Category: Pop

Album Reviews 23/01/12

Heroes and Monsters, Heroes and Monsters (Frontiers Music srl)

You get why this is a stupidly named band, right, like, I don’t have to explain that there’s a really great band called Of Monsters And Men already, and Lana del Rey has a song called “Gods & Monsters,” right? (Am I being pedantic, I’m really trying to change, folks). But belay all that nonsense, because we’re talking about our friends at Frontiers Records, meaning it’s time for our periodic reminder to local Iron Maiden- and Judas Priest-soundalike bands that they’re one of the last companies that might give you an actual record contract if you’re nice, just tell them I sent you. Anyway, the rundown: Canadian supergroup-ish three-piece hard-rock band here (has there ever been a Canadian hard-rock that’s been able to find a fourth guy?): the singer was in Kiss guitarist Bruce Kulick’s band, the multi-instrumentalist was in Slash with Myles Kennedy and whatnot, and they sound quite a bit like Skid Row (you remember them, right? No, that was Cinderella. What? No, that was Tigertailz. Sorry? No, that was Poison. Etc.). The tuneage has some Savatage-ish power-metal to it, and the singer has a little Metallica to him. It is definitely OK. B

David Crosby, Live at the Capitol Theatre (BMG Records)

Yes, this founding member of both the Byrds and Crosby, Stills & Nash is still kicking around, sharing bong hits with random people and doing whatever else he does, if anything. Point of order, the Capitol Theatre in this case is in Port Chester, N.Y., not the movie theater in Arlington, Mass., but I’m not here to tease the 81-year-old alpha hippie. In fact, he’s still a decent enough songwriter, although there aren’t any songs from his last album, 2021’s For Free, in this live package. This one mostly consists of oldies recited by Crosby and the three 20-somethings (known as The Lighthouse Band) he has backing him up these days: “Deja Vu,” “Woodstock” and “Guinnevere” are here, all delivered with that old magic that involved those world-stopping silences in between phrases. He sounds pretty good vocally, and he’s still quite the acoustic guitar picker, but what may be most notable about this is that it’s his first live solo LP. A+

Playlist

• OK, super, we should have plenty of albums to talk about this week, because we’re clear of the holidays, meaning that all the bands and semi-talented “artistes” should be back to making a bunch of tunes so we can all gather around and hold hands and try to keep from laughing at all the awful music-clowns, who’ve been busy as little Santa elves, making albums for our merriment and snark. Now, try to be nice this time, guys, we wouldn’t want to — oh no, there’s barely anything in the current “you should review this” list on Metacritic, just two things coming out on Friday the 13th of January (yep, that’s how this year’s starting out, with a Friday the 13th right off the jump), and one of ’em’s a metal album! Terrific, I should have just stayed in bed until it’s warm out, you know, like, who needs this anyway? OK whatever, the metal album, here it is, it’s the new one from Obituary, called Dying Of Everything, is that edgy or what, folks? This band has been around since 1984, and they are from Tampa, Florida. The test-drive track on the band’s Bandcamp is “The Wrong Time,” and it’s like a cross between Leviathan-era Mastodon and Wasp. Funnily enough, that isn’t the worst combination ever, OK let’s move on.

• Margo Price is an American outlaw-country/Americana singer-songwriter and producer based in Nashville, Tennessee, and I know that for a fact because that’s what Google says, pretty much verbatim. The Fader thinks she’s going to be a huge star, whatever; and she was nominated for a Best New Artist Grammy in 2019. Her new album, Strays, is on the way, and hopefully you’ll like it, I guess. Right, so now let’s descend on this nice little innocent album like a pack of Dementors and find every fault with it and mention nothing nice about it, unless I change my mind after a few bars. OK, here’s a single, called “Been To The Mountain,” listen to that, she sounds a little like Cyndi Lauper or Gwen Stefani, I guess, and the tune is kind of Sheryl Crow-ish, straight-ahead bar-band rock. She does a little rap-skit thing in the middle that sounds like Transvision Vamp, if you remember them. Nothing much going on here, but it’s not all that bad.

