Album Reviews 26/09/24

The Church, Lacuna (Cooking Vinyl Records)

U.S. rock fans will — or more likely won’t — know this Australian gloom-pop band from their million-selling tune “Under The Milky Way” from their 1988 album Starfish, their only full-length to go gold here. Bassist Steve Kilbey’s unremarkable but goth-sounding baritone matched up nicely with their then-competitors U2 and The Cure and it’s still in fine fettle as proved in this record’s opening song “Lumbini Grove,” at least once it gets going anyway; the band has tried to avoid being pigeonholed as a Cure/Echo & The Bunneymen wannabe for pretty much their entire history, and to accomplish that, they’ve largely eschewed common song structures, insisting on padding their stuff with melodic, atmospheric dada as found in the first couple of minutes of this new track (which only accomplishes delaying the inevitable bummer-pop vibe, which isn’t to say it’s a bad song at all; indeed, it’s strummy and catchy and important-sounding; I’m saying it would have benefitted from having no intro at all). All told, there’s not a lot to dislike here; some reviewers consider this record one of their best, and at the very least they’ve been consistently active, taking no more than eight years between albums over their 46-year oeuvre, which definitely counts for something. A —Eric W. Saeger

Ibibio Sound Machine, Chopping Mountain (Merge Records)

If you always wanted more than a little Afrobeat authenticity with your Moby/Massive Attack-related techno, this London, U.K.-based outfit is your ticket. Interspersing such sounds as West African highlife, post-punk, Afrobeat, soul and electronic music, this stuff is as frenetic and crazy-busy as it is unpredictable and interesting; the eight-piece collective is led by Nigerian singer Eno Williams, whose life’s mission is obviously to direct the world to a more positive place through infectious dance grooves. This is their sixth LP, produced this time at their own Vanguard Studios; it’s an all-in, team-collaborative record that follows the darker disco/club-focused Pull The Rope and, before that, Electricity, which was produced by renowned synthpop heroes Hot Chip. Despite the jam-out origins of the songs, there’s real precision to them, indicating that parts didn’t end up making the cut by slim vote margins; whether they’re on a dancehall tip, trying to evoke glitter-ball energy or ramming a loop into your head, it all works exquisitely. A+ —Eric W. Saeger

PLAYLIST

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• And here it is, the last CD release Friday of September, this one, Sept. 25! Of course, in current music news, the thing that’s been virally abuzz on social media lately (unless it’s not by the time you’re reading this) has been Ed Sheeran’s dropping Macklemore from his 2026 tour — including the Boston-area show at Gillette Stadium this very Friday — at the behest of promoters, owing to a political statement Macklemore made onstage, that is unless Sheeran has the good sense to cancel the tour, which would cost him between $60 million and $100 million (he’s worth around $400 million now, so I suppose his decision ultimately hinges on how many 100-foot yachts he’d ideally like to own). Naturally I’ll not weigh in on the sociopolitical nitroglycerine in this space, but that’s mostly because since the story broke I’ve continued to be more flummoxed about Sheeran’s mass appeal than anything else. It’s always puzzled me; as I expressed on “my socials” the other week, I consider him to be “the most overrated musician since Gogg the Neanderthal found himself worshipped tribe-wide for his ability to smack a mastodon skull with a log four times in a row,” which isn’t to say that he doesn’t write catchy-ish songs that are relevant to members of today’s young, criminally underserved generation; it simply echoes the complaint lodged by many others in my business, that, for starters, he can’t sing for beans. Now, would I cut him any slack if he could sing for beans? Possibly yes, a little, but if he were indeed some sort of momentously talented mega-diva I expect he would have told the promoters to go bake themselves in a pie and demanded that things be done according to the original plan way before he sensed he was about to get into any hot water from the Twitter masses, and besides, didn’t Sheeran ask for it in the first place, what with all the controversy Macklemore’s drummed up previously? But let’s leave that to stew in its own rancid juices and move on to other, far less radioactive things, starting with the new album from French techno-shoegaze band M83, titled I Wrote You A Letter! Let me mention first to all you smarty-pants whippersnappers that I was into these guys before most of you were, having added their 2008 sort-of-hit “Graveyard Girl” to a few of my personal mixtapes, but I certainly didn’t think “Kim & Jessie” was the greatest thing since sliced bread like Pitchfork did; quite the contrary. In fact their new single “Blister Sunrise” was my first exposure to them in many uninterested moons for good reason. The tune isn’t much of a game-changer, making like an overproduced Raveonettes-style shoegaze dirge, but sure, it’s fine.

