-year-old Led Zeppelin songs, so they’ve “graced” us with “Acid Babe,” a vaguely “Black Dog” joint that would have fit on Zep’s Physical Graffiti LP, which still remains the most celebrated album of phoned-in swill in history. Fine for what it is, this CD would make a fine drink coaster if it isn’t your thing. B+

Chelsea Jade, Soft Spot (Carpark Records)

Over to the bloop-bling side of things, we find this South African-born singer-songwriter and record producer, who’s now based in Los Angeles, making yet more tuneage for the ritzier fashion shops at the local mall. Like I talk about in this week’s other review, it doesn’t take a lot of detective work to figure out the current zeitgeist, one born of now-decades of basically no musical education in public schools, which has basically left most younger listeners tilting their heads quizzically at the goings-on in the golden age of electronic music and just accepting the vibe as worthwhile. There’s nothing disagreeable here, don’t get me wrong; I appreciate the power of Jade’s wispy voice. But there’s nothing fascinating either, just subdued reggaeton and snap-dance, its intensity set to almost-none, and of course a lot of Billie Eilish-style stopping and starting, which is already well past its sell-by date. B

PLAYLIST

• On April 8 you will see a plethora of new albums in your Spotify, and now it can henceforth never be said that I’ve never used the word “plethora” in this award-winning column, please make a note of it. The summer draws closer, folks, it draws, and so the folks at the big record companies are gearing up for the big summer push, releasing new albums you can listen to while knowing you are completely safe from Covid, which is, as we speak, holding a national conference on what sort of insane mutation it’ll take so that the winter months are pretty much like the last 20 minutes of the film Contagion, I can hardly wait. But in the meantime, we have albums for your pleasure, if not for the aesthetic sense of any rational person, and so we will start with former relevant person Jack White, whose appetite for Big Macs rivals only that of the Hamburglar, who may actually be related to him as far as this reporter knows. Fear Of The Dawn is his new album, and I was rightly surprised to find that the title track is the most awesome tune I’ve heard from him since back when he was relevant and not a Hamburglar. It’s a buzzing mixture of Big Black no-wave and the 1960s acid-rock vibe of Norman Greenbaum’s “Spirit in the Sky,” I’m not kidding, you should check this out. If any Jack White song sounded like it really, really belonged on the soundtrack to one of those sequels to The Purge, it’s this one. It’s very cool, and if White were here in front of me right now I’d give him a Wendy’s Baconator as a richly deserved reward.

• After the death of best drummer of all time Neil Peart, the progressive-rock trio Rush was pretty much done. But there are still two guys left, one of whom is the band’s original guitarist, Alex Lifeson, who will release a new self-titled album with the band Envy Of None, a quartet that also features Coney Hatch’s Andy Curran, Alfio Annibalini and Maiah Wynne. Whatever, there are rumors of a “Rush reunion,” which would be like a Wright brothers reunion with just the two guys who ran out of way during the first plane’s takeoff at Kitty Hawk, but they could probably hire one of those guys who plays drums to Rush songs on YouTube; I mean after all, that’s how Journey ended up hiring their Steve Perry-soundalike singer, from some online video. But anyway, gang, sorry, I digress, let’s just go to the internet and listen to the first single from this silly album, “Look Inside.” Hm, it’s kind of noise-rock-ish, but there’s a girl humming something or other, so it sounds a lot like early M83, except kind of metallic. I’ll let this one pass, it’s acceptable.

• Canadian dude Orville Peck is sort of like the Deadmau5 of cowboy music, like, he wears a crazy fringed mask that he never takes off, so no one knows what he looks like. In fact, all Wikipedia knows is that he was “born in the Southern Hemisphere” (actually it’s safe to say that in reality he’s Daniel Pitout, drummer of the Canadian punk band Nü Sensae, because that’s the person who owns his songs according to ASCAP, and plus he has the same tattoos), but who cares, his new LP Bronco is coming out this week, led by the single “Daytona Sand,” a pretty hilarious song that’s like Elvis meets the Lone Ranger, you should download it or something.

