Category: Pop

Pastoral Song, by James Rebanks

Pastoral Song, by James Rebanks (Custom House, 294 pages)

Occasionally a book does so well across the Atlantic that publishers in the U.S. pick it up, hoping that American readers will warm to the author as well despite the peculiarities of some English words. This worked out splendidly for J.K. Rowling.

There are similar hopes for Pastoral Song, which the U.K.’s Sunday Times pronounced “nature book of the year” when it was first published as English Pastoral. Subtitled “A Farmer’s Journey,” the book is a meditation on the plight of small farmers who struggle to keep family farms going even as the despised “factory farm” gobbles a larger share of our food dollars each year.

James Rebanks, the author, is a thinking-man’s farmer, although he makes it clear that no true farmer has time to sit and think. He inherited his land from his father but got his love of farming from his grandfather, who was the bigger influence in his life. Of his father he writes, “I would try to help him and would inevitably do something wrong and be shouted at.”

The grandfather was gentler in his approach, not only to his grandson but to farming.

“He would simply gaze at his cows or sheep for what seemed like ages, leaning over a gate. As a result he knew them all as individuals. He could spot when they behaved differently because something was wrong, when they were coming into season or were about to give birth. He thought only fools rushed around,” Rebanks wrote.

This is all well and good for the practice of farming, but unfortunately for the reader, Rebanks brings his grandfather’s style to this book. In sum, it is Rebanks leaning over a gate, for what seems like ages, musing leisurely about the challenges of farming. It’s watching the grass grow, with very little happening in long stretches, but for the occasional offing of varmints. (And I wish I had not learned how Rebanks’ father rid his fields of rabbits, but it’s too late for that now.)

To be fair, Rebanks memorably conveys the harshness of a lifestyle that has been romanticized. “My parents were half-broke. I could see it in the second-hand tractors, rusting barn roofs, and old machinery that was always breaking down and never got replaced. But I could taste it too, in the endless boiled stew and mince that was served up.”

The family earned a tenuous living that would be foreign to workers with biweekly direct deposit. Their pay varied with the weather, and with rising interest rates and diving market prices, and the occasional murder of crows that could swoop in and destroy a field of barley. And farming requires an extraordinary amount of emotional toughness, what with all the horrible ways in which farm animals can die, even outside of slaughter. (When’s the last time you watched a rat try to drag away a chicken?)

“The logic chain is simple: we have to farm to eat, and we have to kill (or displace life, which amounts to the same thing) to farm. Being human is a rough business,” Rebanks writes. But, he says, there is a difference “between the toughness all farming required and the industrial ‘total war’ on nature that had been unleashed in my lifetime.”

The past 40 years, Rebanks says, has upended thousands of years of farming practices that came before it, and when his father died, leaving him the land, he was faced with the same dilemma confronting his father and grandfather — how to earn enough from the land “to pay our bills, service our debts, and make some money for us to live on” — in circumstances vastly different from theirs.

Then, after all this musing in his motherland, Rebanks up and comes to America to visit friends. And traveling through Iowa and Kentucky, eying the Confederate flags and Trump signs, he figures out who to blame: those grungy Americans!

This may have played well in the U.K., but it was a startling turn of events in an otherwise mournful elegy for the farmer, to have him pick up a bat and start swinging it wildly in the Iowa cornfields. He said Kentucky felt like a “landscape littered with ghosts and relics” and called Iowa “dark, flat and bleak.”

“Everything old was rotting. Barns leaned away from the wind, roofs half torn off.” The cause of this dystopian Midwest: “America had chosen industrial farming and abandoned its small family farms,” as if there was a lever we pulled in our last election. In fact, we vote for factory farms every time we visit a supermarket, he says. “The people in those shops seemed not to know, or care much, about how unsustainable their food production is. The share of the average American citizen’s income spent on food has declined from about 22% in 1950 to about 6.4% today … The money that people think they are spending on food from farms almost all goes to those who process the food, and to the wholesalers and retailers.”

Fair enough. But read the room. An English farmer coming over here to lecture Americans about their grocery shopping, diss our fruited plains? It feels a little rude.

And Rebanks concedes that “the overwhelming majority” of farms are not factory farms. “About 80 percent of people on earth are still fed by these small farmers,” he writes. That said, the work of a small farm is a “tough old game and doesn’t fit with any economic principle of minimizing work and maximizing productivity.” So what to do? Besides supporting your local farmers, “thinking longer term and with more humility,” Rebanks suggests planting trees. He plans to plant a tree every day for the rest of his life.

It’s clear to see why English Pastoral was a hit in the U.K., with its call for more sustainably produced food there “in order to avoid importing more from sterile, ruined landscapes like those of the American Midwest, or from land being cleared of pristine ecosystems in places like Indonesia and the Amazon.”