• Speaking of politics and stuff but oh let’s not, Rage Against The Machine frontman Tom Morello checks in this week with a solo album, Everyone Gets Everything They Want! “Date Night,” the single, starts off with some bullhorned spoken word, then moving on to a Pennywise-punk verse, all without the banshee-screechy vocal gimmick he’s most known for. I’d recommend buying literally any Ministry album instead, but it’s your money.

• Neo-soul singer Leon Bridges keeps his steamy tradition going with Happiness Anytime, his fifth full-length. The title track is low-key sexy and sublime, irresistible stuff.

• We’ll end the week with Australian indie-folk singer Julia Jacklin and her fourth album, The Gem. The leadoff single, “Get Away From Me (I Think I’ll Love You Soon),” is Sheryl Crow-ish but much more worthwhile than that. She’ll be in Boston at the Royale on Nov. 20. —Eric W. Saeger

NOTE: Local (NH) bands seeking album or EP reviews can message me on Twitter/Bluesky (@esaeger) or Facebook (eric.saeger.9).

Featured Photo: The Church, Lacuna & Ibibio Sound Machine, Chopping.

The Weekly Dish 26/09/24

By John Fladd
jfladd@hippopress.com

• NH Brewfest has been canceled: In a Sept. 10 press release, the Prescott Park Arts Festival, in partnership with the Master Brewers Association of the Americas (MBAA), District New England, announced that the annual New Hampshire Brewfest normally held in Prescott Park in Portsmouth will not take place in 2026. “This year’s decision to pause the event follows careful consideration of a number of factors,” the announcement read, “including ongoing challenges in securing a suitable location, broader headwinds facing the craft beer industry, and a festival landscape that continues to evolve.“

• Wines of the world and charcuterie: On Friday, Sept. 25, beginning at 5:30 p.m., Tuscan Market (Tuscan Village, 9 Via Toscana, Salem, 912-5467, tuscanbrands.com) will host a guided evening where its sommeliers will lead participants on a tour through wine regions from Italy and France to Spain, Argentina and beyond. Sample a curated flight paired with an artisan cheese and charcuterie board built from the market: aged Parmigiano Reggiano, creamy taleggio, Prosciutto di Parma, salami, olives, honey and freshly baked bread. Tickets are $65 each through the Tuscan Market website.

• Dolly Day: Friday, Sept. 25, is Dolly Day at To Share Brewing (720 Union St., Manchester, 836-6947, tosharebrewing.com). Wear your best Dolly fashion, support a great cause, and drink excellent beer. Ten percent of all sales will be donated to Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library program to put books in the hands of children. There will be beer, food and nonalcoholic drinks available from 4 to 9 p.m.

• To Share Oktoberfest: To Share Brewing’s (720 Union St., Manchester, 836-6947, tosharebrewing.com) 8th Annual Oktoberfest will be held Saturday, Sept. 26, from 1 to 8 p.m. In an announcement on Facebook the brewery referred to this event as their “biggest day of the year, packed with German-inspired food, great beer, games, prizes, and plenty of reasons to raise a stein.” It also marks the release of To Share’s Oktoberfest Altbier. Admission is free. So is the fun.

• Fall cookie decorating: Station 101 (193 Union Square, Milford, 249-5416, station101nh.com) will host an evening of cookie decorating with Posy Cottage Cookies (801-7590, posycottagecookies.com) Monday, Sept. 28, from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Learn five early autumn-themed cookie designs with four colors of royal icing. Posy Cottage Cookies will provide all the materials needed to create beautiful and delicious cookies. Tickets are $64.80 each through the Posy Cottage website.