• Hold it, I found more albums. That’s right, I tied a picnic knapsack full of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to the end of a hobo stick and departed my Metacritic bubble, and will you look at this, folks, it’s former HIM frontman Ville Valo, more commonly known as VV, with some new record called Neon Noir! We’re back in business, baby, let’s rock our ears and see if my lunch will stay down for a full song from this dude, whattaya say? Wow, the single, “Loveletting,” has a little bit of a She Wants Revenge flavor, but it’s also kind of hooky, like Eric Carmen used to be in the 1970s, and there’s definitely a goth edge to it. I have no problem with this tune at all, seriously. With regard to his 2023 tour, he’ll be appearing at Big Night Live in Boston, but not until April 2.

• Lastly, it’s Gaz Coombes, the frontman for Supergrass, with a new solo album called Turn the Car Around! Wow, this guy’s into the cabaret stuff, it looks like; he probably really digs Dresden Dolls and all that stuff, at least to go by the single “Don’t Say It’s Over.” There’s Austin Powers-style organ in there, and he favors disposable mid-Aughts hipster-pop vocals a la Dale Earnhardt Jr Jr. The song would be OK without the stupid organ, but on a scale of 1 to 10 in horribleness, it’s only around a 3, which improves on most of the music put out between 2002 and 2010, so bravo.

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).

Great Short Books: A Year of Reading — Briefly, by Kenneth C. Davis

Great Short Books: A Year of Reading — Briefly, by Kenneth C. Davis (Scribner, 448 pages)

In the early stages of the pandemic, Kenneth Davis grew tired of doomscrolling, but he wasn’t up for reading long books. As a compromise, he began to read a collection of tales set at the beginning of the Black Death in Florence, Italy, in the 14th century. It’s called Decameron, written by Giovanni Boccaccio, and its style is similar to Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales in that a character tells a different story each day.

Davis set about reading one of the novellas each day, which took him a little more than three months. After that, he decided to move on to short novels. Great Short Books is the culmination of this pandemic experience; it is Davis’s ode to the short novel, which he likens to a first date: “It can be extremely pleasant, even exciting, and memorable. Ideally, you leave wanting more. It can lead to greater possibilities. But there is no long-term commitment,” he writes.

Of the short novels he has read during the pandemic, Davis selected 58 to highlight in hopes that more readers will come to appreciate short fiction. Great Short Books contains the work of both famous and obscure writers from around the world; what they have in common, he says, is that they can be read in “one to several sittings” and “with careful rationing” we can read one each week. (With that, Davis reveals himself to not have small children under his care.) Generally, this means these books are anywhere from 100 to 200 pages, with some exceptions.

They aren’t just books he stumbled upon; he got recommendations from friends, librarians and people who work in publishing, and took care to make sure that the list wasn’t all from “dead white guys.” But Davis says that there was one standard that was nonnegotiable: to be included, the book had to be a pleasure to read. “I had … pledged that I would not read out of duty,” he writes.

The resulting titles include the work of George Orwell, Ernest Hemingway, Virginia Woolf, Kate Chopin, Toni Morrison and F. Scott Fitzgerald, among other famous writers, as well as authors that would only be household names to people with multiple graduate degrees in literature. (Or maybe I’m just revealing my own ignorance by being unfamiliar with the work of Nadine Gordimer and Chinua Achebe.)

Each work gets its own chapter, set up with the opening sentences of the book. Perusing the openings of 58 lauded books is instructive in and of itself. (Some grab you at the start; others make you wonder why the eventual publisher even kept reading.)

From there, Davis composes his own CliffsNotes-type summary, promising no spoilers, then gives us a rundown on the author. He concludes each chapter with a bit of literary moralizing in a section called “Why you should read it,” and finishes with a summary of “What to read next.” For example, in the chapter on Orwell’s Animal Farm, he suggests we follow up with Nineteen Eighty-Four, Orwell’s three nonfiction books (Down and Out in Paris and London, The Road to Wigan Pier and Homage to Catalonia) as well as one of the author’s essays, “Politics and the English Language.”

For anyone who’s already a fan of Orwell, nee Eric Blair, there’s not much to be gained here; in fact, even Davis says that his advice to read or re-read Nineteen Eighty-Four is a “no-brainer.” But then again, this is not a highbrow book, nor does it pretend to be. Davis describes himself as the “common reader” that Virginia Woolf wrote about: “He is worse educated, and nature has not gifted him so generously” as a critic or scholar, she said. “He reads for his own pleasure rather than to impart knowledge or correct the opinions of others.”

