Album Reviews 26/02/26

Namasenda, Limbo (YEAR0001 Records)

This one’ll be out in May, when it’ll be used to soundtrack some backseat romancing most wonderfully. This girl is Swedish, and when I was told her stuff was blissfully pop-oriented my mind naturally expected ABBA, which this is in a way, after a purely house/trance fashion, but you should be thinking more Kylie Minogue for the shorthand. She’s been around the Swedish techno underground for a while, breaking through with an EP in 2017; here, she fixates on a sound that I’d characterize as the passion of the AutoTune, a tool that’s all over this thing, but not to the detriment of its sexy mission. Like I alluded to, it’s Kylie for increasingly tech-accustomed ears; neo-trance track “Ultra Bomb” delivers a polite-enough drop composed of pure prettiness, a la Above & Beyond, if you’re familiar. “Cola” combines subdued reggaeton with super-refined pop sugar; “Heaven” gives us similarly innocuous dubstep. Clubgoers won’t want to miss this one. A+ —Eric W. Saeger

U2, Days Of Ash [EP] (Interscope Records)

Not knowing this six-songer was even coming, I received this on (appropriately enough) Ash Wednesday, the day it came out. I hadn’t followed U2’s doings at all since their disastrous co-branding event with Apple in 2014, when 500 million iTunes users found the U2 album Songs Of Innocence rudely shoved into their devices for free, whether they wanted it or not. I liked the band’s first two albums, back in the late Cretaceous, but Bono’s irrepressible epicness got on my nerves upon hearing The Joshua Tree, and I haven’t been back until now, when this album’s Soundcloud stream link was rudely shoved into my emailbox. Now, this is serving as an advance for a full-length album due later this year; the songs focus on headline items like Minneapolis vs. ICE and things like that, with Bono delivering some horribly apathetic vocal lines (sample: “I love you more than hate loves war” in the plodding, apathetically titled “American Obituary,” a tune that microwaves so many old U2 melodies it feels like a medley). The rest of this thing just sucks, like “Song Of The Future,” which convinces the listener that U2 regrets not being more like Flock Of Seagulls or something. Not trying to be edgy or anything, I swear, this is just a really stupid record, fact not opinion. F —Eric W. Saeger

PLAYLIST

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• Yikes, here comes Friday, Feb. 27, with a bunch of spanking new albums for us to laugh at together, don’t hog the popcorn, I’m only going to say it once! No, I’m kidding, I’m full of love for all bands and music, what would we do without it, but do I really have to include Mitski, who is this generation’s Yoko Ono? Seriously, as with Yoko, you either like Mitski’s awful music or you pretend that it’s viable, and we’re only in this mess because during Yoko’s first appearance in 1972 on The Mike Douglas Show, when Yoko sang a duet with Chuck Berry that sounded like a yowling match between two alley cats, no one dragged her off the stage in a butterfly net. Cut to now, where we have Mitski playing the part of a super-important avant-garde artiste, writing nonsense songs about existentialist whatever, and if your college roommate likes her, there’s no escape unless you decide to quit college. But anyway, she has a new album coming out this week, titled Nothing’s About To Happen To Me, and I’m going to “live review” the title track right now, let me take my tummy medicine and go do this. OK, the video starts out with our heroine being all softcore-sexytime but appropriately slovenly; the beat is mellow French café-style chill but with too much bass and dissonant melody, and then she starts singing, which of course never works out too well, but wait, it’s not all that bad. I think she’s trying to be Portishead, but there’s nothing very cool going on here. Ack, now she’s fooling around with a magnifying glass, making her mouth look huge only because she doesn’t care what anyone thinks of that, and she’s dressed like Rasputina in a poofy Victorian-era dress. OK, this just in, she moved the magnifying glass up to one of her eyes so it looks big. From there nothing much else goes on; to sum up, it’s sort of like 1970s radio pop, a lot better than her last album, not that there’s any music out there that isn’t. At some point I fully expect her to become a Vegas act meant to entertain millennials who had, you know, bad college roommates.