One day of Greek goodies

Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church will hold its annual Greek Food Festival

By John Fladd
jfladd@hippopress.com

On Saturday, Sept. 26, the Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church in Concord will hold its annual Greek Food Festival, the last of the region’s Greek festivals for the year. Constantine Newman is the priest at Holy Trinity.

“It’s a one-day festival,” he said. “We feature a lot of good Greek food, all of it homemade, favorites like the lamb kebabs and the chicken kebabs, moussaka, pastitsio, Greek meatballs and spanakopita. On the line we’ll have gyros and the ladies have a whole setup of Greek pastries that they’re selling.”

The Greek Food Festival is Holy Trinity’s biggest fundraiser of the year, Newman said. “This helps us get through the year. But it’s also a lot of fun, too. It’s not just a monetary thing, but it’s nice for showcasing Greek culture and food and just having a nice time together.”

While months of preparation go into the Festival, he said, there is always a last-minute scramble to get everything ready in time for the big day. “Some of the things we can prepare ahead of time. Some of the things though, you can’t really freeze them well, so we do them in the last week. Of course, all the meat that we get has to be cut and trimmed and then put on the skewers. It has to be marinated, so that can only be done in the last week. [In the days before the Festival] we will be doing the moussaka, the baklava, the galaktoboureko, and then all the meat stuff.” All the meat will be finished on the grill, he said.

For many Greek food enthusiasts, the acid test of a festival is the spanikopita — spinach and feta cheese sandwiched in many layers of buttered, paper-thin phyllo dough. Margaret Gegas is the head of the Spanikopita Committee. She said a really good spanikopita has only a few ingredients but they have to be of the best quality. “We put in a lot of fresh spinach — not frozen — and we use a good amount of feta cheese crumbled in each pan and olive oil. Every layer of phyllo is buttered. We put in the pita — maybe 25 sheets each of phyllo dough. At home, some cook might put dill, and they may put a lot of dill, or a lot of spearmint, but we do not alter that flavor because one may not like dill, one may not like spearmint, so we just stick to the recipe we have with scallions, and it blends very well with spinach and olive oil.”

Even more important, Gegas said, is to have a bone-deep understanding of the particular oven it is baked in.

“It is a lot of work,” Gegas said, “and baking it correctly is crucial. [Our spanikopita] are baked in a convection oven so they have to be watched carefully.” She said even if somebody used the exact same techniques and ingredients but tried to make the same recipe in their home oven, their timing and temperature would be off. After years of experience, Gegas and her team know that in the church’s ovens a batch of spanikopita should take exactly one hour.

“They go in,” she said, “but we.check them and change the position [of the pans] in the oven, just to be sure all the air is circulating correctly with each pan. We’ve made 35 pans this year.”

The Spanikopita Committee does not monitor the internal temperature of the pans while they bake, Gegas said. “It’s by eye and timing. We time them. … So after an hour, we know how it should look. It’s about the browning; if they’re not brown on top, they’re not ready. So it all works out together — the baking and the color.”

Greek Food Festival
When: Saturday, Sept. 26, from 11 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
Where: Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church, 68 N. State St., Concord
More: holytrinitynh.org

Featured photo: Kids’ activities at a previous festival. Courtesy photo.

Treasure Hunt 26/09/24

Hi, Donna,

My wife and I own a frame shop and we acquired this piece many years ago. I sent a photo to the Museum of Fine Art in the midst of Covid, but never heard back from them. Can you shed some light on it?

Thanks.

Brian

Dear Brian,

I can try to provide you with some advice for this piece.

I think for you to get an authentic appraisal, depending on where you live, I would bring it directly to professionals who deal in this subject. For yours I would recommend Bonhams Skinner in either Boston or Marlborough, Mass.

There were two eras of this work that was Cuzco style done in Peru, first during the 16th through 18th centuries, and later in the 19th century. Prices vary from around $15,000+ in the first era to up to $3,000 in the second era. So you need eyes on it to get an age determination and assess authenticity in general.