It’s less clear why this occasionally plodding, occasionally melodic memoir would do well here. As our grandmothers would say, don’t bite the hands that feed you. C

Book Events

Author events

• HILARY CROWLEY Author presents The Power of Energy Medicine. Virtual event hosted by Gibson’s Bookstore in Concord. Thurs., Nov. 18, 7 p.m. Via Zoom. Registration required. Visit gibsonsbookstore.com or call 224-0562.

• WENDY GORTON Author presents 50 Hikes with Kids: New England. Virtual event hosted by Toadstool Bookshops of Peterborough, Nashua and Keene. Sun., Nov. 21, 4 p.m. Via Zoom. Visit toadbooks.com.

• TANJA HESTER Author presents Wallet Activism: How to Use Every Dollar You Spend, Earn, and Save as a Force for Change. Virtual event hosted by Gibson’s Bookstore in Concord. Mon., Nov. 22, 7 p.m. Via Zoom. Registration required. Visit gibsonsbookstore.com or call 224-0562.

• BRENE BROWN Author presents Atlas of the Heart. Virtual event hosted by Gibson’s Bookstore in Concord. Thurs., Dec. 2, 8 p.m. Via Zoom. Tickets cost $30. Ticket sales end Dec. 2, at noon. Visit gibsonsbookstore.com or call 224-0562.

• JACK DALTON Kid conservationist presents his book, Kawan the Orangutan: Lost in the Rainforest. Toadstool Bookshop, 375 Amherst St., Nashua. Sat., Dec. 4, noon. Visit toadbooks.com.

• DAMIEN KANE RIDGEN Author presents Bell’s Codex and My Magnum Opus. Toadstool Bookshop, 375 Amherst St., Nashua. Sun., Dec. 5, noon. Visit toadbooks.com.

• JEN SINCERO Author presents Badass Habits. Virtual event hosted by The Music Hall in Portsmouth as part of its “Innovation and Leadership” series. Tues., Dec. 7, 7:30 p.m. Includes author presentation, coaching session and audience Q&A. Tickets cost $22. Visit themusichall.org or call 436-2400.

• KATHRYN HULICKAuthor presents Welcome to the Future. Sat., Dec. 11, 2 p.m. Toadstool Bookshop, 12 Depot Square, Peterborough. Visit toadbooks.com.

Poetry

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

Book Clubs

• BOOKERY Online. Monthly. Third Thursday, 6 p.m. Bookstore based in 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.

Album Reviews 21/11/18

Blonder, Knoxville House (Cool world Records)

At this writing, this debut record from Long Island native Constantine Anastasakis isn’t due out until February 2022, so there’s obviously an initiative to get the buzz going as quickly as possible before reviewers realize how much it sucks and tell people like you about it. I mean, Pitchfork Media will probably love it, as it conjures images of Pavement reborn as a half-synth-powered cyborg, and basically every song has a woozy, discombobulated feel to it, everything wandering in and out of pitch like a vinyl album that was left on top of a radiator for a few hours. Think of it this way: Brian Eno and Manchester Orchestra reinterpreted by the dumbest college student you’ve ever known, mixed into a hybrid no one would have ever asked for, except the melodies aren’t all that bad. Better than Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. accomplished, which is simultaneously the closest stuff to this, and yes, the faintest possible praise I can muster at the moment. D

Salt Ashes, Killing My Mind (Radikal Records)

The stage name of Brighton, U.K., singer Veiga Sanchez, Salt Ashes is diva pop with a good amount of retro house, tunes that are form-fitted for velvet rope clubs but could also work as soundtrack for a beachside Tilt-A-Whirl. “Love, Love,” the touchstone single, is pure Mariah Carey meets Janet Jackson, which is about where her voice fits. Unsurprisingly, she digs ’80s floor-filler stuff, checking off Giorgio Moroder, The Knife and Fleetwood Mac as influences; she’s been a dance-music player since her 2016 self-titled debut album, which was produced by the late Daniel Fridholm (a.k.a. Cruelty). Her lyrics deal with a laundry list of things that aren’t wildly unique to today’s young women: unrequited love, sex, anxiety, relationships, mental health, sexual harassment and such. The LP kicks off with a foggy, steam-driven, goth-infused electro-dance joint, “Lucy,” which is more Kylie Minogue than anything else. “Mad Girl” is ’80s as heck, down to the busy organic synths; “I’m Not Scared To Die’ covers the obligato ballad entry with aplomb enough. B

PLAYLIST

• Nov. 19 is here, and with it some new rock ’n’ roll albums. Some will be good and some will be bad, depending on one’s individual tastes or lack thereof. I’m looking at a rather large list of new albums, and I’m sure there will be something that won’t make me power-guzzle a six-pack of Pepto Bismol, but you never know. We can be nice and casual this week, because there is a plethora of albums to choose from, starting with Phantom Island, from a band called Smile, a project from Björn Yttling (Peter Bjorn and John) and Joakim Åhlund of the Teddybears. I think this will probably be safe for me to check out, because the Teddybears are awesome, so I’ll take my chances on the latest single at this writing, “Call My Name.” This song features vocals from mononymed Swedish singer-songwriter Robyn, who isn’t a very good singer, but the tune is a low-key, piquant, very pleasant blend of ABBA and Miss Kittin, very 1970s-radio if you can get past Robyn’s not-very-great voice. There’s a snowy, upbeat feel to it, which is just what the doctor ordered if you need something smooth and cocoa-y to wrap your ears around as we descend into the frozen North Pole of yet another New England winter.