• Lastly, we’ll do the new Calexico album, El Mirador, because when isn’t there a new Calexico album? The title track starts with an ambitious-enough cha-cha rhythm but then turns into the usual Yo La Tengo oatmeal; I’m not impressed.

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).

New Hampshire Jewish Film Festival Edition

The New Hampshire Jewish Film Festival kicks off Thursday, March 31, and runs through Sunday, April 10, with 16 films in all — 11 features, five shorts and four in-person screenings. Most of the movies also will be available virtually, either during the festival itself or during a bonus week, April 11 through April 24.

Tickets start at $12 for individual screenings or you can buy packages for screenings of all movies, virtual only ($118) or in-person and virtual ($130 for one person, $180 for two). See nhjewishfilmfestival.com for details and check out Meghan Siegler’s story on page 10 of the March 24 (last week’s) issue of the Hippo (which you can find at hippopress.com).

Thanks to the organizers, I got advance screenings to a few of the films.

The festival kicks off with an in-person screening of The Automat at the Rex Theatre (23 Amherst St. in Manchester) on Thursday, March 31, at 7 p.m. with a post-film discussion with director Lisa Hurwitz and collector/restorer Steve Stollman. If you can’t make it to that screening, you can also watch the movie during the virtual screening bonus week.

Either way, this movie, like the coffee it so lovingly describes, is well worth the price. This is an absolute charmer of a documentary about the Horn & Hardart chain of automats, which dominated the New York and Philadelphia restaurant scene in the early and mid 20th century. Put a nickel in a slot and open the compartment to reveal the pie or sandwich or creamed spinach you’d been craving, and another nickel gets you coffee so good that Mel Brooks sings a song about it over the documentary’s closing credits. Brooks appears throughout the documentary along with Carl Reiner and Elliott Gould explaining the place of this democratizing but also stylish eatery in their youth and young adulthood. (Descriptions of the restaurants’ gleaming floors, brass fixtures and high ceilings reminded me of discussions of similar era movie palaces and suggest a real luxury-for-all approach to design in public spaces — in case anybody is looking for a senior thesis.) Also appearing here are Wilson Goode, former mayor of Philadelphia, as well as Colin Powell and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, discussing both the food (there’s a lot of pie talk, be prepared to get hungry) and the social vibe created by a space where a business exec, a member of New York’s booming (in the 1920s) female workforce and a blue-collar worker would share a table and where recent immigrants to New York could feel welcome.

You also get the business side of the restaurant — how it rose and the forces that led to its fall. It’s a delightful story told with great fondness and humor.

I had the great good fortune of watching Fiddler’s Journey to the Big Screen at the start of Oscar weekend and it was a perfect way to kick off a weekend of thinking about the art and craft of movies. This documentary (which will be available during the bonus week) offers a great examination of all parts of the movie-making process as it looks at how the successful Broadway musical was translated into the 1971 movie. The songs and the way director Norman Jewison wanted to block a scene influenced the production design, just as the casting of the actresses and finding their comfortable key influenced the way John Williams brought the music of the stage musical to the screen. How do you recreate the look of a turn-of-the-20th-century shtetl in Ukraine some 60-plus years later, after wars and during the Cold War? Jewison discusses finding an Anatevka-like village in the former Yugoslavia.

Jeff Goldblum narrates this documentary, which features interviews with the three actresses who played the older daughters, Topol (the actor who played Tevye), and members of the film crew as well as people, like critic Kenneth Turan, talking about the story and the movie from a cultural-relevance perspective.

The shorts program features five films and you can purchase 48-hour access to the five-film block at any time from March 31 to April 10. The films are Ganef, Beefies, The Shabbos Goy, Mazel Tov Cocktail and The Tattooed Torah and they are a diverse mix in terms of style, tone and theme.

The Tattooed Torah presents as an animated storybook, with the screen panning across pictures but with people popped out from the background to give depth and blinking eyes and other small animated details that add a liveliness to the scenes. Ed Asner narrates the story of a boy and a beloved Torah in Czechoslovakia before and during World War II. The story is based on a book of the same name written by Marvell Ginsburg and illustrated by Martin Lemelman.