You can get information on both Bonhams Skinner locations online. You can send the pictures but I really recommend a visit directly.

Brian, can you drop me a note to let me know what you found out? Good luck!

Donna Welch has spent more than 35 years in the antiques and collectibles field, appraising and instructing. Her new location is an Antique Art Studio located in Dunbarton, NH where she is still buying and selling. If you have questions about an antique or collectible send a clear photo and information to Donna at footwdw@aol.com, or call her at 391-6550.

History in objects

Show and tell at the Canterbury Shaker Village

By John Fladd
jfladd@hippopress.com

According to Garrett Bethmann of the Canterbury Shaker Village Museum, our modern conception of the Shakers — devout Protestants who lived in self-contained communities across the United States in the 1700s and 1800s — is intimately tied in with the objects they made. “I think the first thing [people think of] is certainly the more stereotypical artifacts and objects that feel very classified as Shaker and very much kind of have that Shaker aesthetic of clean lines, very efficient-looking use, very simple … look to them. So, you know, that’s kind of where you get into your furniture, your oval boxes, your brooms.”

On Saturday, Sept. 26, the Shaker Village Museum will present an interactive look at some of those objects, called “Artifact Speed Dating — Canterbury Shaker History in 10 Objects.” This event is part of “We Want More History!,” an initiative by the Organization of American Historians to present historical education at events on the same day at “libraries, parks, museums, and other civic spaces” across the country, according to the initiative’s website. “It responds to heightened public interest in history and historical interpretation. Historians and educators are positioned as scholars and teachers committed to the public good through evidence-based, contextualized understanding of the past, in order to promote excellence in scholarship, encourage wide public discussion, and advocate for history. It ensures that national commemorations reflect the full, complex story of the people and places that make up the United States.”

Which is where the Shakers and their objects come in.

Shirley Wajda, the Shaker Museum’s curator of research and collections, will lead an exploration of different Shaker objects and how we can determine when an object was made or used.

“It will be a lecture,” Bethmann said, “that allows people to see objects close up. It will be in the spirit of, ‘Check this out! Here is a little bit of history, information and context.’ It will be an interactive lecture.”

“The importance of establishing dates for particular artifacts,” Bethmann said, “is to be able to identify when a certain object was used … because that can be insightful as to how they used it and what they were using it for.”

By looking at objects the Shakers owned, Bethmann said, we gain a deeper understanding of the world around them and what kind of technology was available to them.

“I think the objects that can grab people’s attention,” he said, “are the objects that are less associated with Shakers [in particular]. For instance, one thing I always find cool when I’ve walked around the [Shaker] Village is in one of our areas we have a telephone. Seeing a telephone, electrical wires, and seeing an object that is more tied to a modern America or to kind of a contemporary outlook that doesn’t necessarily include our antiquated and kind of folkloric romanticism of them, I think people will always find those types of objects interesting because they find themselves saying, ‘Huh, really? I didn’t think this type of society would be into that type of technology or that type of innovation.’ In fact, Shakers in general were relatively welcoming and inclusive of innovative technologies and things that made their lives easier. Objects like that are more closely associated with American culture, and not Shaker-specific, and can be attention-grabbing for [modern] people.”

The objects themselves are being kept under wraps until the actual event, Bethmann said. “We’re not going to talk about the specific items because that would be a spoiler.”

Artifact Speed Dating — Canterbury Shaker History in 10 Objects
Where: Canterbury Shaker Village, 288 Shaker Road, Canterbury, 783-9511, shakers.org
When: Saturday, Sept. 26, from 2 to 3:30 p.m.
Tickets: General admission tickets are available through the museum’s website for $20, or $10 for museum members.
More: shakers.org and wewantmorehistory.org.

Featured photo: Courtesy photo.

Made in New Hampshire

Sci-fi series Resonance develops in Derry

By Michael Witthaus
mwitthaus@hippopress.com

A few weeks ago, New London Barn Playhouse presented a four-day run of Wakeman, the first staging of a musical about a woman who presents as a man to fight in the Civil War. Audience response to the powerful work seemed to promise that it wouldn’t be the last. One imagines a future Tony acceptance speech thanking New Hampshire for giving it a chance.