• Well, that wasn’t so bad, was it. Hmm, dum de dum, why don’t we — wait, hold everything, here we go, a new album from Elbow, called Flying Dream 1, why didn’t someone tell me about this before? Elbow is one of the few indie bands in the world that still tinkles my jingle bells; they are from Bury in Greater Manchester, England. If past is prologue here, this will probably be awesome; their previous stuff has been like a cross between We Were Promised Jetpacks and VNV Nation, and — wait, I did a fly-by, didn’t I; you haven’t the foggiest idea what that even means. Unfortunately I do, so I’ll try to translate. Picture a stuffy literature professor starting a mildly aggressive rock band but never doing anything really punky, sort of like a British version of Bruce Springsteen except the singer doesn’t suck and it’s mostly mellow-ish, and the tunes are really catchy and cool. That’s Elbow, at least up until this moment, when I’m about to find out if their single “Six Words” is any good. OK, it is, it’s a mellow, almost Coldplay-ish tune comprising a synth arpeggio but without being annoying like Coldplay. It’s awesome, mildly mawkish but ultimately upbeat and very pretty. I so totally love these guys.

• Not bad, I haven’t even thought about uncorking the Pepto Bismol during this exercise at all! I’ll tell you, gang, this may be my lucky — oh no, it can’t be. Do you hear those booming tyrannosaurus footsteps, coming for me, to ruin my day? Yes, look, it’s the hilariously overrated Sting, smashing buildings as he strides toward me, holding out some awful new album! The LP is called The Bridge, and it has a single, called “Rushing Water.” Oh jeez, oh jeez, this sounds like like every boring elevator-music song this egomaniacal Matrix-clown has ever foisted onto listeners of dentist-office-rock, basically a souped-up version of “Every Breath You Take” except with some rap-speed lyrics. Don’t worry, you’ll probably only hear this once, either on Jimmy Kimmel or The Today Show; it’s definitely not interesting enough to warrant anything more “hip” than that.

• We’ll wrap up this week’s business with 30, the new album from Adele, whose hobbies include publicly sucking up to Beyonce and being this decade’s Celine Dion. “Easy On Me” is a depressing but powerful pop ballad as always, and she does some high-pitched professional singing. As if you couldn’t guess, it is a song that will be loved by 20-somethings who don’t trust their boyfriends, and with good reason.

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).

Truffle Hound, by Rowan Jacobsen

Truffle Hound, by Rowan Jacobsen (Bloomsbury, 283 pages)

You may think, because you’ve never eaten a truffle nor been interested in doing so, that you would have no interest in reading about this delicacy of the 1 percent, who pay upwards of $200 an ounce for bulbous underground fungi.

But you would be wrong.

In the hands of celebrated food writer Rowan Jacobsen, Truffle Hound is a joyful romp through a very strange world, no less interesting for those who care nothing about truffles, or who only care about the chocolate kind. In fact, the book may be even more fascinating to readers who come to it with only a vague knowledge of truffles and why people love them so much.

Jacobsen, who lives in Vermont, was once that person, despite being part of an enviable club: writers who write primarily about food. (His previous books have included deep dives into oysters and apples.) He had consumed truffle fries, truffle salt and other truffle dishes with no particular interest, but one day, at a meeting in Italy, he encountered a small fat truffle, a “bulbous pearl” under glass, that made his world explode.

“I have smelled lots of yumminess before, but this was different,” he writes. “… It was hardly a food scent at all. It was more like catching a glimpse of a satyr prancing across the dining room floor while playing its flute and flashing its hindquarters at you. You think, What the hell was that?”

Jacobsen returned to his table but couldn’t stop thinking about what he had just experienced. “I kept asking my dining companions if they wanted to go smell the truffle,” he writes. Mind you, this reaction arose from the most humble of organisms: a fungus with very little taste and a lumpy shape that is considered delicious by wild pigs. And yet it has inspired kings, philosophers and even Oprah Winfrey, who reportedly carries her own stash of white truffles with her when she travels.

Like William Butler Yeats, who wrote that “Love has pitched his mansion in the place of excrement,” Jacobsen considers the idea that truffle mania is Mother Nature’s joke: “I began to wonder if [truffles] were more like little Trojan horses, wheeled into the finest dining rooms in the world, only to discharge a scent that mocked civilization and its trappings.”