Davis writes for people who find solace and camaraderie in books of all sorts, not necessarily those that win literary prizes. He advocates for reading outside of one’s comfort zone as a form of lifelong learning, no different from taking courses at a community college. And there’s no question that anyone who reads Great Short Books will come away with a list of a dozen or more on their “to-read” list. I’ve picked out a few just by virtue of their opening sentences. (July’s People by Nadine Gordimer and Another Brooklyn by Jacqueline Woodson.)

If there’s anything to quibble with here, it’s Davis’s argument that “Short novels are literature’s equivalent to the stand-up comedian Rodney Dangerfield’s signature line: they ‘get no respect.’” He says they “occupy the place of the neglected middle child of the literary world.” As an example, Davis says that critics dismissed Ian McEwan’s On Chesil Beach as too short (203 pages) to be a candidate for the Booker Prize in 2007. “So, a degree of critical prejudice — call it literary sizeism — exists against short fiction,” he concludes.

But does it really? Claire Keegan’s Small Things Like These (128 pages) was shortlisted for the Booker Prize this year and won the 2022 Orwell Prize for Political Fiction. One of the most beloved books of all time, A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, is only about 31,000 words, roughly a third of the size of a typical novel.

And many books in the canon presented here argue against the author’s own words. Was there critical prejudice against Charlotte’s Web? A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man? And the book we all forget existed prior to the movie: Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption by Stephen King?

That argument doesn’t hold up over centuries; in fact, with America’s famously shrinking attention span, it’s likely short books like these are our future. From the titles highlighted here, that’s not a bad thing. B+

Album Reviews 23/01/05

Winery Dogs, III (Three Dog Music)

On Feb. 26, 2023, The Winery Dogs will be at Tupelo Music Hall in Derry, New Hampshire. They’re something of a rebirth of the hard rock superband Mr. Big, which older people will remember as an act whose main spotlight was on former Talas bass player Billy Sheehan. I remember seeing them in the late ’90s and thinking Sheehan was a little overhyped, but he’s good, whatever. Also on board is frontman Richie Kotzen, who, after graduating from Mr. Big, played guitar for Poison for a bit, and rounding things out is former Dream Theater drummer Mike Portnoy. Lot of borderline-interesting Guitar Player magazine-level wonkiness here, which usually spells bad songs delivered with panache. As far as that goes, album opener “Xanadu” (not a cover of the Rush song, point of order) is a lot of lightning-fast notes trying to find a purpose in life, but Kotzen’s David Coverdale impression makes it interesting. And so on and so forth, self-indulgent butt-kicking and etc. B

The Bombadils, Dear Friend (Epitaph Records)

Influenced by classical, jazz, bluegrass, Celtic music and various singer-songwriter traditions, this Canadian couple (Luke Fraser and Sarah Frank, FYI; their band name came by way of a Tolkien character) were nominated for a Canadian Folk Music Award for their sound, which, taken as a whole, tends to evoke John Prine/Emmylou Harris duets tendered with a Loreena McKennitt edge at its best moments (“Bicycle” for starters, which stumbles upon some really pleasant moments of contrapuntal vocals, a thing I’d really like to hear from more indie bands). “Tell Me I’m Not Dreaming” sounds simultaneously Fleetwood Mac-ish and like top-drawer Americana; the sturdy, vocally adventurous “Through and Through” gets even more Appalachian, so much so that you can practically smell the campfire cooking whatever’s going to be dinner. Fans of Bela Fleck and that sort of thing would be quite pleased with this, I’m sure, and I wouldn’t be surprised to hear these two on a soundtrack or three in future. A

