Category: Pop

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 [email protected].

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.

Album Reviews 22/03/31

Various Artists, Black Lives: From Generation to Generation (Jammin’colorS Records)

The Belgium-based Jammin’colorS label is run by its chef/cook/bottle-washer, Stefany Calambert, whose husband, bassist Reggie Washington, helped out on the writing end in this collection of songs, which aims to present “Black music as a source of moral truth and potent weaponry against the scourge of racism.” The Belgian government directly contributed to the creation of this hefty double album, so Calambert was able to gather an amazingly diverse herd of artists that includes Oliver Lake, Marvin Sewell and a chorus line of others. It’s strikingly produced and deeply urban, all of it: Stephanie McKay’s playful, electric-piano-and-la-la-la driven “Phenomenon” checking off the ’80s-jazz-pop tick; Andy Milne & Unison’s dreamy, soprano-scatted “Togged To The Bricks”; Cheick Tidiane Seck’s tribal-rhythmic “Sanga Bo” adding some Fela Kuti texture; even some opera-diva high-wire stuff from Alicia Hall Moran, getting plenty of help from Washington and DJ Grazzhoppa (“Walk”). An honest, depthlessly immersive experience throughout; it may not solve anything but it sure does try. A

Graeme James, Seasons (Nettwerk Records)

In the busking space, you’ve got your golden-throated guys like Peter Bradley Adams, and you’ve got your po-faced Art Garfunkel types. This New Zealander would fall into the latter category, a serious balladeer who plays a million instruments in these smooth, sometimes mildly rocky tunes. Let’s see, here you’ll hear him play mandolin, double bass, fiddle, guitar, banjo and bass ukulele, among other things, a cornucopia of sound that’s equal to the task of supporting his voice, which is similarly all over the place, ranging from floaty Bon Iver to vanilla Sufjan Stevens to clear-throated sea shanty slinger to the aforementioned Garfunkel (“Death Defying Acts”). The song that’s so far received the most attention (including some love from Rolling Stone) from this album is a song about a terrifying adventure aboard an old ship (let’s all agree that humanity will never have enough of those), that being “The Voyage of the James Caird.” A-

PLAYLIST

• The next batch of new albums scheduled for release will get here on April 1, i.e. April Fools’ Day, which is, of course, most apropos, because this week we start with badly tattooed Red Hot Chili Peppers, whose new album, Unlimited Love, is first to be put into the Snark-O-Scope™ for a thorough and proper evaluation! But before we do that, let’s go over it again: I don’t like this band, and, um, well, I never really did. If the ’90s were the ’60s, RHCP would have been the Rolling Stones to Pearl Jam’s Beatles, if you’re down for some rather trite juxtaposition, and I have no idea how that happened, how RHCP got so popular. But people of all ages love ’em, they just love ’em. A couple years ago I was given a single pass for the RHCP show at TD Garden, and since it was snowing and it was only one pass and I don’t like RHCP to begin with, I gave it to a friend, who drove down from New Hampshire, through the snow, to see the show. He loved it, which I wouldn’t have, because I don’t like a single one of their songs, literally none. The only thing that pumps me up about the old ’Chili Peppers is being given this new opportunity to trash their funk-ska nonsense in public, and since I’m salivating at that prospect, I’ll toddle off to YouTube right now, to listen to the new song “Black Summer.” OK, the video starts with Anthony Howeveryouspellit dressed like the Karate Kid, and the song is mellow, with their usual drippy guitar sound (it would be so cool if they’d learn that their Peavey amplifiers actually have things like distortion knobs and stuff and thus don’t necessarily have to sound like the sort of 1-foot-tall amp that’s normally played at kids’ birthday parties, so lame!). Anyway, on the tune drags, with Anthony making rapper hand movements even though he doesn’t rap, and then there’s some psychedelic ’70s vibe that’s just annoying and then some Austin Powers 1960s-pop vibe that also just made me depressed. What does this all mean? Well, it means that a lot of people will like it, just to tick me off.

