Two of a kind

Fools duo play intimate Manchester show

November is a time of year when Mike Girard is usually getting ready to star in the annual Christmas Buzz Ball or doing shows with either his longtime band The Fools or the oversized side project, Mike Girard’s Big Swinging Things. Since the pandemic put the kibosh on most live music last March, however, he’s done exactly one gig: an early August drive-in Fools show at a Manchester by the Sea fitness club parking lot.
Girard’s performance output will double when he and Fools guitarist Rich Bartlett play an intimate show at the Rex Theatre in Manchester on Nov. 28. They’ve done the duo act once before at a house concert, “and we really had a terrific time,” Girard said in a recent phone interview. “The songs were stripped down, with lots of stories in between. We called it the Naked and Afraid Tour; this is a continuation of that.”
The setlist will include favorites like “Life Sucks, Then You Die” and “It’s A Night For Beautiful Girls,” reworked for the spare performance.
“I guess the words are going to be a lot more audible, for good or ill,” Girard said. “If you don’t like it, you’ll know why. There’s [one] song in particular, a slow one called ‘Just Give Up’ — it’s kind of an inspirational song about just quitting.”
A natural raconteur, Girard is more than ready to perform, despite the time off. He’ll share tales of his band’s beginnings in the late 1970s, when hits “She Looks Alright In The Dark” and “Psycho Chicken” were all over Boston radio, and talk about international tours opening for Van Halen and The Knack.
Fans will also gain insight into his songwriting process, Girard promised.
“For instance, ‘Night Out’ occurred to me in a dream — it really did,” he said. “In the dream, we were playing in a small club, doing this song. I woke up and wrote the verse and chorus. I knew where it was going and I went back to bed.”
In the morning, Girard finished the song.
“I called up Richie and said, ‘I had this dream we’re playing this song in a club; I wrote it down and I want to play it for the band.’ He said, ‘How many people were in the club?’ I said, ‘Not too many.’ He said, ‘Call me back when there’s more people in the club.’”
For his part, Bartlett is always ready to hit the stage, Girard said.
“I could show up at his place pretty much any hour of the day and he’ll be sitting on the couch playing guitar into his headphones while watching one TV show or another,” he said. “I tell him, ‘Your life hasn’t really changed at all; we’re all [not used to] staying at home, but that’s just what you do.’”
The upcoming stripped-down show will be The Fools’ second at the Rex; they were there last Feb. 22, a few months after Girard published a new book, A Fool In Time. Like 2010’s Psycho Chicken & Other Foolish Tales, he admits that it’s loosely a memoir, quoting Bartlett’s response to Psycho Chicken in the preface: “The story is pretty much true, even if the details aren’t.”
The Fools have a long history in Manchester, dating back to the raucous mid-’80s days of The Casbah Club, when they and performers such as GG Allin, Jim Carroll and The Ramones would frequently visit.
Girard is looking forward to playing at the city’s newest venue again.
“We’re going to add to the foolish population of that town,” he said with a laugh. “I love the Rex, the place is great. It’s got that feeling of history about it, being an old theater. Nice high ceilings, lots of space.” And it’s ideal for a safe, socially distanced evening.
“We won’t be selling merch, or hanging out with the audience after or whatever, all the things that we would normally do,” Girard said. “We’ll have our own separate entrance, everyone will wear a mask when they’re out of their seat, you know? But once we start, it’s going to be fun — that’s the whole point of every show.”

An Intimate Evening With A Couple of Fools
When: Saturday, Nov. 28, 7:30 p.m.
Where: The Rex Theatre, 23 Amherst St., Manchester
Tickets: $29 in advance at palacetheatre.org, $39 at the door

Featured photo: Mike Girard and Rich Bartlett. Courtesy photo.

The Music Roundup 20/11/19

Local music news & events

• Flighting: Southern California-based tribute band The Eagles Experience presents a convincing recreation of their sound, from the four-part harmonies of “Heartache Tonight” to Don Henley’s melancholy on “Heart of the Matter.” An originally scheduled full hall appearance was split into two shows to accommodate social distancing requirements. Saturday, Nov. 21, 5 and 8 p.m., Dana Center for the Humanities, 100 Saint Anselm Dr., Manchester. Tickets are $40 at anselm.edu.