Playlist

• Finally everything is sort of normal again, now that the holidays are over and there’s nothing left to do but ignore the voices in your head, as the winter starts getting worse and worse. It’s that time of year when you try not to end up turning into a snowbank-ghost like Jack Nicholson in The Shining, yessir, it’s all downhill from here, guys, my favorite is when some dude in a pickup truck tailgates you during a crazy snowstorm because he figures everyone has chains on their tires, just like him, same as they do in Siberia (or northern Maine, same thing). But keep it together, all you’re really supposed to be doing while we wait for the annual thaw and flooded streets is go buy some albums, and that’s what we’ll talk about in this section of the newspaper, the new albums scheduled for release on Jan. 6. First up this year is famous stage-diving violence-clown Iggy Pop, with a new LP called Every Loser. I hope you’re as excited as I am for this new set of tunes, and I’m sure you are, because let’s face it, Iggy is the last hope for cool in America. I recently saw a really nifty video of Iggy, with his pet parrot/cockatiel/whatever hanging around on his arm, and there was a sort of trip-hop/African tribal tune playing. So slowly but surely the parrot got more and more into it and started bobbing its head up and down, and then it got really into it and was totally hypnotized and danced, and Iggy was cracking up over it, anyway where were we, oh yes, there’s a new single from the Ig-Man, called — wait a minute, the Igster put the whole album up on YouTube, so we can just listen to the opening track, “Strung Out Johnny,” and bag this. Ha ha, this is so cool, like the guitar part is something Stiv Bators would have written, like borderline goth ’80s dance. I’ll make it short and sweet, just buy this album, OK, that’d be great.

• Anti-Flag is a roots-punk rock band from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, which you whippersnappers would already know if the establishment hadn’t done away with punk years ago and replaced it with stuff like Green Day and whatnot. Lies They Tell Our Children is their new LP, and the rollout single is called “Laugh. Cry. Smile. Die.” And wait a minute, these guys put out their first album in 1996, so they’re just basically Green Day except from Pittsburgh! Whatever, they were kind of rough-ish and punk in 1996, and this new song is pretty fast and punk-ish. That means they’re basically like Panic! At The Disco, but whatever, Anti Flag everyone, don’t forget to wear a helmet or mom won’t let you try any funny business trying to skateboard through the half-pipe with your homies or whatever you people call “friends” nowadays.

• LOL, look, it’s RuPaul, with their new album, called Black Butta, and it’s on the way! Get over here, horrible new album, lemme give a listen to this new song, called “Star Baby,” before I change my mind and go drinking or whatnot. Hm, the tune is basically like the last million Britney Spears hip-hop-ish songs, except there’s some wub-wub. Is it catchy? I don’t know, you tell me, what am I, some sort of music expert or something? I don’t like it at all, if that gives you any idea.

• Finally, yikes, I may have spoken too soon, because there aren’t as many albums coming out as I’d thought. Like, there’s nothing left for me to write about except for some hip-hop person named Venus Da Kid, whoever they are, and their new album, um I mean mixtape, Dreams: The Mixtape Of Life. Actually, the tune “Apartheid” is kind of cool, like this dude sounds like a young DMX, and there does seem to be some substance to it. You might like it, and you actually should, but it sounds like he recorded it on a boombox (which makes it even better, just saying).

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).

Two Old Broads, by M.E. Hecht and Whoopi Goldberg

Two Old Broads, by M.E. Hecht and Whoopi Goldberg (Harper Horizon, 222 pages)

There is no topic so grim that it can’t be lightened by humor. And with America seeming to be graying at light speed, a wickedly funny book on the subject of aging by comedian Whoopi Goldberg (co-written with a physician friend) seemed just the prescription, promising to reveal “stuff you need to know that you didn’t know you needed to know.”

Unfortunately, Two Old Broads does not deliver on its promise and more realistically could have been titled “Two Old Broads Stating the Obvious in a Vanity Book.” It’s that bad.

It’s hard to see how this collection of platitudes and painfully useless advice made it through an agent, let alone a major publishing house. It’s the sort of book that is usually self-published and foisted onto friends, who have to invent creative ways to praise the book without selling their soul. Worse, this yawner comes from accomplished women who should have more interesting things to say.

Mary Ellen Hecht was an orthopedic surgeon with degrees from Columbia and Yale, who died at age 93 just before the book’s publication. She had been friends with Whoopi Goldberg since they met at a fashion show in 2010. Goldberg, of course, is a talented comedian and actress who has won a Grammy, an Oscar, an Emmy, a Tony and a Golden Globe award.

With Goldberg at the shallow end of the aging pool at age 64, and Hecht at the deep end, the friends decided to share their collective advice on various aspects of aging, from skin care to exercise, from medication to wills, from sex over 60 to being “crochety with charm.” All of this is done under the “old broad” rubric, (e.g., “dress like a broad’) which gets tired after the second page.