But he quickly throws that thought aside to travel the world in search of the finest truffles and the people and dogs who find them. His quest takes him to forests in Italy, and to an oddly productive truffle farm in North Carolina. Along the way he encounters a fascinating trove of characters, such as the “hotshot in food media circles” (whom, annoyingly, he grants anonymity) who once worked as a truffle dealer in New York City. She’d go to the airport to pick up a box of about 30 pounds of truffles that had been shipped overnight from Europe (the intoxicating scent fades rapidly) and then try to sell them to the city’s most famous chefs. One day, between calls, she bought a warm bagel and took a few truffle shards out of her cooler and grated them on it. “That may have been the best thing I ever ate,” she told Jacobsen.

In anecdotes like this we learn the important stuff about truffles (they require their own specialty utensil, the truffle shaver) and that the truffle oil you see in grocery stores and restaurants most likely contains no actual truffles but is olive oil infused with a truffle-like scent. Also, be careful if you are vacationing in Italy and are offered the opportunity to go on a truffle hunt: Chances are the experience is about as authentic as the “Pirates of the Caribbean” ride at Disney. Cheap truffles are often planted so that customers can get the thrill of seeing a truffle dog “find” one of these homely edible jewels.

About the only question that Jacobsen doesn’t answer about truffles is whether you can legally bring them into the U.S. He confesses that, having spent upwards of 300 euros for three small white truffles (a transaction conducted surreptitiously in a hotel lobby, like a drug deal), he dared not declare them to the customs agent. “Raw fruit, vegetables, and meat are definitely banned, as is soil, but fungi are theoretically fine,” but still, he stuffed his truffle in a sock stuffed in a boot, which seems the sort of thing that can get you detained.

Like the author and naturalist Diane Ackerman, Jacobsen brings the eye of a scientist and the voice of a poet to his work, which is the main reason that this book is so engrossing. Could it have been 50 pages shorter and still as interesting? Absolutely, and it doesn’t leave the reader wanting more; there is really only so much truffle information that the mind can hold.

But for the truly insatiable, there’s an index of resources (websites where you can buy truffles, find authentic truffle hunts and international truffle fairs, and even where you can buy your very own trained truffle dog). There are also a few truffle recipes and a really nice collection of color photographs so you can see what Jacobsen is writing about.

The only thing that’s missing is a scratch-and-sniff page, and a warning that you, too, might become a truffle hound after accompanying the author on this pleasurable hunt. A

Book Notes

New Hampshire runner Ben True has been in the news a lot lately because of his debut in the New York City Marathon Nov. 7. So why mention this in a book column?

It’s because True and his wife, Sarah, a professional triathlete, named their first child after a character in a novel.

As Runner’s World magazine reported, the Hanover couple named their son, born in July, Haakon (pronounced HAWK-en). The name is a derivative of Hakan, the name of the protagonist in a novel by Hernan Diaz, In the Distance (Coffee House Press, 240 pages).

Independent of its plot, the book has a fascinating origin story. It was the author’s first book, and he broke all the rules by submitting it to a small publishing house without first obtaining an agent. But the novel got a glowing review from The New York Times and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

With that sort of reception, it’s no surprise that Diaz has already sold a second novel, Trust, which won’t be released until May but is already available for pre-order on Amazon. This time he snared a big publisher: Riverhead. If the Trues have another child and follow their Diaz-naming tradition, it looks like their next choices will be more common: the main characters are Benjamin and Helen.

Meanwhile there’s a new book out that examines a sport of special interest in New Hampshire: skiing. Powder Days by Heather Hansman (Hanover Square Press, 272 pages) examines “ski bums, ski towns and the future of chasing snow.” A review in Publishers Weekly calls it “as exhilarating as the act of skiing itself.”

Book Events

Author events

• KEN FOLLETT Author presents Never. Virtual event with author discussion and audience Q&A, hosted by The Music Hall in Portsmouth. Sun., Nov. 14, 1 p.m. Tickets cost $36 and include a book for in-person pickup at The Music Hall. Visit themusichall.org or call 436-2400.

• HILARY CROWLEY Author presents The Power of Energy Medicine. Virtual event hosted by Gibson’s Bookstore in Concord. Thurs., Nov. 18, 7 p.m. Via Zoom. Registration required. Visit gibsonsbookstore.com or call 224-0562.

• WENDY GORTON Author presents 50 Hikes with Kids: New England. Virtual event hosted by Toadstool Bookshops of Peterborough, Nashua and Keene. Sun., Nov. 21, 4 p.m. Via Zoom. Visit toadbooks.com.

• TANJA HESTER Author presents Wallet Activism: How to Use Every Dollar You Spend, Earn, and Save as a Force for Change. Virtual event hosted by Gibson’s Bookstore in Concord. Mon., Nov. 22, 7 p.m. Via Zoom. Registration required. Visit gibsonsbookstore.com or call 224-0562.