• Modness: Singer Rick Larrimore’s Rod Stewart Tribute Show convinces on two fronts. He looks the part of the shaggy-haired pop star, and his delivery — sandy-throated vocals, fluid mannerisms and impish charm — is a perfect doppelganger. Larrimore is a big draw in Las Vegas, when a pandemic isn’t running the tables. The event is limited to four-seat table reservations. Saturday, Nov. 21, 8 p.m. at Pasta Loft Restaurant & Pub, 241 Milford Oval, No. 4, Milford, tickets $80 per table at eventbrite.com.

• Worldly: Serious music ensues at a Symphony NH event called Universal Perspectives, as Maestro Roger Kalia leads a 10-piece string ensemble performing selections ranging from Gershwin’s “Lullaby” to a pair of Brazilian pieces — Danza’s “De Panama” and “Mother & Child” — concluding with a musical journey to Estonia and the enduring hymn “Amazing Grace.” Sunday, Nov. 22, 2 p.m., Rex Theatre, 23 Amherst St., Manchester. Tickets $10 to $25 at palacetheatre.org.

• Percussive: Though Drinksgiving is Covid-diminished this year, Senie Hunt will perform an evening of his unique, guitar-as-a-drum music to lead into the holiday. Born in Sierra Leone, Hunt moved from New Hampshire to Memphis a while back but has been in town for the past several weeks. He’ll debut a new Christmas album, Winter Meadow, at the show. Wednesday, Nov. 25, 8 p.m., Penuche’s Ale House, 16 Bicentennial Square, Concord. $2 at the door, see seniehunt.com.

At the Sofaplex 20/11/19

Operation Christmas Drop (TV-G)

Kat Graham, Alexander Ludwig.

A congressional aide eager to impress and an Air Force captain laser focused (like, possibly to a degree that should warrant some personal examination on his part) on spreading Christmas cheer clash, but flirtily (at least I think that’s what they’re doing) in this Netflix Christmas romance. I think it is also technically a comedy but I don’t specifically recall anything funny happening or being said.

Erica (Graham) is sent to Guam to observe the annual Operation Christmas Drop (a real thing that would probably make for a fun holiday documentary), wherein supplies are brought by air drop by the U.S. Air Force (and allies) to the people living on islands around Micronesia. Her boss, Congresswoman Sourface (Virginia Madsen, who looked like she was given a shot of lemon juice before every scene; also, no, that’s not really her character name), wants Erica to go and write a report that says the whole thing is wasteful and the military base should be closed — which would allow Sourface to keep the base in her district. Pilot Andrew (Ludwig) is picked by his boss to show Erica around, answer questions and make a good argument for the base’s continued existence Because It’s Christmas (there’s also some talk about Guam’s strategic importance but honestly it’s very secondary to the Christmas thing). Because it is required by law, there is immediate friction between the two — he’s surfing, she’s in a suit! — but slowly they bond over the fact that they are both attractive and that It’s Christmas.

This is the kind of movie where the main female character starts off with hair neatly up and ends up with wavy hair even in circumstances where down, wavy hair doesn’t seem like a great idea, like while pushing stuff out of a plane. I feel like even for that kind of movie, though, Operation Christmas Drop could be better. Ludwig and Graham are both attractive people but they have no chemistry with each other nor does the bland “banter” generate any. They also have no general chemistry with the movie; I suspect they’re not given enough to do to really commit and create emotional weight of any kind. C-Available on Netflix.

Holidate (TV-MA)

Emma Roberts, Luke Bracey.