• In spite of their German-sounding name, Warmduscher is a British garage/post-punk band. Wikipedia says that a “Warmduscher” basically refers to someone who’s a wimp, like, at English “pubs,” the beer-gargling “punters” tease their “mates” with that term, in the hope that someone will start a huge bar fight that will need to be broken up by the “bobbies.” Any-whatever, the new album, At The Hot Spot, is on the way, in the “lorries” right now, headed to the “record shoppes,” where you can buy it with your shillings and tuppence, and it will feature a song called “Wild Flowers,” a stream-of-consciousness rant spoken by one of the “lads,” who “prattles” on and on about all the stuff he hates in everyday life. There’s a wah-wah pedal on the guitar, not that that sound will be coming back from the grave for widespread use anytime soon, or at least I hope.

• You have to admire a band whose cover art is inspired by those old Garbage Pail Kids stickers, so props are due for Toronto four-man power-pop band PUP, whose new LP The Unraveling Of Puptheband is on the way! The push track, “Robot Writes A Love Song,” is a pretty well-rounded amalgam of Weezer and Violent Femmes, if that sounds like something anyone out there would be the slightest bit interested in.

• Finally, let’s check in with Canadian singer Lights, and her new album PEP, with its single “Salt and Vinegar.” This is basically next-gen Taylor Swift bubble-pop, made tolerable by some nifty samples; it’s brainless but not hateful.

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).

Comedy Comedy Comedy Drama, by Bob Odenkirk

Comedy Comedy Comedy Drama, by Bob Odenkirk (Random House, 285 pages)

It’s hard to imagine now, but in its first season, the AMC drama Breaking Bad didn’t make much of a splash. In fact, when his agent first brought up a potential short-term gig playing a sleazy lawyer named Saul Goodman, Bob Odenkirk had not seen the show.

“I vaguely recalled the image on the billboards — a guy in his underwear in the desert?” He figured, “I would phone a friend, see if anyone had actually seen it,” Odenkirk writes in his new memoir.

Breaking Bad, of course, would go on to be a monster hit and make household names out of Odenkirk and several of his costars. And the show’s success eclipsed the work he’d been doing since he was in middle school. (“By age twenty, I’d been steadily pumping out the blithering idiocy for over a decade,” he writes.) What he wanted to do, what he’d always done, was make people laugh, and he had been (mostly) paying his bills by writing jokes and sketches, going from the famed comedy stages in Chicago to the set of Saturday Night Live.

Saul Goodman, of course, is in many ways a comical character, although he exists within a serious and often violent drama. So maybe Odenkirk’s transition from stand-up wasn’t as big a transition as, say, playing the butler in The Remains of The Day, but it’s surprising enough to sustain a 200-plus-page book, at least for Breaking Bad fans. Those who have no interest in the show or its spinoff would have a tougher time paying attention unless they are young people looking to get into comedy.

The book, of course, begins with a joke:

“How does one begin a book? … Dickens, Melville, Odenkirk — all have faced the same query, and only one has failed. Melville. ‘Call me Ishmael.’ Talk about giving up.”

He goes on to riff about a childhood in Naperville, Illinois, that was most likely more painful than described. “A tale as old as time. Daddy issues. The end,” he jokes. Odenkirk was one of seven children in a Catholic family headed by a man with anger issues, so to speak. “Generally speaking, my dad was rough and too intense, and those were his good qualities. He was never around, and when he was, there was tension in the air.”

Odenkirk was relieved when his parents split up when he was 15; he says he shrugged when his father died when he was 22. His salvation was his brothers and sisters, encouraging teachers and, most importantly, discovering Monty Python, the British comedy troupe. Their comedy taught him that much of the world and many of its people were pretty awful “and you don’t have to respect these people, you can laugh at them.”

He mowed lawns in order to save enough money to buy a cassette recorder from Kmart (Google both of them, kids), on which he recorded comedy bits and interviews, but he couldn’t really envision doing comedy for a living until he was in college and had a chance encounter with Del Close, a legend in Chicago’s comedy scene. On impulse, Odenkirk asked if he could interview Close, “a gnarled, shaggy Sasquatch of a man,” and got two and a half hours of rambling memories, confessions, inspiration and advice. “All I can say is that it drew me in and shook me by the collar and screamed in my face, ‘YOU CAN DO THIS! THIS IS GONNA BE GREAT! I trembled in the presence of his galloping mind.”

