Album Reviews 26/03/05

IT’sALIE, Wild Games (Frontiers Music s.r.l.)

I know it’s lazy of me to write about arena-metal bands, given that I was in one for about 14 years and know the genre and all its predictable, hare-brained tropes like the back of my hand, but I think it’s been a long enough while since I last wrote up an LP from the Frontiers record label, which I always affectionately refer to as “Frontiers Mercy Hospital,” given that they remain committed to releasing records from bands whose musical growth stopped at either Judas Priest or Iron Maiden. The band’s name isn’t a misprint, they’re not “It’s A Lie,” but they’re Italian, so what do they care (it makes me think of all the Americans out there who’ve gotten tattoos with “genuine Chinese characters” that actually read something like “If tent parakeet for” or whatnot). These guys say they like Lynch Mob, Dio–era Sabbath, and Southern Rock,” how adorable, let’s go. OK, it’s a girl singer whom they tout as having Janis Joplin chops, which she doesn’t, more like if your aunt sang for a Skid Row cover band, which is what the first song (“Waiting For The Rain”) sounds like. The next soggy tune sounds like Buckcherry, zzz I am getting shleeeepy, nothing to see here but yay for these guys, sure. B- —Eric W. Saeger

Onelight, Autobody (self-released)

Finally something I can sink all four of my canines into, from a French R&B-experimental hybrid-electronic DJ/producer who’s gotten love from DJ Mag, Complex, and Rinse FM, I’m all over this. Dude looks like a cross between Borat and the U.S. Olympics goalie, and I simply can’t be arsed to try Googling up his real name, but he’s got more soul in him than a dozen Jamie Liddells or (lord help us all) Steve Aokis. He kicks things off with a glitchy dubstep-adjacent curveball (“Starter”) that had me expecting a showoff-y, unreadable noise filibuster, but it settles into a wickedly relatable groove that’ll be the envy of a lot of EDM guys. A lot of stuff goes on here, folks, from Mariah Carey diva-twee (“Let It Be,” featuring the helium-inflated vocals of Nikki Ariel) to bong-bubbling reggaeton (the title track) to Martian bloop-tech (the Tristan Price-guested “Keep Your Heart Alive”). I have absolutely nothing bad to say about this record, it’s truly a beauty. A+ —Eric W. Saeger

PLAYLIST

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• Oh great, here comes another Friday, specifically the one on March 6, which spells new albums for your ears! We’ll start this week with very old U.K. New Wave band Squeeze, who tortured human ears in the 1980s with jangle-pop nugget “Pulling Mussels (From The Shell)” and the even more awful
proctologist-waiting-room standard “Tempted,” which had xylophone in it, before xylophones became cool again in the Aughts for whatever reason! The band’s revolving door membership once included singer Paul Carrack, who was in Mike And The Mechanics for a while, but either way, during their early ’70s breakout era, Allmusic hailed the band’s songwriting core of Chris Difford and Glenn Tilbrook as “the heirs to Lennon and McCartney’s throne,” that is to say, they were the next Beatles, a compliment critics have doled out over the years to, let’s see, The Bee Gees, The Monkees, Oasis, and the Bay City Rollers just to name a few (in the Reagan era, Tears For Fears skipped the middleman and just came right out and said they were the new Beatles, that’s telling ’em!). Whatever, Squeeze has a whole new incarnation these days, built around Difford and Tillbrook, including Dirty Vegas singer Steve Smith. This all brings us to the band’s new album Trixies, their 15th. The project features songs written by the duo in 1974 when they were teenagers (19 and 16, respectively), long before their first official record, which is as things should be, given that the chill-pop single, “You Get The Feeling” sounds like it was written by two teenagers who had just discovered the guitar arpeggio, how useless!