It feels shallow to be all “this one had swearing, sex and sarcasm and I liked it better” but, well, this holiday movie from Netflix had swearing, sex and sarcasm and I liked it a lot better than Operation Christmas Drop. Sloane (Roberts) is knocking on the door of 30 (ha!) and feels like the most pitied member of her family because she doesn’t have a date to bring home with her to family celebrations. Jackson (Bracey) regularly finds himself on holiday dates where the importance of the day has outpaced the seriousness of the relationship. They meet cute at the mall while trying to return underwhelming Christmas gifts and discuss the idea, introduced by Sloane’s aunt (a “having big fun” Kristin Chenoweth), of a standing “holidate” — someone who can attend Easter outings and St. Patrick’s pub crawls but won’t expect any long-term commitment. Naturally, Sloane and Jackson decide to become each other’s holidates and run through the year’s holidays — New Year’s Eve, Valentine’s Day, Cinco de Mayo — while having what they claim is no-strings-attached fun together.

Does this movie write itself? Kinda. But that doesn’t make it any less enjoyable in a satisfying “fun thing on in the background” way, particularly if it is the entertainment to accompany pairing up a pile of winter gloves or cleaning out your purse or some other task. Roberts and Bracey have decent chemistry and seem like a good fit for the mildly zany material. B- Available on Netflix.

A New York Christmas Wedding (TV-MA)

Nia Fairweather, Adriana DeMeo.

In the tradition of It’s a Wonderful Life-type holiday movies, this one finds Jennifer (Fairweather) planning a wedding with David (Otoja Abit, the movie’s writer and director) — or rather, listening to his mother’s over-the-top plans for their wedding to take place on Christmas Eve. Jennifer has a tough relationship with Christmas — years ago she had a big fight with her best friend near Christmas, and both of her parents passed away when she was relatively young. Out on a jog to get away from David and his overbearing mother, she meets Azrael (Cooper Koch), who —if the name didn’t give it away the white outfit and the imperviousness to being hit by a car should — is an angel. Thus, when she wakes up the next morning, Jennifer finds herself in bed not with David but with Gabby (DeMeo), her best friend all grown up and now her fiancee.

I feel like I should say something like “Jennifer has to decide if this is the true path her life should have taken” but there really isn’t much to decide; Jennifer and Gabby are clearly deeply in love and meant to be together.

Much like one of those cakes with wonky fondant and oozy jam on Great British Baking Show, this movie isn’t quite patisserie-window-ready; you can see the lumpy bits and rough patches in the basics of this movie’s construction and in some of the writing. Chris Noth shows up as a priest wrestling with the church’s position on same-sex marriage and his whole plot is both very heartfelt and not quite as well folded into the overall story as it could have been with a few tweaks. There is genuine emotion and sweetness all over this movie even if there are also flaws that a slicker production could have fixed. I’m not sure if the heart totally makes up for all the rough moments, but I feel like if the heart is your focus, this could work for you. B-

Available on Netflix.

Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey (PG)

An inventor is lifted out of his doldrums by a visit from his plucky granddaughter in Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey, a charming Christmas-y family musical about STEM, the dedication of the post office and the importance of small business loans.

I mean, it’s also about the magic of creativity and believing in yourself, the magic of actual magic and the importance of familial bonds and friendship, but small business loans and the post office play a not insignificant role.

Jeronicus Jangle (Justin Cornwell as a young man, Forest Whitaker as a grandpa-aged man) is a toymaker and a dazzling inventor in some kind of Victorian-ish world that has a vaguely steampunk feel but without any menace. He believes he has finally cracked the puzzle of a toy so marvelous that it will solidify his Greatest Inventor status and a lifetime of wealth for his family, including wife Joanne (Sharon Rose) and young daughter Jessica (Diaana Babnicova), who wants to be an inventor just like her dad. The toy is a sentient toy matador called Don Juan Diego (voice of Ricky Martin), who is fairly flawed from the outset in that he is extremely vain and possibly evil. When he hears that Jeronicus’ plan is to mass produce him, which means he would no longer be one of a kind, Don Juan convinces Gustafson (Miles Barrow as a squirrely young man; an excellent Keegan-Michael Key as a desperate older man), Jeronicus’ underappreciated apprentice, to steal him, the plans for him and Jeronicus’ book of inventions. Thus does Gustafson become a rich and famous toy inventor and Jeronicus lose his confidence in his inventions, his livelihood and even his family as Joanne dies abruptly and he becomes estranged from Jessica.