• BRENE BROWN Author presents Atlas of the Heart. Virtual event hosted by Gibson’s Bookstore in Concord. Thurs., Dec. 2, 8 p.m. Via Zoom. Tickets cost $30. Ticket sales end Dec. 2, at noon. Visit gibsonsbookstore.com or call 224-0562.

• JACK DALTON Kid conservationist presents his book, Kawan the Orangutan: Lost in the Rainforest. Toadstool Bookshop, 375 Amherst St., Nashua. Sat., Dec. 4, noon. Visit toadbooks.com.

• DAMIEN KANE RIDGEN Author presents Bell’s Codex and My Magnum Opus. Toadstool Bookshop, 375 Amherst St., Nashua. Sun., Dec. 5, noon. Visit toadbooks.com.

• KATHRYN HULICKAuthor presents Welcome to the Future. Sat., Dec. 11, 2 p.m. Toadstool Bookshop, 12 Depot Square, Peterborough. Visit toadbooks.com.

Poetry

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

Book Clubs

• BOOKERY Online. Monthly. Third Thursday, 6 p.m. Bookstore based in 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.

Album Reviews 21/11/11

Delv!s, Walk Alone Tracks (Because Music)

Three-song EP from Belgian singer-songwriter Niels Delvaux, meant as a teaser for a full-length LP that’s due out in early 2022. All the promotional materials I received on this release were in broken English; I’m sure the PR guy — a top-level pro with whom I’ve dealt for like a million years now — had some nasty back-and-forth with the artiste and came away swearing a lot, but my concern here is, of course, to find something innovative somewhere in this neo-soul record. First, I had to get past the fact that the title track opener is so dangerously close to Albert Hammond’s 1973 radio hit “It Never Rains In Southern California” that if you hummed it into Siri, even she would suggest suing Delvaux for copyright infringement, and second, there’s nothing “neo” about this soul. Oh whatever, it gets kind of rub-a-dubby, which worked; it should have been a reggae song in the first place. Same for “Rebelman,” which is basically “Stir It Up” in a fake moustache. It’s lo-fi and pleasant enough; let’s just leave it at that. B-

East Forest, A Soundtrack For The Psychedelic Practitioner, VOL. I (Aquilo Records)

Odd coincidence, if you look at today’s Playlist section, I mentioned Jon Hopkins, a soundcaper who collaborated with guru and American spiritual teacher Ram Dass. This guy, East Forest, whose real name is Trevor Oswalt, released a similar album in 2019, appropriately titled Ram Dass, which featured Dass’s last teachings. Prior to that, Forest’s (also 2019-released) Music For Mushrooms: A Soundtrack For The Psychedelic Practitioner, made headlines by hitting No. 1 on the iTunes New Age chart and being included as a go-to listen in the “psychedelic-assisted therapy and research movement.” You know me by now, so you know that all this business is flooding my head with wiseass comments about people dressed for Himalayan expeditions riding on the backs of yaks, but it is what it is, and besides, there’s a movement these days pushing psychedelics as a way to relieve people’s psychic ills through chemistry, so I say whatever floats your boat, being that pretty much everyone is dealing with massive amounts of existential angst these days. Anyway, this is a collection of floaty/glittery background pieces for TED Talks (“Cloud Gaze”), and sometimes they get weird (“Slip Slope (Octopus Spaghetti Pants)”). Think freakiest-possible Tangerine Dream and you’re there; it’s listenable enough. B

PLAYLIST

• No turning back now, gang, we’re looking at the slate of new albums coming out Nov. 12, there’s no escape, winter is here. It’s the favorite time of the year for people who enjoy scraping frost off car windshields when they’re already late for work or whatever, so congratulations if speed-scraping is your jam. But whatever, look, it’s British dude Jon Hopkins with his new album, Music For Psychedelic Therapy, a record that will be in stores on the 12th. Hopkins used to play keyboards for technopop lady Imogen Heap, which of course you already know if you’re one of the five people who actually ever read the insert of an Imogen Heap CD. But that’s neither here nor there, and besides, Hopkins has been making his own records for 19 years now and deserves your respect, so let the strains of lead single “Sit Around The Fire” play. It is a sleepy ambient song for yoga classes, but there’s a lot of talking over it, by — I assume — Ram Dass, an American spiritual teacher, who was more commonly known as Baba Ram Dass! While all the cloudy happy music is going on, you’ll hear messages of love and contentment and awakening and other impossible nonsense from this fellow Ram Dass! OK!

• San Francisco indie-rock duo The Dodos, comprising Meric Long and Logan Kroeber, will release its 8th album, Grizzly Peak, this week! One of the guys is “a student of West African Ewe drumming and intricate blues fingerpicking guitar,’ while the other “hails from a background in heavy metal bands.” I’ve heard of these guys before and may have even talked about them in the past, but I don’t remember, so I’ll pretend that I’ve never heard their music before instead of going with my first guess, that I’ve heard them before and they bored me into a semiconscious state from which I may have never recovered. OK, OK, just forget it, I’m so toxic right now, let’s just get this over with and find out what these guys are even doing, to cement their rock ’n’ roll legacy. I’m now listening to the band’s new single, “The Surface,” and my stars, listen to how quirky it is! Acoustic guitar strumming, a singer with bad adenoids, then they sort of rock out a little on acoustic guitar. Think Simon and Garfunkel except redundant and unnecessary; that is to say, Vampire Weekend meets the Everly Brothers or some such. I predict that this album will not conquer the world, but I was wrong about something a few years ago, so who knows.