An hour’s drive away in Derry, another potential Granite State creative triumph is quietly taking shape.

The unassuming exterior of StudioLab, in an industrial park near Tupelo Music Hall, masks the wizardry going on inside. It includes LED panel walls that use the same kind of technology Lucasfilm popularized for The Mandalorian, with LiDAR renderings that create photorealistic sets.

It’s where Rob Livie, an Emmy-winning veteran of corporate video and motion graphics, is building Resonance, a 1980s-set science-fiction series. Born from memories of living in the shadow of the Cold War, it’s something he’s imagined since his days as a teenager drawing comic books with apocalypse-themed mushroom clouds.

Last year, Livie launched Human Originals, a story studio and production company “dedicated to creating original worlds and characters that resonate on a deeper level,” beginning with Resonance. Livie’s leap of faith meant leaving Connection, Inc., the company he’d worked for since 2017, and setting up shop in StudioLab, with its state-of-the-art equipment.

He’d connected with the facility during his time providing services to Events United, a production company owned by Tim Messina, who operates StudioLab. When Livie pitched Messina his long-held idea, he didn’t hire him outright but offered whatever help he could: studio space, crew, and a network built over years in corporate production work.

A LiDAR-generated warehouse, with windows looking out at a gritty New York City street, opens the film. Livie has shot the first 10 minutes. “A proof of concept,” he called it. “We’re using this to try to find a champion for the project, whether that’s an executive producer, a showrunner, or an actor. Someone that helps create a snowball effect.”

That footage got a public airing at the recent Granite State Comicon, where organizer Chris Proulx urged Livie to “show people what’s being done here in New Hampshire.” The screening was followed by a live Q&A with the mostly local cast and crew. The latter is a crucial element of Resonance.

Livie is emphatic about using a Granite State cast, though some hail from the region, like the Springfield, Mass., actor on screen when the film opens. The net’s been widened when necessary. For example, James Hilliard is a California-based actor and former Connection colleague of Livie’s who also emceed the Comicon panel.

The show’s premise leans hard into Cold War-era anxiety as well as New Hampshire’s own strange corner of UFO lore. Its inciting incident is pegged to Sept. 26, 1983, the actual date a false alarm on a Soviet missile-defense system nearly triggered a retaliatory nuclear strike. It was averted only because the officer on duty didn’t believe the data.

In Resonance, that glitch becomes the moment the aliens crash to Earth. While Area 51 exists in the show’s mythology, it is used for misdirection; the actual black ops site is a fictional Area 52, located in New Hampshire. It’s a wink at the state’s own abduction lore, rooted in the 1961 Betty and Barney Hill case near Exeter.

A shelf in Livie’s office has comic books and a primitive 8mm movie camera he used to make stop-action animation as a teenager. He plans to shoot a future episode entirely on period-appropriate equipment like this, aiming for a lived-in era feel rather than pastiche. “I don’t want to yell that it’s the ’80s,” he said. “I just want to show it.”

Livie’s ambitions carry well past the screen. He’s sketched out an interactive extension of his story, with walkable, LED-enhanced sets. There’s also a theme-park vision of Resonance that’s spread across five locations in New Hampshire and tied to the show’s five alien worlds.

What’s next is the unglamorous, essential work of packaging: a finished script, a pitch deck, a show bible and an informal advisory network. There’s also a Keene-based CEO helping with the business plan and veteran line producers helping him suss out a budget, all assembled mostly over email.

It’s the stage where most independent projects quietly die for lack of know-how. Whether Resonance breaks through is an open question. But after decades spent, as Livie puts it, “adjacent to Hollywood, but not within Hollywood,” he has a 10-minute opening and a local team that believes in it, along with a story that starts, as he envisioned, close to home.

Made in New Hampshire
Follow the progress of Resonance at humanoriginals.com

Featured photo: Granite State Comicon. Courtesy photo.

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