As a grown woman, Jessica (Anika Noni Rose) has an inquisitive and creative daughter of her own, Journey (Madalen Mills). Journey has grown up hearing stories about Jeronicus and his inventions but, due to the estrangement between father and daughter, she has never met him. She finds a way to travel to meet Jeronicus, but finds a man mired in sadness. He is barely hanging on in his shop, which is now a pawn and fix-it store. Though his young apprentice Edison (Kieron L. Dyer) believes in him and post officer Mrs. Johnston (Lisa Davina Phillip) cares for him (reminding him in song that she is a widow ready to mingle), Jeronicus wants nothing to do with any of it. He isn’t terribly welcoming to Journey — making her sign a non-disclosure about any plans or inventions she might stumble on — but he slowly starts to warm to her.

With singing! As I mentioned, this is a musical and, while I’m not necessarily humming anything from the movie at the moment, all of the songs are high-energy, plot-appropriate and fun.

I don’t understand the weird financial alchemy that makes a family musical with music co-written by John Legend and a whole bunch of really expensive-looking wooden-toy and paper pop-up-book and wind-up robot animation (used to move the narrative through time jumps between live-action scenes) possible for Netflix distribution but — cool! I’m so glad this movie exists! And I’m so glad it’s getting distribution this way, which feels like the most family-accessible way to put it out there. This movie features genuine artistic achievement, particularly for the look of this film, as well as some solid storytelling. The movie creates a very specific world and then builds a magical story in it, with flavors of The Nutcracker and Peter Pan. The actors do a good job at making us care about these people and believe them, even if they’re doing math equations in the air or singing in the middle of a Dickens’-London-esque setting (but, like, clean and bright, and calling to mind a snow globe with colors that pop). In addition to the core cast, Phylicia Rashad and Hugh Bonneville show up for small roles, which give this movie a quality-throughout feel.

There is also solid adventure, a friendly robot, a goofy villain and not too much scariness — I feel like kids a few years into elementary school can handle this movie. (Common Sense Media gives it an 8+ rating.) Looking for something for a family movie night? Jingle Jangle has enough action that it can probably keep kids engaged and enough storytelling cleverness to entertain adults as well. A

Rated PG for some thematic elements and peril. Written and directed by David E. Talbot, Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey is two hours and two minutes long and distributed by Netflix.

Featured Photo: Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey

How to Write One Song, by Jeff Tweedy

How to Write One Song, by Jeff Tweedy (Dutton, 159 pages)

Of all the implausible goals on my bucket list, writing a song is not one of them. Although I possess both a guitar and a piano, and regularly abuse a vintage iPod, I have always been a consumer of music, not a creator, and it never even crossed my mind to try birthing a song. I’ll venture to say that’s probably true of you, too.

So Jeff Tweedy’s How to Write One Song should have no value to people like us, but as it turns out, the book is a quirky little pep talk that’s more about creativity in general than about songwriting in specific. Imagine Julia Cameron (The Artist’s Way) or Steven Pressfield (The War of Art) in a cowboy hat. Like these creativity coaches, Tweedy proposes to wrest people from tedium — of jobs, lives, dinner choices — by inviting a daily visit from the muse. But he believes that anyone can write a song that is meaningful to them, even without music education or even owning an instrument.

Tweedy, recently described in Rolling Stone magazine as “one of today’s greatest songwriters,” leads the Grammy-winning rock band Wilco and was co-founder of the group Uncle Tupelo. He begins with an interesting assessment of how songs differ from other art forms, like novels or paintings. “They’re hard to hold on to — airlike and ephemeral. They pass through time. They’re here, then gone … Yet they’re portable, they can linger as a memory, and even crazier, they can just pop into our minds for no discernable reason.”

If people think at all about the craft of songwriting, Tweedy says, they’re likely to assume that songs are conjured, not written. He concedes that there is some sort of partnership between the conscious mind and the unconscious, but doesn’t subscribe to the magical “the universe gave me this work, I am but a lowly conduit” mindset. Instead his is a practical method that benefits from timers, schedules and, amusingly, theft.