As with that movie, Masel Tov Cocktail slips bits of history into its tale about a teenager named Dima (Alexander Wertmann), a post-Cold War Jewish-Russian immigrant to Germany. He wrestles with his frustration, all teenage righteousness and humor, over the way Germans — the prejudiced and the well-meaning — pull him into their views of World War II and what their ancestors did (or, as some claim, definitely weren’t a part of). The short is the fourth directing credit (all shorts) for directors Arkadij Khaet and Mickey Paatzsch, according to IMDb, and it has that entertaining, scrappy indie film energy.

Ganefwill be familiar to viewers of the 2021 Manhattan Short Film Festival. It’s a tight drama about the residual effects of trauma that features Sophie McShera (best known as Daisy from Downton Abbey) playing Lynn, the housekeeper to the Hirth family, who live in an upper-class house in England. Mrs. Hirth (Lydia Wilson) tells her young daughter Ruthie (Izabella Dzeiwanska) that people can’t take what they don’t know you have — a lesson she learned as a child in Frankfurt, Germany. It’s a smartly told story that clocks in at about 14 minutes.

Beefies is a charming tale about Josh (Adam Lebowitz-Lockard), a man trying to figure out the recipe to his late mother’s “beefies” dish. (Lebowitz-Lockard wrote and directed Beefies; on the website he describes the dish as his own mother’s “sort of beef stew/stroganoff dish of meat and veggies” which he hasn’t been able to reverse engineer since she died.). In Beefies, Josh finds clues in his mother’s papers but realizes that to get answers he’ll have to call Mark (Goran Ivanovski), the brother he’s been estranged from. The movie is a sweet family tale that gets bonus points for the rare good use of pandemic as story point.

The Shabbos Goy is my favorite of the pack. This movie stars Milana Vayntrub, perhaps still best known as the lady from the AT&T commercials. As the movie poster explains, the titular person is a non-Jewish person who performs certain tasks that religious law prohibits a Jewish person from doing on the Sabbath or, more succinctly, “a human loophole.” During a gathering with her family and her future in-laws, Hannah (Vayntrub) is desperate to keep her engagement on track but won’t break the Sabbath by turning off her, er, personal device when it is accidentally activated. She runs out to find a non-Jewish person to help her, leading her to Davian (Devere Rogers), who first tries to ignore her when she crazily tries to wave him down. The movie is written and directed by Talia Osteen, who has a director credit on the Hulu movie Sex Appeal (also a fun trailer) and it is executive produced by Paul Feig.

Oscar wrap-up

If there’s one thing you’ll remember from last Sunday’s Oscars, it’s that you need to watch CODA.

OK, one other thing.

Truly, though, if you have “meh-ed” at Oscar nominees — which isn’t an unfair response in 2021 when the movies never fully felt back — hopefully CODA’s wins will entice you to check it out. It won for best picture, best adapted screenplay and best supporting actor for Troy Kotsur, who co-starred with Marlee Matlin as the deaf parents of a hearing teen (Emilia Jones) in this truly heartwarming movie. It’s on Apple TV+.

Another winner worth seeking out is Summer of Soul (… Or When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised), the documentary that won Questlove an Oscar (which you may have missed while Googling “Chris Rock Will Smith was it a bit?”). That excellent documentary about the multi-concertHarlem Cultural Festival is on Hulu and Disney+ and is available for rent or purchase (and you can also purchase the very excellent soundtrack).

Another winner that might have gotten lost in the evening’s proceedings for a different reason (it was one of the awards cut from the broadcast and then deep-faked back in, as writer Chris V. Feil described in a tweet) was The Queen of Basketball, the winning documentary short, which is available on nytimes.com. It’s a charming profile of Lucy Harris, a star college (and Olympic) basketball player in the 1970s who was drafted by, but never played for, the New Orleans Jazz.

Then feel free to shut the book on the whole messy 2021 in the Oscar-verse, with its category strife, its lack of real surprises among the winners (though my swing-for-the-fences guesses led to my still only correctly predicting a little more than half the winners) and all-over-the-place ceremony even before the infamous slap. Or, at least, shut the book after one more watch of the beautifully staged Beyonce opener and the uneven but lively at least “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” remix.