• New Jersey-born R&B/pop singing man Charlie Puth shoots for his fourth straight Top 10 album this week with Whatever’s Clever! He is really going for it this time: Instead of settling on feats from nobodies like Meghan Trainor, Boyz II Men, Blackbear or Jungkook again, he’s corralled a Who’s Who of super-famous 1980s names to turn in guest appearances, for instance Michael McDonald, Kenny Loggins and Jeff Goldblum, wait what, why is Jeff Goldblum on an album, what is even going on here, pop culture! There have already been two singles from this album; the latest one, “Cry,” features pop saxophonist Kenny G, who once tried to make jazz safe for normies with no taste, but we won’t get into that. The tune has a yacht rock vibe stolen from Toto’s “Africa”; it is very nice and pretty, perfect for the overhead speakers at Bed Bath & Whatever, I don’t really mind it.

• Before I landed at your illustrious Hippo Press, I was on a team of snarkmeisters at a seacoast-area newspaper that has basically been banished to online-only publication these days. Now, my editor there was a big fan of Morrissey, who used to be in The Smiths, whom she also liked very much, and she’d get all over my case if I made fun of either band in my column, because I couldn’t stand them. Much good-natured ribbing ensued, which usually ended with my messaging something cleverly mean, but either way, I’m sure she’ll be buying Morrissey’s new album, Make-up Is A Lie, just to upset me. But an open mind is important, so I will listen to the title track single, just to upset myself. Yes, it is a tuneless mishmash of French café vibe, 1960s fashion statements and hotdog water, get this nonsense away from me this instant.

• And lastly it’s Kentucky freak-folk fixture Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, with his latest album-load of Bonnaroo bait, We Are Together Again. The single “They Keep Trying To Find You” is like James Taylor if James Taylor couldn’t sing all that well. — 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 Grownup Noise, No Straight Line in the Universe and Jennie Arnau, A Rising Tide

Running the Numbers

  • A 2-inch chunk of cucumber – I like using the long, skinny English cucumbers; they seem to have a little more flavor. Go ahead and wash it, but don’t bother peeling it. The peel will add color and flavor to the finished drink.
  • 2 ounces chili-lime rum – I’ve been using Captain Morgan’s for this. I do not regret it.
  • 1 6-ounce can of pineapple juice

Muddle the cucumber thoroughly in the bottom of your cocktail shaker. This means smooshing it up with a stick. If you don’t have a muddler you can use a wooden spoon, or a beer bottle if it fits, or if you’re up for a project you can actually go outside and find a stick (wash it before using it). I’ve heard of a guy who cut off the handle of a child’s baseball bat, presumably not while his child was using it. The point is that you want to crush this chunk of cucumber, body and spirit, until it is the consistency of applesauce.

Add the rum, and shake your rum & cuke for 20 seconds or so. This is what is called a “dry shake,” meaning without ice. When you muddle herbs or fruits or vegetables, you do it for three reasons:

1. By smashing your cucumber up, you’ve given it a lot more surface area to interact with the alcohol.

2. You’ve broken up the cell walls inside the cucumber and released some of the flavor compounds from their tiny prisons. (If you are really committed to breaking up the cells of the cucumber, you can freeze it first. Ice crystals will poke holes in the cell walls before you even get to it with the muddler.)

3. So now you have all these flavor compounds floating around unattached. Some of them like water just fine and will dissolve into it without complaint. Others are pickier and are waiting around for some alcohol to bond with. By dry shaking your rum & cuke before diluting it with melting ice, you’re swooshing the flavor and color chemicals around in an alcohol solution. On a molecular level you’ve kick-started a party. As you shake it up you’ll hear a “slosh-slosh” sound, but the botanical molecules will hear Ozzy Osborne’s “Crazy Train.”

At this point go ahead and add a handful of ice to the shaker, as well as the contents of the miniature can of pineapple juice.

Shake the mixture for another 30 seconds or so, then strain it over fresh ice in a Collins glass. It will have a gratifyingly foamy head on it. This drink is best suited to drinking with a straw.

This is a mildly refreshing drink. The cucumber flavor team has spread throughout the pineapple juice, keeping it from being too sweet. There is a subtle citrussy spiciness from the flavored rum.

Featured photo: Photo by John Fladd.