From there, Odenkirk describes the ins and outs of his early career as a comedian and writer, including a trying time as a writer at SNL, which was then in its 13th season, working with people such as Al Franken and Chris Farley. It’s a revelatory in that he describes how what seems to be a dream job can actually wreck even someone with talent. (And it’s clear Odenkirk had talent — I am still laughing over a sketch he pitched about a cheap airline called “Greyhound Air” that doesn’t promise destinations but vague directions: “the plane is headed in a general direction … like towards New York.”)

It’s interesting that Breaking Bad doesn’t show up in the memoir in any real way until the ninth chapter, some 200 pages in. It shows how so many people in Hollywood can define a person by a single series or film, despite a robust body of work that precedes or follows it. And Breaking Bad, of course, gave birth to the prequel that Odenkirk is still immersed in: Better Call Saul, which he calls “the biggest break of my career by a fair margin.”

But here’s one of Odenkirk’s more interesting reveals: He initially said no to the role, because it was going to be shot in Albuquerque. He and his wife/manager had two kids, he was a school volunteer and a soccer coach, and a raft of other reasons, including that he felt he was famous and successful enough. “I am in this to entertain myself. Here’s how much fame I need: ‘just enough’ and no more.”

Maybe that’s the secret to Hollywood success: not really caring about it. Odenkirk concedes that his own success has in some ways been driven by luck. (He tells a young woman seeking advice, “You can’t make your own break.”) But it’s hard to look over Odenkirk’s life and not recall the Ralph Waldo Emerson quote “Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.” With enough raw talent and a cheap tape recorder, it’s apparently enough to just want to entertain yourself.

B

Book Notes

The literary genre known as autofiction is a blending of fiction and autobiography, and not everyone accepts it as necessary. “It’s either memoir or fiction. There’s no such category as autofiction,” writing coach Brooke Warner argued in Publishers Weekly last year.

The industry begs to differ, as perhaps would authors of centuries past. Let’s just say Charles Dickens’ fiction likely would have been much different had he not grown up in his own bleak house.

The latest buzz in the realm of autofiction is Checkout 19 (Riverhead, 288 pages) by Claire-Louise Bennett, a novel published in the U.K. last year and released this month in the U.S.

It is, as much as I can tell from reading excerpts and reviews, a stream-of-consciousness novel about books and their effects on the narrator’s life. But the opening will draw in anyone who, like the narrator, would go to the public library as a child and emerge with a stack of books they could barely see over.

It’s better, Bennett’s narrator, says, to just pick one book, rather than to be distracted by the siren songs of 10 others all week: “[J]ust because we were allowed to take out six books eight books twelve books four books didn’t mean did it that we had to.”

That could be autofiction for many of us.

Meanwhile, one has to marvel at the timing of Vladimir: A Novel (Avid Reader Press, 256 pages) by Julia May Jonas, which was released a few weeks before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It has nothing to do with Putin, but surely benefits from people searching for books on Russia’s president. It’s about a New York college professor who develops an obsession with the titular Vladimir while her husband is under investigation for having untoward relationships with students.

Finally, Anne Tyler fans are rejoicing at this week’s release of her 24th novel, French Braid (Knopf, 256 pages), a multigenerational family story — set in Baltimore, of course.

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.

Album Reviews 22/03/24

Raveena, Asha’s Awakening (Warner Records)

Another Missy Elliott wannabe heard from, more or less, although this diva is more prone to tabling reggaeton and such than Ariana Grande-ish Disney-spazz when she’s in gyration mode. With regard to her reggaeton, her singing on “Rush” has the same fluttery fragility as The Jets’ “Crush on You,” if you remember that one, and “Secret” borders on same, but the beat there is more a general-purpose Shakira thing than anything else. “Mystery” is different, though, a rather straightforward R&B tune with a pretty remarkable amount of bubbly femininity. I wouldn’t want to be trapped in a car driving around with nothing but this album for a few hours, but it’s pleasant enough. And mind you, the LP revolves around a conceptual theme regarding an alien princess “who, through a fantastic journey across the centuries, learns about love and loss, healing and destruction.” So anyhow, that. The closest her tour will bring her to New Hampshire will be on June 15, at Brighton Music Hall in Allston, Mass. A-

Dave Douglas, Secular Psalms (Greenleaf Music)