“Everyone who you could possibly steal from at this point in human evolution is a thief. Even innovators seemingly without any historical precedence are found to be building on someone else’s foundation, upon deeper investigation,” Tweedy writes.

That doesn’t mean he endorses presenting someone else’s work as your own, but seeing the work of others in the context of a “shared ability to create,” and thus allowing for inspiration and integration into your own work. “I believe that writing your own lyrics to an existent melody is a damn fine thing to do if you don’t have much of handle on the music side of things and you really need to get something off your chest in song.”

In fact, one of his suggested exercises is to steal words from a book. Think of a melody, and then “Open up a book anywhere, any page, and keep humming the melody to yourself as you scan. Don’t really try to comprehend what you’re reading; just let your mind skim over the surface of the words on the page and focus your attention on the melody.”

The goal is to capture ideas without the control of the ego, to connect with an “anchor word” from which inspiration flows. Tweedy says that he used this process when writing Wilco’s song “Hummingbird,” conceived with an assist from Henry Miller’s Stand Still Like the Hummingbird. (That’s a nice example of how “theft” doesn’t have to be a crime.)

Simple and folksy, How to Write One Song does not attempt to be more than what it is, a conversation between someone who knows how to write songs and people who don’t. There may not be any great gems of insight here, but there are pebbles of smart, such as Tweedy’s insistence that, to truly succeed at any form of art, the process has to be the goal, not the success of the work, or even the work itself.

In other words, if you want to write a song in order to make money and win a Grammy, you will most likely be emotionally crushed. If you, instead, decide that writing a song is a worthy goal in itself, that the act of creating it has benefits (which Tweedy believes), then you win every time you sit down with a timer and work on your song (or painting or poem) for five minutes. That you win every day when you do it for nothing more than the love of the work.

“There’s just a lot of joy in it, in having created something at all. I don’t feel as bad about other things. I don’t necessarily feel high, or overly joyed. I just feel like, ‘Oh, I’m not wasting my time.’”

But what if we are wasting our time? It’s easy to think that if we are creating things that don’t net us money or recognition. Tweedy says we have to mentally return to childhood, when we hunched over a Crayola masterpiece for an hour and were so proud of what we produced, despite its actual artistic worth. “The drawing got hung up on the fridge regardless of how good it was, because your mom loves you and everyone loves you. Why can’t you be that kind to yourself?”

He goes on: “That’s one of the problems with humans — that we can be talked out of loving something. That we can be talked out of loving something that we do, and we can be talked out of loving ourselves. Easily, unfortunately.”

Will you write a song after reading this book? Maybe not, but it’s still worth the small investment of time, and if nothing else, maybe you’ll resume coloring on the floor, a joyful activity that Tweedy himself would endorse. B

BOOK NOTES
Since songwriting is, well, writing, it’s a natural progression for musicians to write books, too. Whether they’re readable is another story.
Anything by country music superstar Dolly Parton, however, seems a safe bet. She’s out this week with Dolly Parton, Songteller: My Life in Lyrics, written with an assist from music journalist Robert K. Oermann (Chronicle, 388 pages). The publisher promises that fans will learn the origin stories of Parton classics such as “Jolene,” “9 to 5” and “I Will Always Love You,” as well as more than 170 other songs that Parton has written.
If you have a Parton fan on your Christmas list, pair this with a “A Holly Dolly Christmas” CD and you’re done.
But Thanksgiving stands between us and Christmas, so more pertinent to your life this week may be The Book on Pie: Everything You Need to Know to Bake Perfect Pies by Erin Jeanne McDowell, with photos by Mark Weinberg (Rux Martin/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 352 pages).
McDowell, the author of 2017’s The Fearless Baker and a host on Food Network Kitchen, believes that pie of any kind is perfectly acceptable fare for breakfast, which seems reason enough to buy this book. In it, she walks novices through crust-making (she prefers butter to Crisco and lard), and offers her own recipes on classics like apple pie, entrees such as chicken pot pie, and dozens of creative variations such as striped citrus pie, watermelon pie, triple chocolate caramel truffle pie and pina colada pie. Your socially distanced relatives and friends will thank you for reading this book.
Also, fans of Hallmark holiday movies (I don’t understand you, but I know you exist) will want to pick up the clunkily titled Hallmark Channel Countdown to Christmas: Have a Very Merry Movie Holiday (Hearst Home, 224 pages). Author Caroline McKenzie offers recipes and decorating tips from “stars, screenwriters, set designers, costume designers, and directors who create the movie magic.”
In other TV-inspired holiday fare, check out The Official Downton Abbey Christmas Cookbook (Weldon Owen, 240 pages) by Regula Ysewijn. “Now you can eat like an aristocrat,” a review in Delish promises, evidence of yet another wide divide in America: the Downton Abbey stans versus the Hallmark Christmas movie peeps.