Here is a sampling of some of their advice:

“Arthritis is a killer when it comes to style, but lift up your head, look the world in the eye, and say internally, Ready or not, here I come — someone to notice and admire!”

“Believe it or not, sweaty feet are an invitation to medical problems including fungal infections.”

“Under normal circumstances, it’s a good idea to get a second opinion.”

“Try not to go through your day with anything that causes discomfort, like a dress or slacks being too tight or shoes that cause pinching.”

Lines like this are not only boring, but they are actually insulting to readers, as if Hecht and Goldberg are speaking to geriatric kindergarteners unable to comprehend basic aspects of life. Is there an 80-year-old alive today that doesn’t know they should get second opinions on serious medical matters? Is there a 70-year-old alive who doesn’t know that if pants or shoes hurt, they should take them off?

The book disappoints, not only because it’s not remotely funny or wise, but also because it skips lightly over things that aging people care a lot about — skin care, for example. For that matter, it’s hard to find a person over 40 who isn’t concerned about how their face will look as they age (hence the trend of people in their 20s getting Botox). Yet on the subject of “senior skin care,” Hecht and Goldberg offer a total of three pages. Three pages in which readers are told they should drink water, apply face cream and wax facial hair — and are given a mind-numbingly juvenile pep talk: “ … Remember you’re the CEO of your own body! So behave like one!’

To be fair, it is possible, not being in my 80s or 90s, that I’m bringing the jaundiced eye of (relative) youth to the book. Maybe our elderly relatives and friends who have been living in caves for the past 40 years will benefit from the simplistic style. And yes, there are a few takeaways that might be helpful for people struggling with the indignities of old age, such as the authors’ “three-look method” of avoiding falls and accidents (look low, look level, look up) and there’s surely a benefit (though this could be intuited) to their advice to thoroughly stretch before getting out bed at any age.

Moreover, Hecht, who wrote most of the book, with Goldberg chiming in, throws out the occasional charming tidbit in musings on her life. I will not soon forget her Aunt Grace, a gourmet cook who, late in life, always ate dessert before the main course. (“For her, all food led to dessert,” Hecht writes.) As a fellow dessert fiend, I grudgingly enjoyed that story.

But the rare paragraphs that weren’t insulting (“I’m sure you are familiar with a well-known saying: ‘You are what you eat.’”), aren’t good enough to justify this use of your time.

There are genuinely funny books about aging (Nora Ephron’s I Feel Bad About My Neck comes to mind) and inspirational books about old women (Two Old Women by Velma Wallace). Two Old Broads offers little to recommend it other than the fame of one of the authors. Don’t gift it to anyone that you like. D

Album Reviews 22/12/29

Justin Courtney Pierre, Permanent Midnight (Epitaph Records)

If you’re going to sound like a male version of Mazzy Star — I mean the full Monty of that vibe, the aural equivalent of sipping a vodka drink while floating around in a luxury pool and feeling the tremors as the earth collapses — your lyrics might as well be so maudlin and psychologically adrift that people would worry about you a bit if they cared enough to try to grok your intentions (not that I detect any in the tune we’re discussing right now, “Used To Be Old School,” other than reflections on trite, Freudian little boyhood/adulthood reminiscences, but whom did that ever stop?). On and on Pierre warbles in his helium falsetto throughout the opening track of this listenable-enough five-songer, after which he tables a bunch of mid-Aughts noise-ish rock recalling Dandy Warhols and all that, exploring aging, fatherhood, family, longing and whatnot. Nothing wrong here, but by the same token there’s nothing that hasn’t been attempted by literally thousands of bands. A

Various Artists, This Ain’t Your Mama and Papa’s Holiday Music: A Compilation of Holiday Favorites for the Weirdo in Your Life (Island House Recordings)

You have about 20 seconds left to get this downloaded and prettily packaged so you’ll have a nice, edgy, indie collection of holiday tunes for your edgy indie holiday feast, which, if you’re like most people trying to get by during this corporate-greed jubilee that’s being blamed on “inflation,” will consist of buns, with actual hot dogs if you’re lucky. I got dragged into this set of 17 songs when someone clued me in to an upcoming EP from the New York City-based Royal Arctic Institute, a five-piece all-instrumental band that contributes to this compilation a sloshy, dreamy version of “Christmastime Is Here,” you know, the maudlin melody from the old Charlie Brown Christmas cartoon. It’s fine for what it is, but there are plenty of edgy indie things from which to choose here: a giggling, sample-soaked “Deck The Halls” from Synthetic Villains that didn’t upset my stomach, and so on. I’m already out of room for this shtick, but do keep in mind that all the proceeds from this one go to benefit the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, so you should buy it just to be nice. A