• Oh great, it’s Damon Albarn, the frontman of oi-pop band Blur, with a solo album, called The Nearer The Fountain More Pure The Stream Flows, and it’s on its way right now! Wow, what a ripoff, it’s not bouncy or punky or crazy like Blur’s “Song 2,” it’s like really mellow Coldplay. Who knew that the guy who sang “Song 2” could sound like Chris Martin, you know? This is like lullaby music for Zoomers, but since no Zoomers know who this guy is, they’ll never have the pleasure. I don’t even know why he did this, good lord, let’s just do one more here and call it a column.

• Finally, we have Sonic Youth co-founder Lee Ranaldo with his 14th album, In Virus Times. There’s just an excerpt available now, a video where he’s drawing weird pictures while a pretty decent acoustic guitar arpeggio does stuff. And then he’s whistling, because there hasn’t been a good whistle song since the theme to The Andy Griffith Show. Oh, I get it, he’s selling prints of his weird drawings; they look like they were done using a Spirograph. So arty!

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).

Bewilderment, by Richard Powers

Bewilderment, by Richard Powers (W.W. Norton, 278 pages)

For some people, the title of Richard Powers’ new novel, Bewilderment, might seem a nod to his last.

Although The Overstory won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, the 612-page book, published in 2018, had decidedly mixed reviews from the general public. Many readers found it confusing, overwrought, pretentious, unwieldy and preachy.

There are no such problems with Bewilderment, which is a taut and engrossing read from its opening pages to its unsettling ending. It is Powers’ 13th novel and should delight his longtime fans and recruit new ones. There is a raft of intelligent design bobbing in this fast-moving river of a book that centers on two characters: a widowed astrobiologist and his neurologically atypical son who has been diagnosed with Asperger’s, ADHD and obsessive-compulsive behavior. In all of modern literature, you will not find a more sympathetic account of what it’s like to be a single parent raising a child who cannot regulate his behavior. Nor will you find a more thoughtful, yet accessible, musing on the mysteries of the universe.

The novel begins with a father-son camping trip that Theo Byrne arranges as an extended time-out for his son, Robin, who is on the verge of being expelled from third grade because of his out-of-control behavior. Robin, who goes by Robbie, is 9 and has the usual challenges of children that age; other children bully him, for example, because of his name, which was given to him because it was his mother’s favorite bird.

Alyssa Byrne has been dead for two years, but her spirit is very much with her son and husband, who recite her favorite prayer every night: May every sentient being be free from unnecessary suffering. Alyssa was what is commonly known as an animal-rights activist, but without the red spray paint. She was a sharply intelligent, untiring force of nature who used natural winsomeness to alleviate the suffering of animals and to draw attention to mass extinctions under way. In the words of her husband, “She ionized any room, even a roomful of politicians.”

Alyssa’s sudden death (the details of which are slowly revealed) was catastrophic for the family, beyond usual ways. It left Theo an island with no support in his insistence that Robbie not be subjected to psychoactive drugs while the child’s mind was still developing. And it left Robbie, already prone to fits of rage and other antisocial behavior, obsessed with his mother and her causes. At one point, he decides to paint a picture of every endangered animal and sell the paintings to give to one of Alyssa’s favorite charities.

All this alone is fodder for a very good novel, especially given the sensitivity and insight that Powers brings to the challenges of parenting children with autism-spectrum disorders, especially for those doing so alone.

But Powers brings another layer to the story through Theo’s choice of career. A researcher who uses data and imagination to envision forms of life that could populate planets that have yet to be found, Theo shares these potential worlds with his son, who possesses extraordinary wisdom and empathy. Their conversations about the Fermi paradox (the fact that there is no evidence of extraterrestrial life despite the overwhelming odds that it exists) and other scientific concepts lend an intelligence to this novel that inferior literature lacks, and Theo’s descriptions of theoretical planets at times mirror what’s going on in the book. It’s a lovely dance, expertly choreographed by a master.

Robbie’s escalating problems lead Theo to seek out an experimental therapy called Decoded Neurofeedback, which Theo and Alyssa had participated in years ago. Using artificial intelligence, a subject’s brain is mapped, and then taught to steer toward another subject’s emotions. Because Alyssa’s data was available, it is eventually incorporated into Robbie’s treatment, and unforeseen consequences ensue.