Organic farming in NH

Winter conference returns

Of the many events and conferences taking place at this time of year, one that probably escaped your notice is the Winter Conference of the Northeast Organic Farming Association of New Hampshire, taking place at Colby Sawyer College this weekend. This year’s conference is actually happening a month later than usual, said Kyle Jacoby, a program manager for the Association.

“It’s not our first ever conference in March, but it’s been a little while, so we’re excited to see what March brings us,” Jacoby said. “We always get a lot of people in our evaluations and through comments that say community is a big part of the event and the organization, so we really leaned into that with our theme this year, ‘Taking Root and Nourishing Community.’ We really like the word ‘nourishing,’ sort of an action of taking root, really feeding into all these connections between land and people and our practices.”

A core concept of organic farming is being aware and mindful of where our food comes from, Jacoby said, and this year’s conference will address the concerns of many different groups who are interested in that. He said this year’s conference will have “over 20 workshops for everyone from farmers to home growers, permaculturists, and educators. So we really have a full gamut of different workshops for all types of learners, farmers, home growers, home livestock [keepers], herbalists, hobbyists, educators, nonprofits and professionals. So we’re really excited about all those workshops.”

This conference’s workshops will span a wide range of interests from the technical (Soil Carbon Dynamics and Farm-Scale Management) to the academic (Carrying Seeds Forward: African Diasporic & Indigenous Traditions in New England Agriculture) to the narrative (Starting From Scratch: What We Learned Starting Our Farm). The concept of inclusivity extends to this year’s keynote speakers, Jacoby said. “We’re really excited. We decided this year it was going to be really valuable and important to uplift some local voices and some local initiatives, and so we connected with Dave Trumbull of Good Earth Farm and Sarah Hansen of Kearsarge Gore Farm, two farmers who’ve been really involved in a farmer collaborative CSA [Community Supported Agriculture] called Local Harvest CSA. They’re going to share some of their lessons and stories from this farmer collaborative and from their perspective as farmers in the state about how we come together as a community and connect with one another.”

“We also have things like our Green Market Fair, and a lot of exhibitors, raffles, different activities for people to engage in,” Jacoby said. The Green Market, he explained, is an ongoing activity throughout the conference where organizations can exchange information, and attendees can make connections and build support networks. “We have a number of nonprofits or small businesses [and] some of our local co-ops or organizations that work to support farmers, like Northeast SARE, which is Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education, the MOSCA, the certifying agency that a lot of our farmers now have turned to to get certified. And we’ll have Rimmel Greenhouse, the Hampshire Herbal Network, the Granite State Grazers, Kearsarge Food Hub, High Mowing Organic Seeds, Witching Hour Provisions, the UNH Extension. So it goes on and on.”

Jacoby said more people have started to pay attention to food production in recent years, and this conference — like NOFANH itself — provides a way for those people to turn their interest into action.

“A lot of the things we see — both anecdotally and through data that we’ve seen – that there’s just increasing demand nationally for organic food and we have a lot of farmers in the state, and home growers too, who believe a lot in the philosophy and the principles of organic and want to ensure that they’re doing that … for themselves but also for the their communities.”

NOFANH
The 2026 Winter Conference of the Northeast Organic Farming Association of New Hampshire will take place Saturday, March 7, at Colby Sawyer College in New London. For more information about the conference, or to register for it, visit nofanh.org/winterconference.

Featured photo: Photo courtesy of Tamworth Distillery

The comfort of an egg sandwich

Breakfast eats to get you going at The Cure Cafe

Rachel Ormond is the owner and operator of The Cure Cafe in New Boston.

“About three years ago we went up to Loon Mountain,” she said, “and there’s a little cafe on the top of the mountain. That was the first time Colin ever ate an English muffin, egg and cheese sandwich and he loved it.” At the time, Ormond’s 3-year-old son Colin was being treated for acute lymphoblastic leukemia, a form of blood cancer.