Playlist

• Icky and gross, it’s the least wonderful time of the year, because as far as I can tell, there are almost no new albums due out tomorrow, Dec. 30, a Friday, which is of course the traditional day of the week on which to release new albums. Let’s face it, the holidays are over, no more plastic Halloween skulls everywhere, the Thanksgiving-flavored turkeys are all eaten up, Christmas and all its good will toward people and whatever is but a memory, and all that’s left is New Year’s Eve, the night we married couples stay up late to watch a bunch of people who’re immune to frostbite make out in Times Square after an electronic ball drops, and then, if we have any brain function remaining, we stay up another 15 minutes to catch up with all the latest new corporate rock acts (“Wow, honey, I didn’t know Florida Georgia Line actually had a catchy song!”). Then, of course, we ceremoniously clink our Coke glasses together and try to herd the cats up to bed. See, that’s what happens when you grow up enough to realize that New Year’s Eve is a plot to sell you cheap liquor, and that nothing really magical ever happens on that holiday, that is unless you get engaged to someone you can actually deal with as the clock strikes Bedtime. Have you ever gotten engaged on New Year’s Eve and broken up with that person two months later? I have. Have you ever gone bar-hopping and been stuck driving in a car when the clock struck midnight? I’ve done that one too. They should make a movie about New Year’s Eve that exposes the potential horror of it, like someone being stuck in an Uber at the stroke of midnight and they get sent back in time to the day before Thanksgiving, and they have to relive the whole holiday season, and if they don’t get it right and have an incredible moment of New Year’s Eve wonderfulness in which they smooch with their Twitter crush or whatever, they have to go back and do it all again. No? What about if there are velociraptors to deal with too?

• OK, I have no bloody idea what I’m going to do to fill the remainder of this space. Want to hear about the worst-ever meal I cooked on New Year’s Eve, of course you do, one time I was dating a vegetarian and I spent the entire day of New Year’s Eve making this disgusting tempeh-meatball dish with sauerkraut. The recipe required all sorts of stupid ingredients, like ginger root and sesame oil, all sorts of things that would have been great by themselves but which together made for a dining experience so unpleasant that I should make a short horror story out of it, to horrify people. But oh look, I’m saved, because some U.S. band called Bandit is releasing an album of “grindcore” (actually overly polished emo) tuneage, titled Siege of Self, on — oops, it was Dec. 29, but close enough. It’s stupid, and everyone’s calling it a worthless pile of Pig Destroyer worship. In other words, the only people who might like it are grindcore dudes who’ve never heard Pig Destroyer before. (No, don’t bother.)

• On New Year’s Eve day, some American metal band called Bayonette will release a new single called “Grógaldr.” No one knows anything about it, not even the Album Of The Year site, which means either that it doesn’t exist or that the band doesn’t understand that record releases need to be announced so that people know they exist. I don’t care what the case is, let’d just wrap up this dumb year with one more thingie.

• Finally we have DaniFighter, apparently a Turkish artist who, like Bayonette, has absolutely no idea how to announce an album. This dude has been known to put out Gorillaz-influenced noise-hip-hop that really sucks, and his new album/EP, Lecsavarlak, will be out this Friday, Dec. 30. Have a great New Year, 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).

A Christmas Memory, by Richard Paul Evans

A Christmas Memory, by Richard Paul Evans (Gallery, 183 pages)

Thirty years ago, Richard Paul Evans was 29 years old and working for an advertising agency in Salt Lake City when he decided he’d try his hand at writing a book. He didn’t have a Haruki Murakami moment, when he suddenly knew he could be a novelist while sitting in a baseball park; rather, he had just run for a statewide political office and lost, and needed a new goal to fill the void.