• Oh how adorable, looks who’s back and being all Satan-y, it’s Rob Zombie, who sings about gross devil stuff and Frankensteins and Night Of The Living Dead stuff, the only song I ever really liked from him was “More Human Than Human” because it ripped off Gravity Kills so exquisitely. Naw, I don’t actually hate Rob Zombie; he’s sort of like a heavy metal Herman Munster who watches too many 1980s horror B movies, and I don’t expect much deviation from that template on this new LP, The Great Satan, which opens with “(I’m a) Rock ‘N’ Roller.” Yup it starts with weird Martian sounds, and then it becomes evil and doomy and industrial, like Skinny Puppy for dummies. I don’t mind it, nope.

• British “virtual band” Gorillaz are back again, with more collaborations and cartoon antics and music I don’t personally like, on “their” new album, The Mountain! If you like ’80s krautrock with Aughts-era falsetto vocals, you’ll love the new single “The Happy Dictator,” which includes a feat from Sparks, believe it or not.

• We’ll round out the week with Bruno Mars, you remember him, from back when you were in junior high just a couple of years ago, when there was still some faint semblance of hope for humanity. Yes, his new album is The Romantic, which spotlights the title track, in which he does all sorts of Bone Thugs And Harmony scat-singing over a poppy 1970s-pseudo-jazz beat that evokes Drake covering an Otis Redding song or whatnot. It’s OK! —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

Vinegar Pie

You will need a pre-baked pie crust for this recipe. You can make yours from scratch, but let’s face it; that can be intimidating. The way people talk about making pie crust makes it sound like a harrowing experience. In point of fact, once you’ve figured out the process it’s pretty straightforward; it’s just difficult to describe. It’s one of those things you’ve got to dive into and get your hands covered with flour. If you know a grandmother, have her show you.

In the meantime, if you don’t have the confidence to tackle making a crust yourself, just buy a premade one, or a frozen crust that you just have to thaw out and roll into a pie pan. A store-bought pie crust will work perfectly well in this recipe. Just follow the directions on the package to “blind-bake” it — to bake it before adding the filling.

The filling may be one of the easiest pie fillings you’ll ever make. It makes an apple pie look like differential calculus.

  • 4 eggs
  • 1 cup (198 g) brown sugar
  • ½ teaspoon kosher or coarse sea salt
  • 6 Tablespoons (3/4 stick) butter, melted
  • 3 Tablespoons cider vinegar

Preheat the oven to 350°F.

Do what you have to do to have a pre-baked pie shell ready for you.

This pie is so easy that it really isn’t worth the hassle of getting out your electric mixer. Get out a mixing bowl and a whisk.

Whisk the eggs, brown sugar and salt together. Whisk in the melted butter. Whisk in the vinegar.

Boom! The filling is done. Pour it into your prepared pie crust and bake it on the middle rack of your oven for about 35 minutes. Take it out when it’s brown and not jiggly anymore. Set it aside to cool.

Like many egg-based pies — quiche, for instance — this will be puffy and domed when it comes out of the oven, then it will settle down as it cools.

You often hear of old-fashioned pies like this described as “poverty” pies, or Depression Era pies. The explanation is that the vinegar is a stand-in for fruit that frugal housewives couldn’t afford. I’ve never bought that explanation. You can’t afford a couple of apples, but you have eggs, butter and (depending on the recipe) cream? Think instead of New England or the upper Midwest in the middle of winter 100 or more years ago. You’ve got access to chickens and a cow — or your neighbor does — but fruit is hard enough to come by that you’ll save it for a special occasion. If you’re baking a pie for your family, you’ll use vinegar as a flavoring agent that will give the filling an acidic tang.

Which is what you’ll find here. This is a sweet, super-buttery, rich pie with a background sourness that cuts through that richness and is extremely satisfying. It’s a good dessert pie, but even better with gossip over a couple cups of strong coffee.

Featured photo: Vinegar Pie. Photo by John Fladd.

Smell and sip

How to taste whiskey

Much like wine enthusiasts or microbrew beer fans, whiskey connoisseurs have strong opinions, and a lot of them. They will debate endlessly about subtle differences and argue about whether a particular whiskey has flavor notes of leather, or vanilla, or peat. Then there are drinkers who don’t know much about whiskey. Maybe they remember drinking something that they enjoyed once, and somebody told them it had whiskey in it. Now they want to learn more about whiskey. Where does somebody even get started figuring whiskey out?