What Happened to the Bennetts, by Lisa Scottoline

What Happened to the Bennetts, by Lisa Scottoline (G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 400 pages)

Most people have heard of the federal witness protection program; far fewer have ever actually given it any serious thought. Those who have might know its acronym, WITSEC for witness security, and that it is a program of the U.S. Marshals Service that gives new identities to people who testify against criminals who have networks that enable them to retaliate.

According to the government’s website, more than 19,000 people have taken part in the program since its formation some 50 years ago. That includes not just people who testify but also any dependents who might be in danger.

Lisa Scottoline dives into this world with her new novel, which probes the hellscape one family endures after a violent carjacking. Up until this point, Jason and Lucinda Bennett had enjoyed a comfortable suburban life — replete with a Mercedes sedan, two nice teens and a small white dog with two speeds: “asleep and annoying.” But driving home after their daughter’s field hockey game, they were cut off by two men, which started a cascade of horrific events that led up to FBI agents banging on their door later that night.

The agents informed the already reeling family that they were in imminent danger because they had witnessed one of the carjackers shoot the other. They had 15 minutes to decide whether to enter the witness security program or to stay home and risk their own deaths.

That in itself is worth some reflection. Many people have thought through what they would take to leave their house for an emergency, such as a wildfire or hurricane; that’s why “bug out” bags are a thing. But this wasn’t just bugging out. The Bennetts had 15 minutes to gather belongings with the realization that they were never coming back, and in fact, they would never even be “the Bennetts” anymore after they left. Moreover, they weren’t allowed to tell anyone they were leaving — not Jason’s employees, not Lucinda’s friends or even her mother, who lived in a nursing home for the memory impaired.

As such, it wasn’t quite as easy a decision as it seemed.

The Bennetts do leave, however, and that’s not a spoiler; the title tells us as much. And although they are not allowed to go to their social media accounts on the new laptops the U.S. taxpayers give them, Lucinda uses an old account to see what’s being said about their disappearance. This makes it even harder, of course, seeing a thread called “What happened to the Bennetts” and a search being organized by citizen investigators, much like what happened in the real-life case of Gabby Petito and Brian Laundrie last year.

Moreover, by seeing what was said on the internet, the couple can see the rampant speculation that is taking place, such as whether Jason killed his family and then burned down the house and his office.

All this is fascinating enough, but eventually the story turns into a more conventional crime novel, enabled because Jason, as a court reporter, knows how to read lips, and learns something about the criminal he is hiding from that he wasn’t supposed to know.

From there the story accelerates, going back and forth between Jason’s quest for justice and the frenzied search for answers within the community they left behind.

It would be a mistake to call this a nail-biter; the novel is not as accomplished as that, although it certainly qualifies as a run-of-the-mill thriller. Scottoline, a columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer, has somehow found the time to write 32 novels in addition to non-fiction books of humor, including Why My Third Husband Will Be a Dog. She also writes humor with her daughter, Francesca Serritella.

There’s little humor in this story, however, and in fact, the opening sequence of events will be disturbing to anyone who is a parent. It’s an emotional haul for the reader to move past what happens to fully embrace the thriller mode.

What Happened to the Bennetts is being praised by some as Scottoline’s best novel yet, which does not make me want to rush to get the others. It’s an excellent beach read, a few months early and a hundred pages too long. B-

Book Notes

Looking for new releases in gardening, I came across a term I hadn’t heard before: survival gardening. Apparently, this is a subset of doomsday prepping that has been a thing since long before Joe Biden warned us that Ukraine-related food shortages are coming.

`Until the seed shortage hits, you might be interested in some more traditional titles as we wait for the growing season to start. Out this month is Gardening for Everyone (Harvest, 304 pages) by sustainability expert Julia Watkins, who focuses on vegetables, fruits and herbs.

If you’re more into flowers, there’s Garden Maker (Harvest House, 208 pages) by Christie Purifoy. The Healing Gardenby Juliet Blankespoor is out this week (Harvest Press, 448 pages) and is a comprehensive guide to growing therapeutic plants. Next week comes Containers in the Garden (Cool Springs Press, 176 pages) by “celebrity gardener” Claus Dalby, who is apparently the Scandinavian Martha Stewart.