In his spare time he spent four weeks writing a novella he called The Christmas Box and then made 27 copies at Kinko’s and gave them out as Christmas gifts. Family and friends loved the story, which was about a young couple who become caretakers for a widow who has a mysterious box full of letters that (spoiler alert) turn out to be life-changing for the man and his wife. A couple of publisher rejection letters later, Evans self-published the book and eventually it hit No. 2 on The New York Times self-published bestseller list. Shortly thereafter, it sold at auction to Simon & Schuster for $4.2 million. It wasn’t a bad investment.

Evans has gone on to write more than 40 novels, most of them bestsellers, many of which have something to do with Christmas. His latest is A Christmas Memory, which steals a title from Truman Capote. (Disclosure: Capote’s poignant reflection about making fruitcake with his elderly cousin was published in 1956 and is a staple in my annual holiday reading.) Capote, the author of In Cold Blood, would no doubt be amused that two writers with such different trajectories and styles converged in this way.

Like Capote’s A Christmas Memory, Evans promises, in an author’s note, that his story is a lived experience, or more accurately, a collection of lived experiences woven into one narrative memory. It is a “composite of childhood experiences,” he says, without detailing which parts of the book, if any, are fiction.

Despite the title and festive cover, A Christmas Memory is disappointingly not really a Christmas story. It’s a story about a friendship that develops between a young boy and his elderly neighbor.

It opens with a family tragedy in 1967: the loss of the narrator’s older brother, who was killed in the Vietnam War. “He had promised to be home for Christmas. He kept his promise. Just not in the way we hoped.”

The narrator — presumably Evans, or some version of Evans, as he is called Richard or Ricky throughout the book — is “an awkward boy of eight with Tourette’s syndrome” who suffers 20 different kinds of tics. The family’s troubles get worse after the brother dies. The father is unemployed, the narrator’s grandmother dies, the family moves from California to Utah and then Richard’s parents separate.

The boy takes all of this hard. One day, while he is outside sobbing, he is comforted by a dog, which turns out to belong to a neighbor he later learns is named Mr. Foster. Mr. Foster is Black, which is unusual in Utah, which is “homogeneous as whole milk.” The man keeps to himself, for reasons that gradually become clear.

One day, Mr. Foster rescues Richard from bullies, and the two develop a relationship. At first, it seems mostly business. Mr. Foster hires the boy to shovel snow and to walk his dog, Beau, a deal they consummated with (possibly the most Utah thing ever) a snack of hot croissants with strawberry preserves. The two grow closer, with Mr. Foster gradually revealing parts of his life as the boy’s visits become more regular. At Thanksgiving, Mr. Foster invites young Richard and his mother to his house for the holiday meal, and there is finally a hope that with the start of the Christmas season, something Christmassy might ensue.

Alas, no.

The story culminates in December, that is for sure. There is a subplot about a cruel public school teacher who, for reasons that are not fully explained, basically ruins Christmas for her whole class with an angry tirade about Santa Claus. But there are also tragedies of mental health and physical health that, for all Evans’ narrative gifts, make this a bit of a downer to read, especially around the holidays. That’s not to say that depressing circumstances don’t make for a good holiday story; the travails of Jim and Della in O. Henry’s “The Gift of the Magi” make one of the most beloved Christmas stories despite its soul-crushing ending. And for anyone suffering the loss of a loved one at Christmas, this little book might be a comforting read.

As Mr. Foster tells young Richard, “We hate grief because it hurts. Not everything that hurts is bad. Whatever grief may be, it’s one thing for certain. Grief is the truest evidence of love.”

Reader reviews warn that Foster, who is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, is heavy-handed with Christian imagery and themes, but this is not the case in A Christmas Memory, aside from a few references to resurrection and an afterlife. For anyone who celebrates Christmas, this certainly wouldn’t be off-putting.

It’s tempting to compare Evans’ Christmas titles to the mauldin “Christmas Shoes” song and movie, which grew out of a story that circulated on the internet and has, at least in my house, become a subject of mockery. But Evans is a much better storyteller than that, and his commercial success shows that there is an appetite for these sorts of books, particularly since major publishing houses have lately failed to deliver any intellectually stimulating holiday titles, instead concentrating their efforts on cheesy Christmas romances and Hallmark movie fare.

A Christmas Memory is no A Christmas Carol, and Evans is no Charles Dickens. But it is a holiday bonbon of a book in a genre with disappointingly few choices, and it’s a serviceable and poignant story, particularly for anyone tending more toward misery than merriment this Christmas season. B

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