Featured photo: How to Write One Song

Album Reviews 20/11/19

The Old Rochelle, Pony Steps (Crumple Crumple Crumple Records)

This band is too messy and cool for me to dismiss as an average fedora combo, even if most of the varying ingredients are there. Thing is, this Lowell, Mass., band, led by Bucky Fereke, has hit on something that’s like a zydeco-washed cross between Eels, Springsteen and ’80s-era Randy Newman. The up-front stuff on this record, starting with “It’s All A Mystery,” is party-time Cajun-pop, made legitimately listenable through the efforts of the band’s accordion player, Tony Cavalieri. It goes on like this for a few tunes, and then, as expected, comes a nice knuckleball, in the form of “West Coast,” an examination of personal rebirth sizzling with a squeaky clean Byrds-style guitar line, in other words stylized in the manner of every other indie-rock song made in the Aughts. That’d usually make me reach for the Tums, but Fereke’s battered yet unrelenting voice can be, as alluded, redolent of Mark Oliver Everett, even borderline Elvis Costello, come to think of it. I’m sure this is a blast to hear live, if this Covid nonsense ever ends. A+

Orianthi, O (Frontiers Records)

You may remember this millennial answer to Lita Ford from her 2009 bubblegum hit “According To You,” a Michelle Branch-style rockout in which the mononymed Australian did her own guitar shredding, something she’s done for a long time now, not only as a solo artist but also as a sidekick for Michael Jackson, Alice Cooper and others. The aforementioned 2009 album, Believe, earned platinum sales status, mostly on the strength of the similarly Avril Lavigne-esque stuff that was on it, but on this, her fourth LP, she ventures into other blends of familiar female-rock, applying a grungy Alanis Morrisette vocal to the Evanescence-drenched opener “Contagious.” “Sinners Hymn” ropes in the noise-heads with a brilliantly beaten-down mud-blues riff, and I suppose I’d love the tune even more if it didn’t rip off Alice in Chains, but what are ya gonna do. “Sorry” finds her trying Trent Reznor goth-electro on for giggles, at which point anyone into heavier music has to tip their hat. A

Retro Playlist

People who are old enough to have their mailboxes stuffed with AARP spam remember when ’80s hair-metal hack Billy Squier, a Boston native, once sang “Christmas is a time to say I love you.” In my mind, now that it’s looking like a Covid Christmas, I’ve changed the lyrics to “Covid is a time to stop being a sucky band.”

Like, why not, bands? There’s really nothing else to do other than reassess your whole approach. It’s either that or just keep trying to press on with the current plan, which, for most bands, involves streaming live shows from someone’s basement. That hasn’t worked out so well, at least from a critic’s eye view. I’m not the only one who’s noticed it; in a recent Facebook post, local veteran rock writer Billy Copeland noted, “The sound quality sucks. The singer keeps pausing to acknowledge all of the fans watching, and that reminds me of … Romper Room, when the lady used to look into her crystal ball and say ‘I see Tommy, and I can see Sally, and I can see Robin[…].’”

The more palatable option for bands looking to make a socially distanced splash, according to one of my favorite PR guys, is to spend no more than $500 on two professionally shot videos. I like that, but I’d always rather see bands getting better at, or changing entirely, their approach to music-making.