But for sheer reading enjoyment about gardens with none of the actual work, look for Marta McDowell’s Unearthing the Secret Garden (Timber Press, 320 pages), which explores the life and gardening history of Frances Hodgson Burnett, the author of the beloved children’s classic.

The opening: “Can a book be a horticultural trigger? A sort of gateway drug for gardeners? If so, then surely The Secret Garden by Franches Hodgson Burnett is a contender.”

McDowell, who teaches at the New York Botanical Garden, has also written horticultural histories of sorts about other writers, to include Emily Dickinson and Beatrix Potter, is the author of 2016’s All the Presidents’ Gardens (Timber Press, 336 pages), a history of White House gardens — “from Madison’s cabbages to Kennedy’s roses” — that sounds infinitely more interesting than foraging for seeds. — Jennifer Graham

Book Events

Author events

• AN EVENING TO REMEMBER: CONVERSATIONS WITH CONCORD-AREA AUTHORS Authors Margaret Porter, Virginia MacGregor (Nina Monroe), Paul Brogan and Mark Okrant, in conversation with NHPR’s Laura Knoy. Presented by The Duprey Companies. Bank of NH Stage, 16 S. Main St., Concord. Wed., April 6, 7:30 p.m. Free to attend. Visit ccanh.com.

• MAGGIE SHIPSTEAD Author presents The Great Circle. Virtual event hosted by Gibson’s Bookstore in Concord. Wed., April 13, 6 p.m. Registration required. Visit gibsonsbookstore.com or call 224-0562.

• EMMA LOEWE Author presents Return to Nature: The New Science of How Natural Landscapes Restore Us, in conversation with author Hannah Fries. Virtual event hosted by Gibson’s Bookstore in Concord. Wed., April 13, 7 p.m. Registration is required. Held via Zoom. Visit gibsonsbookstore.com or call 224-0562.

• MARIE BOSTWICK Author presents her new book The Restoration of Celia Fairchild. Bookery, 844 Elm St., Manchester. Fri., April 15, 5:30 p.m. Visit bookerymht.com or call 836-6600.

• BECKY SAKELLERIOU AND HENRY WALTERS Becky Sakelleriou presents The Possibility of Red. Henry Walters presents Field Guide A Tempo. Sat., April 16, 9:45 to 11:45 a.m. Peterborough Town Library, 2 Concord St., Peterborough. Visit monadnockwriters.org.

• ANNE HILLERMAN Author presents The Sacred Bridge. Virtual event hosted by Gibson’s Bookstore in Concord. Tues., April 19, 7 p.m. Held via Zoom. Registration is required. Visit gibsonsbookstore.com or call 224-0562.

• BRANDON K. GAUTHIER Author presents Before Evil: Young Lenin, Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Mao, and Kim. Gibson’s Bookstore, 45 S. Main St., Concord. Wed., April 27, 6:30 p.m. Visit gibsonsbookstore.com or call 224-0562.

Poetry

• REBECCA KAISER Poet presents Girl as Birch. Virtual event hosted by Gibson’s Bookstore in Concord. Mon., April 11, 7 p.m. Held via Zoom. Registration is required. Visit gibsonsbookstore.com or call 224-0562.

• DOWN CELLAR POETRY SALON Poetry event series presented by the Poetry Society of New Hampshire. Monthly. First Sunday. Visit poetrysocietynh.wordpress.com.

Writers groups

• MERRIMACK VALLEY WRITERS’ GROUP All published and unpublished local writers who are interested in sharing their work with other writers and giving and receiving constructive feedback are invited to join. The group meets regularly; the next meeting is scheduled for Tues., April 5, from 5 to 7:15 p.m., and will be held virtually over WebEx Meetings. To reserve your spot, email pembrokenhtownlibrary@gmail.com.

Writer submissions

• UNDER THE MADNESS Magazine designed and managed by an editorial board of New Hampshire teens under the mentorship of New Hampshire State Poet Laureate Alexandria Peary. features creative writing by teens ages 13 to 19 from all over the world, including poetry and short fiction and creative nonfiction. Published monthly. Submissions must be written in or translated into English and must be previously unpublished. Visit underthemadnessmagazine.com for full submission guidelines.

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