“He’s really picky at the best of times,” Ormond continued, “and when you’ve been on cancer treatment, and you take all sorts of steroids, your taste buds change and your cravings are very distinct. He ate exclusively mac and cheese and chips for quite a while, so for him to eat an egg and cheese sandwich was really exciting. And then, he ate egg and cheese sandwiches every single day from that day on for two years. … So when we opened the Cafe, the first sandwich on the menu was The Colin, and it’s our egg and cheese on an English muffin because that’s what he loved. And then [my daughter] Charlotte always got a sausage egg and cheese, so now we have The Charlotte. And then that was it until their dad, Robert, was a little jealous. He was like, ‘Oh, what about me? I want a menu item.’ So, there was born ‘The Robert.’ My husband’s a big, jacked bodybuilder, so he’s got two eggs, double meat on an everything bagel, because that’s what he loves. And actually The Robert is super popular.”

The Cure Cafe is the local coffee-and-muffin joint in New Boston.

“I’m an avid coffee drinker myself,” Ormond said, “and I would frequently drive to Bedford, to Manchester for coffee, to Milford for coffee. So when this space opened up and the opportunity arose, my reaction was, ‘First of all, we need espresso within driving distance.’” As a result, the cafe offers a full menu of coffee options, from lattes and espressos to a range of iced coffee drinks.

“We serve any of our drinks hot or iced,” Ormond said. “We make cold brew and iced coffee and just regular drip as well. We sell cold brew and iced coffee and iced lattes all day long. We probably sell more iced drinks than hot drinks, truthfully. And in the summertime we will almost exclusively sell cold [drinks].”

In addition to coffees, teas and breakfast sandwiches, all of which feature an over-hard egg (“We’re more than happy to do an over-easy egg if you ask,” Ormond said), the breakfast menu includes a range of muffins and goods baked in house.

“We make all of our pastries every day,” Ormond said. “We’ve got cinnamon rolls, which are humongous, and our most popular muffin flavor is the lemon-blueberry. Every time I don’t make lemon-blueberries, people are like, ‘Where’s the lemon blueberry muffin? I’ll come back tomorrow.’ So I make them all the time because it keeps the people happy. And then we always have croissants or spinach and feta pastries. We switch up our scone flavors — usually blueberry, white chocolate-raspberry, and an apple-cinnamon.”

The lunch menu features salads and a range of sandwiches.

“We call all of our sandwiches here ‘sammies’ though, for fun,” Ormond said. “Our smoked turkey BLT is super popular now. … it was on the seasonal menu, but it’s transitioning into the permanent menu because it’s been so popular. We only use sourdough bread for sandwiches here, usually toasted. The smoked turkey BLT, the BLT, and the chicken salad all get it toasted. The club’s the only one that doesn’t get served on toast. But a lot of people request that we don’t toast it, so I really think it’s up to personal preference.”

The Cure Cafe
8 Mill St., New Boston, 741-5016, curellc.toast.site
Hours: Wednesday through Monday, 6:30 a.m. to 2 p.m.; Saturday and Sunday, 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. Closed on Tuesdays and during weather emergencies.

Featured photo: The Cure Cafe. Courtesy photo.

The Weekly Dish 26/03/05

• Slice of Pi: The Canterbury Shaker Village, 288 Shaker Road in Canterbury, will celebrate Shaker Pie Pi Day on Saturday, March 14, from 1:30 to 3:30 p.m. “Join us at Canterbury Shaker Village for a slice of pie and an informal talk (which may include pie charts) about pie in both Shaker and American history,” according to shakers.org, where you can register for the event. Register by Saturday, March 7.

• Pizza fundamentals: There will be a family-involved pizza-making class with Ohana Sourdough at Barrel and Baskit (377 Main St., Hopkinton, 746-1375, barrelandbaskit.com) Friday, March 6, from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. The cost will be $18 per pizza, but all ingredients and equipment are included. Register online at barrelandbaskit.com.

• Brunch with heels and sparkle: The Vanderbilt Room & Banquet Facility (48 Lowell Road, Hudson, 810-7337, vanderbiltroom.com) will be the venue for Hudson Honeys Drag Brunch, Sunday, March 8, from 11 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. For $60.54 through eventbrite.com, guests will get a brunch buffet and then Sticky Honey will host a drag show while guests sip mimosa specials.