According to Rachel Manna, a manager at Tamworth Distilling in Tamworth, a good first step is narrowing down the number of whiskeys you want to learn about at first.

“We always ask people what their preference is,” she said. “Some people are bourbon drinkers, some people are rye drinkers, some people just don’t know. So we really like to kind of walk them through and, you know, talk about the differences between the different types of whiskeys, talk a little bit about flavor notes.”

Somebody new to the world of whiskeys might not know that there even are different types of whiskey, she said, so learning a little bit about the differences between Scotch, bourbon, rye and any of the other types of whiskey will help a new whiskey drinker wrap their head around the general flavor profiles.

“They’re all a little bit different,” she said. “You’re going to get the aroma, you’re going to have the taste, you’re going to have a finish; ultimately, you’re looking for a balance of flavors.”

“For instance,” Manna continued, “our [Tamworth Distilling’s] bourbon is a ‘high corn’ bourbon, and it’s 100 proof — and the proof factors in as well — so you’re going to get completely different notes than you’re going to get from our straight rye. That is a little bit of a lower proof [a lower percentage of alcohol]. And then when you go into something like our William Whipple Winter Wheat Whiskey, that has toasted chocolate and caramel malt in it, those are going to give you completely different notes as well. So a lot of it is just trying [different types of whiskey], and working it through your palate and seeing the different notes that hit when you’re tasting them.”

Manna explained that even the act of drinking a whiskey will affect its flavor. Taking a long pull from a favorite cocktail is physically different than cautiously tasting something new.

“Our recommendation is to breathe it in through your mouth,” she said, “in a sense, versus your nose; put your nose in the glass, and then take the breath in through your mouth. That’s where you’re going to really pull out those different flavor notes. And then where it hits on the tongue and showcases the different notes that are in the whiskeys. Even adding a little drop of water to a whiskey really opens it, can change it a little bit.”

Manna said that in New Hampshire distillers are only allowed legally to offer a few choices of whiskey at a time for guests to compare.

“There are state regulations,” she said, “so, realistically, when you go to tasting rooms, you can’t have any more than five half-ounce pours in a ‘flight.’ A professional taster might see it a little differently, but on a small-scale personal level I think that five is a good amount. Especially a higher proof, it’s all going to stick over time, and the tastes will blend together. And you need to cleanse your palate between tastes. For us civilians, the standard is we just drink water. Our distillers, when they are tasting stuff, they drink a lot of soda water — a really strong soda water — to cleanse their palates as well as unsalted crackers, because sometimes they’ll be tasting through 20 barrels or more [of whiskey]. They use droppers so the droppers hit the middle of their mouths when they’re tasting. And then, they can spit it out afterward, because clearly that’s a lot to taste after a while.”

Whiskey tasting
The tasting room at Tamworth Distilling (15 Cleveland Hill Road, Tamworth, 323-7196, tamworthdistilling.com) is open Thursday through Sunday, noon to 5 p.m. In addition, Tamworth Distilling is present at the Concord Summer and Winter Farmers Markets. There will be a fireside tasting of Tamworth’s whiskeys at the Blue Bear Inn (534 Mountain Road, Francestown, 808-0174, bluebearinn.com) Thursday, Feb. 26, at 6 p.m. Tickets are $55.20 through eventbrite.com.

Featured photo: Photo courtesy of Tamworth Distillery

Pies are home

Slightly Crooked Pies gets a brick-and-mortar spot with hopes to open by Pi Day

Lauren Cline was very excited. She had just taken delivery on a special toy: a commercial sheeter capable of rolling out large volumes of dough — in her case, pie dough.

“It just got delivered today!” she said excitedly.

Cline, the owner and operator of Slightly Crooked Pies, has run a homestead bakery for several years, baking bespoke pies for individual customers and filling wholesale orders, but she has made a leap of faith and will open a brick-and-mortar pie shop on Elm Street in Manchester within the month.

“A series of factors all came together and told me, ‘It’s time,’” she said. “I always wanted to be in Manchester. I always wanted to be on Elm Street, and a place with a kitchen became available in a building that matches the aesthetic of my business, which just was amazing. And I think right now, with the nature of the downtown businesses, you know, we work together, we support each other. I have so many mentors just on this one strip. I just have to pinch myself over being a part of that ecosystem.”