Quite the Da Vinci Code-tinged curveball here from jazz trumpeter Douglas, who was commissioned by the city of Gent, Belgium, to score music for the city’s 600th anniversary celebration of the creation of a 24-part polyptych (multi-paneled painting) titled “The Adoration Of The Mystic Lamb.” There’s an interesting backstory of course, revolving around the 2012 discovery that the altarpiece had been overpainted around AD 1550, and a couple of pieces are apparently missing, and such and so, all of which served to inspire Douglas and his sextet to work with such components as Latin Mass chanting, medieval folk songs and the work of composers of the period. As well, the band plays unconventional instruments such as a lute and a serpent (a huge, meandering ancestor of the tuba), which takes us to the first track, “Arrival,” a bizarre piece that evokes a William Peter Blatty fever dream. There’s relatively normal stuff as well, some readily accessible modern jazz and such, but chanting and such things do appear from time to time. Like its subject, a unique, rare artwork. A

PLAYLIST

• Onward we slog, my stouthearted ones, to March 25, when the new albums will magically appear in your Spotify, begging for just a little space in your non-existent attention span. Pitchfork will have to talk about these albums, as will YouTube’s resident clue-mosquito “musicologist” Anthony Fantano, a.k.a. “Needle Drop.” As always, in between making up nonsense words in an effort to overanalyze simple rock ’n’ roll songs, Fantana will make super-funny comments and perform two-second skits dressed up as a butler or Haystacks Calhoun or whomever he assumes will entertain his audience of 11-year-olds that day. And once he’s done confusing the young’ns, he’ll either toddle off to say something completely idiotic on some political podcast run by college freshmen who’ve never actually read any political books, or he’ll go shopping for more funny costumes in order to better entertain his fans, who apparently don’t have ears attached to their own heads, so there’s no way they can judge all that awful music for themselves. Needle Drop will definitely ignore the new Cowboy Junkies album, Songs Of The Recollection, because he is fake-edgy and only likes songs he could play his stupid bass to, but you know this album will be OK, because the ole Junkies have always made it a point to make a stop in New Hampshire when they tour, which is pretty cool of them. This year they’ll be at Portsmouth Music Hall on April 12, and the alternative country-folk veterans will surely play a few numbers from this new LP, a collection of cover tunes. There’s a boozy/pretty version of David Bowie’s “Five Years” on board; singer Margo Timmins sounds particularly Melissa Etheridge-ish on it.

• Speaking of Bowie, there’s a new album coming from British pop-punkers Placebo, who benefited greatly when Bowie took them on tour with him in 1996. It’s all well and good by me that they’ve had success; I suppose the world could always use a band that sounds like a weak version of Killers, but such analyses are beyond the scope of this newspaper article, as I’m supposed to discuss this new album, Never Let Me Go, and move on to the next thing. Fine, then, one of the tunes, “Surrounded By Spies,” has the same rhythm as “Cry Little Sister” from the soundtrack to The Lost Boys, like it’s music for dancing slowly and weirdly around a roaring campfire and making googly eyes at people, except the vocals sound like Pet Shop Boys. I have no idea what these guys think they’re even doing these days, but anyway, that.

• What else, what else, what else, oh look, it’s Toronto hardcore punk band F–ed Up, with a new album, called Do All Words Can Do. The title track really is old-school, which is cool, like, it’s really fast and crazed, and it sounds like it was recorded on a boombox and whatnot, but the only reason I even brought this up was that you bands out there really need to stop having swears in your names, because 99 times out of 100 you’ll be ignored by respectable newspapers like this one, because young children would accidentally read it and have questions. It just isn’t done, you see. If you’re looking for a way to make me listen to your music, I’d much rather that you brag about how awesome your band is instead of behaving like a 10-year-old, that’d be great. This has been a public service message; the more you know.

• Let’s wrap up the week with Australian all-girl indie-rock trio Camp Cope, whose new full-length, Running With The Hurricane, is heading your way in trucks right this minute! The title track is really good, evoking Florence & The Machine in a Woodstock frame of mind, you’ll like it, I promise.

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).

Stay in the loop!

Get FREE weekly briefs on local food, music,

arts, and more across southern New Hampshire!