We’ve already discussed the possibilities that can come from bands changing their sounds, both the good (Fantastic Negrito’s dumping his Prince trip and becoming the best Led Zeppelin wannabe in the world) and the bad (The Horrors, enough said). But there’ve been others, like Staten Island indie rockers Cymbals Eat Guitars, who in August 2011 gave up posing as a lousy Pavement-type band and released the LP Lenses Alien, which, I noted back then, evinced “a talent for funk-chill, an ear for angsty hooks, a singer who can accurately karaoke Trail of Dead, and a gimmick (mad, mad bliss) — the whole Pavement thing was doomed from the start.”

On the flip side, we have trip-hop legend Tricky, a once-vital character in the Massive Attack canon. His 2013 album False Idols was too minimalist and wasn’t my cup of tea. He went “completely torch,” I whined then.

So, if you’re an artist or band, don’t just change for the sake of changing. I know, it’s totally Captain Obvious, but true.

PLAYLIST

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• It’s here, fam, Nov. 20, the next dump-day for general CD releases! What’s in the can and headed our way, don’t you wonder? Maybe an album of T-Pain burping complete Bach concertos through an Auto-Tuned mic? A Blu-ray of Cardi B giving twerking lessons while wearing a scowling “I Heart Beethoven” half-top? Miley Cyrus covering the entire Mastodon Leviathan album? (You know she wants to, seriously, have you even seen what she’s been up to lately?) Jeezum crow, I can’t imagine what sort of horrific monstrosities are on their way, for the final shopping weeks of this, Week 47 of The Worst Year Of Our Lord 2020, when marriage counselors and family therapists made more money than the airline, cruise ship and hotel industries combined, all while working from home in their Scooby Doo pajamas! Harumph, I say, old chaps and chapettes, look yonder, it’s mummified English EBM/industrial-punk veterans Cabaret Voltaire, with their 15th album, Shadow Of Fear! Hmm, it says here that Richard Kirk is the only remaining member of the band. What fun could that have been, with no drama over artistic differences? Boring! The single, “Vasto,” is a krautrock-electro thing, with no singing. It is OK, because at least it isn’t like some stupid Kraftwerk fanboy thing. Nice tribal-house loops, I shall allow it to live.

• Canadian pub-emo band Partner is commanded by two lesbian guitarists, Josée Caron and Lucy Niles! They won a Canadian songwriting contest or another, whatever, and then got semi-famous when their video for “The ‘Ellen’ Page” went viral, when actual Ellen Page shared it on her Twitter and such. Anyway, Never Give Up, the band’s new LP, features the tune “Honey,” a pretty decent hipster-ized nicking of Joan Jett’s “Do You Wanna Touch Me.” Totally salvageable tune; you might possibly like it, but also might not!

• Speaking of ambivalence, maybe you liked “My Heroine” by Canadian screamo geeks Silverstein, back in 2005, when you were a nerdy tadpole playing Counter Strike for 26 hours a day, but now you’re hopelessly adult and don’t have time for dweeb-rock anymore, yet you’re still interested to know that the band has a new album, Redux II, coming to your Spotify! The first single, “My Disaster (2.0)” is mostly oi-tinged ape-screamo, but then the Dashboard Confessional part comes in, and you realize you must drop everything and go pwn noobs on CS just like back in the old days, what are you waiting for!

• Finally we have my favorite stoner band in the world (because their name fills up almost one million characters of column space), King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, with not one but two new albums! We’ll first talk about the new studio album, K.G., which includes a song titled “Automation,” a shuffle-y, super-cool, mid-tempo post-grunge tune in which our demented heroes try to make Indian sitar-like sounds with their guitars; you’ll totally love it, it’s like a s’mores of Queens of the Stone Age and Ravi Shankar. Now, of course, because it’s holiday shopping season and this band loves putting out albums every two weeks or whatnot, they are also releasing a concert album, Live In S.F. ‘16, which will include such songs as — oh, whatever, it’s all awesome, King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard everyone!

Stay in the loop!

Get FREE weekly briefs on local food, music,

arts, and more across southern New Hampshire!