This puts Theo, a science-fiction fan since childhood, deeper into an already mind-boggling dilemma — whether to continue with therapy that is apparently helping his son, even when unfolding events threaten to publicly expose Robbie’s participation in a controversial treatment.

As in The Overstory, Powers has points to make, about nature, humans’ oversized footprint on the planet, and politics. His occasional asides into the actions of a fictional president (clearly Donald Trump, or an imitator, though never directly identified as such) — such as a directive that all Americans carry proof of citizenship at all times — seems unnecessary, although there is an endearing fictional Greta Thunberg with whom Robbie falls in love and who is a perfect fit with this story. And when the reason for the title is finally revealed in the waning pages of the novel, it’s a political observation, but pitch-perfect no matter what ideology the reader embraces.

A Hollywood happy ending would betray the complexity of this deeply serious and heart-rending novel, so don’t look for that. But this should be a contender among the best novels of 2021.

A

Book Notes

If your life has been a little colder, a little drearier these days, maybe it’s because it’s November. Or maybe it’s because it’s been almost five years since the last BBC episode of Sherlock aired, and Benedict Cumberbatch is still being cagey about whether he will make another season.

No matter. There’s usually something new in the Holmes universe, and this month comes Miss Moriarty, I Presume? (Berkley, 368 pages) by Sherry Thomas, writer of something called “The Lady Sherlock Series.” The major characters are Charlotte Holmes and Mrs. Watson, and previous titles in the series include A Study in Scarlet Women and A Conspiracy in Belgravia. It’s anybody’s guess what Sir Arthur Conan Doyle would think of this, but the books have made the New York Times bestseller list.

Doyle died in 1930, but his inspired character lives in the genre of pastiche, literature written in the style, and with many of the same characters, as a famous work. Call it a more formal and tasteful style of fan fiction, one that satisfies the appetite for more and more stories of a beloved character.

British writer James Lovegrove has done this successfully with the Sherlock Holmes franchise, and he released a new novel in October: Sherlock Holmes and the Three Winter Terrors (Titan Books, 416 pages). That’s seasonal enough, but he also published Sherlock Holmes and the Christmas Demon two years ago (Titan, 384 pages). It seems that Halloween and Christmas are morphing into one big festival, probably starting with The Nightmare Before Christmas.

There are nine other Lovegrove/Sherlock books, and he’s also written a handful of short stories, published in anthologies, all listed on his website. That should be enough to keep you entertained until a fifth season of Sherlock comes out.

If not, there’s a Benedict Cumberbatch adult coloring book available on Amazon.

Book Events

Author events

• MITCH ALBOM Author presents The Stranger in the Lifeboat. Virtual event hosted by Gibson’s Bookstore in Concord. Fri., Nov. 5, 7:30 p.m. Via Zoom. Registration required. Visit gibsonsbookstore.com or call 224-0562.

• KEN FOLLETT Author presents Never. Virtual event with author discussion and audience Q&A, hosted by The Music Hall in Portsmouth. Sun., Nov. 14, 1 p.m. Tickets cost $36 and include a book for in-person pickup at The Music Hall. Visit themusichall.org or call 436-2400.

• TANJA HESTER Author presents Wallet Activism: How to Use Every Dollar You Spend, Earn, and Save as a Force for Change. Virtual event hosted by Gibson’s Bookstore in Concord. Mon., Nov. 22, 7 p.m. Via Zoom. Registration required. Visit gibsonsbookstore.com or call 224-0562.

• HILARY CROWLEY Author presents The Power of Energy Medicine. Virtual event hosted by Gibson’s Bookstore in Concord. Thurs., Nov. 18, 7 p.m. Via Zoom. Registration required. Visit gibsonsbookstore.com or call 224-0562.

• BRENE BROWN Author presents Atlas of the Heart. Virtual event hosted by Gibson’s Bookstore in Concord. Thurs., Dec. 2, 8 p.m. Via Zoom. Tickets cost $30. Ticket sales end Dec. 2, at noon. Visit gibsonsbookstore.com or call 224-0562.

Poetry

• COVID SPRING II BOOK LAUNCHVirtual book launch celebrating COVID Spring II: More Granite State Pandemic Poems, an anthology of poetry by 51 New Hampshire residents about the pandemic experience in New Hampshire, now available through independent Concord-based publisher Hobblebush Books. Includes an introduction by Mary Russell, Director of the New Hampshire Center for the Book at the New Hampshire State Library. Sun., Nov. 7, 7 p.m. Virtual, via Zoom. Registration required. Visit hobblebush.com or call 715-9615.

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

Book Clubs

• BOOKERY Online. Monthly. Third Thursday, 6 p.m. Bookstore based in 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.