The new pie shop, also called Slightly Crooked Pies, will offer more than pies, Cline said; this will be more of a conventional bakery.

“In addition to our full-size pies, we’ll be offering mini heart and hand pies,” she said, “both large and small hand pies. We’re going to feature either cookies or bars of the month. We’re going to carry [French-style] macarons. We’ll have frozen chicken pies to take and bake, and we’ll have a freezer of our take-and-bake pies so you can make your house smell good and take all of the credit for yourself.”

But the focus will remain on pies, Cline said.

“We’ll have staples that will be always available year round — cherry, apple, blueberry, pecan, and chocolate-bourbon-pecan. And then, I’ll be able to work with creams and custards,” she said. “So I’ll be able to have lemon meringue, Key lime, and chocolate cream pies. The chocolate cream will actually change three times a year. I’ll have traditional chocolate cream, and in the summer we’ll go to a s’mores [pie] — it will have a graham crust and a marshmallow. cream top. And then in the winter months I’ll be making a peppermint hot cocoa [pie], which has got a little touch of mint in the chocolate, and then a marshmallow-whipped cream top and a chocolate cookie crust.”

Cline’s plan is to offer fruit pies in season, she said.

“For instance,” she said, “from May through late June we’ll have a strawberry-rhubarb. In the middle of the summer we’ll have peach. And in the fall we’ll have something I call SweaterWeather — an apple-pear [pie] with cardamom in it. And the top is braided so it looks like a sweater, because it has a very warm, comforting flavor. We’ll also be rotating in our award-winning varieties that we have. We’ll feature one of those a season — blueberry-lavender, maple-pecan, and, of course, SweaterWeather.”

Cline said she has surprised herself with how calm she has been at taking the big step of opening an almost-all-pie shop. She sees a real demand for homemade pies (in her case, rolled by machine, but made by hand.).

“When I tell people I’m opening a pie shop they get really excited in a way that surprises me,” she said, “even after doing this for many, many years now. Almost everyone says either, ‘I love pie!’, or, ‘Oh, man, my grandmother….’”

Slightly Crooked Pies
Slightly Crooked Pies (slightlycrookedpies.com) will be located at 1209 Elm St. in Manchester. Owner Lauren Cline hopes to open her doors on March 14, Pi Day.

Featured photo: Photo by John Fladd.

The Weekly Dish 26/02/26

• T-Bones on the move: T-Bones Great American Eatery closed its current Hudson location (77 Lowell Road) on Feb. 22 and is slated to reopen the restaurant down the road at 256 Lowell Road in early March, according to a press release. “Guests can expect the same T-Bones favorites and friendly hospitality, just in a brand-new state-of-the-art building with expanded outdoor dining and private dining room available for functions,” Tom Boucher, CEO and owner, said in the press release. See t-bones.com.

• Supper club: Arts Alley (20 S Main St, Concord, 406-5666, artsalleyconcordnh.com) will hold the first dinner in its new Supper Club dining series. “Modern Diner, Old Soul” will take place on Friday, Feb. 27 (rescheduled from Feb. 20 due to weather) from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m, and features a four-course dinner inspired by classic diner dishes. Tickets for this 21+ event are $97.88 and available through eventbrite.com.

• New England Hot Sauce Fest on the move: The New England Hot Sauce Fest has a new home, according to a press release. This year’s Fest will take place Saturday, Aug. 1, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Strawbery Banke Museum in Portsmouth, the release said. The festival will feature hot sauce makers and hot sauce samples, music, hot pepper eating contests, food trucks, beer, family friendly activities and more, the press release said. Tickets are on sale now, at newenglandhotsaucefest.com. Donations from the proceeds of the event will go to Blue Ocean Society for Marine Conservation and Seacoast Science Center, the press release said.

• Maple season: Make those syrup plans now. Maple Weekend 2026 in New Hampshire is slated for Saturday, March 21, and Sunday, March 22. See nhmapleproducers.com for a list of area sugarhouses participating in the weekend with tours, tastings and more.

• And to serve that syrup…: The League of NH Craftsmen Meredith Fine Craft Gallery, 279 DW Highway in Meredith, currently has a collection of handmade maple syrup pitchers, according to a press release. See the collection, from which you can purchase one to take home, Monday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday, noon to 5 p.m. See meredith.nhcrafts.org.