• Patriotic tea: The Nashua Historical Society (5 Abbott St., Nashua, 883-0015, nashuahistoricalsociety.org) will host Steeped in ’76, a tea party to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution and the Boston Tea Party, Sunday, March 8, beginning at 12:30 p.m. Guests will enjoy an elegant tea service featuring teas, scones, petite sandwiches and sweet treats, all served amid red, white and blue décor. Designed for ages 6 and up, the afternoon offers engaging activities for history lovers of all generations. The cost for Historical Society members and children under 18 is $18. The price for non-members is $25. Reservations are required; seating is limited. Visit nashuahistoricalsociety.org/events.

• Burgerama: The Bedford Village Inn in Bedford has kicked off its nearly month of special burger recipes known as Burgerama, available in the Tavern. Through Saturday, March 7, it’s “BVI Favorites” week with a BVI Big Double, a BVI Black and Blue Burger and Sausage Pizza Sliders served with herbed parmesan fries, according to the menu at bedfordvillageinn.com. Starting Sunday, March 8, it’s a new week of burgers — Smokehouse Week, where a BBQ Pork Burger, Wicked Smoked Brisket Burger and Smoked Andouille Sliders are served with smoked paprika fries. See the website for the full menu for all of March and a description of all the burgers.

• Get your tickets: The Nashua Center’s annual Taste of the Towns event will take place Thursday, May 7, 6 to 9 p.m. at the Sheraton Nashua, 11 Tara Blvd. in Nashua, according to nashuacenter.org/taste-of-the-towns, where you can purchase tickets and sponsorships. The lineup of participants includes Bellavance Beverage Co., The Imported Grape, In the Mix Bartending, K’sone’s Thai Restaurant & Lounge, Le Gris Charcuterie, Nothing Bundt Cakes, Shorty’s Mexican Roadhouse, Soel Sistas, Tara House Grill and Woodman’s Artisan Bakery, according to the website.

Kiddie Pool 26/03/05

Family fun for whenever

Video game history

• On Sunday, March 8, SEE Science Center, 200 Bedford St. in Manchester, will celebrate Ralph Baer, the German-born engineer who lived in Manchester and is known as “the father of video games,” according to see-sciencecenter.org. According to SEE’s Facebook page, the day will feature activities celebrating his legacy, which will be included with regular admission — $15 per person ages 3 and up, according to the website. The Center is open Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. with the last admission of the day at 4 p.m., the website said.

Maple season

• New Hampshire’s Maple Weekend is Saturday, March 21, and Sunday, March 22, this year but Ben’s Sugar Shack, 8 Webster Highway in Temple, offers free tours on weekends throughout March, according to bensmaplesyrup.com. This weekend, visit Saturday, March 7, or Sunday, March 8, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. for a tour that demonstrates the maple syrup making process from tree to pancake. And, of course, the tour will include samples of maple products such as maple soft-serve ice cream, maple roasted nuts, maple cotton candy, maple soda, maple fudge, maple barbecue sauce, maple syrup and more, the website said.

• Charmingfare Farm, 774 High St. in Candia, kicks off its Maple Express event celebrating maple season with times for the public Saturdays and Sundays, March 6-22 (as well as some school group days). Visit the sugarhouse, see boiling sap, learn about tree tapping and taste the syrup during the event, which also features visits with the animals and a horse-drawn or tractor ride, according to the website, where you can purchase tickets for specific times during the event.

Big screen fun

• Chunky’s Cinema Pub, 707 Huse Road in Manchester, chunkys.com, will feature new Disney Pixar release Hoppers in its “Little Lunch Date” screening on Tuesday, March 10, at 11:30 a.m. The lights will be slightly dimmed and admission costs $5, according to the website. Let this also serve as a reminder that Tuesday, March 10, is town voting day in some communities, which can mean no school for students.

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