Album Reviews 21/11/04

Alice Longyu Gao, High Dragon And Universe (self-released)

The current electronic music scene, this Chinese-born DJ is reported to have said, is “designed by heterosexual white men to guarantee their success.” I have no doubt that’s true; Gao wasn’t able to release this debut EP until she’d been at it for five years, even though she started out with a bang (her second DJ gig was the launch party for A$AP Mob’s VLONE streetwear line). Based in New York and L.A. these days, she’s a cross between a fashion plate and a fake-12-year-old Twitter goofball; she wastes no time mindlessly getting up in your grill with opening bling brag “100 Boyfriends,” evoking a combination of Da Brat and Missy Elliot as processed through a grime-o-meter set to “bust your eardrums” on the bass-throb end. Past that utter mindlessness, she does have some pop sensibilities (I mean come on, that’s where this would be going anyway), but for now she’s focused on club stuff, heavy on the hearing-test panoplies. Good luck to her, I suppose. B

Toth, Death EP (Northern Spy Records)

Really, another Brooklyn hipster who sounds like Bon Iver? I am really about out of words to describe this kind of stuff, and I’m not seeing any reviews that nail it in a sonic sense (Aquarium Drunkard’s reviewer went with “a Beach Boys session produced by Brian Eno,” which was close enough I suppose. I mean, I have no idea how anyone can even take this stuff seriously anymore, really truly). I dunno, to me, this is Grizzly Bear with a heavy infusion of Vampire Weekend getaway-indie, not that there’s anything interesting going on as far as syncopation or percussion. But the more I listen to it, the more I have to admit it’s next-gen, in a way, at least toward the end of evoking images of sipping umbrella drinks in a sleepy cabana; the overall vibe is José González but with a little personality. The theme is alcoholism, a disease with which singer Alex Toth has had his bouts and which claimed a relative, an event that inspired this five-songer, not that anyone would have the foggiest idea that that’s what this fluff is about. B

PLAYLIST

• On to the winter months and the yearly misery time, it’s November, and there will be new music albums coming out, on the 5th! Soon enough we’ll get the worst of it, like when you’re already running late and you go outside to start the car but it’s completely frozen in a block of ice, like a woolly mammoth with all-weather tires, and you’re scraping like the dickens with an empty CD case or whatever, but it’s basically Krazy Glue. Hey, man, I told you months ago to move to Georgia, yet here you are, so let’s just get to the business at hand, making ultra-jillionaire Diana Ross a few more dollars by helping to sell her new album, Thank You, which is coming to the stores as we speak. Pretty sure she put out an album last year, so the only reason she would want to put out another one so soon is that she must be starting her own NASA, like her fellow gazillionaires, and she needs people to buy this album in order to buy a few candy machines for her Diana-NASA cafeteria. Wait, no, this is the same dumb album that was supposed to come out in August, the one where I said the title track was a “shapeless, formless blob of Foxwoods glitz-pop.” Whatever, this time for sure, I assume!

• Aimee Mann was once a Gen-X It Girl, the Boston-based singing lady from ’Til Tuesday, and then she turned herself into a meme by becoming Jules Shear’s groupie, and it was super funny, but these days, she’s out on her own, making albums. I know one Hippo reader who like totally loves Aimee Mann; I won’t try to explain that, but I respect it. Her Christmas album was pretty good, the one from 2006 or whenever it was. Let’s see, what else, she won Best Songwriter or whatever in a few contests that were basically run by big-ass record companies that had to somehow promote artistes like Aimee Mann, I do know that, and, like anyone else who’s old, I remember making out with someone at a club while her big song “Voices Carry” was playing. And that’s all my brain has on this subject, so let’s ’ave a look at her fast-approaching new album, Queens Of The Summer Hotel, and its single, “Suicide Is Murder.” It’s a kooky piano ballad, with disturbing lyrics I won’t get into here. Hm, she looks like a librarian in the video. I think the guy in the video is a semi-famous actor, like someone who lasted like three episodes on The Walking Dead, but I could be wrong, which I’m allowed, as I haven’t misreported anything for at least a week I think.

• Oh, boy, what a week, what could possibly be next. Ah, it’s indie-rock singer Penelope Isles, with an album called Which Way To Happy. I asked Google who she is, and Google was all like, “I don’t know, would you rather talk about Thanksgiving decorating ideas instead?” But after some digging — which I really wasn’t interested in doing — come to find out “Penelope Isles” is just the stage name of goofy Twitter girl Lily Wolter, from England. Wait what, she only has 88 followers. Why am I doing this, again? Whatever, my “Important Notes For Professional Music Critics” feed, a.k.a. Metacritic.com, thinks she’s important, so I’ll traipse over and listen to “Sailing Still,” her new single. It’s basically a pre-shoegaze thing, with giant Chris Isaak guitars, and she’s singing like Carole King on Rohypnol. All set with this, let’s finish this week up.

• We’ll close the week with Voyage, the new album from Swedish ’70s-pop band ABBA! Ha ha, these ridiculously famous circus clowns came to hate each other so much they haven’t done an album in 40 years. The new single, “I Still Have Faith In You,” is a giant yelly power ballad for blue-haired grandmothers, you might love it, I don’t know.

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).

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