• Mochi and merlot: Averill House Vineyard (21 Averill Road, Brookline, 244-3165, averillhousevineyard.com) offers a new tasting experience, pairing handcrafted wines with vegan Issei Mochi Gummies. Each guest will get a customized flight of six wines, selected from Averill House’s traditional and craft wines. Every pour is paired with one of six Mochi Gummies This tasting experience is available through April on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays.

• Wine and cheese, and more, please: There will be a tasting class at Tuscan Market (Tuscan Village, 9 Via Toscana, Salem, 912-5467, tuscanbrands.com) Friday, Feb. 27 at 5:30 p.m., called “Wine, Cheese, and Dessert.” Sample wines paired with cheeses and Italian sweets. The cost for this event is $64.74 through eventbrite.com.

Kiddie Pool 26/02/26

Family fun for whenever

February vacation week fun

• Pats Peak, 686 Flanders Road in Henniker, patspeak.com, has extended its POP Ticket (pay one price for skiing, snowboarding, snowtubing, rentals and lesson tips) days for every day through Saturday, Feb. 28. The POP tickets cover night activities starting at 4, 5 or 6 p.m. and running through 9 or 10 p.m. depending on the day (with ticket prices based on start time), according to the website.

• Wonderland Books and Toys, Maple Valley Plaza, 245 Maple St., No. 12, in Manchester, wonderlandbooksandtoys.com, has a variety of activities scheduled for the rest of vacation week, according to its Facebook page. On Thursday, Feb. 26, there will be a drop-in story time from 11:30 a.m. to noon; a reading of Part 3 of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland from 1 to 1:30 p.m. (recommended for ages 7+), and a bookstore scavenger hunt from 2 to 5 p.m., the post said. On Friday, Feb. 27, the fun includes Pokemon Day to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the first Pokemon video games from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.; a reading of Part 4 of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland from 1 to 1:30 p.m. (recommended for ages 7+), and Board Game Afternoon from 2 to 5 p.m. Activities for Saturday, Feb. 28, include a 3D model building project (ages 6+; see post for pricing) from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.; the wrap-up reading of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland from 1 to 1:30 p.m., and a 3 to 3:30 p.m. story time, the post said.

Theater by kids

• The Community Players of Concord Children’s Theatre Project Winter Vacation Theatre Camp presents The Rainbow Fish Musical at the Concord City Auditorium (2 Prince St., Concord, 228-2793, theaudi.org) Friday, Feb. 27, at 6:30 p.m. A family treat for all ages, this is a children’s classic set to music, performed by a cast of 30 young actors ages 8 through 14. It is adapted from The Rainbow Fish, the award-winning book by Marcus Pfister. This event is free and open to the public, though donations will be accepted.

• How I Became a Pirate (Younger@Part), presented by the performers in grades 2 to 12 from the Palace Youth Theatre vacation camp, will be on stage at the Palace Theatre, 80 Hanover St. in Manchester, on Saturday, Feb. 28, at 11 a.m. See palacetheatre.org for tickets.

• For the older crowd, Cabaret presented by the Palace Teen Apprentice Company and the Palace Teen Company, performed by student actors ages 12 to 18, will be on stage at the Rex Theatre, 23 Amherst St. in Manchester, on Sunday, March 1, at 2 p.m. See palacetheatre.org for tickets.

Save the date

• Chunky’s Cinema Pub, 707 Huse Road in Manchester, chunkys.com, will hold Girl Scout Cookie Bingo for all ages on Friday, March 13, at 6:45 p.m. Winners of each round of bingo will receive boxes of Girl Scout Cookies. See the website for tickets.

• Kids Con New England — a celebration of comic books, comic book creators, comic book readers, superheroes and more — will take place Sunday, April 12, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Sheraton in Nashua. See kidsconne.com for tickets and for a list of artists and authors scheduled to attend as well as activities and programming scheduled throughout the event. Tickets cost $16 for ages 5 and up and $60 for a family of four.

• Enjoy the “comedy canine cabaret” of Mutts Gone Nuts on Friday, May 1, at 7 p.m. at the Dana Center at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, according to tickets.anselm.edu, where you can purchase tickets.

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